Holy Cow! Charles Osgood, a skeptic?
A QUIET SUN DOESN’T HAPPEN OVERNIGHT.
excerpts:
I know you’ve already got a lot to worry about as it is, but something rather odd is going on — on the Sun.
The Sun normally undergoes an 11-year cycle of activity — and last year, it was supposed to have heated up — and, at its peak, would have a tumultuous boiling atmosphere, spitting out flares and huge chunks of super-hot gas.
Instead, it hit a 50-year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity. Right now, the sun is the dimmest it’s been in nearly a century.
Did you know that? It’s true. Astronomers are baffled by it, but has the press covered the story? Hardly at all. Is the government doing anything about it? No, it’s not even in the Obama budget or any Congressional earmarks.
Right now, global warming is a given to so many, it raises the question: Could another minimum activity period on the Sun counteract, in any way, the effects of global warming?
read the entire article at the link below:
Transcripts, podcasts, and Mp3’s of all this program can be found at theosgoodfile.com.
kim (11:50:48) :
eric 10:30:24
Ah, hopeful words. Why is it that none, or almost none, of the climate models predict natural variability to overwhelm the effect of CO2 for ‘as much as a decade or more’? And please see lucia’s Blackboard at rankexploits.com/musings/ for disconfirmation, at the 95% confidence level, of the AR4 projection of 0.2C rise per decade, in eight short years.
The models are wrong; they’ve overestimated the sensitivity of climate to CO2. This is the simplest explanation for today’s dropping temperatures while CO2 continues to rise. You may hope that temperature starts to rise again, but the oceanic oscillations in their cooling phase and possibly the effect of the quiescent sun makes your hopes vain. We shouldn’t base expensive and dangerous policy on your vain hopes.
I assume you are referring to this post.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/giss-temp-jan-20010-dec-2008/
My focus has been comparing observed and predicted trends during this period. My posts discuss whether or not these sorts of negative trends are consistent with IPCC projections of underlying warming (which is about 2 C/century for the first 2 or 3 decades of this century.)
I believe that these data are inconsistent with that level of warming.
However, I do periodically think it’s important to note that I am not suggesting the recent negative trend is inconsistent with some level of underlying warming trend. I believe GHG do cause warming, and we should expect that warming trend to resume at some point
This opinion is countered by a post by Tamino at Open Mind who did an analysis which showed that the trend we are seeing is consistent with weather noise on top of an underlying .2K per decade increase.
To the moderator: How do I write embedded hyperlinks such as Smokey (08:27:06) : where he has ” directly under the graph” and the graph is hyperlinked.
I can write these in MS Word, but when I cut and paste from the program into this text block, the link disappears.
Preferably my ignorance will not be made public and you can email me a response.
thanks in advance.
Kim,
Here is the analysis I was referring to in the previous post.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/09/12/dont-get-fooled-again/
eric 12:16:35
Now, that’s funny. Still, once Sarkozy snaps to the fact that the Europeans and the Americans are being played for their carbon use guilt at Copenhagen, he may wish he’d taken advice from Allegre. And that playing is becoming more obvious every day, just as the failure of the CO2=AGW paradigm is becoming more obvious every day. Tipping point soon, my friend.
=================================
Comment on Climate Heretic (11:54:05)
Politics will naturally flip & flop polarity. I suppose we can’t stop people from draining themselves trying to oppose nature.
Sensible (& strategic) response to illusion is often coy. There is no monopoly on common sense that runs along party lines.
Your comments are thought-provoking.
Paul Vaughan (11:11:46) :
Leif Svalgaard (01:38:20)
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~obs/torsional.html
Now I am beginning to suspect politics….
Those winds are very much an active area of research, and lots of papers and no politics. We even observe them inside the Sun. We are not sure where they fit is the grand scheme of things, if ever. They probably are just consequences of more fundamental processes, much as the trade winds in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Here is a recent paper: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.041102
Sagar Chakraborty,Arnab Rai Choudhuri,and Piyali Chatterjee
published 29 January 2009
Although the Sun’s torsional oscillation is believed to be driven by the Lorentz force associated with the sunspot cycle, this oscillation begins 2–3 yr before the sunspot cycle. We provide a theoretical explanation of this with the help of a solar dynamo model having a meridional circulation penetrating slightly below the bottom of the convection zone, because only in such dynamo models does the strong toroidal field form a few years before the sunspot cycle and at a higher latitude.
David Ball (11:43:42) :
Leif, does Willie Soon’s work pass your smell test?
Sometimes it does, sometime it does not; as with much other work, e.g. Hathaway’s and Lockwood’s. I’m sure they say the same about my work 🙂
Read this, then go back and read the one about habitable zone planets.
We better get our butts in gear ASAP.
Pardon my guffawing… Adolfo caused me to regurg coffee.
eric (05:45:08) :
“Who cares what Charles Osgood thinks? He has no expertise in climatology. He is a human interest, soft news reporter. He is well past his sell by date.
This blog is nothing but cheer leading.”
And a cheer-ful bunch they are Eric. But please note that it is often the tone of the AGWs that older folks know nothing or are stale. This is reflected in posts all over the net from barking AGWs who show an open disdain for senior skeptic scientists.
The MSM may be setting Mr. Osgood out front to test their transition strategy. The avuncular Osgood sets the table for the transition away from the failed AGW campaign to something new. What they hate to admit is that repositioning their content WILL improve their ratings. The key for all networks and MSM is get with the new program… anything but AGW. And “Look, we made a mistake” type editorials – garner big numbers and forgiving readers. Remember Checkers?
Since I first heard him on my local radio station — WEEI 590 AM — back
around 1977, I have followed him. I like his presentation and his
attempts to be balanced. 30 years of listening gives me a bit of
perspective.
Have no doubt about his politics and beliefs. He is a big-government
hard leftist. In many cases he hides it well. He tries trying to be a reporter,
not an editor, at least sometimes.
It is hard for me to figure out what his reporting on this event really
means. Is he just being professional, and reporting the news, or has
the left got a case of creeping panic? There is no AGW, so what can
we scare the public with next? Or is CBS about to launch into a
support-Obama cap-and-tax scheme, and this piece is just cover
so CBS can claim it reports both sides equally?
My guess is the latter. Expect Charles to start pushing carbon tax
and tax and tax and tax plan from the O administration.
Frank Perdicaro (13:54:53) : No guesses..perhaps he followed WUWT recipe (Rx: Castor Oil) and has been relieved of all the burden he had.
kim:
“You are as dense as Tom P. The only time there is a good correlation between CO2 rise and Temperature rise is in the last quarter of the last century. Before and after that, the correlation is poor.”
Incorrect. Get the data, plot it, and you too can see the strong correlation between CO2 and temperature, and the non-existent correlation between TSI and temperature. To claim something about the data without even having looked at it is dense indeed.
“However there is a good correlation, for at least a century, between temperature variations, overlaid on the constant rise from the Little Ice Age, and the varying phases of the oceanic oscillations.”
Incorrect. Try plotting a scatter graph of hadcrut or gistemp against JISAO PDO index. I find R-squared=0.02.
Smokey:
Do you really need spoonfeeding the data? Try hadcrut for temperatures, and SIDC for sunspot numbers. Use google. Instead of shouting about how you don’t believe the numbers, simply get the numbers and plot the graphs.
“Also, a graph covering a decade is not a ’short period,’ as you say.”
Yes, it is a short period. If you want to discern a climate trend, you cannot do so with only a decade of data. It seems that many of you find this difficult to understand, but you cannot say anything about climate based on only a decade of data. A bit like how you can’t say whether last winter was cold based on a single week from some part of it.
“Face it, the claim that CO2 will cause runaway global warming has been repeatedly falsified. You’re beating a dead horse.”
The day that CO2 stops absorbing infrared will be the day it stops playing a major role in the Earth’s energy balance. Do you expect it to stop absorbing infrared?
Leif Svalgaard (13:25:03)
“Those winds are very much an active area of research, and lots of papers and no politics.”
– –
As (indirectly) suggested previously, I hope you will ask your contacts to publish sensible summaries of the data to a webpage — separate pages for:
i) monthly average rotation rate by N&S latitude
ii) daily (estimated) rotation rate by N&S latitude
Once the data is publicly available, my suspicion that someone is “sitting on” (perhaps ‘politically incorrect’ for-the-times) leads from Ulrich’s very fruitful 2001 investigation may fade.
If I had access to sensible summaries of the data I would do something similar to what Ulrich did – but I would go a lot further, I would be more organized, and I would not view everything through a differential rotation (so-called) “law” lens.
This is a fascinating area of research. There seems to be the potential for a major discovery – & in the fairly near future. I can see why people are hoarding the data and not extending credit to some of the smart players at Oulu.
We should be throwing an army of investigators at this.
I’ve no doubt I could turn up more insight that what I can find published.
…but perhaps it’s politically convenient if the truth is delayed?…
As long as the data is not posted on a webpage, some people might wonder ‘why? – what is so easy-to-see that it has to be hidden?’
Yo, RW, I asked you to post the hand plotted chart you said you made. @06:52:38 you said:
“I got the data from publicly available sources, and plotted the graphs.”
It should only take a minute or two to post your hand made chart… unless you were, like, pretending. So let’s see it.
And about your claim that CO2 is making the planet hotter:
click1
click2
click3
click4
click5
click6
click7
click8
click9
click10
click11
click12
click13
click14
click15
click16
click17
click18
click19
click20
So who are you gonna believe? Al Gore? Or your lyin’ eyes?
Wish I knew how to attach the graphs, but I am new at this.
RW.
I am not sure I see what you mean for correlation of CO2 and temp. If go to woodfortrees and plot woodfortrees temp index as series 1 and C02 index (from 1979 and normalized to 1) as series 2, I see a flat temp period from about 1980 to 1995 for temp. CO2 is steadily increasing. From 1993 to about 2002 both rise . From about 2000 to 2009 temps are flat, CO2 continues to increase. I was a bit surprised that I see the same thing when I plot the GISS from 1979. If I go back further with the GISS (to 1960) it is even more obvious that temp is flat while CO2 is roughly linear. On a smaller time frame even GISS and CO2 from 2000 show CO2 increasing and temp flat. I had expected to find better agreement to a steady rise with the GISS. While both flat periods are probably too short to be climate, they are long enough to make me skeptical about a direct correlation of temperature to CO2.
Paul Vaughan (15:03:47) :
I hope you will ask your contacts to publish sensible summaries of the data to a webpage — separate pages for:
i) monthly average rotation rate by N&S latitude
ii) daily (estimated) rotation rate by N&S latitude
It is a complete misnomer to call them rotation rates. They are not. ‘Zonal flows’ is the preferred name.
but I would go a lot further, I would be more organized, and I would not view everything through a differential rotation (so-called) “law” lens.
I cannot imagine what you would do any differently than what many researchers are already doing.
I can see why people are hoarding the data and not extending credit to some of the smart players at Oulu.
This has been studied since the early 1980s and nobody is hoarding the data. I have it and the smart players have it. You can just ask Ulrich [or John Boyden] for it.
We should be throwing an army of investigators at this.
Considering what we are getting from a fair number of all-knowing geniuses already, I’ve a dim opinion of the quality of what they might turn out.
it’s politically convenient if the truth is delayed?…
Nothing is hidden or delayed. There is a fair amount of work involved in maintaining such a website and Mt. Wilson is operating on a shoestring already as is WSO and other solar observatories, so if the Army of Investigators would each donate, say $1000 [a paltry sums for the chance of making a major discovery don’t you think] perhaps something could be done.
My apologies if this has already been said, and perhaps better than this, but there are so many posted replies that I don’t have time right now to read them all.
That said, my suspicion is that rather than a display of true journalism, what is really happening here is a face-saving / bet-hedging move on the part of the alarmists who have been predicting thermal disaster. I’ve read over the last year or so statements to the effect that global warming has taken a hiatus, but don’t you worry, its gonna come roaring back! Well, this piece feeds this story. They’ll say look, the solar output is as low as it has been in a zillion eons, yet we’ve not become engulfed in ice like we should have. See, its the greenhouse effect that is hampering the natural action of the Sun, and as soon as solar output comes back to normal we’re all gonna die!
Just wait — this will be the party line.
RW (06:52:38) :
Ric Werme: you link to a piece in which the data is heavily smoothed, which inflates apparent correlations. It also uses US temperatures instead of global.
Joe D’Aleo may have used USHCN because of our downwind proximity of the PDO. Joe does have some shorter period raw MSU temps vs ENSO data at http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Correlation_Last_Decade.pdf while that R^2 is a pretty paltry 0.36, the CO2 data has a R^2 of 0.00 to 0.08. However, it is monthly data, so it may not be a fair comparison since the CO2 signal has that annual oscillation. Perhaps the only thing worse than smoothed data is raw data, especially over a shorter term than the century of data I previously pointed out. What do you consider “Goldilocks” data?
BTW, your 30 year look at correlation covers the warm period of the current PDO cycle. If global warming is heavily influenced by the PDO, then you’ve picked the ideal period to show a correlation with rising CO2. Looking at a shorter term should show a poor correlation with CO2 (like Joe’s 0.00) due to the recent cooling, looking at a longer term (like a full PDO cycle) will help suppress the PDO’s effect and give a better result. Of course, then you have to worry about Akasofu’s hypothesis that PDO and linear warming from the Little Ice Age explains the temperature history for the last century ot two.
I’ve been reading here for almost a year now, don’t really think I have much to offer to the serious science discussions that go on here. But wanted to write and thank Lief and all the other regular commenters for the discussion that makes the comments as fascinating as the articles.
Scientist Wannabe
Lloyd
Leif Svalgaard (15:31:33)
“[…] Mt. Wilson is operating on a shoestring already as is WSO and other solar observatories […]”
This is what I was getting at.
Leif: “[…] would each donate, say $1000 [a paltry sums for the chance of making a major discovery don’t you think] perhaps something could be done.”
I couldn’t agree more. The human race has reached the stage where we need to increase research funding by an order of magnitude. Everywhere I look I see wasted human capital. Squander, squander, squander… eventually catches up with a society.
… but, to throw in some optimism: The balance is shifting….
Climate is changing and always will. The climate celebrities, however, are linking climate and the economy. Yes, there has been warming to end the Pleistocene. Climate is a multiple input, multiple loop, multiple output, complex system. The facts and the hypotheses, however, do not support CO2 as a serious ‘pollutant’. In fact, it is plant fertilizer and seriously important to all life on the planet. It is the red herring used to unwind our economy. That issue makes the science relevant.
Sulphate from volcanoes can have a catastrophic effect, but water vapour is far more important. Water vapour (0.4% overall by volume in air, but 1 – 4 % near the surface) is the most effective green house blanket followed by methane (0.0001745%). The third ranking gas is CO2 (0.0383%), and it does not correlate well with global warming or cooling either; in fact, CO2 in the atmosphere trails warming which is clear natural evidence for its well-studied inverse solubility in water: CO2 dissolves rapidly in cold water and bubbles rapidly out of warm water. The equilibrium in seawater is very high; making seawater a great ‘sink’; CO2 is 34 times more soluble in water than air is soluble in water.
CO2 has been rising and Earth and her oceans have been warming. However, the correlation trails. Correlation, moreover, is not causation. The causation is under experimental review, however, and while the radiation from the sun varies only in the fourth decimal place, the magnetism is awesome.
“Using a box of air in a Copenhagen lab, physicists traced the growth of clusters of molecules of the kind that build cloud condensation nuclei. These are specks of sulphuric acid on which cloud droplets form. High-energy particles driven through the laboratory ceiling by exploded stars far away in the Galaxy – the cosmic rays – liberate electrons in the air, which help the molecular clusters to form much faster than climate scientists have modeled in the atmosphere. That may explain the link between cosmic rays, cloudiness and climate change.”
As I understand it, the hypothesis of the Danish National Space Center goes as follows:
Quiet sun → reduced magnetic and thermal flux = reduced solar wind → geomagnetic shield drops → galactic cosmic ray flux → more low-level clouds and more snow → more albedo effect (more heat reflected) → colder climate
Active sun → enhanced magnetic and thermal flux = solar wind → geomagnetic shield response → less low-level clouds → less albedo (less heat reflected) → warmer climate
That is how the bulk of climate change might work, coupled with (modulated by) sunspot peak frequency there are cycles of global warming and cooling like waves in the ocean. When the waves are closely spaced, the planets warm; when the waves are spaced farther apart, the planets cool.
The ultimate cause of the solar magnetic cycle may be cyclicity in the Sun-Jupiter centre of gravity. We await more on that.
Although the post 60s warming period appears to be over, it has allowed the principal green house gas, water vapour, to kick in with more humidity, clouds, rain and snow depending on where you live to provide the negative feedback that scientists use to explain the existence of complex life on Earth for 550 million years. Ancient sedimentary rocks and paleontological evidence indicate the planet has had abundant liquid water over the entire span. The planet heats and cools naturally and our gasses are the thermostat.
Check the web site of the Danish National Space Center.
http://www.space.dtu.dk/English/Research/Research_divisions/Sun_Climate/Experiments_SC/SKY.aspx
Keeping in mind that windmills are hazardous to birds, be wary of the unintended consequences of believing and contributing to the all-knowing environmental lobby groups.
Smokey (15:21:10)
Smokey you would make a damn great attorney. Your style is known as the “wilting method”.
…Being where you just overwhelm (and wilt) your opponent with sheer volume and content of good counter-evidence.
I laughed out loud when I saw TWENTY clicks.
Bravo.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Francis T. Manns (20:28:43)
THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE and BEST post on this site in explanation to the complex fluid of the universe in which we live [against the current rigid orthodoxy of the AGW religion].
Period.
I copied that post Francis, for future reference and study. THANKS!
BRAVO….again.
Two fantastic posts BACK TO BACK (Smokey and Francis). Not too bad eh?
Thanks to WUWT team for making posts like these possible. There are truly some great minds on this site.
DAMN REFRESHING!
RW (14:51:32) “Do you really need spoonfeeding the data? Try hadcrut for temperatures, and SIDC for sunspot numbers. Use google. Instead of shouting about how you don’t believe the numbers, simply get the numbers and plot the graphs.”
Are you trying to lose the argument RW? From a spectator’s viewpoint I can say that Smokey’s graphs look ok and your graphs look…uh…well they don’t look like anything. I hope you’re not a lawyer. (Your honor my client is innocent. Do you really need me to spoonfeed you the evidence? Use google.) If you’ve got something that backs up what you say why not trot it out for the rest of us to see?
Julie L (09:00:24) : …that peeks with sunspots
So what’s wrong with that? How do you know it is not peeking with sunspots? What else would it peek with? Big blue eyes – I think not!
Anyway, this is no less strange of usage than the reporter who claimed the Catlin Team in the first few weeks of their trek was experiencing “torrid” conditions. In the “peeks” case, they only missed by one letter!
A few of you ought to click on over to Roy Spencer’s Q & A page
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
and scroll down to the CO2 part – it is about a page after the picture of the big white bear chasing the man around his pickup. All the Qs & As are worth reading but as several posts on this thread show there is a major misunderstanding about the CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere.