CBS' Charles Osgood on the Sun – and a surprising suggestion

We have to wake up the Sun now, before it’s too late. There’s tipping points, once the ice crosses the 60th paralled we’re all doomed. We must launch nuclear rockets into the Sun before it’s too late. Arrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Smokey. Do you expect me to reproduce the chart with ASCII art? I’ve pointed you in the direction of the data so you can reproduce the scatter plot yourself and see strong correlations, but you seem reluctant to do so.
It’s well known that on the internet you can find 20 separate people who back any proposition whatsoever. The problem is that not one of your graphs shows what you want them to. 1, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11 and 13 show periods of a decade or less, and like I’ve said, you cannot measure climate over a decade. A bit like how you can’t tell if an oak tree is growing by measuring it for a day. 2 doesn’t work. 3 and 7 are regional temperatures, not global. 8 highlights two points out of 360 – otherwise known as cherry picking. 12 and 14 show speculation with no physical basis. 15 shows a physically meaningless high order polynomial fit. 17 – what are you trying to show here? 18 comes close to providing some support for your views, but neglects to mention La Niña, and does not show error bars. 18, 19, 20 – er, yeah…
If you really want to look at short periods, what’s wrong with the last 14 months? Clear upward trend of 15 degrees/century!!!
Mark_0454: try downloading the data from woodfortrees, then plot CO2 concentration vs. global temperature in your favourite spreadsheet program. Do this for the whole period for which data is available, as I did, and you’ll see a strong correlation. Talking about short periods is pointless – internal variability, not external forcing, dominates year-to-year variations.
Ric Werme – here is a graph showing temperatures and PDO index. PDO index varies about zero – it’s an oscillation after all. Temperature oscillates about a secular upward trend. I downloaded the raw data, plotted a scatter chart and found no correlation between temperatures and PDO index from 1900-present.
Don’t know what you mean by 30 year look at correlation. I did CO2 from 1958 – present, because that’s the period of direct measurement.
“Akasofu’s hypothesis that PDO and linear warming from the Little Ice Age explains the temperature history for the last century ot two.”
You can’t explain warming with warming. What caused the linear warming?

Ric Werme (15:42:01) :
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.
The very definition of the PDO almost precludes it from being correlated to a long lasting global warming signal, and limits it to explaining short term variability:
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest
Updated standardized values for the PDO index, derived as the
leading PC of monthly SST anomalies in the North Pacific Ocean,
poleward of 20N. The monthly mean global average SST anomalies
are removed to separate this pattern of variability from any
“global warming” signal that may be present in the data.

Interesting info and comments on the ACRIM website:
http://acrim.com/
“The requirements for a long-term, climate TSI database can be inferred from a recent National Research Council study which concluded that gradual variations in solar luminosity of as little as 0.25 % was the likely forcing for the ‘little ice age’ that persisted in varying degree from the late 14th to the mid 19th centuries. A centuries-long TSI database will have to be calibrated by either precision or accuracy to a small fraction of this value to be of any use in assessing the magnitude of solar forcing.”
Apparently there is a metrology problem with the satellite data (similar to the surface temperature system?). And some disagreement on the “settled science”. And they want “centuries” of DIRECT measurements for an accurate assessment. I guess there are still some real scientists around.
The charts look like TSI MIGHT be bottoming out, but not enough to say for sure.

[snip – get a hold of yourself]

“[snip – get a hold of yourself]”
???
“Today, RW does a 180° flip, and says…”
Yes, smokey, I was being ironic. You obviously don’t understand the criteria for determining whether a trend is significant or not. But if you’re so wedded to claiming ‘trends’ based on periods that are far too short, then you’ll just have to accept that since 2008, temperatures are strongly rising.

Sure, it’s a short trend so far, RW, but with the AMO and the PDO newly in their cooling phase, and with past temperatures demonstratively determined by those and other oceanic oscillations, we can predict at least 20 years of cooling. Even the most diehard alarmists tend to concede that another ten years of cooling will constitute a trend, and call seriously into question the paradigm of CO2=AGW. So kick back with a julep, put your feet up, and contemplate the thermometer. You are unconvincing, so far.
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RW, what explains the linear warming since the end of the Little Ice Age? We don’t know, but it can’t be explained by the CO2 curve.
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Leif Svalgaard (15:31:33)
“I cannot imagine what you would do any differently than what many researchers are already doing.
Further to Paul Vaughan (16:25:06) …
I haven’t had the benefit of easy access to a sensible summary of the data, so I am basing this ‘step 1’ suggestion primarily on what I’ve been able to glean from the literature, the best example of which (so far) seems to be Ulrich (2001).
For starters:
Compare all possible pairs of latitudes via cross-wavelet phase-difference, but due to the latitudinal phase-drift do not keep the translation & dilation parameters locked across variables – let them vary separately for each variable in each pairing — and when doing the plots, use a circular color-scheme that assigns the same colors for phase-differences symmetric about 0 on a scale of (-pi,+pi) and place the plots in large scatterplot-matrices (to reduce the burden on investigators’ short-term memories).
Also, based on what I’ve read so far, I’m concerned that startlingly little attention is being paid to the time-integrated properties of cross-correlation spectra. A thorough examination of the scale-dependency of parameter estimates is likely to turn up a variety of valuable clues. It may also be fruitful to go the extra step of allowing cross-recurrence discontinuities to guide more in-depth windowed analyses.
The more capable-people analyzing the data the better, particularly since different analysts use different methods and have different experience. There is also the propulsive benefit of competition. The current sociopolitical context could be a game-changer & bar-raiser for research-as-usual in fields like economics, solar physics, & climatology, as more & more capable people – out of a sense of curiosity & responsibility – investigate first hand, “What on Earth is going wrong here?” This could provide quite a boost for our education & research systems. Furthermore, if played right, this could be a sustainable wave.

Ric Werme (22:02:41) :
The PDO flipped positive about 30 years ago, so your correlation between temperature and PDO coincided with a warming period. That period could also be expla
ined by the PDO.
It doesn’t make any sense at all to associate the PDO with Global Warming.
The north pacific sea surface temperature associated with the PDO averaged over the surface is neutral. For a positive PDO the area near the pacific coast of the US is warmer relative the rest of the Pacific, and for negative it is colder.
The other half of the north Pacific has a temperature change opposite to that of the Pacific Coast of the US.
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~mantua/REPORTS/PDO/PDO_cs.htm
The SST pattern highlights the strong tendency for temperatures in the central North Pacific to be anomalously cool when SSTs along the coast of North America are unusually warm, and vice-versa (Graham 1994, Miller et al 1995, Zhang et al 1997, Mantua et al 1997)

Ric Werme – to be clear: plotting global temperatures against CO2 concentrations from 1975-present gives R-squared = 0.67. From 1958-present gives R-squared=0.71. The longer period giving the slightly better correlation shows that the PDO has nothing to do with the correlation.
A secular rise in temperatures cannot possibly be attributed to oceanic oscillations, by definition. Your graph certainly does prove that point.
You say “notice things like the rise in Hadcrut temps from 1910 to 1940 where CO2 changes likely were slower than in the Mauna Loa record. The recent temperature data doesn’t track either all that well”.
Recent data tracks CO2 concentrations as well as older data so I’m not sure what you mean there. You can see that better if you smooth a bit more. But I think we’re all well aware that greenhouse gases are not the only factor in determining the climate. There are also variations in volcanic activity and solar activity. However, the correlation coefficient suggests that rising greenhouse gases are the dominant cause of the ongoing rise in temperatures, and basic physics shows us why.
“I don’t know where the linear warming since the LIA comes from, I don’t think anyone knows.”
It does seem strange to assume that if you don’t know, no-one does. Climate scientists do know of three basic causes: 1. rising greenhouse gas concentrations following the start of the industrial revolution. 2. increasing solar activity. 3. A period of few large volcanic eruptions in the early 20th century. The contribution of each has varied with time; currently #1 is dominant.