OK, so my art is a bit tongue in cheek. But it does fit the disaster theme of the topic.
This op-ed piece in the Herald Sun is interesting, because it touches on many of the points covered here on WUWT. This is the first time I’ve seen all these collected in one article in a major newspaper. Andrew Bolt routinely uses material from WUWT, and this is the first time I’ve been able to reciprocate. There are some truly unique points raised by Bolt that are indigenous to Australia that we haven’t discussed here, but they are valid for discussion nonetheless. In cases where we have covered a point on WUWT, I’ve made a footnote link [in brackets] – Anthony
From Andrew Bolt, The Herald Sun
Global Warming Alarmists Out in the Cold
April 29, 2009 12:00am
IT’S snowing in April. Ice is spreading in Antarctica. The Great Barrier Reef is as healthy as ever.
And that’s just the news of the past week. Truly, it never rains but it pours – and all over our global warming alarmists.
Time’s up for this absurd scaremongering. The fears are being contradicted by the facts, and more so by the week.
Doubt it? Then here’s a test.
Name just three clear signs the planet is warming as the alarmists claim it should. Just three. Chances are your “proofs” are in fact on my list of 10 Top Myths about global warming.And if your “proofs” indeed turn out to be false, don’t get angry with me.
Just ask yourself: Why do you still believe that man is heating the planet to hell? What evidence do you have?
So let’s see if facts matter more to you than faith, and observations more than predictions.
MYTH 1
THE WORLD IS WARMING
Wrong. It is true the world did warm between 1975 and 1998, but even Professor David Karoly, one of our leading alarmists, admitted this week “temperatures have dropped” since – “both in surface temperatures and in atmospheric temperatures measured from satellites”. In fact, the fall in temperatures from just 2002 has already wiped out a quarter of the warming our planet experienced last century. (Check data from Britain’s Hadley Centre, NASA’s Aqua satellite and the US National Climatic Data Centre.)
Some experts, such as Karoly, claim this proves nothing and the world will soon start warming again. Others, such as Professor Ian Plimer of Adelaide University, point out that so many years of cooling already contradict the theory that man’s rapidly increasing gases must drive up temperatures ever faster.
But that’s all theory. The question I’ve asked is: What signs can you actually see of the man-made warming that the alarmists predicted?
[ Ian Plimer, Temperature trends]
MYTH 2
THE POLAR CAPS ARE MELTING
Wrong. The British Antarctic Survey, working with NASA, last week confirmed ice around Antarctica has grown 100,000 sq km each decade for the past 30 years.
Long-term monitoring by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports the same: southern hemisphere ice has been expanding for decades.
As for the Arctic, wrong again.
The Arctic ice cap shrank badly two summers ago after years of steady decline, but has since largely recovered. Satellite data from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Centre this week shows the Arctic hasn’t had this much April ice for at least seven years.
Norway’s Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Centre says the ice is now within the standard deviation range for 1979 to 2007.
[Antarctic Ice Growth, Arctic Ice Recovery ]
MYTH 3
WE’VE NEVER HAD SUCH A BAD DROUGHT
Wrong. A study released this month by the University of NSW Climate Change Research Centre confirms not only that we’ve had worse droughts, but this Big Dry is not caused by “global warming”, whether man-made or not.
As the university’s press release says: “The causes of southeastern Australia’s longest, most severe and damaging droughts have been discovered, with the surprise finding that they originate far away in the Indian Ocean.
“A team of Australian scientists has detailed for the first time how a phenomenon known as the Indian Ocean Dipole – a variable and irregular cycle of warming and cooling of ocean water – dictates whether moisture-bearing winds are carried across the southern half of Australia.”
MYTH 4
OUR CITIES HAVE NEVER BEEN HOTTER
Wrong. The alleged “record” temperature Melbourne set in January – 46.4 degrees – was in fact topped by the 47.2 degrees the city recorded in 1851. (See the Argus newspaper of February 8, 1851.)
And here’s another curious thing: Despite all this warming we’re alleged to have caused, Victoria’s highest temperature on record remains the 50.7 degrees that hit Mildura 103 years ago.
South Australia’s hottest day is still the 50.7 degrees Oodnadatta suffered 37 years ago. NSW’s high is still the 50 degrees recorded 70 years ago.
What’s more, not one of the world’s seven continents has set a record high temperature since 1974. Europe’s high remains the 50 degrees measured in Spain 128 years ago, before the invention of the first true car.
MYTH 5
THE SEAS ARE GETTING HOTTER
Wrong. If anything, the seas are getting colder. For five years, a network of 3175 automated bathythermographs has been deployed in the oceans by the Argo program, a collaboration between 50 agencies from 26 countries.
Warming believer Josh Willis, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, reluctantly concluded: “There has been a very slight cooling . . .”
MYTH 6
THE SEAS ARE RISING
Wrong. For almost three years, the seas have stopped rising, according to the Jason-1 satellite mission monitored by the University of Colorado.
That said, the seas have risen steadily and slowly for the past 10,000 years through natural warming, and will almost certainly resume soon.
But there is little sign of any accelerated rises, even off Tuvalu or the Maldives, islands often said to be most threatened with drowning.
Professor Nils-Axel Moerner, one of the world’s most famous experts on sea levels, has studied the Maldives in particular and concluded there has been no net rise there for 1250 years.
Venice is still above water.
[Sea Level in the Maldives, Sea Level satellite data]
MYTH 7
CYCLONES ARE GETTING WORSE
Wrong. Ryan Maue of Florida State University recently measured the frequency, intensity and duration of all hurricanes and cyclones to compile an Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index.
His findings? The energy index is at its lowest level for more than 30 years.
The World Meteorological Organisation, in its latest statement on cyclones, said it was impossible to say if they were affected by man’s gases: “Though there is evidence both for and against the existence of a detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate record to date, no firm conclusion can be made on this point.”
[Ryan Maue and Hurricane energy, Hurricane landfall trends]
MYTH 8
THE GREAT BARRIER REEF IS DYING
Wrong. Yes, in 1999, Professor Ove Hoegh-Gulberg, our leading reef alarmist and administrator of more than $30 million in warming grants, did claim the reef was threatened by warming, and much had turned white.
But he then had to admit it had made a “surprising” recovery.
Yes, in 2006 he again warned high temperatures meant “between 30 and 40 per cent of coral on Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef could die within a month”.
But he later admitted this bleaching had “minimal impact”. Yes, in 2007 he again warned that temperature changes of the kind caused by global warming were bleaching the reef.
But this month fellow Queensland University researchers admitted in a study that reef coral had once more made a “spectacular recovery”, with “abundant corals re-established in a single year”. The reef is blooming.
MYTH 9
OUR SNOW SEASONS ARE SHORTER
Wrong. Poor snow falls in 2003 set off a rash of headlines predicting warming doom. The CSIRO typically fed the hysteria by claiming global warming would strip resorts of up to a quarter of their snow by 2018.
Yet the past two years have been bumper seasons for Victoria’s snow resorts, and this year could be just as good, with snow already falling in NSW and Victoria this past week.
[New low temp record at Australian ski resort this year]
MYTH 10
TSUNAMIS AND OTHER DISASTERS ARE GETTING WORSE
Are you insane? Tsunamis are in fact caused by earthquakes. Yet there was World Vision boss Tim Costello last week, claiming that Asia was a “region, thanks to climate change, that has far more cyclones, tsunamis, droughts”.
Wrong, wrong and wrong, Tim. But what do facts matter now to a warming evangelist when the cause is so just?
And so any disaster is now blamed on man-made warming the way they once were on Satan. See for yourself on www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm the full list, including kidney stones, volcanic eruptions, lousy wine, insomnia, bad tempers, Vampire moths and bubonic plagues. Nothing is too far-fetched to be seized upon by carpetbaggers and wild preachers as signs of a warming we can’t actually see.
Not for nothing are polar bears the perfect symbol of this faith – bears said to be threatened by warming, when their numbers have in fact increased.
Bottom line: fewer people now die from extreme weather events, whether cyclones, floods or blinding heatwaves.
Read that in a study by Indur Goklany, who represented the US at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: “There is no signal in the mortality data to indicate increases in the overall frequencies or severities of extreme weather events, despite large increases in the population at risk.”
[Going down – death rates due to extreme weather events]
So stop this crazy panic.
First step: check again your list of the signs you thought you saw of global warming. How many are true? What do you think, and why do you think it?
Yes, the world may resume warming in one year or 100. But it hasn’t been warming as the alarmists said it must if man were to blame, and certainly not as the media breathlessly keeps claiming.
Best we all just settle down, then, and wait for the proof — the real proof. After all, panicking over invisible things is so undignified, don’t you think?
Hmmmm, drowning polar bears didn’t even make the top ten !!!
… at least as their own category.
I’ve seen things like this graph that indicate a plateau or possible decline in global temperature:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/global-jan-dec-error-bar-pg.gif
But, what is the source of this claim under “myth 1”? “In fact, the fall in temperatures from just 2002 has already wiped out half the warming our planet experienced last century.” Is it based on one month’s anomaly? For example, March 2009?
Please don’t use the word “indigenous’ unless you’re referring to an already sanctified ethnocultural group of misfits already approved as such. Otherwise, the UN will be obligated to make a call for a new cluster of NGOs, strike a task force and relief agency, and compel 123 nations to sign a declaration of some sort attesting to some obligation or another, and your taxes will go up, again, and Jim Hansen and Al Gore will have yet another group to pontificate before, and that can only come to no good.
A nice demonstration of the sceptic echo chamber bouncing inaccurate tid-bits around the globe.
Let’s drill down to some of the “evidence”…
Snow in April is nothing new in OZ – there was heavy snow last year.
The snow season last year was not a bumper one nor was 2007. They were both very poor seasons overall – very short, very little overall snowfall and marked by very warm and dry conditions in spring (hyped by industry and “sceptics” – http://www.snowyhydro.com.au/snowDepth.asp?pageID=46&parentID=6 ).
The 2007 was the hottest year on record in the snowfields.
The last 10 years have seen the hottest driest drought on record in the snowfields.
Snow has shown drastic declines of near 50% since the 1950s in Australia.
Perhaps some of the other “sceptics” here might deal with the other 9…
REPLY: You live is Australia, why not deal with all of them then? How about the Barrier reef, you work in waterworld, explain that one and why the claims made by Bolt are all wet. Oh, and Jennifer Maohasy is still waiting for you to answer a question on her forum.- Anthony
For a complete list of things caused by global warming see this: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
1. Al Gore said so.
2. Al Gore said so.
3. Al Gore said so.
And the debate is over.
Andrew Bolt routinely applies what I call the practical person’s “sniff test” to public policy issues.
When a rational adult applies their “sniff test” to the whole agw proposition, the odor makes their eyes water.
Here Bolt breaks through the instinctive stench surrounding agw, and lays out why it is so on the nose.
The great pity is that, in a so-called intelligent age, our politicians seem unable to arrive at these same conclusions immediately.
Hey, the religion of carbon-caused Climate Doom from the very start has merely been exercising its right to free speech and indoctrination. They said all along that their beliefs are based on consensus, which everybody knows is not how science is done. As with any other religion, the more myths incorporated, the stronger is the faith of the followers. I’m sure they have a whole holy book full of myths – far more than your paltry list, Andrew. The Head Ministers will, of course, be entitled to Carbon Credits. It’s the least the world can do for them in return for being saved.
As the world keeps on blabbermouthing about CO2, who tells Obama that he is about to make the biggest mistake in life?
Stop Obama talking Gore.
Micajah,
Here is the graph you posted:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/global-jan-dec-error-bar-pg.gif
This one is from NASA JPL (scroll down to the temperature data) which was just updated to include 2008:
http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/index.cfm#GlobalTemperature
Also the recent high years are lower in the JPL than the NOAA graph…. why? I have no idea.
I could name a sign, the big heat blobs rolling over Asia on Intellicast’s forecast maps, oh wait maybe that happens every year.
Maybe this one, SST’s today are higher than at various times in the last 2 months, oh wait they’re still lower than in January.
Maybe this one, Fairbanks has been seeing above average temperatures, oh wait it’s actually below average elsewhere on the globe.
I plum can’t think of any solid un-debatable reasons O.o
Well, well, Thermador still makes man made ovens that get hotter than hell. 😉
DJ, I have reservations about the opinion of anyone who uses the term “drilling down to some of the evidence” – it usually means selectively cherry picking the evidence to suit one’s own point of view. Alas I think you fall into this category. By the way I too live in Australia, and enjoy skiing. The snow here hasn’t got any worse over the last 20 years – it was always fairly ordinary.
That is not fair! How dare you!
Hansen prophesized it, Gore profitted it, the IPCC wrote it, Obama promised to cure it, and that is that!
Don’t worry… the consensus scientists are always working on new and even scarier scenarios. The next one? Ocean acidification!!! Already shriveling under the white hot heat of truth… The good warming.
Interesting reading.
An Executive Summary to the Layman’s Guide to Global Warming Myths.
And here, on WUWT, complete with footnotes.
That whole thing about “faux pas” on the last topic got me off into this. An example of correct southern usage goes something like, “What’s that shotgun faux, pas?”
“DJ (16:21:12) :
A nice demonstration of the sceptic echo chamber bouncing inaccurate tid-bits around the globe. “
Now don’t get me wrong…I admire your beliefs. You need to realize that as well as trying to save the world, you need to look after your family. You realize that it is a foregone conclusion that we won’t be able to stop global warming in time. Heck, I think we’ve passed at least two or three tipping points in the last ten years. You have to face up to it…there isn’t time to do anything about it now. It’s still early enough to invest in property which at the moment is just farmland…in central Louisiana. In a few years, it will be the new gulf coast. Think about it…Sandw15 Boudreaux’s Port of New New Orleans. A huge amount of shipping goes through the current city of New Orleans…you will be able to tap into the millions of dollars that will go through the new Port of New New Orleans.
You will be surprised at what a relatively small investment will yield as sea level rise drowns the old infrastructure. We at Sandw15 Incorporated are committed to recreating this infrastructure at the new mouth of the Mississippi River. Heck, we’re even going to improve it by making sure that the entire city of New New Orleans is entirely above sea level. Want the night life of old New Orleans? We have a plan to disassemble the French Quarter brick by brick and restore it in New New Orleans.
Just keep in mind that based on the strength of your commitment to the environment, this is the most logical course for you to take. The world may go to hell, but your insightful investment will ensure the welfare of your descendants and give you the economic clout to help many others. And this will be the end of your worries on vanishing wetlands. The whole family will agree…this is the wettest land you ever saw!
And I want you to know, for every share of stock that you buy in Sandw15 Boudreaux’s New Port of New New Orleans, I will give you three shares of stock in Sandw15 Boudreaux’s Lucky 15 Casino and Water Park and I will give you five free days at Sandw Boudreaux’s Lucky 15 Casino Hotel. You will get a 5 day pass to the Lucky 15 water park for the whole family…this includes unlimited rides on the awesome Broken Levee Water Slide!! How can you pass this up?
Very well-written, Anthony. I could see this picked up by the MSM.
The ‘test’ that strikes me as most impressive to the public is the state of the Arctic icepack. Thanks to Al Gore & Co. hyping such an easily understood outcome – does it melt, or not? – we have a people-friendly symbolic proxy for the eye-glazing complexity of ‘climate change’ science that anyone can feel comfortable with.
Come late this summer, a lot will be riding on how arctic the Arctic ocean looks.
Here is a related list, this from the U.S. EPA’s Proposed Finding that CO2 (and 5 other gases) are greenhouse gases.
EPA stated “The effects of climate change observed to date and projected to occur in the future–including but not limited to” (my responses in parentheses)
1. the increased likelihood of more frequent and intense heat waves, (even if valid, which is debatable, given the dust bowl years of the 1930s, these are more likely related to Jet stream and El Nino, which are natural events and very cyclical)
2. more wildfires, (likely not a valid statement, given the short period of records, plus modern fires are more likely due to forest mis-management, lighting strikes, arson. I made a point earlier on a WUWT thread that evidence of massive wildfires in the form of layers of charcoal can be found in the banks of rivers and streams)
3. degraded air quality, (air quality laws are improving air quality)
4. more heavy downpours and flooding, (storm intensity index not higher as stated by Bolt, but more damage occurs due to population growth and location in areas prone to flooding)
5. increased drought, (droughts are cyclical, more severe droughts in the past are known, some areas of drought are caused by poor land management)
6. greater sea level rise, (see the answer already given by Bolt)
7. more intense storms, (refer to the answer for more heavy downpours and flooding, above)
8. harm to water resources, (non-sequitur; water resources are affected by agricultural runoff, overuse, population growth, but not CO2)
9. harm to agriculture (no evidence provided, crop shortages and failures not noted, instead, cold weather is inhibiting planting and is shortening growing seasons).
10. harm to wildlife and ecosystems-(polar bear populations are growing, coral atolls are thriving)
Looks to me like the EPA is 0-for-10 on this one…that is even worse than Michael Jordan’s minor league batting average.
DJ (Dodgy Joe), why don’t you get accurate with your evidence and present it with an unbiased slant.
Yes it’s not unusual to get some snow in April in the high country of Australia, usually 5 to 10 cm in some areas every 2nd of 3rd year and its gone in about 24 hours.
This year we got 70 cm at Mt Buller and all other resorts got over 40 cm in one dump. Now lets put this in perspective. It is rare in Australia to get 70 cm in one dump in any resort at any time of the year and an event worth celebrating. In fact a yearly maximum snow pack of 70 cm. at any resort would be a great season that most ski enthusiasts would want. The sort of season where you dont have to dodge rocks etc.
Mt. Buller has just officially opened for the 2009 ski season, 5 weeks ahead of schedule, the earliest in history. The closest time was in 1964 on 16th may. Hey that was the last time we had a natural global cooling cycle, and the period of data that all allarmists exclude from their studies so they can show a false extreme warming trend.
I think you will have to agree that this is an unusual cooling event and strong evidence to support world wide data that we are entering another natural multi decadal climate cooling variable.
Another view from the UK:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/apr/30/climate-change-scepticism-climate-change
Environment Canada announced to day that by the end of April, Winnipeg has had five consecutive months of below normal temperatures. Believe me, in this climate, any kind of warming is welcome!
[snip]
Hey DJ, i think you’ll find the newly discovered Indian Ocean Dipole explains virtually all the recent weather, including droughts in SE Australia. No need for AGW at all.
DJ (16:21:12) :
“Snow in April is nothing new in OZ”
Not sure where you get your information from. It hasn’t snowed in during April Australia for over a decade according to HeraldSun.com.au. They also reported that the last two ski seasons were bumper seasons as they also were across the ditch here in NZ. The ski field weather gurus in Aussie are predicting another bumper season this year.
One of our local NZ ski fields got 45 cm of snow dumped on it during the last 48 hours with another freezing weather system predicted to blow through next week. This aging person (and keen skier) cannot remember the last time we had significant snow this time of the year. Incidentally DJ last year was also a bumper ski season here.
http://www.nzski.com/cameras.jsp?site=mthutt
When was the last time snow fell simultaneously (or nearly so) in Australia, and California? (from NOAA and National Weather Service, May 1, 2009):
“A WARM AND WET LATE SEASON PACIFIC LOW WILL CONTINUE TO MOVE
ACROSS NORTHERN CALIFORNIA THROUGH TONIGHT…BRINGING PERIODS OF
MODERATE TO HEAVY SNOWFALL TO THE HIGHEST ELEVATIONS OF THE
NORTHERN SIERRA NEVADA…WESTERN PLUMAS COUNTY…AND LASSEN PARK.
SNOW LEVELS ARE STILL RUNNING BETWEEN 7000 AND 8000 FEET THIS
AFTERNOON…BUT WILL LOWER THIS EVENING AND TONIGHT TO BETWEEN
6000 AND 7000 FEET. SNOW ACCUMULATIONS TONIGHT WILL BE UP TO 4
INCHES AT THE LOWER ELEVATIONS AND NEAR A FOOT AT ELEVATIONS ABOVE 7000 FEET.” (that is 25 to 30 cm above 2100 meters)
apologies for the all-caps format, but that is how the NWS writes. No intent to “shout.”
Good on ya, cobber! (cue Waltzing Matilda, coincidentally also the official song of the US 1st Marine Division)
[whenever I meet an Englishman, I always tell them I’ve had five English bosses, if you count Australians. The Pommeys get bulging neck veins from this routine, which is of course the goal, but unfortunately it also has the side-effect of pissing-off the Australians. To make amends, I usually cite the Battle of Gallipoli, in which the British fought to the last Ozzie (or, if you like, Kiwi or Canuck, take your pick)]
This reminds me of the old Nevil Shute book (and movie with Ava Gardner!) ON THE BEACH, in which the Ozzies are the last folks alive after a global nuclear holocaust.
In this case, we’ve apparently had a global genocide of common sense, with the last remaining bits taking up residence in Australia. I guess that’s why it’s God’s Country.
James Allison (17:40:19)
James, the Herald Sun is not quite correct. In 2004 or 2005 I went to the Snowies over the ANZAC weekend, (late April). They had blizzards on top of the alps on the 25th April. On the 26th I walked from the top of Thredbo to the summit of Koszuisko in snow all the way. Have a great photo of myself standing at the Cairn on Kosi in a Blizzard on April 26th. So it does snow in April, BUT, the snow we saw last week in AUS is extremely unusual if not unprecendented it terms of the depth AND the low elevation that it fell to. Up to 500 metres lower for snow settling last week than my experience of 5 years or so ago.
Obviously, the reason for the the cooling going on now is because we changed our incendenscant light bulbs to florescent! Amazing the effect such a small change can make to the climate and its sparing effect on the ice of the polar regions!
Do you have global warming? Symptoms may include:
Acne, agricultural land increase, Afghan poppies destroyed, Africa devastated, Africa in conflict, African aid threatened, African summer frost, aggressive weeds, air pressure changes, airport malaria, Agulhas current, Alaska reshaped, moves, allergy season longer, alligators in the Thames, Alps melting, Amazon a desert, American dream end, amphibians breeding earlier (or not), anaphylactic reactions to bee stings, ancient forests dramatically changed, animals head for the hills, animals shrink, Antarctic grass flourishes, Antarctic ice grows, Antarctic ice shrinks, Antarctic sea life at risk, anxiety treatment, algal blooms, archaeological sites threatened, Arctic bogs melt, Arctic in bloom, Arctic ice free, Arctic ice melt faster, Arctic lakes disappear, Arctic tundra to burn, Arctic warming (not), Atlantic less salty, Atlantic more salty, atmospheric circulation modified, attack of the killer jellyfish, avalanches reduced, avalanches increased, Baghdad snow, Bahrain under water, bananas grow, barbarisation, beer shortage, beetle infestation, bet for $10,000, better beer, big melt faster, billion dollar research projects, billion homeless, billions face risk, billions of deaths, bird distributions change, bird loss accelerating, bird strikes, bird visitors drop, birds confused, birds decline (Wales), birds driven north, birds return early, bittern boom ends, blackbirds stop singing, blackbirds threatened, Black Hawk down, blood contaminated, blue mussels return, bluetongue, brain eating amoebae, brains shrink, bridge collapse (Minneapolis), Britain one big city, Britain Siberian, brothels struggle, brown Ireland, bubonic plague, budget increases, Buddhist temple threatened, building collapse, building season extension, bushfires, business opportunities, business risks, butterflies move north, camel deaths, cancer deaths in England, cannibalism, caterpillar biomass shift, cave paintings threatened, childhood insomnia, Cholera, circumcision in decline, cirrus disappearance, civil unrest, cloud increase, coast beauty spots lost, cockroach migration, coffee threatened, cold climate creatures survive, cold spells (Australia), cold wave (India), computer models, conferences, conflict, conflict with Russia, consumers foot the bill, coral bleaching, coral fish suffer, coral reefs dying, coral reefs grow, coral reefs shrink , coral reefs twilight, cost of trillions, cougar attacks, crabgrass menace, cradle of civilisation threatened, creatures move uphill, crime increase, crocodile sex, crops devastated, crumbling roads, buildings and sewage systems, curriculum change, cyclones (Australia), danger to kid’s health, Darfur, Dartford Warbler plague, death rate increase (US), deaths to reach 6 million, Dengue hemorrhagic fever, depression, desert advance, desert retreat, destruction of the environment, disappearance of coastal cities, disasters, diseases move north, dog disease, Dolomites collapse, dozen deadly diseases, drought, ducks and geese decline, dust bowl in the corn belt, early marriages, early spring, earlier pollen season, Earth biodiversity crisis, Earth dying, Earth even hotter, Earth light dimming, Earth lopsided, Earth melting, Earth morbid fever, Earth on fast track, Earth past point of no return, Earth slowing down, Earth spins faster, Earth to explode, earth upside down, earthquakes, earthquakes redux, El Niño intensification, end of the world as we know it, erosion, emerging infections, encephalitis, English villages lost, equality threatened, Europe simultaneously baking and freezing, eutrophication, evolution accelerating, expansion of university climate groups, extinctions (human, civilisation, logic, Inuit, smallest butterfly, cod, ladybirds, pikas, polar bears, possums, walrus, toads, plants, salmon, trout, wild flowers, woodlice, a million species, half of all animal and plant species, mountain species, not polar bears, barrier reef, leaches, salamanders, tropical insects) experts muzzled, extreme changes to California, fading fall foliage, fainting, famine, farmers benefit, farmers go under, farm output boost, fashion disaster, fever, figurehead sacked, fir cone bonanza, fish bigger, fish catches drop, fish downsize, fish catches rise, fish deaf, fish get lost, fish head north, fish stocks at risk, fish stocks decline, five million illnesses, flames stoked, flesh eating disease, flood patterns change, floods, floods of beaches and cities, flood of migrants, flood preparation for crisis, Florida economic decline, flowers in peril, food poisoning, food prices rise, food prices soar, food security threat (SA), football team migration, footpath erosion, forest decline, forest expansion, frog with extra heads, frostbite, frost damage increased, frosts, fungi fruitful, fungi invasion, games change, Garden of Eden wilts, geese decline in Hampshire, genetic diversity decline, gene pools slashed, giant oysters invade, giant pythons invade, giant squid migrate, gingerbread houses collapse, glacial earthquakes, glacial retreat, glacial growth, glacier grows (California), glacier wrapped, global cooling, global dimming, glowing clouds, golf course to drown, golf Masters wrecked, grandstanding, grasslands wetter, Great Barrier Reef 95% dead, Great Lakes drop, great tits cope, greening of the North, Grey whales lose weight, Gulf Stream failure, habitat loss, haggis threatened, Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, harmful algae, harvest increase, harvest shrinkage, hay fever epidemic, health affected, health of children harmed, health risks, heart disease, heart attacks and strokes (Australia), heat waves, hibernation affected, hibernation ends too soon, hibernation ends too late, HIV epidemic, homeless 50 million, hornets, high court debates, human development faces unprecedented reversal, human fertility reduced, human health risk, human race oblivion, hurricanes, hurricane reduction, hurricanes fewer, hurricanes not, hydropower problems, hyperthermia deaths, ice age, ice sheet growth, ice sheet shrinkage, icebergs, illness and death, inclement weather, India drowning, infrastructure failure (Canada), industry threatened, infectious diseases, inflation in China, insect explosion, insurance premium rises, Inuit displacement, Inuit poisoned, Inuit suing, invasion of cats, invasion of crabgrass, invasion of herons, invasion of jellyfish, invasion of king crabs, invasion of midges, island disappears, islands sinking, itchier poison ivy, jellyfish explosion, jets fall from sky, jet stream drifts north, Kew Gardens taxed, kidney stones, killer cornflakes, killing us, kitten boom, koalas under threat, krill decline, lake and stream productivity decline, lake empties, lake shrinking and growing, landslides, landslides of ice at 140 mph, lawsuits increase, lawsuit successful, lawyers’ income increased (surprise surprise!), lawyers want more, legionnaires’ surge, lives saved, Loch Ness monster dead, locust plagues suppressed, lush growth in rain forests, Malaria, mammoth dung melt, mango harvest fails, Maple production advanced, Maple syrup shortage, marine diseases, marine food chain decimated, Meaching (end of the world), Mediterranean rises, megacryometeors, Melanoma, Melanoma decline, methane emissions from plants, methane burps, methane runaway, melting permafrost, Middle Kingdom convulses, migration, migration difficult (birds), migratory birds huge losses, microbes to decompose soil carbon more rapidly, minorities hit, monkeys on the move, Mont Blanc grows, monuments imperiled, moose dying, more bad air days, more research needed, mortality increased, mountain (Everest) shrinking, mountaineers fears, mountains break up, mountains green and flowering, mountains taller, mortality lower, Myanmar cyclone, narwhals at risk, National security implications, native wildlife overwhelmed, natural disasters quadruple, new islands, next ice age, NFL threatened, Nile delta damaged, noctilucent clouds, no effect in India, Northwest Passage opened, nuclear plants bloom, oaks dying, oaks move north, ocean acidification, ocean acidification faster, ocean de
ad zones unleashed, ocean deserts expand, ocean waves speed up, oceans noisier, opera house to be destroyed, outdoor hockey threatened, ozone repair slowed, ozone rise, Pacific dead zone, penguin chicks frozen, personal carbon rationing, pest outbreaks, pests increase, phenology shifts, plankton blooms, plankton destabilised, plants lose protein, plants march north, plants move uphill, polar bears aggressive, polar bears cannibalistic, polar bears deaf, polar bears drowning, polar tours scrapped, popcorn rise, porpoise astray, profits collapse, psychiatric illness, puffin decline, radars taken out, railroad tracks deformed, rainfall increase, rape wave, refugees, reindeer endangered, release of ancient frozen viruses, resorts disappear, rice threatened, rice yields crash, rift on Capitol Hill, rioting and nuclear war, river flow impacted, rivers raised, roads wear out, robins rampant, rocky peaks crack apart, roof of the world a desert, rooftop bars, Ross river disease, ruins ruined, Russia under pressure, salinity reduction, salinity increase, Salmonella, satellites accelerate, school closures, sea level rise, sea level rise faster, seals mating more, sewer bills rise, severe thunderstorms, sex change, sexual promiscuity, shark attacks, sharks booming, sharks moving north, sheep shrink, shop closures, short-nosed dogs endangered, shrinking ponds, shrinking shrine, ski resorts threatened, skin cancer, slow death, smaller brains, smog, snowfall increase, snowfall heavy, soaring food prices, societal collapse, soil change, songbirds change eating habits, sour grapes, space problem, spectacular orchids, spiders invade Scotland, squid aggressive giants, squid population explosion, squid tamed, squirrels reproduce earlier, stingray invasion, storms wetter, stormwater drains stressed, street crime to increase, subsidence, suicide, swordfish in the Baltic, Tabasco tragedy, taxes, tectonic plate movement, teenage drinking, terrorism, threat to peace, ticks move northward (Sweden), tides rise, tigers eat people, tomatoes rot, tornado outbreak, tourism increase, trade barriers, trade winds weakened, traffic jams, transportation threatened, tree foliage increase (UK), tree growth slowed, trees in trouble, trees less colourful, trees more colourful, trees lush, tropics expansion, tropopause raised, truffle shortage, truffles down, turtles crash, turtle feminised, turtles lay earlier, UFO sightings, UK coastal impact, UK Katrina, uprooted – 6 million, Vampire moths, Venice flooded, violin decline, volcanic eruptions, walrus pups orphaned, walrus stampede, war, war between US and Canada, wars over water, wars sparked, wars threaten billions, wasps, water bills double, water scarcity (20% of increase), water stress, weather out of its mind, weather patterns awry, Western aid cancelled out, West Nile fever, whales lose weight, whales move north, whales wiped out, wheat yields crushed in Australia, wildfires, wind shift, wind reduced, wine – harm to Australian industry, wine industry damage (California), wine industry disaster (US), wine – more English, wine – England too hot, wine -German boon, wine – no more French , wine passé (Napa), wine stronger, winters in Britain colder, winter in Britain dead, witchcraft executions, wolves eat more moose, wolves eat less, workers laid off, World at war, World War 4, World bankruptcy, World in crisis, World in flames, Yellow fever.
And artificial insemination.
“DJ (16:21:12) :
A nice demonstration of the sceptic echo chamber bouncing inaccurate tid-bits around the globe. “
Whose fault is that? It’s the fault of the AGW’ers who keep crying wolf.
If they had a lick of sense about them, they’d be off on a more sensible bandwagon, namely conserving energy. Making corporate & industrial more energy efficient, just like the consumers did in the 70’s.
No, instead, they preach manfire and drowning.
If you want to save the planet, get a plan that doesn’t insult everyone’s intelligence as a global Ponzi scheme that everyone knows will only fill pockets already leaking cash.
Stop yelling fire on a crowded planet.
???? “Snow in April is nothing new in OZ” ?????
This will be the first year on record in Oz that some ski fields will open on May 1. The current snow depths may not last long but are extraordinary for this time of year!
Check our the snowcams here…
http://ski.com.au/snowcams/australia/nsw/thredbo/thredbo6.html
DJ:
We’ve missed you! Where have you been? The entertainment factor at WUWT has been trending down with your absence.
Others don’t seem to agree with your Answer #1. Only 9 more to go.
DJ on this totally wrong about our snow seasons in Victoria.
The last 2 years have been excellent snow seasons in Victoria. He knows that, and is making the story up to suit his agenda.
Here`s one for you DJ:
http://globalfreeze.wordpress.com/2009/05/01/mount-buller-has-the-earliest-start-to-the-snow-season-ever/
I strive not to become a cynical old coot but faced with evidence climate is behaving as it has naturally for eons whilst people react like they’ve lost all concept of weather, climate or history batters me into a rude corner.
I wonder how much AWG support is spawned by those trying to salvage investment made in failing alternate energy?
We need to respond to inevitable climate change, not react. There is a huge difference.
Thanks everyone…this site kicks ass!
DJ (16:21:12) :
You misunderstand the term “echo chamber,” DJ. The echo chamber is RealClimate and other alarmist blogs that delete/censor uncomfortable posts that disprove what they believe.
WUWT is not like that. You get to post here, don’t you? Therefore, WUWT does not fit the definition of “echo chamber.” QED.
Now, may I post something that will torture the true believers? Thank you: click.
I like to pull the wings off flies, too.
“The snow season last year was not a bumper one nor was 2007. They were both very poor seasons overall – very short, very little overall snowfall and marked by very warm and dry conditions in spring (hyped by industry and “sceptics” –
I’m an Aussie and I started skiing in 1966. The worst season I can remember was actually 1972 and not 2003. Last year was definitely a bumper year in the Snowy’s with very cold late winter temperatures. I was cross country skiing at only 1300m ASL here in NSW during August and doing it on a 1.5m (5 ft) cover of fast dry powder which is definitely not normal. August was 3 degrees C below average.
if global warming is here and last year’s snow season is the stereotypical AGW season then I’m breaking out the ski wax now and booking my 10 day holiday.
hareynolds (18:04:59) :
My nomination for quote of the week.
“I’m an Aussie and I started skiing in 1966. The worst season I can remember was actually 1972 and not 2003. ”
Correction to that. The worst year was 1973 and not 1972.
But it was 36 years ago so I can be forgiven for the memory error.
Smokey says:
That doesn’t actually prove anything. I have seen plenty of comments from the “skeptic” point of view over at RealClimate.
As for the “echo chamber” effect, I don’t think it is strictly necessary to have no postings from the other point-of-view in order to become an echo chamber, although I suppose this depends on your definition. I think it was fairly clear from DJ’s post at least roughly what he meant by his use of the term.
Roger Sowell (17:26)
Nice summary and rebuttals.
Since these are the EPA’s own findings, would this be an effective outline for a letter as part of the EPA’s call for comments?
thanks
David LM (18:38:26)
Thanks for the eye-witness account. What the AGW fear camp is doing is spreading falsehoods about places halfway around the world. It works as long at the folks who know better halfway around the world keep quiet.
I just love the picture of the USS Skate.
Just like I admired it 50 something years ago.
George Monbiot of the Guardian is a embarrassment to a newspaper I used to respect and read daily many decades ago. Like many other AGWers, he is absolutely blinkered to the point where he even continues to believe in the Mann hockey stick and the pronouncements of the IPCC. So strong is his faith in AGW that I sincerely doubt he would change his mind even if the rest of the world thought otherwise. Such is the AGW religion.
Robert Bateman (18:17:16) :
STOP! You are making too much sense! Back into your echo chamber!!!!! No more thinking in public!
Good ol’ Bolt. Just keeps plugging away at the Catastrophists and Carbophobes. They hate facts and criticism…. specially when they have declared the debate over 😉
O/T, but I really love my kids, and I can understand how people like DJ want to save the world, but what they keep forgetting is stuff like this:
http://www.worldonfire.ca/
All on $100,000. How much would that video have cost with cap and trade prices in place? I am, of course, referring to the generators, ambulances, and such.
hareynolds said “…we’ve apparently had a global genocide of common sense…”
Brilliant! I second the nomination for quote of the week.
Myth #N: Coral Reefs Dying
Coral reefs etc are growing well.
See: Craig Idso – Carbon Dioxide, Global Warming, and Coral Reefs: Prospects for the Future (PowerPoint) (Listen to Audio) (Play Video) (Download Video) 2009 International Climate Conference on Climate Change
Myth #N+1 Oceans are become acidic
This conveniently ignores the almost infinite buffering capacity of ocean salts.
See: Tom Segalstad – Carbon Isotope Mass Balance Modeling of Atmospheric vs. Oceanic CO2 (PowerPoint) (Listen to Audio) (Play Video) (Download Video)
e.g., “Carbon dioxide has a lifetime of about 5 years in the atmosphere.”
“The upper 200m has enough Ca to bind ALL remaining fossil fuel CO2 as calcium carbonate.”
Instead of trusting the easily found numbers, someone did a literature review of how much methane is oxidized (consumed) as it passes through dirt which covers landfills. The researcher found 22-55% was oxidized (15 sites studied over a year had 11-89%); the mean was around 35%. Of 42 determinations, 4 measured oxidization under 11%.
http://jeq.scijournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/38/2/654
The IPCC has numbers. 0-10%. The USEPA recommends using 10% due to uncertainty. Maybe 10% is a little low.
Literature review, not new research. Isn’t that what the IPCC claims it does?
hareynolds,
I’ve been wondering were I could relate this:
Years ago I worked with two pilots in northern Alaska…one a Englishman and the the other Australian. So I says to the Brit one day, “For a foreigner your English is really coming along”. The response included considerably less humor than a sharp stick in the eye. Having such success, I figured I’d try the same thing on the Aussie. He thought is was hilarious and thanked me for the compliment.
Hey DJ
Here are some news reports re the Australian snow season:
The Victorian ski season might still be six weeks away, but the state’s two main ski resorts are already reporting snowfalls of up to 20 centimetres.
“If these weather predictions are correct, 2009 looks like being the third bumper ski season in a row. This would be great news for all Australian ski resorts,” Mt Hotham weather forecaster Pete Taylor said.
http://globalfreeze.wordpress.com/2009/04/27/ski-resorts-welcome-early-snow-dumps
Also last year Australia had snow one week away from Summer!
http://anhonestclimatedebate.wordpress.com/2008/11/27/snow-hits-australia-one-week-away-from-summer
DJ: “Snow has shown drastic declines of near 50% since the 1950s in Australia.”
Did you even look at the data you provided the link to?
Compare the earliest data available, 1954 Spencer’s Creek vs 2008. Your claim is obviously nonsense since the 2008 depths substantially exceeded the depths in 1954, 1957, 1959, … etc.
The mere presence of the great president Obama means that global warming has been solved. After 100 days in office the world has cooled and we can move on to our next armageddon – swine flu!
In the next glaciation the Great Barrier Reef will, as it did in the last glaciation, be completely dead as it will be hundreds of feet above sea level. There will be nothing we can do to “save” it. The same will be true for practically every other coral reef we know of today, too.
Ok. 3 items.
1.) Sea level dramatic rise…no, can’t see a darned inch or rise along Ca. coast.
2.) Hotter temps cooking brain out …. nope, been lookin’ at weather records since the 60’s. The old records from the 20’s & 30’s still rule the roost.
3.) Record 3rd year of drought…are you mad, Arnold? Shasta Res. had 600,000 ac.ft. in Nov 77. By April 78 it was 4,000,000 ac. ft. They currently have 2,998,247 ac. ft., and it’s pouring outside. The cup runneth over, and the Trinity Dam is now starting it’s spring release for the 1st salmon run.
Oh well, sucks to be a fire-breathing alarmist these days.
Gerard (20:12:55) our next armageddon – swine flu!
Now THAT is a problem.
People getting sick.
Not like that fake problem of lobbyists getting sick at the feeding trough from overgorging.
Joel 18:56:59
Way too many serious scientists have had legitimate criticisms never posted at real climate. That some skeptical opinions get posted there means little; the truly telling comments have never been allowed. And the attitude? Why do realclimate, Open Mind, Pharyngula, and Climate Progress all have the same tenor of snark and hatefulness by the moderators. Something is seriously rotten with your paradigm and I can smell it all the way over here.
=============================================
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/printall.php
“Models are not perfect,” says Syd Levitus. “Data are not perfect. Theory isn’t perfect. We shouldn’t expect them to be. It’s the combination of models, data, and theory that lead to improvements in our science, in our understanding of phenomena.”
What kind of science is that?
This whole thing about global warming stopping in 1998, or that half the warming has been erased, are you really arguing that CO2 doesn’t cause an increase in temperatures? If the sun is responsible for the cooling, and overwhelming the CO2 trend, then wouldn’t a more active sun just restart the warming?
Of course it isn’t just in Australia that winters have been colder and snowier. The last two winters here in Michigan have also been great for skiing with much above average snowfall and colder than average.
Whenever you discuss cooler local weather conditions the global warmists cry that how weather is in one locale is not necessarily representative of global conditions. But I suspect that at least ten consecutive years of seeing no evidence of warming in one location (true for Michigan) is at least some evidence that there is no upward trend in temperatures globally, just as we did indeed see warming here in the 1980’s and 90’s – a trend that was also present in global temperatures for that period.
With so many places around the world seeing cooler temperatures I believe that the public may be more receptive to the viewpoint expressed in Bolt’s article. One or two good documentary programs airing some of the truths presented on this webpage and we may see a “the emperor has no clothes” phenomenon regarding the global warming myth and a snowballing (ha ha) of disbelief in it.
DJ is lucky to have a site like WUWT where he can express his views and even though they are contrary to those of most at this site, he is treated with respect. That does not happen if you don’t believe in global warming and post at one of the other sides’ sites. Love ‘ya WUWT!
Mark_0454 (18:59:17) :
“Since these are the EPA’s own findings, would this be an effective outline for a letter as part of the EPA’s call for comments?
thanks”
I believe it would, and thank you for the kind words. My comment letter will include the points I outlined above, because attorneys must, when rebutting the opponent’s argument, address each and every point put forth by the opponent. Failure to rebut even one point may result in losing the case.
Then, I intend to add more points to my argument, chief among which is the non-correlation between CO2 concentration and “global” temperature since 1800. Under irrefutable control theory, CO2 cannot be, and never will be, an independent variable by which global temperature may be controlled.
Despite what some commenters on WUWT have written, my case is airtight on that point. To believe otherwise is to deny that a cruise control on a car functions properly, or a temperature control on a refrigerator maintains a desired temperature, or a rocket places a satellite into a precise orbit. In each case, the desired result is achieved by adjusting the appropriate independent variable.
I will also rebut their claim that CO2 has never been higher than now, as that is a complete lie. (but I will say it in a nicer way).
One of the (potentially) most devastating points of all is the fact of multiple ice ages that occurred after a period when CO2 was much higher than now. If a tipping point is imminent today, with a bare 400 ppm CO2 (I rounded off to one significant digit), and that tipping point will inevitably push us into a horror chamber of global warming, how exactly did that ice age occur after the high-CO2 period? I need to conduct more research into that issue, as there seems to be a good argument that the dinosaur-killer meteor blasted enough dirt and fine particles into the sky to induce a rapid cooling due to insufficient sunlight reaching the earth.
Another good point related to glacier retreat is the recent discovery of the prehistoric man’s body in the Alps, who apparently died while walking across a pass. Later the snows covered him and a glacier formed. How could it have been warm enough then for that pass to be ice-free, with so little CO2 in the air?
There are many, many other good points to bring to the argument, such as the correlation between temperature and sunspots, periodicity of ocean temperatures, and the failure of so many IPCC predictions.
But for me, the primary and indisputable Achilles heel in the AGW argument is the non-correlation between CO2 and global temperature. I intend to pontificate on that point, and pound it home.
With all the ammunition at hand, writing a comment to EPA should be fun (at least, for me it will be).
I hope everyone writes a comment to EPA and lets them know your opinion, for or against. This is freedom of speech at its finest.
Mike Bryant (16:47:58) :
In the second list you posted, have you noticed what is currently happening with CO2?
Seems like we are measuring the lag between temperature stasis and ocean out gassing.
http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/index.cfm#GlobalTemperature
[snip -OT]
And hey, I notice a distinct lack of response from hit-and-run DJ. I wonder if his monicker is also his profession?
Spring snowstorms in the Sierra Nevada are quite common.
I’ll see your 10 myths and raise you 5:
http://ilovecarbondioxide.com/2009/01/top-15-climate-myths.html
This has been an open tab on my browser for a while, and I mentioned it because I thought how fun it would be to make an “I ‘heart’ CO2” logo to put on one of my vehicles… Then I realized the banner on the website uses a green leaf as the heart, and my whole idea was just a subliminal message, surreptitiously implanted into my brain by an evil oil and gas consortium.
Crap, I hate it when that happens. I still want an “I ‘heart’ CO2” logo, but I just can’t get past the idea that I didn’t think of it myself. Now I have to get copyright permission on a green leaf. The horror.
Smokey, great post, I guess I missed a couple of days on the ice extent. I think I’ll pass on the canoe trip next year…
Then change them back!!! I’m getting tired of the cold!!!
Remember, DJ was the one who claimed he saved $500 a year by installing left wing lightbulbs at his place. Hey, DJ! How are things down at the Bijou Theater? Did you find that switch for the marquee, yet?
Really? Granted, I primarily stay away from there, but I do drop in occasionally just to see what is new. I am pretty reserve in most of my postings on any site, and I once questioned Gavin about their lack of software controls, source control, change release management and peer review processes for developing their GCM’s (GCM=General Circulation Model, not Global Climate Model .. btw). This was in response to his own posting basically saying how they don’t bother with such controls and how they are useless, blah, blah. Well, they (or he) evidently didn’t like my questions regarding, as I never saw my response posted.
My only comment left on the subject of GCM’s is .. “what a joke” .. and to think they are so lacksidasical with the development of such important software that has so many trillions of dollars hanging in the balance, that gets funding beyond my wildest imagination, and to do so with my money, is beyond appalling.
I was actually much nicer than this on RC, but was still ignored.
So, I disagree with you completely, and I have seen others that have been batted down just as easily. They are complete cowards at RC and completely unwilling to “discuss” anything. IMHO…
The cross-country skiing season at Falls Creek, Victoria, where the Australian cross-country skiing team does its training during the southern winter, lasted until September 25th, 2008, which was 3 1/2 weeks after the official season ended!
In Sydney, the month of August 2008 was the coldest since the 1940s.
In the snowfalls of this past week, Falls Creek already received 1m of snow, 6 weeks before the official season begins.
At Charlottes Pass, NSW, the record low for the month of April took place this past week.
This past summer in Sydney, our beautiful giant jacarunda tree did not flower because of the incredibly cold months of October and November 2008.
I still meet people who think I eat children for breakfast when I tell them that global warming is a hoax, but I am finding that more and more people are willing to discuss the issue rationally, and many are allowing themselves to be persuaded.
Speaking of temperature graphs…
I just read this from a commenter here named Steven Kopits. He pointed out that he saw Steven Chu use the Mann Hockey Stick in his ““Energy Problem” presentation.
See page 7 of this presentation :
http://www.eia.doe.gov/plenary/Chu.pdf
from this link :
http://www.eia.doe.gov/plenary/plenary_main.html#DrChu
For those who missed what I’m saying :
STEVEN CHU USES THE MANN HOCKEY STICK GRAPH!
Something I am not reading right?
http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/index.cfm#GlobalTemperature
has as subtitle that the data for CO2 that it is from
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
The two plots do not agree. Rats got in?
All you folks hammering on DJ just don’t understand that AGW “facts” are not like regular facts. Regular facts must be documented and defended. Now that the man made global warming debate is “over”, AGW facts are whatever folks like DJ wish them to be and it is clear that DJ wishes the snow to be gone from down under. We’re all going to burn up and die!
Well, if nobody else will say it, I will … no, CO2 does not cause warming, in fact I truly believe it is to the contrary, as it creates a net negative feedback with water vapor, one reason the tropics are cooler than the desert in the mid-day sun.
And, we are lucky that people like DJ do indeed post here, as I believe this is a huge reason for the success of this site. The fact that people can discuss, bat ideas, data and information back and forth at each other, is what makes this site great. For without DJ’s participation (and other like him/her), we would not have nearly the quality and volume of ideas and information being presented. IMHO…
Thank you DJ for joining in the conversations, sincerely…
MikeN (20:48:58) : “. . .are you really arguing that CO2 doesn’t cause an increase in temperatures? If the sun is responsible for the cooling, . . .”
Some researchers believe CO2 contributes a small amount of warming and humans contribute a small amount of the CO2 in the atmosphere. If it were possible to double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere then that small amount of temperature (dT) change could double. As doubling a very small dT is still a very small amount (and doubling the CO2 in the atmosphere isn’t something humans can do anyway), what’s the problem?
As for ol’Sun, great minds have been studying this fiery object for many years, draw opposite conclusions, and leave it to amateurs to state unequivocal positions. Stay tuned.
Anthony,
Just to make it clear – when the global warming panic finally collapses, we need to make it clear that the scientific enterprise must not go down with it.
Maybe they reduce the volcano corrections so as to keep the slope for the final curve?
One can expect anything in data maniputaltions, and CO2 measurements have not had the intense scrutiny that was given to temperature measurements.
MYTH 6
THE SEAS ARE RISING
Wrong. . . .
Venice is still above water.
At least when the tide is out.
The Florida sea level risk chart from the “Sea Level Graphs from UC and some perspectives” WUWT post looks pretty scary until you check out the color scale. At the recently current rate of 3.2 mm/yr, that’s 3.2 meters per millennium, which doesn’t even get you out of the black on the color scale.
Still, that’s a hefty rise, so here’s how much Florida we lose a thousand years from now.
http://i41.tinypic.com/qx8hmw.jpg
We sure won’t be laughing then.
What’s this? The History Channel International is broadcasting “Little Ice Age:The Big Chill”
I thought the Little Ice Age didn’t exist!
DJ,
even if your claims were true, and they have been debunked thouroughly by previous posters, why would you consider extrapolating the WEATHER of one small area to the entire globe??
Oh yeah, Mann, Steig, Hansen…………..
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
DJ: My take is that CO2 warming is probably about 10% of what the IPCC says. They have a 4-part equation (all parts multiplied) and seem to have exaggerated each factor by around two. Thus their error.
I do think that about a quarter of CO2 currently in the atmosphere was put there by us. We put out about 3% of CO2 exuded each year: A bit less than half has accumulated in the atmosphere and the rest has gone into land and ocean sinks. It does add up over the years.
When we finally determine what the true persistence rate of CO2 is we will know the rest of the equation. There is huge dispute over this issue. Some seem to think it is near-immortal; others say it is gone PDQ.
So I think there has been a teeny bit of CO2 warming, but I do credit mankind with the recent increase.
BTW, those who believe in AGW are welcome here. All of our readers add value. (Well, okay, nearly all . . .)
Oh yeah, you can see it now… the MSM are backpedling over this Global Insanity. You can bet they will have a major Global Amnesia, and a Global Denial.
Well, we do see that the Maldives will actually be gone soon.
http://travel.yahoo.com/p-interests-27384279;_ylc=X3oDMTFxcWIyczFpBF9TAzI3MTYxNDkEX3MDMjcxOTQ4MQRzZWMDZnAtdG9kYXltb2QEc2xrA21hbGRpdmVzLTQtMjgtMDk-
I would like to echo the above and elaborate on the “factors” in the GCM’s the IPCC approved.
The additional greenhouse effect from a CO2 doubling is only 1 deg C, with a lot of hand-waving. The physics is very complex and simplifying assumptions and linearizations are just plain wrong.
The models added factors to try and fit the few years of warming to the small rises in CO2. While this is a reasonable hypothesis, when you look deeper, it is clear that there is no basis in physics to believe that there are ANY positive feedbacks to amplify the temperature increase from CO2. It certainly does not interfere with cloud formation, which is the hidden assumption in most of the GCM’s. Positive feedbacks are pretty rare in nature on large systems, otherwise they would “blow up” and destroy the unique conditions and get “stuck” in a different, stable regime.
Even the well known ice-albedo feedback is very weak. When snow and ice are on the ground outside of temperate zones, there is not much sunshine to reflect back into space, especially in winter. If the arctic ice melts and ocean currents keep the ice out, the arctic will act as a much better radiator and will not absorb enough extra solar energy to offset this.
Joel Shore, Squidly
There are plenty of skeptical statements on the RealClimate site, however, many get deleted, and these we never see.
Try asking them what happened to the peer review, that they couldn’t spot any errors in Michael Mann’s hockey stick? Would they have been just as credible if instead of a hockey stick, someone found that temperatures are lower than in the recent past?
Such a comment will never show up on their site. Plus look at the blog links. WUWT links to realclimate, realclimate don’t link to here.
>As doubling a very small dT is still a very small amount (and doubling the CO2 in the atmosphere isn’t something humans can do anyway), what’s the problem?
Actually this is about 1.2C of warming, plus feedback effects which could take it to 6C. If you have a negative feedback overall, then the warming is not a problem.
Joel Shore (18:56:59) :
That doesn’t actually prove anything. I have seen plenty of comments from the “skeptic” point of view over at RealClimate.
Give it a rest. That’s complete nonsense and you know it. RC does not let any legitimate criticism through. They merely pick and choose the straw arguments to beat them down and pat themselves on the back.
Mark
I hope this isn’t too off topic, but we have been discussing data, and therefore, truth manipulation.
Arthur C. Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. ”
Magic can be used to illuminate or to confuse. Computers can give us knowledge and power, but to gain wisdom we have to be able to sift the truth from the rubbish. A computer can be made to persuade instead of to enlighten. How many times have we seen graphs and algorithms twisted and molded to produce a desired outcome instead of the mere truth?
Canon is developing a product that will mix reality and the virtual world. When you wear the goggles, you can see fish swimming all about your house. Of course, they might also let you see people with jetpacks and silver jumpsuits from the future. What would they show you to convince you of AGW? They call it “mixed reality”, a confused reality brought to you by the computer. There is a video at this site:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/canon-gets-all-steve-zissou-with-its-mixed-reality-aquarium/#continued
Mixed reality, or augmented reality, can be a tool of those who want to convince people of a reality that just does not exist.
Now some are creating graphs and changing graphs and data, but they are also using the powerful persuasion techniques of movies and advertising. What techniques will we be seeing next?
Here is a short video:
To Just Want Truth… (21:39:15) :
Well, the Australian Government also used a variation of Mann’s Hockey Stick graph in their justification (background information) for its proposed ETS (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme). Their “expert”, an economist Mr Ross Garnot, thought that this evidence was clear proof of the AGW problem. No mention about its having been widely ridiculed. Unfortunately, such scientifically dishonest papers as Mann et al. and Steig et al just keep getting regurgitated.
“anna v (20:56:35) :
In the second list you posted, have you noticed what is currently happening with CO2?
Seems like we are measuring the lag between temperature stasis and ocean out gassing.”
http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/index.cfm#GlobalTemperature
That site is pure propaganda mixed with bad graphs. They also talk about the huge land ice losses at Greenland, which have reversed in the last couple of years, while ignoring the even larger land ice gains at Antarctica. On sea ice they do the same thing, ignoring the sea ice gains in the Antarctic while highlighting the smaller losses in the Arctic. The whole website leaves me with a sick feeling.
Mike
“When was the last time snow fell simultaneously (or nearly so) in Australia, and California?”
Due to the lack of any land mass between the Australian continent and Antarctica there can be snow in the southern mountain areas of NSW, Victoria and Tasmania even in mid summer. All it takes is for pressure systems to align themselves accordingly and draw cold air from a long way south. However, summer snowfalls are brief and any accumulation usually melts within a day or two. I have been at Charlotte Pass on a New Years day and there was a substantial snow fall of several inches that really comfused some of the Canadian Tourists.
In those parts it can be almost 30C (84F) one day and close to 0C (32F) the next. Such extreme changes during summer are probably much less common at similar latitudes in the NH.
“That said, the seas have risen steadily and slowly for the past 10,000 years through natural warming, and will almost certainly resume soon.”
Not quite so. There’s been nothing steady about sea level rise since the last deglaciation. (See Blanchon P and Shaw J “Reef drowning during the last deglaciation: Evidence for catastrophic sea-level rise and ice sheet collapse” Geology, vol 23 no.1 January 1995, pp 4-8). And yet reefs survive!
Peter Jones (23:22:56) :
Well, we do see that the Maldives will actually be gone soon.
A total PR f road, imo. No measurements, just huge handwavings to support the claim of the islands who are trying to get subsidized by the rest of us.
Have a look at what a person who measures sea levels is saying.
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_20-29/2007-25/pdf/33-37_725.pdf
Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner is the head of the Paleogeophysics and
Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden.
He is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission
on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and
leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project. Dr. Mörner has
been studying the sea level and its effects on coastal areas for
some 35 years.
He gives 10 cm as a possible rise in the next century.
There is also a picture of
A famous tree in the Maldives shows no evidence of having been swept away by rising sea
levels, as would be predicted by the global warming swindlers. A group of Australian
global-warming advocates came along and pulled the tree down, destroying the evidence that their “theory” was false
.
Can I suggest that everyone sends this link to every media outlet they can think of.
.
When the BBC does a piece in a similar vein to this Sun Herald article, then we will know that sense and rationality will have returned to mankind. At present, however, the BBC is still riding high with the Greens, Hippies, Anarchists and Loons.
.
.
>>Just to make it clear – when the global warming panic
>>finally collapses, we need to make it clear that the scientific
>>enterprise must not go down with it.
Agreed, but we might legitimately discuss the role of government in funding science, and thus the role of political interest groups determining the outcome of science. The funding needs to be more independent of government.
.
This is probably the best piece of disinformation I’ve seen in my all life. In every point, there is a mix of truth and lies.
Myth 1
“In fact, the fall in temperatures from just 2002 has already wiped out half the warming our planet experienced last century.” Completely false – anyone can check data by him/herself and see it’s complete bulls….
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:12
Myth 2
“THE POLAR CAPS ARE MELTING” The trye prediction being that Arctic is melting.
“The Arctic ice cap shrank badly two summers ago after years of steady decline, but has since largely recovered.” I guess we’re not talking about the same Arctic
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2007.jpg
etc etc. I could go on, but damn I can’t stand such a level of hypocrisy. Are some people then really ready to do anything in the name of political beliefs?
Maybe more people ought to grill Al Gore about his green credentials?
http://www.thebulletin.us/articles/2009/04/30/top_stories/doc49f94461cae7e846121174.txt
Lots of records broken in OZ this week…the Jose Minimum is gaining Momentum.
Andrew Bolt is one of the few over here in the media battling against the likes of Karoly (who makes my skin crawl more than Gore). I recently helped a friend do an interview with Bolt which has been published in a network of education newspapers. The younger crew need to be informed too.
I’m more comfortable with MSM journo’s ignoring the truth, I get totally confused and a little distrustful when they pop up after “the debate is over” telling people what they already know all too late.
The Sun’s eruptional activity has nearly stopped, the global temperature is dropping, the Pacific temperature is dropping and the Artic and Antarctic ice sheets are increasing and we are probably heading into a little ice age. Who is brave enough to tell this to Obama?
“Peter Foster: The Dark Lord Sir Nicholas Stern says there will be ‘no powerful carbon policemen.’ Don’t bet on it. It was once said of Maurice Strong, the Canadian envirocrat who masterminded the current United Nations-centred climate change policy mess, that you wouldn’t pick him out of a crowd of two. If the other person were Nicholas Stern, Chairman Mo might have a shot.
Lord Stern, who was at the Economic Club of Toronto yesterday peddling his new book, The Global Deal, has other things in common with Mr. Strong besides bureaucratic blandness. These include apocalyptic environmental visions, a burning desire to help developing countries, preferably by bashing the rich ones, a belief that those with alternative views should be silenced and a quasi-religious faith in big — and I mean really big — government.”
urlm.in/chsl
Slightly off topic but so were all the amusing jokes about Gallipoli and after all we are discussing myths.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Gerard-Henderson/The-lingering-myth-of-Anzac-Day/2005/04/18/1113676698825.html
Far from fighting to the last man the withdrawal was (ironically) a brilliant success.
A little research into one of the main sources of the myths will uncover a name familiar to viewers of Fox.
Casualties (from Wiki)
Died Wounded Total
Total Allies 44,092 96,937 141,029
– United Kingdom 21,255 52,230 73,485
– France (est.) 10,000 17,000 27,000
– Australia 8,709 19,441 28,150
– New Zealand 2,721 4,752 7,473
– India 1,358 3,421 4,779
– Newfoundland 49 93 142
Per Strandberg (04:06:17) :
…we are probably heading into a little ice age.
What evidence do you have that the coming ice age will be “little”?
http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-battles/ww1/anzac/gallipoli-facts.htm
Has this
Propaganda
Distorted propaganda is usually at its height during wars but corrected in later years. In the case of Gallipoli the opposite occurred. The official Australian war historian, Charles Bean, was reluctant to hint that Australians were ever less than heroic, and in the interests of maintaining good relationships with Australia, Cecil Aspinall-Oglander, the official British war historian, toned down even implied criticisms of any Australian action. As Rhodes James observed, the result of massaging the truth was an ‘Australian mythology that Gallipoli was an Australian triumph thrown away by incompetent British commanders’.
Far worse distortions disfigure the Peter Weir film Gallipoli, which seeks to contrast cowardly and idle British troops with ANZAC heroes. Some British troops did bathe and drink tea at Suvla Bay whilst horrific fighting was taking place a few miles to the south, but others were as fully engaged in that conflict as New Zealanders and Australians.
Rhodes James noted that the ‘suicidal assault’ of the Australian Light Horse at The Nek on 7 August 1915 ‘had nothing to do with the British landing at Suvla, but was intended to help the New Zealanders, as the film’s military advisers knew’.
However, ‘the principal Australian sponsor of the film (Rupert Murdoch) wanted an anti-British ending, and got it’, with ‘the deliberately inaccurate final scenes’ of the film, a potent source of Australian republican sentiments.
Few Australians realise that ‘the British, French and Indian causalities were far greater than those of the Anzacs, and that the British bore the brunt of the fighting – and the losses.’
Far from covering up British errors, British historians exposed them at every level, from Kitchener, Churchill, Fisher and Hamilton down. The indecisiveness of the naval commanders , the muddle at Imbros, the incapacity of Sir Frederick Stopford, and every other British failing, were laid bare to the world. This is as it should be, if anyone is to benefit from past errors, but in 2001 British people, no more or less than Australians and New Zealanders, can take pride in heroic deeds at Gallipoli, as indeed can French, Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi people. We should not allow latter-day propagandists to sow seeds of unwarranted resentment between peoples whose ancestors fought with great courage in a common cause.
Just Want Truth… (21:39:15) :
Noted – stands out as an unreferenced graph amongst most of the others which have sources quoted. US citizen should FOI requesting a ref.?
Per: the global temperature is dropping?
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps+001
Nice to have all these myths in such a concise form–including the references to vampires and the plague. It will help in constructing my rebuttal to Waxman-Markey.
Alan from Australia (00:39:43) :
I thought it would be big news here at WUWT that Steven Chu uses the Mann Hockey Stick. But it didn’t create much of a stir.
Is it cold in your part of Australia?
Ok. Here’s one clear sign of impending “Thermageddon.” When the MSM stops writing about it – WHAM! – we’re all gonna fry because they always get it backwards nowadays ;o)
Seriously, the geologic record doesn’t really show any Thermageddons of the Venus or Mars type. All of the severe climate impacts (from a human survival POV) have been cold events. Why would anyone bet against millions of years of earth history?
My $2.00 Perfecta bet is that the next three severe global climate change events that threaten humanity will bring cold conditions.
“Per Strandberg (04:06:17) : Who is brave enough to tell this to Obama?”
I am. But President Obama wouldn’t call on a non-reporter at a press conference. Also, he doesn’t call on reporters who could be antagonistic toward him. They could raise their hand all day and he wouldn’t point at them.
I also would inform him that Steven Chu is using flawed science since he uses the Mann Hockey Stick.
slowtofollow (04:47:50) :
That would be one of the problems with global warming—people not checking to see if it’s actually real.
Dr Andrew Glikson has had a crack at the 10 myths presented by Andrew Bolt.
Here’s an example for your amusement.
“MYTH 1 — THE WORLD IS WARMING:
BOLT: Wrong. It is true the world did warm between 1975 and 1998, but even Professor David Karoly, one of our leading alarmists, admitted this week “temperatures have dropped” since – “both in surface temperatures and in atmospheric temperatures measured from satellites”. In fact, the fall in temperatures from just 2002 has already wiped out a quarter of the warming our planet experienced last century. (Check data from Britain’s Hadley Centre, NASA’s Aqua satellite and the US National Climatic Data Centre.)
Some experts, such as Karoly, claim this proves nothing and the world will soon start warming again. Others, such as Professor Ian Plimer of Adelaide University, point out that so many years of cooling already contradict the theory that man’s rapidly increasing gases must drive up temperatures ever faster.
But that’s all theory. The question I’ve asked is: What signs can you actually see of the man-made warming that the alarmists predicted?
GLIKSON: As has been projected by climate science over the last 20 years, the increase in atmospheric energy level associated with global warming results in greater variability, including: greater frequency and stronger amplitude of the ENSO (El-Nino – La-Nina) cycle and extreme weather events (hurricane intensity, floods, extreme droughts and fires) and, most particularly, rapid melt rates of large parts of the Arctic Sea ice, Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets and shelves — as is in fact happening around the world, including the recent Australian droughts, mega-bush fires and floods Australia.”
http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/04/29/climate-myths-andrew-bolts-claims-scientifically-tested/
Michael D Smith (21:05:13) :
This would be a cute variation for Canadiens: “I CO2” implying both that the bearer likes staying warm in winter and (should there be some connection) a longer growing season.
It’s really depressing to see the same tired arguments trotted out time and time again. Let’s consider these “top 10 global warming myths”.
1. Yes, the world is warming. The problem is that sceptics cannot, or will not, understand the concept of statistical significance. There is a statistically significant, ongoing warming trend.
2. Yes, arctic ice is melting. It has not ‘largely recovered’ since the dramatic 25% drop in its minimum extent in 2007; 2008’s minimum was also 25% lower than anything seen before 2007.
3. Not global.
4. Not global, except for the last paragraph which mistakes outliers for trends. The global temperature trend is upward.
5. Yes, the seas are getting hotter. You have to learn to look at the long term; short periods, like a decade or less, are more or less meaningless. “four years with no warming in the upper ocean does not erase the 50 years of warming we’ve seen since ocean temperature measurements became widespread. Nor does it erase the eight inches of sea level rise we’ve experienced in the past 100 years. Both of these are important indicators of human-kind’s effect on the climate.”
6. Yes, sea levels continue to rise.
7. Well now, this one’s actually quite interesting. Certainly, the temperature of the upper ocean is one of the major drivers of hurricane activity, and if ocean surface temperatures rise, one expects hurricane activity to become more intense. The equatorial Pacific is warmer than the equatorial atlantic, and so tropical cyclones in the Pacific are on average more intense than those in the Atlantic. But sea surface temperatures are not the only factor in determining hurricane intensity. A drop in hurricane activity may raise questions about our understanding of how hurricanes form and develop, so this is interesting and worth discussing.
8. Not global.
9. Not global.
10. An odd statement made by a baptist minister is entirely irrelevant. To describe this as a ‘global warming myth’ is pretty laughable.
So, of these 10 ‘global warming myths’, 4 are in fact true, 4 relate only to Australia, 1 is not and has never been seriously claimed, and 1 is an interesting observation from which wildly overblown conclusions have been drawn.
0.5/10. Pretty poor.
OTs: I believe that it was Ian Wilson who published “Which came first, the chicken or the egg ?” which dealt with the role of planetary gravitational forces, especially Jupiter, and its correlation with changes in length of day which correlated with the PDO and AMO. He promised some exciting follow up in Jan of ’09, but I have seen nothing yet-anyone know what has happened with it ?
Ed Fix (04:39:20) :
‘What evidence do you have that the coming ice age will be “little”?’
Very good point. In figure 5 of Frank Lansner’s spahgetti reconstruction of our current interglacial period, a fairly constant temperature range has given way to more extreme bumps (MWP and LIA). This corresponds to similar bumps that appeared as we came out of the last ice age. If the climate is bumpier the closer we get to an ice age then that next drop may be REALLY big.
If Frank’s reconstruction is valid then we should be spending money understanding the MWP and LIA and why we are seeing these relatively quick changes in climate. Otherwise we may be in for some very cold times.
What are you gonna believe — these lyin’ facts or my computer models?
What are we to do? I don’t see warming-but cooling.We go down the warming rabbit
hole and find out -when we pop out the other end- that the ground is now covered in
snow and ice.BTW the argument for an approaching ice age is real-the 11-12,000
year clock is about hit midnight.The warmists yet pursue heretics at the expense of
reality.Reality has a very expensive way of getting people’s attention…
MikeN (23:52:52) :
“Actually this is about 1.2C of warming, plus feedback effects which could take it to 6C. If you have a negative feedback overall, then the warming is not a problem.”
“plus feedback effects” What are they and how do they work. More importantly WHERE is the actual data to support them, as opposed to what appears in computer models.
A previous entry about the Maldives
From U-Tube
M White, my point is that many people here are denying the first order 1.2C warming. Somehow people here, including Anthony Watts, think that because there has been some cooling, global warming has stopped completely. If the sun is the dominant factor, which I believe it is, then it is overwhelming a CO2 warming trend. However, if the sun goes back into a warming phase, then with the added CO2 trend, things will get much warmer, and Watts and Co will look like fools. What’s strange is he has posted graphs that show this exact same warming, yet he continues to deny it.
DJ (16:21:12) :
I get so tired of having to check AGW links. I doubt that anybody is interested , but here is the link DJ gave, except comparing 2008 to 1979 or 80 or something like that, I got cross-eyed thumbing through them. Really nothing to see, move along.
http://www.snowyhydro.com.au/snowDepth.asp?pageID=46&parentID=6&mode=submitted
RW (07:03:26),
Not one word in that entire post falsifies the the theory that the observed temperature changes are a consequence of natural variability.
RW is using the fallacious argumentum ad ignorantiam:
The fallacy of assuming something [e.g., the CO2=AGW=runaway global warming hypothesis] is true, simply because it hasn’t been proven false. An appeal to ignorance.
RW could just as well insist that an asteroid will hit Beijing within five years, simply because it hasn’t been proven false. That is the situation the alarmist contingent is in. They say that we must look at entirely normal and natural climate variations, and see something that just isn’t there.
RW’s incorrect facts aside, the climate’s current variability is well within its normal and natural historical parameters. Nothing is out of the ordinary. There is no mythical “tipping point,” there is no runaway global warming, and there certainly is no scientific basis for spending $Billions to $Trillions on a fake hypothesis.
Robert Bateman (18:17:16) :
“It’s the fault of the AGW’ers who keep crying wolf. If they had a lick of sense about them, they’d be off on a more sensible bandwagon, namely conserving energy. Making corporate & industrial more energy efficient, just like the consumers did in the 70’s… Stop yelling fire on a crowded planet.”
Good quote Robert! Hopefully, most skeptics here do not discourage cogent energy conservation. It is not an unreasonable goal given the vast sums U.S. and industrial nations send overseas for oil. But this goal can be accomplished without the need for CO2 “pollutants,” melting ice caps, and ocean acidification. There are good, solid reasons to conserve energy.
Nor is adopting supplemental alternative energy unreasonable. But what is truly discouraging is the damage AGW has done to the name of conservation. Unfortunately IMO, with the demise of AGW we may see justified skepticism toward any conservation movement – a tragedy brought on by “climate change” hubris.
“Exaggeration leads the coalition of disbelief.”
April 2009 sunspot numbers ….. Nothing happing here ….Move on ….
The just released SIDC report of “official” April sunspot daily numbers and April totals show 25 sunspot free days and 5 days with fleeting sunspots.
http://sidc.oma.be/products/ri_hemispheric/
An excellent article by SIDC on how SIDC measures and obtains these numbers is at
http://www.icsu-fags.org/ps11sidc.htm
“It is also the case for the contributing network to the definitive International Sunspot Number, and the sub-networks for the provisional and definitive North and South Sunspot Numbers, respectively stabilized at 90, 28 and 50 contributors. The geographical distribution for the definitive sunspot number network is 10% for Belgium, 59% for other European countries, and 31% for the rest of the world.”
In this 1994 posting they list the many observing sites submitting data. As noted in a recent Wattsupwiththat discussion, it is improbable that the historical sunspot reports from a few observing sites in Europe in the 17th through the 19th century can be correlated to modern techniques.
Those fleeting sunspots we now can measure would, for the most part, not be recorded by early observers.
If we had the 100-200 observatories with 21st century solar observing techniques observing the sun during the Maunder Minimum, some on moutains and in diverse geographical areas (no cloud cover), I doubt if we would find approx 3600 days in a row without some SIDC qualified fleeting sunspots.
The Maunder Minimum may have been an extended period of years of very low sunspot activity similar to what we are currently encountering — not zero sunspots, just very low activity.
Time will tell … stay tuned.
The number of stations whose data was acceptable and used in the April 2009 report is listed after the data. The Rn and Rs refer to the northern or southern hemispheres. Ri combines both to get the total.
Current May 1st report on April 2009 sunspots
:Issued: 2009 May 01 0921 UTC
:Product: documentation at http://www.sidc.be/products/ri_hemispheric
#——————————————————————–#
# MONTHLY REPORT ON THE INTERNATIONAL SUNSPOT NUMBER #
# from the SIDC (RWC-Belgium) #
#——————————————————————–#
APRIL 2009
PROVISIONAL INTERNATIONAL NORMALIZED HEMISPHERIC SUNSPOT NUMBERS
Date Ri Rn Rs
__________________________________________________________________
1 0 0 0
2 0 0 0
3 0 0 0
4 0 0 0
5 0 0 0
6 7 7 0
7 0 0 0
8 0 0 0
9 0 0 0
10 0 0 0
11 0 0 0
12 0 0 0
13 0 0 0
14 0 0 0
15 0 0 0
16 0 0 0
17 0 0 0
18 0 0 0
19 0 0 0
20 0 0 0
21 7 7 0
22 7 7 0
23 0 0 0
24 0 0 0
25 0 0 0
26 0 0 0
27 0 0 0
28 0 0 0
29 8 0 8
30 8 0 8
__________________________________________________________________
MONTHLY MEAN : 1.2 0.7 0.5
COOPERATING STATIONS : 62 55 55
PILOT STATION : Specola Solare Ticinese, Locarno
__________________________________________________________________
Reproduction permitted if source mentionned
R. Van der Linden
avenue Circulaire, 3 B-1180 BRUXELLES – BELGIUM
#——————————————————————–#
# Solar Influences Data analysis Center – RWC Belgium #
# Royal Observatory of Belgium #
# Fax : 32 (0) 2 373 0 224 #
# Tel.: 32 (0) 2 373 0 491 #
# #
# For more information, see http://www.sidc.be. Please do not reply #
# directly to this message, but send comments and suggestions to #
# ‘sidctech@oma.be’. If you are unable to use that address, use #
# ‘rvdlinden@spd.aas.org’ instead. #
# To unsubscribe, visit http://sidc.be/registration/unsub.php #
#——————————————————————–#
MikeN (08:11:57),
I don’t recall anyone here saying that global warming doesn’t exist. Who said that? The Earth has been naturally warming, in fits and starts, since the end of the last great Ice Age.
The disconnect occurs when people claim that CO2 is the cause of all the warming, based on very flimsy to non-existent empirical, real world “evidence.”
In fact, increased CO2 is the result of warming. Sure, humans add some CO2, but it’s very little compared to what nature puts out. And the amount is well within the natural year-to-year variable emissions from the oceans, volcanic activity, and the biosphere. If human emissions were at all significant, the bar graph showing human emission fluctuations would show up in the Mauna Loa graph. But they don’t. The human addition is too insignificant.
The fact is that the climate warms, and the climate cools — irrespective of human activity. The climate is currently well within its long term pattern of natural variability. There is nothing out of the ordinary occurring regarding temperature, sea level, coral bleaching, hurricanes, or whatever else the scare du jour is.
This link shows that there have always been alarmists running around trying to scare the public: click
Read it, and you will see that an alarmist contingent has always been with us — and they have always been wrong. Every time. Things are no different this time around.
Mike McMIllan (22:22:34) : sea level rise
I’m not sure of the point you wish to make. What we call Florida is quite flat and has only recently (speaking in Earth-time) emerged from the ocean. Two items of interest: One: the building material – coquina — for the fort built at Castillo de San Marcos on the Atlantic coast of Florida:
http://florida-vacation-travel.com/castillo-de-san-marcos.html
and two: the “Trail Ridge” at The Okefenokee Swamp on the Georgia – Florida border. “The swamp was formed over the past 6,500 years by the accumulation of peat in a shallow basin on the edge of an ancient Atlantic coastal terrace, the geological relic of a Pleistocene estuary. The swamp is bordered by Trail Ridge, a strip of elevated land believed to have formed as coastal dunes or an offshore barrier island.” From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okefenokee_Swamp
These two things suggest that the relative ocean-land interface is dynamic. The ocean may re-occupy part of the US southeast coast, it may not, or the land may continue emerging from the water. I’d love to be around in 1,000 years to see which way it goes, but I’ll surely move along before then.
M White (07:45:50) :
Monckton reported that some environmentalist tore down the tree that Nils-Axel Morner talks about starting at the 2:15 minute of that video.
Smokey – you still don’t get the basic facts. For warming to have caused the post-industrial rise in CO2 concentrations, it would have to have warmed by 15°C. Isotopic studies prove beyond doubt that fossil fuel burning is what has caused CO2 concentrations to rise 40% higher than they were at any point in the 800,000 years before humans started burning fossil fuels.
This is a fact.
For some bizarre reason you keep on claiming there’s no evidence that CO2 could affect climate. Again, I’ve explained this to you, and while you cannot and do not argue, you simply refuse to accept it. Again, flat-earthism. CO2 is a strong infrared absorber (see eg. Tyndall, 1868). Strong infrared absorbers cause the greenhouse effect. Increasing the concentration of strong infrared absorbers causes temperatures to rise, inevitably.
This is a fact. You’re in ~snip~. I think even most of your fellow ‘sceptics’ accept and understand the simple physics of CO2, and many have now even accepted the conclusive evidence of the fossil fuel origin of the rise in CO2. You’re pretty much on your own with your strange and untenable opinions.
Do you ever read scientific papers?
MikeN: if the Sun is the dominant factor, as you believe, then why is it even now, in the midst of a deep solar minimum, warmer than it was during the last, shallower minimum? Why was that minimum warmer than the one that preceded it, which was warmer than the one that preceded it?
DJ (16:21:12) :
A nice demonstration of the sceptic echo chamber bouncing inaccurate tid-bits around the globe.
DJ, where’s your data? And I don’t mean a powerpoint of Hansen’s auto generated pseudo-data. If you approached this blog with legitimate information, THAT is what we’re seeking here. Fortunately, legitimate scientific analysis of the warming theory yields failure after failure of that theory to confirm…. and I regret to inform you that we’re not all going to roast, drown, starve, succumb to violent storm-drought and rampant disease as a result. I’m sorry. I know it’s a disappointment.
RW (10:29:46) :
“For some bizarre reason you keep on claiming there’s no evidence that CO2 could affect climate. Again, I’ve explained this to you, and while you cannot and do not argue, you simply refuse to accept it. Again, flat-earthism. CO2 is a strong infrared absorber (see eg. Tyndall, 1868). Strong infrared absorbers cause the greenhouse effect. Increasing the concentration of strong infrared absorbers causes temperatures to rise, inevitably.”
“Do you ever read scientific papers?”
Do you ever think for yourself?
Why do you and other people posting here, use this utterly simplistic statement of physics to justify AGW on the planet Earth?
I can also give a simplistic example of physics. Put the end of a bar of steel in a bowl of hot water and measure how long it takes the other end to warm up. Do the same with a bar of wood, lead, iron etc. You will soon see they all warm eventually but at different rates and you can draw conclusions that confirm a known law of physics.
Now put an inanimate cellular based object in the bowl and voila the same effect.
Now put your feet in the bowl and wait for your head to warm up. OOPS! What has gone wrong with the physics?
Nothing of course. However this physical law is now operating in a dynamic environment where the heat may trigger other processes within the object/system.
Unless you can confirm that you have an excellent understanding of all the possible significant connected processes within the Earths climate system (Sun, oceanic circulation, clouds, biomass response, albedo etc etc etc) and how changes in one might drive changes in others then how can you possibly predict the future?
If anyone says that they have settled the science because of they have such an understanding I would call them naive, a liar or deluded.
Which are you?
Alan
RW has made up quotes by me that I never stated, such as:
“For some bizarre reason you keep on claiming there’s no evidence that CO2 could affect climate.”
Please show me where I have ever stated that CO2 has “no” affect [sic] on climate. I have not changed my position: that the effect of CO2 is merely insignificant at current levels. Misrepresentations like RW’s occur most often when the actual statement can not be refuted.
I made my position clear in my @08:33:23 post. Rather than respond to the points contained in that post, RW sets up several straw man arguments, brave straw man killer that he is, and fearlessly attacks his new inventions.
And I dispute the RW statement:
Citation, please [but not from the propaganda site RC; they’re incredible].
Unbiased readers can see how very small the human CO2 emissions are, by comparing them to natural CO2 emissions: click
RW says: “Isotopic studies prove beyond doubt that fossil fuel burning is what has caused CO2 concentrations to rise 40% higher than they were at any point in the 800,000 years before humans started burning fossil fuels… This is a fact.”
Not really.
“Please show me where I have ever stated that CO2 has “no” affect [sic] on climate”
“people claim that CO2 is the cause of all the warming, based on very flimsy to non-existent empirical, real world “evidence.” “
Why are you introducing your own grammatical errors and marking them with a [sic]?
You don’t believe that isotopic studies have shown beyond doubt that the increase in CO2 concentration from 280 to 390ppm is due to fossil fuel burning; this doesn’t surprise me. Here’s a couple of papers that would convince you of this fact, if you were rational. At the moment all the evidence is that you’re not rational but I hope that will change.
A 1000-year high precision record of d13C in atmospheric CO2
Oceanic Uptake of Fossil Fuel CO2: Carbon-13 Evidence
Sorry, too late! The Administration, the Senate and Congress are all heavily in global warming preventing cap and trade and we are all going to pay through the nose.
“Research by three New Zealand scientists may have solved the mystery of why glaciers behave differently in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
… the new work topples theories based on climate in the Northern Hemisphere changing in tandem with the climate in the Southern Hemisphere.
The research argues that at times the climate in both hemispheres evolved >b>in sync and at other times it evolved differently in different parts of the world.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/environment/news/article.cfm?c_id=39&objectid=10569888&ref=rss
So should we start talking about climates – in the plural ?
Perhaps RW would like to consider this scientific paper which uses actual chemical measurement to determine CO2 levels. These are real, scientifically observed values which show CO2 levels at over 470ppm in the 1820s and 1940s.
Does the isotopic study he refers to identify these directly observed levels, and if not perhaps he would concede that they are not “beyond doubt”?
To see if we’ll possibly see Global Warming coming back take a look at this chart of ENSO forecasts
http://www.climatelogic.com/system/files/forecasts/winter10/IRImodelsApr09.gif
And this one
http://www.climatelogic.com/system/files/forecasts/winter10/CPCconsolidationApr09.gif
Then look at this one from the Japan Met. agency
http://ddb.kishou.go.jp/climate/ElNino/elmonout.html#outlook
The depth cross-section doesn’t show anything pointing to a strong El-nino event coming soon like in 1998 or 2006.
And now the link to the paper:
http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/180_years_accurate_Co2_Chemical_Methods.pdf
Apologies for the omission from the previous post.
Flanagan: Don’t use old data to prove a point. What you did was prove that it is not warming.
Myth1:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/mean:12
Since the increase in global temperature since 1850 is .8 C and the globe has dropped .7 degrees C since 1998, that is more than half.
Myth 2:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
The global sea ice are is over the 1979 to 2000 mean for 2009 and 2008 and 2004 and 2003 but you picked 2007? Any reason for that?
Regarding Steven Chu’s use of the Mann Hockey stick in the 2009 Energy Conference. I saw that, thanks for posting it. I emailed them a comment that using that graph destroyed the validity of the presentation.
I was horrified that one of their suggestions is to turn your thermostat to 65 in the daytime and lower at night. Who is going to tell Obama who keeps the temperature in the Oval Office at 77?
Seriously, I am not freezing to death for the global warming terrorists. They can freeze to death if they want to.
Interesting essay that reports on another nail in the coffin of CO2 as a problem here.
Strange, for a while there some scientists were claiming Global Warming was a myth.
Thanks Smokey, very interesting.
Smokey, there is about a 1.2C effect on temperature of a doubling of CO2, absent feedbacks. I got this from climate-skeptic.com, just scroll down a little.
You yourself say that the planet is coming out of a little ice age, so you don’t think global warming has stopped.
>if the Sun is the dominant factor, as you believe, then why is it even now, in the midst of a deep solar minimum, warmer than it was during the last, shallower minimum?
The Sun isn’t the only factor, just large enough to cancel out the effect of CO2. Why do you think it is cooling right now?
Smokey says:
No, rather it is the embrace of every crackpot theory by those who are trying to put nails in the coffin that demonstrates that they are not skeptics at all but will believe just about anything that agrees with their preconceptions. Read Nick Stokes’ comment on that blog. He is absolutely right…The use of the virial theorem by Miskolczi is completely incomprehensible as the atmosphere is not in free orbit around the earth any more than we are. And, if one just plugs in numbers, one finds that the prediction of the virial theorem for the relation between the potential and kinetic energy of the atmosphere isn’t even close to being satisfied! You guys complain about models not reflecting reality but when some guy comes up with a crackpot theory and doesn’t even bother to do the simplest consistency checks against reality, you embrace it!
MikeN:
Stop misquoting me. You keep doing it. I never said the Sun is the dominant factor: “>if the Sun is the dominant factor, as you believe…”
You set up that straw man and knocked him right down, you brave straw man slayer. Except that I didn’t say what you claim. And earlier you stated that my position was that there is no global warming. That is false.
It’s a bad habit to get into, misquoting other people for what you perceive to be a temporary advantage. I am very careful with my words. Please stop misrepresenting what I say.
Joel Shore: I have no idea at this point what is causing climate change. But I do have a pretty good idea about what is not causing climate change: carbon dioxide.
It’s funny reading your statement that skeptics “will believe just about anything that agrees with their preconceptions.” That’s projection, right? Either that, or you still don’t get it. So I will explain it once again: it is not the job of skeptics to prove anything. The preconceptions are on the AGW side. Skeptics simply question — but the CO2=AGW folks won’t give us straight answers.
It is the job of skeptics to say, “Prove it.” Or at least: provide us with substantial, real world evidence that CO2 will cause runaway global warming. Convince us. We’re skeptical. So far you haven’t, because all the incessant arm-waving over coral bleaching, sea levels, polar ice, receding glaciers, polar bears, acid rain, the ozone hole, and whatever else is the scare du jour, eventually turns out to be someone crying “Wolf!”
This is what the debate is all about; if a rise in CO2 only causes a small temperature change, making for a warmer, more pleasant climate, then there is no reason to waste $Trillions doing anything about it. There are much more urgent uses for that money, don’t you think? Be honest. Wasting it on a false CO2 scare is extremely irresponsible.
So far, the planet itself is proving the alarmists flat wrong: as CO2 steadily rises, the planet’s temperature has steadily fallen. To a scientific skeptic that fact raises big red flags. It means that either CO2 has no measurable effect on the Earth’s temperature, or that its effect is so small as to be inconsequential.
Either way, there is no reason to immediately start pouring $billions to $trillions into this non-problem. Especially when Elmer Gantry Gore will be taking his cut out of every dollar.
The CO2 = AGW hypothesis is owned by the climate alarmists. It’s your baby. So once again: it is not the responsibility or the duty of skeptics to do anything, except to say: prove it. Show us. Convince us — not by your always-inaccurate computer models — but by solid, real world, empirical evidence, that CO2 will cause runaway global warming. So far, all I see is conjecture.
And if CO2 doesn’t cause runaway global warming, as is becoming increasingly apparent, then we can certainly come up with plenty of better suggestions about where that money should go. I suggest putting it right back into the taxpayers’ pockets.
Flanagan
“Myth 2
“THE POLAR CAPS ARE MELTING” The trye prediction being that Arctic is melting.
“The Arctic ice cap shrank badly two summers ago after years of steady decline, but has since largely recovered.” I guess we’re not talking about the same Arctic
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2007.jpg
etc etc. I could go on, but damn I can’t stand such a level of hypocrisy. Are some people then really ready to do anything in the name of political beliefs?”
If you want an honest view of what happened since 2007 just click on “NH Anomaly” on CT. The current value is about minus 500 000 km2, which is about one SD from the mean (in other words: it’s more or less “normal”). And since “Polar 5” found thicker Eisdeckendicken that thought, “largely recovered” is correct.
Smokey above – agreed but I think there is a step before it: Prove that an invariant climate is the norm?
Also FWIW I’d rather see the money go to building a more level global playing field in terms of wellbeing etc etc but being done without the smoke and mirrors of carbon trading.
Slowtofollow,
If you think that any money collected by any government on the face of this earth will ever go toward enhanced wellbeing of anyone except those collecting those funds… I have some property in Tennessee that will soon be ocean front that I would like you to take a look at….
The Met Office
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20081216.html
has a colorful graph that shows their medium earth temperature; after a maximum anomaly in 1998 of +0.52 deg C, we have in the new century 2002: 0.46
2004: 0.43
2006: 0.42
2008: 0.32
All this is of course only of interest when one compares it to ICPP or the hockey stick; but it does make their curves look a wee bit silly.
I know Thermageddon is just around the corner when:
1.) Lake Superior freezes over and it was weather in 1913 and Global Warming in 2009.
2.) A hearing is held in Congress over the climate, the guest speaker is treated like a God, then the Spring turns immediately back into winter.
3.) Miss one drop of rain in a season and emergency drought measures are slapped into place faster than an F18 with afterburners on.
Packing my trunks 🙂
Hahaha… My age makes me a cynic… you must be young to still have so much trust in government…
Thanks,
Mike
“hope” is the word!…. how do we fix a price? on the current or projected?? Cheers 🙂
Global warming is dead:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/us/politics/02enviro.html?_r=1
Alexej Buergin (18:20:43) :
Global warming is dead:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/us/politics/02enviro.html?_r=1
Yes Alexej, but it’s spirit is stil alive.
These kind of articles makes me throw up and it is one of the reasons I have stopped reading the NYT a long time ago.
I won’t shed a tear if they go belly up due to a lack of readers.
Smokey:
It is the job of people proposing a hypothesis to convince reasonable people who are capable of being convinced. That is what has happened for AGW, as evidenced by the fact that a quite strong consensus exists in the scientific community by a number of measures (e.g., studies of the statistics of the papers that appear in the peer-reviewed literature, statements of the IPCC and concurring statements by major scientific bodies including the National Academy of Sciences and the analogous bodies in the other G8+5 nations, etc.)
It is not the job to convince everybody. And, in fact there is a theory in biology (whose name one seems not to be allowed to mention on this Board) that is very well-accepted by the scientific community but for which a consider number of “skeptics” remain outside of the scientific community (and even a few in the scientific community), thus illustrating that such “skepticism” has little to do with scientific merit and much to do with what happens when scientific theories conflict with strongly-held beliefs or philosophies.
The fact that you are willing to believe almost anything that comes along that claims to disprove AGW, no matter how crazy, shows me that you certainly fall into the category of people who are unconvinceable. I cannot do the impossible and it is silly for me to even try. I am content with pointing out the flaws in your arguments for others (hopefully more convinceable than you) to see.
Smokey: “So far, the planet itself is proving the [snip] flat wrong: as CO2 steadily rises, the planet’s temperature has steadily fallen.”
Over what time period? The long-term trend for temperature is upwards:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
As the graph shows, temperatures fluctuate over the short term, even while they are increasing over the long term. So to claim that “as CO2 steadily rises, the planet’s temperature has steadily fallen” is meaningless unless it is placed within the correct context.
The correct context is climate change, and when short-term fluctuations are placed within that context, they can be seen as irrelevant noise – much like your prose.
Joel,
I think that most people here believe there has been some warming. The thing is… we don’t believe that the American way of life must be brought to a dead halt because of all the unproven hypotheses of impending doom.
If you would say that cap and trade or carbon taxes are counterproductive and will only enrich the elite of government , science and rentseekers, you would have a bosom buddy in Smokey “The Hammer”, and many others. You see, for the IPCC, it’s really not about the details of the science, it’s about the control. Most people here realize that, and I have a feeling that you know it too…
Thanks for listening,
Mike
JS:
More psychological projection on your part. YOU have to prove your hypothesis; all that skeptics need to do is question it: click.
I have strongly held beliefs like many people. Including you. But not about AGW, which is still just a GCM wet dream lacking empirical evidence. The planet is laughing at the AGW conjecture.
You may believe fervently that there is a black cat in a dark room. Skeptics say “show me.” If you turn on the lights and we see a black cat, you’ve proven your hypothesis. But so far, alarmists have been unwilling or unable to turn on the lights. I don’t accept a black cat based on your belief system — which is all you have. There’s only real world evidence of declining global temperatures as CO2 rises.
I merely point out that credible real world evidence for AGW is missing. Where is it? Alarmists obviously believe in CO2=AGW — but they are unable to provide solid, falsifiable evidence to support their pet hypothesis.
You have no convincing real world evidence, so you fall back on “consensus” again. As we all know, that argument fails.
No one has been able to falsify the theory that the observed temperature changes are a consequence of natural variability. That is the test of your failed hypothesis; it must explain reality better than what it trying to replace. It fails.
I understand that you’re really trying hard to turn the argument around. I can’t blame you, it must be tough with the albatross of CO2=AGW around your neck. But you put it there, we didn’t.
Brendan H (19:18:37),
Have you been out of town or something? That chart has been discussed here frequently. Your GISS chart is after “adjustment.” And GISS is pretty uncooperative when people start asking questions about its data and methodologies.
Anyway, that chart is a piece of Dan Rather-style fiction: click
This really does smack of double speak. And they are having classes in it?
cite>The answer, Mr. Perkowitz said in his presentation at the briefing, is to reframe the issue using different language. “Energy efficiency” makes people think of shivering in the dark. Instead, it is more effective to speak of “saving money for a more prosperous future.” In fact, the group’s surveys and focus groups found, it is time to drop the term “the environment” and talk about “the air we breathe, the water our children drink.”cite<
Joel Shore (19:01:35) :
“And, in fact there is a theory in biology (whose name one seems not to be allowed to mention on this Board) that is very well-accepted by the scientific community but for which a consider number of “skeptics” remain outside of the scientific community (and even a few in the scientific community), thus illustrating that such “skepticism” has little to do with scientific merit and much to do with what happens when scientific theories conflict with strongly-held beliefs or philosophies.”
——————–
I’ll bite.
WTF are you talking about here ??
scary but true..thanks for posting. 🙂
“as CO2 steadily rises, the planet’s temperature has steadily fallen”
As you’ve been told quite some number of times now, this is not true.
You keep on repeated the same falsehoods time and time again, unable to heed the actual data and treat it sensibly. You are not understanding even the concept of climate change, which can’t be measured over a decade unless it’s happening extremely rapidly. How many graphs have you dug up now of temperatures since 1998, or 2002, or whatever date in the last ten years? They are all meaningless.
But as I’ve said before, if you like meaningless graphs, then start your data in March 2008. Please explain why you feel that all climate graphs should start in 2002, and not March 2008.
Smokey: “Anyway, that chart is a piece of Dan Rather-style fiction: click”
Well, I don’t get out much, but “that chart” you link to is not the same one as I linked to: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
Yours is for the US. Mine is for the globe. And it’s the globe we are talking about when we discuss climate change.
So that’s two strikes now: 1) Confusing the short with the long term; 2) Confusing the local with the global. Try to avoid a hat-trick.
Brendan H
The data your curve represents i mostly showing adjustments.
http://www.coyoteblog.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/07/30/ushcn_corrections.gif
The above graph is a few years old and “nobody” knows how it would look in a up to date version. We just know, that even in the later year GISS temp data still have a more AGW-friendly trend than any other temp graph.
Its really essential that you understand that your graph is not temperature, but just human corrections, manly.
These adjustments have not been fully peer reviewet (if thats important to you) or even made fully puplic. That also means, that every “scientific” paper or model made based on data like this cannot be used for anything much. This include papers(models that predict CO2 warming, since otherwise the authors cant make things add up. No wonder!
See a compare of recent years temperature fall:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/feb.gif
The following graph is not conclusive but illustrates that there are uncertainties in just using the GISS-temperature-adjustment graph of yours:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/gissdivergence.gif
Bon apetit.
.
Throughout history cold periods have been the worst times for humanity, warm ones have been better for human prosperity.
The CNN Meteorologist saying that the Man-Made Climate Change theory is “arrogant” is a great advancement in the cause of educating the masses with the truth. Hopefully more of the MSM will start speaking out. The word is spreading, tell all your friends and family, and tell them to do the same.
Gore and his Man-Bear-Pig. The politicians on board with this scam must be simply out of their minds. For one thing, there’s plenty of oil and NG, we just need to drill for it and refine it. Also expand and improve nuclear, wind, hydro, solar and hemp fuel.
Can’t anybody talk some sense into Obama, Gore, McCain, Brown and Merkel about how temperatures rise first, and THEN carbon-dioxide levels rise.
Carbon-dioxide doesn’t cause warming, sun activity does, warming causes CO2 levels to rise.
The Laws proposed like taxing Cows for flatulence are among the stupidest, but ALL the laws proposed will totally destroy the world economy and starve 100’s of millions of people worldwide, all without changing the weather one bit. And it will take probably 100 years to repeal these insane laws. STOP the insanity! TELL EVERYONE!
.
absurd thought –
God of the Universe says
humans’ breath is poison
just one child hurts the world
worse than a jet engine
.
absurd thought –
God of the Universe says
don’t research all theories
put an end to all debate
silence all your critics
.
absurd thought –
God of the Universe says
spread hysteria
wildly exaggerate
scare little kids not ready
.
absurd thought –
God of the Universe says
keep people all worked up
about global warming
despite inconvenient facts
.
All real freedom starts with freedom of speech. Without freedom of speech there can be no real freedom.
.
🙂
.
Frank Lasner: “We just know, that even in the later year GISS temp data still have a more AGW-friendly trend than any other temp graph.”
According to this comparison, the long-term trend for GISS is similar to the trend shown by other agencies.
http://atmoz.org/img/climate_metrics.png
“See a compare of recent years temperature fall:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/feb.gif”
As a matter of interest, why does this graph begin in 2002?
MikeN (08:11:57) :
I’ve no doubt it has warmed but it’s the reason for that warming that we may differ. It’s obvious to me that temperatures have increased as we emerged from the little ice age.
Just to show you what it was like then, you’ve heard that the River Thames use to freeze? There were a number of paintings from that period
http://www.artfund.org/artwork/1021/enlarged/1/the-frozen-thames-looking-eastwards
Note the thickness of the ICE, a picture by an artist called Abraham Hondius signed 1677. Quite thick even for the Catlin team.
http://www.artfund.org/artwork/1021/the-frozen-thames-looking-eastwards
I’ve seen other pictures with compression slabs which appeared to be 3M high unfortunatley can’t find them on the net
Eve: can you please tell me where you see a 0.7 celsius decrease in temperatures in the data you sent?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/mean:12
The linear regression is positive, and over the 2002-2009 period that was mentioned, the trend is -0.2…
But now that I take a look at the text above… Miracle! The “half of the warming” suddenly became “quarter of the warming”. Must be the new skeptic way of playing with words…
RW, Brendan H and Joel Shore.
Why don’t you answer my previous question?
Having difficulties?
“RW (10:29:46) :
“For some bizarre reason you keep on claiming there’s no evidence that CO2 could affect climate. Again, I’ve explained this to you, and while you cannot and do not argue, you simply refuse to accept it. Again, flat-earthism. CO2 is a strong infrared absorber (see eg. Tyndall, 1868). Strong infrared absorbers cause the greenhouse effect. Increasing the concentration of strong infrared absorbers causes temperatures to rise, inevitably.”
“Do you ever read scientific papers?”
Do you ever think for yourself?
Why do you and other people posting here, use this utterly simplistic statement of physics to justify AGW on the planet Earth?
I can also give a simplistic example of physics. Put the end of a bar of steel in a bowl of hot water and measure how long it takes the other end to warm up. Do the same with a bar of wood, lead, iron etc. You will soon see they all warm eventually but at different rates and you can draw conclusions that confirm a known law of physics.
Now put an inanimate cellular based object in the bowl and voila the same effect.
Now put your feet in the bowl and wait for your head to warm up. OOPS! What has gone wrong with the physics?
Nothing of course. However this physical law is now operating in a dynamic environment where the heat may trigger other processes within the object/system.
Unless you can confirm that you have an excellent understanding of all the possible significant connected processes within the Earths climate system (Sun, oceanic circulation, clouds, biomass response, albedo etc etc etc) and how changes in one might drive changes in others then how can you possibly predict the future?
If anyone says that they have settled the science because they have such an understanding I would call them naive, a liar or deluded.
Which are you?”
That bit of physics together with GCMs that have been retrofitted to match the data from 1975 to 2000 are all that alarmists have got to ‘prove’ their hypothesis.
But of course the global temperature record in the 20th century is only in accord with the GCMs and AGW hypothesis for 25% of the time (1975 – 2000) it is in discord for 65% of the time (1910 -1975).
The 21st century is also not looking good for the hypothesis and the models so far.
To close the disconnect between the hypothesis and models from 1940 – 1970 a hypothesis based on aerosol production is put forward to stitch it together.
However, nobody has been able to show a direct and consistent connection between aerosols and global temperatures. For instance areas with a high production of aerosols show a lower cooling trend in the period 1940 -1970 than other areas.
Greenland ice cores show that sulfat aerosols increased stongly from 1910 to 1940 a period of significant warming indeed the rate of warming was almost the same as the warming rate from 1975 to 2000. So how does all that work then?
What sort of hand waving can you come uo with to explain the 1910 – 1940 model discord?
If the aerosol suggestion had been proven I am sure we would have heard about it by now. I am sure, that you realise that you, logically, cannot prove one unproven thing by using another unproven thing. It just doesn’t compute. So if you can stitch these two hypothesis together with some level of proof then you should publish and make a name for yourself.
Until the obvious discord between the models and observed data in the 20th and 21st century can be closed by proven hypothesis then clearly noone can say that the science is anyway settled.
What makes more sense is the theory that the Earths climate is naturally variable and that we have not been round long enough yet to have anything like a complete understanding of all the factors involved.
Just to make it easy for you I repeat my earlier question.
“Unless you can confirm that you have an excellent understanding of all the possible significant connected processes within the Earths climate system (Sun, oceanic circulation, clouds, biomass response, albedo etc etc etc) and how changes in one might drive changes in others then how can you possibly predict the future?
If anyone says that they have settled the science because they have such an understanding I would call them naive, a liar or deluded.
Which are you?”
Alan
I had high HOPE(s) that when OBAMA selected Steve Chu (Legitimate Nobel Prize in Physics — versus the Nobel Political Prize of AlGore and the IPCC — but I digress) to head DOE (ENERGY) that we would have some serious SCIENCE injected into the Obamanation underneath the Obamarhetorical pronouncements about AGW and Alternative Energy…..In other words… that despite his political leanings… that there might be a positive CHANGE…..;That the new President could Nixon-in-China-like go to Anwar and debunk AGW and support DRILLING for OIL and Building NUCLEAR plants……..And truth be told — we still might — yet so far there is no evidence of anything except more Obamahetoricalism……On the other hand I had serious concerns for the White House’s sanity when HE picked AGW True Believers for Chief Scientist (Holdren) and Enviro Advisor (Browner)…..Thus I FEAR that whatever good influence that might come from having a person with a serious science background heading the most science-centric of any cabinet department (ENERGY) in Chu (he is officially pro-nuclear after all) …will be buried by the babbling idiocy of (Browner / Holdren)…..So my question for the AGW True Believers of OBAMANATION is…….if we have Real CHANGE imposed from without (e.g. NO SUNSPOTS) for a significant period of time (DALTON MINIMUM II?) … what kind of FUTURE…other than COLD with associated BAD FARMING (and yes widespread FAMINE) can we HOPE for….Anyone for building a NEW STONEHENGE and resurrecting a temple or two your favorite mythological SUN GOD???
Alan Millar,
Good post. Of course you are correct. I have yet to see anything that would fit the definition of real world evidence showing that rises in CO2 causes global warming. The reason is simple and straightforward: there is no evidence.
As CO2 rises, the global temperature does not follow. Lately the planet has been cooling. That simple fact falsifies the entire CO2=AGW hypothesis.
And it cannot be repeated often enough that the long held theory of natural climate variability has never been falsified. The new AGW/global warming hypothesis has no real world foundation; all of its “evidence” comes from computer models programmed by people desiring a specific end result. That certainly is not real world evidence of anything.
Our planet is well within the parameters of past natural variability, and a change in a very *minor* trace gas, from <4 parts in ten thousand, to five parts per in thousand, will have no effect on temperature — which precedes rises in CO2.
If the planet’s temperature increased following a rise in CO2 levels, I would be re-thinking the CO2=AGW hypothesis. I go where the evidence leads.
The evidence leads to the conclusion that the effect of CO2 is extremely small to non-existent. It may be negative. The claim that CO2 causes a rising temperature is so flimsy — if not invented outright — that rational people must accept the fact that the hypothesis fails.
Brendan H (01:42:29) :
“According to this comparison, the long-term trend for GISS is similar to the trend shown by other agencies.”
Not really: click
Frank Lasner is right: “We just know, that even in the later year GISS temp data still have a more AGW-friendly trend than any other temp graph.”
The chart above proves it.
Brendan H (01:42:29) :
The graph http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/feb.gif
i have made by downloading most up to date datasets, so its the “state of art”.
Then you ask why it starts 2002. If it was started in the peak of heat 1998 (El Nino) or the low around 2000-01 (La Nina) i could better understand if you would question the begin time. Whats now wrong with 2002??
If you go back to 1997 on the other hand, RSS and UAH still show flat trend line. With GISS and Hadcrut you can only go around 8 and 10 years back and still have flat trend. This also demonstrates that GISS is more AGW-friendly never mind what you do.
You dont mention the HUGE corrections done to GISS data. Why not? Is it not relevant that perhaps half the global warming late 20th century in the GISS graph is in fact corrections??
“RW:
You keep on repeated the same falsehoods time and time again, unable to heed the actual data and treat it sensibly. You are not understanding even the concept of climate change, which can’t be measured over a decade unless it’s happening extremely rapidly. How many graphs have you dug up now of temperatures since 1998, or 2002, or whatever date in the last ten years? They are all meaningless”
You correctly insist on looking at the long term picture:
1) Earth temperature is rising (thank god) since the end of the LIA, approximately 1850.
2) When would you say that the CO2-content of the atmosphere started to rise significantly?
3) Therefore: Can 2) be the reason for 1) ?
For me the key questions are not: “Why do you believe that man is heating the planet?” or “What evidence do you have?”. The key questions are: How is it now possible for mankind to understand with certainty how this planets global climate works? What scientific breakthroughs occurred – and when did they occur?.
Right now the AGW debate strikes me as a modern version of the same mankind-centric viewpoint that Copernicus and Galileo had to contend with.
Smokey, I did not misquote you. The ‘misquote’ on the sun being the dominant factor was something I wrote higher up in the thread.
So when you say CO2 has a negligible effect, then what do you mean by negligible? Do you think, all else being equal, CO2 will cause a 1C rise in temperatures?
I am saying that CO2 may cause a 1C rise or a 2C rise, and that the current warming i being masked by a ‘colder’ sun. That CO2 will add to any solar warming another 1-2C. You seem to be undecided as to whether CO2 causes any warming, is that the case?
I have always found it odd that those who support the AGW theory choose to call those who do not Flat Earth theory believers.
After all, neither AGW or Flat Earth theory can point to a scientific breakthrough that proves conclusively that the theory is 100% correct. And neither theory can point to a test that proves conclusively that the theory is 100% correct – and that can be replicated by other scientist. But both theories can point to times in history when their belief was popular – if not proven.
Seems to me that the pro-AGW crowd has not given much thought to their taunt. Especially since no scientist actually believes in Flat Earth theory any longer.
Alan Millar (03:44:47) :
Thanks for the following gedanken experiment. I will add it to my armory:
“RW (10:29:46) :
“For some bizarre reason you keep on claiming there’s no evidence that CO2 could affect climate. Again, I’ve explained this to you, and while you cannot and do not argue, you simply refuse to accept it. Again, flat-earthism. CO2 is a strong infrared absorber (see eg. Tyndall, 1868). Strong infrared absorbers cause the greenhouse effect. Increasing the concentration of strong infrared absorbers causes temperatures to rise, inevitably.”
“Do you ever read scientific papers?”
Do you ever think for yourself? ”
Why do you and other people posting here, use this utterly simplistic statement of physics to justify AGW on the planet Earth?
I can also give a simplistic example of physics. Put the end of a bar of steel in a bowl of hot water and measure how long it takes the other end to warm up. Do the same with a bar of wood, lead, iron etc. You will soon see they all warm eventually but at different rates and you can draw conclusions that confirm a known law of physics.
Now put an inanimate cellular based object in the bowl and voila the same effect.
Now put your feet in the bowl and wait for your head to warm up. OOPS! What has gone wrong with the physics?
Nothing of course. However this physical law is now operating in a dynamic environment where the heat may trigger other processes within the object/system.
Unless you can confirm that you have an excellent understanding of all the possible significant connected processes within the Earths climate system (Sun, oceanic circulation, clouds, biomass response, albedo etc etc etc) and how changes in one might drive changes in others then how can you possibly predict the future?
“CO2 is a strong infrared absorber”
No it is not there is a small window in the infra-red.
If you are too dumb to understand the science, please explain why you peddle your zombied opinion.
Alan Millar plaintively asks: “Why don’t you answer my previous question?”
If you seriously wonder why I didn’t answer a question asking whether I am naive, a liar or deluded, you must be either have aspergers, autism or a brain tumour. Which is it?
Smokey: when will you stop posting irrelevant graphs? It doesn’t matter how many you produce! They are still completely irrelevant!
You still obviously can’t comprehend the significance of carbon isotope studies, and so your ideas about where the 40% rise in CO2 came from are laughable.
“I go where the evidence leads.”
Oh, you don’t. You don’t even understand what the evidence is, let alone where it leads. You don’t make any attempt to understand it, either. I know you won’t change your tune, no matter how overwhelming the evidence that you’re wrong. After all, you never commented on those papers that I linked to. You just repeated exactly the same nonsense, again.
“Lately the planet has been cooling”
Nope.
Frank Lansner: do you understand why raw data needs to be calibrated? Do you realise that all the major global temperature datasets are virtually identical during their common periods?
Alexej Buergin:
“When would you say that the CO2-content of the atmosphere started to rise significantly?”
I have no say in when it began to rise. The data tells us quite objectively. 1750. The answer to your question 3 is then quite clear.
lucky dog says:
I don’t think that is really the relevant way to phrase the question. After all, many people here seem very certain that even doubling or tripling or quadrupling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause very little effect. How are they so certain of this?
By contrast, the scientific community has worked very hard to understand the radiative effects of CO2, to understand the feedbacks in the climate system, to look at past climatic changes and see what they implied. And, what this evidence tells us is that increasing CO2 causes a significant radiative perturbation (that can be estimated to an accuracy of about 10%) and that, while there remains significant uncertainty in regards to how feedbacks come into play to produce the final effect, both our best understanding / modeling of these feedbacks AND the evidence of the past sensitivity of the climate to perturbations strongly suggest that the resulting feedbacks will produce a significant climatic effect. There is still, however, a considerable range of uncertainty as to the exact strength of these effects and regarding other things (such as the regional changes, how fast ice sheets will disintegrate, possible tipping points, etc.)
In light of this, what I find curious is more the reverse question of how people who are much less well-versed in the science nonetheless feel that they know with a high degree of certainty that the scientists are wrong and to be so confident that a complex nonlinear system that has shown a strong past sensitivity to perturbations is going to behave in such a tame way with the perturbation that we are applying to it.
That is a red herring. No scientific theory can be proven 100% correct. Science is inductive and thus uncertainty is inherent to science. Science is about the accumulation of evidence, not proof. If you want 100% certainty and absolute proof, stick to a deductive logical system like mathematics. Unfortunately though, mathematics doesn’t tell us anything about the real physical world. (It can and has been very successfully applied to study the physical world, but that again relies on inductive steps in making the jump from the mathematical description to the physical world being described.)
RW (12:58:55) :
“Alan Millar plaintively asks: “Why don’t you answer my previous question?”
If you seriously wonder why I didn’t answer a question asking whether I am naive, a liar or deluded, you must be either have aspergers, autism or a brain tumour. Which is it?”
I take it, therefore, that you are not claiming that you have an excellent understanding of all the possible significant connected processes within the Earths climate system (Sun, oceanic circulation, clouds, biomass response, albedo etc etc etc) and how changes in one might drive changes in others.
Therefore why are you claiming that you can predict the future direction of climate change with a high degree of certainty?
I have already illustrated that the main evidence that you are relying on are nonsense ie
1. That CO2 is a greenhouse gas and therefore increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, a priori, leads to higher temperatures.
Can only be true if you have that understanding I have previously mentioned.
For instance it would take me pure minutes to describe a planetary climate system where increasing CO2 levels, beyond a certain level, would have a negative effect on planetary temperatures.
2. The GCMs are a match for global temperatures from 1975 – 2000 after being retrofitted to be so.
I have already pointed out that they are a mismatch from 1910 – 1970 and for the 21st Century to date.
Unless you can post evidence showing that you, or some other named person, has solved all the significant issues in the climate system as per point one and that you can post proven hypothesis which closes the discord in the models and observed Global Temperatures as per point two then you should stop posting what is pure speculation not scientific fact.
Alan
Smokey: “Not really: click”
Eleven years is not a long-term trend.
Frank Lasner: “Whats now wrong with 2002??”
What’s right with it?
“If you go back to 1997 on the other hand, RSS and UAH still show flat trend line.”
According to the UK Met Office, the “latest decade” (1998-2007) shows a continued warming of 0.1 °C per decade. And that’s taking the high point as the starting point.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/bigpicture/fact2.html
“RW:
“When would you say that the CO2-content of the atmosphere started to rise significantly?”
I have no say in when it began to rise. The data tells us quite objectively. 1750. The answer to your question 3 is then quite clear.”
Did you notice that the ordinate of your curve starts at 270 ppm, which makes the changes look much bigger than they are? That the value in 1850 is about the same as in 1500, when the LIA began, so if the curve stops there it is just a horizontal line?
But of course I should have defined “SIGNIFICANTLY” (2.5 SD ?). And I should have asked “significantly OVER THE MEAN”.
Joel Shore,
AGW theory is not even in the running for validity. It is politics highjacking climate science.
It is is enviro-extremsits attempting to highjack just about everything.
You can dissemble all you want- and you do dissemble rather well.
But the article this blog thread is based on cannot be factually countered by you. or any other AGW believer for the simple reason you have no facts available to do so.
The predictions of AGW have failed.
In real science, you go back and test again.
In politics, which AGW is, you tell people the issue is settled. That is the only argument AGW community has, and the only argument the community has ever had.
hunter says:
No, what is politics attempting to hijack science is the attempt by some to attack well-grounded scientific theories because acceptance of these theories would tend to lend strong support for actions that are hated by certain people because of their political philosophies (and/or, in some cases, economic self-interest). Fortunately, however, science is not easy to hijack because scientists are hard to dissuade from the scientific evidence and because we have systems in place like peer review and organizations in place like the National Academy of Sciences to provide good assessments of the science and to distinguish between science and pseudoscience.
Joel Shore,
When your side makes predictions that fail to come true, you lose.
Just like with eugenics and its fantasy interpretation of evolution, AGW makes bogus interpretations of how the physics of things like CO2 works.
Just like eugenics, your predictions do not work. Just like eugenics, you only prevail by selling AGW to decision makers, by tricking them into accepting the misrepresentation of consensus and the lie that the science is settled.
Your side predicted storms- you failed.
Your side predicted heat- you failed.
Your side predicted no ice- you failed.
Stop confusing climate science with AGW.
It only damages the real science.
And since the AGW is a pernicious popular delusion, the inmates have taken over the asylum.
The AGW community now has to resort to PR firms to rename its damaged brand. And that is in the face of every single media outlet being a stooge supporting AGW.
People are not as stupid as Hansen and the rest of the AGW promoters need them to be: They still look at the weather, and they still know the smell of used cow food when they smell it.
As a published research scientist in the field of perinatology, I am hardly qualified to speak to the complex science of climatology. However, I am qualified to look at the body and quality of “evidence” offered in both sides of the AGW debate. Being a concerned lay-environmentalist, I have diligently poured over both accounts for the past 10 years or so. In that quest I offer the following observation of the debate:
Scientists, by nature, are skeptics. We test the hypothesis without prejudice to the alternate hypothesis because the alternate hypothesis is necessary to prove or disprove the hypothesis. The science of AGW is the only science that summarily rejects the alternate hypothesis as inconvenient and considers advancing knowledge as having arrived too late to be permitted its contribution. The unfortunate politics of AGW has done more to discredit the reputation of science before the public than to prove anything that can be held as knowledge.
I remain a skeptic in the tradition of science although I am open to new evidence that may convince me.
Joel Shore, the Mann hockey stick passed peer review. Do you think that was good science?
How about a later work by Mann, also peer-reviewed, in which he turned a proxy upside-down? http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=5766
RW is Johnny One Note about the dozens of graphs from numerous different sources that I’ve posted here: he is still claiming that every graph is wrong, every single one of them, and that none of them are credible, and that the planet is heating fast — and to prove that, he posted a made up chart of his own from that bastion of home-made cherry picked graphs, woodfortrees. [Which is a fine site, but prevaricators can make their home-made charts show anything at all. It’s easy. Even Dan Rather could do it.]
People on an even keel might argue that one or two or even three charts out of a couple of dozen have problems. That would be reasonable in a debate.
But when someone says they’re all wrong, every single one of them; that none of them can possibly be right — and here’s my own home made chart that I personally ginned up right now that refutes everything… well then, their mind is made up and shut tight. CD will do that to a person.
I also notice that RW is always out of step from everyone else. Must be a self esteem issue or something. He has my sympathy. I understand that CD is incurable.
People go to the woodfortrees chart RW linked. Change the date to 1998.0 and you’ll see a sharp downward trend.
Joel Shore (18:29:07) :
Fortunately, however, science is not easy to hijack because scientists are hard to dissuade from the scientific evidence and because we have systems in place like peer review
You really believe that peer review is sufficient, don’t you? Wow. I guess, by that standard, Matt Bennett would say you have a lot of experience with peer review, hehe. Sit in on ONE real engineering design review and your view will change forever.
and organizations in place like the National Academy of Sciences to provide good assessments of the science and to distinguish between science and pseudoscience.
Hehe, you ought to see what Richard Feynman said about the NAS and why he resigned. They are not the gatekeepers of science – science protects itself all on its own.
Mark
“Hehe, you ought to see what Richard Feynman said about the NAS and why he resigned. They are not the gatekeepers of science – science protects itself all on its own.”
Science is protected by stubborn old buggers like us saying, “Don’t say ‘trust me’ explain to me”
Obviously since those that support AGW know that they’re lying they cannot explain how they made up their data and its processing.
The internet has taken peer review to a whole new level, so with the BS exposed and the world cooling, the death-throes of AGW are upon us.
Incidentally, isn’t it nice of them to hold Copenhagen in winter? If it’s really cold Russia will fiddle with the gas because their contracts are by volume and a -20C pipeline is good value for the buyer.
crosspatch (20:15:38) :
In the next glaciation the Great Barrier Reef will, as it did in the last glaciation, be completely dead as it will be hundreds of feet above sea level. There will be nothing we can do to “save” it. The same will be true for practically every other coral reef we know of today, too.
That’s very sad, another ephemeral entity consigned to the dustbin of deep time. I think that I’ll just go off and have a quiet cry into my beer.
Sandy: “The internet has taken peer review to a whole new level, so with the BS exposed and the world cooling, the death-throes of AGW are upon us.”
When you say “the death-throes of AGW are upon us”, by “upon us” do you mean now, next month, next year, in five years’ time?
I’d like to be prepared for the AGW death throes, the collapsing house of cards, the turning point, the bursting bubble, the rats jumping ship, the last gasp, the veneer cracking, the edifice crumbling, the game ending, or even just the end beginning.
For hareynolds
“This reminds me of the old Nevil Shute book (and movie with Ava Gardner!) ON THE BEACH, in which the Ozzies are the last folks alive after a global nuclear holocaust.”
And when Ava Gardner arrived in Oz she is reported to have said: “I have come to Australia to make a film about the end of the Earth and my first impression is that I have come to the right place!”
Smokey, ~snip~ You can’t measure climate change over 10 years.
How old are you, Smokey? ~snip~ I am beginning to think you must be very young. I am talking to you as if you are an adult, and quite possibly you’re not.
Young? Wrong as always, RW. I’m mature [but not old! ;^) ] enough to have retired after a 30+ year career as a professional metrologist, designing, calibrating, testing and repairing weather/climate related instruments, primarily those measuring temperature, the dew/frost point, relative humidity, etc.
The laboratory I worked in had over 140 engineers and technicians, and none of them — not a single one — bought into Al Gore’s globaloney warming scam, which you apparently have, hook, line and sinker. These were professionals, working in the hard sciences. Raises and promotions were dependent on our being right, rather than being politically correct.
If someone had come in and voiced some of your opinions, he would have been laughed out of the lab. We had a sign on the lab wall: “One Test Is Worth A Thousand Expert Opinions”. You would not have made it there.
I’ve asked you for your CV several times now, but you always avoid admitting what it is. That tells me all I need to know. Without a background in the subject, it’s always best to ask technical questions, rather than making blanket statements as if they are unassailable. The result of making those statements can be seen here [scroll down and read the first dozen or so comments. Seems other people hold RW in pretty low esteem].
If you believe that you’re convincing anyone, well, you can see from their comments that you’re not. CD again. My sympathy.
~snip~ ad hominem. What is your explanation for the declining 13C content of atmospheric CO2?
Alexej Buergin:
“Did you notice that the ordinate of your curve starts at 270 ppm, which makes the changes look much bigger than they are?”
A 40% increase is a 40% increase, no matter what axes you choose.
“But of course I should have defined “SIGNIFICANTLY” (2.5 SD ?). And I should have asked “significantly OVER THE MEAN”.”
Why don’t you get hold of the data, and do these calculations yourself?
MikeN: what is the scientific relevance of your statement about 1998?
Alexej Buergin:
“Did you notice that the ordinate of your curve starts at 270 ppm, which makes the changes look much bigger than they are?”
RW:
A 40% increase is a 40% increase, no matter what axes you choose.
“But of course I should have defined “SIGNIFICANTLY” (2.5 SD ?). And I should have asked “significantly OVER THE MEAN”.”
Why don’t you get hold of the data, and do these calculations yourself?
The answer is of course: I am too lazy to transfer a large table of numbers (Excel would do the calculations), so let us stick to (your) use of %.
Let us define “significant” as a rise of 10% over the average. That takes us to about 310 ppm. Which corresponds to about 1950 when the so called AGW usually is supposed to have started.
Your definition of significant is entirely arbitrary. Look at the data. The sharp rise quite obviously did not start in 1950.
>MikeN: what is the scientific relevance of your statement about 1998?
None, someone posted a link claiming a decade trend of increase, and I note that if you change the start point slightly, you get the opposite, so their claim is bogus.
You still haven’t explained why you think things have gotten cooler.
If your point was to show that short periods are irrelevant to discussions about climate, then I agree with you.
“You still haven’t explained why you think things have gotten cooler.”
I don’t think that.
MikeN:
Don’t know who did that, but I agree with MikeN and the scientific community in general that global temps are not increasing.
I can’t explain exactly why the planet is cooling, either. I suspect that it’s just fluctuating around its natural trend line. But I do know that rising carbon dioxide levels have little effect on temperature: click
The fact that since about 2002, global temperatures have been falling means that the planet itself is falsifying any significant CO2 effect.
Of course someone could come along and claim that seven years of falling temperatures mean nothing because only a 30-year chart is significant: click. We are within about 0.2° C up from 1979. If someone wants to argue that a 0.2° C change is outside of normal and natural variation, bring it on.
The current round of warmist arm-waving began in earnest around 1997, when temps rose about 0.8° C above the long term trend line. I began taking seriously the possibility that global warming [not AGW] could be a problem.
But as we’ve seen since then, 1997 was simply an anomaly. In retrospect, it was a false positive that sent shivers up the legs of the true believer crowd. They’ve been disappointed ever since, and now resort to insisting that the world must just take their word for it that they’re right. That’s not happening.
Finally, how can anyone take the UN/IPCC credibly, when they’re so far off base?
Well, that’s real progress, Smokey – yet more irrelevant graphs, but you now acknowledge the idea of internal variability swamping trends over periods of a few years, and the idea that climate takes more than ten years to measure. Your very first graph of a meaningful time period shows an upward trend of about 0.15°C/decade, not the 0.06°C that you claim, presumably on the basis of comparing two individual months rather that considering all the data.
1998 was not an anomaly. It was a year in which a very strong El Niño occurred. This semi-regular phenomenon is certain to happen again in the next 10-15 years. Given that the underlying trend in global temperatures is upward, the next time there is an El Niño of comparable magnitude to 1998’s, it is certain to result in a warmer year than 1998.
“I do know that rising carbon dioxide levels have little effect on temperature”
Wrong, as I’ve shown you before. To understand a problem you have to look at all the available data, not just a tiny bit you chose because it seemed to fit your preconceptions.
You never responded to those papers that I linked to, showing where the 40% rise in CO2 over the last 200 years has come from. Did you read them?
“RW (08:54:20) :
Your definition of significant is entirely arbitrary. Look at the data. The sharp rise quite obviously did not start in 1950.”
Of course it is arbitrary. That’s why, when you test a hypothesis, you decide on the level of significance before doing the calculation. That’s why I did not define it in my first post. Which gave you the possibility to omit it (the word “significantly”) in your response, so you could answer a question I did not ask. My question was and still is: From what point in time was the rise relevant?
The important point (in earth history) is that the rise in temperature always came a few hundred years before the rise in CO2-content.
RW: “1998 was not an anomaly.”
Huh?? You could look it up:
Of course 1997 was an anomaly. QED.
And no, I didn’t read your links. In addition, I reject all woodfortrees interactive charts, not because that isn’t a fun site, but because they are always cherry picked in your case to show what you want — while the numerous charts I provided in this thread came from many different sources. Those were not my charts; they were compiled by professionals in related fields. But there is not a single one out of more than two dozen charts I posted, which you haven’t arbitrarily rejected. Not one. That is extraordinarily unreasonable; no honest, reputable person would be that extreme or closed minded. Those professionals, organizations, governments and universities are not all wrong, in every case.
It’s clear to others beside me that your mind is made up and closed tight. You appear to be a crank. And you surely fail a basic credibility test by rejecting every chart issued by numerous legitimate sources.
As “Themstocles” commented about you in Jennifer Marohasy’s blog:
“I have noticed this RW person on other sceptic sites, where he engages in the same obnoxious behavior. Steve McIntyre completely deleted without comment quite a few similar RW posts recently from Climate Audit. Anthony Watts’ site is also plagued with similar fact free RW postings.”
And poster “groweg” says:
“RW: You have put yourself in the position of an ‘expert’ implying you have read atmospheric physics texts and responding dismissively and condescendingly to posts here. ‘Miskolczi’s work is ‘meaningless’ and Gary P’s opinions are ‘anti-science’, as if you are the arbiter of what is scientific…
“Gary P. has investigated this topic to some apparent depth and arrived at conclusions that are unique from those in the popular media. You, on the other hand, arrogate the mantle of science such that you feel you are in a position to dismiss Gary P. in a heavy-handed, rigid way as ‘anti-science’ (whatever that is) while adhering to the conventionally-accepted ‘wisdom’ on this topic. I do not claim to be any expert on climate science, but merely from the above considerations, I would pick Gary P.’s views as most likely correct. He’s also the one I’d rather have a beer with.”
Everyone commenting about RW thinks more or less the same way: “I would pick Gary P.’s views as most likely correct. He’s also the one I’d rather have a beer with.” Ya think??
There are other similar comments made there, and here, and at CA and elsewhere. So who is out of step? Everyone else? Is it reasonable accept as credible someone with a demonstrably closed mind? Someone who arbitrarily rejects 100% of any information that does not fit his own personal belief system? Someone who insistently demands that all others must step up and answer his questions — but who hides out from answering any uncomfortable questions from other posters? Someone who comes across as a crank?
No. It is not reasonable, in a debate over the article beginning this thread, to take the position that everyone who disagrees is always in the wrong. Those posters quoted above are not 100% wrong. Truth be told, they are pretty much right on the money. Neither am I 100% wrong, even though that is your repeatedly stated opinion. Nor are the other posters in this extensive thread 100% wrong, simply because you disagree with them.
I don’t think they’d want to have a beer with you, either.
(Smokey):
“I do know that rising carbon dioxide levels have little effect on temperature”
(RW):
Wrong, as I’ve SHOWN you before
The graph SHOWN proves nothing and is just plain silly. So temperature and CO2 went up during 50 years. But the manipulation of the units (missing) for CO2 is dishonest, as one can always make straight lines coincide (if necessary counting backwards on one of the ordinates).
If the rise in CO2 is the reason for the rise in temperature, one must show that the first mentioned started first. But it was always the other way around.
MarkT:
Having refereed over 80 papers in physics (and published about 30), I have a reasonably large amount of experience with peer review. And, if you are asking whether I think peer review is sufficient in the sense of a guarantee that any particular paper is correct and even that it doesn’t suffer from elementary errors, the answer is no. In fact, that is quite obvious, for example, from the fact that the Douglass et al paper passed peer review and that even the ridiculous polemical nonsense by Gerlich and Tscheuschner was published in a third-rate peer-reviewed physics journal.
However, the real point of peer review is not to guarantee the correctness of any particular paper but to increase the signal-to-noise ratio…and that I think it does quite well. And discussions at sites like this provide evidence of why that can be a good thing.
Alexej Buergin: it’s not clear what your point is. The data is clear, though. CO2 started rising in about 1750. The 13C content of atmospheric CO2 <a href=”“>started dropping around the same time. Are you trying to argue that rising temperatures caused the post-industrial rise in CO2?
Smokey: after a brief glimmer of hope, you’ve lapsed again. Your logic seems to be that if you can find enough people who say something, then that makes it right. Well, I can find you a hundred people who say the Earth is flat, a thousand people who say the moon landings didn’t happen, and a million people who think they’ve been abducted by aliens.
El Niño is a standard, normal and expected phenomenon.
None of your graphs came from governments or universities. They were all irrelevant except the one that showed temperatures since 1979. I don’t know why you struggle to understand this: a graph of the last 7 years, or 10 years, or 11 years, is always and in every case irrelevant, no matter who produced it and no matter how many of them you can find. You can’t measure a trend in global temperatures over these periods. Full stop. End of story.
“no, I didn’t read your links”
I’m not surprised. You are someone who arbitrarily rejects 100% of any information that does not fit his own personal belief system.
RW
I’ve avoided jumping in on this back and forth with Smokey, mostly because I’m busy, but to sum it up.
You don’t like Smokey’s graphs because the time period cannot reflect climate changes. He doesn’t like yours because you state the consensus view.
I would like to reframe this a bit. You do realize that the 30 year time period for “climactic significance” is an arbitrary choice? There is no physical basis or derived statistic that defines this choice. It is simply a holdover of previous choices used to define averages for weather records.
Rather than say the “Earth’s climate is cooling” would you be willing to state: “For the last seven years or so, surface measurements are showing a slight negative trend”? And I would be willing to state it’s been positive since last March.
The real question is: Are the trends we are observing sufficient to falsify the current theories which can be summed up with the term Anthropological Global Warming?
What would be required to insist that were true? Would it require 30 years of records? What observations need be made. In MY opinion, demonstrating that GCM’s are failing in the predictions or scenarios by a statistically significant amount would be important since the bedrock of AGW theory is the GCM’s.
Lucia over at rank exploits shows this over and over again..
Whether or not this is published by a university or not is not relevant. What would be relevant would be a valid critique of her work.
“You can’t measure a trend in global temperatures over these periods. Full stop. End of story.”
At what point can you call it a trend, 30 years?
Jeez: a trend only exists if it is larger than the error bars. For example, a ‘trend’ of +0.2 ± 0.5 is not a trend. A trend of +0.2 &pm 0.1, though, is a trend. Thus, there is a clear statistical basis for determining climatic significance.
Given that, no, I would not be willing to state that “For the last seven years or so, surface measurements are showing a slight negative trend”, and nor should you be willing to state that there has been any positive trend since last March. Over these periods, you cannot measure any trend.
“Are the trends we are observing sufficient to falsify the current theories which can be summed up with the term Anthropological Global Warming?”
Presuming that you’re referring to the last 7-10 years as “the trends we are observing”, well, we’re not observing any trends over that period. You can’t measure trends over that period. Starting from last month, and working backwards month by month, calculating a temperature trend from then until now, the first one you would find to be statistically significant would be positive.
“What would be required to insist that were true? Would it require 30 years of records? What observations need be made.”
A statistically significant downward trend that was not due to solar, volcanic or aerosol forcing would do.
“In MY opinion, demonstrating that GCM’s are failing in the predictions or scenarios by a statistically significant amount would be important since the bedrock of AGW theory is the GCM’s.”
I disagree that climate models are the bedrock of any theory. If they were all completely wrong, it would not change the fact that CO2 is a strong infrared absorber, the concentration of which has risen 40% due to fossil fuel burning. That is the bedrock of our understanding that humans have caused global temperatures to rise.
RW
Without the positive feedback explicitly included in GCMs the fears of the AGW crowd disappear, so yes, GCMs are the bedrock of AGW theory as far as any concern for the environment goes.
As far as the 40% increase due to fossil fuels, that is a longer discussion. BTW I do not dispute the fact the isotopic signatures identify that much of the CO2 circulating is fossil fuel sourced, however, without a real knowledge of sources and sinks-which we do not have, it is impossible to know that this increase in total concentration is primarily due to fossil fuels. There are many possibilities that this is simply a new equilibrium ratio and the total sum of CO2 is regulated by other factors.
Sandy says:
Depends what sort of precision you desire. I think a more precise statement than RW made would be to say that you can measure a trend in global temperature over any period that you want but you should also attempt to measure an errorbar for that trend. And, what you will find is that trends over a ten-year period still have quite large errorbars so that the result is actually compatible with a large range of underlying trends. (For trends over, say, 5 years the errorbars are, of course, even larger.) Certainly, by the time you get to a 30-year period, the errorbars are much smaller and so it is often said that periods close to this are necessary to define climate, but clearly it all comes down to the degree of precision desired.
“”” Micajah (16:18:58) :
I’ve seen things like this graph that indicate a plateau or possible decline in global temperature:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/global-jan-dec-error-bar-pg.gif
But, what is the source of this claim under “myth 1″? “In fact, the fall in temperatures from just 2002 has already wiped out half the warming our planet experienced last century.” Is it based on one month’s anomaly? For example, March 2009? “””
Micajah; look in the mirror. YOU are the source of that myth you cite. #1 on the above list claims only 1/4 of the last century retraced;
You and you alone, made up that myth about it being half.
George
jeez says:
And, tamino over at his blog has demonstrated otherwise. Since the results one gets for the trends and their significance seem to depend very strongly on the time period that one considers, his result seems more sensible to me.
“”” MikeN (20:48:58) :
This whole thing about global warming stopping in 1998, or that half the warming has been erased, are you really arguing that CO2 doesn’t cause an increase in temperatures? If the sun is responsible for the cooling, and overwhelming the CO2 trend, then wouldn’t a more active sun just restart the warming? “””
Well if the rising CO2 is responsible for the warming (after triggering massive positive feedback warming by water vapor); why isn’t it still warming since the CO2 is still going up, and there is plenty of water available for that wonderful positive feedback amplifier ?
And we have it on good authority that the sun doesn’t have anything to do with earth’s climate so don’t blame the sun for laying down on the job.
We know the CO2 is going up; you’ve drummed that into us; we know that CO2 causes runaway globale warming; you’ve drummed that into us as well; so where the blazes is the warming that we have bouth and paid for already.
Enquiring minds want to know; before we all freeze to death.
RW says:
I would add expand on this point in this way: Our understanding of the radiative effects of CO2 certainly allows us to know with good precision what the radiative forcing due to this rise is. So, then the question comes down to climate sensitivity to that forcing. While it is true that climate models are one source of estimates of that forcing, another important source is paleoclimate events, major volcanic eruptions like Mt Pinatubo, and to a lesser degree (mainly because of the high degree of uncertainty in regards to the aerosol forcing) the 20th century temperature record. All of these suggest that the net feedbacks are positive, producing an equilibrium sensitivity likely in the range of about 2 to 4 C per doubling of CO2 (or roughly 0.5 to 1 C per W/m^2 of forcing). In fact, a net negative feedback such as that proposed by Spencer would require a complete rewriting of our understanding of paleoclimate. (My guess is that it may also be hard to reconcile with current climatology too although I am less sure about that.)
“”” Flanagan (02:23:09) :
This is probably the best piece of disinformation I’ve seen in my all life. In every point, there is a mix of truth and lies.
Myth 1
“In fact, the fall in temperatures from just 2002 has already wiped out half the warming our planet experienced last century.” Completely false – anyone can check data by him/herself and see it’s complete bulls….
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:12 “””
Well you called it Flanagan;
The above posted myth #1 never said anything about “half the warming” on my computer screen it comes out “one quarter.” Didn’t you learn in climatology class, that the approved climate science fudge factor ratio is 3:1, and not 2:1 ?
Maybe my screen generates its own typos.
You seem to have Obama’s disease; he can’t even read his own teleprompters correctly; neither one of them !
Time to find a willing re-programmer to set you back on the straight and narrow Flanagan.
George E. Smith:
For precisely the same sort of reason that we have weeks here in Rochester in the spring where the temperature trend is negative despite that fact that we have a very strong seasonal cycle which should be driving us in the general direction of warming this time of year. Is a system that has both an underlying trend and superimposed fluctuations about that trend that difficult to understand?
Noone has ever said that the sun doesn’t have anything to do with the earth’s climate; that is just silly. What people have said is that variations in the sun cannot explain the temperature trend seen over the instrumental temperature period…and particularly since about 1970. Whether or not there is an observable temperature cycle associated with the 11 year solar cycle is still hotly debated, as this has been notoriously difficult to tease out of the data, but it may well be there. (See, e.g., the discussion of that by the NASA GISTEMP folks here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/)
You seem to be adopting bad terminology from Smokey. You can use the term “runaway” to refer to the IPCC projections if you want but I think it is an abuse of the terminology. On Venus, CO2 caused runaway global warming; on earth under the current conditions such a runaway is not in the cards (modulo some recent cryptic claims by Hansen that I don’t think anyone else completely understands…but seem to refer to the possibility of significant carbon cycle feedbacks coming into play if we really go to town in our burning of fossil fuels).
“”” Nigel Sherratt (04:32:23) :
Slightly off topic but so were all the amusing jokes about Gallipoli and after all we are discussing myths.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Gerard-Henderson/The-lingering-myth-of-Anzac-Day/2005/04/18/1113676698825.html
Far from fighting to the last man the withdrawal was (ironically) a brilliant success.
A little research into one of the main sources of the myths will uncover a name familiar to viewers of Fox.
Casualties (from Wiki)
Died Wounded Total
Total Allies 44,092 96,937 141,029
– United Kingdom 21,255 52,230 73,485
– France (est.) 10,000 17,000 27,000
– Australia 8,709 19,441 28,150
– New Zealand 2,721 4,752 7,473
– India 1,358 3,421 4,779
– Newfoundland 49 93 142 “””
Now Nigel old chap; why don’t you do the proper British thing; and take your numbers above, and scale them by the total population of each of those countries; as of April 25 1915 of course.
Those 2,721 Kiwi ANZACS who died were a major disaster impact on New Zealand in 1915.
I will grant you one thing old chap; 2,721 Kiwis or 8,709 Aussie ANZACS are easily the equal of 21,255 Limeys any day !
As for the 1,358 from India; they had about that many Bombay Rickshaw drivers run over in 1915.
I do like that 10K Frenchmen (est); hard to count the French warriors; can’t tell which are coming and which are going.
Yes the First Lord of the Admiralty put up a bang up show for the ANZACS.
But watch out; next time you get your A*** caught in the ringer; we won’t be in such a hurry to come and join you.
It’s rather pathetic; Winston Churchill said “I am not come to power to preside over the dissolution of the British Empire” and proceeded to do exactly that.
Well you blokes didn’t exactly help him out; tossing him out in the street; after he saved the world from total disaster; and look at you now; with your Sharia Law acceptance; why do you insist on committing national suicide.
You’re a pale shadow of your former greatness; and you let Winnie down; when he needed your support.
Even Dame Thatcher was unable to resurrect your carcass; although heaven knows she tried.
So we Colonials don’t look to you for leadership any more Nigel old chap; you’ve gone to seed in more ways than one.
“”” RW (07:03:26) :
It’s really depressing to see the same tired arguments trotted out time and time again. Let’s consider these “top 10 global warming myths”.
1. Yes, the world is warming. The problem is that sceptics cannot, or will not, understand the concept of statistical significance. There is a statistically significant, ongoing warming trend. “””
Not true RW.
What you are referring to is simply a bunch of anomalies; which don’t have any physical connection to the planetary temperature; they merely record the ruminations of a quaint set of “sensing stations”, that Hansen et al massage.
There is no way that inept selection of sampling choices, can in any way reflect the mean temperature of any defined portion of the globe; except the specific locations of that handful of sensors.
Forget your statistical mathematics, and standard deviations and study some sampled data system theory for a change.
So where is your hard data that the world has warmed since 1995 (forget the 1998 El Nino anomaly; it didn’t last long enough to have any real imact.
Even taking into account the 3:1 obligatory spread in Climate modelling output, you can’t make an upward trend sicne 1995.
The earth does not respond to trend line regressions; what it will do tomorrow depends on where it is today; not on any trend.
A quick look at the output of any of the network of owl boxes will convince anybody that none of them can predict where the next observed data point will fall, nor even whether it will be higher or lower than the most recent one. So much for trends.
But I’ll grant you one thing; the trend in CO2 in the atmosphere is definitely up; which is good; since right now it is historically about as low as it ever gets.
RW says:
Not really, RM. Wrong again, sorry.
I explained @09:59 that around 1997 I began to accept the possibility of unusual GW when the temperature started rising fast. You could go read it again. So your comment above is provably wrong. If I had a “belief system”, nothing could change my mind, right? Sound familiar, RW? Faith is enough, you don’t need pesky facts with a belief system.
Skeptics don’t have much of a belief system. We just say: prove it. Show us. Or at least provide convincing, real world evidence of your CO2=AGW hypothesis. But that’s where warmists always lose the argument: the real world isn’t agreeing with their computer models, and GCMs are central to their hypothesis. The planet is laughing at your hubris.
[You don’t understand what Alexej Buergin said, either. I understood it, and it’s not what you’re trying to imply.]
Finally, your going on and on about an arbitrary 30-year time line is getting tedious. If I used a 29 year, nine month chart, would that be ruled out because it’s not at the magic thirty year mark? Answer “Yes” and people will laugh at you. Answer “No,” and the arbitrariness becomes apparent. 30-year chart here. This chart was posted on WUWT, along with plenty of similar charts showing the same thing. Note that current temps are within about 0.2° C of 1979 levels — 30 years ago. There’s your thirty years. You want a longer time line? Here’s 67 million years: click. See? No correlation. I suppose you’ll say 67 million years is too long. Or too short. Tell me the time frame you want. I have a chart for it.
Trying to read global warming into a 0.2° change over 30 years is a fool’s errand. There is no unnatural global warming, see? The planet’s temperature fluctuates around a slowly rising trend line. Why is it rising? We’re still emerging from the last great Ice Age and the LIA. A minuscule 0.2° change over thirty tears is statistically insignificant; and there goes your CO2=AGW conjecture.
Joel S: “On Venus, CO2 caused runaway global warming”. Wow, that’s a definitive statement. But… I’m skeptical. I think the fact that Venus’ atmosphere is at ~90 bar might have something to do with it, along with its proximity to the Sun. Mars’ atmosphere is 95% CO2 — and Mars is damn cold. CO2 hasn’t warmed Mars much. Earth is between them both, which may have more to do with temperature than CO2. Remember that the outer planets and moons have also been warming somewhat. Thank Mr. Sun for that.
“”” Brendan H (19:18:37) :
Smokey: “So far, the planet itself is proving the [snip] flat wrong: as CO2 steadily rises, the planet’s temperature has steadily fallen.”
Over what time period? The long-term trend for temperature is upwards:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
As the graph shows, temperatures fluctuate over the short term, even while they are increasing over the long term. So to claim that “as CO2 steadily rises, the planet’s temperature has steadily fallen” is meaningless unless it is placed within the correct context. “””
Well Brendan, that graph you linked to has an axis that is labelled “Temperature anomaly”.
It doesn’t say anything about global temperatures which are something else entirely; and for which we have no reliable means of obtaining meaningful and timely data.
And when you plot Hansen’s Anomaly chart (Hansen’s Horrorscope ) on a scale that runs from -90 C to +60 C which pretty much fully covers the actual temperture range on earth; then your “data” is lost in the noise level; specially when you throw in the 3:1 fudge factor that is a constant presence in all climate papers.
Wake me when you find something real to report.
“Well Brendan, that graph you linked to has an axis that is labelled “Temperature anomaly”.
It doesn’t say anything about global temperatures which are something else entirely; and for which we have no reliable means of obtaining meaningful and timely data.”
I still like the graphs that show monthly temperature approximations instead of approximate anomalies… but that’s just me. I got this from Smokey:
http://junkscience.com/GMT/NCDC_absolute.gif
I’d like to see this one brought up to date.
Smokey:
Smokey says:
I think that you are actually correct that Venus’s closer proximity to the Sun is a very important factor in explaining why it succombed to a runaway greenhouse effect while the Earth does not suffer from the same instability. However, the closer proximity to the Sun alone does not explain to temperatures on Venus, since they are hotter than those on Mercury. (I believe they are hotter than even the hottest temperatures on Mercury…and much hotter than the average temperature on Mercury.) As for the 90 bar pressure, that is a post-runaway measurement; I don’t think pressures were nearly so high before a runaway occurred, although I am not an expert on planetary climates…You may want to consult Ray Pierrehumbert’s online textbook-in-preparation.
Your statement about Mars is rather incomplete. The fact is that the atmosphere is very thin…and I don’t think that the amount of greenhouse effect seen is less than the accepted theories predict it should be; if you believe otherwise, perhaps you could present evidence of this?
Finally, as to your claims about the sun and supposed warming on other planets and moons (which is based on a very cherry-picked reading of limited data anyway): Are you proposing that the instruments that are very carefully measuring the solar output in the satellite era are out-to-lunch? Even most “skeptics” admit that solar changes are not sufficient to explain the warming on Earth without resorting to a hypothesis like the sun’s effect on galactic cosmic rays to provide a selective positive feedback to magnify the solar effect (and then they still have to struggle to try to find anything in the cosmic ray data that even vaguely correlates with the temperature trend). The mechanism by which cosmic rays are hypothesized to affect the earth’s climate is by changing nucleation of water droplets in clouds. Good luck making that work in an atmosphere very different from Earth’s…particularly one without significant clouds!!
George and Mike:
The reason to look at anomalies rather than absolute surface temperatures is that the anomaly field has much nicer properties than the temperature field, as discussed here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ This can be seen most easily by thinking of a mountainous region where clearly the elevation of the measurement location will have a huge effect on the temperature. By contrast, studies of the anomaly field shows that it tends to retain a significant positive correlation between observing stations separated by even hundreds of miles.
Joel Shore (17:12:36) :
RW says:
I disagree that climate models are the bedrock of any theory. If they were all completely wrong, it would not change the fact that CO2 is a strong infrared absorber, the concentration of which has risen 40% due to fossil fuel burning. That is the bedrock of our understanding that humans have caused global temperatures to rise.
I would add expand on this point in this way: Our understanding of the radiative effects of CO2 certainly allows us to know with good precision what the radiative forcing due to this rise is. So, then the question comes down to climate sensitivity to that forcing. While it is true that climate models are one source of estimates of that forcing, another important source is paleoclimate events, major volcanic eruptions like Mt Pinatubo, and to a lesser degree (mainly because of the high degree of uncertainty in regards to the aerosol forcing) the 20th century temperature record. All of these suggest that the net feedbacks are positive, producing an equilibrium sensitivity likely in the range of about 2 to 4 C per doubling of CO2 (or roughly 0.5 to 1 C per W/m^2 of forcing). In fact, a net negative feedback such as that proposed by Spencer would require a complete rewriting of our understanding of paleoclimate. (My guess is that it may also be hard to reconcile with current climatology too although I am less sure about that.)
Joel, RW,
Have a good look a this peer reviewed theory explained in a video:
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/05/miklos-zagoni-explains-miskolczis.html
Joel S:
You’re telling me exactly how I should be arguing — and then you refute that argument. I could tell you how that’s wrong, but I think you know so I’ll spare you the lecture. I am simply being skeptical of your previous absolute assertion that CO2 is the reason that Venus is so hot: “On Venus, CO2 caused runaway global warming”. Really? And how do you know that for sure?
I sincerely believe that you don’t see the disconnect in what you’re saying. Maybe you’re right, and maybe you’re not. But you are far from convincing. You folks always seem to argue from a preconceived belief based on models, and then you can’t understand it when we say, “Convince me. Provide strong real world evidence.” You’ve already convinced yourself; so you wonder why don’t we see it your way. You ignore things like the fact that Mars may have a thin atmosphere — but it’s 95% CO2, while Earth’s atmosphere has only .038% CO2.
You say: “The fact is that [Mars’] atmosphere is very thin…and I don’t think that the amount of greenhouse effect seen is less than the accepted theories predict it should be; if you believe otherwise, perhaps you could present evidence of this?”
*sigh* For the umpteenth time: You have the burden of supporting your hypothesis by presenting evidence. Skeptics don’t have to do anything: planet Earth has already falsified your wild-eyed CO2=AGW=runaway global warming hypothesis. CO2 is steadily rising, but Earth’s temperature is falling. You’re just looking for a way to save your dead hypothesis.
You people are still trying to convince everyone that a very minor trace gas is going to turn Earth into another Venus. That is an exaggeration to prove a point: because if CO2 will at most raise the temperature a degree or so max in a century [and there is still no proof of even that], then you should be joining with skeptics and arguing against wasting even one more taxpayer dime on “carbon”, or carbon offsets, or carbon credits, or carbon mitigation, or carbon footprints, or any other carbon scam nonsense.
Carbon [by which they mean CO2] is not a demonstrable problem, and it may even be a negative forcing; prove it’s not. The truth is that you just don’t know. You’re speculating based on GCMs. Skeptics don’t accept your speculation — especially if it will result in an enormous mis-allocation of resources, and *much* higher taxes and much higher prices for goods and services.
If big, bad, evil CO2 will cause the ‘greenhouse effect’ and make Earth’s temperature shoot way up… then why is Mars so freezing cold? Mars has way more CO2 than Earth, and since CO2 presumably holds so much heat, it should be toasty warm.
“By contrast, studies of the anomaly field shows that it tends to retain a significant positive correlation between observing stations separated by even hundreds of miles.”
Are you saying that anomalies show a different correlation between observing stations than the temperatures do? That sounds rather odd. I think rather you mean that the anomaly graph exaggerates the differences to make them easier to see.
Also the word “anomaly” carries the unfortunate meaning “deviation from normal”. Since we live on a planet with variable temperatures and the star we circle is a variable star, a better descriptor is “variance”, since it carries no hidden subtext.
Words have meanings, and when we use words that are incorrect, they can affect our thinking. So, I think instead of “anomaly graph”, “variance graph” is the more scientific description of what is actually being presented.
“Without the positive feedback explicitly included in GCMs the fears of the AGW crowd disappear, so yes, GCMs are the bedrock of AGW theory as far as any concern for the environment goes.”
Not so. Like I say, even if all climate models ever were completely wrong, we still have these facts: a) CO2 is a strong infrared absorber; b) its concentrations are rising. Positive feedback is required to explain the paleoclimate record, and present day observations as well. Climate models are simulations, not observations, and observations are the bedrock of the theory.
“As far as the 40% increase due to fossil fuels, that is a longer discussion. BTW I do not dispute the fact the isotopic signatures identify that much of the CO2 circulating is fossil fuel sourced, however, without a real knowledge of sources and sinks-which we do not have, it is impossible to know that this increase in total concentration is primarily due to fossil fuels. There are many possibilities that this is simply a new equilibrium ratio and the total sum of CO2 is regulated by other factors.”
You’re wrong; it is possible to know that the increase in CO2 is primarily due to fossil fuels. The studies have been done, long ago. I tried to link earlier to a page in a textbook but it didn’t work; here is the link again.
George E. Smith: upward trend since 1995.
Smokey: there is no getting through to you, is there? You still cannot understand that climate is not measured over years but over decades. Your constant angry claims that “co2 is rising but temperatures are falling!” is wrong. It appears that you will never be able to comprehend that; originally I thought it was not because you couldn’t understand but because you didn’t want to. Now I’m not so sure.
“Finally, your going on and on about an arbitrary 30-year time line is getting tedious”
I haven’t mentioned such a “time line” even once. Are you hallucinating?
RW
Positive feedback is not required to explain the paleoclimate record. For decades positive feedback was never considered. It is a recent outgrowth of Team pseudoscience. It is only required to explain the record if it is assumed to be a primary driver in a completely circuitous bit of tortured logic.
To Joel Shore’s point of longer trends leading to smaller error ranges. That is true only as far as you trust historical data. Pre 1979 the historical record is a complete mess, especially with the inclusion of the sea surface records with their made up bucket adjustments. Anthony’s surface station project demonstrates this point in the land records. In fact, the real error range grows as you extend back 100 years and swamps the magnitude of the suspected trend. Recent attempts to torture spurious accuracy out of records with +/- several degrees K of precision are more pseudoscience.
Read my statement about Co2 concentration again. Your response is irrelevant. “A study has shown” is meaningless. We do not have complete knowledge of every source and sink, how they vary or in what amounts. All your studies can be are simplified assumed models and approximations.
George E Smith: “Well Brendan, that graph you linked to has an axis that is labelled “Temperature anomaly”.”
The anomalies are derived from the measured temperatures.
“And when you plot Hansen’s Anomaly chart (Hansen’s Horrorscope ) on a scale that runs from -90 C to +60 C which pretty much fully covers the actual temperture range on earth; then your “data” is lost in the noise level…”
Yes, but you’d only do that if you wanted to lose the data. In order to discern a trend of warming, if any, you would need to use a method that reveals the trend, not obscures it, as shown in the graph I linked to:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
” you would need to use a method that reveals the trend, not obscures it, as shown in the graph I linked to:”
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
Why stop in 2006… not obscuring the trend are we?
jeez:
Pseudoscience. Exactly. I was going to call shenanigans on this too, but jeez did a better job of answering.
RW:
Don’t worry about it pal, Scientologists and Jehova’s Witnesses don’t get through to me either.
We’re still waiting to hear RW’s CV that makes him an expert. Maybe he could post it here real quick, before he has to get to Burger King and put on his apron.
” you would need to use a method that reveals the trend, not obscures it, as shown in the graph I linked to:”
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
The graph above is intentionally misleading. In almost a hundred and thirty years we see a temperature rise of less than .7C, and yet it is shown as a GINORMOUS spike. This type of exaggeration would be laughable if it didn’t fool so many otherwise smart people.
This graph at least gives a better understanding of what is happening:
http://junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/NCDCabs.html
Mike Bryant says:
No…I meant what I said. I even gave you an example: if you plot the surface temperature field over a mountainous area, you will get dramatic variations in temperature associated with the varying elevation. By contrast, the anomaly field apparently is much better behaved…i.e., stations that are several hundred miles away or less tend to have strong correlations in their anomaly.
Whatever…Your terminology would tend to confuse people though since “variance” is often used not to represent a particular value but to describe the amount of variability…i.e., the spread (something akin to standard deviation).
I think most people are intelligent enough to understand properly labeled graphs. And, why stop where JunkScience did by making the graph go down to 0 C. After all, the zero on the celsius scale is rather arbitrary. So, maybe you should plot down to zero kelvin. 😉
jeez says:
I don’t think your statement is even historically accurate. Arrhenius already understood positive feedbacks (although he may not have called them such).
You are also wrong in your claim “it is assumed to be a primary driver” if by “it” you mean CO2 (or greenhouse gases more generally). For example, for the difference between the last glacial maximum and now, the largest global forcing is assumed to be changes in the albedo due to the ice sheets. If you assume that CO2 did not contribute at all, then you would in fact derive an even larger estimate for the climate sensitivity (expressed in C per W/m^2 of forcing) because you would have to explain the same temperature change with a smaller total forcing. [Of course, your result would also not be self-consistent since that derived climate sensitivity along with the known forcing due to the change in CO2 levels would imply that CO2 did significantly contribute to the difference.]
And yet, there is good agreement between the historical record post-1979 and the satellite record (which don’t measure exactly the same thing…but something similar). And, there are also other indirect measures of temperature such as glacier length that show good agreement with the pre-1979 record. Besides which, post-1979 includes most of the warming that is understood to be due to greenhouse gases anyway.
Ron de Haan:
As I noted above, peer review just increases the signal-to-noise ratio. It does not guarantee that any particular paper is correct…and, in fact, when the paper is published in some very obscure journal as Miskolczi’s was, that should immediately raise some alarm bells. (After all, if it is as important as it claims to be, why not try to get in a more prestigious journal?)
In this particular case, people have already noted that the paper is nonsense. For example, he assumes that the virial theorem applies to the atmosphere, which would only be true if the atmosphere were orbiting the earth. That makes about as much sense as assuming that the virial theorem applies to us standing on the earth. And, it is a simple calculation to plug numbers in and show that in fact the virial theorem fails spectacularly when applied to the atmosphere. Why he didn’t actually try this seems rather strange!
You should give it up, Joel. We don’t know what the water vapor feedback to CO2 forcing is, but it is pretty clear that it is not as high as the models have assumed. Good science requires re-evaluation of assumptions when empiric measurements do not bear out hypotheses. We are overdue for that correction in climate science, and I suspect even you know that. So, admit it, and move on; it would really be nice to try to understand climate without this logjam of propaganda about CO2. And it would be really nice to take care of our earth without this chimera of CO2=AGW taking up all the environmentalists’ energies.
=======================================
Joel Shore (13:43:52) :
lucky dog says: How is it now possible for mankind to understand with certainty how this planets global climate works?
I don’t think that is really the relevant way to phrase the question. After all, many people here seem very certain that even doubling or tripling or quadrupling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause very little effect. How are they so certain of this?
lucky dog says: I have always found it odd that those who support the AGW theory choose to call those who do not Flat Earth theory believers. After all, neither AGW or Flat Earth theory can point to a scientific breakthrough that proves conclusively that the theory is 100% correct.
That is a red herring. No scientific theory can be proven 100% correct.
***
Small point: I agree with Joel’s “100% correct” observation. And since it distracts from the point – that text really should have been left out of both sentences that used that standard. However, I still stand by my observation that given the similarities between AGW theory and Flat Earth theory (breakthrough, test, popularity) – it’s a strikingly ‘off target’ taunt. Not that I’m encouraging anyone to come up with a more ‘on target’ taunt. [IMO – I’m pretty sure no scientist will argue that it has not been proven with 100% certainty that Flat Earth theory is not correct. So sometimes “100%” may be the standard for theories not as complicated as AGW theory.]
Bigger point: My interpretation of Joel’s point is that it is not fair to only ask those questions of the AWG theory supporters. And I agree. However, I really would like to know what were the scientific breakthroughs that led some to believe that AWG theory has been proven. And that for some AWG theory supporters the science ‘is settled’. In my line of work I am often asked to add a ‘Level of Confidence’ estimate to my business case/ proposal (~theory) – and the importance of how I arrived at that confidence level goes up as the impact of what I am recommending increases. So I am hoping that someone who is following the AGW discussion closely – like Joel – can answer that question. It would be a big help. Make sense.
Lastly, I’m 100% behind moving forward on solutions that are supported by both AGW believers and non-AGW believers (i.e., conservation, efficiency).
Joel Shore (08:46:18) :
Whence this pontification ?
For example, he assumes that the virial theorem applies to the atmosphere, which would only be true if the atmosphere were orbiting the earth. That makes about as much sense as assuming that the virial theorem applies to us standing on the earth.
from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virial_theorem
The significance of the virial theorem is that it allows the average total kinetic energy to be calculated even for very complicated systems that defy an exact solution, such as those considered in statistical mechanics; this average total kinetic energy is related to the temperature of the system by the equipartition theorem. However, the virial theorem does not depend on the notion of temperature and holds even for systems that are not in thermal equilibrium. The virial theorem has been generalized in various ways, most notably to a tensor form.
etc. etc.
I do not know whether the virial theorem has been applied correctly by Miskolczi , but your statement that the virial theorem can only be applied if the statistical ensemble is orbiting the earth is certainly funny.
Re Kim above.
Does anybody ever think about water vapor “feedback” to water vapor “forcing”.
Water vapor absorbs far more electromagnetic radiation than Carbon dioxide ever could. Water vapor has a bit of a hole on the short wavelenght side of the CO2 15 micron band, but fully overlaps the long wavelength edge. the CO2 4 micron band has awater band that is twice as wide sitting right on top of it, and then water covers about half of the spectrum from 0.75 microns our to 4 microns.
So water vapor heats the atmosphere from both incoming solar spectrum radiation and also from outgoing IR absorption; so water vapor DOESN’T NEED any CO2 nudge to get it to absorb energy that can warm the atmosphere; and once that energy warms the atmosphere; the exact species that caused the warming is quite irrelevent; the thermal re-radiation from the atmosphere to the ground, is just as effective when water vapor causes it as it is when CO2 causes it, and there is far more water vapor than CO2.
CO2 is 0.0385% of the atmosphere, and has a molecular weight of 44 compared to about 28.5 for air, so at STP, that makes the partial pressure of CO2 about 0.41 mm Hg.
At -15 deg C, the sat VP of water is 1.436 mm Hg; or 3.5 times as high as the CO2, and doesn’t get down to CO2 levels till around -25deg C.
So wherever water vapor exists in the atmosphere, it can do all the warming needed without any help from CO2, and if the water vapor is so low that it isn’t able to produce warming; then it certainly can’t feedback enhance CO2, can it ?
Water vapor feedback enhancenment of CO2 is a total myth; absent the CO2 and the water vapor warming would be virtually unchanged.
Thw MMGWCC warmists need CO2 as a crutch, because they can’t figure out how to control people’s behavior with water vapor.
Joel and Brendan
Nice to see you both back over here-you certainly enliven the place and keep everyone on their toes!
Our history tells us that current temperatures are not unprecedented and that sea ice levels regularly diminish and increase.
As Co2 is supposed to be such a powerful driver- but has been a constant 280ppm according to the ice cores-what has been the mechanism since the last ice age for the dramatic and regular warming and cooling events which have seen great civilisations born and collapse?
You have to go back many thousands of years before it can be different orbits. So what has been the driver that has caused our past climatic perturbations? Warmists really need to demonstrate why this warming event is ‘different’ this time to previous events, and it would seem to many of us that the only way that can be done is by;
a) falsifying history so it can be claimed current temperatures are ‘unprecedented’ -“The medieval warm period is an outdated concept”-Dr Michael Mann
b) Not providing the evidence to back up the central claim that doubling co2 can cause a rise of up to 6.2C. The only scientist brave enough to post their calculations is misclozi who reckoned 0.2 to 0.6C increase. With the logarithmic effect- if that is correct- we would seem to be most of the way there already.
If you have the A to Z of how you get to 6.2C I would be pleased to see it. (yes I have read ALL the IPCC assessmemts-it doesn’t tell us)
Failing the provisions of the A to Z you might instead like to concentrate on what has been the driver of our climate during the many warmer and cooler episodes in our past. What was it? Thanks for your help.
Tonyb.
George,
I don’t know exactly what your point is. Everybody in the field understands that water vapor is an important greenhouse gas in its own right that is in fact responsible for the majority of the natural greenhouse effect. There is absolutely no disagreement about that.
The point, however, is what determines the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. And, the answer is that it is mainly determined by the temperature and that it is not significantly affected by the amount of water vapor that humans emit into the atmosphere…at least for the rates at which we can currently emit it.
If you are going to critique the standard scientific understanding in a field, it is important to first understand what it is. You seem to continually go off on tangents that suggest that you really do not have a good understanding of what the scientists are actually saying…and thus you debate strawmen.
Smokey, you say CO2=AGW is disproved. That is quite different from saying not proven, and is the essence of what I am saying.
The AGW model output has most warming coming in later decades, so small changes are to be expected. Plus what they are claiming is not that all warming comes from CO2, but rather that CO2 adds to the ‘natural’ temperature. So planetary temperature is caused by sun, volcanos, aerosols, oceans, AND CO2. You can’t just put up a chart of 8 years of rising CO2 and falling temperatures and say, see, your theory is disproved.
Let’s suppose for a moment that because of CO2 concentrations, temperature increases by .2C per decade not accelerating but in a linear fashion. Then because of the sun, we have a .4C dropoff in temperatures. Then the total would show us .2C lower temperatures, yet nothing is proven wrong. The physics of CO2 causing higher temperatures is accepted by far many more people than ‘alarmists’. Now if the sun goes back to normal over the next ten years, you would see an increase of .6C in one decade.
It could be the theory of a large temperature increase is flawed. But without feedbacks, a first order increase of 1.2C is pretty well accepted. Now if there were negative feedbacks to go with that then the overall warming may be negligible as you say. To just put up some charts and then say ‘the theory is false’ is not a serious attempt at understanding things.
anna v says:
Yes, the point is that he has misapplied it because, in essence, he has failed to notice that the atmosphere (like us) is held up by the earth. (I.e., in our case, we have a normal force pushing up on us from the earth; for the case of the atmosphere, it is more like a boundary condition.) I think that you are correct that there is a way to use the virial theorem in a general enough form that it applies in this case … and I believe the correct general from was worked out by Neal J. King in a discussion on the ClimateAudit bb. (Here’s a link into the middle of the long discussion: http://www.climateaudit.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=161&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=770 and here is a link to a letter he sent to Miskolczi discussing it: http://landshape.org/stats/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/m_questions-4.pdf ). However, if you simply assume as Miskolczi seems to that the kinetic energy has a magnitude of twice the gravitational potential energy, it doesn’t make sense and you don’t even come close to what is empirically-observed.
MikeN,
That was a well thought out post. I haven’t completely made up my mind on the effect CO2 has, but it is probably much lower than what the IPCC assumes.
You say, “You can’t just put up a chart of 8 years of rising CO2 and falling temperatures and say, see, your theory is disproved.”
Yes, I can. Prior to about 2002 warmists assumed across the board that CO2 was driving temperatures higher. Then, when temps started declining and CO2 kept rising, the goal posts were moved [as usual], and there was “heat in the pipeline” [there wasn’t, it turns out]. And “the models say that global warming will cause global cooling.” Gradually “global warming” morphed into “climate change.” And so on.
Given those facts, if CO2 contributes to temperature, it can’t be very significant, can it? No. Otherwise, global temps would still be rising. That being the case, there is no rationale for charging ahead and spending $trillions on what is very likely a minor temperature increase — or possibly no increase at all. See TonyB’s post @12:45:04. He asks some important questions.
Finally, CO2=AGW isn’t a theory. It is a hypothesis that has been on increasingly shaky ground for the last 6 – 7 years. The theory is natural climate variability, in which the planet’s temperature fluctuates above and below a gradually rising trend line. The planet has been warming naturally from previous ice ages. CO2 may drive some of the warming; the question is: does it really? And if so, how much?
The IPCC has been forced to ratchet down its estimate of climate sensitivity in every successive assessment report. IMHO it is still too high, and should be at least halved again. And if it is lowered even one more time, the argument that there is a critical need to spend any money on “combating climate change” will be hard to argue.
There are many other needs that come before shoveling money into special interest pockets because of a putative 1°C± change toward a more balmy, pleasant climate. Sanitation, malaria, AIDS; the list is long and the money is finite.
Never forget that the IPCC is composed of 100% political appointees who have their marching orders, and that the UN’s primary goal is to extract as much money as possible from the West, and in particular the U.S. The scare over CO2 and global warming is in their tool box, along with a complicit media and a scientifically ignorant president and Congress.
And where is their hard evidence? Aside from GCMs, there is little real world evidence that there is a problem. With the planet cooling, we have time to learn more before we take action that is probably completely unwarranted, and which diverts money from other more legitimate and critical needs.
TonyB says:
Good to hear from you again. First, I am not sure exactly where you have gotten the 6.2 C number from. (Actually, I now see that it appears to be the upper bound in the paper of Hegerl et al.) The IPCC AR4 report concludes that the equilibrium climate sensitivity for doubling CO2 is likely to be in the range of 2 to 4.5 C with a most likely value of around 3 C. It is not something that can be simply calculated from first principles; rather, it is based on looking at the observational evidence as summarized in Section 9.6 of the report (available here: http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg1.htm ).
Further credence to this range of values comes from the fact that the climate models incorporating all that we understand about the current physics of climate comes up with a similar range. (Of course, these models are not independent of the observational data, since the observational data has been used in helping to build and test the models…although the models are mechanistic models [some processes are modeled quite rigorously using the basic physical laws and others that are not as well understood or that occur on smaller length scales than the model resolution are parametrized]; they are not empirical models fitting the data.)
Limiting ourselves to the Holocene, i.e., the last ~10000 years or so after we emerged from the ice age, I would make the following comments:
(1) It is not clear the extent to which the climate changes that did occur involved much significant global change in temperature. In particular, while there is still considerable debate about whether Northern Hemisphere variations in temperature were as small over the last 1000 years or so as Mann et al found, almost all…if not all… of the well-accepted reconstructions do seem to agree that the late twentieth century was likely the warmest such period over that time for the Northern Hemisphere. (The data for the Southern Hemisphere are still too sparse to come to any conclusion.)
(2) What changes in global temperature did occur are likely explainable in terms of small variations in solar forcing, variations in the frequency of large volcanic eruptions (large enough to inject a significant amount of material into the stratosphere), and some variations in CO2 levels (which have been pretty steady, but not completely…I think they have varied about +-10ppm about the ~280ppm value).
(3) The uncertain nature of the proxy reconstructions of both the temperatures and the forcings (e.g., solar variations) makes it difficult to give a more definitive answer. [Of course, it is possible that someone better versed in studying climate change during the Holocene would also be able to be somewhat more definitive.]
Smokey says:
This whole historical summary is manifestly untrue. You can look at individual climate runs published prior to 2002 that show that noise is dominant over shorter timescales and thus that the resulting climate can have a negative trend over periods of several years. Heck, you can even see that in Hansen’s Scenario A (a scenario that assumed steadily increasing greenhouse gases and no volcanic eruption, and thus a monotonically increasing forcing) published back in the late 1980s using a considerably more primitive climate model.
Again, that is like saying, “We have weeks here in Rochester in the spring where the temperature trend is negative. Hence, that ‘seasonal cycle’ that all those alarmist climatologists talk about can’t be very significant.”
Where is your evidence of this? I believe that the estimate from the 1st thru 3rd was that it was likely 1.5 to 4.5 C (although I am not absolutely sure for the first). In the 4th report, they actually raised the lower end to say that it was likely between 2 and 4.5 C.
I think a shorter summary would be: Remember that I am paranoid.
Finally, the whole argument that uncertainty justifies inaction is sort of strange anyway. Most people do not wait until they are sure their house will burn down before they buy fire insurance. Decisions are made in light of less than absolute certainty all the time. The best way to make such a decision is in a way that gives maximum flexibility and produces the “least regrets” considering the estimated probabilities of different scenarios occurring. I don’t think that any serious analysis that has been done in this way has concluded that the correct decision is to do nothing.
The consenus is that the world is flat. “Do not go near the edge, there are monsters!!!!”
Heck, even the American Petroleum Institute won’t publicly support the “do nothing” idea or the idea that AGW is not a serious matter anymore: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/opinion/l05climate.html
That is how far behind the times some of the arguments here are!
Joel Shore (14:15:53) :
That is how far behind the times some of the arguments here are!
No, that’s how myopic you are. What the API supports or does not support is yet another argument from authority. It doesn’t matter who actually agrees (or disagrees) with you, Joel, something you just.don’t.get.
Mark
Joel Shore:
We can really learn new things on the intertubes. All this time I thought that gravity pulled us down. Now I find out that a ‘normal force’ from the Earth pushes us up!
And: “Finally, the whole argument that uncertainty justifies
inaction is sort of strange anyway.”Fixed.
Joel Shore (14:12:35) :
You can look at individual climate runs published prior to 2002 that show that noise is dominant over shorter timescales and thus that the resulting climate can have a negative trend over periods of several years.
Tell me, Joel, what is your model for this so-called “noise?” Can you distinguish between “noise” and “signal” in your plots? How? If you can’t, the claim “noise is dominant” is meaningless. Try again.
Mark
Joel
Thanks for your reply-I always enjoy your thoughtful posts-in a different league to poor RW.
I note that to explain past climate drivers -in the absence of enhanced co2 to do the job-you require the temperature variations to be limited, so therefore implying that you side with Michael Mann,
We have had these historical discussions before and you have admitted you are weak on history. If you saw sufficient evidence that demonstrated that past temperatures were at times greater than today, would that make you query your belief in AGW?
tonyb
Global warming used to have stopped in 1998. Amusing to see that’s now shifted to 2002. I predict that in 2015, global warming will have stopped in 2009.
Joel 14:15:53
Heh, that’s amusing. You link to a letter to the Editor that is responding to an article that has been corrected. Also, it is disingenuous of you to claim that industry has the cutting edge arguments. You should know that so many companies have ‘gone green’ in order to appeal to the public. They are actually behind the cutting edge arguments, which are increasingly showing that CO2’s role in climate has been exaggerated. “How far behind the times”, indeed. You are pretty amusing.
=================================================
RW 16:23:05
Look at the curve of temperature. It really peaked around 2003-2005. It’s just that lines can be drawn from either 1998 or 2002 to the present and show a negative slope. So I’ve always claimed we’ve been cooling since around 2005. The Argos buoys show that, too, and the oceans tell the story most compellingly.
========================================
Smokey (14:30:06) :
Joel Shore:
“…the atmosphere (like us) is held up by the earth. (I.e., in our case, we have a normal force pushing up on us from the earth…”
We can really learn new things on the intertubes. All this time I thought that gravity pulled us down. Now I find out that a ‘normal force’ from the Earth pushes us up!
Something Sir Isaac Newton revealed quite some time ago! It’s expressed in his Third Law: “To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
(1) Rapid species extinction
(2) A sheet of ice the size of New York City falling into the Antarctic Ocean
(3) Unprecedented amount of hurricanes and tornadoes
(4) San Francisco…93 degrees in April
armedevolution:
(1): 90%+ of all species that ever existed are extinct. Believe it or not, almost all of these extinction events preceded the SUV.
(2): This happens routinely, and is a function of precipitation at higher altitudes. Besides, it’s still cooling at the S.P.: click
(3): Wrong a third time: click
(4): Weather ≠ climate.
But nice try, and thanx for playing! Vanna has some wonderful parting gifts for you on your way out.
Smokey (19:07:31) Re: #2, how about the sheet of ice the size of Texas that grew in the Antarctic Sea. Playing the Vanna card was brilliant. Looks like you, George, kim et al have faced quite the onslaught here in the past two days, keep fighting the good fight you guys.
kim: the pattern is very clear. The date at which global warming is claimed to have ‘stopped’ constantly shifts forward. The game is always that you’re pretending that internal variability doesn’t exist.
And you say it ‘stopped’ in 2005? Would you tell us what trend, and what errors on that trend, you’ve calculated for global temperatures since 2005?
Phil.,
I was just razzing Joel for the way he explained gravity. He’s always so serious. I was gonna say something about ‘there is no gravity, the world sucks’, but I resisted. Until now.
Mike Bryant: “Why stop in 2006… not obscuring the trend are we?”
Not as far as I know. The graph I linked to happened to be handy. More importantly, the relevant trend is the long term. But if you’re unhappy with my previous graph, here is a link to another that looks more recent:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/bigpicture/fact2.html
Tony B: “Joel and Brendan
Nice to see you both back over here-you certainly enliven the place and keep everyone on their toes!”
Thanks for the kind words, Tony B. I am a mere layman, so will allow Joel to respond with his usual cogent arguments.
RW
My post to Joel was phrased in such a way that it seemed to be rude about you, which was not the intention. What I meant was that you play in different games-Joel deals with the physics whereby you tend to make references to what we would consider dubious ‘facts’ straight out of the ‘How to deal with a climate sceptics'[ pantheon. No offence intended. Its good to get alternative views. It’s a shame different views aren’t treated as tolerantly at say Real climate as they generally are here.
Similar question to you as I posed to Joel. Do you believe the re writing of history- as per the work of Michael Mann- supercedes the previously settled science as erxpressed by an overwheming consensus of historians? This believed that the world has been at times -in mans recorded history- very much warmer and very much cooler than at present. Did the MWP and LIA exist?
Tonyb
Brendan,
Thanks for the effort of the newer graph. Looking forward to many temperature discussions over the rest of the year. The temp graph here was only updated recently at my insistence:
http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/index.cfm#GlobalTemperature
One year does not a trend make, but it MIGHT be the beginning of something,
Mike
“My post to Joel was phrased in such a way that it seemed to be rude about you”
It was unambiguously so.
“which was not the intention.”
Fair enough.
I’m not sure quite what you mean by “dubious ‘facts’”. I don’t think I’ve posted anything that’s not extremely well known. If you tell me what you’re referring to, perhaps I can explain more.
~snip~ However, “Did the MWP and LIA exist?” is certainly an interesting question.
First of all, though, in what sense are you using ‘re-writing of history’? A paranoid Orwellian sense, or simply in the sense that human knowledge progresses? If the former, I’ve no time for such an attitude.
“the previously settled science as erxpressed by an overwheming consensus of historians”
History is not science, and would you please provide evidence that such a consensus ever existed?
Assuming anyway that you’re not paranoid and Orwellian, here’s my answer to your question. Always, in any science discussion, you need to carefully define your terms. What do you mean, exactly, by little ice age, and mediaeval warm period? Do you believe they were global or regional? What temperatures do you believe prevailed in those times? What do you mean by “very much warmer” and “very much cooler”? What sources are you basing your beliefs on?
As regional (ie, northern Atlantic) phenomena, they certainly existed. It was certainly cooler in the 1750s than it is now. Whether it was warmer in the 1200s than it is now is more difficult to ascertain but it looks unlikely.
As global phenomena, there was until recently not really enough evidence to say either way. About two thirds of the scientists in the world are based in North America and Europe, which naturally makes data collection from those regions easier. Recent years have seen a great effort to find out whether or not these climate variations were truly global. It’s still early days: few truly global reconstructions exist. The best evidence so far seems to be that these climatic variations were not truly global, as warm and cool periods started and ended at different times in different parts of the world. And the best evidence is that average global temperatures today are higher than they have been at any point in the last 1000 years.
Hi RW
Even Al Gore didn’t believe the LIA and MWP (both of which he acknowledged) were confined to the North Atlantic (see Earth in the Balance)
Most historians will have seen evidence (studies, observed evidence, contemporary accounts etc) from a wide variety of sources, from the Ipiatuk in the Arctic two thousand years ago to the Romans,to the Mayans, to know that our climate changes from warm to cold at frequent intervals. The greatest period of instrumental warming occured between the LIA spikes when the 1730’s showed values similar to todays. Observed evidence (Pathe newsreel , newspaper accounts, diaries,) also illustrate arctic melt similar in the period 1909-1936 to todays (also recorded by Hansens revisions of US Temperatures)
This is a good book showing the widespread impact of the MWP and there is another very good one about the Vikings I can quote you if you will read it (some 500 references)
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Great-Warming/Brian-Fagan/e/9781596913929
In order to believe past events can be attributed to ‘natural’ forcings I do appreciate the temperature swings need to be minimised, but surely you are not advocating Dr Manns work as being accurate after all that has happened?
Tonyb
TonyB,
Of course the MWP was global! That’s the reason that guy [I don’t recall his name right now] sent an email to a colleague saying: “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.” If the MWP had never existed, there would be nothing they needed to get rid of.
And regarding your comment that our climate changes from warm to cold at frequent intervals, that is a function of natural climate variability that carries right up to the present: click
[It’s to the credit of the visitors to WUWT that no one has made an issue about the fact that Pickens money helped produce this report. It is very well balanced, and it doesn’t take sides. And its conclusions are well worth reading, IMHO.]
Smokey
I think the comments from RW and Joel were interesting in as much it is evident the hockey stick resolutely refuses to be broken in some peoples eyes.
It is also interesting that a large part of the case for warming still relies on this artefact (and its spaghetti variations) and its usage to refute history.
In Joels mind for example, if the global temperature has always been relatively constant in the past (with constant co2 levels) that minor variation can be explained away by ‘natural’ variability. However, in his eyes that means modern ‘unprecedented’ warming can only be explained by rising levels of man made co2.
Dr Mann spent a lot of time trying to get rid of the MWP and the LIA and this was promoted by the IPCC. Warmists such as RW and Joel then rely on this ‘scientific’ study to prove their case.
Through my studies I have accumulated hundreds of studies -scientific and anecdotal- showing the MWP and LIA existed. However these learned -and often boring and difficult to understand-studies are not as easy to digest as a very powerful graphic of a (doctored) hockey stick still used to this day in schools, media etc.
It might be useful to have access to a comprehensive set of links to papers that have demolished the Hockey stick, and in addition explains in simple language how it was constructed in the first place then subsequently demolished. I am aware of the work of Mcintyre/Ross, Monckton, Bishop Hill, David Holland, North and Wegman of course. Do you have access to a good comprehensive list combined with a good simple summary -with graphics- of how the stick was constructed and demolished?
We need to recognise that to this day the Hockey stick remains the most potent ‘proof’ of mans supposed interference with our climate and have the means to refute it at a variety of levels.
Tonyb
Well, you didn’t really define your terms at all there.
What do you mean, exactly, by little ice age, and mediaeval warm period? Do you believe they were global or regional? What temperatures do you believe prevailed in those times? What do you mean by “very much warmer” and “very much cooler”? What sources are you basing your beliefs on?
“That’s the reason that guy [I don’t recall his name right now] sent an email to a colleague saying: “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.””
That is certainly fiction.
RW: That is certainly fiction.
Fiction possibly, but fiction under oath.
Mike Bryant: “One year does not a trend make…
True. Interestingly, the graph you link to shows a continuing warming trend through 1998 and on until the mid-2000s, in contradiction to many claims by climate sceptics that warming “stopped” in 1998 or 2002 etc.
“…but it MIGHT be the beginning of something.”
Again true, although we will have to wait a few years before the current temperatures can be placed accurately within the long-term context.
In that regard it’s interesting that many climate sceptics are now going out on a limb with predictions of an imminent cooling global climate. In my view, in a tactical sense, this is a counterproductive move, especially when we have seen predictions from the warmist side running foul of events.
The predictions of cooling run a high risk of fatally undermining the sceptics’ position, since it would be difficult to retreat to the more solid ground of, say, natural variation or mild CO2 warming, without suffering loss of credibility.
I have been very surprised that climate sceptics are so keen to engage in risky predictions when all they need do is kick back and watch the river flow.
Brendan H
Damn! I agree with Brendan. Although he is still using electricity from the grid. When are you going to lead by example Brendan instead of telling poor people they shouldn’t have what you have?
Ah, OK – so you really do think that “history is being rewritten” in a paranoid and Orwellian sense, and your main reason for rejecting scientific progress seems to be that you heard that some guy sent an e-mail to some other guy saying something.
If the so-called hockey stick were a work of pure fiction, that would not change our understanding of the physics of CO2. No matter what temperatures were in the middle ages, CO2 is still a greenhouse gas. Its concentrations are still rising sharply. Temperatures are still rising as a result, and will continue to do so.
History has been rewritten throughout history, this is not a paranoid or Orwellian concept.
Did you know that Joe McCarthy was right about a lot of Communists working for the Soviet Union were in high positions in the US govt.? I doubt you were taught that. While his methods were reprehensible, he was correct about many he accused. I will not bother to cite the proof, but since the fall of the Soviet Union, declassified documents from the Soviet Union bear this out. Look up Venona.
I’m not sure I believe Deming’s testimony or care.
What I do believe is that this issue has been taken hostage few dozen primary members of the Hockey team who in no sense practice science. By withholding data and methods, their self-referential independent verifications, and far more than I have time to delve into here, their results are reduced to little more than wishful alchemy. That they peer-review each other is not relevant. History will paint Mann et Al with the same brush as Lysenko. I just hope the millions do not have to die unnecessarily before that happens.
The physics of C02 infrared absorption is known and minor. As far as feedbacks and final effect on the terrestrial environment are not remotely known with any level of confidence. Feedbacks could be positive, negative, or null. There are lots of papers and theories, but none that we could have any conceivable level of confidence in at this time.
Jeez: definitely fiction, regardless of oaths. Why would he be reticent about naming his “major researcher in the area of climate change”, otherwise?
Fiction in other ways, too.
” The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the “Little Ice Age” took hold in the 14th century. Warmer climate brought a remarkable flowering of prosperity, knowledge, and art to Europe during the High Middle Ages.”
Funny, then, that the Renaissance, the Spanish conquest of the Americas, the first British Empire which laid the foundations for Britain becoming the first superpower, the Copernican Revolution, the Galilean Revolution, the founding of the Royal Society, Newton’s formulation of a theory of gravity, and of calculus, the development of classical music into forms which still define much of Western music, and innumerable other examples of scientific, cultural and societal progress all took place after the Medieval Warm Period had come to an end.
RW:
I mean, dude, that’s just funny.
Interesting use of irrelevancy, really interesting. Ignoratio elenchi anyone?
But I’m going to bed. Nighty night.
Thanks for that, awesome.
Brendan H
I have to agree with you as well. Tactically it is daft to pitch our sceptics wagon to some climatic phase that at this stage is nothing more than very interesting, and certainly not a definitive trend.
Bearing in mind the intermediate state we are in at present (2008 was barely .2C or so above the temperature the year the Royal Society was founded-in the LIA) at present we are showing a very weak recovery from those values and it is reasonable to expect warming to continue for some years otherwise we remain too close for comfort to the values of the LIA rather than the MWP. (I will come back to definitions when I have much more time RW!)
Tonyb
RW (02:01:22) :
Jeez: definitely fiction, regardless of oaths. Why would he be reticent about naming his “major researcher in the area of climate change”, otherwise?
Fiction in other ways, too.
” The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the “Little Ice Age” took hold in the 14th century. Warmer climate brought a remarkable flowering of prosperity, knowledge, and art to Europe during the High Middle Ages.”
Funny, then, that the Renaissance, the Spanish conquest of the Americas, the first British Empire which laid the foundations for Britain becoming the first superpower, the Copernican Revolution, the Galilean Revolution, the founding of the Royal Society, Newton’s formulation of a theory of gravity, and of calculus, the development of classical music into forms which still define much of Western music, and innumerable other examples of scientific, cultural and societal progress all took place after the Medieval Warm Period had come to an end.
They were just running away from the cold, don’t you know.
Seriously though.
There are many studies that purport the Renascence was triggered by the fall of the Byzantine empire finally in 1453. The empire fell because of the crusades , which did happen during the affluent medieval warm period, which ate away the edges of the empire, and then by the rise of Islam and the coming of the mongol turkish races from the north, possibly looking for warmer climates as their areas were hit but the LIA. How is that for a short refutation of your short refutation?
The triggering happened because scholars with their manuscripts from ancient greek philosophers and scientists and some current ones too went to Italy and from the knowledge was spread around that led to the intellectual flowering . I suppose the cold helped in keeping them in and studying :).
RW
(Anna please see later in this post)
This lists some of the 400 or so studies of the MWP.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
There are separately available many other studies but the most interesting are the various books which brings numerous references together. I particularly recommend The Viking World’ which has some 500 studies and was published last year. This demonstrates the initial settlement of Greenland as the ice retreated and their eventual demise as the sea ice returned several centuries later.
A similar fate seems to have befallen the Ipiatuk a century earlier who dwelt in the arctic and had cities almost as large as those today but who also died out as climate changed.
In addition the reference I gave you yesterday is a good book about the MWP and the author wrote a book on the LIA.
I personally think we have too much of a fixed view about both events in as much the MWP was thought of as continually hot and the LIA continually cold. I think the periods were characterised by predominantly warm or cold climate but there were periods in between that were not typical of the general climate. if you follow this link and go to the uk
http://www.climate4you.com/
you can see that the warm periods in the UKs past include some in the LIA, indeed the 1730’s were similar to today as were other periods. Pepys also wrote of extreme heat in his diaries as did the Venerable Bede.
I think our current recovery from the LIA is extremely weak as 0.5C of a degree or so since the 1700’s is not exactly excessive warming. If man is having an influence the natural recovery from the LIA plus man induced heat should be able to do much better than that shouldn’t it?
I would like to reinforce Anna’s excellent potted history of the Byzantine empire with this link which leads to a much longer history of them
http://www.archive.org/stream/byzantineempire00omanrich/byzantineempire00omanrich_djvu.txt
We have their climate references which list the droughts and rains and cold and warm spells and access to their drawings of the various irrigation systems they developed to cope with changing climate. The Byzantine empire in the East was, as you know, the successor to the Western Roman empire which was partly destroyed as the climate changed for the worst following the Roman optimum (the Rhine froze allowing their enemies to outflank them).
Prof Hunt writes most eloquently of the High level passes the Romans used to patrol their empire which then became closed by ice in subsequent centuries .
This is a reference to a very cold spell the Byzantines experienced in the 8th century which caused much hardship.
“On the Continent eighth-century minor annals record the severe winter in the
area from which they drew their information, Austrasia. This was the power center of the new Carolingian dynasty around the Meuse and Moselle rivers and west of the Rhine. In this region that “worst freeze” began on 14 December 763 and continued until 16 March 764. A generation later, the royal court still remembered the winter for its unprecedented bitter cold. About that time someone in the same or a related milieu wrote up the most detailed record, in the Chronicon Moissiacense. It observes under the year 762 that the freeze reached as far as the western provinces of the Byzantine Empire:
“A great freeze oppressed the Gauls, Illyricum and Thrace and, wasted by the freeze, many olive and fig trees withered; the sprouts of the crops withered, and in the following year, hunger oppressed these regions very severely, such that many people died from scarcity of bread.”
In response to the Frankish king’s request for news about the papal and royal
ambassadors whose return from Byzantium he had expected earlier, Pope Paul I protested that “it has assuredly not escaped you that because of the very cruel harshness of this winter season, no one is coming from those parts” with news of the envoys. In fact, the pope’s unusually specific expression of relief that the king himself, the queen, and their three children were “healthy and safe and unharmed” probably reflects the receding terrors of that extreme winter.
The special processions that King Pippin enjoined on the bishop of Mainz for God’s mercy for “the great and marvelous consolation and abundance of the fruit of the earth” after the terrible “tribulation for our sins” surely reflects the return to normalcy in 765. The economic impact on the Carolingian kingdom was serious enough to force Pippin to suspend his long-standing effort to conquer Aquitaine.
Some 2,000 kilometers to the southeast, a well-informed observer at Constantinople recorded that great and extremely bitter cold settled on the Byzantine Empire and the lands to the north, west (confirming the Chronicon Moissiacense’s statement concerning Illyricum and Thrace), and east. The north coast of the Black Sea froze solid 100 Byzantine miles out from shore (157.4 km). The ice was reported to be 30 Byzantine “cubits” deep, and people and animals could walk on it as on dry land.38 Drawing on the same lost written source, another contemporary, the patriarch of Constantinople, Nicephorus I, emphasized that it particularly affected the “hyperborean and northerly regions,” as well as the many great rivers that lay north of the Black Sea.39 Twenty cubits of snow accumulated on top of the ice, making it very difficult to discern where land stopped and sea began, and the Black Sea became unnavigable. In February the ice began to break up and
flow into the Bosporus, entirely blocking it.
Theophanes’ account recalls how, as a child, the author (or his source’s author) went out on the ice with thirty other children and played on it and that some of his pets and other animals died. It was possible to walk all over the Bosporus around Constantinople and even cross to Asia on the ice.
One huge iceberg crushed the wharf at the Acropolis, close to the tip of Constantinople’s peninsula, and another extremely large one hit the city wall, shaking it and the houses on the other side, before breaking into three large pieces; it was higher than the city walls. The terrified Constantinopolitans wondered what it could possibly portend.
Hope you will find the time to read some of these excellent books-after all I have ploughed through all the IPCC’s assessments 🙂
Best regards
Tonyb
Sorry
My refernce to the Ipiatuk above should have read they were around in the Arctic a thousand years before the Vikings not a century.
tonyB
TonyB:
“2008 was barely .2C or so above the temperature the year the Royal Society was founded-in the LIA”
According to what data? The only directly measured temperature record that goes that far back is the Central England Temperature.
Central England Temperature in 1660: 9.08°C.
Central England Temperature in 2008: 9.96°C.
9.96-9.08 = ?
“0.5C of a degree or so since the 1700’s”
According to what data? CET gives more like 1.5°C. Hadcrut gives a global rise of about 0.8°C since 1850.
“the 1730’s were similar to today”
CET gives a mean temperature of 9.86°C for 1730-1739, and 10.39°C for 2000-2008.
“the natural recovery from the LIA”
That is what they call ‘not even wrong’. ‘Natural recovery’ is a meaningless term in this context.
As for ‘co2science.org’… not a reliable source. First of all their ‘mission statement’ reveals that they begin from the premise that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. Second, I did a quick check on one of these papers. I just did this completely randomly. I went to ‘South America’ and looked at the first paper, about sea temperatures off Peru. The claim is that temperatures there in the mediaeval warm period were 23.2°C, and that temperatures there today are 22°C, so therefore it’s not as warm today as it was then.
However, they have the warm period there peaking in about 700AD, long before the commonly accepted dates for the mediaeval warm period. And, when I looked up modern measurements of sea surface temperatures, I found this image. Look at the coast of Peru. The colours there indicate a temperature of 26-28°C, considerably higher than the peak claimed by co2science.org.
If you think climate change was the only reason the Norse colonies in Greenland collapsed, you should wonder why the Inuit who lived further north survived and thrived, and were still there when the Danes returned in 1721.
anna v: I don’t think you have refuted the notion that Europe in the little ice age was in fact wealthier, culturally more enlightened and had far greater knowledge and understanding of the natural world than was the case in Europe in the mediaeval warm period. There is a reason that ‘mediaeval’ is a synonym for backward and unenlightened.
RW
If the middle of the LIA at around 9.86 and the current period at around 10.32 is not similar I don’t know what is. (please also factor in UHI-as the record sites have moved several times to a less rural area. )
The difference as you can clearly see if you study the months is that we generally don’t have very cold winters – they did in most of the CET record which is why its called the LIA 🙂 – which lowered the mean. To this day however the warmest winters are not in the 20th or 21st Century.
The Royal Society got their charter in 1661 CET 9.75 or 1662 CET 9.50 2008 was 9.96-a fraction of a degree difference in 350 years as I have already said.
http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Societies/RS.html
Your comment about the Inuit is completely irrelevant-different ships, different food, different prey, different culture, different habitation. One was an Arctic people the other a European group who couldn’t survive when their trade routes to Europe seized up. Read the book with an open mind and you will see why the Inuits survived and the Norse didn’t.
Please put aside your prejudices and check more than one random paper on the MWP. THey are not written by the group you dismiss out of hand, merely collected by them. I have checked around 80% of their papers over the years (what I couldnt tell you about moss and eels at one time wasn’t worth knowing!!) and would qualify around 80% of those papers, with another 10% or so unproven and the remainder probably incorrect. To dismiss hundreds of studies made by numerous independent researchers, plus historical contemporary records in one line is unreasonable. If I dismissed the Hockey stick after reading just one study you would quite rightly criticise me.
I take the effort to check on sources that disagree with me which has resulted in my buying material from Nasa, Various American Societies, Historic sources, going to talks and generally trying to see the evidence from the other side as well (we’re not born climate sceptics you know). I also work on a daily basis with sea levels so have first hand experience of the observed reality as opposed to the modelled suppositions.
As for ‘global’ temperatures, would you like to tell me the actual meaning of such an impossible construct? Perhaps you would also like to tell me how many stations it was derived from in 1850, and how consistent it has been ever since? It is an artefact with dubious data used to parse the meaningless results to tenths of a degree to try and give it scientific credibilty.
Please try and be a little more receptive to things you might not agree with and we can all have a constructive debate.
Tonyb
Half a degree or even a quarter of a degree is a large difference in annual average temperatures – certainly noticeable to most people. 2007 in the UK was about half a degree cooler than 2006. I certainly felt that difference.
Now how about we recognise the difference between short term internal variability and long term trends. Look at all the years around 1660. For example, the first 20 years in the CET. Mean temperature, 8.86°C. Now, look at the last 20 years. 10.25°C. 1661 and 1662 were unusually warm relative to the climate of the time; 2008 was unusually cool relative to today’s climate. And still 2008 was warmer than 1661 and 1662. And the last 20 years were the warmest 20 years in the entire 350 years CET record. Your comment about “the intermediate state we are in” is not supported by the data.
My comment about the Inuit was not irrelevant, and you even re-stated the point. Climate was only one factor in the demise of Norse Greenland.
Yes, I know that the papers were written by many different people. I don’t trust ‘co2science.org’ to interpret them correctly, given their anti-scientific mission statement and their failure on the one that I checked. I don’t trust anyone who says “I believe X” and then goes looking for evidence in favour of X.
“impossible construct” – why?
“It is an artefact with dubious data used to parse the meaningless results to tenths of a degree to try and give it scientific credibilty.
Please try and be a little more receptive to things you might not agree with”
I find the juxtaposition of these two sentences highly ironic.
TonyB, as a lifelong avid reader of history, particularly the Roman and Byzantine empires, I was fascinated by the account of icebergs in Constantinople. Thanks for that.
And in response to RW’s question to you: “History is not science, and would you please provide evidence that such a consensus ever existed?” you provided voluminous scholarly references. Score one for TonyB.
I’ve been away from this thread for awhile, but I’m glad jeez provided the Deming reference for RW (01:12:28). Score one for jeez.
For RW to claim, without a shred of evidence, that Deming was lying is preposterous. At the time I was just commenting about the incident from memory. But since it was challenged, I’ve just now searched the quote — and got over 1700 hits: click. Score one for Smokey.
There is so much rampant dishonesty in the alarmist crowd that it’s not surprising some of them would try to “get rid of” inconvenient facts like the MWP.
RW paints himself into a corner by giving a baseless opinion about the Deming email: “That is certainly fiction.” Certainly? Based on exactly what evidence?
It is difficult to believe that someone would be prepared to throw away a lifetime of professional achievement and his hard earned reputation, by lying under oath by stating that he received an email from a colleague that said, “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.”
Those suffering from psychological “projection” impute their personal failings onto others. Someone who routinely lies assumes that other people routinely lie, too. But to believe that a professional scholar would try to score a minor point by lying under oath beggars belief. And the answer to why Deming didn’t name the person who sent him the email may be hard for some to understand, but it’s clear that he simply wanted to avoid embarrassing a professional colleague.
Even the UN’s Second Assessment Report has a 1,000-year graph clearly showing that the temperature in the Middle Ages was warmer than it is today. Naturally those who believe that human CO2 emissions caused the recent warming are uncomfortable that their hypothesis is destroyed by the MWP.
Finally, I also have to thank Brendan H. for his good advice. Score one for Brendan H.
“For RW to claim, without a shred of evidence, that Deming was lying is preposterous”
There isn’t a shred of evidence that this mystery ‘colleague’ ever existed, let alone sent the alleged e-mail. Score nil to Smokey.
See what I mean? An email is evidence.
And who has ever seen this e-mail? Who has ever been told the name of the mystery ‘colleague’?
Score -1 to Smokey.
Reply: I’m willing to call the “Was Deming lying/was Deming telling the truth controversy a draw. Can we move on now? ~ charles the moderator
Hi RW
I thought I recognised the paper you cited. I bought it from Elsevier a little while ago for $30 as the sea studies matched my professional interests, I live by the sea and I wanted to know more about the MWP and LIA in an area other than Western Europe.
Rein is a perfectly respectable researcher who has produced numerous peer reviewed studies. Why don’t you read the report again and disregard its original source? Rein can’t help it if a third party linked to his work.
Comparing the UK in 2006 and 2007 needs to take into account there was nearly a full degree temperature difference -nearly double what you stated-but the nature of the two years was not the same at all with regards to wetness and the number of individual warm and cold months. You are comparing apples and oranges.
My point was that despite the CET covering very largely a LIA period, the older temperatures were at times similar to current ones. I was referring to intermediate in the sense of modern temperatures are between LIA and MWP which is a pretty reasonable definition.
With regards to your comments about irony, the difference is that I have thoroughly checked the material mentioned, you do not appear to have done so-see my comment about the study you rejected.
In this respect I used to believe in the concept of a global temperature and its accuracy until I read about Gistemp and the number of stations, their location and lack of consistency. I then researched which ones were used back in 1850 and would repeat that I think they are worthless due to the numbers involved and their provenance. If you can point me to a good article explaining how compiling one global temperature has any meaning and also HOW it is compiled accurately and meaningfully back to 1850 I will gladly read it.
Smokey
I am inclined to agree with your comments-why would a respected scientist throw away his reputation by a silly and pointless lie? However if RW can come up with evidence that demonstrates Deming was lying-and he seems absolutely certain about it- as sceptics we have a duty to examine it.
Tonyb
Sorry Moderator-all the various replies re Deming happened as I was typing my last message 🙂
tonyb
Reply: I was just being silly anyways. At least I didn’t link to the MP argument sketch, although I was sorely tempted. ~ charles the moderator
Reply 2: I can’t resist.
~ charles the moderator
Jeez: “Although he is still using electricity from the grid. When are you going to lead by example Brendan…”
Not going to happen.
“… instead of telling poor people they shouldn’t have what you have?”
But poor people need to be guided, kindly but firmly. If they didn’t need guidance, they wouldn’t be poor.
As a matter of interest, my local energy provider recently switched on the first stage of its wind farm. I was sort of chuffed, despite not having lifted a finger to help. All that carbon-free energy! I can now leave my computer on 24/7, guilt-free.
Smokey 1: “There is so much rampant dishonesty in the alarmist crowd…”
Smokey 2: “Those suffering from psychological “projection” impute their personal failings onto others.”
Hmm.
“Finally, I also have to thank Brendan H. for his good advice.
Thanks Smokey. And it’s all carbon-free. No fees to pay; no ads to click.
“Score one for Brendan H.”
Ahem…two (see above).
If you take David Deming at face value, you’re very gullible. There isn’t a shred of evidence that this mystery ‘colleague’ ever existed, let alone sent the alleged e-mail.
“If you can point me to a good article explaining how compiling one global temperature has any meaning and also HOW it is compiled accurately and meaningfully back to 1850 I will gladly read it.”
Lots of papers on methodologies, bias corrections and all that sort of stuff are available on the GISS website, and on the Hadcrut website. If you have found that they are wrong, why not write up your analysis and publish it?
“With regards to your comments about irony, the difference is that I have thoroughly checked the material mentioned, you do not appear to have done so-see my comment about the study you rejected. ”
I did not ‘reject’ the study. I rejected the ‘co2science.org’ interpretation of it, which was trivially shown to be wrong.
RW (11:50:50) :
“anna v: I don’t think you have refuted the notion that Europe in the little ice age was in fact wealthier, culturally more enlightened and had far greater knowledge and understanding of the natural world than was the case in Europe in the mediaeval warm period. There is a reason that ‘mediaeval’ is a synonym for backward and unenlightened.”
That was not my aim. My aim was to refute that the connection with the LIA had something to do with the enlightenment, which was responsible for the industrial revolution and the subsequent wealth the the use of coal and the steam engines brought. I gave the common historical explanation.
Rw
“If you can point me to a good article explaining how compiling one global temperature has any meaning and also HOW it is compiled accurately and meaningfully back to 1850 I will gladly read it.”
I have looked to these sources you mention many times but they don’t tell you the nunbers of stations at the start of the process and during it, nor the various changes in location etc. As I say, if you would like to select one or two I will read them with as open a mind as you do our material (now THAT’s what I call irony 🙂
Seriously, I am happy to read anything you link to that you think gives a fair representation of the Global material- it needs to include the rationale behind the belief that the world-which essentially consists of millions of micro climates- can be condensed down into one meaninful global temperature that is so fantastically accurate back to 1850.
Do I understand you are from the UK? I am from the South West-where do you hail from?
Brendan
I think your score is three, Myself, Smokey and I think Jeez endorsed your original comments. You might have to resign in shame 🙂
Tonyb
In fact, now that I think of it, and maybe it is also expostulated by somebody who is much more versed in the history of the last four centuries, that it is the cold that forced the use of the machine inventions enlightenment made available, to get coal out of the earth deeper and deeper, and use steam for transport and heat and finally use oil. Energy=wealth, and the cold forced humans to find more energy.
RW (13:56:30) :
Half a degree or even a quarter of a degree is a large difference in annual average temperatures – certainly noticeable to most people. 2007 in the UK was about half a degree cooler than 2006. I certainly felt that difference.
No you didn’t. Half a degree temperature difference is not perceptible, particularly since it is averaged out over time, much of which you were not even outdoors to begin with (safe assumption you live in something other than a lean-to). You may have thought so, but that doesn’t make it true. What you may have noticed was news stories that pointed out how much colder it was, or perhaps a few days that were significantly colder than normal, but those days happen all the time even during hot years.
Mark
Brendan H,
Of course TonyB is right, your score is now 3. If this keeps up you will have the reciprocal of cognitive dissonance, and the scales will fall from your eyes [to mix metaphors, which I am good at]. The downside is that your globaloney compatriots will disown you.
I also reveled in your comment that “…poor people need to be guided, kindly but firmly. If they didn’t need guidance, they wouldn’t be poor.” Yes, Big Brother will care for them. Ceding freedom to the State has its advantages, from the cradle to the grave. We will all be taken care of, if we only submit.
Mark T: you are bizarrely presumptuous, and quite wrong.
TonyB: just how closely have you read the GISS papers? Did you ever notice Figure 4 in this paper, which shows the number of stations from which the temperature record has been derived, as a function of time?
Mean global temperature is as meaningful a concept as average wage, for example. I don’t understand what you’re objecting to if you think that in some fundamental way it’s not a useful quantity.
I am indeed from the UK. I live in London.
anna v – what you seem to be saying, then, is that the connection between absolute temperature and human progress is weak to non-existent, but that changes in climate, in either direction, whether locally or globally, can have profound impacts on the course of history. I’d agree with that.
RW
I am genuinely grateful for the link-It was the one that originally got me interested in Global warming and the concept of the Global temperatures since1850, but I had put it aside as other things came along. This was a genuinely good paper by James Hansen as he attempted to do something that had never been tried before. I think things have moved on somewhat since 1987 though.
Sometime ago I bought the archives of GS Callendar who -as well as his seminal work on co2- was also a noted amateur meterologist. He complained about the very small number of reliable weather stations on which to base his work, and the fact that stations were often closed, moved, new uncalibrated equipment put in, and generally the data was highly inconsistent.
If you look at your figure 4 (after first reading how many times the word ‘estimates’ is used to excuse the interpolation of data to compensate for the lack of numerical or spatial coverage) you will see that it shows precisely the point I was making. In 1850 in the whole of the NH there were 60 weather stations and in the SH there were 10. G S Callendar wrote his co2 thesis in 1938 and used only a total of 200 stations worldwide, many of which he was not impressed with.
By about 1900 we theoretically had 50% coverage in the NH (if you accept very large gridded squares as ample coverage) and it took until 1940 for the same in the SH.
The SST has been hotly contested due to the nature of the ships data being used-you might have followed the long debate on CA about Buckets and water intakes. You will also be aware of the incorrect algorithm Hansen used that forced him to concede that the 1930’s US temperatures were higher than he calculated.
(As an aside, quite by chance I met someone who served on a ship and took these water temperatures and the word haphazard is far too kind a word)
This is the very good-but somewhat dated -paper from Hansen you posted. A year after writing his paper was surely the time when Hansen testified in front of Congress and his aides chose the warmest day and turned off the Aircon?
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1987/1987_Hansen_Lebedeff.pdf
This rebuittal from Vincent Gray
http://www.fcpp.org/pdf/The_Cause_of_Global_Warming_Policy_Series_7.pdf
This from CA
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2015
This refers to the fuss about McKitricks paper.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Talk:Ross_McKitrick
To use data from 1850 is meaningless due to their incompleteness and lack of reliability. Since then there has been a whole series of changes in the stations number and locations, and measurements at UHI hot spots are not fairly adjusted for. In addition there is a severe problem with general siting of many stations-that is the prime focus of Anthony Watts site surfacestations.org -have you ever visited it?
Your analogy of an average wage to Global temperatures is meaningless. Here In our area of the South West our wage is half of that in London. I am sure if some local went to the building society and said they wanted to buy a house and could they use the national average wage to determine how big a mortgage he could get, he would be shown the door.
We are being asked to spend trillions of pounds and upend our economy because of the fallacy there is such a thing as the ‘average’ global temperature and to do that on the basis of a few dozen stations from 1850 is the height of folly.
Tonyb
“If you look at your figure 4 … you will see that it shows precisely the point I was making”
No, Tony, it directly contradicts you. Perhaps I need to remind you that you claimed “I have looked to these sources you mention many times but they don’t tell you the nunbers of stations at the start of the process and during it”.
You believe that there is not sufficient data to derive a global mean temperature in 1850. So do NASA. That is why their record starts in 1880. Again, just how closely have you read the papers?
“We are being asked to spend trillions of pounds and upend our economy…”
No, we are not.
“…because of the fallacy there is such a thing as the ‘average’ global temperature”
This is not a ‘fallacy’. To claim so is to deny basic physics.
RW
Come off it RW, what I said was;
“If you can point me to a good article explaining how compiling one global temperature has any meaning and also HOW it is compiled accurately and meaningfully back to 1850 I will gladly read it.
I have looked to these sources you mention many times but they don’t tell you the numbers of stations at the start of the process and during it, nor the various changes in location etc.”
You have missed out the last line when quoting me which is rather crucial, and also neglected to demonstrate how it is compiled accurately and meaningfully. The Hansen paper is of necessity full of guesstimates, estimates, interpolations, suppositions and guesses (together with some commendable detective work)
I said the number of stations in 1850 was tiny and the stations were always changing, were inconsistent and were being used to try to demonstrate a accurate global temperature when all the parameters were continually changing. Hansens report merely confirms this.
Are you saying that a global temperature from 1850 can be compiled from a total of 70 stations worldwide-a number of which were inaccurate and shouldn’t be included, 45 is nearer the mark-although this level of uncertainty were not mentioned in the report. This level of inaccuracy was recorded by G S Callendar-the father of co2 induced AGW. As you may know he came to believe his theory was wrong by the end of his life.
As far as I can see Hansen has proven the point I was making-numbers were small, inconsistent, unreliable and most importantly the changes were not properly recorded (location/calbration/recording methodology) The UHI effect was also grossly underestimated.
This level of uncertainty and inaccuracy was not reflected in Hansens (very good) paper or in the IPCC reports-instead it is taken as gospel and settled science when it is no such thing.
THere is nothing I can do to convince you that it is not scientific to base a concept such as global temperatures on an ever shifting number of weather stations starting from a very tiny base. I also can not convince you that much of the data coming from the stations is as worthless now as it was 150 years ago. (see the lead thread on WUWT on the surface stations project) You aslso remain convinced that the astonishing concept of a single global temperature has some meaning in a world consisting of millions of micro climates.
Let’s beg to differ on this one.
Did you see the report in the Sunday Times today which concerned UHI having an effect of as much as 10C in cities like London in the future? I certainly believe UHI is real and that its effect will continue to increase as cities grow and there are more developments of every type. However that will happen irrespective of increased CO2, which in the great scheme of things is a practical irrelevance as a driver.
If you didn’t see it I will try and locate it as I think this has a far more significant effect than co2 and one which needs taking seriously-after all over half the worlds populations now live in cities.
I would be most interested to get your views on the threat posed by UHI-the impact of which is grossly underestimated in the IPCC reports citing fractions of a degree as its entire impact.
Best regards
TonyB
TonyB
Sorry RW
I meant to also say that I appreciate that the NASA figures start from 1880 and not 1850 as some others do (although it still represents extremely poor practical coverage which suffers all the problems already enumerated). However that has the unfortunate side effect of accentuating the temperature rise as that date is sometimes said to be the end of the LIA.
tonyB
Tony, when you claimed “they don’t tell you the numbers of stations at the start of the process and during it, nor the various changes in location etc.”, you were wrong. They could hardly tell you more clearly about these things, as I showed you.
Why are you demanding things about 1850 when GISTEMP doesn’t even start until 1880?
“Are you saying that a global temperature from 1850 can be compiled from a total of 70 stations worldwide”
Again, GISTEMP doesn’t start until 1880.
“45 is nearer the mark”
You do tend to just pull stuff out of a hat, Tony. Cite a source now and then, would you? What is the basis for this claim?
“This level of uncertainty and inaccuracy was not reflected in Hansens (very good) paper or in the IPCC reports-instead it is taken as gospel and settled science”
No, it is not. Is your reading of the IPCC reports any more thorough than your reading of GISS papers? Let me remind you again that you claimed “they don’t tell you the numbers of stations at the start of the process and during it”, when in fact they couldn’t tell you these things more clearly. IPCC reports contain thorough descriptions of levels of certainty.
“You aslso remain convinced that the astonishing concept of a single global temperature has some meaning in a world consisting of millions of micro climates.”
To think that it doesn’t, you must reject the entire concept of averages. This is basic statistical science, Tony. Again, how about you cite some sources, rather than simply stating wildly unorthodox beliefs as if they were fact.
“I would be most interested to get your views on the threat posed by UHI-the impact of which is grossly underestimated in the IPCC reports citing fractions of a degree as its entire impact.”
I’ll tell you what I think when you cite your sources for yet another claim wildly at odds with the literature that you state as if it is fact. Why do you think it is “grossly underestimated”?
RW
I referred above to a Sunday Times article on UHI. I have always been very sceptical of the notion that it only accounts for a fraction of a degree rise in temperarure and as so many surface stations are affected by it that will obviously affect temperatures readings.
This latest report confirming the current and future impact of uhi therefore makes interesting reading
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6256520.ece
In effect UHI dwarfs the notional impact of co2 and is something that observationally can be felt to happen. As over half the worlds population now lives in cities perhaps the city temperature becomes the ‘norm.’
Short of drastically reducing the population and curbing our instinct to cover everything with concrete in order to create homes, jobs and leisure opportunities, it is difficult to see how we can reduce any uhi effect by any appreciable amount in the future.
I would be interested in your comments
tonyb
RW
Surface temperatures are generally calculated back to 1850.
As wiki says
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_temperature_record
“The period for which reasonably reliable instrumental records of near-surface temperature exist with quasi-global coverage is generally considered to begin around 1850. Earlier records exist, but with sparser coverage and less standardized instrumentation.”
Hansen starts from 1880-a period of cooling, many skeptics believe this was deliberate so his comments on the world stage can be demonstrated by a dramatic temperature rise from the outset. This seems to be confirmed by his performance at Congress in the year after his research, but I retain an openish mind as to whether it was coincidence or not.
The numbers of stations even from 1880 are still tiny, still highly inconsistent, do not properly represent a complete spatial spread and are full of estimates and extrapolations. The IPCC promote this inadequate representation of historic global temperature (from whatever source) as factual and accurate and reliable enough to enable parsing to fractions of a degree, when instead it is an inadequate data base
I deal in averages every day RW and to calculate average global temperatures from such a tiny number of ever changing and inadequate sources will mean already inadequate information becomes even more distorted. You need to start with good information in order to end up with good information and it shouldn’t be changed as you go along without very good reason as this compromises the information even more.
Reverting to the UHI article to which you said:
“I’ll tell you what I think when you cite your sources for yet another claim wildly at odds with the literature that you state as if it is fact. Why do you think it is “grossly underestimated”?
I think its underestimated because it is largely discounted or minimised:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=43
“There are quite a few reasons to believe that the surface temperature record – which shows a warming of approximately 0.6°-0.8°C over the last century (depending on precisely how the warming trend is defined) – is essentially uncontaminated by the effects of urban growth and the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. These include that the land, borehole and marine records substantially agree; and the fact that there is little difference between the long-term (1880 to 1998) rural (0.70°C/century) and full set of station temperature trends (actually less at 0.65°C/century). This and other information lead the IPCC to conclude that the UHI effect makes at most a contribution of 0.05°C to the warming observed over the past century.”
This from wiki
“A number of scientists and scientific organizations have expressed concern about the possible deterioration of the land surface observing network.[18][19][20][21] Climate scientist Roger A. Pielke has stated that he has identified a number of sites where poorly sited stations in sparse regions “will introduce spatially unrepresentative data into the analyses.”[22] The metadata needed to quantify the uncertainty from poorly sited stations does not currently exist. Pielke has called for a similar documentation effort for the rest of the world.[23]
The uncertainty in annual measurements of the global average temperature (95% range) is estimated to be ~0.05°C since 1950 and as much as ~0.15°C in the earliest portions of the instrumental record. The error in recent years is dominated by the incomplete coverage of existing temperature records. Early records also have a substantial uncertainty driven by systematic concerns over the accuracy of sea surface temperature measurements.[24][25] Station densities are highest in the northern hemisphere, providing more confidence in climate trends in this region. Station densities are far lower in other regions such as the tropics, northern Asia and the former Soviet Union. This results in less confidence in the robustness of climate trends in these areas. If a region with few stations includes a poor quality station, the impact on global temperature would be greater than in a grid with many weather stations.[26] “
That UHI has no real impact on global temperatures is further clarified here;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island
“Peterson (2003) indicates that the effects of the urban heat island may have been overstated, finding that “Contrary to generally accepted wisdom, no statistically significant impact of urbanization could be found in annual temperatures.” This was done by using satellite-based night-light detection of urban areas, and more thorough homogenisation of the time series (with corrections, for example, for the tendency of surrounding rural stations to be slightly higher, and thus cooler, than urban areas). As the paper says, if its conclusion is accepted, then it is necessary to “unravel the mystery of how a global temperature time series created partly from urban in situ stations could show no contamination from urban warming.” The main conclusion is that micro- and local-scale impacts dominate the meso-scale impact of the urban heat island: many sections of towns may be warmer than rural sites, but meteorological observations are likely to be made in park “cool islands.”
A study by David Parker published in Nature in November 2004 and in Journal of Climate in 2006 attempts to test the urban heat island theory, by comparing temperature readings taken on calm nights with those taken on windy nights. If the urban heat island theory is correct then instruments should have recorded a bigger temperature rise for calm nights than for windy ones, because wind blows excess heat away from cities and away from the measuring instruments. There was no difference between the calm and windy nights, and the author says: we show that, globally, temperatures over land have risen as much on windy nights as on calm nights, indicating that the observed overall warming is not a consequence of urban development.[14][15]
However, Roger A. Pielke has claimed that Parker 2004 has “serious issues with its conclusions” [3] due to his research published in Geophysical Research Letters which states: “if the nocturnal boundary layer heat fluxes change over time, the trends of temperature under light winds in the surface layer will be a function of height, and that the same trends of temperature will not occur in the surface layer on windy and light wind nights.”[4].
Another view, often held by skeptics of global warming, is that much of the temperature increase seen in land based thermometers could be due to an increase in urbanisation and the siting of measurement stations in urban areas [5][6]. However, these views are mainly presented in “popular literature” and there are no known scientific peer-reviewed papers holding this view.[16] “
This from;
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GW_Part3_UrbanHeat.htm
The IPCC Physical Basis report [http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html] makes the following statements:
“Urban heat islands result partly from the physical properties of the urban landscape and partly from the release of heat into the environment by the use of energy for human activities such as heating buildings and powering appliances and vehicles (‘human energy production’). The global total heat flux from this is estimated as 0.03 W m–2 (Nakicenovic, 1998). If this energy release were concentrated in cities, which are estimated to cover 0.046% of the Earth’s surface (Loveland et al., 2000) the mean local heat flux in a city would be 65 W m–2. Daytime values in central Tokyo typically exceed 400 W m–2 with a maximum of 1,590 W m–2 in winter (Ichinose et al., 1999). Although human energy production is a small influence at the global scale, it may be very important for climate changes in cities” [emphasis added]
“Over the conterminous USA, after adjustment for time-of-observation bias and other changes, rural station trends were almost indistinguishable from series including urban sites” [emphasis added] [The problem is that the data don’t support these IPCC statements, as shown below using examples from around the world.]
this is commented on here:
“Since most of the long-term temperature stations are in cities, this is more significant than implied by the IPCC, because that’s where the data is recorded. While reading this document comparing the effects of urbanization on temperature trends, keep in mind the IPCC’s position that ): “Urbanisation impacts on global and hemispheric temperature trends have been found to be small. Furthermore, once the landscape around a station becomes urbanized, long-term trends for that station are consistent with nearby rural stations” (AR4, Chapter 3, 2007).
The Surface Stations web site [http://www.surfacestations.org/] is accumulating physical site data for the temperature measurement stations (including photographs) and identifying problem stations — there are a significant number of stations with improper site characteristics.”
RW, this leads us neatly back to the web site of Anthony Watts. There is a new thread there about his project on surface stations and I suggest we both migrate there to debate this further, as I feel as if we are the last two people at the party who have not moved into the next room where all the action is happening!
Best regards
Tonyb
Tony, it seems to me that you have beliefs. How you arrived at those beliefs, I do not know, but they do not seem to be objective and they are in no way self-consistent. For example, on the one hand you’re claiming that temperature records from 1880 are useless, and yet on the other you’re talking about “1880-a period of cooling”. What data did you look at to draw that conclusion?
On the urban heat island effect, you say “I think its underestimated because it is largely discounted or minimised”. No-one discounts the effect. No-one minimises it. It has been studied for many decades. There are numerous lines of evidence which show that it does not introduce significant errors into the instrumental temperature record, and you’ve quoted many of them yourself. So again, it’s not clear why you hold the beliefs that you do.
On global average temperatures, you said “I used to believe in the concept of a global temperature”, and later referred to “the astonishing concept of a single global temperature”. Now you seem to be backtracking. Could you clarify which you have a problem with: is it the concept itself, or merely the derivation by climate research groups? If the former, as quite clearly indicated previously, then to hold such a belief, you must not believe in averages generally. If the latter, then why did you say “I used to believe in the concept of a global temperature”?
TonyB,
You’re feeding the troll! And he will not argue in good faith: notice that whatever you may think is a “belief” — even though he provides nothing to support his own opinion. And the citations you provide are “useless.” It’s pointless trying to educate someone whose mind is made up and closed tight.
There is an overwhelming preponderance of evidence backing up what you said above. You’re right, of course. How do I know you’re right? Because the planet itself validates your position — and it falsifies those who mistakenly believe, against the real world’s physical measurements, that the planet is getting hotter. It’s not, as we both can see.
We can post facts like these all day long, and neither one of us will convince the deluded otherwise:
click1
click2
click3
click4
click5
click6
click7
click8
click9
click10
I have a few hundred similar sources that show the same thing. But they will never convince a True Believer that the planet isn’t getting hotter. Facts don’t matter to Al Gore’s acolytes. Their unfounded opinion trumps all. It is part of their belief system, and those pesky facts don’t matter at all.
I did look at the links you provided, though. And I note that no one has been able to refute Anthony Watts’ complete demolition of the U.S. Surface Station network’s accuracy. When GISS relies on a system that shows temperatures to be 1° C — 5°+ C warmer than ambient, a normal person would question whether there has been any warming at all, since the putative “global warming” has been less than 1° C.
Smokey: “I also reveled in your comment that “…poor people need to be guided, kindly but firmly. If they didn’t need guidance, they wouldn’t be poor.” Yes, Big Brother will care for them.
You misunderstand me. When I offer kind but firm guidance I am not advocating an Orwellian nightmare. For example, over the past year I have been offering you kind but firm guidance in matters of climate, and yet while this guidance has been fraternal I don’t think you could equate it with Big Brother totalitarianism.
Rather, it has been in the nature of a teacher-pupil relationship, in which I, as the kind but firm teacher, have also learnt something of value from you, the sometimes unwilling pupil.
Certainly, learning a new subject, especially one as demanding and radical as man-made climate change, is a challenge, but I believe it is a worthwhile challenge and that in rising to meet it you will become a better person.
Despite your occasional lapses into paranoia about the folding stuff, I believe I have made some headway with your education, and your horizons have expanded beyond a focus on short-term material advantage.
As a result of my kind but firm guidance I believe you are better equipped to face the historic tasks that await all of us in the future that is to come.
Brendan H,
Those lacking any real qualifications are always the most insufferable. Because being insufferable is all they’ve got. Sound familiar, Brendan H?
As you know from visiting this excellent site, you’re aware that my working career of 30+ years was spent in a climate/weather related field. That explains my interest in the subject. I worked in one of the country’s largest metrology laboratories [no, not meteorology; metrology. Amateurs always make that mistake].
Our primary and secondary standards were directly traceable to the National Bureau of Standards [now unfortunately replaced by N.I.S.T.]. My primary disciplines were weather recording instruments; dew point, frost point, relative humidity, temperature, pressure, etc., etc. We received all the scientific literature courtesy of the instrument manufacturers, and I personally subscribed to the AAAS journal Science for over twenty years while you were no doubt still reading comic books. I’ve probably forgotten more than you will ever know about the technical aspects of the subject, as anyone can see by reading your posts.
But hey, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you’re a published climatologist. If that’s the case, you’ve been fooling everyone. So why don’t you tell us your professional qualifications — and I’m not referring to Cut ‘n’ Paste 101, or Search the Internet 1A. Come on, teacher, provide us with your CV.
Rw
You are taking portions of quotes and using them selectively.
The effect of UHI is minmised or dscounted in traditional studies as I clearly showed in the various links. Have you visited the current thread on the severe shortcomings of the siting of stations?
!880 cooling is clearly shown in a variety of individual records including CET. Global records are a composite artifact that relies on a variety of data sets suitably ‘adjusted’ and homogenised, and those back to 1850 or 1880 become even more unreliable as the amount of good data from a significant number of sources diminishes, and the amount of adjustment increases. If you average bad data you will get a bad average. That is not a good formula for an accurate data base that is then being used to show ‘catastrophic’ warming.
I also linked to various comments (which you did not reply to) explaining why a global temperature was not a proper measurement. How is that being inconsistent? As for my beliefs, you confuse me with a denier (lower case- and in a non perjorative way) I am a sceptic and arrived here after looking at all the evidence. Of course I believed in a global temperature initially because I was told it was calculated scientifically. The reality is different. The reality with sea level rises is also different to that portrayed (I work in that field) It is also evident that Arctic ice melt is a regular occurence (again I have posted numerous links to studies)
Incidentally, just to confuse your evident belief that we are all rednecks who haven’t given AGW a thought as we are all too busy trying to destroy the planet, I am a cycling vegetarian who trys to buy local food locally, in season, am enthusiastic about renewables (but can see their dreadful shortcomings) subscribe to various renewable magazines and also donate money to stop the Amazon rain forest being destroyed. I do beleve in science though and hate to see it being misused in the way it is for increasingly political reasons. (see my extensive postings on Agenda 21) As a historian I also object to being told everything is ‘unprecedented’
Perhaps you would now clarify your answer to my original question which has got somewhat forgotten, and that was do you believe in the MWP and LIA (and the Roman and Holocene optimums etc) and in particular do you think DR Manns work accurately represents the historic temperature swings? Your 14 50 35 was somewhat hedged about and I could not explore it in greater depth as you then went off on a series of diversions. I think you are saying they were limited in extent and not particularly severe (particularly the warming) Therefore presumably the current episode of warming is unprecedented (since the last ice age) and definitely caused by Man as it coincided with an increase of co2 (as measured in ice cores).
To believe in co2 as the current modern primary driver seems to rely on past warming and cooling events being limited in extent (Joels reply) and these can then be explained away by natural factors-such as solar variability.
Its a simple question. As is the second part-how do you get to an increase of up to 6C through a doubling of co2. Again I have asked for an A to Z (from Joel) which doesn’t include computer models (which the IPCC admit are flawed ) or unlikely positive feedbacks which remain unproven.
We are not idiots RW-if we believed that doubling co2 has the effect claimed of course we would all look to ways to mitigate our emissions. Steve MCintyre has spent the last five years seeking the answer and no one has yet been able to enlighten him or any of us through the use of realistic and observational data.
So to recap;
1) Do you believe the MWP or LIA existed or do you support the hockey stick version of events.
2) Please provide clear evidence as to how doubling co2 causes the temperature increases claimed.
Smokey 16 52 54
You are right of course. Actual Observation does not match the warmist models let alone match the historical record. DR Mann said ‘the MWP is an outdated concept’ and minimising past warming and cooling periods is the only way such events can be attributed to natural variability..
Brendan H
I believe you are probably British (or Irish) as well as myself and RW. I thought your last post showed delicious irony and I took it in that vein. Am I right or were you being serious?
Best wishes to all
TonyB
Rw
You are taking portions of quotes and using them selectively.
The effect of UHI is minimised or dscounted in traditional studies as I clearly showed in the various links. Have you visited the current thread on the severe shortcomings of the siting of stations?
!880 cooling is clearly shown in a variety of individual records including CET. Global records are a composite artifact that relies on a variety of data sets suitably ‘adjusted’ and homogenised, and those back to 1850 or 1880 become even more unreliable as the amount of good data from a significant number of sources diminishes, and the amount of adjustment increases. If you average bad data you will get a bad average. That is not a good formula for a supposedly accurate data base that is then being used to show ‘catastrophic’ warming.
I also linked to various comments (which you did not reply to) explaining why a global temperature was not a proper measurement. How is that being inconsistent? As for my beliefs, you confuse me with a denier (lower case- and in a non perjorative way-who disputes everything) I am a sceptic and arrived here after looking at all the evidence. Of course I believed in a global temperature initially because I was told it was calculated scientifically. The reality is different. The reality with sea level rises is also different to that portrayed (I work in that field) It is also evident that Arctic ice melt is a regular occurence (again I have posted numerous links to studies)
Incidentally, just to confuse your evident belief that we are all rednecks who haven’t given AGW a thought as we are all too busy trying to destroy the planet, I am a vegetarian who mostly cycles or walks, who trys to buy local food locally, in season, am enthusiastic about renewables (but can see their dreadful shortcomings) subscribe to various renewable magazines and also donate money to stop the Amazon rain forest being destroyed. I do beleve in science though and hate to see it being misused in the way it is for increasingly political reasons. (see my extensive postings on Agenda 21) As a historian I also object to being told everything is ‘unprecedented’
Perhaps you would now clarify your answer to my original question which has got somewhat forgotten, and that was do you believe in the MWP and LIA (and the Roman and Holocene optimums etc) and in particular do you think DR Manns work accurately represents the historic temperature swings? Your 14 50 35 was somewhat hedged about and I could not explore it in greater depth as you then went off on a series of diversions. I think you are saying these events were limited in extent and not particularly severe (particularly the warming) Therefore presumably the current episode of warming is unprecedented (since the last ice age) and definitely caused by Man as it coincided with an increase of co2 (as measured in ice cores).
To believe in co2 as the current modern primary driver seems to rely on past warming and cooling events being limited in extent (Joels reply) and these can then be explained away by natural factors-such as solar variability.
Its a simple question. As is the second part-how do you get to an increase of up to 6C through a doubling of co2. Again I have asked for an A to Z (from Joel) which doesn’t include computer models (which the IPCC admit are flawed ) or unlikely positive feedbacks which remain unproven.
We are not idiots RW-if we believed that doubling co2 has the effect claimed of course we would all look to ways to mitigate our emissions. Steve McIntyre has spent the last five years seeking the answer and no one has yet been able to enlighten him or any of us through the use of realistic and observational data.
So to recap;
1) Do you believe the MWP or LIA existed as traditionally portrayed, or do you support the hockey stick version of events.
2) Please provide clear evidence as to how doubling co2 causes the temperature increases claimed.
Smokey 16 52 54
You are right of course. Actual Observation does not match the warmist models let alone match the historical record. DR Mann said ‘the MWP is an outdated concept’ and minimising past warming and cooling periods is the only way such events can be attributed to natural variability.
Brendan H
I believe you are probably British (or Irish) as well as myself and RW. I thought your last post showed delicious irony and I took it in that vein. Am I right or were you being serious?
Best wishes to all
TonyB
“1880 cooling is clearly shown in a variety of individual records”
Yes, but by your own logic you can’t possibly know whether it was global or not, can you?
You have not clarified whether it is the concept or the execution of a global average temperature that you don’t believe in.
“The reality with sea level rises is also different to that portrayed (I work in that field)”
How is it portrayed? How is reality different?
“It is also evident that Arctic ice melt is a regular occurence (again I have posted numerous links to studies)”
Not that I can see. Please show your evidence.
“do you believe in the MWP and LIA”
You never did specify what your understanding of these terms was. Until you do, we can’t have a meaningful discussion about them.
“To believe in co2 as the current modern primary driver seems to rely on past warming and cooling events being limited in extent (Joels reply) and these can then be explained away by natural factors-such as solar variability.”
Wrong. CO2 is a strong infrared absorber, and its concentrations are rising. How could a 40% rise in the concentration of a strong infrared absorber fail to drive global temperatures upward? This understanding does not rely in the slightest on “past warming and cooling events being limited in extent”.
What else but natural factors would you want to explain past temperature variations with, anyway?
“As is the second part-how do you get to an increase of up to 6C through a doubling of co2.”
Few claim 6°C. A huge number of studies find values between 1.5 & 4.5°C. The latest IPCC report provides a good summary and a wealth of references. Have you read it?
“Again I have asked for an A to Z (from Joel) which doesn’t include computer models (which the IPCC admit are flawed )…
Oh yes? Where, exactly, do they ‘admit’ this?
“or unlikely positive feedbacks which remain unproven.”
The existence of positive feedbacks is observationally verified. Look up Soden et al’s study of the atmospheric response to the Pinatubo eruption for just one example.
Smokey: “Those lacking any real qualifications are always the most insufferable. Because being insufferable is all they’ve got. Sound familiar, Brendan H?”
That’s a new one for me. Is it a Smokey original?
“As you know from visiting this excellent site, you’re aware that my working career of 30+ years was spent in a climate/weather related field.”
It doesn’t show. You wouldn’t be leading up to an argument from authority, would you?
“Come on, teacher, provide us with your CV.”
Unfortunately, the climate field was closed to me. I suspect a conspiracy. In hindsight, I was lucky not to have my development stunted by mediocre minds teaching yesterday’s hidebound nostrums and was blessed to be mentored by a brilliant team of cutting-edge climate scientists, who have brought me up to speed with the latest ideas. Highly recommended.
http://www.realclimate.org/
TonyB: “I believe you are probably British (or Irish)…”
Not quite, but the genes are there.
“I thought your last post showed delicious irony and I took it in that vein. Am I right or were you being serious?”
Tongue firmly in cheek. My own, of course.
RW
I thought you were going to reply (at last) to the UHI report but instead we seem to be having yet another diversion.
Firstly sea levels- according to NOAA and Proudman and other individual reports- is at best static or more likely slightly falling. This started around three years ago. It is not rising at the IPCC stated rate of 3.5mm. Sea levels are approximately where they were (for much of the area bordering the Atlantic) 100 years ago, slightly below in the Indian ocean and at varying levels in other places. You have to take into acount other factors of course erosion, deposition, and any effect from glacial ‘bounce’ but around the UK, such as Newlyn, levels are the same as the early part of the 20th century.
Newlyn in Cornwall
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/resids/170-161.gif
and Helsinki. http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/resids/060-351.gif
Levels round the UK are slightly lower now than in the MWP.
Please google Prof Morner who has forgotten more about sea levels than the IPCC ever knew.
As regards computer models Kevin Trenberth, a lead author wrote,
“…the startling climate state in several models may depart significantly from the real climate owing to model errors.”
Another independent study demonstrates that models perform poorly, even at a climatic (30-year) scale which caused this observation “In essence, the study found that climate models have no predictive value.”
http://www.atypon-link.com/IAHS/doi/pdf/10.1623/hysj.53.4.671?cookieSet=1
Water vapour and cloud play a crucial part if the climate is to be accurately modelled, but as the IPCC themselves admit numerous times, it can’t be achieved
“…cloud feedbacks remain the largest source of uncertainty…”
“In climate research and modelling we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non linear chaotic system and therefore that the long term predictions of future climate states is not possible.”
AS for Arctic ice I suggest you do a search of this site where it has been extensively documented. As some tasters try these as claims of unprecedented warmth and abnormal melting of meltic arctic ice are unfounded if we look at history;
1 The following link describes the ancient cultures of the warmer arctic 5000 to 1000 years ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lithoderm/Inuit_culture
2 This relates to an Arctic culture thriving in warmer times 2000 years ago
From the Eskimo Times Monday, Mar. 17, 1941
The corner of Alaska nearest Siberia was probably man’s first threshold to the Western Hemisphere. So for years archeologists have dug there for a clue to America’s prehistoric past. Until last year, all the finds were obviously Eskimo. Then Anthropologists Froelich G. Rainey of the University of Alaska and two collaborators struck the remains of a town, of inciedible size and mysterious culture. Last week in Natural History Professor Rainey, still somewhat amazed, described this lost Arctic city.
It lies at Ipiutak on Point Hope, a bleak sandspit in the Arctic Ocean, where no trees and little grass survive endless gales at 30° below zero. But where houses lay more than 2,000 years ago, underlying refuse makes grass and moss grow greener. The scientists could easily discern traces of long avenues and hundreds of dwelling sites. A mile long, a quarter-mile wide, this ruined city was perhaps as big as any in Alaska today (biggest: Juneau, pop. 5,700).
On the Arctic coast today an Eskimo village of even 250 folk can catch scarcely enough seals, whales, caribou to live on. What these ancient Alaskans ate is all the more puzzling because they seem to have lacked such Arctic weapons as the Eskimo harpoon.
Yet they had enough leisure to make many purely artistic objects, some of no recognizable use. Their carvings are vaguely akin to Eskimo work but so sophisticated and elaborate as to indicate a relation with some centre of advanced culture — perhaps Japan or southern Siberia —certainly older than the Aztec or Mayan.
This link leads to the Academy of science report of the same year regarding the Ipiutak culture described above
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1078291
3 This refers to the Vikings living in a warmer arctic culture 1000 years ago
People might be interested in reading a very interesting book about the Vikings called ‘The Viking world’. It is a very scholarly and highly referenced book running to some 700 pages and deals with all aspects of the Vikings. It is good because it does not have an axe to grind, but deals matter of factly with all aspects of Viking culture and exploration.
There is a large section on their initial exploration of Greenland, the subsequent establishment of their farms there, everyday life, how they gradually lost access to the outside world as the sea lanes closed through ice, a record of the last wedding held In Greenland and how trade dried up. It also deals with Vinland/Newfoundland and it seems that it was wild grapes that helped give the area its name, it being somewhat warmer than today.
The book ‘The Viking World’ is Edited by Stefan Brink with Neil Price Published by Routledge ISBN 978 0 415 33315-3
I suggest you borrow it from the local library as it costs £150!
4 This is one of a number of similar books that record our warmer and cooler past throughout the Northern Hermisphere. Al Gore wrote a good book in 1992 called ‘Earth in the Balance’ in which he explored the changing climate that devastated the civilisations in the Southern Hemisphere.
5 This refers to a warmer arctic 75 years ago recorded on Pathe newsreel by Bob Bartlett on the Morrisey during his journeys there in the 1920’s and 1930’s and reported in all the media.
http://boothbayharborshipyard.blogspot.com/2008/08/arctic-explorer-on-ways.html
Wednesday, 10th August 1932
The ship rolled heavily all night and continues to do so….
The glacier continues its disturbances. No real bergs break off but great sheets of ice slide down into the water and cause heavy seas. About noon, the entire face of the glacier, almost a mile in length and six or eight feet deep slid off with a roar and a rumble that must have been heard at some distance. We were on deck at the time for a preliminary report like a pistol shot had warned us what was coming. The Morrissey rolled until her boats at the davits almost scooped up the water and everything on board that was not firmly anchored in place crashed loose. But this was nothing to the pandemonium on shore. I watched it all through the glasses. The water receded leaving yards of beach bare and then returned with a terrific rush, bringing great chunks of ice with it. Up the beach it raced further and further, with the Eskimos fleeing before it. It covered all the carefully cherished piles of walrus meat, flowed across two of the tents with their contents, put out the fire over which the noonday meal for the sled drivers was being prepared, and stopped a matter of inches before it reached the pile of cement waiting to be taken up the mountain. Fortunately, in spite of heavy sea, which was running, the Captain had managed to be set shore this morning so he was there with them to help straighten out things and calm them down.”
The arctic has periodically warmed throughout recorded history.
So where have we got to?
Sea levels not rising, let alone at the rate claimed.
Arctic ice melts with surprising regularity.
Global temperatures are an unrealistic construct based on severely flawed and manipulated information gathered since 1850 (or 1880) from a tiny number of ever changing stations.
UHI severely understated in relation to the number of sites situated in urban areas.
Individual Station sites severely flawed (see the current thread on this site)
Hundreds of studies illustrating the extent and nature of the MWP (previously linked but not commented on by you) demonstrate the current climate is not unprecedented (there are numerous studies of the Roman optimum as well)
Computer models inaccurate as admitted by the people promoting them.
You do not appear to want to engage on UHI and merely answer my questions with other questions or accuse me of not backing up my statements which I continually do with links. Consequently there is little point in continuing a one sided debate so I suggest we rejoin the party in one of the other threads.
Brendan H
I thought I had detected your irony before. Very dry. Look forward to more.
Best regards to both of you. It is good we can have a exchange of views without degenerating into the unpleasant vitriol exhibited on certain other sites.
Tonyb
Tony, again I have to wonder exactly what you have been reading. Your ‘IPCC stated rate of 3.5mm” appears to have been invented. From the IPCC’s 4th assessment report:
“Global mean sea level has been rising… For the 20th century, the average rate was 1.7 ± 0.5 mm/yr…For the period 1993 to 2003, the rate
of sea level rise is estimated from observations with satellite altimetry as 3.
1 ± 0.7 mm/yr, significantly higher than the average rate”
The data does not support your claim that sea level is ‘more likely
slightly falling’. See for example here.
As for Newlyn and Helsinki, unfortunately you have completely misunderstood the graphs you linked to. They are residuals – the variation left over once the long term trend has been removed. You need to look at the actual data, which shows an upward trend in Newlyn and a downward trend in Helsinki.
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.shtml?stnid=170-161
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.shtml?stnid=060-351
If you believe that the effect of urban heat islands on the temperature record is much larger than scientists find it to be, could you explain these things:
1. the greatest warming is seen in northern polar regions, and on the Antarctic Peninsula, both of which are very sparsely populated;
2. the oceans are warming by about 0.1°c/decade;
3. the satellite and ground-based temperature records agree very closely.
I’m short of time so can’t respond to the rest of your post at the moment.
TonyB: “Best regards to both of you.”
Likewise.
“It is good we can have a exchange of views without degenerating into the unpleasant vitriol exhibited on certain other sites.”
In my view, civility of exchange is a matter of horses for courses. And of course what one considers to be “unpleasant vitriol” often depends on which side of the fence one sits.
RW
You keep querying what my sources are even when I provide a link! Why would I invent a figure that is so easy to check? Perhaps you think I also invented the quotes about the unreliability of computer models? You must be aware of the official concern that models are being used instead of observations?
Are you also unaware that the IPCC use six sea level scenarios?
” The IPCC have six sea level rise scenarios
The fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) projects global SLR over the
course of this century to be between 18 and 38 cm (7-15”) for
their lowest emissions scenario, and between 26 and 59 cm
(10-23”) for their highest emissions scenario.”
“Sea-level rise
There is much debate over quantifying potential sea-level rise scenarios. The IPCC has estimated six sea-level rise scenarios, which predict a range of sea levels from 0.1 – 0.88 m by 2100 (based on data and various climate models). Rahmstorf (2007) estimates sea-level scenarios of 0.5 – 1.4 m by 2100 (based on a fit of global temperature to sea-level and the projection of IPCC temperature predictions). Church & White (2006) found global sea-level to rise almost 20 cm between 1870 and 2004 based on data from tide gauges, and estimated 0.28 – 0.34 m of sea-level rise by 2100 based on a constant acceleration rate of 0.013 mm/yr2 from the historical data. Beckley et al. (2007) found global sea-level rise rates increased from ~2.75 mm/yr (during 1993-2000) to ~3.75 mm/yr (during 2000-2007) using satellite altimetry.”
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environ/fcd/pubs/pagn/climatechangeupdate.pdf
These are the figures that Defra use in order to calculate the necessary flood defence heights around the UK coast. These figures are part of Govt policy that then uses Govt money to build the defences. If they are wrong they need to be told.
Why are you linking to sea level graphs that finish in 2003? I clearly said that sea levels have been falling over the last three years, i.e to 2005. Please recheck your figures and use current data.
You said:
“If you believe that the effect of urban heat islands on the temperature record is much larger than scientists find it to be, could you explain these things:”
I merely asked for your comments on the UHI study, for example in 14 39 09 and I then gave a number of supplementary references in 02 09 41. There are a disproportionate number of stations in urban areas and it appears the impact of UHi is greater than had been thought. Consequently I was hoping you might actually make some sort of reference to the report I quoted even if it was to say you disagreed with the findings.
Best regards
Tonyb
Brendan H
You have a very dry British sense of humour that I think some of our American Friends here misinterpret (but I enjoy!) It is often said that Americans don’t do irony or sarcasm-I am not sure I agree with that, nevertheless it is striking how often you see someone making a comment here then finish with ‘sark off” in order to illustrate they were joking.
Perhaps we ought to arm ourselves with emoticon symbols. 🙂
Tonyb
RW
forgot this link showing oceans are cooling
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/03/the-ocean-really-is-cooling/?cp=all
Tonyb
TonyB:
Tony, your reasoning is flawless, and can not be refuted. However, you must understand that you’re feeding a species of troll who always demands answers — and then when answers are provided, it instantly moves the goal posts and demands different answers to new questions. It is a one-way street with him. He snipes from the sidelines while convincing no one.
This guy in particular always hides out from answering any questions himself, while making statements that are trivial to refute, as you did above. IMO he’s got mental problems, but I’m not a psychologist, only a retired metrologist.
So I would advise not feeding that particular troll, you’ll never get any straight answers… unless, of course, you’re having fun showing everyone how wrong he is. In that case, then by all means, fire away!
Tony, I begin to doubt that you’re posting in good faith. You claimed there was an ‘IPCC stated rate of 3.5mm’ . I showed you that this was not so. You object to the idea that you made the figure up, but you have not provided its source. How about you either show us where this number of 3.5mm/year came from, or withdraw the claim?
Next, you demand “Why are you linking to sea level graphs that finish in 2003?”
First, you didn’t understand the graphs you linked to for Newlyn and Helsinki. They showed residuals – that is, data with trend removed. Now it seems that you didn’t understand that the graphs I linked to were the actual data. You badly misunderstood what you posted, and now you’ve badly misunderstood my attempt to correct you. I think you have to try quite hard to misunderstand so badly, so often.
“I clearly said that sea levels have been falling over the last three years i.e to 2005. Please recheck your figures and use current data.”
It’s 2009 so I’m not sure what you mean, exactly, by “the last three years i.e to 2005”, but yet again you seem to have misunderstood. I already posted a link to sea level data, right up to date, which does not support your claims. Look again, here.
As for urban heat islands, I did think I’d been quite clear. Everyone knows they exist. However, it is obvious that they do not strongly bias the surface temperature record, because
1. the greatest warming is seen in northern polar regions, and on the Antarctic Peninsula, both of which are very sparsely populated;
2. the oceans are warming by about 0.1°c/decade;
3. the satellite and ground-based temperature records agree very closely.
As you clearly believe that they do strongly bias the surface records, I’d like to hear what you make of these three observations.
According to this New Scientist article on: Seal level rise could bust IPCC estimates
So, let me see, 180mm to 590mm in almost 100 years (93, say). Seems close to 3.5mm/yr as the mid-point of the range. (Quick, someone check the numbers.)
Probably wrong since NS is a notoriously unreliable rag. Where is that IPCC source document?
Rw
Amazing. Check your 13 29 06
” see for example here” It did not work (try it-DNS error) so I had no idea what you were linking to.
I quoted three references to the 3.5mm. How many do you want? This is the figure being used by the UK Govt and all the others signed up to the Kyoto protocol.
Individual 2008 figures will likely be adjusted (for good reasons) so I calculated the three years as starting in 2005. (if 2008 confirms the trend it will make 4 years) You quoted for some reason data that concluded in 2003-probably because that still showed a rise. I didn’t dispute that there had been a rise as part of the short term cycle.
I comment on sea level temperatures and you then ignore my link and refer to your previous comment as if I hadn’t said anything. (In the meantime completely ignoring the bulk of my email which gave numerous references illustrating the historic background).
It seems to me that I post the links, you then ignore them or make a reference to something else claiming I have misunderstood. So to my list enumerated earlier as to ‘where have we got to?’ we can now add sea level temperatures. THe list now reads;
“Sea levels not rising, let alone at the rate claimed.
Sea level temperatures
Arctic ice melts with surprising regularity.
Global temperatures are an unrealistic construct based on severely flawed and manipulated information gathered since 1850 (or 1880) from a tiny number of ever changing stations.
UHI severely understated in relation to the number of sites situated in urban areas.
Individual Station sites severely flawed (see the current thread on this site)
Hundreds of studies illustrating the extent and nature of the MWP (previously linked but not commented on by you) demonstrate the current climate is not unprecedented (there are numerous studies of the Roman optimum as well)
Computer models inaccurate as admitted by the people promoting them.
You do not appear to want to engage on UHI and merely answer my questions with other questions or accuse me of not backing up my statements (which I continually do with links.)
Lets add another to the list as well, ” The science is not settled.”
You obviously believe the science is settled and that the only facts are ones that have graced the pages of realclimate or similar and will not look at the latest evidence, whether it is sea levels, ice, temperatures etc.
Even the Met office are admitting they dont know as much as they thought they did;
Current Advert
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/recruitment/vacancies/001758.html
“A significant uncertainty in future projections of sea level is associated with dynamical changes in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets and a key aspect of this uncertainty is the role of ice shelves, how they might respond to climate change, and the effect this could have on the ice sheets. The goal of the post is to contribute to improved scenarios of sea-level rise, which is an important aspect of climate change, with large coastal impacts.”
I have no idea what will happen in the near future-I would have expected the long term LIA would be replaced by a period of considerable warming. If it then exceeded the MWP or other warm period then certainly that would be a cause for concern. However that was my original point-the current circumstance are not unprecedented as is so often claimed.
I will reluctantly concede that Smokey is right with his16 45 39 so I will take his advice that it is pointless in continuing a one sided debate where the only facts are those that emanate from your side and you appear reluctant to accept any other information. As the Royal Socety motto says ‘Nobody’s word is final.’
I am away from my computer for a few days and when I return I will rejoin the party in one of the other threads and hope to meet up with you there.
With best regards
Tonyb
OK, Tony, ~snip~ <—– Personal attack. ~dbstealey, moderator.
What? What? There was nothing of the sort in what I posted.
After the inexplicable deletion of my last post, I’ll try again. And this time I’ll save what I write. If arbitrary deletions are the thing here, then perhaps you could make that clear somewhere so that people don’t waste time writing long posts.
So, Tony, the figure of 3.5mm/year does not appear in any IPCC document that you linked to. You do appear to have invented it, or perhaps misread it. I quoted earlier from the IPCC’s most recent report – it contradicts your claim, which therefore falls.
You failed to understand when you linked to graphs of residuals that they were not showing sea levels. I linked to the actual data, but rather than admit your mistake and thank me for pointing it out, you ignored your error and complained about when the graphs stopped. Your claims that there had been no change in sea level at Newlyn and Helsinki were incorrect, and thus they fall.
You ignored the graph of sea level rise – here it is again. Your claims that sea level has stopped rising, or is falling, are not correct. They fall.
It is now clear that you’re not posting in good faith, and thus I will have no further dialogue with you. After your unprovoked attack on me before we’d even conversed (but which the moderators apparently thought was fine!), I gave you the benefit of the doubt, though I now see I shouldn’t have done.
Reply: I didn’t delete your post (at least I don’t remember), but certainly someone else may have. Certain tones will get an entire post deleted with no notice. Please read policy page if you don’t think things are made clear. FYI I did delete one post today, a personal attack on an AGW proponent.~ charles the moderator
TonyB,
Sea levels are notoriously difficult to measure. This anomaly graphic shows that there has been no recent rise, and in fact there are negative anomalies in the past few years: click
Also, Tony, it depends on which iteration one cites from CU. In this case, the rise in sea level is actually less than 3 mm/year: click
And as long time readers of WUWT know, the UC chart is “adjusted” and needs to be taken with a big pinch of salt: click
Before the secret inverse barometer manipulation, recent sea levels are declining significantly. Then after the “adjustment,” *voila!* the sea level rises again.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
[For a fine discussion of historic sea levels, see here: click1 and especially click2].
Finally, here is more sea level info from NASA, covering the past 12 years. No reason for alarm: click
Hi Anthony,
thank you very much for your WUWT blog!
I’ve been browsing through the NEIC (http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/epic/epic.html) data recently and made a diagram of the number of earthquakes since 1973 and got this result: http://www.divshare.com/download/7677300-dc8. I couldn’t find any source on the net that could really explain the increase of M4-5 earthquakes. Just some conspiracy and weird science sites. Have you ever covered this subject yet?
Thanks again and regards,
Jan
“Myth” 5
The Oceans *are* Getting Hotter
Andrew Bolt must have missed the end of the story…
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/page1.php
See the heat content of the Oceans going up, up, up ?
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/page4.php
That means the Oceans are getting Warmer.
Josh Willis himself found the errors in some new Argo and old XBT data.
As for “Myth” 2, The Polar Caps are Melting:
I’m sure a clever Australian journalist can explain *this* away after a few pints:
http://www.nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20090706_Figure3.png
Oh look, much better these last 3 years… crisis averted.