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?
“”” 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.
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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.