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?
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