Reposted from Jennifer Marohasy’s website.
THERE are four official global temperature data sets and there has been much debate and discussion as to which best represents change in global temperature.
Tom Quirk has analysed variations within and between these data sets and concludes there is 1. Substantial general agreement between the data sets, 2. Substantial short-term variation in global temperature in all data sets and 3. No data set shows a significant measurable rise in global temperature over the twelve year period since 1997.
Global Temperature Revisited
Article by Tom Quirk
One of the most vexing things about climate change is the endless debate about temperatures. Did they rise, did they fall or were they pushed? At times it seems like a Monty Python sketch of either the Dead Parrot or the 5 or 10 Minute Argument.
However it is possible to see some of the issues by looking at the four temperature series that are advanced from:
GISS – Goddard Institute for Space Studies and home of James Hansen,
Hadley Centre – British Meteorological Office research centre
UAH – The University of Alabama, Huntsville, home of Roy Spencer with his colleagues including John Christy of NASA and
RSS – Remote Sensing Systems in Santa Rosa, California, a company supported by NASA for the analysis of satellite data.
The first two groups use ground based data where possible with a degree of commonality. However since 70% of the surface of the earth is ocean and it is not monitored in a detailed manner, various procedures with possibly heroic assumptions and computer modelling, are followed to fill the ocean gap.
The last two groups use satellite data to probe the atmosphere and with the exception of the Polar Regions which are less than 10% of the globe, they get comprehensive coverage.
One question is of course are the two groups measuring the same temperature? After all the satellite looks down through the atmosphere, while the ground stations are exactly that.
There is an important distinction to be made between measuring the temperature and measuring the change in the temperature. Since the interest is in changing temperatures then what is called the global temperature anomaly is the starting point. The issue of measuring absolute temperatures should be put to one side.
Data from 1997 to 2009 was drawn from the four group websites on the 28 April 2009. When data for 1997 to early 2008 was compared to data acquired in early 2008 differences were found as shown in the first table.
This is evidence of substantial reprocessing and re-evaluation of data. This is not unusual with complicated analysis systems but there is so much interest in the results that adjustments are regarded with great suspicion. This is the fault of those publishing the temperature data as they fail to make the point that monthly and even yearly measurements are about weather and not climate.
The latest series of temperature anomalies are shown in the graph where the monthly data has been averaged into quarters. All statistical analysis that follows is on the monthly data unless stated otherwise.
From inspection, there is substantial agreement over the years 1997 to 2008. This can be statistically measured through correlations. This is a measure of how closely related the series may be. A value of 0 implies independent series while a value of 1 implies complete agreement. The correlation in turn indicates the degree of commonality in the comparison.
This is remarkable agreement given the two very different techniques used.
It is important to note that the two satellite analysis groups draw measurements from the same satellites. So the differences in temperatures are a result of analysis procedures that are not simple. In fact corrections to the data have been the subject of exchanges between the two groups.
The ground based measurements also have a common data base but it is clear and acknowledged that the two groups have different analysis procedures. While the satellite analysis procedures have converged to reduce their differences over the last thirty years, this has not been the case for the ground based procedures.
It is also clear looking at the measurements that there are substantial short-term, say less than 2 years, variations over the period 1997 to 2009. In fact, while the overall monthly variations show a scatter with standard deviation of 0.20C, the month to month variations are 0.10C. This is a measure of features that are clear in the data. The short run sequences of temperature movement are a reflection of variability in the atmosphere from events such as El Ninos (1997-98) and La Ninas.
Looking for a simple trend by fitting curves through a highly variable series is both a problem and a courageous exercise. The results on an annual rather than a monthly basis are given in the third table. The problem of dealing with real short term variations was resolved by ignoring them. 
So for twelve years there has been a rise 0.10C with a 140% error, in other words, no significant measureable temperature rise. You can play with the data. If you omit 1998 then you can double the change. But 1998 was an El Nino year followed in 1999 by a La Nina. If we omit both years then the results are unchanged.
However the lesson from this is to look at the detail.
There is so much variability within the 12 year period that seeking a trend that might raise the temperature by 20C over 100 years would not be detectable. On the other hand there are clearly fluctuations on a monthly and yearly scale that will have nothing to do with the predicted effects of anthropogenic CO2.
The twelve year temperature changes from the data of the four analysis centres reveal some possible differences. Since there is a high degree of commonality amongst the results, any differences may be systematic. Both the GISS and Hadley series show a larger temperature increase then the satellite measurements. This may be due to urban heat island effects.
Finally, if you are looking for temperature increases from CO2 in the atmosphere, then you should choose the satellite approach of measuring temperatures in the atmosphere!
Short term, less than thirty years, temperature series are not the place to seek evidence of human induced global warming.
**************************
Tom Quirk lives in Melbourne, Australia.
To read more from Dr Quirk click here http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/author/tom-quirk/
The photograph is from Anthony Watt’s website that details his program of photographically surveying every one of the 1221 USHCN weather stations in the USA which are used as a “high quality network” to determine near surface temperature trends in the USA, read more here http://wattsupwiththat.com/test/
John Finn (00:51:06) : “What happened between 1975 and 1985 then?”
The ocean warmed prior to St Helens 1980 VEI 5, Chichon 1982 4+ and 5,
John Finn (00:51:06) : “You’re calling this ‘result’ far too early. I realise you’re desperate for evidence which contradicts AGW, but that is some way off yet. As for “cooling since 2006″ you’ll be telling us next it’s been cooling since last week.”
http://climatesci.org/2009/01/07/sea-level-budget-over-2003%E2%80%932008-a-reevaluation-from-grace-space-gravimetry-satellite-altimetry-and-argo-by-cazenave-et-al-2008/
http://climatesci.org/2009/05/05/have-changes-in-ocean-heat-falsified-the-global-warming-hypothesis-a-guest-weblog-by-william-dipuccio/
and this interchange between Roger Pielke Sr and Josh Willis is interesting:
http://climatesci.org/2008/04/09/josh-willis-comments-on-ocean-heat-content-trends/
Mike Jonas says:
Because if the costs of something are not internalized into its price then the assumptions of an ideal market don’t apply and people will be inefficient…i.e., they will use more of it than they would if the assumptions of market economics applied. Right now, people are not directly paying the full costs of the fossil fuel energy that they are using.
True Song Media says:
No they weren’t: http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0477/89/9/pdf/i1520-0477-89-9-1325.pdf [PDF file]
Allan Macrae
The quote that you referenced
“It is just absurd to claim that “the Earth has actually been cooling for the last 7 or 8 years” when the 2010s will easily be the hottest decade on record ”
The analogy might be like this . What is the overall latest trend despite short term up and downs? Are we still climbing up the mountain or coming down generally. When we are quite high and coming down we may still be relatively high and have periodic changes in elevations and hit record personal heights, but our overall trend is coming down for the next several decades perhaps . The period 1994-2008 had record highs due to the simultaneous warm phases of PDO and AMO but the overall trend was coming down since 2001. Both of these indices are negative or cool now . Could they reverse? Possibly in short terms but unlikely in the constant mode in the longer term[2-3 decades] in my opinion.
The monthly trend is supported by annual numbers which are also down for the last several years.
I don’t think that the 2010’s will be the hottest on record even though you may have some isolated warm years in between. There is a very long term trend to our climate since the last ice age and this is up very gradually. So long term wise we seem to be still climbing at 0.72C per century
Joel 5 47 53
Great to read you again. Liked your comments on the ham slicer thread.
We have all had this dicussion on global cooling before. I am delighted to show my green credentials by recycling a part of the previous thread on this subject.
“Brendan H at 02 51 57 said
“As for William Connolly, the paper he co-authored on the myth of the 1970s cooling consensus presents a persuasive and well-supported argument. I think you should give it another chance.
http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0477/89/9/pdf/i1520-0477-89-9-1325.pdf “
I replied;
I have seen this article before in another form- the three authors are interesting including William Connelly-on whom I did a long and thorough piece about his personal agenda as a member of the UK Green party and as gatekeeper of wikipedia climate section (my 01 14 54 earlier today addressed to Joel and Smokey)
The second author was Thomas Peterson, who Anthony has met;
http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:xpjH07lfElgJ:wattsupwiththat.com/2007/06/30/+thomas+peterson+noaa+politics&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=uk
Thomas Peterson is the keeper of weather records including weather stations at NOAA Anthony records being co interviewed with him
When trying to continue his surface stations project shortly after this meeting he found;
“You are not authorized to view this information. Your IP address has been logged”
When it came back up Monday afternoon, the “managing parties” field identifying the location of the weather station was gone. I would note that I shared a radio interview with Dr. Thomas Peterson of NCDC last week, so I am certain NCDC is aware of the effort. No notification was given, nor even a professional courtesy to advise of the change, nor any notice on the website.”
The Row over access was repeated in more detail here
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1879848/posts
The third author of the piece you cite is John Fleck who is a competent science writer on the Albuquerque journal- he reported his own involvement in the article here;
http://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/guest_columns/1897180018opinionguestcolumns02-18-09.htm
His politics are left wing -which is his own business- but the reports he co authors need to be seen against that background.
The original report you cite is rebutted here
http://www.openmarket.org/2008/12/09/the-new-ice-age-continued/
For my part I had an involvement, in as much back in the 70’s I was asked to write a piece on climate change and being unaware at that time what was being referred to, collected material from both ‘sides’. There were undoubtedly far more pieces citing cooling rather than warming-whether they survived as digital copies anywhere –and therefore are still being cited-depends on who the record keeper was at the time. I threw away my files years ago and recall the flimsy folder with warming material and the very thick bunch of folders on cooling.
The article you cite makes some interesting comments including;
“Scientists teasing apart the details of Mitchell’s temperatures found it (cooling) was not necessarily a global phenomenon.”
Mitchell had based his calculations on 200 weather stations for his 1963 treatise. Interestingly this was the same number (and appears to be the same ones) that G S Callendar based his work on when he came up with the seminal document on AGW being caused by rising co2 levels back in 1938. He had based his own work by backtracking to 1850 to show rising temperatures and found only 100 weather stations of which some 50 were flawed and unreliable. Interestingly Charles Keeling admitted to being influenced by Callendars work so based his own hypotheses on the basis that temperatures were rising and so was co2-this latter supposition based on Callendars cherry picking of historical co2 data.
It is certainly untrue to rewrite history and claim global cooling was a myth. It wasn’t. To base a new world order on a tiny number of historical temperature records- many of which were known to be flawed then and are flawed to this day- is clearly absurd.
Sorry Brendan, but the report you cite could easily be rewritten to show a diametrically opposite view and if anyone here would like to fund it I shall be happy to oblige”
Joel-still waiting for the offer of funding. around $250,000 dollars a year should do it 🙂
Best regards
TonyB
DJ: You wrote, “This was an attempt to discredit GISS. Given NCDC and GISS are very similar and HadCRU is the outlier at the surface including NCDC would have blown the story.”
It was? They are? It would? Hmm. I’ve read the post a few times, and all of the data providers discussed in it were portayed in a good light. Please identify what part of the post was an attempt to discredit GISS. Please show what part of the story would’ve been blown had NCDC been included. Feel free to plot the data and include links to it so you can prove your point.
“”” Joel Shore (19:12:44) :
Frederick Michael says:
Some observations made by Keith:
Another example, water vapor is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. [The media now calls CO2 a “pollutant”. If CO2 is a “pollutant” then water vapor is also a “pollutant” – that’s absurd, but I digress.]
That is one hell of a strong point — and I hadn’t thought of it. Thanks for the ammo.
Using it for ammo will only show ignorance of how the two gases behave in the atmosphere. CO2 is a long-lived greenhouse gas that builds up in the atmosphere in response to fossil fuel emissions. By contrast, humans cannot currently emit water vapor on a scale that significantly influences its concentration in the atmosphere. The concentration of water vapor is essentially controlled by the temperature. It is only by raising temperatures through an increase in CO2 concentrations that humans can indirectly raise the level of water vapor in the atmosphere.
These scientific facts are often summarized by the statement that water vapor is a feedback, not a forcing. “””
Come on Joel you can’t believe what you just wrote.
>>>humans cannot currently emit water vapor on a scale that significantly influences its concentration in the atmosphere.<<<
Every gas burning automobile emits about as much water vapor as it does CO2.
And as for longevity; water vapor is at least as long lived as CO2 is. It is true that water vapor in the atmosphere varies considerably more than does CO2 over short periods of time; but only rarely does water vapor content of the atmosphere drop to the level that CO2 is at. Even at the lowest humidities, water vapor swamps CO2 levels. Even at Vostok base, they routinely show the dew point only a few degrees below the ambient temperature.
And for a GHG to operate in the atmosphere it only needs to be present for about one millisecond to intercept outgoing photons; so quit trying to sell that longevity red herring; water is a permanent component of the atmosphere in quantities sufficient to swamp any CO2 or other GHG effect.
And I would like a dollar for every time some AGWer says water vapor is a feedback and not a forcing. What total drivel; the atmospheric warming process of long wave IR absorption by atmospheric trace molecules is exactly the same for water vapor as it is for CO2; and once the atmosphere has warmed by that process; the effect on the surface such as oceans or other water bodies is quite independent of what species caused the atmospheric warming.
It's time to abandon that feedback crutch Joel, because it just won't support you much longer.
You know the answer as well as I do; carbon taxing provides the Marxist controlling mechanism that the political left seeks over our lives; and they can't see how to get the gullible to buy into the same claims for water.
Carbon is dirty and black a la coal dust; but nice clean water is natural and beautiful; and couldn't possibly be harmful to the environment.
Well neither can CO2.
I have a cartoon picture you would like Joel. It depicts a high cliff with a couple of Pterodactyls soaring about high in the air. A cave man is about to launch himself off the cliff with a couple of appendages attached to his head; a forward, and a backward cone attachment to render his head shape pterodactyl like.
His soon to be alone buddy is saying: "Are you sure about this Stan? It seems odd that a pointy head, and long beak is what makes them fly !".
It's the same as cutting all four legs off a bullfrog; and concluding they become stone deaf; because they won't jump on command.
The thin ice you are standing on Joel, is shrinking about you as time goes by.
George
TonyB,
Good to see you again as always. Thanks for the information about the various authors of that paper but I don’t think it is particularly relevant to the correctness of their conclusion. You furthermore say:
Alas, that doesn’t rebut the Peterson, Connolley, and Fleck piece whatsoever. First of all, what it cites is a 1961 N.Y. Times article reporting on a meeting. However, Peterson et al. looked at a different time period, the one more often claimed to be associated with some global cooling scare (specifically they looked from 1965 to 1979). Furthermore, they were interested in the peer-reviewed literature, not what appeared in the popular press like the N.Y. Times…and they in fact admit that there were some poor articles in the popular press (although not all of the articles in the popular press were in the direction of cooling). Finally, the N.Y. Times article cited does not appear to warn about a future ice age…It just reports on what the temperature trend had been over the past year, which was indeed cooling at that time (although, as was later noted, the global cooling was really the result of a Northern Hemisphere cooling with pretty flat temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere). So, in fact, there doesn’t appear to be anything in that article that is in contradiction with modern understanding (at least from what those bloggers report…I did not pay the money to buy the whole article).
So, that “rebuttal” is no rebuttal at all for a variety of reasons. It is rather strange to see it even presented as any sort of rebuttal.
The myth is that there was any scientific consensus in regards to future global cooling. In fact, it is even a myth that there was more warning of cooling than warming in the peer-reviewed literature during that period. The point is that at that time, climate science was a very young field and there were various pieces of the puzzle that were being understood, e.g., that we were currently in an interglacial between ice ages, that greenhouse gases could cause warming, and that aerosol pollutants could cause cooling (although there was a minority that thought that they too could cause warming). However, there was no scientific consensus yet on how these different factors would play out in our future climate. This was stated clearly in the 1975 National Academy of Sciences report.
All the major scientific journals survive and are now, as far as I know, digitally archived nowadays. I’m sorry but the claim that these things have just disappeared is silly. I myself conducted a search of the journal that I had easy online access to, Science, and my less quantitative conclusions were completely in line with Peterson et al. (Judging from the articles that I looked at that they categorized, I think one could quibble with a few of their categorizations…I.e., they seemed to try hard to categorize articles as either warming or cooling and not put too many as neutral. I find a few articles on either the warming or cooling side that I would have categorized as neutral; indeed, I think the most notable thing about the papers in those days is that very few really took sides on the larger issue of predicting the future climate. But, I can understand their desire to categorize as many of the articles as possible one way or the other, so one should probably interpret their “warming” articles as meaning that they at least leaned a bit in the direction of warming or focussed on a particular mechanism that they said should cause warming and similarly for the “cooling” articles.)
George E. Smith,
I really don’t know how to respond to your post except to say that you really ought to try to understand the arguments that myself and the climate science community in general is making instead of attacking all sorts of strawmen.
It is completely irrelevant to this discussion whether or not water vapor ever gets down to as low concentrations as CO2 is at. (In fact, the higher concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere is ONE of the reasons why the direct human influence on it through our emissions is negligible.)
Furthermore, how long a GHG has to be present in the atmosphere to intercept photons is also irrelevant. The point about the relative timescales for addition and removal of CO2 and water vapor is only relevant in explaining why we can directly influence the concentration of one in the atmosphere and not the other through our emissions.
And, the reason why water vapor is considered a feedback and not a forcing has nothing to do with any difference in the way in which it absorbs IR radiation. It simply has to do with the fact that we can directly influence the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere through our emissions whereas we cannot directly influence the concentration of water vapor through our emissions (but only indirectly influence it because of the dependence of the concentration on the temperature).
In short, there is nothing in your post that addresses the actual issues that I raised and that are understood by nearly all scientists in the community. You are a smart person, George, but you really ought to consider the possibility that there are other smart people, including entire communities of scientists, and that you might learn from them. Instead of interpreting their arguments in ways that make no sense, you should try to understand what they are really saying.
TonyB
You are correct. Connolley is re-writing history to suit his agenda.
And I don’t need to provide citations on this question [although I’ve provided plenty on this subject before]. How do I know your statement is correct? Because I was there, in my early 30’s, and working in a very big metrology lab, specifically on weather related instruments.
The instrument manufacturers provided our lab with the current literature, gratis. In addition, the media was full of global cooling scare stories. [Oh, OK, I’ll provide one cite: click.
The reason I know for a fact that the global cooling scare was constantly in the news is because I remember it so well. We discussed it in the lab whenever a big global cooling story came out.
And just like today, rent-seeking scientists and scientific organizations in the ’70’s concentrated on applying for grants — and they were likely to be much more successful if they included the message that they were studying ‘global cooling.’ Just like grant seeking organizations do today by using the magic words “global warming,” and “combating climate change.”
Scientists are not stupid; and they are human. Not all scientists actually believed in a coming ice age. But to pretend that the stated concern has always been about global warming is disingenuous and untrue. I’ve read Connolly’s pdf screed, and he is either a young ‘un, or he’s deliberately misrepresenting what went on in the ’70’s.
As you pointed out, much of the record has been lost because it was not archived. If it was archived, it was not collated in a central location. Today the internet takes care of that problem, but it would be hard work to track down a lot of the information. Connolley uses that situation to absolutely cherry-pick for his claim that global cooling wasn’t a scientific issue back then. It was. I was there, working in the field. And I remember.
Joel
Always a pleasure -You won’t ever tell anyone that I supported you once over one of Hansens codes that had been misrepresented by someone here will you? 🙂
I knew you would come back (we must stop meeting like this) so did not post the second part of the original post. Here it is again-Ah the green credentials I am gathering-soon I will be brave enough to take another peek at the Realclimate blog 🙂
I am not saying for a moment that there were any near as many articles back then on cooling as there is now on warming-different time. But to believe that everything was digitally archived that was written back then is somewhat fanciful. There would be a pecking order whereby the very top science organisations would archive the very top papers, but the likelihood of a smaller organisation digitising everything especially a relatively esoteric paper, becomes much more unlikely, so yes, they would have ‘disappeared’.
The major UK environmental organisation I work for did not routinely digitally archive their material until around 8 years ago. Any major report before then tends to be a closed book unless someone actually remembers it and drags out the physical copy. Not that easy as physical copies have often been discarded for reasons of space (or may have migrated to another form.
Some of this old material may have lived on in books-I will keep my eyes open in the seciond hand booshops.
Incidentally, whilst th repeated post below (sorry I’m being lazy tonight but its the onset of the hay fever season) was directed at Brendan H but I know you were listening in. (I’ve just remembered-I supported Brendan H on another thread AARRGGHH!)
repeat of Post;
“You said earlier that the report you linked to demolishing the myth surrounding Global cooling;
“…As for the opinions and activities of the report authors, I don’t see where they are relevant to my claim that their report “presents a persuasive and well-supported argument”.
I had made some very detailed anaysis suggesting that two of the three authors had an acknowleged warming agenda and the third-the keeper of the weather records- certainly did not appear as objective as he might, if the experience of others is anything to go by.
You then said;
“The authors identified seven papers claiming global cooling, 44 papers claiming global warming, plus a number of neutral papers. In other words, if there were any scientific consensus, it was in favour of warming. This finding is supported by an opinion survey carried out in 1977 of top climate scientists, who narrowly favoured warming over cooling.”
With respect Brendan the two statements do not correlate.
Let us for the sake of advancing the arguement (only) accept the poll at the time showed a narrow consensus in favour of warming, and for the sake of easy maths accept it was around 5%
Yet by the figures you cite around 80% of papers the three authors ‘found’ supported warming. Surely it is more reasonable the found figure would represent around 50/55%?
This suggests a number of possible explanations.
* The coolers didn’t write much
* The coolers documents were never digitised or became lost over time.
* The authors didn’t dig hard enough to find the true representation of papers that the poll shows should have been there.
Are you seriously saying a group of objective authors, seeking to present a well balanced argument, found only around 15/20% of the cooling papers, when statistically it should have been at least double or triple that number? In doing that is it really correct to say that they are presenting ‘a persuasive and well-supported argument?”
I suggest that the authors well known sympathies have prevented them from delving far enough to present anything that is balanced.
This is also so far from my own direct experience at the time as to exist in a parallel universe. Finding papers without the internet back in the 70’s was not easy and my own memory of writing my own article at the time is that I subsequently threw away far more than 7 cooling papers, and far fewer than 44 warming papers!
We will each continue to believe what we want, but it is only fair to point out that an important and widely cited report of this kind does need to be put into the context of the agenda behind those writing it.”
Back to the present, on a more serious note Joel, it would be good to genuinely spend enough time looking into this as a proper research project.-but that requires funding. I would not take the words of those committed to the irrationalist cause any more than you would accept the papers of (say)Ernst Beck.
It is a great shame that research is ordered in the way it is, whereby someone comes up with a pet theory then defends to the death their interpretation of the science. For example, with my interest in history I would have liked to have been sitting next to Michael Mann when he was manufacturing his sticks and said;
” Michael-errr you do know about the Roman Optimum and the MWP don’t you? How about a trip to Greenland?”
Always a pleasure to debate with you.
tonyb
Slightly OT, but…
Joel Shore (and others) – excellent discussion, but I have some concern about statements such as “…we can directly influence the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere through our emissions…”
From what I’ve read in WUWT, my response would be something to the effect of, “Well…yes, no, and maybe, at least as I understand the situation.”
The reason I say that is that WUWT (and responders) in past posts have provided values for anthropogenic CO2 emissions on the order of 3% to 10% (Roy Spencer) of all CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. I think I remember one specific responder who quoted that the total CO2 emitted is somewhere on the order of 306 gigatons; of this total, human emissions constitute only 6 to 8 gigatons (~2.9%). The rest result from ocean degassing and natural decomposition products. If these data are reasonably close to being accurate, then, yes, human activity could conceivably directly influence CO2 ppm in the atmosphere, but how significantly is another question. I would think minimally.
Can anyone confirm or replace these values with generally accepted ones?
BobW in NC,
This may help:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/eia_co2_contributions_table3.png
Keep in mind that the original data comes from the UN’s IPCC, and they have a vested financial interest in showing human CO2 emissions to be as high as possible. But it’s probably in the ball park, and it’s close to what you stated.
I probably sound like a broken record, because I keep coming back to the central issue: no one has shown any solid evidence that CO2 is harmful at current or projected concentrations. The only “evidence” comes from computer models. That’s not good enough to justify spending $trillions of tax dollars on Cap & Trade.
CO2 is not harmful, it is beneficial. And no one has shown otherwise.
BobW in NC:
Here is a diagram showing exchanges of carbon between various components: http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/kling/carbon_cycle/carbon_cycle.jpg It is indeed true that there are large exchanges between the oceans and atmosphere and between the biosphere and the atmosphere. However, the key is that these exchanges have been nearly in balance since the end of the last ice age about 10,000 or so years ago…and even during the ice age – interglacial cycles, the CO2 levels in the atmosphere did not tend to change as rapidly as they have been doing recently.
Perhaps an analogy would be in order: Imagine that you are CEO of a supermarket chain and it has very thin profit margins…For simplicity, let’s say you sell everything at a 10% mark-up relative to the price that you buy it for, and because of your expenses in running the store, this means that you exactly break even. Let’s also say that you sell $100,000,000 in merchandise each year, which means that you buy $90,000,000 of stuff at wholesale and then your other expenses are $10,000,000. So, you run a break-even operation.
Now, suppose that an unscrupulous finance officer is hired who skims 3% off of the sales. So, then with no further adjustments, you would start losing $3,000,000 / year…and, of course, your losses would accumulate from year-to-year. Now, when you discover this and go to fire the officer, would you think it reasonable if he claimed that his contribution to your losses are negligible because you are paying out $90,000,000 to buy the merchandise (and another $10,000,000 to run the business) and compared to this, his siphoning off of only a few percent of this amount is a negligible contribution?
So, to make a long story short: Yes, there are large exchanges of CO2 between the atmosphere and oceans and the atmosphere and biosphere. However, these do not cause a significant change in the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. By contrast, we are taking a store of carbon that has long been locked away from the atmosphere and rapidly (on geological timescales at least) liberating it into the atmosphere. The study of the carbon cycle by scientists demonstrates that in fact we are responsible for essentially all of the rise in CO2 levels in the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution. And, in fact it is only because the oceans…and to a lesser extent the biosphere…are now partially compensating for this by taking up more carbon than they emit that CO2 levels have not risen even faster. I.e., the increase in CO2 levels is only about half of what it would have been if all of the CO2 we had liberated through the burning of fossil fuels had remained in the atmosphere.
Smokey and Joel
As both you and Joel are hanging around this blog I would like to suggest something.
I personally welcome the input from Joel, Mary Hinge (where has she got to?) and RW in particular. They frequently respond to an article but we then tend to get fragmentary coments and not a coherent narrative. It would be most interesting to get a complerte article written by one of the above that WE could then critique. For my money I would like to see;
1) An explanation of just how doubling co2 causes a rise of up to 6.2C (without the use of magic or mirrors or the strewing of the runes)
2) The actual value and purpose of a global temperature, especially one dating to 1850 or 1880, bearing in mind the paucity of material and its subsequent unreliability.
3) Just how the rate of sea level ‘rise’ is going to accelerate to the height suggested by Hansen, when it is at best fairly static
I am sure there are lots of other topics. Anthony may be horrified by the suggestion, but allowing other people to have a fair say is the bedrock of a democratic society and sadly one not much practiced in certain other science blogs.
Anyone think it a good idea? Or could suggest topics? Have I gone mad?
Tonyb
Smokey says:
Actually, you have provided exactly zero citations that address the relevant question, which is the state of the science IN THE PEER-REVIEWED LITERATURE. And, exactly zero citations to any peer-reviewed papers that Peterson et al. missed in their methodology.
All that you have provided is some links to screeds written about the discussion in the popular press, and ones that cherry-picked what articles they reported to boot. (And, we know they cherry-picked them since I have produced specific citations to articles that they left out, besides which they never even discussed what methodology they used to find the articles.)
TonyB:
Thanks for your post. I have little to add to what I said before however. You seem to think that somehow most of the papers that supported global cooling were not properly archived whereas those that supported global warming were…or something of the sort. I don’t find this claim very compelling. All the major scientific journals that I know have now have all of their past issues available on digital archives. I certainly know that Science does. (And besides, I don’t see why there would be this sort of selectivity bias in what was preserved.)
You may have remembered folders of articles that you copied…but were these really peer-reviewed scientific articles? And, why can’t we find any of them now? Why have you or Smokey or anyone else for that matter been unable to find even one peer-reviewed paper that Peterson et al. missed that supported global cooling? (I am willing to believe that there might be a few, as Peterson et al. didn’t claim their search method would infallibly find all peer-reviewed articles bearing on the subject…but detractors haven’t even been able to find any!)
Smokey (13:43:28) : The only “evidence” comes from computer models. That’s not good enough to justify spending $trillions of tax dollars on Cap & Trade.
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I just got back from a (the) major respiratory disease conference. In many lectures were described cell-based or animal models for the various diseases (asthma, emphysema, etc.). Invariably, much discussion surrounded the applicability, or drawbacks of these models for drug development and for even understanding the disease in humans in general.
Although I can’t say whether or not the multiple complex genetic and biochemicals interplays resulting in these diseases, and their treatment, are as complex as the chaotic systems in climatology, they do have many similarities. Both fields are filled with extremely complex networks.
If anyone suggested using computer models as a basis for getting a treatment for the condition approved – everyone in the room would laugh.
To move it up a level (from the AGW “scientist” level) and suggest using a drug’s beneficial effects in a cell-based assay (i.e. real experimentation) as a basis for approval – everyone in the room would laugh.
….. and then to move a potential therapeutic up one level further into sophisticated animal model studies, and then suggest using the results to seek approval, you’ve guessed it – everyone in the room would laugh.
It’s all about stopping both charlatans and bad scientists from profiting at the expense of unitended consequences (toxicity) in patients. Scientists and physicians in this type of medical science police their own field, even before it gets to the regulators.
I guess the field of human medicine is more mature and contains many first-rate scientists. I hope that some of the better scientists in AGW can develop a spine before Copenhagen.
Since CO2 is a beneficial trace gas the analogy fails. The finance officer would more properly have been surreptitiously ADDING three million bucks to the stores coffers.
By the way, the store in the example is not a business but only a hobby.
“”” Joel Shore (14:09:22) :
BobW in NC:
Here is a diagram showing exchanges of carbon between various components: http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/kling/carbon_cycle/carbon_cycle.jpg It is indeed true that there are large exchanges between the oceans and atmosphere and between the biosphere and the atmosphere. However, the key is that these exchanges have been nearly in balance since the end of the last ice age about 10,000 or so years ago…and even during the ice age – interglacial cycles, the CO2 levels in the atmosphere did not tend to change as rapidly as they have been doing recently. “””
Joel, I’m quite prepared to take all of that as gospel truth; although I think it can be the subject of a good debate.
But I didn’t see the word “temperature” in there anywhere; and there simply isn’t any observational data that points to ANY of that CO2 interchange being the cause of any temperature changes of note; nor of any process for having it all go out of whack.
There’s still plenty of uncertainty for how much CO2 is rattling aorund in the environment; where it comes from and where it goes to. I keep reading/hearing that some 25% of the total is unaccounted for in some why or another.
While that uncertainty is interesting and worth understanding better; when all is said and done I still don’t think it has any significant bearing on earth’s climate; other than the amount in circulation being affected by some climate changes.
Joel Shore (05:47:53) :
I’ve always marveled at how today’s “climate community” (not to mention some current era journalists themselves) have no trouble implying Newsweek and Time journalists in the 70s were either lying through their teeth or were simply a bunch of hapless hacks when they spoke of the “harbinger of another ice age” and “[evidence] has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it.”
As I’ve pointed out on other blogs, everyone should give a careful read to these articles, since they remind me so much of those old Mad Magazine features, where you just fill in the blanks and create a piece of writing that can mean anything, but still has a smooth flowing style.
Substitute warming for cooling, and voila, we still have drought in Africa and lots of tornadoes in the midwest! Not to mention of course the impending disaster because the world can’t possibly grow enough crops to feed all those hungry mouths. Of course, the “climate community” would love to make these articles disappear as faciley as it thinks it’s made the medieval warming period disappear.
And while your asking other people to dig up old references, perhaps you could point me to all those letters to the editors by outraged scientists of the times pointing out how misleading those two articles were.
I only wish the “climate community” would let today’s journalist know what they think of their predecessors when it breathlessly goes running to them with its latest and greatest scientific findings.
Looks like I may have googled up the Newsweek link.
http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf
Mike Bryant
The analogy also fails because increased CO2 causes increased biological activity, which makes use of the extra airborne fertilizer. It’s as if the grocery store could grow extra money.
Joel,
Thanks for commenting.
However, the peer-review system in the climate sciences is broken, as has been pointed out here and elsewhere many times. It is completely controlled by a relatively small, self-serving clique of rent-seeking, grant begging opportunists who are pushing a 100% AGW agenda. These are not just my views; internationally esteemed climatologists and statisticians have publicly stated the same thing. Should we believe you, or them?
How many times does the Wegman Report have to be posted? Or M&M’s valid critiques? Or Bishop Hill’s narrative of the corrupt, dishonest shenanigans that go on behind the scenes by the climate peer review clique? Or Prof. Lindzen’s pointed critiques? And many others who say the same things? Are they all wrong? Are they all making it up out of whole cloth? Have they all put their reputations on the line by falsely speaking out? No. They are informing the public of how corrupt the climate peer-review process has become. Should we believe them …or the alarmist version of reality?
The climate peer-review process has been corrupted by big money and status-seeking. James Hansen has taken upwards of a million dollars [that we know of] from groups and individuals with an AGW agenda, while he’s on the public payroll — then he preposterously denies taking the payola. But… he doesn’t sue to recover his stained reputation. That tells you all you need to know about whether Hansen is lying. Mr. Hansen is beholden far more to the people handing him big bucks to push their agenda than he is to the taxpaying public, who only want honest science. Why is that OK?
Hansen’s equally disreputable underling, Gavin Schmidt, runs a website during the day while he is being paid by taxpayers, and he routinely employs censorship. How honest is that? The climate peer-review system has been gamed. It can no longer to be trusted, because the people running it lack ethics. They have traded in their honesty for money.
[Also, if you think I’ve never provided peer-reviewed citations, you are of course mistaken. Use the search feature, it will deconstruct your beliefs about that.]
Concerning cherry-picking, you’re one of the true world leaders in that regard. When have you ever posted anything but what fits your AGW agenda? You need to read Feynman on what makes a good scientist: click.
Despite all your considerable efforts, I doubt that you’ve converted even one person to your AGW beliefs. Yet we regularly read from others here who used to accept AGW, but are now skeptical of it. They are not stupid people. They have simply become skeptical due to the lack of any solid evidence supporting the AGW hypothesis. That’s how science is supposed to work.
Skeptics don’t have an agenda to sell anything. See, Joel, there’s a difference between people selling AGW for grant money, and skeptics. The purveyors of the CO2=AGW hypothesis [and that’s what it’s all about: ‘CO2 is gonna getcha’] have the burden of showing some — any — solid, real world evidence that their hypothesis explains reality better than the long accepted theory of natural climate variability. And unlike those pushing AGW, skeptics don’t get paid for being skeptical.
The CO2=AGW hypothesis is a scientific failure because no falsifiable evidence exists — it’s all computer models and opinion, backed by the increasingly absurd claims that every natural fluctuation is always the fault of anthropogenic CO2… without any underlying proof of that assertion. That’s not nearly good enough.
Skeptics simply say: Show us. Convince us. Provide some solid, reproducible evidence that CO2 is harmful in any way. Back up your AGW beliefs with empirical, falsifiable evidence, if you can find any.
Over the past couple of years the AGW crowd has blamed everything on AGW: the sea level, the ice extent, coral bleaching, the ozone hole, hurricanes, global death rates, receding glaciers, etc., etc. And in every case, skeptics have been proven right, and the AGW purveyors wrong.
The central pillar of AGW is CO2. The hypothesis is that rising CO2 will cause runaway global warming. But if CO2 doesn’t cause runaway global warming, then the entire AGW edifice comes crashing down. Your job is to provide solid, real world evidence for your CO2=AGW hypothesis. We’re still waiting for it.
“”” Joel Shore (11:57:28) :
George E. Smith,
I really don’t know how to respond to your post except to say that you really ought to try to understand the arguments that myself and the climate science community in general is making instead of attacking all sorts of strawmen.
It is completely irrelevant to this discussion whether or not water vapor ever gets down to as low concentrations as CO2 is at. (In fact, the higher concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere is ONE of the reasons why the direct human influence on it through our emissions is negligible.) “””
Well maybe irrelevent to you Joel; but not irrelevent. You and others bring up the “longevity” of CO2 in the atmospehre to support the notion that because humans emit some that may stay around for a while that is bad.
The reason I raised the issue of water vapor range of variation was precisely to point out that under the vast majority of global conditions there is always plenty of water vapor in the atmosphere; and yes it is enough to make any human emissions of water vapor quite irrelevent; but then you entirely miss the point that for the very same reason; the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and specially any human additions to that ise very bit as irrelevent because of the overwhelming effect of the much larger amount of water vapor.
Any atmospheric warming “forcing” I guess you climatologists call it depends “logarithmically (we are told) on the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere; that is not the total CO2 in the atmosphere, but the total including water vapor, because water vapor is just as able to absorb IR as is CO2.
It is the total of all GHG species that is responsible for the atmospheric warming; there’s no magic about CO2 that makes it logarithmic responding, but not for water vapor.
CO2 doesn’t demonstrate any significant global temperature change; even if you ascribe 100% of the atmospheric increase to human causes for the very reason that water vapor raises the total GHG to where the logariythm of the change due to a CO2 increase is negligible.
And then to top it off; water vapor forms clouds which stop the whole surface warming in its tracks.
As it happens; I do followe your arguments and everybody elses that can write readable English; and the case for CO2 induced runaway changes in the earth’s climate just isn’t there.
Any thesis that is supported ONLY by computer program models; and fails to predict even the input data that was used to construct the model; let alone project ahead to predict what is yet to be; is hardly what i would call science. It’s all maybes, and could bes, and within the parameters of, and other such gobbledegook.
The earth currently enjoys about the lowest atmospheric CO2 levels it has had in its geologic history; and throughout all that with CO2 as high as 20 times present levels; life has flourished; and here we have the most adaptive species of all is paranoid about perfectly ordinary natural changes; that haven’t produced any catastrophic climate results yet; and don’t show any promise of doing so.
Climatologists; call them climate scientists if you wish, can engage in all kinds of esoteric statistical mathematics, and computer modelling (sans clouds of course);p and some of that is even interesting; but it certainly doesn’t justify bringing the whole of civilisation to a crashing halt because of some completely unsusbsatiated “sky is falling” computer predictions.
And here I define “predictions” as purported results of running any computer model into a time period past the last observational data point entered into it. Call it projections or any other weasel words; it is still something that the model alleges will happen; tomorrow or the next day, or 100 years hence; it’s a prediction, and so far they simply have been wrong.
philincalifornia,
“It’s all about stopping both charlatans and bad scientists from profiting at the expense of unitended consequences (toxicity) in patients. Scientists and physicians in this type of medical science police their own field, even before it gets to the regulators. ”
I guess that since climate is so much simpler than medicine, climatologists can project outcomes a hundred years hence with no problem. Maybe climatologists should be governed by a state board that collects license fees and makes them take continuing education. Then the climatologists could stay up to date just like cosmetologists do!
Maybe it’s just that climatologists don’t have to worry about truth so much because they are only trying to turn the world on it’s head.