Reposted from The Air Vent
Disproving The Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) Problem
Leonard Weinstein, ScD
April 25, 2009
A theory has been proposed that human activity over about the last 150 years has caused a significant rise in Earth’s average temperature. The mechanism claimed is based on an increased greenhouse effect caused by anthropogenic increases in CO2 from burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, cement manufacture, and also from increases in CH4 from farm animals and other causes. The present versions of the theory also include a positive feedback effect due to the increased temperature causing an increase in water vapor, which amplifies the effect. The combined result are used to claim that unless the anthropogenic increases of CO2 are slowed down or even made to decrease, there will be a continuing rapid increase in global temperature, massive melting of ice caps, flooding, pestilence, etc.
In order to support a theory, specific predictions need to be made that are based on the claims of the theory, and the predictions then need to happen. While the occurrence of the predicted events is not proof positive of a theory, they increase the believability of the claims. However, if the predictions are not observed, this tends to indicate the theory is flawed or even wrong. Some predictions are absolute in nature. Einstein’s prediction of the bending of light by the Sun is such a case. It either would or would not bend, and this was considered a critical test of the validity of his theory of general relativity. It did bend the predicted amount, and supported his theory.
Many predictions however are less easily supported. For example weather forecasting often does a good job in the very short term but over increasing time does a poor job. This is due to the complexity of the numerous nonlinear components. This complexity has been described in chaos theory by what is called the butterfly effect. Any effect that depends on numerous factors, some of which are nonlinear in effect, is nearly impossible to use to make long-range predictions. However, for some reason, the present predictions of “Climate Change” are considered by the AGW supporters to be more reliable than even short-term weather forecasting. While some overall trends can be reasonably made based on looking at past historical trends, and some computational models can suggest some suggested trends due to specific forcing factors, nevertheless, the long term predicted result has not been shown to be valid. Like any respectable theory, specific predictions need to be made, and then shown to happen, before the AGW models can have any claim to reasonable validity.
The AGW computational models do make several specific predictions. Since the time scale for checking the result of the predictions is small, and since local weather can vary enough on the short time scale to confuse the longer time scale prediction, allowances for these shorter lasting events have to be made when examining predictions. Nevertheless, if the actual data results do not significantly support the theory, it must be reconsidered or even rejected as it stands.
The main predictions from the AGW models are:
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The average Earth’s temperature will increase at a rate of 0.20C to 0.60C per decade at least to 2100, and will continue to climb after that if the CO2 continues to be produced by human activity at current predicted rates.
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The increasing temperature will cause increased water evaporation, which is the cause for the positive feedback needed to reach the high temperatures.
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The temperature at lower latitudes (especially tropical regions) will increase more in the lower Troposphere at moderate altitudes than near the surface.
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The greatest near surface temperature increases will occur at the higher latitudes.
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The increasing temperature at higher latitudes will cause significant Antarctic and Greenland ice melt. These combined with ocean expansion due to warming will cause significant ocean rise and flooding.
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A temperature drop in the lower Stratosphere will accompany the temperature increase near the surface. The shape of the trend down in the Stratosphere should be close to a mirror reflection of the near surface trend up.
The present CO2 level is high and increasing (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/). It should be fairly easy to show the consequences of AGW predictions if they are valid.
Figure 1. Global average temperature from 1850 through 2008. Annual series smoothed with a 21-point binomial filter by the Met Office. (http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/)
It should be noted that the largest part of the last 150 year increase in CO2, which is blamed on human activity, did not occur until after 1940, so the largest temperature rise effects should have occurred in that time. The proponents of AGW have generally used the time period from 1970 to 2000 as the base line for an indicator of the rapid warming. In that base line period, the average temperature rose about 0.50C, which averages to 0.160C per decade. The claim was then made that this would accelerate due to continuing increases in CO2 level. However if we look at the temperature change from 1940 through 2008, the net increase is only 0.30C. This is due to a drop from 1940 to 1970 and a slight drop from 2000 through 2008. Now the average rise for that period is only 0.040C per decade. If the time period from 1850 through 2008 is used as a base, the net increase is just under 0.70C and the average rise is also 0.040C per decade! It is clear that choosing a short selected period of rising temperature gives a misleading result. It is also true that the present trend is down and expected to continue downward for several more years before reversing again. This certainly makes claim 1 questionable.
The drop in temperature from 1940 to 1970 was claimed to have been caused by “global dimming” caused by aerosols made by human activity. This was stated as dominating the AGW effects at that time. This was supposed to have been overcome by activity initiated by the clean air act. In fact, the “global dimming” continued into the mid 1990’s and then only reduced slightly before increasing more (probably due to China and other countries increased activity). If the global dimming was not significantly reduced, why did the temperature increase from 1970 to just past 2000?
A consequence of global dimming is reduced pan-evaporation level. This also implies that ocean evaporation is decreased, since the main cause of ocean evaporation is Solar insolation, not air temperature. The decreased evaporation contradicts claim 2.
Claim 3 has been contradicted by a combination of satellite and air born sensor measurements. While the average lower Troposphere average temperature has risen along with near ground air temperature, and in some cases is slightly warmer, nevertheless the models predicted that the lower Troposphere would be significantly warmer than near ground at the lower latitudes, especially in the tropics. This has not occurred! The following is a statement from:
Synthesis and Assessment Product 1.1
Report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program
and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research
April 2006
“While these data are consistent with the results from climate models at the global scale, discrepancies in the tropics remain to be resolved”.
Claim 4 implies that the higher latitudes should heat up more than lower latitudes. This is supposed to be especially important for melting of glaciers and permafrost. In fact, the higher latitudes have warmed, but at a rate close to the rest of the world. In fact, Antarctica has overall cooled in the last 50 years except for the small tail that sticks out. See:
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/20061013/20061013_02.html
Greenland and the arctic region are presently no warmer than they were in the late 1930’s, and are presently cooling! See:
The overall effect of Antarctic and Greenland are now resulting in net gain (or at least near zero change) of ice, not loss. While some small areas have recently lost and are some are still losing some ice, this is mostly sea ice and thus do not contribute to sea level rise. Glaciers in other locations such as Alaska have lost a significant amount of ice in the last 150 years, but much of the loss is from glaciers that formed or increased during the little ice age, or from local variations, not global. Most of this little ice age ice is gone and some glaciers are actually starting to increase as the temperature is presently dropping. For more discussions on the sea level issue look at the following two sites:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dnc49xz_19cm8×67fj&hl=en
This indicates that claim 5 is clearly wrong. While sea level will rise a small amount, and has so since the start of the Holocene period, the rise is now only 10 to 15 cm per century, and is not significantly related to the recent recovery from the little ice age, including the present period of warming.
The claims in 6 are particularly interesting. Figure 2 below shows the Global Brightness Temperature Anomaly (0C) in the lower Troposphere and lower Stratosphere made from space.
a) Channel TLT is the lower Troposphere from ground to about 5 km
b) Channel TLS is the lower Stratosphere from about 12 to 25 km
Figure 2. Global satellite data from RSS/MSU and AMSU data. Monthly time series of brightness temperature anomaly for channels TLT, and TLS. Data from: http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html
The anomaly time series is dominated by ENSO events and slow troposphere warming for Channel TLT (Lower Troposphere). The three primary El Niños during the past 20 years are clearly evident as peaks in the time series occurring during 1982-83, 1987-88, and 1997-98, with the 1997-98 being the largest. It also appears there is an aditional one at 2007. Channel TLS (Lower Stratosphere) is dominated by stratospheric cooling, punctuated by dramatic warming events caused by the eruptions of El Chichon (1982) and Mt Pinatubo (1991). In these, and other volcanic eruption cases, the increased absorption and reflectivity of the dust and aerosols at high altitudes lowered the surface Solar insolation, but since they absorbed more energy, they increased the high altitude temperature. After the large spikes dropped back down, the new levels were lower and nearly flat between large volcanic eruptions. It is also likely that the reflection or absorption due to particulates also dropped, so the surface Solar insolation went back up. It appears that a secondary effect of the volcanic eruptions is present that is unknown in nature (but not CO2)! One possible explanation is a modest but long-term drop in Ozone. It is also clear that the linear fit to the data shown is meaningless. In fact the level drop events seem additive if they overlap soon enough for at least the two cases shown. That is, after El Chicon dropped the level, then Pinatubo occurred and dropped the level even more. Two months after Pinatubo, another strong volcano, Cerro Hudson, also erupted, possibly amplifying the effect. It appears that the recovery time from whatever causes the very slow changing level shift has a recovery time constant of at least several decades.
The computational models that show that the increasing CO2 and CH4 cause most of the present global warming all require that the temperature of the Stratosphere drops while the lower atmosphere and ground heat up. It appears from the above figures that the volcanic activity clearly caused the temperature to spike up in the Stratosphere, and that these spikes were immediately followed by a drop to a new nearly constant level in the temperature. It is clear from the Mauna Loa CO2 data (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/) that the input of CO2 (or CH4) from the volcanoes, did not significantly increase the background level of this gas, and thus, this cannot be the cause of the drop in the Stratosphere temperature. The ramp up of atmospheric CO2 also cannot explain the step down then level changes in high altitude temperature. Since the surface temperature rise is supposed to be related to the Stratosphere temperature drop, and since a significant surface rise above the 1940 temperature level did not occur until the early 1980’s, it may be that the combination of the two (or more) volcanoes, along with Solar variability and variations in ocean currents (i.e., PDO) may explain the major causes of recent surface temperature rises to about 2002. In fact, the average Earth temperature stopped rising after 2002, and has been dropping for the last few years!
The final question that arises is what prediction has the AGW made that has been demonstrated, and that strongly supports the theory. It appears that there is NO real supporting evidence and much disagreeing evidence for the AGW theory as proposed. That is not to say there is no effect from Human activity. Clearly human pollution (not greenhouse gases) is a problem. There is also almost surely some contribution to the present temperature from the increase in CO2 and CH4, but it seems to be small and not a driver of future climate. Any reasonable scientific analysis must conclude the basic theory wrong!!
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So…As CO2 climbed from ~285ppm to 335ppm, there was no CO2 driven greenhouse warming…But the next 45ppm CO2 caused all of the warming from 1978 to ~2005…Then the next 5-10ppm didn’t prevent the cooling since 2005…And none of the CO2 from 385ppm to ~5000ppm influenced global temperatures from ~600 million years ago until 1978? I hope you can understand why most geologists are puzzled by this.
The models can “hindcast” only the past changes that they were parameterized to calculate.
Actually those intervals are quite obvious on your graph. They’re even more obvious on the Hadley CRU presentation of their own data (with my annotations)…
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/HadCRUT3_Segments.jpg
And…If you bothered to do that, you’d see the pattern that you have thus far failed to see.
That graphic is very clear and it doesn’t show the correlative stratospheric cooling that should have accompanied greenhouse warming of the Troposphere…A linear trend-line does not turn a non-linear function into a linear one.
The stratospheric temperature was flat prior to the El Chicon cooling, flat between El Chicon and Pinatubo, and flat after Pinatubo.
Greenhouse warming of the troposphere wouldn’t have have resulted in pulses of cooling being transferred to the Stratosphere from the Troposphere every ten years or so. The shape of the stratospheric cooling curve should approximate the inverse of the tropospheric warming curve from 1978-2005…It’s not even close.
Francis (16:53:44) :
A look at a graph of Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) and temperature (against time) would suggest that the above results may be coincidental.
Temperature increases with TSI over the first period. Then they both roughly level off.
Correlation between TSI and global warming exists and it is never zero. It’s not coincidental that all the energy incoming to the Earth is emitted by the Sun. Is it coincidental that a star provides energy to a colder system?
But in 1978 the TSI goes into a decline. While the temperature continues to increase.
Have your hear about negative correlations?
AGW begins in 1978. Computer models can hindcast the climate up until then using natural causes. After that, the CO2 effect must be added.
Warmhouses have ocurred since Earth is Earth; most of them by far higher than the current warming.
How much of CO2 effect must be added? I’d like you to explain what’s the absorptivity, emissivity, total emittance, specific heat, partial pressure, specific volume and heat capacity of the CO2. If you can include a mathematical procedure which demonstrates what you are assuring, it would be great.
I’m not a geologist. But I did take enough of those courses that I could have gotten a degree in it.
Then you should remember from your courses that during the warmhouse of the Cretaceous Period an icehouse (chicken little, as it’s named by Dave Middleton) occurred when the concentration of CO2 was almost the same than nowadays.
And I don’t remember anything that I learned in those classrooms that would set me against recognizing something new. In fact, I learned all those reasons to expect continental drift, long before it was “found”.
Nobody in this site is proposing not to accept something new… What we propose is to not accept pseudoscience or posmodernist pseudoscience.
As I see it, in the absence of a natural causes explanation for the post 1978 temperature increase; some consideration should be given to what’s left standing: CO2 AGW.
There is a colossal natural cause to explain the increase post 1978… The energy incoming from the Sun which is stored by the oceans, the ground and the subsurface materials of ground. Those systems store more energy than the amount of energy stored by the whole atmosphere.
By the way, take a look to these experimental data for heat capacity:
ρC of CO2 is 0.601 J/m^3 K
ρC of air is 1200 J/m^3 K
ρC of H2O is 4.19 x 10^6 J/m^3 K, and
ρC of dry clay soil is 1.78 x 10^6 J/m^3 K
Do you still think the CO2 is a scientific explanation for the last global warming?
Then you should remember from your courses that during the warmhouse of the Cretaceous Period an icehouse (chicken little, as it’s named by Dave Middleton) occurred when the concentration of CO2 was almost the same than nowadays.
IIRC, there was a big rise in CO2 at the same time there was a big drop in temperatures. (I remember commenting on it to my bronto buddies.) And at the time, CO2 concentration was several times that of today.
Well,
my absolute lack of knowledge about Arctic currents blabla where I kind of predicted a rapidly decaying Greenland sea ice is just confirmed now. Please take a look at the JAXA sea ice graph
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
the sea ice extent is now back to the 2008 level, quite far from the average. And this is mainly due to the Greenland sea ice as can be seen here for example
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.5.html
At this rate, one might maybe circulate around Greenland at the end of the summer
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png
For the record, I am an oil industry geologist too.
I always point out – to the AGW side – that I would have made a lot more money than I have over the years had I chosen a career in “climate science”.
Dave Middleton:
“By just visually looking at the HadCRUT3 data it should be “intuitively obvious to the casual observer” that the temperature anomaly has oscillated with a wave length of about 60 years and an average amplitude of about 0.34 C since 1850.”
The effect of PDO on US continental temperatures is even more evident if I recall correctly.
Dave Middleton’s comment reminded me of some undone homework. There is an excellent ab initio correlation of global MST against TSI and GCR. It occurred to me some time ago that it would be a good idea to carry out a statistical test as follows:
*Correlate MST against TSI and GCR (with a fitted time lag variable on TSI)
*Now include a sine function of time with parameters of amplitude and periodicity to be fitted. [This function is intended to be a coarse reflection of the effect of the ocean oscillations, particularly ENSO and PDO.]
*Test the significance of the inclusion of the sinusoidal term.
* Assuming that it is significant, test the error function for stationarity in time.
If the error function shows a significant trend of increasing positive bias in the late period, then this would offer some support for there being an additional (warming) control on temperature, which could include CO2.
If the error function shows no such significant trend, then it would powerfully debunk the argument about there being no explanation for late 20th century warming other than CO2.
Of course, I never got round to actually doing the work. Has anybody else tried to do this?
lweinstein (18:04:58) :
I would ask what is the difference between using an exclamation mark when you exclaim something, and using a question mark when you ask a question? Neither is good form in a formal paper, but these are less formal blogs for discussion. I do agree with Paul Coppin that the issue is not about a theory, but a bunch of hypotheses and computer models with the common name Anthropogenic Global Warming. However, the common use of the term on the blogs has been theory, so I tried to stay in character. Sloppy use of terms is bad, but if all users are aware of the difference, it becomes a kind if local lingo. …[snip]
This is, I believe, a common misconception about blogs. Technical blogs are rapidly replacing the “letters” sections of formal journals as the place where a public airing of a journal article or topic takes place. The very nature of blogs also provides a means for the lay populace to look inside both the science and the process of the science. In the past this has been generally closed to common scrutiny. In particular, science writers have access to information and opinion they had to previous dig out or interview for.
More than ever, it is important that scientists and science writers convey their material in as precise a language as they can muster. The jargon of science assumes a common learned understanding amongst professionals about the meaning of characteristic phrases and concepts.
The general public often has a more general (mis)understanding or interpretation about words and phrases that have a specific meaning in science. “Theory” and “hypothesis” are two particularly important jargon terms in the conveying of information to the public. “Theory”, especially, is not at all understood by the lay public (and “hypothesis” is largely unknown). Had scientists been more rigorous about the correct use of the terms in the context of AGW, it may not have become the “settled science” it has become. It’s time, even in popular science writing, to bring the level of comprehension up to the level necessary for a proper understanding of science, not to bury the science in the mud of common language.
RW
Please read the start of my email before jumping in. I was being self deprecating about me -not you. My third hot tip-aimed at me- is not to use an Asus 7inch screen in which to try to read across columns of figures. My fourth hot tip is for you to read other peoples posts before rubbishing them.
We were talking about April and May, so not unreasonably I gave figures for those months and gave ‘trends’ in that limited context for those months, so there is really no point in complaining that the figures are irrelevant-they are relevant for the point we were discussing, but not if you then want to go off at a tangent.
If you want to use data from all the months we are getting into quite a different discussion-interesting in itself- but different to the topic that Flanagan introduced, namely April and May. Using my figures in an attempt to prove something I wasn’t arguing is rather fruitless.
Also, please check your facts before saying that 1989 was one of the three warmest winters. try 1833 as number three. A far as I am aware 1833 is before the 1900’s.
I said there were plenty of hot summers back then as there are now. You missed the caveat in your eagerness to try to prove your point and that is these occured even during the LIA. I surely don’t need to define the LIA to you do I RW? It would be astonishing if the LIA was as warm as the 2000’s.
As you seem to want to take my comments out of context and apply them into a wider discussion of temperatures we can leave aside the obvious fact that individual months have behaved in differnt ways since the LIA (and no doubt before). Temperatures have marginally increased overall since the LIA -which is hardly surprising.
If you want to argue that they are rising catastropically in an unprecedented manner I look forward to your graph and your citations.
I also hope you will then put it into context by looking at a broader sweep of human history back to the Holocenes, which would include a number of other warming periods as great as or greater than todays.
best wishes
Tonyb
And what makes you think the impact on human populations, even in North American where human numbers were very low and nomadic, was benign?
Here’s one abstract:
Sounds fairly disruptive to me.
There’s evidence for a two-meter rise in sea levels on the eastern seaboard during the mid-Holocene:
You may think this would have no affect. Professionals think it would be an expensive proposition to mitigate …
I am a mathematician, not a climatologist.
Long ago I learned the difference between interpolation and extrapolation.
Interpolation is the use of two data points to infer the observed behavior in the interval between them.
Extrapolation is the use of two or more data points to infer behavior beyond the interval.
Examples abound. Take a simple spring. Springs obey Hooke’s Law: the force is proportional to the amount of stretching or compressing. This is good so far as it goes, but eventually the law (and the spring) fail.
See Mark Twain, and his observations about the length of the Mississippi.
Just a little extrapolation proved that within a few thousand years St Louis will be a suburb of New Orleans!
Or Throop’s Law: any theory constructed in the absence of data is useless.
Just Want Truth… (13:14:33) :
Jane Lubchenco is a marine ecologist. One who makes up things about climate.
Unqualified and a liar.
The perfect appointee for NOAA.
Expect only the worst from NOAA during her tenure.
It will be political, manipulative and agenda driven without integity.
Paul Coppin (03:17:07):
“Theory”, especially, is not at all understood by the lay public (and “hypothesis” is largely unknown). Had scientists been more rigorous about the correct use of the terms in the context of AGW, it may not have become the “settled science” it has become. It’s time, even in popular science writing, to bring the level of comprehension up to the level necessary for a proper understanding of science, not to bury the science in the mud of common language.
I agree with this statement, which doesn’t mean that I agree or disagree with the remainder of your post.
Hypothesis is the term used for a provisional solution to a problem that has arisen from observation of nature. A hypothesis can be false of true; however, it must be in concordance with the observed phenomena. Hypotheses must to be submitted to verification (falseability) through the known methodology; experimentation and/or sustained observation of the phenomenon (repeatability) if experimentation is not possible, for instance.
Theory, on the other hand, is a hypothesis which has been proven to be true through sustained observation and/or experimentation, at least over one space. Theories are subject to change through observation of similar phenomena. There could be theories which have been proven false through time. Sometimes, the subjects of those disproved theories have changed over time; sometimes the methodology which had lead us to accept them as true was flawed, biased or simply wrongly conducted.
Finally, an assertion which has not been cropped up from careful observation of natural events and/or experimentation is guess. A guess is comparable to idea. It’s the first step of pseudoscientific methodology, while observation is the first step of systematic methodology.
AGW idea, for example, is not new. It surged some 3500 years ago, into Uruk culture. After that, it was brought to Judeo-Christian culture some 2000 years ago (Revelation or Apocalypses), although the main cause of warming was not the CO2, but the sins of humans. The latent idea was there, waiting for somebody adapted it to the modern knowledge by replacing the sinful cause by a technical or quasi-scientific cause, but always with human beings as the main propitiators behind the roast. Once an idea has been constructed, its perpetrators look for evidence which gives support to their guess and limits or dismiss any observations against their idea transforming it into an irrefutable hypothesis. Science works exactly on the opposite.
And what makes you think the impact on human populations, even in North American where human numbers were very low and nomadic, was benign?
Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? Sparse, nomadic, non-technological cultures were far more prone to severe disruption by small environmental changes than man in his modern context. Nowadays, if there’s a drought in a given area in the US, no one starves as a result. Maybe a slight increase in food prices (or not).
@Pierre Gosselin (09:04:02)
I admire your son’s courage. Teachers are no better than anyone else in that they will find ways to retaliate with those who disagree with them or challenge their authority.
Is AGW a theory or hypothesis? Try and start that thread on RC and see what you’ll get! Mostly you’ll get a lot of angry responses saying ‘neither, it’s a fact’!
Regardless, AGW (through greenhouse gases) still testable and falsifiable. Dr. Weinstein has outlined 6 predictions that can be tested. The data shows that AGW fails the tests and is invalid.
The survival or earth is not a weather report…
This was an important topic and would have been relevant information in 1935. In 2009, we need to focus on damage control from ignoring all warnings since then.
I know we live in a world where a weather report can win you a noble prize… But our gluttonous misuse of finite resources (fossil fuels, bio resources and water) is and always has been the problem.
Data, theories, politics leave so much room for interpretation and misleading errors… making us question everything and divert efforts from resolving the real problems with tangible and obtainable goals.
Regardless of our chicken egg debate over ‘warming’… the more we punish this planet and its people, the more we will suffer and the harder it will become to reverse what we have done.
In the big picture:
Air and water pollution are the contributing factors to the premature death of 1/3 the worlds population.
Over 90% of the ocean is contaminated with chemicals that hold 95% of all life on earth.
Only 5% of the worlds waters is drinkable and 1,000’s of miles away from 85% of the worlds population.
And those 85% live in arid nations with only 5% of the worlds resources and nutrients to sustain them.
When they have depleted their land of the oil, ores and essential minerals… we have to be there to offer salvation, hope and solutions.
Under the BEST scenario this is a 50 year timeline that I am not looking forward to living through if we stay on our current path.
We must end this ‘worrying about the weather’ and focus, together on a cure for our planet and its people.
Peak Oil, Water, Gas, Coal and Uranium… Peak prosperity?
Trust me, we are sweating the small stuff. Ironically if we focus on fixing the ‘big ticket’ items we inadvertently fix the secondary problems (CO2, fossil fuels, globalwarming), but it does not work the other way around.
I thoroughly enjoy reading this blog and greatly appreciate all the contributor efforts and I am only posting these ‘absolutes’ for readers to understand that our efforts are about more than just ‘debating the weather’.
Thanks,
Christopher Haase
juan (17:11:59):
Nasif Nahle
“Uh! Oh! Would you be so kind as to brief me also on how to avoid ad hominem attacks and not getting anger before ad homs? :)”
My late father would recommend the example of the Missouri farmer who was kicked by his mule. He considered the source and went on with his work….l
Wise advice that of your late dad… Next time I’ll look who the mule was… Heh! 🙂
Dhogaza 6 10 39
Thank you for your post but you seem to be arguing with me rather than against me, as seemed to be your intention.
I have posted here many times on history whereby man has suffered extreme heat. Extreme cold. Droughts, and every condition in between.
I have posted the climate references of the Byzantine empire who have commented on Ice bergs hitting the walls of Constantinople and discussed the irrigation systems they set up as fertile land turned to desert in extreme drought. Both Al Gore (Earth in the balance 1992) and Dr Iain Stewart (BBC Climate wars 2008) have agreed we have been this way before. Their slant on the argument being that we need to be aware of the past if we are causing climate to change. Else we end up in the same boat.
The list of civilisations overwhelmed by excessive heat or cold is impressive (although generally we do better in warmth than cold).
The following link describes some of these
http://www.truthout.org/article/the-climate-man-the-curse-akkad
“ Weiss first published his theory, in the journal Science, in August, 1993. Since then, the list of cultures whose demise has been linked to climate change has continued to grow. They include the Classic Mayan civilization, which collapsed at the height of its development, around 800 A.D.; the Tiwanaku civilization, which thrived near Lake Titicaca, in the Andes, for more than a millennium, then disintegrated around 1100 A.D.; and the Old Kingdom of Egypt, which collapsed around the same time as the Akkadian empire. (In an account eerily reminiscent of “The Curse of Akkad,” the Egyptian sage Ipuwer described the anguish of the period: “Lo, the desert claims the land. Towns are ravaged. . . . Food is lacking. . . . Ladies suffer like maidservants. Lo, those who were entombed are cast on high grounds.”) “
One of the most famous civilisations who disappeared into the dust was Akkad –referred to above. This is the curse.
For the first time since cities were built and founded,
The great agricultural tracts produced no grain,
The inundated tracts produced no fish,
The irrigated orchards produced neither syrup nor wine,
The gathered clouds did not rain, the masgurum did not grow.
At that time, one shekel’s worth of oil was only one-half quart,
One shekel’s worth of grain was only one-half quart. . . .
These sold at such prices in the markets of all the cities!
He who slept on the roof, died on the roof,
He who slept in the house, had no burial,
People were flailing at themselves from hunger.
It is said that the collapse of great civilisatiions- and that even the greatest kings are mortal- inspired Shelley;
OZYMANDIAS
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.[1]
Now the point of this preamble is that throughout our history civilisations come and go through various forms of climate change, and this is the normal state- not the exception. I asked RW to look at the greater scheme of things when suggesting he might like to put our present age into a wider historic context. In this respect we need to ask ourselves what is normal and what is extreme?
Clearly such events as the MWP, Roman warm periods and the various other events extreme enough to cause the demise of civilisations- whether through heat or cold- are extreme cases. That the extremes of the MWP that brought the Vikings to prominence then caused their demise when their sea lanes iced up in the LIA is an irony not lost on us. So where do we sit at present in all this?
We are barely above the warmer periods of the LIA, but somewhat below the warmer bits of the MWP. So is this modern era normal, or are we in transition to another climate state that is outside of the normal variables? Is that transition state to warmth or cold-we are hovering in between.
Forgive the long preamble but it is so I can make several points in context.
The first is that clearly our current climate state is not ‘unprecedented’ and it does not help the discussion when this over used word is so often trotted out.
Secondly, as co2 is said to have been at a constant concentration of 280 before we increased it, how have these extremes existed without co2 as the powerful climate driver it is said to be? (We have previously had discussions on orbits and precessions etc to try to explain past extremes).
That such extremes could happen would seem to suggest co2 is at best a weak driver and that consequently it can not cause the future chaos predicted. The logarithmic nature of co2 would seem to suggest that increasing co2 markedly could cause a small temperature increase (well within natural variability) which I have never attempted to disagree with as that would seem to follow the laws of physics as we currently understand them.
However to get to the extreme increases suggested we have come to rely on computer models (which the IPCC say are unreliable) and the need to subscribe to all sorts of unobserved and extravagant ‘feedbacks.’
Personally, I think it would greatly assist an intelligent discussion if everyone agreed that we have been this way before and nothing is currently unprecedented. Then the warmists can put their case as to why they believe it’s different this time round, and how co2 is a more powerful climate driver than past evidence would seem to suggest.
We can then concentrate on the science rather than the history lessons and discuss the real effect of co2 as a greenhouse gas and attempt to justify the extraordinary impact of the claimed feedbacks that greatly multiply the logarithmic increase of temperature we would reasonably expect to see.
Instead we are at a stage where we have scientists refusing to release information, models that are being used as proof when they are nothing of the sort, a weak understanding of the effect of clouds which consist of the most abundant greenhouse gas on the Earth, set against the highly politicised background of the IPCC where various reviewers disagree vehemently with things written under their name.
Tonyb
Christoper
I do not disagree with much of what you wrote. Do you read Bjorn Lomberg? He believes-like me- that we have many very urgent things to worry about and they can be solved more readily if we didnt place so much emphasis on something that is as yet unproven to be as catastrophic as the things we currently know need fixing.
We also need to recognise that we are making things worse than they need to be and somewhere somehow the world needs to be educated to reduce its population.
Tonyb
I just spent my lunch hour working with the UAH MSU temperature data…Comparing the Stratosphere to the Troposphere.
While linear trends over the entire satellite record do indicated a tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling trend; a more detailed review shows that the Troposphere and Stratosphere have rarely behaved in a manner consistent with greenhouse warming. The apparent linear trends from 1979-2009 are largely the result of three major climate disruptions. The first two most affected the Stratosphere: The eruptions of the El Chichón (1982) and Mt. Pinatubo (1991) volcanoes. The third most affected the Troposphere: The 1997-1998 El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The volcanic eruptions caused short term cooling in the Troposphere and very significant short-term warming events in the Stratosphere.
Prior to El Chichón (Dec. 1978 – Jan. 1982), the Troposphere warmed while the Stratosphere cooled…This is the only time period of the UAH MSU data that showed a “greenhouse signature.
During the El Chichón disruption (Jan. 1982 – June 1984), the Troposphere and Stratosphere had linear cooling trends.
Between El Chichón and Pinatubo (June 1984 – June 1990) the Troposphere and Stratosphere had linear cooling trends.
During and just after the Pinatubo disruption (June 1990- June 1944), the Troposphere and Stratosphere had linear cooling trends.
In the run-up to the major ENSO event (June 1994 – June 1997), the Troposphere and Stratosphere had linear cooling trends.
During the 1997-1998 ENSO (June 1997 – June 1999), the Troposphere actually had a linear cooling trend; while the Stratosphere had a slight warming trend.
Between the end of the ENSO and the onset of oceanic cooling in 2003 (June 1999 – Dec. 2003), the Troposphere and Stratosphere both had warming trends.
Since the onset of oceanic cooling (Jan. 2003 – Apr. 2009), the Troposphere and Stratosphere have had cooling trends…With almost identical slopes.
It’ll take me a while to convert these graphs to Jpeg’s and upload them to Photobucket…I’ll post links after I upload those images.
Over the ~30-year satellite record, the Stratosphere has rarely cooled as the Troposphere warmed. I can only find that essential “greenhouse signature” in about 10% of the data.
I’m sure there must be a Ptolemaic explanation for this discrepancy.
Here are the links to the JPEG’s of the Excel graphs…
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/00_DEC_1978_APR_2009.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/01_DEC_1978_JAN_1982.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/02_JAN_1982_JUN_1984.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/03_JUN_1984_JUN_1990.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/04_JUN_1990_JUN_1994.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/05_JUN_1994_JUN_1997.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/06_JUN_1997_JUN_1999.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/07_JUN_1999_DEC_2003.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/08_JAN_2003_APR_2009.jpg
It’s fairly obvious that the strong Stratosphere-warming volcanic events early in the record (1982 and 1991) and the strong Troposphere-warming event later in the record (1997-1998 ENSO) create an “illusion” of a long-term greenhouse signature…Despite the fact that a clear greenhouse signature only exists in the first three years of the satellite record.
The Spam filter may have just intercepted the JPEG links.
Scepticism is a hugely important characteristic, deployed correctly it forms a crucial part of the scientific method.
Dr Weinstein’s second hyperlink is to a document hosted by ‘ff.org’, AKA the Frontiers of Freedom’ foundation. His third takes us to http://www.worldclimatereport.com and a document with the banner headline ‘World Climate Report’.
Odd then, that over at the Air Vent is the assertion …
I don’t have any idea who the Frontier Foundation and World Climate Report are
Anybody else ‘sceptical’ about the Doctor’s powers of investigation?
“Please read the start of my email before jumping in. I was being self deprecating about me -not you.”
Yes, that was quite clear.
“We were talking about April and May, so not unreasonably I gave figures for those months and gave ‘trends’ in that limited context for those months, so there is really no point in complaining that the figures are irrelevant-they are relevant for the point we were discussing, but not if you then want to go off at a tangent.”
You made a number of factually incorrect claims about April and May, and then made statements about trends that could not be made based on the data you were referring to.
“Also, please check your facts before saying that 1989 was one of the three warmest winters. try 1833 as number three. A far as I am aware 1833 is before the 1900’s.”
I already gave the link to the actual data. You provide no links to back your claims. The warmest three winters in the CET record are 1869, 1834, and 1989. 1833 is in fact 160th. I don’t know what you hope to achieve by yet again making statements that are trivially shown to be false but I find it pretty irritating, I have to say.
“I said there were plenty of hot summers back then as there are now”
And I showed you, with reference to the actual data, that hot summers have in fact been markedly more frequent in recent years.
“I surely don’t need to define the LIA to you do I RW?”
You have so far proved unable to. What exactly does the term mean to you?
“Temperatures have marginally increased overall since the LIA -which is hardly surprising.”
Once again, terms such as ‘marginally’ are meaningless unless you define what you mean. Why would it be hardly surprising?
“If you want to argue that they are rising catastropically in an unprecedented manner I look forward to your graph and your citations.”
Definitions yet again, Tony. Please learn that meaningful discussion is impossible without them. At the moment you seem to have no inkling that this is the case. What do you mean by ‘catastrophically’? What do you mean by ‘unprecedented’?