Left to Right: Dr. Gavin Schmidt (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), Dr. Paul Knappenberger (President of the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum), Dr. Wally Broecker (Columbia University), and Dr. Ray Pierrehumbert (University of Chicago) pose for a photo after the first of the Global Climate Change forum. Forum I was held at the Adler Planetarium.
From Roger Pielke Jr.’s blog.
Two Decades of No Warming, Consistent With . . .
Over at Real Climate they are busy giving climate skeptics reason to cheer:
We hypothesize that the established pre-1998 trend is the true forced warming signal, and that the climate system effectively overshot this signal in response to the 1997/98 El Niño. This overshoot is in the process of radiatively dissipating, and the climate will return to its earlier defined, greenhouse gas-forced warming signal. If this hypothesis is correct, the era of consistent record-breaking global mean temperatures will not resume until roughly 2020.
Imagine, twenty-two or more years (1998 to ~2020) of no new global temperature record. What would that do to the debate?
Real Climate does say something very smart in the piece (emphasis added):
Nature (with hopefully some constructive input from humans) will decide the global warming question based upon climate sensitivity, net radiative forcing, and oceanic storage of heat, not on the type of multi-decadal time scale variability we are discussing here. However, this apparent impulsive behavior explicitly highlights the fact that humanity is poking a complex, nonlinear system with GHG forcing – and that there are no guarantees to how the climate may respond.
As I’ve argued many times, uncertainty is a far batter reason for justifying action than overhyped claims to certainty, or worse, claims that any possible behavior of the climate system is somehow “consistent with” expectations. Policy makers and the public can handle uncertainty, its the nonsense they have trouble with.
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Hair is composed primarily of proteins (88%). These proteins are of a hard fibrous type known as keratin. Keratin protein is comprised of what we call “polypeptide chains.” These chains are broken down by global warming. In the picture it is evident that the north polar regions of Gavin have been seriously effected by the lowering of the polypeptide chain area and extent. I also have been a victim of this pernicious assault on my northern region. With the anticipated cooling, perhaps we may see increased area and extent of pate polypeptide chains.
Here’s hoping,
Mike
PS I hope this doesn’t kill any polar bears…
This reminds me of a movie I saw one time about a baseball pitcher named “Alibi Ike”
Twenty-twenty used to mean acute vision, now it’s used to disguise Myopia.
In the words of the late and much lamented Douglas Adams:
Keep banging the rocks together, guys!
and as for Co2 -> Mostly Harmless!
Kyoto must have worked after all!!! We’re all saved and Algore gets the credit! We should give him another Peace Prize!!
Parody works better than straight argument with these guys.
“…there are no guarantees to how the climate may respond.”
What’s that? Don’t your models tell you?
Ashby Lynch (12:35:06) :
“Interesting thing is that the air can’t heat the water. Even if there is a significant gradient, the difference in the specific heat of air (.001J/(cm3*K)) and water (4.8J/(cm3*K)) dictates that no meaningful amount of heat can be transported from air to water. […]”
Interestingly, I would say the same must apply to rock/asphalt/concrete (what is the specific heat of these?). So I guess air can hardly heat these materials directly. But these materials are also less effective in heating air, as there is no evaporation of significance taking place. So in this case the IR absorption/emission of the CO2 molecules might indeed be of some consequence. (please correct me if I’m wrong here)
But what about plants? I’ve read somewhere in the past year that plants were found to control the temperature of their leaves, that they always try to keep it around a certain temperature, no matter what the weather.
So a similar evaporation effect as with the oceans might also be in effect here, complete with the “warmer air can contain more H2O and thus can suck more heat from the plants, rather than warming them” analogy.
How much of the landmass was covered by vegetation again?
And does snow/ice not have the ability to sublimate, too?
Tamino said, “A recent post on RealClimate explores a new approach to understanding some of the natural variability in the climate system.”
What? Natural variability? The warmers have for years insisted that most of the temperature change (warming) is due to greenhouse gases, and now dare to mention variability. It may be new on RC, but it has not been new elsewhere.
So they have overshooting. Let us see some error bars on that – should go sky-high. Where is the peer-reviewed study that supports this? The sun was even mentioned. What will the IPCC do with this?
George E. Smith (14:12:00) :
“[…]
That radiation from the atmospheric air, goes in all directions so only about half of it is directed downwards towards the surface;
[…]”
Given, on the large scale, the planet is a globe, I’d say it’s less than half. Or is the atmosphere too thin to even notice the difference?
Looks like Gavin overshot himselfs foot.
The Team is having doubts; preparing for a change of climate 🙂
Weather not climate:
Here in Ottawa, Canada, we are having an overnight low of 8 centigrade. This time of teh year, we should have our ACs on and be having sleepless, sweltering nights.
George E. Smith @14:12:00
Good discussion there George. For most readers, the odd switch between Joules and Calories as quantities of energy may be a bit confusing. There are 4.18 Joules in a calorie.
Alternate caption for photo above.
Climate mastery… the Final Frontier. These are the continuing voyages of the starship RealClimate. Her ongoing mission: to explore strange new hypotheses, to seek out endangered life forms and new statistical procedures, to boldly go where science has not gone before.
[snip]
Now which movie with Jack Nicholson does this presentation of doctors remind me of? There will be no prices for the right answer.
Jordan (13:21:21)
Jordan, I always find I’m up against a bit of a brick wall with the trend line thingy, as the AGWers always choose the depth of the Little Ice Age as their start point.
After being criticized for pointing to satellite temps for the past 30 years, out comes the “but look since 1850!!” as if it were a game winner.
I then state “Well, why cherry pick that period, after all you accused me of cherry picking. Let’s look at 1000 years, or 7000 years”.
Such is the vile deception of the evil AGWers – and I mean that seriously, folks. The scare-mongers are profiting from this. They don’t believe it themselves. See the subject of this post, where the RC Team are simply developing the message to counter new attacks.
Al Gore is Elmer Gantry.
This Global Warming Parrot is not dead.
He’s just sleepin’ . . . you know, shagged out after a long, loud squawk.
Beautiful plumage on the Gorons.
It is very dangerous for the AGWers to discuss “natural variability”. They are obliged to dismiss natural variability because the come-back argument is “if the current cooling is just natural variability, then perhaps the previous warming was as well”.
There is no come-back to that argument. I think we are witnessing the slow collapse of “The Science”.
by Tamino in open mind ….quote
“I’m especially skeptical of the suggestion that we may be beginning an extended “plateau” of temperature change.”
wellcome.
They used the wrong term. The 1997 – 98 spike was overshoot. What they are trying to say is, the current cool is undershoot, not overshoot. The truth is, it’s not possible to declare the current downward trend undershoot. It may be the beginning of a much larger drop. Of course at its bottom there may be undershoot.
The Evil Tamino said (apparently):
I’m especially vexed by the perception by so many that there’s “proof” that “global warming has stopped.”
It appears he confuses “facts” and “proof”.
Darn, does this all mean I’ve got to postpone my “ice free Arctic” cruise?
I am disappointed by the tone here. Ad hom, mockery, and general piling on directed at RC when they really should be commended for posting that potentially controversial (to them) article and allowing the subsequent discussion.
When did it the pacific ocean heat more than usual, before 1997-98 el nino.
As after H.Svensmark
Influence of Cosmic Rays on Earth’s Climate
VOLUME 81, NUMBER 22 PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 30 NOVEMBER 1998 Influence of Cosmic Rays on Earth’s Climate Henrik Svensmark* Solar-Terristrial Physics Division, Danish Metorological Institute, Lyngbyve
http://hep.physics.indiana.edu/~rickv/quarknet/article2.pdf
It was during low clouds cover 1989-1992 (Fig.1 in cited paper), coincidental with higher 1989 march and september solar flares:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/05/07/a-reminder-to-us-flyspecks-on-an-elephants-butt/
Here’s another major admission (5th line in quotes from RC) from dem folks at RC.. looks like their own are turning on them LOL
[Response: Wayne, please note that this is Kyle’s article not mine, though I did encourage him to write it for us. I think the interesting question raised (though not definitively answered) by this line of work is the extent to which some of the pause in warming mid-century might have been more due to decadal ocean variability rather than aerosols than is commonly thought. If that is the case, then a pause or temporary reduction in warming rate could recur even if aerosols are unchanged. Learning how to detect and interpret such things is important, lest a temporary pause be confused with evidence for low climate sensitivity. –raypierre]