UPDATED: This opinion piece from Professor Henrik Svensmark was published September 9th in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Originally the translation was from Google translation with some post translation cleanup of jumbled words or phrases by myself. Now as of Sept 12, the translation is by Nigel Calder. Hat tip to Carsten Arnholm of Norway for bringing this to my attention and especially for translation facilitation by Ágúst H Bjarnason – Anthony
Translation approved by Henrik Svensmark
While the Sun sleeps
Henrik Svensmark, Professor, Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen
“In fact global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth – quite the contrary. And this means that the projections of future climate are unreliable,” writes Henrik Svensmark.
The star that keeps us alive has, over the last few years, been almost free of sunspots, which are the usual signs of the Sun’s magnetic activity. Last week [4 September 2009] the scientific team behind the satellite SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) reported, “It is likely that the current year’s number of blank days will be the longest in about 100 years.” Everything indicates that the Sun is going into some kind of hibernation, and the obvious question is what significance that has for us on Earth.
If you ask the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which represents the current consensus on climate change, the answer is a reassuring “nothing”. But history and recent research suggest that is probably completely wrong. Why? Let’s take a closer look.
Solar activity has always varied. Around the year 1000, we had a period of very high solar activity, which coincided with the Medieval Warm Period. It was a time when frosts in May were almost unknown – a matter of great importance for a good harvest. Vikings settled in Greenland and explored the coast of North America. On the whole it was a good time. For example, China’s population doubled in this period.
But after about 1300 solar activity declined and the world began to get colder. It was the beginning of the episode we now call the Little Ice Age. In this cold time, all the Viking settlements in Greenland disappeared. Sweden surprised Denmark by marching across the ice, and in London the Thames froze repeatedly. But more serious were the long periods of crop failures, which resulted in poorly nourished populations, reduced in Europe by about 30 per cent because of disease and hunger.
It’s important to realise that the Little Ice Age was a global event. It ended in the late 19th Century and was followed by increasing solar activity. Over the past 50 years solar activity has been at its highest since the medieval warmth of 1000 years ago. But now it appears that the Sun has changed again, and is returning towards what solar scientists call a “grand minimum” such as we saw in the Little Ice Age.
The match between solar activity and climate through the ages is sometimes explained away as coincidence. Yet it turns out that, almost no matter when you look and not just in the last 1000 years, there is a link. Solar activity has repeatedly fluctuated between high and low during the past 10,000 years. In fact the Sun spent about 17 per cent of those 10,000 years in a sleeping mode, with a cooling Earth the result.
You may wonder why the international climate panel IPCC does not believe that the Sun’s changing activity affects the climate. The reason is that it considers only changes in solar radiation. That would be the simplest way for the Sun to change the climate – a bit like turning up and down the brightness of a light bulb.
Satellite measurements have shown that the variations of solar radiation are too small to explain climate change. But the panel has closed its eyes to another, much more powerful way for the Sun to affect Earth’s climate. In 1996 we discovered a surprising influence of the Sun – its impact on Earth’s cloud cover. High-energy accelerated particles coming from exploded stars, the cosmic rays, help to form clouds.
When the Sun is active, its magnetic field is better at shielding us against the cosmic rays coming from outer space, before they reach our planet. By regulating the Earth’s cloud cover, the Sun can turn the temperature up and down. High solar activity means fewer clouds and and a warmer world. Low solar activity and poorer shielding against cosmic rays result in increased cloud cover and hence a cooling. As the Sun’s magnetism doubled in strength during the 20th century, this natural mechanism may be responsible for a large part of global warming seen then.
That also explains why most climate scientists try to ignore this possibility. It does not favour their idea that the 20th century temperature rise was mainly due to human emissions of CO2. If the Sun provoked a significant part of warming in the 20th Century, then the contribution by CO2 must necessarily be smaller.
Ever since we put forward our theory in 1996, it has been subjected to very sharp criticism, which is normal in science.
First it was said that a link between clouds and solar activity could not be correct, because no physical mechanism was known. But in 2006, after many years of work, we completed experiments at DTU Space that demonstrated the existence of a physical mechanism. The cosmic rays help to form aerosols, which are the seeds for cloud formation.
Then came the criticism that the mechanism we found in the laboratory could not work in the real atmosphere, and therefore had no practical significance. We have just rejected that criticism emphatically.
It turns out that the Sun itself performs what might be called natural experiments. Giant solar eruptions can cause the cosmic ray intensity on earth to dive suddenly over a few days. In the days following an eruption, cloud cover can fall by about 4 per cent. And the amount of liquid water in cloud droplets is reduced by almost 7 per cent. Here is a very large effect – indeed so great that in popular terms the Earth’s clouds originate in space.
So we have watched the Sun’s magnetic activity with increasing concern, since it began to wane in the mid-1990s.
That the Sun might now fall asleep in a deep minimum was suggested by solar scientists at a meeting in Kiruna in Sweden two years ago. So when Nigel Calder and I updated our book The Chilling Stars, we wrote a little provocatively that “we are advising our friends to enjoy global warming while it lasts.”
In fact global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning. Mojib Latif from the University of Kiel argued at the recent UN World Climate Conference in Geneva that the cooling may continue through the next 10 to 20 years. His explanation was a natural change in the North Atlantic circulation, not in solar activity. But no matter how you interpret them, natural variations in climate are making a comeback.
The outcome may be that the Sun itself will demonstrate its importance for climate and so challenge the theories of global warming. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth – quite the contrary. And this means that the projections of future climate are unreliable. A forecast saying it may be either warmer or colder for 50 years is not very useful, and science is not yet able to predict solar activity.
So in many ways we stand at a crossroads. The near future will be extremely interesting. I think it is important to accept that Nature pays no heed to what we humans think about it. Will the greenhouse theory survive a significant cooling of the Earth? Not in its current dominant form. Unfortunately, tomorrow’s climate challenges will be quite different from the greenhouse theory’s predictions. Perhaps it will become fashionable again to investigate the Sun’s impact on our climate.
–
Professor Henrik Svensmark is director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at DTU Space. His book The Chilling Stars has also been published in Danish as Klima og Kosmos Gads Forlag, DK ISBN 9788712043508)
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Bill:
This is getting very silly. You write to me:
“Richard S Courtney (09:59:43) :
Joel Shaw is asking you to provide evidence of your assertion that the younger dryas was global.
I have shown that it did not extend to the antarctic ice sheet.
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/6826/iceage040kkq1.jpg
Data from vostok / gisp
You obviosly have evidence to back your claim from elsewhere. Please may we see it?”
I CITED IT WHEN I MENTIONED IT.
I wrote (see above):
“Transition between glacial and interglacial states consists as a series of rapid ‘flickers’ between the glacial and interglacial states until the global climate remains fixed in one of the two states. And the rate of temperature change during the transition of a ‘flicker’ is much higher than 0.1 C/century. The Younger Drias is one such ‘flicker’ event.
Please see
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/data4.html
for an account of the Younger Drias from a source you may be willing to accept.
That account says;
“The end of the Younger Dryas, about 11,500 years ago, was particularly abrupt. In Greenland, temperatures rose 10° C (18° F) in a decade (Figure 6; Cuffey and Clow, 1997).”
Is it necessary to point out to you that “10° C (18° F) in a decade” is much much more than “0.1 C/century”?
And that account also says:
“The Younger Dryas is clearly observable in paleoclimate records from many parts of the world”
so please do not try the usual ‘warmist excuse’ that historic temperature changes were not global.”
If you and Joel Shaw had bothered to read that item then you would have read this extract:
“The Younger Dryas is clearly observable in paleoclimate records from many parts of the world. In the Cariaco Basin north of Venezuela, for example, temperatures decreased about 3°C (5.5°F), although some of this cooling might have been due to greater upwelling of colder subsurface water (Lea et al., 2003). In many parts of the Northern Hemisphere tropics, conditions also became drier (Hughen et al., 2000; Wang et al., 2001). The story in Antarctica is somewhat different, however. The ice core record at Dome C (Figure 6) shows that climate changes in Antarctica were out-of-phase with those in the Northern Hemisphere (EPICA, 2004). At Dome C, the amount of the hydrogen isotope called deuterium, expressed here as δD, is proportional to temperature. The deuterium record indicates that, contrary to the Northern Hemisphere records, temperatures were relatively low prior to the Younger Dryas (a period called the Antarctic Cold Reversal) and rose during the Younger Dryas.”
Please note the following.
(a) Venezuela is not and then was not in the Northern Hemisphere.
and
(b) the Antarctic has been warming through the twentieth century but nobody claims there was not global warming in the twentieth century because of that.
“Global climate change” does not mean that everywhere changes in the same way and at the same rate. The Younger Dryas was global in the same way that twentieth century warming was global: i.e. the Anratarctic responded differently.
I now understand why you and Joel Shore ignore everything I write and respond to all my points with AGW-mantra. Sorry, but it is not in power to help you with your reading difficulties.
Richard
Bill:
A correction.
In my anger I wrongly wrote “Venezuela is not and then was not in the Northern Hemisphere”.
It is, just.
Sorry.
Richard
The text gives 3 examples of Younger Dryas event
Greenland (from plot) gives -20C dip
Cariaco Basin -4C dip (some possibly due to cold water upwelling)
Dome C rising temp
“Scientists have hypothesized that meltwater floods reduced the salinity and density of the surface ocean in the North Atlantic, causing a reduction in the ocean’s thermohaline circulation and climate changes around the world. Eventually, as the meltwater flux abated, the thermohaline circulation strengthened again and climate recovered. ”
This sounds like a NH cooling event (caused by change in thermohaline circ?) that cooled the globe progressively less toward the south.
Unless you have more data from other areas the YD seems to be NH
“The Younger Dryas is clearly observable in paleoclimate records from many parts of the world. ”
My 2 cents
(A) This text from the paper seems to suggest it was a global phenomenon.
(B) The Antarctic currently is not showing the same warming that rest of the world is, which is similar to the YD.
and
(C) I seem to recall reading some where that the thermohaline may not work the way we all were taught as children, which means that this theory of the causes of the YD will have to be revisited and revised. . Hmmmm, I know I’ve seen that peer reviewed bit of science somewhere….
Smokey says:
Actually, if you read the post following the one I wrote, you would know that my post was submitted in error prematurely and what you are quoting are actually words of Richard’s that I had copied in to respond to. But what I was going to say in response to Richard was this:
As for your rantings in your post of 01:39:21, I find the irony pretty rich when you talk about trying to “oppose the perversion of science by political activity”. Do you seriously believe that it is the National Academy of Sciences, the analogous bodies in all 12 of the other G8+5 nations, the AAAS, etc. who are perverting science and it is only the brave souls at right-wing think-tanks like the Heartland Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute, CATO, etc. who are fighting this perversion!?! That is certainly a bizarre view of the world.
And, yes, Smokey, I agree that there are environmental groups on the Left (although to label them “Marxist” is ludicrous) that are involved in this issue too. However, the difference between you “skeptics” and those of us in the mainstream scientific community is that you guys are essentially relying on the right-wing think-tanks and their small coterie of scientists, whereas we are not quoting Greenpeace or Sierra Club but actual prestigious scientific organizations.
Richard,
I am willing to be educated on the issue of whether some of these fast climate changes really involved large changes in the global temperature or whether they were just large shifts in heat from one location to another. (And, in fact, I am not sure if the science is totally settled on this.) But, just saying that there were large climate changes in different parts of the world doesn’t tell me much in regards to what the global temperature did, particularly when it seems some places cooled and others warmed.
anna v says:
I don’t think there is yet evidence that the PDO has anything in particular to do with global temperatures. Most of downward trend in temperatures measured over a few years is on account of the La Nina that we just had. And, the sort of logic that says that CO2 contribution is weak if the trend can be downward over periods of several years is precisely the same as the claim that the seasonal cycle must be weak if we can have a weeklong period here in Rochester where the temperature trend is up instead the expected down trend. It is simply a lack of understanding of how a system with a linear (or approximately linear) trend on longtime scales and noise on shorter time scales behaves.
Stefan says:
Well, lots of people are very worried about this. And, what is known about nonlinear systems is that applying a forcing to them makes it more likely that one will induce such a shift. This is the whole concept of tipping points. Of course, climate skeptics generally don’t believe in tipping points because they don’t like science that would argue for the necessity to constrain our emissions. Better to believe that the only way the climate can flip suddenly is completely spontaneously and so there is nothing we can do about it. (Or that the only way it would flip is through induced cooling…or whatever we can come up with that avoids facing the possibility that we should reduce our emissions.)
Richard S Courtney:
Thanks for your reply. It was quite gracious since – re-reading your earlier blogs, you comprehensively pre-empted my sermon on non-equilibrium systems, attractors and oscillations in your 15/09 posting (10:04:40).
Your point is correct, Science is in a deep epistemological crisis. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge – that many readers are unfamiliar with this term underlines the point. We are deluged with data, but the philosophical structure, discipline and world-view needed to make sense of it are in much shorter supply. It is far too easy – trivially easy – for “scientific” information and data to be subverted to any and every political agenda, and narratives generated to suit the required end result.
In this context the work of Carl Popper has urgent authority. I was amazed to read recently a warmist blogger openly attacking Popper saying “science got on fine without him before and will again”. He at least realized (perhaps subconsciously) that the full implications of Poppers main theories of scientific process actually kill stone cold dead the entire edifice of the CO2 global warming proposition. Not the hypothesis – by the way – the greenhouse scenario is valid as a hypothesis – but the way that it is being argued and validated, is anti-Popperian and scientifically flawed.
In his book Conjectures and Refutations Popper established two rules for scientific inquiry into the reality of things. They are:
(1) A hypothesis must be falsifiable if it is to be considered scientific,
(2) The scientific process of evidence gathering and argument must be deductive and not inductive.
It is the high-priestly status of computer modelling in the AGW proposition that totally abrogates Poppers rules. It is semi-detached from reality and evades in an eel-like manner any attempt to be tied down to objectively falsifiable tests – it just recodes and re-phrases. And what could be more inductive than computer predictive modelling – building assumption on assumption to the nth degree. Poppers requirement for deductive reasoning – keeping paths between observed fact and interpretation as short as possible – is based on a humility that is abundantly justified by the reality that many or most natural systems have non-equilibrium chaotic complexity that demands such humility and parsimony – in this his theories were prescient and ahead of their time.
Linear logic: if A then B; if B then C; if C then D; if D then E etc….
Structured logic: if A AND if B AND if C AND if D then: WORD
Joel Shore (18:35:47) “[…] the difference between you “skeptics” and those of us in the mainstream scientific community is that you guys are essentially relying on the right-wing think-tanks and […]”
Wo– completely lost me there. Drop some assumptions.
Re: Phlogiston (19:13:04)
You explain the reason why our society is in steep decline.
I can understand the feeling that many will find AGW “inconvenient” to their way of life, and their ego attachment to material comfort will 100% blind them to facts. I understand that.
And for me, I’ve wrestled with the problems of ego for a decade or more. See, I take up spiritual practices, like Zen, and so you’re faced with rather subtle problems about ego and motivation. One of the hard problems, and nobody as far as I know has solved this one, is how do you tell if the teacher who’s supposed to be guiding you out of your own ego, isn’t him or herself at the effect of their ego?
It is a tough one, because the teacher can always say, “you’re just a selfish individual attached to your ego! and that’s why you won’t do what I say!” The teacher always has that ace, and can always use it. But how do you know that he or she isn’t just manipulating you for their own egoic needs?
This is what I’ve usually found quite naive about the AGW argument that big business and Western consumers are just willfully ignoring “evidence”. If you want to accuse people of selfish motivations, first start by showing that you are not selfish. First start by showing that you are not biased. First demonstrate that you are not influenced by subjective and cultural fashions.
Scientists are supposed to practice the scientific method. But the real world is messy and complicated, and good data is hard to come by, so whilst objective facts are available, how they are interpreted is up to the scientists, and that my friend, is a subjective judgement influenced to some extent by culture. And so when people say there has been a consensus by peer review, what that says is that there has been a great deal of peer pressure and group think. Now the group think might turn out to be right anyway, or it might turn out to be spectacularly wrong.
Don’t pretend that those who disagree only do so out of selfishness. You’re a human being too. Don’t pretend that a consensus proves truth, consensus is a social dynamic, and is not in itself an objective fact or data.
And yes, I am just as human as you.
As for tipping points, how many things do you think could induce a tipping point? Or is it only CO2?
Bill:
Believe whatever you want. That is your right. But reality is what it is.
And reality is not affected by what you, Joel Shore, me, or anybody else chooses to believe.
Science is the method we use to to try to try to understand reality.
Clearly, you and Joel Shore do not understand the difference between scientific understanding and faith. Please read my response to Stefan’s question that I posted above a couple of day ago and is timed at 08:50:57. If you can understand that posting then you are at the start of understanding something about how scientific investigation is conducted.
The scientific method exists independent of any faith. Practice of the method may be imperfect because scientists are human and, therefore, their interpretations can be biased by their political and/or religious faith, but over time the effects of those imperfections become erased.
Imposition of political faith(s) on how science can be conducted has happened before; e.g. Lysnkoism, eugenics, etc. So, your attempt to pervert science by imposition of your faith in AGW has precedent. All such perversions of science have had dire effects. And AGW threatens similar dire (probably worse) effects.
Please reconsider what you are doing.
I put to you the plee that Cromwell put to Charles 1 when Cromwell was trying to avoid the English Civil War:
“I beg ye in the bowells of Christ to consider that ye may be wrong.”
Charles 1 refused to consider that possibility so the bloody and harmful Civil War ensued with resulting terrible loss of life, and Charles 1 lost both his Crown and his head to put it on.
Later, in attempt to avoid WW2, Churchill repeated that plee to Chamberlain also to no avail. He stood in the House of Commons and shouted:
“I beg ye in the bowells of Christ to consider that ye may be wrong.”
And we all now what happened after that.
Science always accepts that everything we think we know is merely the best understanding we have at present. All scientists know that we “may be wrong”. Again, please see my above reply to Stefan for an understanding of this.
But faith ascribes certainty where science refuses to accept certainty.
Believers in the AGW hypothesis are trying to distort science by imposing their faith on science. Those who try to adhere to the scintific method will defend against that perversion of science with everything at our disposal.
So, “I beg ye in the bowells of Christ to consider that ye may be wrong.”
Richard
Yes indeed, thank you.
Phlogiston:
Thankyou. I agree.
Richard
Joel Shore:
You say to me:
“just saying that there were large climate changes in different parts of the world doesn’t tell me much in regards to what the global temperature did, particularly when it seems some places cooled and others warmed.”
OK, I will agree that. So we agree that there was no global warming in the twentieth century because “there were large climate changes in different parts of the world doesn’t tell me much in regards to what the global temperature did, particularly when it seems some places cooled and others warmed”.
I await your confirmation of this agreement.
Richard
Joel Shore (18:49:29) :
anna v says:
” Still the CO2 contribution is so weak it cannot reverse the PDO. Joel suggests it will reverse the coming ice age.”
I don’t think there is yet evidence that the PDO has anything in particular to do with global temperatures. Most of downward trend in temperatures measured over a few years is on account of the La Nina that we just had. And, the sort of logic that says that CO2 contribution is weak if the trend can be downward over periods of several years is precisely the same as the claim that the seasonal cycle must be weak if we can have a weeklong period here in Rochester where the temperature trend is up instead the expected down trend. It is simply a lack of understanding of how a system with a linear (or approximately linear) trend on longtime scales and noise on shorter time scales behaves.
bold mine.
I will stop talking with you. You are either an undergraduate or a person with very little knowledge of differential equations, solutions thereof, boundary conditions etc. etc ( not to forget dynamical chaos). If you can look at the ice core records and talk about linear long term trends you are much deeper in the delusional system than I thought.
“you are much deeper in the delusional system than I thought”
He has simply lost all respect for his own ignorance.
However, like a springy boxing ball he provides a good workout for honing one’s
opinion and how to express it.
Richard S Courtney says:
You are confused between a necessary and a sufficient condition. What I am saying is that to determine what the global temperature did one has to go beyond just looking and finding changes in climate of one sort or another at different places on the Earth. For the twentieth century, we have good enough temperature records over the entire globe to determine what the global temperature did do to a reasonable degree of accuracy.
As to your larger point you make about faith and science and certainty and uncertainty: The fact is that science is never based on certainty because it is inductive. So, there is always uncertainty. The honest way to deal with this is to try to specify the certainty and uncertainty that one has about various parts of the science, which is what the IPCC does. It is not useful to say that because of uncertainty, we know nothing. (Or ,more to what actually seems to happen, because of uncertainty in regards to climate change, we should just assume its natural and there is no significant effect from greenhouse gases.)
And, while it may be true that some people on the side of the scientific consensus have made statements that sound overly certain (I try to avoid doing that but I am sure that I am not perfect), I think this is at least as prevalent on the other side…and, in fact, the certainty is often about things that I think are not just uncertain but are almost certainly false.
anna v says:
Well, I am not going to repeat what my qualifications are since I have said them before and it is easy enough to do a google search on me. However, I will merely point out to you the concept of a Taylor Series: Except at very special points, a curve can be well-approximated by a linear function over some interval. In the particular case that you quoted, I was talking both of the current rise in global temperatures and of the seasonal cycle during the fall, for which one could indeed fit pretty well to a linear function over a period of a few weeks. (I now realize that I left out the fact that I was talking about the fall in what you quoted, although I have certainly talked about the seasonal cycle in enough detail in previous posts for one to infer the meaning. Sorry if that confused you.)
Richard S Courtney (01:13:53) : Charles 1 refused to consider that possibility so the bloody and harmful Civil War ensued with resulting terrible loss of life, and Charles 1 lost both his Crown and his head to put it on.
Richard, this is sooo wrong. It ought to be:
…”and his head, upon which to put it”.
Other than that, perfect posting! 😉
Really.
Stellar.
anna v (05:05:25) :
Joel Shore (18:49:29) :
anna v says:
You are either an undergraduate or a person with very little knowledge of differential equations, solutions thereof, boundary conditions etc. etc ( not to forget dynamical chaos). If you can look at the ice core records and talk about linear long term trends you are much deeper in the delusional system than I thought.
Anna, you do a disservice to undergraduates with that comparison of Joel …
I like the phrase “deeper in the delusional system”. I may “borrow it”.
I have noticed a consistent difference between Warmers and Skeptics.
Skeptics regularly ask questions like: How do you know? Is this consistent? What is the quality of the data and measurement system? Do these conclusions drive from those data? What are the hidden assumptions? Is there evidence to support those assumptions? What alternative explanations would work as well with this data? Is this argument well structured, efficient, and clear?
Warmers seem to have only one real question: “Given this conclusion, what assumptions can I draw?” Occasionally supported by “How much must I torture the data to get it to confess that I am right?”
Before this need to discover the “best” assumptions, all else must fall. History, data, methods, consistency, even things like the erratic temperature history of the planet can get “ironed out” into a “linear trend”.
As a consequence we get what you have just experienced. Joel’s arguments are about as solid as warm jello. ANYTHING can be held up as “fact” even if completely inconsistent, even if not supported by the data, even if it is demonstrably false. Even if fabricated by fantastical “methods” like Mann and Hansen used. Because it is “the necessary assumption that must have been true” for the conclusion to be validated.
This, as you have noticed, is infuriating to folks who believe that causality must flow from data to analysis to conclusions in well supported steps and with only minimal and rational assumptions; and even then is subject to challenge.
I believe that is not a matter of “undergraduate” vs “Ph.D”. I think it is a matter of the nature of ones mind and the nature of the education it received. Hansen, IIRC, has a Ph.D – but a broken mind…
I can say that with some certainty. The code that looks like his in GIStemp is badly done and shows a very untidy mind. For example:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/gistemp-invnt-f-a-sympathy-plea/
One that has poor skills at ordering things, poor skills at clarity, disdain for others (no comments), a love of false complexity (variables chosen with deliberately confusing names), artificially complex and painfully cluttered, and several other faults of reasoning. It also shows a clear pattern of goal seeking to cherry pick values to validate his thesis (key values as parameters for easy tuning, tunable Reference Station Method limits with different sizes in different sections, tunable zone sizes, etc.) rather than a careful selection of reasonable values and results fall where they may.
So yes, they are “deeper in the delusional system” – in some cases “all the way in”…
Stefan (01:06:18) “As for tipping points, how many things do you think could induce a tipping point? Or is it only CO2?”
Good question Stefan.
E.M.Smith (09:37:01) “Given this conclusion, what assumptions can I draw?”
Nice.
Global averages are not enough. (See R.G. Currie (1996), for example.) It is necessary to investigate the stability of parameter estimates across a range of spatiotemporal scales (Physical Geography 500).
It is also important to consider variables other than just (TMin+TMax)/2. One example:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/CCaa1mo&11aT1mo.PNG
David in Davis (22:55:22) : They, of course can’t let us go bankrupt until they have sold off most of their U.S. bonds, but after that we have little leverage. More ominously, they are in the process of moving all of their gold, stored mostly in London, to a new storage facility at the Hong Kong airport. It is shaping up to be the Chinese century, and where that leaves us is anybody’s guess.
They don’t have to sell the debt.
China recently announced a deal for several years worth of oil from Brazil. It was “paid for” via the transfer of $200 Billion of US treasuries that now sit on the books in Brazil. Watch for more of this (they were doing similar things on other minerals). China is in the process of locking up all the resources needed to run global manufacturing for decades (so good luck competing if they own the metals, oil, coal, etc.) and is doing it via swaps of treasuries; thus avoiding a collapse of their holdings as they liquidate.
It would not be hard to trade down their exposure via shortening maturities either (and there is some evidence that this may be happening with shorter dated treasuries selling a smidgeon better):
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/chinese-food-fight/
So take your long maturities, trade them for future delivery of inflating hard assets and buy up / lock up resources. Use your ‘buys’ to buy short maturities. In about 3 to 5 years, you are done. 1 to 2 years if you really try…
Do not under any circumstance believe that China can not walk away from the US debt or that it is in any way bound by that debt to any behaviours we would like to see. It just is not so. They are the bank, we are the overdrawn credit card user. Nothing more.
For those who have asserted that there is no Airport Heat Island Effect:
NOAA thinks there is one. From:
http://www.arh.noaa.gov/arhdata/archive/FXUS64KMEG/FXUS64KMEG_04203201519
EXPECT A MOSTLY CLEAR NIGHT. WINDS WILL BECOME LIGHT AND TEMPERATURES DROP INTO THE LOWER 70S…EXCEPT FOR THE MEMPHIS AIRPORT HEAT ISLAND WHERE IT WILL ONLY GET DOWN TO THE MID 70S.
https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/1811/23307/1/V089N2_001.pdf
has:
THE HEAT ISLAND OF AKRON-CANTON
9:30 AIRPORT. Nirmala Kochar and Thomas
W. Schmidlin, Department of
Geography, Kent State University, Kent, OH
44242.
Air temperatures measured at airports may not
represent the temperatures of surrounding rural
areas because of extensive paved surfaces,
buildings, lack of tall vegetation and flow of
traffic. These factors may cause the presence
of a heat island which is generally an urban
phenomenon. So, the temperature of the airports
may not represent that of the surrounding rural
land. This was verified by studying the
temperature and wind of the Akron-Canton Airport
and eight nearby rural sites between December
1987 and October 1988. The results showed that
an airport heat island did not exist under
cloudy conditions or when the wind was not calm
over 4 or more rural sites. However, the
airport was a heat island for 75% of the calm
and clear nights. Hence, the airport
temperature is not representative of the
surrounding rural land under clear, calm
conditions and it would be appropriate to
establish instruments at a truly rural site.
I bolded the bit where they say that there is an AHI effect…
So the basic point is that there is an AHI effect and it is most pronounced on days with clear sky and low wind. (So folks in cloudy windy places may not have measured it). In an annual average of everywhere, all those thermometers at airports will, on average, read higher than truly rural places.
And, btw, GIStemp uses airports as ‘rural’ for UHI corrections. You just can’t make this stuff up…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/gistemp-fixes-uhi-using-airports-as-rural/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/most-used-rural-airport-for-uhi-adj/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/agw-gistemp-measure-jet-age-airport-growth/
For those who have asserted that there is no Airport Heat Island Effect:
NOAA thinks there is one. From:
http://www.arh.noaa.gov/arhdata/archive/FXUS64KMEG/FXUS64KMEG_04203201519
EXPECT A MOSTLY CLEAR NIGHT. WINDS WILL BECOME LIGHT AND TEMPERATURES DROP INTO THE LOWER 70S…EXCEPT FOR THE MEMPHIS AIRPORT HEAT ISLAND WHERE IT WILL ONLY GET DOWN TO THE MID 70S.
https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/1811/23307/1/V089N2_001.pdf
has:
THE HEAT ISLAND OF AKRON-CANTON
9:30 AIRPORT. Nirmala Kochar and Thomas
W. Schmidlin, Department of
Geography, Kent State University, Kent, OH
44242.
Air temperatures measured at airports may not
represent the temperatures of surrounding rural
areas because of extensive paved surfaces,
buildings, lack of tall vegetation and flow of
traffic. These factors may cause the presence
of a heat island which is generally an urban
phenomenon. So, the temperature of the airports
may not represent that of the surrounding rural
land. This was verified by studying the
temperature and wind of the Akron-Canton Airport
and eight nearby rural sites between December
1987 and October 1988. The results showed that
an airport heat island did not exist under
cloudy conditions or when the wind was not calm
over 4 or more rural sites. However, the
airport was a heat island for 75% of the calm
and clear nights. Hence, the airport
temperature is not representative of the
surrounding rural land under clear, calm
conditions and it would be appropriate to
establish instruments at a truly rural site.
I bolded the bit where they say that there is an AHI effect…
So the basic point is that there is an AHI effect and it is most pronounced on days with clear sky and low wind. (So folks in cloudy windy places may not have measured it). In an annual average of everywhere, all those thermometers at airports will, on average, read higher than truly rural places.
And, btw, GIStemp uses airports as ‘rural’ for UHI corrections. You just can’t make this stuff up…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/gistemp-fixes-uhi-using-airports-as-rural/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/most-used-rural-airport-for-uhi-adj/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/agw-gistemp-measure-jet-age-airport-growth/
Leif Svalgaard (16:23:30) :
Joel Shore (14:33:07) :
I lost you there, Leif. How would a thick atmosphere matter if it were not IR-active?
PV=RT
Ought not that to be: PV=nRT ? (I always remembered it as PivNert…)