The BBC posted a surprising story this past weekend that has skeptics cheering and alarmists hopping mad.
Here’s the opener:
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
The headline?
What happened to global warming?
By Paul Hudson
Climate correspondent, BBC News
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
So what on Earth is going on?
Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man’s influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.
They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?
During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly.
Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth’s warmth comes from the Sun.
But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences.
The scientists’ main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.
And the results were clear. “Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can’t have been caused by solar activity,” said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.
He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.
He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.
If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.
Read the complete story here at the BBC
Correct Sandy, and this brings me back to my original question to RRKampen who never answered it. They are not good sites to reference because they do not allow anyone to question. Apparently this is ok with RR Kampen. Thank you Paul Vaughan, but I am afraid RRKampen will likely not read your posts, or, if he does, he will dismiss them out of hand. The planet is cooling, yet Co2 continues to rise.
Re: David Ball (12:56:31) :
but I am afraid RRKampen will likely not read your posts, or, if he does, he will dismiss them out of hand. The planet is cooling, yet Co2 continues to rise.
Do not fear.
I guess by the end of 1998 you believed in the runaway greenhouse warming effect?
Regards, Remko.
Remko, I acknowledge your De Bilt hockey stick blade, but I don’t make the assumption you make about its causes.
Fair enough!
If I really were 100% confident of the ‘A’ in AGW (instead of say 90%) I wouldn’t even be here. I wouldn’t partake in the discussion, much as I don’t partake in discussions where people try to prove Pi is a rational number. I have no material or political interest in the rationality of Pi as I have none in the AGW-hypothesis, that’s why.
Re: Sandy (08:30:10) :
Looking forward to the skating this winter?
A bit. Until a couple of years ago my year started on the first of September, winter being my favourite season. Repeated dissapointments have dulled my excitement. Since 2006 I’ll just let the winter surprise me (as did 2009).
Paul, I’m digesting your material. Will take some time to sift through the harmonics and how they relate to global temperature 🙂 Thanks for those.
Forgot to clarify your last question, ‘JD’ does allude to the year January (januari) – December (december) (Dutch names of the months in brackets).
RR Kampen (02:06:53) “Paul, I’m digesting your material. Will take some time to sift through the harmonics and how they relate to global temperature :)”
The effect seems to be largely through the hydrologic cycle (through sustained pressure patterns). It is necessary to look at higher derivatives & integrals. Any constructive comments you can offer will be appreciated. There is an opportunity here for cross-paradigm collaboration. We share an interest in understanding natural cycles, in analyzing data, and in protecting nature. I’m not presenting some wild tangent here; rather, I’m following the lead of the Russian scientists who seem to be decades ahead of us in appreciating ACI. Landscheidt & Charvatova were on the right track about timing-elements, but perhaps not about the role of the solar cycle (although Barkin’s theories do not rule out multi-channel influence-pathways ….but one (manageable) step at a time here…)
Here are some notes from …
Sidorenkov, N.S. (2003). Changes in the Antarctic ice sheet mass and the instability of the Earth’s rotation over the last 110 years. International Association of Geodesy Symposia 127, 339-346.
“The purpose of this paper is to call attention to a close correlation of the decade variations in the Earth rotation with the mass changes in the Antarctic ice sheets.”
“The redistribution of water masses on the Earth entails changes in the components of the Earth’s inertia tensor and causes the motion of poles and changes of the Earth’s rotation speed.”
“Apart from all other reasons, the parameters of the geoid depend on the distribution of water over the planetary surface.”
I suggest you compare the following …
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/-LOD_aa_Pr._r.._LNC.png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/-LOD_aa_Pr._r.._LNC_Env_MorletPi.png
[from http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/DRAFT_VaughanPL2009CO_TPM_SSD_LNC.htm ]
… with the overview and 3 figures here:
http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/Y2787E/Y2787E03.HTM
You may also note how many figures in the following show the same pattern:
Klyashtorin, L.B.; & Lyubushin, A.A. (2007). Cyclic Climate Changes and Fish Productivity. Government of The Russian Federation, State Committee For Fisheries of The Russian Federation, Federal State Unitary Enterprise (FSUE), Russian Federal Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (VNIRO). Moscow, VNIRO Publishing.
http://alexeylyubushin.narod.ru/Climate_Changes_and_Fish_Productivity.pdf
[Reminder: When you look at curves, imagine their derivatives & integrals – and watch for phase-relations across a variety of timescales.]
Barkin argues that it is the north-south motion of the Earth’s core that is driving the relative pressure waves in Earth’s shells [but I am convinced that there are more layers of assumptions to break through in the models he is pioneering – (sure makes the math challenging)].
You will note on the plots to which I linked that the pattern shows up in both the acceleration of Earth’s rotation (which relates to pressure & wind patterns, which affect temperature [but we should not necessarily assume linearly, as there could be thresholds in interactions with geographically-stationary waves, for example]) and geomagnetic aa index. This is consistent with Barkin’s notes. I am beginning to suspect that now that LNC/3 is drifting out-of-phase with JN/2, other LNC harmonics may be playing a more important role; I have to give this matter some more thought. (The polar motion record is too short to see what happens over a series of 205 year cycles.)
I don’t have all the answers today, but I am certain that we should be paying attention to the Russian school of thought.
There’s something odd happening with the server at one of the links I posted, so here’s an alternate:
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y2787e/y2787e01.pdf
Chapter 2 from:
Klyashtorin, L.B. (2001). Climate change and long term fluctuations of commercial catches: the possibility of forecasting. FAO Fisheries Technical Paper No. 410, 98p., FAO (Food Agriculture Organization) of the United Nations, Rome.
RR Kampen (02:17:45, 14 Oct)
“Hoax”
Do not mistake a lot of text including expletives for an effective rebuttal.
I looked at the two links that you claim to have demonstrated that Steve Macintyre’s criticism of the Briffa data was a “hoax”. It turns out that they do not touch at all on the substantive content of the objections to Briffa’s hockey stick. For instance it has been abundantly demonstrated by contributions to this site from people experienced in forestry that there can be many reasons for variation in ring width other than warmer or cooler seasons – such as the number & proximity of other trees, water tables, types of nearby trees etc. This contributes background variation that necessitates large group numbers for the statistics to be robust. Neither of the articles defended the use of only 12 trees in the last 20 years, when data from two decades and further previously used 40 or more trees per data point.
Another much larger nearby group of 34 Bristlecone pines at Schweingruber show no hockey stick. When this group is combined with the “Briffa’s 12” (n=46) there is still no clear hockey stick (possibly only a rather twisted golf club). The absence of the upturn in this larger group is also not addressed by either of your referenced links.
Elsewhere others have attacked the addition of the Schweingruber pines on the basis that they were young and the Yamal pines were old – old was apparently better than young. However in a separate response Steve MacIntyre has shown clearly that, up to 1970, the old and young pine proxies were in close agreement. But the small Yamal group of older trees diverge upwards from the younger trees after this date. Suspicious indeed.
If you want the full picture (at least from his side) please read the MacIntyre detailed response at: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7278
Its ironic that the AGW critics of MacIntyre accuse him of being “randomly” selective. One side uses a small group. Another side uses a much larger group. Generally one would consider the choice of the smaller group to be selective, not of the larger. And MacIntyre’s argument holds even if the combined set of all the trees are used.
Anyway – what did these links, from realclimate and rabbet run, say – what points did they make?
First, the real climate offering:
They open by making a personal attack on MacIntyre using strong language – that is true to form for the AGW camp.
Then the article refers to a “categorical refutation” of the criticism by Keith Briffa himself. But if you go to the provided Briffa refutation link, it is nothing of the sort. It is short, and starts with the question of the choice of 12 trees, hiding behind some statistical terminology about methods. (But it does not take a PhD statistician to tell you that 12 is a small number, smaller than 34 or 46). Then he reciprocally criticises MacIntyre for his random and selective choice of the larger group. He ends by saying he will respond in more detail later (but I’m not aware that he has). So this brief opening response does not engage at all with the detailed findings by Steve MacIntyre and does not claim to. Hardly a “categorical refutation”.
After that, the RC article sets forth a series of data sources that they claim show the same sacrosanct hockey stick, excluding the Yamal series. What are they?
(1) Other tree ring based proxy temperature data, the original MBH hockey stick and its replication by Wahl and Ammann. However any reconstructed temperature curve of the last 1000 odd years that is ironed flat before the mid 20th century is completely at odds with an abundance of other proxies that show such blasphemous observations as the medieval warm period and the little ice age. For instance the web site CO2 science almost every month cites new peer reviewed publications finding evidence from lake sediments and elsewhere of the MWP from all over the world (“data published by 744 individual scientists from 437 separate research institutions in 41 different countries and counting”). There are numerous objections to tree rings as climate proxies. The myopic obsession with tree ring data in the AGW camp just because some of it shows the stick is rapidly losing its wider credibility.
One comment of my own on this – increasing CO2 in the atmosphere alone, even without any associated temperature change, will increase plant (including tree) growth rate and thus ring width. A rather obvious confounder to the use of tree rings in recent climate reconstruction one would think.
(2) Oerlemans temp reconstruction derived from glacier retreat since 1600
At the present time – and at any time – glaciers worldwide are either advancing or retreating under influence of local cyclical factors (yes that “c” word, also blasphemous, now we are told the natural world is supposed to be devoid of temporal cycles). So glacier retreat is a very shaky basis for climate reconstruction, and, like tree rings, highly susceptible to subtle selection which scientists can very good at concealing.
(3) “How about Osborn and Briffa’s results which were robust even when you removed any three of the records?”
Not quite sure what they are referring to here. But 3 again seems a rather small number to be using.
(4) Borehole temperature reconstructions (Pollack et al. 1998). This uses borehole water to reconstruct temperature back to about 1860. It shows an increase of about 0.7 deg over this period.
That global temperatures have risen since the mid-late 1800s, the end of the LIA, is not controversial (even if stretched by data fiddling – all the pertinent climate series datasets in the hands of AGW activists, great situation for honest science…) What these people do next however is really astonishing and reveals the sort of mind-set we are dealing with. They extrapolate BACKWARDS the climate reconstruction all the way to 1500. In the minds of these people global temperatures must follow some simple one-term curve, exponential, power or linear. It does not even ENTER THEIR HEADS that there might be natural climate fluctuations! Sorry – shouting is bad manners of course – but I am shocked and incredulous at this. It’s hard to know what to say. Several WUWT threads have explored extensively the role of natural oscillations, from external forcings like orbital and solar variations, intrinsic non-linear system oscillations of oceans and atmosphere that characterise most or all complex natural systems. There is abundant evidence for numerous oceanic oscillations like the Atlantic and Pacific decadal (or multidecadal) oscillations and the ENSO and La Nina events that even AGWers cite (when it suits them). Now we find ourselves having to justify climate fluctuations – like Galileo in front of the Pope arguing for an earth rotating round the sun. Or arguing for evolution before 6-day creationists.
(5) Number 5 shows the CO2 concentration back to -10k yr, with stretched y axis needless to say for dramatic effect. A true hockey stick with a recent anthropogenic upturn – possibly – although I have a suspicion that the premodern flatness could also turn out to have been ironed. Anyway, the CO2 hockey stick is accompanied by a calculation of radiative forcing from the CO2 – the central physical argument in the AGW narrative. OK fair enough. But this is not observational data to offer as a supporting alternative to a corrupted Yamal. It is just the pictorial illustration of the AGW hypothesis. A hypothesis does not prove itself – you need real world data for that.
(6) Another tree-ring based (recycled, and apparently Yamal-free) hockey stick from Kaufman et al. 2009. Please refer to earlier comments on tree ring proxies in point 1.
(7) Various Hadley Centre and other reconstructions going back about 2k yrs, and with (pause for incredulous gulp..) a HAD instrumental series stitched onto the end. Yes. One category of data (several displayed together) up to the mid 1800s and then, after this, a completely different dataset stitched onto the end. The result – you guessed it – a hockey stick! This again shows the calibre and integrity (not) of the arguments from the AGWers. Noooooooo!! (adopts facial expression of “The Scream” by Munch). I’m sorry (now speaking gently) you really can’t do this.
Oh and by the way; this graph contradicts two graphs that you have already used. The combined reconstructions in (7) show – albeit with a lot of scatter – the medieval warm period and the little ice age. Didn’t you notice? These are more “correctly” ironed out in the just cited tree-ring reconstructions by MBH and Wahl and Ammann (1) and by Kaufman et al. (6). It helps not to contradict yourself so blatantly in making an evidence-based rebuttal.
(8) The HADCRUD (did I remember to spell-check this?) instrumental series just referred to, that was stitched onto the end of (7). Just repeating an argument in order to look like an additional argument.
On the subject of the Hadley CRU, there is another story here concerning a certain Dr. Jones and some apparently destroyed data. This hardly fills one with confidence about the data series being referred to.
(9) Number of babies born (capitalist pigs one and all!) and given the name Gavin from 1960. Trivial and pathetic. What is the subtext here? Humans emit the toxic pollutant CO2, too many humans (Gavins or otherwise) a cull of humans is thus the goal of the AGWers? Starting with us no doubt.
That just about wrapped up the RC article.
Then there was one from the respected and august scientific institution “Rabbet Run”, entitled “read effing editorial guidelines”.
Just the sort of language we expect as routine from AGWers.
This article is essentially a chorus of voices defending Briffa’s refusal to share his data on the basis of legal small print, journal policies, “it was the Russians’ data not ours”. Not exactly redolent of a scientific culture of openness and transparency – vociferous defence of the concealment of data.
Then this article used the phrase “capitalist imperialist pigs”, referring to an eponymous website. At this point I lost interest permanently in this rabbet-run website.
Again, what can you say?
If the AGW movement is motivated at its core by anarchistic-anticapitalistic sentiment (as it is) – it should be called the KHMER VERT – it is not clever to loudly proclaim this fact. You should try to keep it quiet.
Finally, your use of the word “hoax” – the entire content of your reply – is inappropriate. We will let you off for this since you are not a native English speaker (omdat uw moedertaal is Nederlands mar uw Engels is niet te slechts). Hoax means deliberate falsehood. Your cited refutations of Steve MacIntyre do not come close to demonstrating dishonest fabrication (i.e. hoax) nor do they even claim to. The boot fits better on the other foot methinks.
Phlogiston (11:33:19),
Excellent post. Very well done.
I’m glad you pointed out the psychological projection of alarmists when they falsely accuse people like Mr McIntyre of perpetrating a hoax, when the hoax is in fact being perpetrated by the AGW crowd.
Skeptics do not have to prove anything, thus they can not be perpetrating a hoax. They are simply asking questions. The job of skeptics is to falsify a hypothesis, and people like Steve McIntyre have done a fine job falsifying the claims propping up AGW — which is the actual hoax.
In another thread RR Kampen invoked the late Karl Popper. Popper explained that falsifiability, refutability and testability are absolutely essential to the Scientific Method.
Climate alarmists should seek the truth using Popper’s criteria. They don’t. But for those interested in Popper’s central points they are as follows:
Steve McIntyre has refuted the Yamal methodology. But rather than accept that Yamal is fatally flawed, the alarmists have circled the wagons and tried to defend the indefensible, following their similar behavior in MBH, Michael Mann’s hockey stick, and other discredited AGW props.
Popper explains: “If observation shows that the predicted effect is definitely absent, then the theory is simply refuted.” Alarmists predicted that increasing CO2 would cause runaway global warming. Yet the opposite is occurring. Therefore, the theory [in this case the AGW hypothesis] is simply refuted.
Smokey
Thanks for your clear summary of Poppers criteria for scientific investigation and hypotheses; better than my previous efforts.
They should be the 7 commandments of the scientific method. But instead we find that we have to pin them to the “Wittenburg door” like Luther.
“Alarmists predicted that increasing CO2 would cause runaway global warming.” – Of course they did, but then e.g. IPCC does not consist of ‘alarmists’, but of scientists. They predict a certain warming that is not ‘runaway’.
Phlogiston, the ‘hockey stick’ was never Briffa’s. Neither was it the exclusive result of that one tree. The figure emanates more or less (on average certainly more) from a very diverse collection of proxy data (which will all have to be refuted).
Finally, http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2000/ .
Paul re “There is an opportunity here for cross-paradigm collaboration. We share an interest in understanding natural cycles, in analyzing data, and in protecting nature.” – we are in total agreement!
I still need some time to digest the Russian material. At work now (software quality assurance mgt), likely to have time in the weekend. Thanks. Also for your tips as to interpreting graphs, even though I have a physics/mathematics background and habitually watch graphs like you describe.
Re: RR Kampen (03:48:12)
I’ve just posted some notes on Barkin here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/11/spotting-the-agw-fingerprint/
[Paul Vaughan (17:56:11)]