A Guest Post by Basil Copeland
Like many of Anthony’s readers here on WUWT, I’ve been riveted by all the revelations and ongoing discussion and analysis of the CRUtape Letters™ (with appropriate props to WUWT’s “ctm”). It might be hard to imagine that anyone could add to what has already been said, but I am going to try. It might also come as a surprise, to those who reckon me for a skeptic, that I do not think that anything was revealed that suggests that the global temperature data set maintained by CRU was irreparably damaged by these revelations. We’ve known all along that the data may be biased by poor siting issues, handling of station dropout, or inadequate treatment of UHI effects. But nothing was revealed that suggests that the global temperature data sets are completely bogus, or unreliable.
I will return to the figure at the top of this post below, but I want to introduce another figure to illustrate the previous assertion:
This figure plots smoothed seasonal differences (year to year differences in monthly anomalies) for the four major global temperature data sets: HadCRUT, GISS, UAH and RSS. With the exception of the starting months of the satellite era (UAH and RSS), and to a lesser degree the starting months of GISS, there is remarkable agreement between the four data sets – where they overlap – especially with respect to the cyclical pattern of natural climate variation. This coherence gives me confidence that while there may be problems with the land-sea data sets, they accurately reflect the general course of natural climate variation over the period for which we have instrumental data. While we need to continue to insist upon open access to the data and methods used to chronicle global and regional climate variation, and refine the process to remove the biases which may be present from trying to make the data fit the narrative of CO2 induced global warming, it would be wrong to conclude that the “CRUtape Letters” prove that global warming does not exist. That has never really been the issue. The issue has been the extent of warming (have the data been distorted in a way that would overstate the degree of warming?), the extent to which it is the result of natural climate variation (as opposed to human influences), and the extent to which it owes to human influences other than the burning of fossil fuels (such as land use/land cover changes, urban heat islands, etc.). And flowing from this, the issue has been whether we really know enough to justify the kind of massive government programs said to be necessary to forestall climate catastrophe.
Figure 2 plots the composite smooth against the backdrop of the monthly seasonal differences of the four global temperature data sets:
Many readers may recognize the familiar episodes of warming and cooling associated with ENSO and volcanic activity in the preceding figure. With a little more smoothing, we get a pattern like that depicted in Figure 3, which other readers may notice looks a lot like the cycles that Anthony and I have attributed to lunar and solar influences (they are the same):
In either case, the thing to note is that over time climate goes through repetitive episodes of warming and cooling. You have to look closely on Figures 2 and 3 – it is much clearer in Figure 1 – but episodes of warming exist when the smooth is above zero, and cooling episodes exist when the smooth is below zero. Remember, by design, the smooth is not a plot of the temperature itself, but of the trend in the temperature, i.e. the year to year change in monthly temperatures. The intent is to demonstrate and delineate the range of natural climate variation in global temperatures. It shows, in effect, the trend in the trend – up and down over time, with natural regularity, while perhaps also trending generally upward over time.
Which brings us to Figure 1. Here we are focusing in on the last 30 years, and a forecast to 2050 derived by a simple linear regression through the (composite) smooth of Figure 3. (Standard errors have been adjusted for serial correlation.) There has been an upward trend in the global temperature trend, and when this is projected out to 2050, the average is 0.114°C per decade ± 0.440°C per decade. Yes, you read that right: ± 0.440°C per decade. Broad enough to include both the worst imaginations of the IPCC and the CRU crowd, as well as negative growth rates, i.e. global cooling. Because if the truth be told, natural climate variation is so – well, variable – that no one can say with any kind of certainty what the future holds with respect to climate change. Be skeptical of any statistical claims to the contrary.
I think we can say, however, with reasonable certainty, that earth’s climate will remain variable, and that this will frustrate the effort to blame climate change on CO2 induced AGW. Noted on the image at the top of this post is a quote from Kevin Trenberth from the CRUtape Letters™: “The fact is that we cannot account for the lack of warmth at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can’t.” Trenberth betrays a subtle bias here – he cannot acknowledge the recent period of global cooling. It is, rather, “a lack of warmth.” But he is right that it is a “travesty” that we cannot fully account for the ebb and flow of earth’s energy balance, and ultimately, climate change. I think Trenberth just sees it as a lack of monitoring methods or devices. But I think there still remains a considerable lack of knowledge, or understanding, about the mechanics of natural climate variation. If you look carefully at Figure 1, you will notice that there seem to be upper and lower limits to the range of natural climate variability. On the scale depicted in Figure 1 (the scale is different with other degrees of smoothing), when warming reaches a limit of approximately 0.08-0.10°C per year, the warming slows down, and eventually a period of cooling takes place, always with the space of just a few years. Homeostasis, anyone? While phenomenon like ENSO are the effect of this regularity in natural climate variation, they are not the cause of it.
In my opinion, what is the real travesty of the global warming ideology is the hijacking of climate science in the service of a research agenda that has prevented science from investigating the full range of natural climate variation, because that would be an inconvenient truth. We see this, quite clearly, in the CRUtape Letters™ where the Medieval Warm Period is just “putative,” and a rather inconvenient truth that needs to be suppressed. Or the “1940’s blip” that implies that global temperatures increased just as rapidly in the early part of the 20th Century, as they did at the end of the 20th Century, an inconvenient truth at odds with the narrative preferred by the IPCC.
It is a truism that “climate varies on all time scales.” With respect to the variability demonstrated here, I’m convinced that someday it will be acknowledged that variability on this scale is dominated by lunar and solar influences. On longer scales, such as the ebb and flow from the Medieval Warm Period, through the Little Ice Age, and now into the “Modern Warm Period,” I do not think climate science yet has any real understanding of the underlying causes of such climate change. If we are, as seems possible, on the verge of a Dalton or Maunder type minimum in solar activity, we may eventually have an answer to whether solar activity can account for centennial scale changes in earth’s climate. And I do think it is reasonable to conclude, at the margin, that human activity has had some influence. It is hard to imagine population growing from one to six billion over the past one and a half centuries without some effect. Most likely, the effect is on local and regional scales, but this might add up to a discernible impact on global temperature. But until all of the forces that determine the full range of natural climate variability are understood better than they are now, there is no scientific justification for the massive overhaul of economic and government structures being promoted under the guise of climate change, or global warming.
Clever manipulation of graphs but the reality is very different – the planet has been warming at about 0.2C per decade for several decades and it still is warming at 0.2C per decade:
https://sites.google.com/site/europa62/climatechange/yvtayto200
Great post Mr. Copeland. Confirmation of natural variability boundaries. However, we must not forget OR minimize the control of a very important aspect of the this, the peer- review process. Also the bullying of people like Soon and Baliunas (to name just a few), who have some very important contributions to make. To be sidelined because your research doesn’t agree with the agenda is scientifically disgraceful. All sciences have been given a black eye in the minds of the public. They know not what they do.
Interesting analysis, thanks. Too bad that so many ordinary people and politicians have exactly zero comprehension of statistics that aren’t related to somebody’s batting average.
HADCRUT3 unadjusted global mean shows the warming:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/to:2010/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/to:2010/trend
… as does GISTEMP land-ocean global mean:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1980/to:2010/plot/gistemp/from:1980/to:2010/trend
… as does RSS MSU lower trop. global mean:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2010/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2010/trend
Opinion by Prof. Delgado Domingos in a google translation, published today in a portuguese newspaper. Delgado Domingos is a relevant Skeptic, emphasized by the fact that he is one of the pioneers of Numerical Weather Forecast. Delgado Domingos signed the Manhattan Declaration.
http://translate.google.pt/translate?hl=pt-PT&ie=UTF-8&sl=pt&tl=en&u=http://aeiou.expresso.pt/gen.pl%3Fp%3Dstories%26op%3Dview%26fokey%3Dex.stories/550438
I like the first graph:
“Trend Forecast = 0.144degC/Decade +/- 0.440 degC/Decade”
So the noise is about 4x bigger than the signal.
IMO when a persons ego gets in the way of the search for truth or worse when it gets in the the way of others searching for truth it is time to stop blocking science and retire. this post is a wonderful example of the search for truth in its best form great post Mr. Copeland. And Icarus one of these days you will find the truth or it will find you I hope that day is not too unpleasant for you.
If only the last paragraph were to have some impact on those who would drag us through penury back to the dark ages, whilst stealing all our money and destroying our ways of life on the pretext that we’re all overburdening the atmosphere with carbon, it would be something.
Sadly, every day on television there are stories of flood, pestilence, drought, rain, storms and all manner of other plagues supposedly brought about by us naughty people for daring to develop the world in which we live, in order to thrive and prosper.
That’s the bit I can’t get my poor head around. With all this obviously trickery staring us openly in our faces, having to watch people like Ed Miliband posturing the need to cut production of a life giving element, and a life-enhancing gas in the name of alarmism, control, theft and inevitably global governance when most of us to have the sense to realise it’s all a huge con. And not being able to DO anything about it. It’s akin to being caught in a whirlpool – you instinctively know it is bad, and no good will come of it, but you are inexorably sucked down into oblivion.
On Channel 4 news tonight, John Snow had turned up in Brazil encouraging the president “Lula” de Silva to whinge about global warming, whilst demanding binding edicts from Copenhagen, there seems to be no doubt in the minds of either Snow or that of the president that global warming continues unabated – and there’s no-one to say otherwise, so the Channel 4 viewers are continuing to be indoctrinated into the AGW religion. I used to like the Channel 4 news as it always seemed less childish and partisan than the awful BBC. I’m no longer of that opinion – they are probably as bad as each other.
I’ve noticed, too, that the “bedtime story” ad is back this evening, slightly modified but still full of the same misleading crap about CO2. Clearly the Advertising Standards Office are as toothless as the government, or in their pockets.
Maybe it’s all a bad dream and we’ll awake soon…
This morning on NPR’s “Fresh Air” (podcast not available yet, will post when it is) Michael Mann was on talking about Climategate and kept saying “[regardless, this decade will be the hottest on record]” and that this was “[consistent with the models]”
Seems to be well within the range of precedented warming to me when you don’t use cooked books. Nice work!
Amen.
In other words, the null hypothesis looks like a winner here. The other major point is that “so what if the climate warms”?. It has before and it will cool again, living in sackcloth and ashes under a bridge will not affect it. My residence has a climate that varies by many degrees over the course of a year and if I really want to live in a world that is warmer by up to 6 degrees, I would take a short flight North in my own country. My real anger is with the so called “Climate Scientists” and their hysterical followers who tried so hard to close off consideration of the null hypothesis.
“Trenberth betrays a subtle bias here – he cannot acknowledge the recent period of global cooling.”
That’s because there isn’t one.
I see what you did there icarus. I’m not impressed.
“It might also come as a surprise, to those who reckon me for a skeptic, that I do not think that anything was revealed that suggests that the global temperature data set maintained by CRU was irreparably damaged by these revelations”
I agree with your conclusion that the variability exceeds the trend, but is it not true that if the differenced data is integrated one comes back to the original anomolies, and that if these are not “irreparably damaged”, then the AGW-ers can also claim that their work is essentially correct?
Icarus:
the planet has been warming at about 0.2C per decade for several decades and it still is warming at 0.2C per decade:
The graph you link to shows an increase of ~0.6° over the period 1965 to ~2008 (by eyeball). Call that four decades, and we have an average increase of 0.15° decade, which is closer to the 0.114° claimed in the post than your assertion of 0.2°. That is the highest rate that can be shown from the chart, since it excludes the first two decades that showed (roughly) no warming – reflecting those reduces the warming over the period you cite to ~0.1° / decade.
Next time, try not to post your refutation as your “proof” ‘mkay?
Icarus, you are “waxing” too vocal on the trends. Trends exist. The AMO is a trend 30 years down 30 years up more or less. The up ended in the early 2000s and we are now heading into the down. So yes, any dataset such as the RSS that includes the majority of its years in the up phase will show a linear up trend. I imagine if you revisit this in 30 years you will have the last 30 years showing the down trend.
At the margin CO2 is a secondary climate forcer at best.
Re the concealment of data practised by Messrs Mann & co. Today the Royal Society has started a website called “Trailblazing” which has some copies of early pioneers papers. Included is “Mr Isaac Newton’s” paper on light & prisms, which is a pleasure to read, not least because Newton included every possible scrap of detail about his experiment, sizes of the equipments, distances between components, angles as measured, just about everything measurable is there. Is there a lesson here?
Look at the graphs. Do they show natural variability or not? Did you read this article at all?
And then comes Jeff Id’s tAV posting today of the Fox News report regarding to what end uses the AGW cadre’s myoptic ‘science’ has been put to…
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/30/6529/
[b]The Religion of Global Government[/b]
Posted by Jeff Id on November 30, 2009
[quote]This is a stunner. Fox news just released some UN documents which are pretty clearly worded as to their intent.
Conservatives have long recognized the UN agenda of global socialization. It’s one of the main problems behind the global warming religion, a religion who’s status becomes more official with each passing day. A couple of documents have recently been reported at Fox news outlining how the topics of one UN organization will be shifted to achieve their wealth distribution agenda to the poor developing nations in the Southern hemisphere.
The document discusses further expansion of the environmental movement, including unelected committees to provide regulation and enforcement of global law. As leftists they fail to notice that these poor developing countries disadvantages are created by their leftist governments. They believe religiously that it’s the Northern countries fault that these poor disadvantaged communists cannot succeed. All governments are created equal and we should prop up and pay these dictators to help them achieve equal prosperity to the world. [/quote]
Add in the massive transfers of sovereign wealth envisaged through the legally binding world political organizations such as the IMF and IPCC/United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change et al and one begins to see the collusions, knowingly or not, that the CRU’s cadre were/are aiding and abetting.
Much like many great conspiracies, once one pulls hard enough on a single loose, exposed thread, the entire interwoven (‘One-World-Order/Government’) fabric hopefully comes apart.
This, I believe, is what will be the true historical perspective written about ‘ClimateGate’ — The only few questions remaining to be answered are whether the interwoven cons will be fully exposed and abrogated before full implementation is legally enshrined and/or will we allow for true Climate science to be investigated, evaluated and confirmed.
Eisenhower had it right in his 1961 farewell address — he just had the wrong political entities…
[quote]In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.[/quote]
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ike.htm
“In my opinion, what is the real travesty of the global warming ideology is the hijacking of climate science in the service of a research agenda that has prevented science from investigating the full range of natural climate variation, because that would be an inconvenient truth.”
Obviously, this is the main point. The IPCC is a political organisation mandated to seek out anthropogenic influences to the exclusion of natural influences, and CRU have followed this ideology fervently. However, since CRU have lost the original data, we cannot be certain at all what has been the rate of temperature increase over the twentieth century. Despite what these alarmists graphs show, it still comes down to the same old problem – don’t worry about the data, just trust us.
“Most likely, the effect is on local and regional scales, but this might add up to a discernible impact on global temperature. But until all of the forces that determine the full range of natural climate variability are understood better…”
And that will never happen under current conditions in the scientific community. The emails make that abundantly clear.
That is why the leaked emails are in fact irreparably damning to the AGW hypothesis. It reveals that climate science makes no effort at understanding any other possible drivers of the earth’s weather. These other possibilities are minimized, grudgingly shown, hidden, suppressed, smoothed, and homogenized, but they are not exhaustively explored.
Human understanding of the earth’s weather are still set to remain in the ditch for a very long time to come, because climate science itself is arbitrarily and even criminally ruling out non anthropogenic possiblilities, and pretending like the past climate variability is not as great as it is today.
I think a good question to ask is do we have enough good stations with long enough runs of data to make a real determination?
Icarus (12:17:55) :
“Clever manipulation of graphs but the reality is very different,” and then Icarus manipulates his own graphs on WoodForTrees [which is a good site, but it’s kind of hypocritical to accuse the author of “manipulation,” when Icarus is doing exactly that].
The global temperature hasn’t changed more than a few tenths of one degree since 1980: click
Regarding manipulation — and before anyone panics — let’s look at a global temperature graph with a normal y-axis plotted in whole degrees: click
Icarus isn’t fooling anyone here. What we see is natural warming following the Little Ice Age. If CO2 caused global warming the temperature would be shooting up. Instead, it’s declining: click
Re Icarus
A chart made of garbage is still garbage
GIGO!
Icarus,
Please explain why then there was a negative cooling by your standards from 1940 to 1980?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1940/to:1980/plot/gistemp/from:1940/to:1980/trend
Your hypothesis is falsifiable with a turn of the knob. Do some reading, come back with a better argument.
Icarus (12:17:55) :
Clever manipulation of graphs but the reality is very different – the planet has been warming at about 0.2C per decade for several decades and it still is warming at 0.2C per decade:
Don’t fly so near the sun mate.
Interesting article, but as ever, I find the spaghetti graphs largely indecipherable. Is there any way to do them in “layers” so that you can look at individual plots separately or in relation to each other? The “composite overlay” approach is one of the means that was used to “hide” the decline (it was impossible to see amongst the other bits of spaghetti).
I recognize that in a blog, it’s probably too much to ask (if I had the computer skills, I’d try to do it myself – alas, no such luck), but for people who are spending significant time creating these files and analyses, is there not a relatively easy way to do it? Just asking (and this should not in any way be taken as a criticism by the author).
Mr. Copeland–
Your summary is a much more succinct and clear assessment of the state of “Climate Science” and the statistical basis of natural variability than I could ever give. The only point I personally would ephasize, is that the alarmists’ extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and at best the data record is ambiguous.
Speaking of alarmists– Icarus, you are a pathetic wretch. The last week shows that all of those databases you cite to are most likely hopelessly corrupted for the same reasons as the CRU data. They cannot be relied upon to make definitive statements about recent or future ‘warming’. The fact that you go on with your religious fervor as if nothing has happened is, well, pathetic. At this point we can only reasonably rely on historical raw data and 30 years of satellite data. Very thin evidence on which to make any legitimate prediction of future temperatures, in fact the lack of reliable data makes any prediction a fools’ errand– see Copeland’s post above.
I do however think your choice of name is appropriate– A MYTH.
The error on the trend is computed wrong. You need to take into account the number of data points in the fit. If you do it right, then you should get a trend closer to (I guesstimate) ~0.05 C per decade, which is what everyone’s eyeballs are telling them.
Come on, people.
Basil
Keep an eye on what EM Smith is doing with the GIStemp code and data. When the various regional temperature datasets are corrected for the drift in mean elevation, mean latitude and UHI I suspect that the warming trend in these indices will be reduced to about 1/3 of what GISS has previously been reporting. It is likely that many of the same issues infest the CRU global and regional temperature indices. The fact that the global anomaly products from these two organisations march in step does not constitute verification of either or both.
Woops I meant to say the error on the trend ought to be closer to 0.05 C per decade.
11/30/2009 3:25:16 PM
From Wall Street Journal..November 30th 2009 – News Re:Indian Glaciers..
Most suggestions of rapid melting are based on observations of a small handful of India’s 10,000 or so Himalayan glaciers. A comprehensive report in November by senior glaciologist Vijay Kumar Raina, released by the Indian government, looked more broadly and found that many of these glaciers are stable or have even advanced, and that the rate of retreat for many others has slowed recently.Jeffrey S. Kargel, a glaciologist at the University of Arizona, declared in the Nov. 13 issue of Science that these “extremely provocative” findings were “consistent with what I have learned independently,” while in the same issue of the magazine Kenneth Hewitt, a glaciologist at Wilfrid Laurier University, agreed that “there is no evidence” to support the suggestion that the glaciers are disappearing quickly. A cornerstone of the global carbon regulation push has been high concern about evidence that glaciers are retreating worldwide. Glaciers are a crucial source of the Earth’s stored water. The “star” glacier, if you will, has been the Himalayan Saichen glacier, 74 km long and the largest outside the polar regions.India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests has released a comprehensive report on the Himalayan glaciers by the eminent Dr. V.K. Raina, ex-Deputy Director of the Geological Survey of India. According to his report, the Saichen glacier has “not shown any remarkable retreat in the last 50 years.” In fact, it is growing.
Has anybody looked at the fact that the correlation between cosmic ray intensity and temperature ends about the time of “hide the decline”
I have two questions:
1) Could it be that current temperatures are not much higher than they were in the 30’s and 40’s as Karlens work would suggest and if so, how would that correlate with cosmic ray intensity? A match?
2) If current temperature estimates are correct and cosmic rays/sun activity are the main driver of temperature/climate. How large is the excess warming presumably caused by CO2.
Is it 10% 20% 50% of total warming?
Are there any good graphs on this or have any of you reflected on this issue?
“But nothing was revealed that suggests that the global temperature data sets are completely bogus, or unreliable”
So all the flub in the Harry Read Me file regarding the databases being in a sorry state of affairs means nothing?
I wonder, does the Icarus who chooses to post here, truly understand his fate?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/The_Lament_For_Icarus.jpg
Philosophically shot down.
Could someone who truly understands these plots explain the obvious difference between the data presented by Icarus and the data presented here?
I believe the four different temp. data sources are in general agreement- yet, somehow, you can’t get graphs for any one of them from different sources to always agree. How can Icarus have graphs that show .2-.4 degree differences in temperature in any one year for HadCRU data?
There’s no doubt now that figures lie and liars figure, and that CRU has HIDDEN data- but until ONE chart of data is agreed to as most representative of global average temperature trends (first, raw data, and then, adjusted for UHI), there will be no real consensus.
Once there is consensus on trends, then hopefully we can rule CO2 out as the primary driver, and focus on just how much effect it actually has.
A veteran meteorologist, Anthony Watts, had reason to doubt the reliability of US Surface Temperature Records so he founded http://www.surfacestations.org and set out to audit 1,221 weather stations operated by the National Weather service.
After surveying over 70% of those sations, he issued a report that states:
“(W)e found that 89 percent of the stations—nearly 9 of every 10—fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source. In other words, 9 of every 10 stations are likely reporting higher or rising temperatures because they are badly sited.” (Pg. 1) The report concludes, “the raw temperature data produced by the USHCN stations are not sufficiently accurate to use in scientific studies or as a basis for public policy decisions.” (Pg. 17)
It gets worse. We observed that changes in the technology of temperature stations over time also has caused them to report
a false warming trend. We found major gaps in the data record that were filled in with data from nearby sites, a practice
that propagates and compounds errors. We found that adjustments to the data by both NOAA and another government
agency, NASA, cause recent temperatures to look even higher.
The conclusion is inescapable: The U.S. temperature record is unreliable.
About the author of the study:
About the Author
Anthony Watts is a 25-year broadcast meteorology veteran and currently chief meteorologist for KPAY-AM radio.
He got his start as on-air meteorologist for WLFI-TV in Lafayette, Indiana and at KHSL-TV in Chico, California. In
1987, he founded ItWorks, which supplies broadcast graphics systems to hundreds of cable television, television, and
radio stations nationwide. ItWorks supplies custom weather stations, Internet servers, weather graphics content, and
broadcast video equipment. In 2007, Watts founded SurfaceStations.org, a Web site devoted to photographing and
documenting the quality of weather stations across the U.S.
Garbage in, garbage out.
Gavin, er, I mean Icarus, quit trying to hijack the thread. Aren’t enough people coming to your blog anymore?
Great post. Thank you.
Can’t we avoid confusion for the public by too many different graphs?
How if we use only one of such pictures, explain it in detail, show it over and over again, getting finally the stupid stick out of the public mind?
ONE picture tells more than thousand words, not hundreds of them.
Makes sense?
Would someone who understands these things please explain the difference between Mr Copeland’s graphs and those posted by Mr Icarus at 12:26.
Icarus
The increase in temperatures as measured by Hadcrut is denoted as an anomaly compared to the 1950-1980 time period. Who decided that temperatures during the 1950-1980 time period were normal? Why a 30 year time span and why not 50-100 years and based on what criteria would you determine what time period to use?
It’s equally as likely that the time period we are in right now might be defined as “normal” for temperature. That would explain why temperatures have been flat.
It’s equally as likely that the 1950-1980 time period was cherry picked by the natural climate cycle “denialists” in order help push forward a flawed theory of AGW and produce a reason to fund their paychecks for the next few decades.
Thanks
Ed
So with the error range being 4x the plotted trend, we have no statistically significant trend at all!
Larry
As someone who read through a good portion of the HARRY_READ_ME.txt file I beg to differ with Mr. Copland’s statement “…I do not think that anything was revealed that suggests that the global temperature data set maintained by CRU was irreparably damaged by these revelations.” The validity of the datasets and code are seriously in question following the release of this information.
Hat tip: The Devil’s Kitchen
You just aren’t applying the right “adjustments”, that’s all:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/ushcn/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_urb-raw_pg.gif
Basil,
Would you specify the formula you use to get the “smoothed seasonal differences” that you plot and explain why it’s an appropriate transformation of the raw data?
Which brings us to Figure 1. Here we are focusing in on the last 30 years, and a forecast to 2050 derived by a simple linear regression through the (composite) smooth of Figure 3. (Standard errors have been adjusted for serial correlation.)
Is it really statistically sound to regress against a smoothed composite? Isn’t this method falling short of Rahmsmoothing, as the projected steepness depends on filter width and a arbitrarily choosen starting point? How do you calculate error bounds for this projection?
“In my opinion, what is the real travesty of the global warming ideology is the hijacking of climate science in the service of a research agenda that has prevented science from investigating the full range of natural climate variation, because that would be an inconvenient truth.”
Excellent summary, I think this is the key. Too much attention is being diverted to other issues. The real horror story is how data, peer review and climate blogs have been/are being manipulated to create an exaggerated story and avoid any other explanations, and in turn control the flow of money. Instead there has been a flow of money to new “reseearch” not investigating all the variables of climate but hypothesizing what will happen in the future if CO2 keeps rising, always assuming CO2 is the driving variable. Such futuristic research is not science as it can not be tested, but it sure helps direct the flow of money.
Icarus:
“Reality” is different. Sorry, I know, no personal attacks.
So let’s say this..
NUMBER ONE, what data is this based on? The LAND DATA from the USA?
Check http://www.surfacestations.org on that.
The “composite data from the CRU”?
Check “Climate Gate” for that.
Aside from the concept that AVERAGE TEMPERATURE IS MEANINGLESS and
every PHD who has published such data SHOULD BE DEFROCKED, don’t make
me laugh.
OH, please, use AUTHORITY on this. I love it. What a joke.
Calm down, he is showing the “year to year differences in monthly anomalies”, not the anomaly. Why not discuss the interesting periodicity instead.
Good work Basil, and your charts illustrate perfectly that the global temperature is always going down and the earth is pretty good at keeping the energy balance fairly steady over time.
With regard to global temperature trends, they contain zero information about climate. Temperature is a poor proxy for the myriad of energy transfer mechanism that comprise the Earth’s chaotic climate system, and being non-linear you can cherry pick any trend you want from the data, depending on the time period you choose (as Icarus so elegantly proves). Once you start adjusting the very sparse proxy data and thermometer record too, hockey sticks can easily be produced, as demonstrated so well by Briffa’s carefully selected Yamal tree.
I think the quote from Kevin Trenberth in the hacked CRU Letters, “The fact is that we cannot account for the lack of warmth at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can’t.” is revealing. It shows the frustration the guy is feeling, that after spending god knows how much money on climate science the scientists involved still don’t have a clue. We still don’t know enough about climate systems to even accurately predict weather more than a few days forward, let alone get it right 10 years ahead.
Climate research will make no progress while it clings to the absurd premiss that you can predict the future by observing what happened in the past, then applying some pattern matching or clever statistical analysis. Instead we need to examine how each of the turbulent systems work in harmony to produce the effects we see. Science has become very good at solving linear problems, but still struggles to deal with dynamic chaotic non-linear systems.
In the mean-time politicians can use this lack of knowledge to control the world. Nothings going to change here any-time soon.
I witnessed Kevin Trenberth vs. a representative from CEI in a FOX presentation of Climategate last weekend and was reminded of the depth of resolve the CRU crew maintains to defraud the world.
Trenberth, expressionlessly peered into his webcam and related that no records had been destroyed, the warming would continue, no data had been manipulated, etc.
Then Trenberth’s appearance in reply to the CEI reps return charges that the emails proved the opposite, etc. became heatedly defiant that anyone would dare to challenge his (Trenberth’s) words. IMO The CRU crew will fight to the end, with no remorse.
Well I like your graph Smokey; the whole degrees one. What would be even more illuminating, would be to plot on a scale going from about -90C to about +60 C which is the true full range of surface temperatures found on earth in various locations.
Then we could appreciate just how totally insignificant these apparent changes in average temperature are. I say apparent because there is no basis for calling any of those four data sets a map of the actual earth’s temperature.
Basil’s fig 1 of smoothed seasonal differences does seem to show very good agreement of the TIMING of the major seasonal shifts; but the amplitudes aren’t nearly so good as to agreement. And his trend of 0.114 +/-0.440 deg C per decade tells the story. The raw data isn’t nearly good enough to determine a trend; and to base such a trend statement on an extrapolation out to 2050, presumably using climate “data” yet to be observed; more in the realm of faith than it is Scientific information.
And the poor quality of the data sets is no mystery; it resides in this statement: “”” We’ve known all along that the data may be biased by poor siting issues, handling of station dropout, or inadequate treatment of UHI effects. “””
If the sampling regimen conformed to the well known rules for sampled data systems, the dropout of stations, and UHIs would have no impact on the correctness of the results.
The fact that these four data sets show a lot of similarity; might be related to the fact that they all try to determine the same thing from roughly the same data sources, and the agreement of the two sat based sets with each other, or the two land based sets with each other is better than the land versus sat discrepancies.
But none of them actually correspond to the true average surface temperature of the earth; whether you mean actual surface or some low altitude (5-10 feet or so) air temperatures.
Do either GISStemp or HadCRUT data sets actually list each and every source station raw temperature data, and include the total AREA of the earth surface that is assigned to each station; without which it is impossible to compute an average for the total earth surface area.
If that data is listed anywhere that is news to me.
jonc look at the dates when they start Icarus starts his at the end of a well known cold period basil starts his in the 1800s basil’s graph will show a much better look at the big picture not a cherry picked date known to be about as cold as the 20th century got.
Quoting from Basil’s article: “But nothing was revealed that suggests that the global temperature data sets are completely bogus, or unreliable.
Nothing? What about the programmers’ notes recently posted by Anthony (from the HARRY_READ_ME.txt file)? For example:
“OH F*CK THIS. It’s Sunday evening, I’ve worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I’m hitting yet another problem that’s based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform data integrity, it’s just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they’re found.”
That’s in reference to the CRU databases. Today, Anthony posted an email in which Phil Jones says the GISS temperature series is inferior to CRU’s. That’s the same CRU data which was called a “hopeless state” and having “no uniform data integrity” by a programmer. I’m sure UAH and RSS are reliable, but how can anyone now say CRU and GISS are not bogus and unreliable?
Could we please change it to the “SCRUtape letters.”
Ah, I understand. I am watching aghast as this outrage unfolds. Icarus really is a cad.
Icarus,
All I see in the graphs you reference is something like 30 years of warm-phase PDO followed by entrance into the cool phase.
Is the earth warming? Of course it is. It is still not back to its former peak temperatures during the Holocene, and will probably wiggle up and down a couple more times before it goes cold for 85,000 years, again.
Icarus (12:17:55) :
clicking on the reference given, I get the following error msg.
“550 /pub/data/anomalies/annual.land_and_ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat: No such file or directory”
So, where did that data come from?
The problem is not with the data, it has really never been with the data. The problem is with selective representation. A few have misrepresented reality to the world for 2 decades now to the point where we are all now expected to hand over portions of (perhaps all?) national sovereignty to an international form of energy regulation (government). That is the point. The data is what it is. The shocking aspect of these e-mails has nothing to do with the data itself, but how it was represented in the IPCC reports and passed off as the gospel truth according to thousands of scientists.
Now we know it was the ideology of a few. We now know from these e-mails what was suspected 16 years ago by a very prominent American Physicist:
( http://www.sepp.org/glwarm/majordeception.htm (seems to be slow/down)
alternatively: http://blog.stoic-epicurean.com/index.php?blog=6&p=62&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1)
We know that the normal process of scientific disagreement to ferret out the truth was circumvented to present only one side of the data. It’s very easy to make random noise look like a signal through selective choice of points and that’s what these men did.
I’ll side with Icarus here. Most of what he states is factually accepted, with many posts on WUWT supporting his position: temperatures in general have increased since 1880, and this increase is around 1 deg C per century. Further, either the 1930’s, 1940’s, or 2000’s were the hottest decade during this period. I would say the 2000’s have a pretty good shot at being hottest overall. At the same time, there has been no appreciable warming in a decade, and arguably some cooling.
Whether man has contributed to climate change is open to question, but certainly not impossible, whether through CO2 or urban heat effect or some other means.
But what to do? Icarus could have predicted in 1900, that were we continue in our ways, temperatures would rise by 1 deg C by 2000. As a factual matter (and disregarding the issue of causality), he would have been right! He could have argued that the automobile, the airplane, electricity would bring on the apocalypse of 1998–and the statistics (if not the theory) would have borne him out! Should we have then foregone these inventions? Would life be better without them? Would the planet support more people at a higher standard of living? It would seem not.
“1) Could it be that current temperatures are not much higher than they were in the 30’s and 40’s as Karlens work would suggest and if so, how would that correlate with cosmic ray intensity? A match?”
There has been a deliberate adjustment down of the blip in the 30’s IMO.
Go to John Daly’s site and pull out a raw rural record anywhere in the world and it will show that the 30’s were as hot or hotter.than today.
http://www.john-daly.com/stations/stations.htm
I.e. Iceland Greenland Alaska
Illinois , Arctic Russia
Finland
New Delhi
Florida
Marble Bar
Adelaide
Canberra & Wagga
Norfolk Island
Iowa
Argentina
South Africa
North west Africa
It appears to me most if not all of the “warming” since the 30’s is adjusted in.
wws (13:01:07) :
Gavin, er, I mean Icarus, quit trying to hijack the thread. Aren’t enough people coming to your blog anymore?
This is grossly untrue… I still go there for a good laugh at the deceptive and misleading responses to valid questions posed.
This from Science Daily about climate change on Saturn’s moon Titan. It seems they believe the orbit of Saturn around the sun is partially responsible. Some on this site have also stated this.
Like Dr Jones says—Cheers
Quiet Time on the Sun Stalls Aurora Viewing
“Like the booms and busts of snowshoe hares, the numbers of both solar flares and sunspots (dark splotches on the sun) peak about every 11 years. On the other side of that peak is a crash, and the sun has bottomed out in sporadic activity since early 2008. The sun has gone more than two years without spewing a significant solar flare, and sunspot counts have also been very low. And sunspots are not great aurora indicators anyway.”
http://alaskareport.com/news109/x71353_aurora_viewing.htm
“It’s equally as likely that the 1950-1980 time period was cherry picked by the natural climate cycle “denialists”
Ed, wasn’t that when they were predicting the coming of the next ice age,
because it was so cold?
Start low, anyone can predict a warming trend when you do that.
“Icarus (12:17:55) :
Clever manipulation of graphs but the reality is very different – the planet has been warming at about 0.2C per decade for several decades and it still is warming at 0.2C per decade:
https://sites.google.com/site/europa62/climatechange/yvtayto200”
I’d be careful putting to much faith in any of the NOAA data, Icarus. Hansen’s part of the same group in that he’s never released any of his “adjustments” to the REAL data, so his graphs are actually the ones that involve manipulated data. Spend some time reading here…it’ll help.
JimB
Expat In France
I suggest you google Chris Smith and you will find he is head of the Environment Agency, a green labour avtivist AND Head of the Advertsing Standards Authority. Any complaints about the ad will go straight to him. Nice incestous little game-like so much of new Labour.
Tonyb
We know that:
1. the interior of the sun is dominated by chaotic and unpredictable buoyancy forces.
2. the oceans are dominated by chaotic and unpredictable buoyancy forces.
3. the atmosphere is dominated by chaotic and unpredictable buoyancy forces.
Thus forecasting or understanding climate variations seems impossible. My best guess is, although Dr. Svalgaard disagrees, that a prolonged solar minimum may lead to a similar temperature drop the start of this century exactly as we saw in the previous century when Titanic unfortunately hit the ice berg.
The main problem is that the climate models have not managed to predict the global cooling we see, and this is a more serious problem than any illegal modification of empirical climate data. With the terribly slow thermal transients in our climate, I do not think that it will be possible to develop a climate model with strong predictive power. We know so little.
While I agree that smoothed data can generate a close match image does it tell the real story. Here on WUWT:
Divergence Between GISS and UAH since 1980
17 01 2009
Guest post by Steven Goddard
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/17/divergence-between-giss-and-uah-since-1980/
Suggests a divergence does exist, at least between GISS and UAH for the 1980 forward time period (beginning of UAH data).
I make note of this paragraph;
Using Google’s linest() function, the divergence between GISS and UAH is increasing at a rate of 0.32C/century. (GISS uses a different baseline than UAH, but the slope of the difference should be zero, if the data sets correlated properly.) The slope is not zero, which indicates an inconsistency between the data sets.
Steven provided a link to the spreadsheet which is here:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pj0h2MODqj3gD6evaxHq_bw
I believe that Basil’s post does point out a very significant fact. When it comes to climate and climate change we are in the infancy of the learning process. We are NOT in a position to make any claims of possessing enough knowledge that “likely” or “very likely” projections of future climate can be made with integrity.
Bulldust
Take comfort in Icarus’s name-like his namesake he is flying too close to the sun and will plunge to earth.
http://www.island-ikaria.com/culture/myth.asp
Tonyb
An excellent balanced discussion by MrCopeland and I think the point about standardisation of the graphs displaying temperature records by JonC is very important. Most people use what the media presents to gain an understanding of the science
Both are very topical because the public are exposed to graphs suggesting an exponential rise in temperatures (6-7c next 90yrs) and much of the MSM particulary the BBC seem determined to support the catastrophic view of melting ice caps, extreme weather events, global flooding etc etc, all on the basis of rising CO2. It seems Copenhagen must be supported no matter what the science really shows
I dont believe most of the climate scientists believe this either but it is now politically correct to believe this extreme description of events. Its going to take some time for the ‘temperature to cool’ so to speak. Meanwhile it will cost a fortune. Is there any way of questioning ‘consensus’ opinion without being branded a denier?
Is there an opportunity to fund some open minded research with a view to publication in peer review literature. I do believe there are enough people who would freely give money if they felt there was a balance of Mcintyres and Manns doing the work whatever the results
“But nothing was revealed that suggests that the global temperature data sets are completely bogus, or unreliable.”
I don’t think this statement can be made, since CRU admits they destroyed the original data.
JimB
Whether it is 0.1- or 0.2-C per decade, the essential point is “at the margin, human activity has had some influence” and of human activity, there are good scientific reasons to believe that CO2 is completely irrelevant. However, CO2 is the only thing of interest to the anti-science warm-mongers, due to its profound economic leverage.
Christopher Monckton interview by Alex Jones. Jones is in a little over his head, which is to our advantage in that the interviewee dominates the discussion.
———————————————————-
Lord Christopher Monckton on Alex Jones Tv 1/5:Lord Monckton Talks About Climategate
Lord Christopher Monckton on Alex Jones Tv 2/5:Lord Monckton Talks About Climategate
Lord Christopher Monckton on Alex Jones Tv 3/5:Lord Monckton Talks About Climategate
Lord Christopher Monckton on Alex Jones Tv 4/5:Lord Monckton Talks About Climategate
Lord Christopher Monckton on Alex Jones Tv 5/5:Lord Monckton Talks About Climategate
The problem with Climate Science is that the most extreme catclysmic prediction gets the most money thrown at it and as we assuredly know money corrupts. One only has to watch the weathermen and women when any storm is approaching. The station with the most alarming possible scenario attracts the viewers.
The only way to avoid this situation in climate science is to have full disclosure and financed verifications, which would descriptive of how the scientific method should work.
Icarus, please keep posting here. I just love it when your posts are torn to shreds.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1979/offset:-0.1/plot/uah/from:1979
The agreement wasn’t bad in 1980, but GISS seems to have acquired an extra couple of decades worth of global warming since.
WUWT?
Who should be nominated for the Baghdad Bob award in this Climategate scandal?
edward (13:04:21) :
Icarus
The increase in temperatures as measured by Hadcrut is denoted as an anomaly compared to the 1950-1980 time period. Who decided that temperatures during the 1950-1980 time period were normal? Why a 30 year time span and why not 50-100 years and based on what criteria would you determine what time period to use?
It is a ‘cherry pick’ in the middle of a cold period. Plot any of a large number of long lived sites and it stands out. TonyB has a nice series that shows it well.
The IPCC report has 0.13+/-..03 deg C trend over the last 50 years. So the only significant difference between this post and the IPCC report is in the standard error. Any plans to post: 1) the smoothing method used and 2) how exactly the standard error was calculated?
Icarus has done this on other threads. He jumps in with erroneous claims and refuses to debate or support his claims. Cut and run is an extremely cowardly way to present your arguments, but is all too typical of how many supporters of the false hypothesis behave. George E. Smith makes a great point in that taken in a larger context, the variability we see in climate today is absolutely miniscule in comparison to the paleo record. Nothing to fear here.
Until independent analysts are allowed to see the raw data and adjustments made, no one can make any judgment about the validity of the GISS and Hadcrut records, and from there climate models, projections, ETS legislation, and the future employment prospects of many in the climate industry.
And that’s not likely to happen. They can truthfully say that “The dog ate it” because according to Harry it really is a dog’s breakfast.
Many months ago here on WUWT, I questioned the integrity of the satellite data, because of the several corrections and adjustments which were applied at the beginning. I was *assured* that the data was *robust* and the adjustments were necessary to make the satellite data correlate with the surface data. The very surface data which has been shown to be worthless. So, I take the satellite data with a very large grain of salt, since it has not been, and apparently cannot be calibrated against absolute standards, as I would have demanded had I been project monitor. With a lifetime of RF and microwave systems design behind me, I know how untrustworthy those sorts of assemblies of electron manipulators can be, especially when placed out of reach. Any other RF designers on here with similar experience?
PK – “Is there any way of questioning ‘consensus’ opinion without being branded a denier?”
There is no alternative to courage, now or in any other age. One has to decide if pursuit of the Truth is worth bearing up under the attacks which the enemies of truth will hurl at you. Fortunately I think the wind has changed, and it will be much easier to do what you suggest in the future. (how could the label “denier” ever have had anything to do with science???)
“Is there an opportunity to fund some open minded research with a view to publication in peer review literature.”
As you have probably noticed by now, the “peer review” mechanism is broken and may be beyond repair. Something new will replace it, but I don’t at this time know what that will be. It would seem in this digital age that it should be web-based and open to all, but that’s just me dreaming.
It’s not only what our eyeballs are telling us, it’s what our instincts have been telling us: We are in a cooling phase.
Key concept: Phase.
Telling descriptor: Cooling.
For how long? Pick a card, any card. Your guess is as good as mine.
I say it’s a cascade failure of many things going in the same direction all at once. We know the PDO will stay where it’s at the next 30 yrs.
Do we know for sure what the Sun will do?
Do we know for sure that GCR background is constant in the Galaxy?
Do we know for sure what volcanism will do next?
Seems to me that many people would have no problem with reasonable actions that lessen damage to the environment as in cleaner air, water etc. That global climate change! has been used as a club to cajole people into improving the environment is only going to undermine what support there would have been for such actions.
Of course taking the route of not clubbing people into submission requires discussing trade offs and reasonable debate. I guess that’s just too much work and when you have hidden agendas more concerned with wealth redistribution and govt. control by the self-appointed intellectually elite.
Re Jon C,
Mr Copelands is a difference between each successive year (i.e. 1980-1979, 1981-1980 and so forth). It is used to clarify the pattern of variation (up and downs, repeatedly). Icaros plot is the adjusted data as it is.
Luis,
FYI – I think Anthony’s system of super-sleuths has now visited over 90% of the U.S. stations and he is planning on issuing a report on siting issues. Given that about 40% of the stations used in the institutional temperature databases is from the U.S., this could be big. Anthony’s volunteers have access to much of the historical station siting data. May of the photos are shocking and can only lead to the conclusion that the UHI is ridiculously under-accounted for and the temperature data compromised. So, an accurate re-analysis of that database could result in a significant reduction of the temperature anomalies over the last century, at least in the U.S.. And understand, a “significant reduction” could be as little as only 0.1-0.3 Deg C., which could undo the entire catastrophic AGW premise. Mr. Copeland’s analysis will add uncertainty to the recorded trends to allow for natural variations to wipe out some if not all of the anomalies.
To everyone else, something really remarkable has occurred in the last month. Big Al in a Newsweek article this month admits he was wrong about CO2’s share of the contribution to global warming, referencing a Science 10/30/09 article that CO2 contributes only about 43% to global warming. Oops. Half as much is due to methane (27%), black carbon (soot) 12%, halocarbons 8%, CO and volatile organic 7 %. No mention of ozone, which also probably contributes to global warming. And then there are those messy nitrous oxides, nitrates, sulfates and sulfur dioxide emissions which offset global warming with global coolings where, if you clean up the smokestacks spewing these chemicals, would contribute to global warming. And ooh, wait! Dr. V. Ramanathan (the guy who launched all those UAV’s into China’s and India’s “brown cloud” and confirmed what other researchers were already quantifying – that black carbon (soot) is warming the planet big time) probably contributes about one half as much to global warming as CO2, a fact which the 2007 IPCC missed. Maybe as much or even more, thereby exceeding CO2’s contributions. And guess who produces more CO2 than the U.S. and 4 times as much soot, and those ratios are climbing? The answer is: China! And these guys are on an atmospheric polluting tear like never before seen in human history.
So there you have it. Global warming which may or may not exist. If it does exist, what part is natural (i.e., solar, Milankovitch cycles, AMO, PDO, cosmic rays, sunspots, volcanic, rebound from the LIA, etc.)? What of that non-natural fraction of global warming may be anthropogenic, how much is due to CO2, dust, methane, sulfur and nitrous compounds, soot, deforestation, tillage methods, human land use changes, etc.? And if by removing any positive feedback mechanisms you end up reducing negative feedback mechanisms that offset the positive feedback mechanisms, how do you deal with that? And even if you can sort out all this, is adaptation cheaper than being bankrupted by mitigation?
Finally, we’re finding the only place where the science is settled in many minds is found, in words of another blogger I read today, in the bottom of a dumpster thanks to the CRU.
The battle is on. And it won’t stop at Copenhagen.
I’ve been trying to find Briffa’s papers. The only one I’ve found available openly is the 1998 paper:
http://eas8001.eas.gatech.edu/papers/Briffa_et_al_PTRS_98.pdf
I assume this is the 1998 paper referred to here in “How the Trick was pulled off”
http://eas8001.eas.gatech.edu/papers/Briffa_et_al_PTRS_98.pdf
Fig 5 looks quite different to the one in the article but it clearly shows a strong decline after 1940. It doesn’t show the LIA as in the Briffa 2000 plot, in the article. Fig 6 shows the decline very clearly. This 1998 Briffa paper is based on trees from the whole of the Northern hemisphere. Surely this paper is more damning of claims of recent warming, than later papers based on a few ftrees in one region ?
Steven Kopits (13:28:18) “I’ll side with Icarus here. Most of what he states is factually accepted […]”
Don’t fall for the routine alarmist strawman, red herring, smoke, & mirrors tactics [designed to pacify religious devotees who haven’t a clue about what is being discussed].
Icarus (12:17:55) “Clever manipulation […]”
This charge is proof of either distortion or ignorance.
Error in second link above:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/28/how-the-trick-was-pulled-off/#more-13328
Reply: More specific please? ~ ctm
Lee Kington,
Well presented!
The science ain’t nowhere close to settled!
Correction – Michael Mann was on NPR’s “The Diane Rehm Show” this morning not “Fresh Air” with John Podesta (Center for American Progress), Stephen Power (Wall Street Journal), Michael Mann (founder of the Hockey Team), and Kenneth Green (American Enterprise institute):
http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=5495237
“Is there an opportunity to fund some open minded research with a view to publication in peer review literature.”
http://www.worldsci.org/php/index.php?tab0=Home
http://www.vixra.org/
In science, whenever a significant amount of the data is questionable, especially data that’s manipulated with undocumented methods, you either have to scrupulously scrub out the bad data or throw it all out.
George E. Smith (13:20:07) :
“Do either GISStemp or HadCRUT data sets actually list each and every source station raw temperature data, and include the total AREA of the earth surface that is assigned to each station; without which it is impossible to compute an average for the total earth surface area.”
I entirely agree. Further more I would suggest it may be even pointless.
Often only few sample locations are considered.
Here is an example in work by Craig Loehle:
http://www.freesundayschoollessons.org/pdfs/climate-history.pdf
[ see part two of the paper ‘correction to: a 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-tree ring proxies’ (page 94 ; Acrobat’s 14of 20) Figure 1. Map of study sites ]
Out of 15 worldwide locations 8 or 9 are related to the North Atlantic area. Only 3 are in the Southern Hemisphere, and none in the Western Pacific area. Hardly representative of the world trends. It would be far more useful if Loehle and McCulloch gave data individually for each of 15 locations, then we would have at least a some idea of the regional trends. It just shows that producing a global temperature anomaly graph is fraught with danger.
Invariant (13:37:18) ” […] chaotic and unpredictable […] Thus forecasting or understanding climate variations seems impossible.”
Along with untenable assumptions of randomness, this is a serious error being made by leading alarm-scientists. It is a major barrier to not only deep understanding but also exploration of natural climate variations.
Those seeking full truth are advised to aggressively challenge such lazy assumptions at every opportunity.
(No personal offense intended – my attack is on the idea, not the messenger.)
Read this, interesting pictures too: Watch Prince Charles who said that in a next life he would like to return as an infectious disease cause a pandemic and the CRU thugs
Tentacles of Climategate will reach far as information is divulged
The Scientists Involved in Deliberately Deceiving the World on Climate
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/17364
And this:
Holdren, it should be pointed out, was also heavily engaged in the proposal by Margaret Mead to create a world crisis back in the early seventies. http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/GWHoaxBorn.pdf
But also this declaration of war to those manipulating the science en those who aim for a World Government
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/17358
And last but not least, an in my opinion a realistic perspective to sew the frauds and Federal government:
Attention Lawyers! Make Millions Off Of Climategate Crooks!
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/17361
Brit Hume will be updating us with a report on Climategate after the Glenn Beck show at 6PM on Fox News. Get your Youtube fingers ready and someone please post a high quality video. Thanks.
Great post Mr. Copeland. Thank you for some pure logical science.
I agree that in the end the sun has a much larger influence that currently viewed by ‘most respected, published, peer-reviewed scientists”. Here’s a view you probably have never seen. I have searched hundreds and hundreds of papers for the following correlation to no avail. If anyone knows where this is exactly addressed, please post the link.
Take the sun spot numbers from 1700 to current. You can get theses at ftp://omaftp.oma.be/dist/astro/sidcdata/yearss.dat. Put years at A5:A314 and Wolf sunspot numbers at B5:B314. Make A1 equal AVERAGE(B5:B260), the average sunspots between 1700 and 1955. Make A2 equal 0.00028, a guess at the dTempC per year per sunspot deviance from equilibrium of ~45 in A1. Make C4 be zero for starting dTempC offset (non-critical). Make C5 equal C4+(B5-$A$1)*$A$2 and extend this equations down to 2009 at C314. View XY chart of A5:A314 and C5:C314.
This is basically taking the integral of the area under the Wolf sunspot time-series curve against time in years.
This might give you a new view of what a tiny change in solar variance can affect temperatures on Earth over decades. The irradiance (and other factors) accumulates or dissipates over long periods of time depending on how high and wide the 11 year cycles are. See graph at NASA of “Global Annual Solar Irradiation” et.al. Lean.
Very rough but you should get the idea behind it.
Increase of a degree or less globally is meaningless. We can all cope with that or delight in it. That is why the Global Warming industry have had to extrapolate way beyond that in order to ramp up the scare factor. They have done this in two ways:
1. Attempting to ‘credit’ Global warming with any sort of bad weather anywhere or anywhen. Every time there is a flood, drought, hurricane etc the response is Global warming…global warming… you ain’t seen nothing yet… global warming. This actually has worked as evidenced on last week’s BBC question time when a lady in the audience asked along the lines if Global Warming is rubbish then why have there been these floods in Cumbria! Lady politician (Scotland 2nd Minister no less) agreed that there was something wrong with the weather… That’s when I turned off.
2. Claiming that warming will be much worse at the poles, sea level will rise, there will be floods. This has worked as well. As can be seen in many forums, a common response from a general public believer is along the lines of if there is no Global Warming then why are the ice caps melting. It is now popular wisdom that the icecaps are melting. Cue pictures of large chunks of ice falling off the end of a glacier. Cue cute polar bear pictures…
We should certainly beware ice caps melting because even though Arctic Ice does not affect sea level it strongly affects public opinion. And to be fair we should keep an eye on polar ice as a matter of sensible precaution. But if those who think we are in for a period of cooling are right then we should make sure the public are aware of it if ice cover increases.
Just wanted to let you all know, In Australia there has just been a change of leader in the Opposition party with the new leader definately against our cap and trade legisltation. let the change roll on globally.
In case you’re interested, Tony Abbott is now the head of the Lib Dems in Australia. They’re saying it means the party will be destroyed in the next election–but for now it means NO ETS!!! Live blogging at The Australian site.
O.T.
Just in from Australia:
TONY Abbott has secured the Liberal leadership in a knife edge three way tussle but the fate of Labor’s emissions trading scheme is still not clear.
While Mr Abbott has pledged to deliver an anti-ETS policy as a condition of his leadership, up to eight Liberal MPs are threatening to cross the floor and vote with Labor.
Kevin Rudd only needs seven Liberal MPs to vote for an ETS in the Senate and it will become law.
“Because if the truth be told, natural climate variation is so – well, variable – that no one can say with any kind of certainty what the future holds with respect to climate change. Be skeptical of any statistical claims to the contrary.”
This says it all for me.
A lot of environmentalist, in their zeal to save mother earth, resort to scare tactics in order to change human behavior. My high school science teacher did back in 1973 when he announced, with the utmost certainty, that the planet would die out within 30 years. This was based on the predictions of leading environmentalists at the time (read the speeches from the first Earth Day for a sample).
For most of my classmates, it didn’t change our behavior but it did scare the hell out of us. We questioned why we should bother going to college, even graduate high school. Sadly I now see this same concern with my children’s classmates.
The one thing from the FOIA that scared me the most was the .pdf “Rules of the Game”.
TonyB (13:39:54) :
Yep I am aware of the Greek myth… which must be a myth, because they claim melting of the wax on the wings because he flew too close to the sun. Obviously the writer had never hiked up any big hills in his life, or he might have noticed the temperature drop with altitude. I mean, exactly how high was this lad flying?
PLEASE: If any body cuts and pastes these links anywhere else.
PLEASE: keep them all together and this message: it includes pro AGW articles a s well
Hi
Please Create a topic for this post: I believe it is a as fair as possible quick summary representation of the mainstream media, in the UK, and ALSO has links to the MOST pro AGW main stream newspaper in the UK (if not Europe)as well.
The Telegraph: and for balance the Guardian: – (and I do give credit to George Monbiot)
ie If a non-regular passer by, and see these links. (keep updating new ones with the current dates
Then the story is in the real world, not just lots of crazy sceptics sites..
At least they will see that the Story about the story is being covered somewhere in the MSM,
especially important as it is in the UK, where the CRU is,
The Telegraph have reported this pretty impartially to start with, and then with increasing annoyance at the other mainstream media (lack of) actions. (LOOK at their comments sections)
The Guardian is VERY pro AGW and Copenhagen. (and they have taken flack because of it)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6679082/Climate-change-this-is-the-worst-scientific-scandal-of-our-generation.html
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100018034/climategate-e-mails-sweep-america-may-scuttle-barack-obamas-cap-and-trade-laws/
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100018192/climategate-the-ipcc-is-over-says-uea-climate-scientist/
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100018236/climategate-the-conservative-backlash-begins/
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100018246/climategate-how-the-greatest-scientific-scandal-of-our-generation-got-its-name/
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100018263/climategate-googlegate/
the Guardian Is VERY pro AGW – BUT they ARE reporting the story, so they must be due a lot of credit (you can see it is painful for them)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/20/climate-sceptics-hackers-leaked-emails
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/27/climate-email-hackers-access-month
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/nov/25/monbiot-climate-leak-crisis-response
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/nov/23/global-warming-leaked-email-climate-scientists
Couple more from the Dail Mail (the first may be of particular interest)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1230943/Climate-change-scandal-BBC-expert-sent-cover-emails-month-public.html
this next blog may have been the cause of your miracle.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2009/10/whatever-happened-to-global-wa.shtml
as the blogger (a bbc reporter says he recieved emails in OCTOBER, search the leaked emails for bbc and Paul Hudson)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2009/11/climategate-cru-hacked-into-an.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2009/11/climategate-what-next.shtml
See what happens (or not) when you search for Climate gate, or Climate Scandal on the main http://www.bbc.co.uk website
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1230635/Scientist-climate-change-cover-storm-told-quit.html
A bit late to the party.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936289.ece
Very interesting post. Once again WUWT leads the way!
Woohoo! Tony Abbot (the anit-EST – Cap & Trade) candidate has just been elected leader of the Australian opposition on the promise to delay and/or reject the legislation in the senate.
Tenuc (13:19:46) : Temperature is a poor proxy for the myriad of energy transfer mechanism that comprise the Earth’s chaotic climate system [] I think the quote from Kevin Trenberth in the hacked CRU Letters, “The fact is that we cannot account for the lack of warmth at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can’t.” is revealing. It shows the frustration the guy is feeling, that after spending god knows how much money on climate science the scientists involved still don’t have a clue.
So well formulated and accurate – this should have been my comment… 🙂
The main problem is that the climate models fail. I think I know one reason why; in order to tune a nonlinear fluid flow model with experiments, you need to do a lot of experiments, over and over again. This is fine tuning, and I have been involved in tuning a most complicated multiphase flow model, so I know that you’ll need thousands of independent experiments to validate and verify a model. For our climate with transients over decades, it will thus at least take 1000 ∙ 10 y = 10 000 years to fine tune a climate model. Without fine tuning, the model will fail, over and over again. Possibly the climate forecast for the 10 years from 12010 to 12020 could be quite accurate… 🙂
You say
“There has been an upward trend in the global temperature trend, and when this is projected out to 2050, the average is 0.114°C per decade ± 0.440°C per decade.”
Question : Why project out to 2050? Surely it is sufficient to calculate the trend in the available data. Projection simply introduces uncertainty.
Question : Have you examined whether there is a trend difference between satellite and surface temperatures over the common period? If so, have you considered the possibility that the difference may be an indication of the extent to which surface temperatures have been manually adjusted or are inaccurate (eg. badly sited stations)? I ask this question particularly because I have plotted satellite and surface tropical temperatures from UAH and CRU (1980-2009), and the surface warmed by noticeably more than the troposphere over that period. It was also very noticeable that briefly during El Ninos the opposite applied – the troposphere warmed more during El Ninos then dropped back below the surface temperature again.
Basil: “I think Trenberth just sees it as a lack of monitoring methods or devices.”
Trenberth’s articles suggest he understands that natural variation is complex. (I don’t necessarily see Trenberth & Meehl as ‘bad guys’… no further comment…)
Basil: “But I think there still remains a considerable lack of knowledge, or understanding, about the mechanics of natural climate variation.”
You could drop “But I think” and change “considerable” to “staggering”.
Basil: “± 0.440°C per decade”
I reject the assumptions upon which this estimate is based. (Note: This does not affect the key points & major theme of Basil’s article.)
Thank You:
This article is a breath of fresh air (after the pattern of the last week). Judge Basil has laid down a judgement that accurately hits several important points. When this thread starts to settle down (politically), I imagine we’ll get refocused on discussing natural variations. I have some fresh notes I might share…
Icarus, so the climate has been warming at 0.2C per decade for the last few decades. Even if that were true, and it isn’t, so what? When it was cooling for a few decades in the 50s’ and 60s’ “scientists” told us a new ice age might happen. The data is rubbish, the “adjusted” data is corrupt and there is no long term global warming or cooling sufficient to cause a threat.
Slamdunk (13:23:16) :
“Could we please change it to the “SCRUtape letters.””
Clever.
“Its going to take some time for the ‘temperature to cool’ so to speak. Meanwhile it will cost a fortune.”
Not necessarily. Give Climategate awhile to sink in, and for additional dirty laundcry to come to light, and for additional scientists to weigh in against the consensus. The pendulum of alarmism has reached its apogee and is poised to swing the other way. Copenhagen is a dead man walking.
There is no chance now that the US will pass any major carbon tax without a lot of hearings and scientific investigations first that produce findings supporting alarmism–and that is impossible, if neutral scientists oversee the process, similar to the Wegman investigation.
And if the US won’t get on board, neither will China and India. So the only money lost will be in Europe, similar to what happened post-Kyoto.
basil – if you look at the thread relating to the exchange between Phil Jones and the Swedish professor Karten, you will see that what CRU did with the data was to interpolate and adjust such that it bore no relation to the actual Fennoscandinavia station data – and that region has a good set of data, and he could not give Karten a straight answer as to why not – not only could he not explain WHAT data he had used, he could not explain the adjustment process either.
I expect the same inexplicable process has occurred for all the other regions- producing the regional graphs for the IPCC 4th meeting that all then showed a mini version of the hockey stick.
I have a particular interest in the Arctic data sets – the station data for 30+ sites from Alaska through Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Russia – in 2004 I could find only one data set that showed higher levels than in 1940, and by 2007, about half of the stations had peaked at about the same level or slightly higher than 1940 and in 2009, all showed a recent decline – the centennial graph looked like a two-humped camel and nothing like a hockey-stick. Unable to find the ‘warming’ I assumed that CRU had a better scientific method of dealing with interpolation (vast areas with no stations), anomalies, etc etc. I trusted that at the very least the data sets were basically sound – it was the interpretation of causation that was at fault.
Now I no longer have such faith. The climate-gate emails are damning on many levels but represent an all-pervading corruption of the processes of science – not just of peer-review, but of data handling and the role of critics (all scientists should be sceptics!).
Somebody asked about what all this means for the CO2 issue and has anyone got a handle on whether it is 5 or 10 or 50% of the warming. I have published an in-depth review of this issue (Chill: a reassessment of global warming theory) – I went to the surface radiation data provided by NASA – there you will find that for the whole of the period 1980-2000, there was an excess of Short Wave (visible light) radiation to the surface of the Earth (70% ocean). The computed Infra Red effect from CO2 is about 1/5th the radiative forcing from this warming power. That is to say – the potential carbon dioxide effect (computed – it cannot be measured because the natural IR flux from cloud is so variable) is 20% maximum. This can also be confirmed from another data set looking at the albedo changes of the Earth from cloud cover. Over the same period, cloud thinned by 4% – that is what let the warming light through.
This warmth is absorbed by the top 200-300m of the ocean (land cannot store it) and is released slowly over decades and in a complex pattern of cycles, slightly different for each ocean basin. Thus there is a time lag.
The crucial question then is – what causes the clouds to thin and allow the light in. (note: sunlight itself – the only significant source of heat, does not vary very much over time – not enough to explain the cycles).
If you look behind the scenes at NASA, for example – and search out their newsletter (http://eospo.gsfc.nasa.gov/eos_observ/pdf/Jan_Feb08.pdf)
you will find a truthful asssessment by Takmeng Wong, their foremost surface radiation budget specialist, where he admits that from the data it is impossible to tell whether the clouds are thinning naturally and driving the warming, or a result of the GHG gas effect warming the oceans (feedback) –
of course – it could be BOTH, but the key is in what happens to the data from 2000 onwards – clouds shift upward by 2% and the surface input falls. A new cycle has kicked in – ‘natural variability’ dominates the ‘warming’.
If you then look at ocean heat storage data you will see that heat storage levels off around 2002-2003 (as does sea-level rise). This is all in my book.
Further comment on the climategate files. It is disturbing that a specialist of Trenberth’s position as a key man at the IPCC has no clue about why the warming has ceased and even less about the 1920-1940 rise that they tried to eliminate from the record. The data is entirely conisistent not with El Nino – as so often mentioned, but the northern pacific PDO cycle (which effects the amplitude of the ENSO) and a similar multi-decadal cycle in the Atlantic. This is oceanography – and there are hundreds of peer-reviewed papers on this issue. Thus, NCAR may not be able to explain it – but climatology certainly can!
And if one extrapolates from the oceanography – as I have done, you can predict that the Arctic ice starts to come back (2008,2009) the Pacific cools further, the Atlantic also begins to cool……
Now to causes – people ask about cosmic rays – I think they do contribute to the natural pattern, but I think the main driver will prove to be the UV component of solar variability coupled to the magnetic field – through a complex interaction in the Arctic this affects the spatial patterning of atmospheric pressure systems, clouds, ocean heat storage and ocean heat loss. (The IPCC knows this behind the scenes – and this is why they state the warming is very unlikely to be ‘due to KNOWN natural causes acting alone’ – of course, nobody said that was likely – and they regard the UV/magnetics/cosmic ray science – with dozens of papers published and a fullscale CERN/European Space Agency programme underway) as not ‘known’ natural causes – they are covering their collective ass!
If as I suspect it is 80% or more natural – then halving the human CO2 component (and 75% of that is industrial, 25% forest changes) will affect at most about 8% of the driving force – for a cost – if you believe Stern, of 2% of global GDP per annum -which is about $1.5 trillion – the same amount as the rescue package for global banks EVERY year for the next 50 years (he is apparently a respected economist) and with no discernible effect on the climate in the next 100 years!
BUT – I do not argue that this then legitimises the current world development model with business as usual – NATURAL climate change can be dangerous and human support systems are very vulnerable to COOLING (Maunder Minimum effects are concentrated in the northern hemisphere which currently produces a surplus in food that feeds 67 countries in food deficit) – we need a big humanitarian effort to create resilient ecosystems – and that will cost perhaps $100 billion annually. This message gets lost (or deliberately suppressed).
Peter Plail (13:53:15) :
“Icarus, please keep posting here. I just love it when your posts are torn to shreds.”
Good point.
It is instructional to see how his comments are torn to shreds.
google.com
Results 1 – 10 of about 107,000,000 for climategate. (0.07 seconds)
107,000,000 hits?
OT Tony Abbott, CLimate skeptic new leader of the Opposition in Australia – next step is to stop ETS
http://www.twawki.com
This data are not enough to show Earth Temperature History with a good error margin.
Most of Africa,Latin America, and all Sea “only” 70% of Earth are heavily sub-represented in that data. The majority of Earth is not there.
OT-thought this article might interest:
Climate Dementors are not only determined to scare us witless about an imagined impending climate catastrophe, they also want to suck all the joy and happiness out of our lives in the process.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2747744.htm
Fantastic ! Good on ya Tony Abbot !!
The 1998 Briffa paper makes very interesting reading. Have a look at page 5 and the attemted explanation for the divergence between Hadcrut temperatures and tree ring data showing falling temps after 1940-1960.
http://eas8001.eas.gatech.edu/papers/Briffa_et_al_PTRS_98.pdf
He claims ” the cause (of the decline) is not understood ” . He suggests:
” increasing atmospheric CO2″ … I think that would cause more growth ?
” higher levels of pollutant (i.e. nitrates or phosphates) … evidence ?
” other changes in soil chemistry” … across the whole N hemisphere ?
” increased UV-B levels ” … evidence ?
” increasing atmospheric opacity has resulted in a notable reduction in the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth’s surface since the middle of this
century (Bradley & Jones 1992).” … wouldn’t that cause cooling ?
He seems to miss the most obvious explanation .. the Hadcrut temps may be wrong.
How does Briffra’s data get so twisted as to show warming after 1970 ?
Listening to Michael Savage, he mentioned climategate and a guset at the bottom of the hour 3:30 PST. I think it is Pat Michaels.
I listen here
http://www.560wind.com/
Bulldust (15:01:39) :
TonyB (13:39:54) :
Yep I am aware of the Greek myth… which must be a myth, because they claim melting of the wax on the wings because he flew too close to the sun. Obviously the writer had never hiked up any big hills in his life, or he might have noticed the temperature drop with altitude. I mean, exactly how high was this lad flying?
Ah well, back in those days the sun was much closer to the earth you see. A consensus of Greek astronomers including Aristotle said so, so it must be true. If you stood on Mt Olympus, you could get yur hair singed by the fiery breath of Phaeton’s chariot horses as they galloped overhead. Even Plato knew that, and he was a dunce with astronomy and geography.
Thank you for being such a reasonable source of good scientific information. But I think the global warmists and their true-believers have more than science on their minds when it comes to climat (As if I’m the first to mention this… of course, that’s what many believe). This writer proves it:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/144267/naomi_klein%3A_why_rich_countries_should_pay_reparations_to_poor_countries_for_the_cl
TerrySkinner (14:53:56) :
As for the Polar Ice melting, it has been a zero-sum game so far the last 30 years. The AGW camp conveniently left off the growing Antarctic Ice to lay claim of diminishing Arctic Ice as proof of Global Warming.
A distinct sign of true Global Warming or Cooling would be simultaneous shrinkage or expansion of Polar Ice, not just one hemisphere.
The expansion/contraction of the distance from the Poles in which icebergs survive is a sign of climactic conditions, and you might want to keep an eye on that development !!!
The Financial Times comment on the issue. Suggesting tax deductible status is removed from Universities and institutions who do not comply with certain standards of openness.
Your analysis, conclusions and all information presented here MUST be totallly bogus.
It all jibes with common sense. And I could understand it.
Phaeton’s excuse for his severe offcourse climate change causing tendency with Helios’ Chariot was:
“…consider what impetuous force Turns stars and planets in a diff’rent course. I steer against their motions; nor am I Born back by all the current of the sky. But how cou’d you resist the orbs that roul In adverse whirls, and stem the rapid pole?”
Worth considering I reckon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pha%C3%ABton
Using that Norway/Nordic raw temp data on the previous post and overlaying it on the Norway graph in that CRU file I have been researching I think we can safely assume that 2008 -2009 file does contain pre-‘corrected’ temp data – and still shows no significant warming
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11643
Basil,
Regarding the tracking of the four main temperature sites, I have difficulty seeing your example – maybe because of the scale. They do all zig and zag more or less at the same time, but since 97 GISS has been diverging from HadCru3, UAH, and RSS. I don’t know how meaningful the fact of the satellite tracking is, since the satellite record is very short, and since much of the GISS and HadCru3 data manipulation seems to be to make past data cooler.
Paul Vaughan (14:37:18): It is a major barrier to not only deep understanding but also exploration of natural climate variations.
“If you know, recognize that you know, If you don’t know, then realize that you don’t know: That is knowledge. True knowledge is when one knows the limitations of one’s knowledge.”
It is a possibility that we at some point may be able to predict the climate, but it might take a long time (see my previous post). Before developing an accurate climate model with strong predictive capabilities, it might be possible to find good correlations for historical climate variations, but these may not be so useful for predictions. For example cloud cover may be related to ocean cycles, but this cannot be used to predictions as we do not know future cloud cover or ocean cycles.
Basil,
Sorry, I meant to include this chart.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__VkzVMn3cHA/SQkAxK2k6CI/AAAAAAAAADs/F4NlhqTzFgM/s1600-h/U+11+Year+Temp+Data.bmp
Although it’s true that the leading temperature records seem to be in agreement, I would not take that to mean that we can trust GISS or HadCru. Why? Because it would be easy enough to tailor those records to match the sattelite records from 1970 forwards while fudging them downwards before that in order to create a stronger warming trend.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic and
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Actually NH Ice is within normal range once again like last year. Its in reality probably quite higher due to Satellite problems from 1 October. An upward Adjustment will probably be done soon to show that. So the ice stories are really ALL lies even according to Cryosphere today (a pro AGW site but can’t fiddle the data enough due to other monitoring sites probably) which shows completely normal global ice variations. Note that Mann and most AGW’s are using this melting ice storyline as an AGW defense. Another major news story is that the ETS will not pass the Senate here in Australia. And I am willing to bet that by the next election the AGW will be so dead in the water that Rudd will lose by landslide (unless he drops the AGW agenda)
In a very short time,China,Japan,Singapore and the other Asian countries are going to be the rich ones. We’ll see how much ‘reparation’ gets paid then! Also,thanks Mr Watt for your survey of the US surface stations.
From the post: “It is hard to imagine population growing from one to six billion over the past one and a half centuries without some effect.”
This is a fallacy, plain and simple. This is “Argumentem ad Ignorantiam,” where the burden of proof is placed on the wrong side. Rather than prove his case that there has been an effect, Copeland instead argues from his inability to conceive (“hard to imagine”) the lack of such changes. (This strikes me as one step worse than simply arguing from ignorance: “We can’t prove that there are no such changes, so they must exist.”) Copeland suggests that his ability to imagine has the force of infallible authority.
Jeremy (13:27:43) :
Problems with your links
http://www.sepp.org/glwarm/majordeception.htm
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The requested URL /glwarm/majordeception.htm was not found on this server.”
http://blog.stoic-epicurean.com/index.php?blog=6&p=62&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1)
“Bad Request!
The parameters of your request are invalid.
If you have obtained this error by clicking on a link INSIDE of this site, please report the bad link to the administrator.
Go back to home page
Additional information about this error:
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Did you enter them correctly, or are they out of date?
Basil: Sorry, I want to respond to Icarus and then I’ll add a note to you.
Icarus: The graph you linked misrepresents the data.
https://sites.google.com/site/europa62/climatechange/yvtayto200
Why? You’ve added a polynomial trend line and let it run two years past the end of the data to show the global temperatures will continue to rise in the future. In other words, you’re using it to forecast. Here’s my version of your graph:
http://i47.tinypic.com/6rlg92.png
The problem with polynomial trends is you also have to look at the other end of the graph, too. The dataset you used runs back until 1880, so we can compare the trend to the data to illustrate the ability of the polynomial trend to hindcast as well.
http://i46.tinypic.com/5mxxk0.png
Does the poly trend line look like a good tool for forecasting to you now, Icarus?
Very calmly reasoned piece. No hyperventilation or end of world scenarios. Guess that that’s what happens when you report on actual instrument derived data and don’t use proxies.
Looking forward to seeing another WUWT hockey stick; it’s now past midnight GMT, so November’s numbers should be out and I bet they’re eye-popping.
Yes the Abbott news in Australia is interesting:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/6534211/turnbull-dumped-abbott-new-leader/
He is a hardliner, churchy type… would fit in well in the GOP in the US. He was doing a Putin impression yesterday if you recall (maybe the budgie-smugglers got him across the line in the 42-41 leadership vote).
I, being of a suitably cynical bent when reviewing politics, would suggest the following:
1) The Libs are not keen for the ETS to go through;
2) Hockey went in the 3-way race to split the Turnbull vote, as they are both relative moderates. This way Abbott was garuanteed to get through to the second round leadership vote;
3) Now that Abbott is in (by the skin of his budgie-smugglers) the Libs can follow him to vote down the ETS;
4) Abbott will be replaced by someone more marketable prior to the next election.
The end.
Compare temps in Britain for 18th century with those of 20th
http://bluemarbleclimate.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/two-centuries-of-temperature-in-central-england-no-warming/
and there really is nothing to see there, if he’s got the data right (as good or better chance than CRU, I’ll wager).
“”” vukcevic (14:35:44) :
George E. Smith (13:20:07) :
“Do either GISStemp or HadCRUT data sets actually list each and every source station raw temperature data, and include the total AREA of the earth surface that is assigned to each station; without which it is impossible to compute an average for the total earth surface area.”
I entirely agree. Further more I would suggest it may be even pointless.
Often only few sample locations are considered. “””
I have said on several occasions, Vukcevic, that computing the global mean surface temperature is an inherently simple problem that any 8th grade high school science student could describe how to do. You place a thermometer in the middle of each one square metre cell of the earth surface, and you then read all of them simultaneously. You multiply each temperature by its cell area which in this simple method is just one square metre. Then you add all those A.T products together, and divide by the total surface area of the earth, and the result is the instantaneous mean global surface temperature. You repeat that process each second for one full year’s trip around the sun, and you add them all together and divide by the number of seconds in a year ( pi x 1E7) to get the annual averaged mean global surface temperature.
Now that is a lot of data, and a lot of thermometers; I just chose the one metre grid, and the one second measurment interval, simply because they are the primary lenght and time units of the SI system of units.
So OK, maybe it is sufficient to put only one thermometer on each square km of the surface; that reduces the number of thermometers by a million. An equatorial thermometer moves about 460 metres in that one second, so the sun basicvally takes two seconds to transit a cell.
Well of course those numbers are still huge, and could be reduced; even in this age of trillions.
Ultimately, the general characteristics of the global function of two variables; space, and time determine what the highest signal frequencies present are, in both the time variable, and the spatial.
It ends up not practical to measure on a regular space grid, so thermometers have to be placed where they can; but each thermometer should only be assigned to the amount of suurface area that is essentially at the same temperature; and this is why UHIs foul up the result. The temperature reading may be correct; but the area it is assigned to is clearly not correct, and typically is too high for the amount of area. I’ve read claims that these readings are good as far as 900-1200 km from the sensor.
That is idiotic in the least.
But I don’t see any area data being applied to any of these measurments.
In the end, whehter the sampling regimen is regular gridded measurments or random sampling; the Nyquist criterion has to be abeyed, and in that case, random sampling is less efficient, since the largest sample spacing, has to meet the Nyquist rule, so there must be more sensors if the sampling is random.
Well, apparently, they don’t do anything like that; I don’t see any area information being assigned to any measuring station; so whatever it is they compute, it doesn’t have anything to do with the mean global temperature.
And the time measurments using the min/max system already fail Nyquist for the basic 24 hour cyclic variation in temperature; byt a factor of at least two which is already enough to make the true average not retrievable. If you want to consider daily cloud fluctuations, then the time intervals between samples are quite inadequate.
So it is no wonder that these trend computations have uncertainties several times their claimed values; the aliassing noise wipes out any chance of accurate reconstruction of the continuous two variable temperature function map; which makes it impossible to calculate something as simple as the annual global average of the function.
Now if you continue to do the same thing and report the results from time to time, I expect you would always see patterns; and you do. Thew mistake is in trying to get anyone to believe that you are measuring the actual average temperature of the earth’s surface.
If I believed in Santa Claus, I would ask him for a special gift this year. I would ask him for a interactive website that would let me pick and choose station data, worldwide, based on various factors such as rural/urban, quality of siting, etc. This gift from Santa would also enable me to aggregate this station data for various time frames and using robust verifiable algorithms to provide a global, hemispheric or regional picture. Santa’s helpers would also provide a similar capability for the various data sets used, up to and including using station data from different data sets to enhance coverage. Santa’s helpers would, of course, begin with raw data in it’s pre-massaged (pre-manipulated, pre-enhanced, pre-value added) form.
I know the data Santa’s helpers need for this project is on the web. If only there was a Santa.
Breaking news
Abbot defeats Hockey and Turnbull for Lib leadership in Australia. This mean at least a delay in the CC legislation proposed by the coalition government. The vote was 42-41 for Abbot. A direct result of Climategate?
icarus,
Perhaps you haven’t heard, but HadCRUT3 is corrupted by bad code that “hides the decline”. Just can’t stop spinning, can you?
Here’s what we’re up against among the true believers in AGW. The following post is by a believer in AGW, and in defense of AGW the post lists all the organizations that have approved of AGW. The post can be seen at:
http://groups.google.com/group/monbiot-discuss/browse_thread/thread/b2dc6e21818f0ba7?pli=1
In response to ‘oakpeak’.
Monckton, Lawson, Delingpole and their ilk are people who do not even
understand science — never mind climate science — so why should any
weight be attributed to their opinions? It’s like listening to the
Pope’s explanation of evolution. Or my opinion of string theory. It’s
utterly meaningless.
Given that 97.5% of climatologists who actively published research on
climate change agree that /”human activity is a significant contributing
factor in changing mean global temperatures” / (Doran 2009
)/; /my question to you, Mr Oakpeak, is what qualifies you to make such outrageous
statements on the subject of climate science? //
/Figure 1: Response to the survey question “Do you think human
activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean
global temperatures?” (//Doran 2009/
/)/ /General
public data come from a //2008 Gallup poll/
/./
As the level of active research and specialization in climate
science increases, so does agreement that humans are significantly
changing global temperatures. Most striking is the divide between
expert climate scientists (97.4%) and the general public (58%). The
paper concludes /”It seems that the debate on the authenticity of
global warming and the role played by human activity is largely
nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific
basis of long-term climate processes. The challenge, rather, appears
to be how to effectively communicate this fact to policy makers and
to a public that continues to mistakenly perceive debate among
scientists.”/
Scientific organisations endorsing the consensus
The following scientific organisations endorse the consensus
position that “most of the global warming in recent decades can be
attributed to human activities”:
* National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
* Environmental Protection Agency
* NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies
* American Geophysical Union
* American Institute of Physics
* National Center for Atmospheric Research
* American Meteorological Society
* The Royal Society of the UK
* Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
* American Association for the Advancement of Science
The Academies of Science from 19 different countries all endorse the
consensus. 11 countries have signed a joint statement endorsing the
consensus position :
* Academia Brasiliera de Ciencias (Brazil)
* Royal Society of Canada
* Chinese Academy of Sciences
* Academie des Sciences (France)
* Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina (Germany)
* Indian National Science Academy
* Accademia dei Lincei (Italy)
* Science Council of Japan
* Russian Academy of Sciences
* Royal Society (United Kingdom)
* National Academy of Sciences
(USA) (12 Mar 2009 news
release
)
Additionally, the Academies of Science from another 8 countries (as
well as several countries from the first list) also signed a joint
statement endorsing the IPCC consensus
:
* Australian Academy of Sciences
* Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts
* Caribbean Academy of Sciences
* Indonesian Academy of Sciences
* Royal Irish Academy
* Academy of Sciences Malaysia
* Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand
* Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
A survey of peer reviewed research
It is also worthwhile examining peer reviewed journals – scientists
can have their opinions but they need to back it up with empirical
evidence and research that survives the peer review process. A
survey of all peer reviewed abstracts on the subject “global climate
change” published between 1993 and 2003
show
that not a single paper rejected the consensus position that global
warming is man caused. 75% of the papers agreed with the consensus
position while 25% made no comment either way (eg – focused on
methods or paleoclimate analysis). More on Naomi Oreskes’ survey…
Klaus-Martin Schulte’s list of studies rejecting the consensus
That is not to say there are no studies that reject the consensus
position. Klaus-Martin Schulte surveyed peer reviewed abstracts from
2004 to February 2007 and claims 32 studies (6%) reject the
consensus position. In these cases, it’s instructive to read the
studies to see whether they actually do refute the consensus and if
so, what their arguments are. You can read a summary of Schulte’s
skeptic studies here…
The above information is attributed to
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus.htm
Note how every statement is backed up by references so that one can
confirm the authenticity of the research: and compare this with the
meaningless vitriolic diatribe of the monckton article. Can you see the
difference?
You’re clearly an angry man, mr oakpeak; but I’ll bet you’re not as
angry as I am at those that seek to deny — through their fabrication
and obfuscation — the constantly accumulating evidence that humans are
creating the biggest disaster the human race will have ever experienced.
jorgekafkazar i agree totally. We don’t know if we humans warm , freeze or do nothing to the planet temperature. Right now it is unknown.
OK, so let me make sure I understand this- the data Icarus posts is temperature, so the upward slope shows warming in general, in a somewhat parabolic manner (just because the last few points diverge from the trend doesn’t mean the trend isn’t there)- but the data Basil presents is the “change in increase” year to year? So if year one is 70 degrees, year two is 71, year 3 is 73, and year 4 is 74, you’re saying Icarus numbers would be 0, 1, 3, 5 (warming relative to 70), while Basil’s would be 0, 1, 2, 1 (change relative to the year before)? To see if the world is warming, wouldn’t Icarus’ data be what we’re interested in? So what if the warming isn’t constant? Just because you’re going up and down hills in a car and speed increase isn’t constant doesn’t mean that the slight increase in gas that you’re constantly giving won’t eventually cause the car to go very fast.
Let’s not turn to deceptive graphs ourselves to try to show “constant” temperature trends, if temperature is, in fact, increasing. While we may be in a “cooling” phase, there could be a longer warming phase that is very real. If it is, I can buy the idea that CO2 isn’t the major driver, and I can buy the idea that if it is, it’s not critical, but PLEASE- can we try to agree on something?
If Icarus’ data can be supplanted by superior data, someone please let me know- but for the most part, even UAH and CRU correlate pretty well- in the somewhat parabolic fashion per Icarus- true? Or are we CERTAIN that the adjustments that have been made (or failed to be made to account for urban heat zones) are causing the warming shown by Icarus?
If so, then we better be hoping for one heck of a solar minimum, or I’m concerned that if/when temperature increases back along Icarus’ parabolic trend line, we better come up with a pretty good explanation, or pretty good plan.
Re: Invariant (15:45:59)
Indeed, we are in the data exploration phase. The bad leadership of a civilization with a narrow attention span has led the research crew seriously astray. Influential investigators are confusing oversimplified statistical inference with careful, thorough data analysis. I agree that it’s not possible to predict how long it will take before forecasting becomes feasible.
“Icarus” is a wellknown nickname for the faithful CAGW believer who runs little green footballs. i don’t know if this is, in fact, CFJ but it sure sounds like him. Check out his blog and you’ll see that he was continuing to deny that CRU deleted data long after CRU said they had deleted the original data.
Mr Copeland strikes the right note when he says:
“the real travesty of the global warming ideology is the hijacking of climate science in the service of a research agenda that has prevented science from investigating the full range of natural climate variation”.
The claims of AGW proponents would be easier to accept if it were not for the fact that normal scientific process has been so blatantly and grossly distorted. Skepticism and open contestation are the foundations upon which good science is built. Absent these, debate is confined to prejudice and unsupported opinion.
Carlo (15:21:32) :
i think you had a comma in the wrong place…however, as of 6:54PM CST, “climategate” got these results:
Results 1 – 10 of about 12,100,000 for climategate. (0.07 seconds)
and as of 6:55PM CST, “climate gate” got these results:
Results 1 – 10 of about 6,460,000 for climate gate. (0.15 seconds).
it would be interesting to know if the two numbers overlap or if they are independent…
I see there is a healthy spectrum of opinion here – for example some people are saying “Yes it’s warming but it’s all/mostly natural” and others are saying “No it’s actually cooling now”.
I think the latter claim is patently false. Nothing in the last ten years looks like any change at all from the warming trend of around 0.2C per decade. Just look at the data:
https://sites.google.com/site/europa62/climatechange/yvtayto200
Now, perhaps in 10 years’ time, if we haven’t seen any new record high global average temperatures, you could legitimately claim that there has been a change to the warming trend, but right now there is no significant difference at all between (say) the last ten years and any other ten year period you care to choose in the last several decades. There is just the normal interannual variation superimposed on the warming trend. Again – just look at the data. To some extent this is the point of Basil’s post – natural variation masks the trends over periods of a few years. That’s why climate scientists ideally work with at least 30 years of data to see any trend clearly rise out of the ‘noise’. To claim that global warming has slowed, stopped or even reversed just by citing a couple of years’ data is therefore clearly insupportable.
I went out with my wife for a movie and dinner, and came back to 144 responses! I’ll reply as best I can, but some of the replies may not come until tomorrow morning.
Basil
“But nothing was revealed that suggests that the global temperature data sets are completely bogus, or unreliable.”
What about not having available the original data for others to look at?
Excellent article Basil Copeland.
Icarus (16:57:22) :
You’ve posted that link before and I’ve let it slide. What curve fitting algorithm is used to get that “trend”?
Kirls (16:46:52) :
What the heck does the “C” in CAGW stand for? I have looked and googled and I can’t figure out the acronym. I apologize in advance for my ignorance!
[C = catastrophic. ~dbs, mod.]
“Trend forecast = 0.114°C ±0.440°C”
So the trend could be anywhere from +0.554°C/decade to -0.326°C/decade
What does that mean? It could get hotter fast or cooler almost as fast. The trend line shown is half-fast in my opinion. Flip a coin.
In effect doesn’t it mean nothing in the real world?
“Is there an opportunity to fund some open minded research with a view to publication in peer review literature.”
Yeah…if you can afford it, hit the tip jar 😉
JimB
“Kirls (16:46:52) :
“Icarus” is a wellknown nickname for the faithful CAGW believer who runs little green footballs. i don’t know if this is, in fact, CFJ but it sure sounds like him. Check out his blog and you’ll see that he was continuing to deny that CRU deleted data long after CRU said they had deleted the original data.”
This is fairly typical troll behavior. Icarus has not real desire to do anything but try and stir up reactions to his/her posts. There is no apparent interest in real, open debate looking at all of the facts and information available, only the climatetroll mantra…”It’s warming, and it’s YOUR FAULT, and you MUST PAY, and CHANGE YOUR LIFETSTYLE.”
After we stop feeding it, it usually goes away.
JimB
spenc BC
maybe now we can get the Royal Commission into the science of AGW I have been agitating//winding up various Members for. The public debate under oath would see FatAlberts rats disappear into the ‘ether’.
regards
Mr. IcARUS,
Did you learn your quaking bad data curve from Dr. Ludwig Van Quack Quack from the littlegreenfootballs .0001 soggy blog?
Thanks, dbs! LOL
You don’t know how long I’ve been trying to figure that one out! 😉
JimB-
I DON’T WANT ICARUS TO “GO AWAY”. That is a CRU tactic. I want Basil and Icarus to AGREE on something, and then post it here. Basil posted “what we know”. If we know it, why doesn’t Icarus agree? If Icarus doesn’t agree, why doesn’t Basil point out the falsity in his post?
What I think I see here is that Basil has used a graphical “trick” to show a graph that has a slope approximating zero- because the rate of change is relatively constant- if I have misinterpreted the explanation of what his graph is, SOMEONE please correct me.
rbateman (15:33:17)
that’s the problem. a major cooling event is due anytime now. as usual smartsr^e thugocrats have exhibited their grasp of reality & left a trail of fraud/self interest that has zeroed humanities chance to respond to cold.
cold means less crops, more energy for heating, climate refugees moving to the equatorial zones etc. but then, considering the twisted minds of the thugocrats running this agenda maybe that’s the idea.
regards
Instead of talking of “Climate Change” should we perhaps talk of “Climate Variation”. It seems to fit better and be more neutral. Change seems to infer going from one place to another when in fact climate is always wobbling this way then that way and going nowhere dramatic unless another ice age is looming
Danzaroni (15:01:04) :
yep. edzackary.
the tired old marxist hippie trash of the 60’s & 70’s are running this agenda. they hate western society. many of them went on self-discovery trips to places in india, israel, nepal etc and due to hootch induced psychosis saw themselves as the new-age druids. look at the age groups of nearly all the leading proponents of AGW. including FatAlbert. speaks for itself really. AGW is a generational phenomenom.
regards
I fed a troll name Icarus once – I fed him the concept of the Little Ice Age and how we recover from that… But he quickly vomited this simple concept back up and I sent him back to the dark forest of Arrogance, where he lurks, even now, frolicking in the shadows of the Hockey Stick Trees with the other trolls, shaking their furry fists at the sun…
Dirk (16:43:35)
Its clear by now that the official datasets have been manipulated to show a warming trend, by up-adjusting recent years, and downtrending older records, when there was no reason to do so, to show a warming trend
This:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/uh-oh-raw-data-in-new-zealand-tells-a-different-story-than-the-official-one/
seems typical of what happens: This adujsted data is assembled by CRU globally, re-adjusted again and then sent to the IPCC.
no wonder they want to suppress that raw data
Is something wrong with the very first figure (Figure 0)? The divisions on the Y axis are at 0.2 increments. So 0.114 would be about half a division. And the +/- 0.4 error band would be +/- 2 divisions. Is there a factor of 10 mistake somewhere?
http://tinyurl.com/ybows5n
from NASA. That seems to be a globally distributed series (scroll down)
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/RSSglobe.png
was formulated from NOAA and appeared on Climate Audit (can’t access at the moment)
and this is the PDO against temperatures
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/17/evidence-that-ocean-net-heat-flow-is-connected-with-climate-shifts-co2-not-correlated/
so if there was any warming in the last 30 years, it seems to be a result of “the pacific climate shift” from the late 70’s which must have ended.
It seems a lot can be done with graphs
Paul Vaughan (15:06:42) ,
I believe it was Trenberth that corresponded with Karlen. I also think I understand Trenberth’s current frustration. He knows they have been making questionable adjustments to the data and he believed, no doubt, in the CO2=AGW hypothesis. He may have even objected but eventually went with the program. Now that the current temps have not increased he is full panic mode (hence the “travesty” comment). He is between the proverbial rock and hard place. He realizes they have been caught with their pants down and he knows deep inside they were wrong. I can imagine his stress level is immense.
G.E. Smith
“So OK, maybe it is sufficient to put only one thermometer on each square km of the surface; that reduces the number of thermometers by a million.”
Actually, divides the number by a million.
Icarus
The plots you reference. The trend is self evident – the curve fit is not valid and simply causes irrelvant discussion. (a moving average can be used to remove the high frequency noise – (but beware the excel function as this shifts the peaks!)
All.
In one breath you state that there is no valid temperature record, In another breath you say this same invalid record categorically shows cyclical trends. Do you not see something wrong here?
Icarus,
If our “climate scientists were ideally ‘working’ with at least 30 years of data to see any trend” instead of less than ideally maniplulating data to show a trend, then you wouldn’t appear so misguided and none of us would be here and WUWT would not exist.
And there would not be any AGW movement.
WxForecaster (12:41:23) :
As leftists they fail to notice that these poor developing countries disadvantages are created by their leftist governments.</i?
Wx, they don’t fail to notice. That is their intent. It is about control.
CAGW – The C is catastrophic. Remember, with Progressives there must always be a crisis. It’s a means to an end, and the means don’t matter. Whatever it takes, even lying, to prove a theory or force a policy.
Remember this as you watch these One-Worlders in Copenhagen. Watch this, it is in their own words: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-kzlRoNfks They say themselves, Global Governance, forcing everyone into unions, a new progressive globalization. [snip]
bill (19:10:29)
yes. Like ice cores, they show trends, but not exact data.
Maybe the magic number for world wide media consumption is a definition of variability — most people can grasp the concept that an increase in a minor atmospheric gas might lead to some climate change, but that the change is in the noise.
Plus or minus .44C has a nice, “Dirty Harry’ish” ring to it — get the politicians and media circus to go away, stop trying to save or run the world, and then the focus can return to trying to figure out what actually matters in determining climate. My guess is that a model of orbital variation, sun spot cycles, and major ocean currents will predict global climate variation far better then a carbon forcing regression.
By anyones measurement we are currently at 11 years and counting Icarus; despite known warm bias in the surface data sets.
Please don’t give us graphs made up by people pushing agendas and call them data.
Icarus (16:57:22) “[…] but right now there is no significant difference at all between (say) the last ten years and any other ten year period you care to choose in the last several decades.”
You got that part seriously wrong, but I will back you up by agreeing that deniers aren’t helping nonalarmists by ranting about “cooling” in the past 10 years.
I suggest you consider this:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/sqrtaayoy.sq22.png
Also, trying to make it into an issue of “whether or not” it is warming is a tired old alarmist trick. The smart hunters don’t shoot decoys. Warming happens naturally. Maybe we can agree that a _lot_ more research is needed on natural climate variations.
Cheers!
don’t know if this is a valid way to look at the data, but the resultant graphs are pretty impressive— being obvious even to duffers like me.
included in my utility bill is a report of the average temp for the billing period (month).
my wife saves these, and so i decided to plot the results. i was unable to get archive temp data from the national weather service before 2008, so i used the info from my utility bills, since i believe they use the same figures.
i have records from november 1991 to present.
first, i put ALL of the consecutive temps onto a Microsoft spreadsheet and generated a graph.
rather nondescript– sinusoidal, wildly swinging lines.
hard to tell what is really going on.
so , i decide to modify my approach. i put in separate average monthly temps for the 3 highest and lowest periods of the year. Jun-Jul- Aug, and Dec-Jan – Feb., from Dec 1991 to present.
the high temp graph appears to not have any discernible trend to me, but ther is a nicely seen downward trend starting with feb of 2004.
there is no “1998” peak in the high temp graph but the low temp one does have a peak in Dec 1997.
i live in north central Iowa
i can e mail the graphs if someone is interested, but will need instructions as to how to do it
In your analysis you have addressed the statistical problem in getting an average temperature. Satellites should be able to cover this problem as they scan the whole globe.
In addition there is the physics problem of what it would mean even if you could statistically measure it, covered in the GERHARD GERLICH and RALF D. TSCHEUSCHNER
International Journal of Modern Physics B (IJMPB) Volume: 23, Issue: 3 (30 January 2009)
Page: 275-364
http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb/
A pdf image copy exists in
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
It is much clearer than the first versions in making the point of the disagreement with basic physics of the GCModels and the (im)possible physics meaning of an average global temperature.
rbateman (14:04:57) :
“…We are in a cooling phase. Key concept: Phase. Telling descriptor: Cooling.
For how long? Pick a card, any card. Your guess is as good as mine.
I say it’s a cascade failure of many things going in the same direction all at once…”
Julian in Wales (17:40:23) :
“Instead of talking of “Climate Change” should we perhaps talk of “Climate Variation”. It seems to fit better and be more neutral. Change seems to infer going from one place to another when in fact climate is always wobbling this way then that way and going nowhere dramatic unless another ice age is looming.”
Invariant (13:37:18)
“…chaotic and unpredictable …
…Thus forecasting or understanding climate variations seems impossible…”
Reply: Some people smell the coffee, most other people don’t.
Dirk (13:00:16) :
“…Once there is consensus on trends, then hopefully we can rule CO2 out as the primary driver, and focus on just how much effect it actually has…”
Reply: Unfortunately Dirk, it’s not that simple. Our climate is NOT driven by a bunch of simple linear processes, but by deterministic chaos. This means that tiny changes to initial conditions will lead to widely diverging observed effects. However, this is not
One effect of this is that small rounding errors in the input to computer models, for example, will lead to predictions for the future diverging from reality in a very short space of time. Another effect is that time series trends have ZERO information content, as even tiny changes to the amount of energy the Earth gains or loses will have effects far into the future.
This is really well illustrated on this thread by the way Icarus and his opponents can easily use the same data and some clever statistics/graphical display techniques to produce a trend which can ‘prove’ whatever they want. This is the real secret behind the CAGW scam.
The whole AGW house of cards is in reality just one of several stratagems instigated by Thatcher at the behest of the Chatham House / Council On Foreign Relations long-term strategic think tank. Their ultimate goal is to set up a World Government to prevent any future wars, by using the fear of a global threat (AGW – pandemics – financial melt-down) to get the public to accept the sacrifice of their freedom.
So, where do you go to find the truth?
It has been known since the early 60’s that climate is driven by non-linear deterministic chaos (Wiki links below to get you started). If you google around you will get lots of information about Chatham House & the Council On Foreign Relations. As ever, the rest of the story will be found when you follow the money – it’s ‘old money’ you’re looking for.
Everyone needs to wake up and smell the coffee.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Norton_Lorenz
Re: Richard M (19:01:49)
I don’t imagine Trenberth panicking. The guy has published some serious insight into natural climate variations, but he lives in a pool of sharks. The clever ones know how to survive the sharks and still get research done on natural climate variations. Tricky business …but you’re right: the jury is still out; it may be a long time before we know what he really thinks …and he may never be in a position to disclose the full truth. Someone has to do the research on natural climate variations. [Don’t forget about funding. There’s still none for nonalarmists.] That means someone has to suck it up and do what is necessary to survive the shark pool. What really matters is results about natural climate variations, not misdirected smear jobs.
Cheers.
To be read with sarcasm:
Boy, it must be just pure coincidence that 1930 & 1976 feature prominently in dozens of terrestrial time series, eh?
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/3r.-.IOD.png
Yet another.
That’s a cross-wavelet harmonic phase-contrast of cumulative Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) index and the radial velocity of the north pole of the sun about the solar system barycentre. [Note that the ~1870 feature is also consistent with the cumulative PDO.]
Oh, and hey, gee, I wonder why Ian Wilson’s index of solar system asymmetry just happens to point to the IOD phase aberrations?
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/I_IOD_Period_SolSysAsym.PNG
Surely it must be just pure random chaos noise that can be conveniently absorbed by some untenable GCM assumptions, just like the hundreds (we’re not talking about a couple flukes here folks) of similar patterns that are easily found by anyone who bothers to look!
What on earth is it going to take to get these guys TO NOTICE NATURE!?
Good fun. I’ve always enjoyed exploring nature. Lots of fascinating patterns for those who look.
Sorry, part of my post above unintentionally ‘snipped’ – should read as follows:-
Reply: Unfortunately Dirk, it’s not that simple. Our climate is NOT driven by a bunch of simple linear processes, but by deterministic chaos. This means that tiny changes to initial conditions will lead to widely diverging observed effects. However, this is not the only problem, as turbulent short-term events such as hurricanes, tend to re-set initial conditions on a regular basis, thus even with accurate data future forecasts are impossible, based on current methods and technology.
Tenuc (21:56:27) “It has been known since the early 60’s that climate is driven by non-linear deterministic chaos”
There remain patterns that can be detected by simple multivariate conditioning. They are being overlooked because people think (and have been trained that) oversimplified statistical inference is a sufficient form of data analysis. At some point in the evolution of understanding there will be random measurement-related noise and confusing chaos left in the unmodeled stuff, but there remain plenty of [relatively] easy hits to be had for those with the patience to work out complex conditioning. I suggest throwing money at research instead of abstract computer fantasies.
Here’s an example involving terrestrial polar motion, geomagnetic aa index, solar system dynamics, & the lunar nodal cycle:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/-LOD_aa_Pr._r.._LNC.png
The 1990s anomaly relates precisely to nutation obliquity [so that’s not a negative].
We need to break down false assumptions. They’re trying to put a roof on a house with no walls and no foundation.
Icarus,
“Now, perhaps in 10 years’ time, if we haven’t seen any new record high global average temperatures, you could legitimately claim that there has been a change to the warming trend”
How can you say this when Basil just showed that the periodicity of natural variation is around 9 years (and 60 years)? The 10 year average around 2010 must then be above the 1998 level according to your graph, which is impossible without a record high by 2015.
Tenuc (23:24:54) “[…] thus even with accurate data future forecasts are impossible, based on current methods and technology.”
Some types of future forecasts.
“deniers aren’t helping nonalarmists by ranting about “cooling” in the past 10 years.”
Right. It’s better to understate by saying “flat-lining this century, and lately a bit of cooling.”
Basil: You wrote, “While phenomenon like ENSO are the effect of this regularity in natural climate variation, they are not the cause of it.”
El Nino events release and redistribute heat from the eastern tropical Pacific the rest of the globe through wind-driven ocean currents and changes in atmospheric circulation. During the La Nina event that follows, trade winds increase above normal levels and decrease tropical Pacific cloud cover. This increases downward shortwave radiation to the tropical Pacific and replaces the heat released by the El Nino. The whole ENSO cycle, starting with the La Nina, creates ocean heat, releases it and redistributes it. In that respect, ENSO is the cause of the climate variation.
The east-west dipole response of the Pacific also impacts global temperatures. During a La Nina, SST anomalies in a large part of the globe rise in opposition to the drop in the Eastern Pacific. That is: during the La Nina event, ocean currents and changes in atmospheric circulation cause SST anomalies to rise in the Western Pacific and in the Eastern Indian Ocean. And if enough warm water was released from the subsurface western tropical Pacific (Pacific Warm Pool) during the El Nino, or if the La Nina lasts for more than one season, the SST anomalies in the East Indian and West Pacific Oceans can remain at elevated levels.
Travesty = burlesque, mockery, perversion, sham, distortion.
Yes, the very gods mock them. Kevin Trenberth inadvertently acknowledged the hubris of his clique.
Peter Taylor: You wrote, “The data is entirely conisistent not with El Nino – as so often mentioned, but the northern pacific PDO cycle (which effects the amplitude of the ENSO)…”
The PDO is an aftereffect of ENSO. Refer to Zhang et al (1997):
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~david/zwb1997.pdf
and to Newman et al (2003):
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/gilbert.p.compo/Newmanetal2003.pdf
and to Shakun and Shaman (2009) courtesy of Leif Svalgaard:
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL040313.pdf
Basil (17:01:39) : said
“I went out with my wife for a movie and dinner, and came back to 144 responses! I’ll reply as best I can, but some of the replies may not come until tomorrow morning.”
Come on Basil your attitude is very disappointing-you should be in front of the computer screen twenty four hours a day just in case any of us have a query. Please show a bit more dedication! 🙂
Tonyb
Tenuc (21:56:27):
…even tiny changes to the amount of energy the Earth gains or loses will have effects far into the future.
Isn’t that precisely why climate scientists are predicting substantial changes in the Earth’s climate from a forcing of just a few W/m² caused by greenhouse gases, land use changes etc? According to the latest IPCC report the net anthropogenic forcing is 1.6W/m² –
http://www.ipcc.ch/graphics/syr/fig2-4.jpg
The normal solar variance (the difference between solar minimum and solar maximum in the regular 11-year cycle) gives a change in total solar irradiance of around 0.2W/m² and that is thought to result in about 0.1°C fluctuation in global average temperature . If we have an anthropogenic forcing of 8 times more than the normal solar cycle, it’s inevitably going to have a substantial effect, and that’s only with current levels of greenhouse gases, let alone projected levels in the future – good reason for concern, yes?
Rob R (12:57:57) : said
“The fact that the global anomaly products from these two organisations march in step does not constitute verification of either or both.”
If the data sets presented as finished products did not show agreement I would be very very surprised. We know they were talking to each other and colluding on peer review, what better way to make people think they are telling the truth than to have two data sets in fairly close agreement. This presents “validation” of the graphs and if they did not do this the scam would not have worked.
AJStrata (who works for NASA) explains how it is done.
“….you ask how good NOAA’s global data [can] be worse than local data in Australia and elsewhere? It is simple (and trust me, I work for NASA and this is not beyond the pale). They averaged it (or smeared it) with other data to raise it up. They can rationalize why they need to over ride or lower the weighting of the cooler data. They just need to agree on some lame excuse to dilute good measurements with bad…..
Seriously. The way to fight back is to run scenarios with the same data that takes out the smearing. Make the assumption the satellite data is solid and that the ground based sensors are only there to do local validation of the sat data. What is the answer when we process the data with these assumptions, where we don’t ‘fill in’ holes by averaging the two sets?….” http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/9887
Sorry Mr. Copeland if everyone is in on the scam, and they are , then NONE of the data can be trusted until validated. That means we need to look at the raw data and that is what AJStrata is doing. He also addresses the error in the CRU data.
“…What surprised me was the one CRU document where CRU proves there is no demonstrable global warming (even by their own ridiculously optimistic assessment). Check out this graph from their report…
The title of this graph indicates this is the CRU computed sampling (measurement) error in C for 1969. Note how large these sampling errors are. They start at 0.5°C, which is the mark where any indication of global warming is just statistical noise and not reality. Most of the data is in the +/- 1°C range, which means any attempt to claim a global increase below this threshold is mathematically false. Imagine the noise in the 1880 data! You cannot create detail (resolution) below what your sensor system can measure. CRU has proven my point already – they do not have the temperature data to detect a 0.8°C global warming trend since 1960, let alone 1880.
See: http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11420
So thank you Mr. Strata
Basil
I can’t stop wondering about fig. 1. I assume the temperature rise is reflected in the integral of that graph, so that a larger area above 0 than below means warming. Then I would expect to see a rising trend if the warming is caused by GHGs, with peaks and troughs going higher and higher, but that’s not the case.
The reason for the larger area above 0 is the double peaks in late 70s 80s and 90s and not higher peaks. I must be totally off track here, will your algorithm always give a no-trend graph?
Dirk (13:00:16) :
Could someone who truly understands these plots explain the obvious difference between the data presented by Icarus and the data presented here?
REPLY: AJStrata is working on it here: http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11420
jaypan (13:02:45) : Asked
“…Can’t we avoid confusion for the public by too many different graphs?
How if we use only one of such pictures, explain it in detail, show it over and over again, getting finally the stupid stick out of the public mind?”
This is the graph you are looking for it gives the “Value Added” fudge factor that causes the “official graphs” to show and increase in temperature. It plots final – raw tempreature data.
” jcl (13:05:48) :
You just aren’t applying the right “adjustments”, that’s all:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/ushcn/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_urb-raw_pg.gif
Thanks JCL just want to make sure no one misses this graph. It is a Large stake in the corpse of AGW.
In the uk, what do we know about climate change?
ermm not much
http://theweatheroutlook.com/
predicts colder than average winter whilst the Met office
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/science/creating/monthsahead/seasonal/2009/winter.html
predicts a warmer than average winter
Hedge your bets!
George E. Smith (16:16:22) :
Thank you for your detailed outline for global temperature measurements procedure, with which I, as an experienced electronic engineer, now retired, agree. I do hope that some of those who profess to know what a global temperature is, may take a note. In my view best we can hope is a reasonable regional trend, which could be far more telling than a poor global estimate.
Paul Vaughan (22:59:40) :
“To be read with sarcasm:
Boy, it must be just pure coincidence that 1930 & 1976 feature prominently in dozens of terrestrial time series, eh?
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/3r.-.IOD.png”
Long before politics became a vital component of the climate science, British climatologist H. Lamb produced an estimate of a central England’s region (based on a 100 miles equilateral triangle with London-Bristol base) temperature trend.
As an exercise, I have compared his graph with intensity (reverse proportionality) to the geomagnetic field of one of the areas that may control Arctic Ocean currents flow.
Result is an apparent coincidence between two.
Taking a liberty and assuming that Lamb may have misjudged by some 25-40 years and the early sparse magnetic measurements were not sufficiently accurate, or most likely both, than the coincidence may produce a meaningful correlation.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/HL-GMF.gif
rbateman (14:04:57) : asks:
…”We know the PDO will stay where it’s at the next 30 yrs.
Do we know for sure what the Sun will do?
Do we know for sure that GCR background is constant in the Galaxy?
Do we know for sure what volcanism will do next?
Do we know for sure what the Sun will do?
We do know the sun is quiet and past history seems to indicate it MAY stay that way.
Do we know for sure that GCR background is constant in the Galaxy?
We know Magnetic Field is changing fast and “Rapid changes in the churning movement of Earth’s liquid outer core are weakening the magnetic field in some regions of the planet’s surface… The decline in the magnetic field also is opening Earth’s upper atmosphere to intense charged particle radiation…” this means the earth will see more CGRs. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/76158139.html
Do we know for sure what volcanism will do next?
“SOLAR-PLANETARY-CLIMATE STRESS, EARTHQUAKES AND VOLCANISM”
ABSTRACT
The largest volcanic eruptions since AD 1800 correlate with periods of enhanced seismicity , changes in the earth’ s spin rate, and the Chandler wobble. Furthermore, a marked increase in the number of major eruptions apparently occurred during the Maunder Sunspot Minimum (1645-1715) at a time when global temperatures were depressed. Solar activity might trigger volcanism through solar-induced climate change which could lead to variations in global spin rate and hence to increased crustal stresses and seismic and volcanic potential . Such solar activity may be modulated by planetary tidal effects which might additionally lead to enhanced crustal stress through direct influence on the earth’s axial tilt, wobble and rate of rotation…”
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19900066907_1990066907.pdf
There also seems to be an increase in tectonic activity, although that could be an artifact of better data gathering techniques. http://www.michaelmandeville.com/vortectonics/vortex_correlations2.htm
No one has all the answers but as the Chinese say “may you live in interesting times…” and it sure looks like interesting times may be here as far as changes in the earth and sun are concerned. With luck we will have honest scientist available to study all this.
JerryM (14:12:51) :
And ooh, wait! Dr. V. Ramanathan (the guy who launched all those UAV’s into China’s and India’s “brown cloud” and confirmed what other researchers were already quantifying – that black carbon (soot) is warming the planet big time) probably contributes about one half as much to global warming as CO2, a fact which the 2007 IPCC missed. Maybe as much or even more, thereby exceeding CO2’s contributions. And guess who produces more CO2 than the U.S. and 4 times as much soot, and those ratios are climbing? The answer is: China! And these guys are on an atmospheric polluting tear like never before seen in human history.
Yes and where is Maurice Strong, the father of “global Warming now living? – CHINA and WHAT is he doing? Working for a CONSTRUCTION Company! CH2M HILL is a ” multinational firm providing engineering, construction, operations and related services to public and private clients in numerous industries on six continents…”
Science has become very good at solving linear problems, but still struggles to deal with dynamic chaotic non-linear systems.
Chaotic problems are unsolvable. Why? Because any deviation from reality – coarse grid cells – Insufficient accuracy in the data – Errors in the data – can cause a divergence from reality. It is impossible to tell aprori in a real system how much divergence from reality is needed to switch to a different strange attractor or cause a period doubling. It could be one part in ten thousand. It could be one part in a billion billion.
In a word: Climate is not predictable.
Lorenz worked this out 40 or 50 years ago while – ta da – studying climate.
Paul Vaughan (23:26:22) :
[“Tenuc (21:56:27) “It has been known since the early 60’s that climate is driven by non-linear deterministic chaos”]
“There remain patterns that can be detected by simple multivariate conditioning. They are being overlooked because people think (and have been trained that) oversimplified statistical inference is a sufficient form of data analysis. At some point in the evolution of understanding there will be random measurement-related noise and confusing chaos left in the unmodeled stuff, but there remain plenty of [relatively] easy hits to be had for those with the patience to work out complex conditioning.”
Deterministic chaos does not preclude quasi-cyclical behaviour. For example, our climate system is in perpetual evolution as it responds to a range of factors which regulate the energy in and out. The Earth stays reasonably warm for 90% of the time, interspersed with a quasi-cyclic sequence of glaciation.
Deterministic chaos is not random, although to the casual observer this looks to be the case. Our climate is the non-linear product of a multitude of linked energy handling mechanisms – some of which are cyclical, some turbulent and some involving boundary change. It is a truly messy system, and this makes predicting it’s future direction impossible with the tools available today.
Peter Taylor wrote:
“…BUT – I do not argue that this then legitimises the current world development model with business as usual – NATURAL climate change can be dangerous and human support systems are very vulnerable to COOLING (Maunder Minimum effects are concentrated in the northern hemisphere which currently produces a surplus in food that feeds 67 countries in food deficit) – we need a big humanitarian effort to create resilient ecosystems – and that will cost perhaps $100 billion annually. This message gets lost (or deliberately suppressed).
What truly frightens me is what has recently been done to our ” human support systems” First the USA grain stores no longer exist and now Congressman Waxman of Cap and Trade fame is introducing a “Scorched Earth Farming Policy” http://farmwars.info/?p=1284
The history of the deliberate destruction of US farming can be found here: http://www.opednews.com/articles/History-HACCP-and-the-Foo-by-Nicole-Johnson-090906-229.html
The same people who are behind the global warming scam are also behind the grab for control of the entire world food supply as well as the global banking fiasco. I would like to see ALL these shadow players in court for crimes against humanity.
Icarus (12:17:55) :
Clever manipulation of graphs but the reality is very different – the planet has been warming at about 0.2C per decade for several decades and it still is warming at 0.2C per decade:
https://sites.google.com/site/europa62/climatechange/yvtayto200
Nice job of cherry picking your starting point! What happened to the first half of the 20th Century?
You can take a handful of clay and kneed it any whichway you like, still won’t make bread.
What raw data are we talking about? the ones taken by Stevenson Boxes? the ones that are next to air con vents? the ones that have had freeways built next to them? the ones that are poorley maintained? the ones with fake records because the persons responsible forgot to read them from time to time or the ones read by tourism operators who “bumped up” the reading because warmer weather attracts more tourists? or the ones from the old soviet era where local mayors would “bump down” the reading so as to get more heating oil allocated for their town? (at the end of the soviet era this practice was no longer necessary, all of a sudden the readings were higher).
Or are we talking about SST data, the ones taken by teenage merchant sailors by dropping buckets over the side, or the ones taken by thermometres that were never recalibrated.
Or are we talking about satellite readings of SST’s? the ones that can’t account for strong winds or cloud cover etc etc etc
GIGO…until we have a system of reading temps. ACCURATELY, CONSISTENTLY for LONG periods of time, (many decades) there is no point relying on them, irregardless of what manipulations, adjustments or forcings are made.
I suggest a reading of John Dalys article on this subject, you know the bloke, the one who was a thorn in the side of Jones et al, the bloke they were “cheery” about when he passed away.
MarcH (15:23:31) : said
“OT-thought this article might interest:
Climate Dementors …
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2747744.htm
Do not miss in the comments section the work of SATAN – I am laughing so hard I can barely type…
SATAN :
01 Dec 2009 9:38:52pm
WOW!!!!
Mars is also experiencing global temperature rise,
does that mean humans are responsible for the loss of polar bears on Mars too??? We must be funneling co2 through an inter-dimensional worm-hole directly into Mars’ atmosphere and heating it up…COOOOOL!!!….
And he gets even funnier from there – ROTFLMAO
I really love sarcasm as a weapon
Rob R (12:57:57) :
Basil
Keep an eye on what EM Smith is doing with the GIStemp code and data. When the various regional temperature datasets are corrected for the drift in mean elevation, mean latitude and UHI I suspect that the warming trend in these indices will be reduced to about 1/3 of what GISS has previously been reporting. It is likely that many of the same issues infest the CRU global and regional temperature indices. The fact that the global anomaly products from these two organisations march in step does not constitute verification of either or both.
I agree, this bears watching. If this bears out, it would probably just affect the mean “drift” I show, not the pattern of variation. But, I think it should be noted how well the HadCRUT and GISS match up to the satellite data sets when we get to the last 30 years. Consider this: if you cool the HadCRUT and GISS records down too much, but match them up in the end with UAH and RSS, that makes the growth rate higher, not lower.
I do not know how this will all shake out. But I want to know. Free the data, free the code. I am not afraid of what it will show.
Denbo (12:59:32) :
“But nothing was revealed that suggests that the global temperature data sets are completely bogus, or unreliable”
So all the flub in the Harry Read Me file regarding the databases being in a sorry state of affairs means nothing?
Oh, Harry_Read_Me.txt means a lot. I didn’t say that there are not some problems with the data. What I think it means most of all is that Jones et al cannot completely replicate their earlier work. It shows evidence of sloppy science. And yet these are the people we are supposed to bow down to and accept their word as gospel? It exposes their feet of clay, and their hubris. It vindicates those who have been saying — “hey, let’s slow down here in this effort to overhaul modern industrial society. There are other voices out there, what do they have to say about this? Some are even saying that warming might be a good thing? What’s up with that?”
Harry_Read_Me.txt takes a lot of wind out of their sails. Thank God.
O/T
Perhaps instead of calling our benefactor “hacker” or “whistleblower” (s)he should be called the unofficial FOIA officer since (s)he responded correctly and legally to a FOI request.
Sort of takes the wind out of the sails of the selfrightous Climate Dementors.
M. Simon (05:54:42):
In a word: Climate is not predictable.
Surely it’s not *that* bad? After all, we can look at palaeoclimate and identify correlations between Milankovitch cycles and climate states –
…orbital variations remain the most thoroughly examined mechanism of climatic change on time scales of tens of thousands of years and are by far the clearest case of a direct effect of changing insolation on the lower atmosphere of Earth (National Research Council, 1982).
If there is a correlation between insolation and climate then it’s reasonable to assume that climate *can* be predicted to some degree – and indeed the climate models have made some fairly accurate predictions already about how the global climate would respond to volcanic forcing (e.g. Pinatubo) and enhanced greenhouse gases. Hansen’s models accurately projected current warming in a 1988 paper –
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/1988/Hansen_etal.html
Quote from the London Daily Telegraph, -see Mary Riddell’s column today which states ‘ Unlike Lord Lawson they do not consider agnosticism a prudent stance when scientists (of whom he is not one) have produced overwhelming evidence of looming catastrophe’.
Have I missed something?
JonC (13:04:07) :
Would someone who understands these things please explain the difference between Mr Copeland’s graphs and those posted by Mr Icarus at 12:26.
I know others have already tried, but let me add my two cents. I’m plotting monthly “seasonal differences.” Icarus is plotting annual “actual values.”
When you “difference” a time trend, you take the trend out, and the “trend” is just the average of all the data, represented as a straight line through the data. There are various reasons for doing this — difference the data — and it is not an uncommon thing to do with time series. I do it, here, because smoothing the differences reveals the pattern of natural climate variation. Usually the latter is done with spectrum analysis, but that only reveals frequencies, not the the pattern of natural variation over time. I look upon the type of analysis I’m doing here as a cross between spectrum analysis and wavelet transforms, where I get the best of both in a more traditional method of presentation.
Another advantage to what I am is doing is that as a method of calculating the “trend” is not as strongly influenced by the starting point. Case in point:
Icarus starts his graph at a low point (though not the lowest) in the historical record. Using that starting point — 1945 — a linear trend through the data has a slope (annualized) of 0.010621692, or about 0.106 per decade. But the average seasonal difference is just 0.0047262, or about 0.047 per decade. Linear trends are all about where you chose to start and stop your data. Linear regression is unduly influenced by outliers, especially near the beginning and end of the trend line. The method I’m using does not have this sensitivity.
Now, before anybody else jumps on this, using differences to estimate the trend is correct, in an absolute sense, only if there is no trend in the differences. Well, I realize that, and I realize that there is a trend in the differences, and I’ve shown it (it is the black line in the figure at the top of the post). More on this in other replies to come.
David Holliday (13:04:49) :
As someone who read through a good portion of the HARRY_READ_ME.txt file I beg to differ with Mr. Copland’s statement “…I do not think that anything was revealed that suggests that the global temperature data set maintained by CRU was irreparably damaged by these revelations.” The validity of the datasets and code are seriously in question following the release of this information.
I’ll repeat here what I said to Denbo above, partly because I forgot to close of an italics tag, so my reply was not perhaps as clear as it could have been.
“Oh, Harry_Read_Me.txt means a lot. I didn’t say that there are not some problems with the data. What I think it means most of all is that Jones et al cannot completely replicate their earlier work. It shows evidence of sloppy science. And yet these are the people we are supposed to bow down to and accept their word as gospel? It exposes their feet of clay, and their hubris. It vindicates those who have been saying — “hey, let’s slow down here in this effort to overhaul modern industrial society. There are other voices out there, what do they have to say about this? Some are even saying that warming might be a good thing? What’s up with that?”
Harry_Read_Me.txt takes a lot of wind out of their sails. Thank God.”
Also, my reply to Rob, where I also left off a tag, is relevant here:
“I agree, this bears watching. If this bears out, it would probably just affect the mean “drift” I show, not the pattern of variation. But, I think it should be noted how well the HadCRUT and GISS match up to the satellite data sets when we get to the last 30 years. Consider this: if you cool the HadCRUT and GISS records down too much, but match them up in the end with UAH and RSS, that makes the growth rate higher, not lower.
I do not know how this will all shake out. But I want to know. Free the data, free the code. I am not afraid of what it will show.”
Why is it Standard deviation is never talked about with global temperatures? Using Excel and a webpage on descriptive statistics (and this is about statistics), I came up with the following:
Hadcrut(unadjusted): trend of .0044c/year +/- .0064c
GISS: trend of .0056c/year +/- .0068c
I just see a lot of noise. Or am I missing something here?
Basil (06:10:43):
Icarus (12:17:55) :
Clever manipulation of graphs but the reality is very different – the planet has been warming at about 0.2C per decade for several decades and it still is warming at 0.2C per decade:
https://sites.google.com/site/europa62/climatechange/yvtayto200
Nice job of cherry picking your starting point! What happened to the first half of the 20th Century?
We could certainly include that –
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1900/to
… and it still shows a warming trend, interrupted by 30 years of slight cooling, but my understanding is that the warming in the first half of the 20th Century was largely due to increasing solar irradiance –
https://sites.google.com/site/europa62/climatechange/sngtaco21870
Apologies for the crudeness of this graph but I think it does show a correlation of solar activity with warming which no longer holds after about 1960, so it doesn’t tell us much about *anthropogenic* warming in the last half century or so. If that’s what we’re discussing, what does the inclusion of the first half of the 20th Century add to the discussion, from your point of view?
hotrod (13:04:43) :
So with the error range being 4x the plotted trend, we have no statistically significant trend at all!
LarryWell, be careful here, because I think you do not understand something. I’ll have more to say about this in some other replies, so it is obviously something that bears repeating. The x4 is a prediction interval, not the confidence interval of the mean of the trend (of trends) itself. Now, as it happens, the mean of the trend (of trends) is not significantly different than zero, either, so your point perhaps remains.
Let me try to be clear about this. In the figure at the top of the post, there is a black “trend line.” This is a linear trend through the seasonal differences. The average seasonal difference, for all the data, is 0.0052823, or about 0.05°C per decade, since 1850. But it has been trending upward, from 0.000377 (0.004°C per decade) in 1851 to 0.010182 (0.10°C per decade) at the end of the historical data (October 2009), and a projection of this trend out to 2050 yields an average of 0.114°C through the forecast period.
Now, this trend (in the trend) may be overstated, somewhat, because of the way HadCRUT or GISS has mangled the historical data. We do not know that, but we need to know, one way or the other. We really do need to take a fresh look at the land and sea surface data, and the way it has been aggregated, to see whether the obvious biases of the CRU crew (or GISS) have inflated the trend.
But beyond that, I do not think we have any kind of true scientific understanding of the source of this trend. Even if HadCRUT and GISS were not biased, and the trends I show were spot on accurate representations of the historical record, what does it mean? Let me repeat something I said in the post:
“On longer scales, such as the ebb and flow from the Medieval Warm Period, through the Little Ice Age, and now into the “Modern Warm Period,” I do not think climate science yet has any real understanding of the underlying causes of such climate change.”
There is a trend. It is discernible, but against the backdrop of natural climate variation, it is difficult to conclude that it is statistically significant. And we do not know what has caused it. Until there is a “consensus” about what causes centennial swings in climate, we cannot be confident that we know what has caused the trend shown in the figure at the top of my post. That is the bottom line. We do not know what causes climate change on this scale. The truth is, we do not even know what causes climate change on decadal or bidecadal scales. It is not ENSO. That is, as I said, the effect, not the cause. Truth is, we really do not know a whole lot about the causes of natural climate variation.
rbateman (15:33:17) Said
“that’s the problem. a major cooling event is due anytime now. as usual smartsr^e thugocrats have exhibited their grasp of reality & left a trail of fraud/self interest that has zeroed humanities chance to respond to cold.
cold means less crops, more energy for heating, climate refugees moving to the equatorial zones etc. but then, considering the twisted minds of the thugocrats running this agenda maybe that’s the idea.
I think the elite are very well aware of a major cooling event being due any time. That is why the World Trade Organization put food/Ag on the trading table in 1995 and the World Bank/IMF SAPs are designed to grab all the farmland they can. Also in 1996 the VP of Cargill got rid of US grain stockpiling. That’s Dan Amstutz, the same VP who wrote the WTO agreement on Ag. these are the result so far:
1 million poles to be removed from their farms – EU Cairlady
60% of Portugal’s farmers removed
Mexico – 1992 to 2002, the number of farms fell 75% – from 2.3 million to 575, 000
And in India one farmer suicides every eight hours.
“The largest sustained waves of suicides in human history—is becoming apparent. And as Sainath emphasizes, these numbers still underestimate the disaster, since women farmers are excluded from the official statistics… It is important that the figure of 150,000 farm suicides is a bottom line estimate..” http://alternatives-international.net/article1394.html
This is the thugocrats response to possible famine:
“In summary, we have record low grain inventories globally as we move into a new crop year. We have demand growing strongly. Which means that going forward even small crop failures are going to drive grain prices to record levels. As an investor, we continue to find these long term trends…very attractive.” Food shortfalls predicted: 2008 http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/dancy/2008/0104.html
“Recently there have been increased calls for the development of a U.S. or international grain reserve to provide priority access to food supplies for Humanitarian needs. The National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) and the North American Export Grain Association (NAEGA) strongly advise against this concept..Stock reserves have a documented depressing effect on prices… and resulted in less aggressive market bidding for the grains.” July 22, 2008 letter to President Bush http://www.naega.org/images/pdf/grain_reserves_for_food_aid.pdf
I wonder if Old Icarus is in favor of mass starvation worldwide because that is what I see being setup when I follow the World Food supply threads. Worldwide regulations and patents sponsored by WTO/UN that prevent the poor from growing their own food.
The Global Biodiversity Treaty is especially nasty. It is used to steal seed from third world farmers so Monsanto et alcan patent the genetics. Third world farmers then have to pay for the seed THEY developed.
Gary (13:06:18) :
Basil,
Would you specify the formula you use to get the “smoothed seasonal differences” that you plot and explain why it’s an appropriate transformation of the raw data?. Hodrick-Prescott smoothing. For Figures 1 and 2 the noise to signal ratio (smoothing parameter) is 14,440. For Figure 3 it is 129,000.
Why Hodrick-Prescott? Why not? In other words, if you think this produces an unrealistic pattern of the natural variation, then you are welcome to take the same data I took, apply your smoothing method of choice, and show it.
But for what it is worth, you can roughly approximate the pattern shown in Figures 1 and 2 with a simple 48 month centered moving average. HP is a bit more elegant, using least squares to smooth things out better than a simple moving average.
Icarus (07:22:19)
The problem with GISS/woodforthetrees is that it appears adjusted data, for no apparent reason, for if you look at raw data globally via john daly.com or raw data from various stations worldwide, they show a flat trend, which is then later processed to give it a warming trend of recent, and downtrended for older recordings, to give it a constant rise for the Industrial period.
So: Raw data or adjusted data?
Re: Icarus.
Normally I’d say something to the effect of,
“This is why I dispair trying to explain things to Alarmists. No matter how many facts and errors in logic you show them, they never budge, and just move on to the next talking point.”
BUT, that is exactly the kind of BS excuse the Alarmists toss at Sceptics in order to not have to deal with us over at RC.
To wit, keep shredding him till he bleeds.
Doc
addendum: neverthless the 30 year cooling trend, followed by a warming trend still correlate with PDO’s..
Hugo M (13:16:03) :
Is it really statistically sound to regress against a smoothed composite? Isn’t this method falling short of Rahmsmoothing, as the projected steepness depends on filter width and a arbitrarily choosen starting point? How do you calculate error bounds for this projection?A lot of this goes away by using differences, rather than the raw data. A linear trend through the smooths of the differences — any of them — has exactly the same slope as a linear trend through the unsmoothed differences. The error bands would be dramatically higher if we used the unsmoothed data. Is that where you really want to go with this? In my estimation, the error bands are appropriate for what they purport to depict. You can see this, I think, just eyeballing the data. Visualize the undulating blue line in the figure at the top of the post continuing out through the forecast period. Most of the time, it will stay within the error bars. Occasionally, it will not. If we were plotting error bars around a projection based upon the unsmoothed data shown in the figure, they’d be several times greater.
lgl (13:17:35) :
Calm down, he is showing the “year to year differences in monthly anomalies”, not the anomaly. Why not discuss the interesting periodicity instead.
Yea. Somebody who gets it.
Zeke the Sneak (12:42:36) : Perhaps historians could teach us when science and politics were formally introduced each other and what happened afterwards…
Kind of a love story..
George E. Smith (13:20:07) :
Basil’s fig 1 of smoothed seasonal differences does seem to show very good agreement of the TIMING of the major seasonal shifts; but the amplitudes aren’t nearly so good as to agreement. Good eyes, George. I suspect if we dug deeper, we’d find some other curiosities in the disagreements in the amplitudes. For example, there appears to be a tendency for the amplitudes of HadCRUT to exceed GISS in earlier decades, and then for GISS to exceed HadCRUT in later decades. I wonder what could that mean about GISS? (/snark)
Basil (07:42:19)
Can I say that I agree with your final paragraph. That it isn’t known, and furthermore that radiative physics is too simplistic to give answers to a complex thing as nature. However, what is known is what can be studied in a laboratory, and in this respect, c02 comes off poorly. It does absorb radiation but at such miniscule and finite energy levels well away from the surface of earth, where it is supposed to matter the most that the conclusion is forced: Its probable that all co2 has no effect on temperature swings.
Its forgotten that most heat stays in the atmosphere due to oxygen and nitrogen, and that little escapes by radiation – mainly by convection and evaporation. Heat tends to stay where it is located if it can, and that would be the case if there were no c02.
E.M.Smith (13:56:07) :
edward (13:04:21) :
Icarus
The increase in temperatures as measured by Hadcrut is denoted as an anomaly compared to the 1950-1980 time period. Who decided that temperatures during the 1950-1980 time period were normal? Why a 30 year time span and why not 50-100 years and based on what criteria would you determine what time period to use?
It is a ‘cherry pick’ in the middle of a cold period. Plot any of a large number of long lived sites and it stands out. TonyB has a nice series that shows it well.
The HadCRUT normal is 1961-1990. There is a discussion of this in the CRU crew emails. They justify this as the last official WMO climate normal period, which is true. But they also note that many nations have updated their normals for 1971-2000 (including the US).
I don’t lose a lot of sleep over this. It is only an issue for the PR value of various anomaly calculations. Interesting enough, in the method I’m using, the base period doesn’t matter at all, and the data “line up” between the various data sets without having to standardize their baseline periods.
Icarus (03:02:18) :
Tenuc (21:56:27):
…even tiny changes to the amount of energy the Earth gains or loses will have effects far into the future.
Isn’t that precisely why climate scientists are predicting substantial changes in the Earth’s climate from a forcing of just a few W/m² caused by greenhouse gases, land use changes etc? According to the latest IPCC report the net anthropogenic forcing is 1.6W/m² –
http://www.ipcc.ch/graphics/syr/fig2-4.jpg
The normal solar variance (the difference between solar minimum and solar maximum in the regular 11-year cycle) gives a change in total solar irradiance of around 0.2W/m² and that is thought to result in about 0.1°C fluctuation in global average temperature . If we have an anthropogenic forcing of 8 times more than the normal solar cycle, it’s inevitably going to have a substantial effect, and that’s only with current levels of greenhouse gases, let alone projected levels in the future – good reason for concern, yes?
Between 1993 and 2003 the steric sea level, according to the satellite measurements and IPCC estimates, increased in surface height by an amount which would have required around 14X10^23J of heat to happen. This is equivalent to a 4W/m^2 forcing. However the SST only rose 0.3C, so your figures are way out. Morover, there’s only one place where that energy could have come from, because back radiation from the atmosphere doesn’t penetrate the ocean. It was from the sun, through a lowered cloud cover.
Get thee to a library, and read some science in addition to greek myth.
Icarus says
“If we have an anthropogenic forcing of 8 times more than the normal solar cycle, it’s inevitably going to have a substantial effect, and that’s only with current levels of greenhouse gases, let alone projected levels in the future – good reason for concern, yes?”
If that were the case then maybe. However, c02 doesn’t have these radiative properties or anything near it. Its absorbtion is13.5-16 microns, which, of course, it converts into heat to re-emit in areas of subzero temperatures found in the mid-upper troposphere. However, most radiation still escapes c02 even here, as it is uniformly distributed and emits in three dimensions, meaning that it doesn’t add heat to the system. GHG’s don’t actually create new radiation, although the planet surface cools by longwave radiation below the frequencies of ghg’s, so ghg’s don’t actually slow the rate of cooling.
Basil,
Sorry if I’m kinda slow, but what do you mean by “seasonal differences”? I assume you mean monthly difference in measured temp. vs. some value- what is that value? The year before, as someone said? The average of some time period- what time period? Or a baseline year?
If you’re using the previous year or a moving average of years, then warming could be happening and your graph would just minimize its appearance, true?
Again, I don’t doubt that the data is suspect, I don’t doubt that AGW proponents are overstating their case (the science is no way settled), I don’t doubt that there are people trying to use AGW to forward policy that can’t be as readily moved forward without AGW- BUT- we don’t have to call things “chaos” and leave it at that. We can agree on reality- it takes some work- and we can agree on sampling error and bias- it takes some work- and climate science is worth putting money into because if the world warms and seas rise and flood tourist areas and destroy agriculture, whether it be CO2 or sunspots or an asteroid- we need to try to know this and adapt to it rather than just ask our priests and medicine men to get busy interceding for us (well, perhaps a little of that too).
Thanks for answering my question, but if you could just clarify what “seasonal difference” means, I’d appreciate it- I’m trying to know what I know so I can help other people know it, too.
Tallbloke,
Isn’t the earth shrinking (as it’s interior cools and contracts from Al Gores “millions of degrees”, lol?). Seriously, if the earth’s interior is cooling (simple thermodynamics), and thus shrinking (since it’s not ice), then wouldn’t the seas rise without an iota of water expansion/glacier melt?
It seems this should be qualitatively obvious, has anyone modelled this effect quantitatively?
P Wilson (09:22:42):
…c02 doesn’t have these radiative properties or anything near it. Its absorbtion is13.5-16 microns, which, of course, it converts into heat to re-emit in areas of subzero temperatures found in the mid-upper troposphere. However, most radiation still escapes c02 even here, as it is uniformly distributed and emits in three dimensions, meaning that it doesn’t add heat to the system. GHG’s don’t actually create new radiation, although the planet surface cools by longwave radiation below the frequencies of ghg’s, so ghg’s don’t actually slow the rate of cooling.
I’m not sure what you mean by “…don’t actually slow the rate of cooling”. Surely the main property of the so-called greenhouse gases is that they reduce longwave radiation to space, which is essentially the only way that the planet loses heat… isn’t that right? Longwave radiation is reduced and the planet heats up until longwave radiation once again balances incoming shortwave radiation at equilibrium. That’s how the greenhouse effect works.
Direct observations of the outgoing longwave radiation from Earth, as measured by satellites, confirms a reduction that is consistent with predicted changes from increases in greenhouse gases –
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html
Icarus, try the graph for 2002 – 2010, what does that show you (clue – the linear trend is -ve)
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/to:2010/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/to:2010/trend
Dirk (09:34:13) :
Tallbloke,
Isn’t the earth shrinking (as it’s interior cools and contracts from Al Gores “millions of degrees”, lol?). Seriously, if the earth’s interior is cooling (simple thermodynamics), and thus shrinking (since it’s not ice), then wouldn’t the seas rise without an iota of water expansion/glacier melt?
It seems this should be qualitatively obvious, has anyone modelled this effect quantitatively?
Interesting question, but I don’t think so. For one thing, the satellites can very accurtely measure earth’s diameter, and would notice the effect if it existed. Another thing is that the crust and oceans insulate the core of Earth well, so the proportion of heat escaping is small. That’s not to say considerable amounts of heat don’t get into the ocean through the thin subsea crust and through mid ocean cracks.
Another thing to consider is the heat generated by the flexing the Earth is subjected to by the moon. One of the moons of jupiter has volcanos despite thick surface ice all over it due to gravitational forces. However, it’s much smaller and it caught in a resonance with one of the other moons.
I wish someone would model these things, it might help with finding answers to questions about why the global temperature fluctuates in rhythm with changes in length of day (caused mainly by subcrustal current changes).
P Wilson (09:22:42):
Direct observations of the outgoing longwave radiation from Earth, as measured by satellites, confirms a reduction that is consistent with predicted changes from increases in greenhouse gases –
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html
That abstract talks about the spectra of GHG’s and their increase, not a reduction in outgoing LW, which has actually increased quite a lot in the last 9 years.
In fact the data shows an increase of radiation leaving than a predicted reduction. (as measured by satellites)
This was the basis of Lindzen’s & Choi’s paper: ghg’s do not block radiation
http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t4/tlsglhmam_5.1
Joe (14:00:45) :
The IPCC report has 0.13+/-.03 deg C trend over the last 50 years. So the only significant difference between this post and the IPCC report is in the standard error. Any plans to post: 1) the smoothing method used and 2) how exactly the standard error was calculated?
I’ve already addressed the smoothing method. As for the standard error, I’ve discussed this too, but since the difference is not always appreciated, my standard error is for a prediction,, not for the mean of the data period. The standard error of the estimate (or prediction) for your IPCC number is probably several times the 0.03 figure you present. A simple linear regression through the HadCRUT data, since 1950 (which should correspond closely to the IPCC number) has a standard error of the estimate of about 0.15. So multiply that by 1.96 for a prediction interval, and it is ±~0.3, abut 10x your 0.03. Since the latest HadCRUT is about 0.44, we get a prediction interval of about .14 to 0.74 (for the near term — it goes up, and gets wider, as we move out into the future).
Well, that doesn’t include zero, like mine does. But then I’ve included the satellite data as well. So, for instance, a simple linear fit through RSS gives a standard error of the estimate of about 0.17, say ±~0.33. And with the latest RSS anomaly being 0.28, we’re now getting a prediction interval that includes zero.
And there are other differences. But the key one to understanding the width of my error bars is to understand that it is based on a prediction interval, it is not the standard error of the mean.
And for what I’m interested in — delineating the range of natural climate variation — I think that is the more relevant way to express the error. What difference does the mean make, anyway? Climate hardly ever falls on the trend line. It is routinely above it, or below it, which is what I’m trying to show. And understanding why that is so is important. If climate science cannot explain the range of natural climate variation, it has no business dictating to people how we ought to radically transform our lives.
Icarus (10:11:22)
Thats a beginner’s guide but a very misleading one. Radiation from earth itself is fairly minor, except for oceans which expel a lot of heat, vapour and c02. Heat loss means cooling although ghg’s constantly emit and re-emit radiation in a trillionth of a second in 3 dimensions, until thermalisation occurs (warm air cools on rising). Most heat in the atmosphere leaves through evaporation and convection – mainly convection, which is a slower process than longwave radiated heat leaving the planet. The portion intercepted by c02 is less than 8% total, due solely to its wavelengths. Water vapour is both more variable, more considerable and over three times the bandwidth, many of which do coincide with outgoing radiation, although c02’s ability to capture is fixed by its wavelength and not its quantity – in terms of quantity then sure, you need 100ppm to catch all heat available to it. On average, radiation from earth leaves at 15 microns, varying eitherside according to season, tropics, and equator. C02 interference with heat is quite rare in the scheme of the climate.
Re: M. Simon (05:54:42) & Tenuc (05:55:00)
We’re not talking about an unbounded system. Furthermore, poorly-understood outside factors shake the whole system. I don’t do predictions, but I am telling you bluntly: It’s nonrandom (& it’s not just messy chaos either). Randomness & chaos play a role at some spatiotemporal scales over some spatiotemporal regions.
The alarmists would love it if we all bought the assumption that all that is left is randomness, chaos, & CO2.
Thank you for providing an opportunity to get the message out.
Icarus (03:02:18) :
[“Tenuc (21:56:27):
…even tiny changes to the amount of energy the Earth gains or loses will have effects far into the future…”]
“Isn’t that precisely why climate scientists are predicting substantial changes in the Earth’s climate from a forcing of just a few W/m² caused by greenhouse gases, land use changes etc? According to the latest IPCC report the net anthropogenic forcing is 1.6W/m² –
http://www.ipcc.ch/graphics/syr/fig2-4.jpg
The normal solar variance (the difference between solar minimum and solar maximum in the regular 11-year cycle) gives a change in total solar irradiance of around 0.2W/m² and that is thought to result in about 0.1°C fluctuation in global average temperature . If we have an anthropogenic forcing of 8 times more than the normal solar cycle, it’s inevitably going to have a substantial effect, and that’s only with current levels of greenhouse gases, let alone projected levels in the future – good reason for concern, yes?”
Reply: No need to be concerned, Icarus, as CO2 in the atmosphere does not behave as the AGW hypothesis predicts. The radiative balance is another myth as most of the heat transport is done by convection currents and by the wind carrying the warm air from equator to poles via Hadley cells, where it is ultimately radiated from the pole. Tropical storms, hurricanes ahd other high energy turbulent events also act as a safety valve should the atmosphere begin to over-heat. The recent climate cooling has meant that both 2008 and 2009 were way below initial projections and
I think these heat transport systems are one of the reasons that the upper atmosphere ‘hot spot’ projected by the IPCC climate models has not been found observationally. Interestingly enough, these hot spots can be seen at the Poles from time to time.
Our chaotic climate is a well balanced system and, as history proves, maintains the Earth at habitable temperatures for long periods of time. This why even if we quadrupled CO2 levels there would be no run-away warming.
avfuktare med kontrollerad ventilation vind – vindsavfuktare (14:09:51) :
Re Jon C,
Mr Copelands is a difference between each successive year (i.e. 1980-1979, 1981-1980 and so forth). It is used to clarify the pattern of variation (up and downs, repeatedly). Icaros plot is the adjusted data as it is.
Someone else who understands. 😉
Mike Jonas (15:06:39) :
So many questions, so little time. Do not get me wrong. The questions are good questions. I just don’t have the time right now to do the data analysis required to answer them. Perhaps you could?
Steve M. (07:14:18) “Why is it Standard deviation is never talked about with global temperatures?”
In order to render it (as well as other measures) a non-misleading measure, one needs to report on the variation of standard deviation as a function of spatiotemporal scale & region.
another note: Where c02 is at its most active: at subzero temperatures in the -double C range, there is no physical mechanism by which cascading cold can come back to earth to create warmer surface temperatures. They call it a cascade, or invented it as such since they’re aware that heat in the atmosphere isn’t dependent on c02, which is always constant with its absorbtion. If it were not constant and depedent on quantity,they’d have invented an avalanche model. The cascade model, though demonstrably a theory, assumes a constant heat in the atmosphere. ie: a constant amount of heat cascades down. c02 molecules are rare enough in the atmosphere so as not to collide into each other when they are vibrating. There’s 3,000 other molecules for a c02 molecule in a given volume of air.
oops. correction to P Wilson (11:21:38) :
radiation on average leaves the earth an average 10 microns (not 15)
Paul Vaughan (15:06:42) :
Basil: “I think Trenberth just sees it as a lack of monitoring methods or devices.”
Trenberth’s articles suggest he understands that natural variation is complex. (I don’t necessarily see Trenberth & Meehl as ‘bad guys’… no further comment…)
I always appreciate your insights, and look forward to them. I do not necessarily see Trenberth as a “bad guy” either, but I do think he’s on the CO2 bandwagon, and sees understanding natural variation as essential to removing it, as if it is a mask covering the effect of CO2 from coming through clearly.
Basil: “But I think there still remains a considerable lack of knowledge, or understanding, about the mechanics of natural climate variation.”
You could drop “But I think” and change “considerable” to “staggering”.
Well, the language of true science is always humble, and carefully qualified, unlike some people we know. 🙂 But I get your point. There is more that we do not know than there is that we do know.
Basil: “± 0.440°C per decade”
I reject the assumptions upon which this estimate is based. (Note: This does not affect the key points & major theme of Basil’s article.)
I was going to ask you what you meant, but I think I know.
Thank You:
This article is a breath of fresh air (after the pattern of the last week). Judge Basil has laid down a judgement that accurately hits several important points. When this thread starts to settle down (politically), I imagine we’ll get refocused on discussing natural variations. I have some fresh notes I might share…
What a tease! I’m sure Anthony will give you a forum, if you ever want to share them with us.
Cheers, 😉
Basil
Peter Taylor (15:08:38) :
I understand what you are driving at. The way data is scattered across the grids is very unclear (ask Harry!), and it is surely likely that when the gridded “model” of the data is then used to replicate the input of individual stations, a lot of it might look ugly, and not match up very well. But for the global “average” I’m not sure that the differences matter as much, as it will tend to all “come out in the wash.” I’m not saying that the data is ideal, or that we cannot do better, or that we shouldn’t try to do better. But when all is said and done, I don’t think the global average will be as affected as many assume. But I’m all for finding out, one way or the other.
vukcevic (04:46:40) ” http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/HL-GMF.gif “
I agree that the subpolar gyre plays an important (switch-like) role …and none of my empirical investigations suggest it is controlled by CO2.
Re: Basil (11:40:00)
I’ll take insights on natural climate variation without regard for whatever politics are necessary in the background to keep the train moving…
The important thing is:
Do you think he’ll lie about the truth? (i.e. in a manner such that wise folks can’t read between the lines) [ :
Tilo Reber (15:44:14) :
Basil,
Regarding the tracking of the four main temperature sites, I have difficulty seeing your example – maybe because of the scale. They do all zig and zag more or less at the same time, but since 97 GISS has been diverging from HadCru3, UAH, and RSS. I don’t know how meaningful the fact of the satellite tracking is, since the satellite record is very short, and since much of the GISS and HadCru3 data manipulation seems to be to make past data cooler.
Tilo,
When all is said and done, we may find that the overall trend is less, because of the way HadCRUT and GISS handle the older data. But I don’t think we’ll see a big change in the cyclic pattern of the data, or the limits to the range of natural climate variation. A few people have picked up on this — the range of natural climate variation, that it is quite variable. But I would also like for people to pick up on something else, which I wrote of in the post:
If you look carefully at Figure 1, you will notice that there seem to be upper and lower limits to the range of natural climate variability. On the scale depicted in Figure 1 (the scale is different with other degrees of smoothing), when warming reaches a limit of approximately 0.08-0.10°C per year, the warming slows down, and eventually a period of cooling takes place, always with the space of just a few years. Homeostasis, anyone? While phenomenon like ENSO are the effect of this regularity in natural climate variation, they are not the cause of it.
The peak amplitudes of the cycles shown in Figure 1 are remarkably consistent. It as if once the earth heats up to a certain point, something happens — say, let’s call it negative feedback! — to limit the warming, and cool the earth back down. I wonder what it could be?
Tilo Reber (15:46:22) :
Tilo,
In the chart you linked to, are the data adjusted for a common baseline?
Basil
Mike Lorrey (16:26:58) :
icarus,
Perhaps you haven’t heard, but HadCRUT3 is corrupted by bad code that “hides the decline”. Just can’t stop spinning, can you?
Let’s be accurate here. The “hides the decline” controversy relates to paleo data, not HadCRUT3. In HadCRUT3, the game was to “hide the 1940’s blip.”
lucklucky (16:39:30) :
jorgekafkazar i agree totally. We don’t know if we humans warm , freeze or do nothing to the planet temperature. Right now it is unknown.Actually, we do know that humans warm their environment. It is called “UHI.” And not just UHI, but land use/land cover changes by humans impact their environment, including temperature. Maybe we do not know the full extent of it, but I do not see the value in denying the impact of humans altogether. And we do not know that it is necessarily bad, either. Warm is good. Cold is bad.
dmoon (18:03:41) :
Is something wrong with the very first figure (Figure 0)? The divisions on the Y axis are at 0.2 increments. So 0.114 would be about half a division. And the +/- 0.4 error band would be +/- 2 divisions. Is there a factor of 10 mistake somewhere?
There is indeed a factor of 10x, but it is not a mistake. The Y axis measures annual rates of change. I multiply by 10 in the Figure to restate it as a “decadal” rate of change.
TonyB (02:15:24) :
I’ve been doing penance (responding to posts) off and on all day today. Am I forgiven yet?
😉
Basil
tallbloke (10:43:37) “I wish someone would model these things, it might help with finding answers to questions about why the global temperature fluctuates in rhythm with changes in length of day”
Wise words. My sense is they don’t know how. I’ve seen attempts. The math gets intractable as soon as even the simplest assumptions are torn down – a clue as to why the brainwashing in support of the insidious assumptions remains a matter of the strictest possible ivory tower cult solidarity. Potential threats to the longstanding ruse are derided & targeted with the most viciously-intent sharp-shooting. This fire needs to be fought with fire of infinitely greater resolve. This will pave the way to greater research efficiency for future bright minds who will need to be on firm ground to fight other important battles on the path to survival of whatever ultimate fate Earth will face.
Always appreciate your comments tallbloke. Cheers.
lgl (03:09:47) :
Basil
I can’t stop wondering about fig. 1. I assume the temperature rise is reflected in the integral of that graph, so that a larger area above 0 than below means warming.
You have it exactly right.
Then I would expect to see a rising trend if the warming is caused by GHGs, with peaks and troughs going higher and higher, but that’s not the case.
The reason for the larger area above 0 is the double peaks in late 70s 80s and 90s and not higher peaks. I must be totally off track here, will your algorithm always give a no-trend graph?
Well, part of the late 20th Century warming comes from the fact that the troughs — the dips below the zero line — were not as deep as those prior to “the Great Climate Shift” of the mid 1970’s. But lest anyone associate that “lack of cooling” with GHG’s, you have even more “lack of cooling” back in the 1930’s. So what’s up with that? I don’t think we know. But these are the kinds of questions we should be asking.
Basil
You are forgiven if you can confirm you will be on duty all over the Christmas period with 1 hour allowed off on Christmas Day to eat your turkey-or whatever else you might want (a quick sandwich at the screen?)
tonyb
Re: Basil (11:17:33)
It is true that the estimates are based on untenable assumptions – too vulnerable to effortless defeat.
–
Basil (12:07:15) “[…] the game was to “hide the 1940’s blip.””
My guns are trained on that. (All the other nonsense is a sideshow.) They show willful blind ignorance of Earth orientation parameters & celestial dynamics. If they muck-up the data from such a willfully blind perspective, they complicate the audits that will need to be done by future truth-needing scientists. I advise a systems approach (as opposed to narrow unidisciplinarity). These guys need to get their hands dirty looking at the patterns shared by a wider range of geophysical & celestial time series. Their perspective is too narrow and it is costing all of us.
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/sqrtaayoy.sq22.png
–
Basil (11:58:43) “The peak amplitudes of the cycles shown in Figure 1 are remarkably consistent. It as if once the earth heats up to a certain point, something happens — say, let’s call it negative feedback! — to limit the warming, and cool the earth back down. I wonder what it could be?”
Interesting indeed…
Dirk (09:29:43) :
Here is the actual HadCRUT data for the past two years:
2007:10 0.367
2007:11 0.267
2007:12 0.220
2008:01 0.030
2008:02 0.194
2008:03 0.481
2008:04 0.278
2008:05 0.280
2008:06 0.307
2008:07 0.415
2008:08 0.391
2008:09 0.369
2008:10 0.452
2008:11 0.388
2008:12 0.321
2009:01 0.384
2009:02 0.364
2009:03 0.371
2009:04 0.417
2009:05 0.409
2009:06 0.509
2009:07 0.508
2009:08 0.548
2009:09 0.459
2009:10 0.437
For 2009:10, the seasonal difference is 0.437 minus the value 12 months prior, i.e. 0.437-0.452, or -0.015. In other words, from October 2008 to October 2009, the anomaly declined 0.015. For 2009:09, the seasonal difference is 0.459 minus 0.369, or +0.09. And so on.
Why use seasonal differences? Well, it tends to transform the data into a stationary process, which is desirable for forecasting. But here, it does a couple of other things along the way that are useful. One, the mean of the seasonal differences of the monthly data becomes an estimate of the annual rate of change, i.e. the annual trend. Second, it facilitates comparing different data sets, like HadCRUT and GISS, without worrying about the different baseline periods used to define their anomalies. The “anomaly” disappears when taking the seasonal difference, and everything is automatically transformed into the same unit of expression. Then there is the pattern of natural variation, or cycles, that gets revealed with smoothing the differences, that is not as evident when smoothing the undifferenced data.
Differencing is a common technique in time series analysis. Economists use it all the time. And the global temperature data is just a time series of observations, so the same techniques apply.
Paul Vaughan (11:57:36) :
Re: Basil (11:40:00)
I’ll take insights on natural climate variation without regard for whatever politics are necessary in the background to keep the train moving…
The important thing is:
Do you think he’ll lie about the truth? (i.e. in a manner such that wise folks can’t read between the lines) [ :
No, I don’t think he’d try to lie about the truth. He’s a cut above some of the others, in that regard.
Basil
It as if once the earth heats up to a certain point, something happens — say, let’s call it negative feedback! — to limit the warming, and cool the earth back down. I wonder what it could be?
I think it’s clear that the peaks are El-Nino and the dips are La-Nina and/or volcanoes. http://virakkraft.com/ENSO-temp-diff.png
So you are asking, what is reversing the Ninos?
Clouds caused by the evaporation? or are the trade winds just picking up again for some other reason? And what the h… offset the thermostat in 1977? I would really like to know, so would others I guess.
Paul Vaughan (12:55:29) :
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/sqrtaayoy.sq22.png
Is the aa controlled by the Earth’s magnetism or by the Sun?
http://virakkraft.com/PDO-mag-dec.jpg
Basil,
Thank you for clarifying your calculation so even I can understand it- if only everyone would be as forthcoming and willing to explain their methods.
So, to close the gap between your graph, which seems to show limits on warming and cooling, and Icarus’, which seems to show parabolic warming, the issue could be that the warming periods are a bit longer than the cooling periods, true?
I’m not sure if this “extra heating” means anything given there seems to be disagreement on exactly how CO2 radiates (I think that’s what Lindzen and Choi were saying), but at least I can reconcile that there IS warming in the data. Now if only CERN can come out and just show it’s all in the sunspots and cosmic rays so we can go back to making decisions based on economics instead of central planners’ daydreams…
p.s.- and the warming is not “going out of control” or directly correlated to CO2.
Judge (10:21:38) :
Icarus, try the graph for 2002 – 2010, what does that show you
OK, look at your graph. It shows that on average, the year-to-year variability of global temperature is at least 0.2°C. Agreed? Now look at half a century of data:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1970/to:2010/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1970/to:2010/trend
I think you have to agree that there is a definite upward trend here, yes? It’s about 0.15°C per decade.
So, you have to graph *at the very least* 15 years of data to have any chance of distinguishing the trend from the interannual variation – to see it rise above the ‘noise’ – Agreed? 8 years clearly can’t tell you anything about the trend – it’s just impossible in a system with this much natural variability.
15 years gives you this:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1995/to:2010/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1995/to:2010/trend
30 years is preferable to pin down the trend:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/to:2010/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/to:2010/trend
Do you see why 8 years of data can’t possibly tell you anything about global warming?
Dirk (15:26:41) :
Basil,
Thank you for clarifying your calculation so even I can understand it- if only everyone would be as forthcoming and willing to explain their methods.
So, to close the gap between your graph, which seems to show limits on warming and cooling, and Icarus’, which seems to show parabolic warming, the issue could be that the warming periods are a bit longer than the cooling periods, true?
That’s certainly one way to look at it.
I do not think the parabolic fit is good statistical methodology, though. While there may be an upward drift in the temperature data (and maybe not as much as it seems, because of all the questions we have about the provenance of the data), I do not see any evidence that it is increasing at an increasing rate, which is what the parabolic curve implies.
But it is undoubtedly true that there has been less cooling, and more warming, in recent decades, i.e. through the period covered by Icarus’ graph. But…we had this same kind of “less cooling, and more warming” in the 1930’s, so any attempt to say that the recent warming is epic, unprecedented, or unusual depends on a distorted view of the historical record. Which, of course, is what the CRU crew was all about in the revealed emails. They were all about showing that the recent warming is unique and unprecedented, even if it meant “hiding the decline” or getting rid of “the 1940’s blip.”
My take is that there is a lot of ups and downs in the temperature record, what we call “natural climate variation,” and that we need to understand both its causes, and its frequency and range, before we can confidently conclude that we understand enough about climate change to justify the massive economic overhaul of the world’s economy that the warming alarmists are calling for.
Re: lgl (14:54:07)
Thanks for reminding me about that PDO / declination pattern.
Based in part on comments I’ve received from physicists, my thinking is currently focused on how variations in the amplitude of the terrestrial pole tide interact with the annual cycle and solar system dynamics to drive some of the more prominent variations we see in a number of geophysical indices, including aa index & temperature.
Look what happens in the decades leading up to 1940:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/GA_MapXL.PNG
Reading Barkin helps raise awareness of why there is so much confounding in geophysical records – for example between LOD & the subcrustal currents which tallbloke mentions – a coincidence which appears to have possibly thrown some of the world’s leading experts seriously off track – (or maybe they have very good reasons for deliberately delaying [not preventing] mainstream awareness of something…)
…No comment on the sun at this time.
Basil (12:55:41) “[…] it tends to transform the data into a stationary process […]”
I suggest revising this statement. Maybe it didn’t come across how you intended.
It’s great to have natural climate variations back on the agenda. Thanks for your very timely contribution Basil.
Basil wrote:
That’s it exactly. Basil cuts to the heart of the matter, echoing Dr Roy Spencer’s statement/challenge:
No one has falsified the theory that the observed temperature changes are a consequence of natural variability.
Since the theory of natural climate variability has never been falsified, Occam’s Razor becomes relevant: Never increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything. The unnecessary entity of carbon dioxide is not needed to explain natural climate variability. It only muddies the waters, and it predicts nothing.
The mechanism for natural variability has not been adequately explained. But it doesn’t have to be. The theory concerns the observed temperature changes. Those cycles are predictable, and they have well defined upper and lower limits. Runaway global warming would necessarily exceed those limits. But there is zero empirical evidence that ‘runaway global warming’ is occurring, or will occur. It is purely a “what if” scenario, based on a belief system that has no more to do with the Scientific Method than astrology or Scientology.
The planet is currently enjoying a very benign climate; nothing unusual or unnatural is occurring, despite the constant efforts of those with a dog in the AGW fight to assign looming climate catastrophe to every weather event, or to any receding glaciers selected from the planet’s 160,000 glaciers, or to the discovery of a drowned polar bear following a storm.
The situation as Basil describes it above — natural variability — has been the mainstream climate theory for many decades. Now a relatively new hypothesis has emerged, which states that an increase in the trace gas carbon dioxide will cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe. But where is the empirical evidence?
The central problem in this debate is that the Scientific Method requires complete transparency of all data and methods used to confirm the hypothesis. But as we see, those essentials are deliberately hidden. We are expected to trust these government- and foundation-paid scientists, who now explain that they have discarded or lost much of their original data, and who invent flimsy excuses for not releasing what remains.
The Scientific Method requires that those putting forth a new hypothesis must provide convincing [ie: unfalsifiable] evidence that their hypothesis is valid, and that it explains reality better than the theory it attempts to replace. This is normally done by using the new hypothesis to successfully predict future events. But the new CO2=CAGW [carbon dioxide causes catastrophic global warming] hypothesis is based primarily on GCMs — computer climate models. These models are a tool. Models are not evidence. And without exception, models fail to make accurate predictions.
Another problem in the debate is that the promoters of the CO2=CAGW hypothesis constantly demand that skeptical scientists [the only honest kind of scientists] must prove their skepticism. But that turns the Scientific Method on its head; skepticism is inherently a negative attack to uncover the truth, and you can not prove a negative.
The burden is properly on the promoters of the new hypothesis, which in turn requires them to divulge all of their data, methodologies, notes and experiments so that skeptical scientists can do their best to falsify the hypothesis.
That is how science advances. A hypothesis that withstands falsification, and can predict future events, is then on its way to becoming an accepted theory. By withstanding all challenges, what remains is as close to scientific truth as we can get.
The fact that not only the pro-AGW CRU scientists, but also those in the UN, the U.S. and other countries all uniformly refuse to cooperate with skeptical scientists, leads to the conclusion that they know that their CO2=CAGW hypothesis will be promptly falsified if they share their data and methods. So they invent excuses to explain why they are not able to divulge the raw data and methods used to arrive at their conclusions: they have lost their data, or they have secret agreements, never mentioned before, that require them to hide their taxpayer-funded climate data, etc.
With the release of the incriminating emails and files, the self-serving reasons for their “the dog ate my homework” explanations, which were given for their extremely well-paid stonewalling, are made clear. So now, maybe climate science can get back to the basics – strictly adhering to the Scientific Method to arrive at the truth. And if CO2=CAGW is falsified along the way, so be it. Because the truth is what matters.
Icarus
30 years is preferable to pin down the trend:
Absolutely not. If looking for a long term trend you must go at least 60 years back because of the PDO.
Paul Vaughan (20:02:34) :
Basil (12:55:41) “[…] it tends to transform the data into a stationary process […]“
I suggest revising this statement. Maybe it didn’t come across how you intended.
Ah, excellent point. I should have remembered the work I did a while back looking into whether it is really a random walk. There, I concluded that the “noise” around the cycles exhibit “anti-persistence” (mean reversion), and the cycles persistence, with the two offsetting each other to make the seasonal difference “appear” to be somewhat a random walk.
It’s great to have natural climate variations back on the agenda. Thanks for your very timely contribution Basil.
Thanks. I hope to see you contribute something here one of these days, too, besides the occasional comments, which are always interesting, but never enough!
lgl (00:11:09) “Absolutely not. If looking for a long term trend you must go at least 60 years back because of the PDO.”
You can be even more restrictive. It would have to be multiples of 60 …but that assumes stationarity & no other cycles …so in other words, it’s hopeless for alarmists making deceptive arguments about trends based on untenable assumptions. They would have to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that they have ruled out confounding. At least until everything about climate is as predictable as the tides, that’s impossible. This is why an increasing number of (the more sensible, if such a thing exists) alarmists are interested in natural climate variations – a welcome development.
–
Re: Basil (07:47:39)
I will be neither organizing my notes nor pursuing my dozen or so most recent research proposals until I have secure, stable, sufficient funding (…funding that doesn’t force a change in focus – note: there is money out there, but it requires chasing red herrings, setting up strawmen, & being diverted from essential pursuits). The source of funding is irrelevant – “dirty oil money”, “David Suzuki Foundation greeny money”, whatever. The source of the money does not influence the truth about natural climate variations.
Cheers to all. Best thread since CRUgate broke, by far — a great credit to Basil’s judgement.
Time is getting short and it is coming down to the fact, that soon I will have to pray to the good Lord to maintain our freedoms and not allow our leaders to sign the Copenhagen Treaty, which will take away our liberties, let go and let God-this being a challenge to our Lord and Saviour? However, while there is still time to prevent the loss of a lifetime, perhaps loss of life it’s self – I will do what I am able to fight for our freedoms! The whole Climate change agenda is a proven fraud and racketeering, but the United Nations and Globalist governments don’t care as that is just the excuse instrument they have used to ensnare us! Has everybody out there become a tree hugger? The tree will be standing 100 years from now, but will you be looking at the tree, from inside the fence of a Concentration Camp? Anyone out there want to fight to maintain their freedom anymore? Please do all you can to preserve freedom in North America!
Check out what Government is doing behind your back at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VebOTc-7shU
To request that PM Harper doesn’t sign the Copenhagen Treaty, thereby causing Canadians to lose
their Sovereignty and Freedom email the PM at: pm@Peter Mullans.gc.ca
Any lawyers want to help out by filing this Copenhagen Treaty be classified as an illegal Treaty, in order to, help save Freedom in North America? ( Unlimited Promotion Opportunity Here For a Law firm to Gain a favorable high profile credibility! )
Congratulations Mr. Copeland !!
This is an excellent summary of what really matters in the state of art regarding climate science knowledgement.
lgl (00:11:09):
Icarus
30 years is preferable to pin down the trend:
Absolutely not. If looking for a long term trend you must go at least 60 years back because of the PDO.
How much impact is the PDO thought to have on global temperature fluctuations?
“How much impact is the PDO thought to have on global temperature fluctuations?”
Much more than thought of. They had to make the stratosphere cleaner than clean around 1940 to increase the forcing of volcanoes and add some speculations regarding aerosol cooling up to the 70s to make the models work.
Run the temp curve through a highpass filter (cutoff 80 yrs perhaps) and you will see the PDO impact.
“How much impact is the PDO thought to have on global temperature fluctuations?”
Lots. Here’s a link to the 52-page paper, “The Recovery from the Little Ice Age”:
http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~sakasofu/pdf/recovery_little_ice_age.pdf
Here is its Abstract:
“Two natural components of the presently progressing climate change are identified.
The first one is an almost linear global temperature increase of about 0.5°C/100 years (~1°F/100 years), which seems to have started at least one hundred years before 1946 when manmade CO2 in the atmosphere began to increase rapidly. This value of 0.5°C/100 years may be compared with what the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists consider to be the manmade greenhouse effect of 0.6°C/100 years. This 100-year long linear warming trend is likely to be a natural change. One possible cause of this linear increase may be Earth’s continuing recovery from the Little Ice Age (1400-1800). This trend (0.5°C/100 years) should be subtracted from the temperature data during the last 100 years when estimating the manmade contribution to the present global warming trend. As a result, there is a possibility that only a small fraction of the present warming trend is attributable to the greenhouse effect resulting from human activities. Note that both glaciers in many places in the world and sea ice in the Arctic Ocean that had developed during the Little Ice Age began to recede after 1800 and are still receding; their recession is thus not a recent phenomenon.
The second one is the multi-decadal oscillation, which is superposed on the linear change. One of them is the “multi-decadal oscillation,” which is a natural change. This particular change has a positive rate of change of about 0.15°C/10 years from about 1975, and is thought to be a sure sign of the greenhouse effect by the IPCC. But, this positive trend stopped after 2000 and now has a negative slope. As a result, the global warming trend stopped in about 2000-2001.
Therefore, it appears that the two natural changes have a greater effect on temperature changes than the greenhouse effects of CO2. These facts are contrary to the IPCC Report (2007, p.10), which states that “most” of the present warming is due “very likely” to be the manmade greenhouse effect. They predict that the warming trend continues after 2000. Contrary to their prediction, the warming halted after 2000.
There is an urgent need to correctly identify natural changes and remove them from the present global warming/cooling trend, in order to accurately identify the contribution of the manmade greenhouse effect. Only then can the contribution of CO2 be studied quantitatively.”
Icarus (17:08:18) “How much impact is the PDO thought to have on global temperature fluctuations?”
You might want to check out the following:
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
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.
html – main index:
http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/Y2787E/Y2787E00.HTM
pdf – directory of chapter-pdf-files:
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y2787e/
Of particular interest:
Chapter 2. Dynamics of Climatic and Geophysical Indices
html: http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/Y2787E/Y2787E03.HTM
pdf: ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y2787e/y2787e01.pdf
The fish don’t have a political agenda.
Thank you for the interesting links Paul. Even if we go only 60 years back your first link shows PDO contribution of 0.3 deg C since 1970. With 0.1 in “value adds” from Phil Jones et al that leaves only 0.1 C for GHGs. Just face it Icarus, AGW-theory debunked.
lgl (07:51:42) “Thank you for the interesting links Paul.”
No trouble.
The interesting thing is that if you put elements of these 2 …
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/RegimeChangePoints.PNG
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/JEV_Period(8,17a)Morlet2pi.PNG
… together you get a 41000 year cycle.
Higher derivatives and their spatial variation tell the story.
How did the Mayans & Aztecs know? With the right resources [& a lack of administrative/political interference] I believe this question could be answered within 5 years.
lgl (07:51:42):
Thank you for the interesting links Paul. Even if we go only 60 years back your first link shows PDO contribution of 0.3 deg C since 1970. With 0.1 in “value adds” from Phil Jones et al that leaves only 0.1 C for GHGs. Just face it Icarus, AGW-theory debunked.
The PDO, just like ENSO, isn’t causing any long-term trends in temperature – it’s redistributing heat and contributing to natural variability, but it’s not a forcing so it doesn’t change the energy balance of the planet. Greenhouse gases do.
Icarus (15:31:02) “The PDO, just like ENSO, isn’t causing any long-term trends in temperature – it’s redistributing heat and contributing to natural variability, but it’s not a forcing so it doesn’t change the energy balance of the planet. Greenhouse gases do.”
You have some homework to do:
1) Chapter 1: Clouds.
2) Chapter 2: Insolation (not irradiance).
The redistribution of which you speak has cumulative effects.
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/CumuSumGLAAM.png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/CumuSumPDO(76,88,98).png
By the way: I’m a HARDCORE environmentalist.
Icarus,
True, but how much of the cooling 1940-1970 and warming 1970-2000 is attributed to PDO in the models. Nothing as far as I know, or? What will the CO2 forcing be if we give PDO 0.3 C 1970-2000?
Paul,
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/JEV_Period(8,17a)Morlet2pi.PNG
Hey, I see a lot of 100+ and 200+ periods here, like in the solar activity records.
Unfortunately I don’t understand what you are doing and how you arrive at 41000 years (Earth’s obliquity cycle?)
Re: lgl (01:37:49)
That JEV plot focuses on the 8 to 17 year timescale range, but if you know the work of Ivanka Charvatova, you’re likely aware that there are power bands at 1.6 & 6.4 years.
V*E / |V-E| = (0.615172097829219)*(1) / |(0.615172097829219 – 1)| = 1.598563485
4*(1.598563485) = 6.394253939
J*N / |J-N| = (11.86630899)*(164.888325) / |(11.86630899 – 164.888325)| = 12.78649873
(12.78649873) / 2 = 6.393249363
(6.394253939)*(6.393249363) / |(6.394253939 – 6.393249363)| = 40693.86799
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles#Axial_tilt_.28obliquity.29
Clarification: I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything with these calculations.
Further to Paul Vaughan (12:50:57) …
By the way, in case it’s still not obvious to people interested in climate science like it should be, the beat period of the Chandler wobble & the annual wobble is 6.4 years. [People lacking background are cautioned to not think that a 6.4 year cycle in climate is being suggested (!) — it is way more complicated and not (at all) easily summarized.]