Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
[see Updates at the end of this post]
Science is what we use to explain anomalies, to elucidate mysteries, to shed light on unexplained occurrences. For example, once we understand how the earth rotates, there is no great need for a scientific explanation of the sun rising in the morning. If one day the sun were to rise in the afternoon, however, that is an anomaly which would definitely require a scientific explanation. But there is no need to explain the normal everyday occurrences. We don’t need a new understanding if there is nothing new to understand.
Hundreds of thousands of hours of work, and billions of dollars, have been expended trying to explain the recent variations in the climate, particularly the global temperature. But in the rush to find an explanation, a very important question has been left unasked:
Just exactly what unusual, unexpected temperature anomaly are we trying to explain?
The claim is made over and over that humans are having an effect on the climate. But where is the evidence that there is anything that even needs explanation? Where is the abnormal phenomenon? What is it that we are trying to make sense of, what is the unusual occurrence that requires a novel scientific explanation?
There are not a lot of long-term temperature records that can help us in this regard. The longest one is the Central England Temperature record (CET). Although there are problems with the CET (see Sources below), including recent changes in the stations used to calculate it that have slightly inflated the modern temperatures, it is a good starting point for an investigation of whether there is anything happening that is abnormal. Here is that record:
Figure 1. The Central England Temperature Record. Blue line is the monthly temperature in Celsius. Red line is the average temperature. Jagged black line is the 25-year trailing trend, in degrees per century.
Now, where in that record is there anything which is even slightly abnormal? Where is the anomaly that the entire huge edifice of the AGW hypothesis is designed to elucidate? The longest sustained rise is from about 1680 to 1740. That time period also has the steepest rise. The modern period, on the other hand, is barely above the long-term trend despite urban warming. There is nothing unusual about the modern period in any way.
OK, so there’s nothing to explain in the CET. How about another long record?
One of the world’s best single station long-term records is that of the Armagh Observatory in Ireland. It has been maintained with only a couple minor location changes for over 200 years. Figure 2 shows the Armagh record.
Figure 2. Temperature record for Armagh University. Various colored lines as in Figure 1.
We find the same thing in this record as in the CET. The fastest rise was a long, long time ago. The modern rise is once again insignificant. Where in all of this is anything that requires billions of dollars to explain?
Finally, what about the global record? Here, you don’t have to take my word for it. A much chastened Phil Jones (the disgraced former Director of the CRU of email fame), in an interview with the BBC on Friday, February 12, 2010, answered a BBC question as follows:
Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
An initial point to make is that in the responses to these questions I’ve assumed that when you talk about the global temperature record, you mean the record that combines the estimates from land regions with those from the marine regions of the world. CRU produces the land component, with the Met Office Hadley Centre producing the marine component.
Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below).
I have also included the trend over the period 1975 to 2009, which has a very similar trend to the period 1975-1998.
So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.
So in fact, according to Phil Jones (who strongly believes in the AGW hypothesis) there is nothing unusual about the recent warming either. It is not statistically different from two earlier modern periods of warming. Since these warming periods were before the modern rise in CO2, greenhouse gases cannot have been responsible for those rises.
So my question remains unanswered … where is the anomaly? Where is the unusual occurrence that we are spending billions of dollars trying to explain?
The answer is, there is no unusual warming. There is no anomaly. There is nothing strange or out of the ordinary about the recent warming. It is in no way distinguishable from earlier periods of warming, periods that we know were not due to rising CO2. There is nothing in the record that is in any way different from the centuries-long natural fluctuations in the global climate.
In other words, we have spent billions of dollars and wasted years of work chasing a chimera, a will-of-the-wisp. This is why none of the CO2 explanations have held water … simply because there is nothing unusual to explain.
SOURCES:
CET:
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/data/download.html
ARMAGH:
ADJUSTMENTS TO THE CET:
http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/004482.html
JONES BBC INTERVIEW:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
Jones also makes the interesting argument in the interview that the reason he believes that recent warming is anthropogenic (human-caused) is because climate models can’t replicate it … in other words, he has absolutely no evidence at all, he just has the undeniable fact that our current crop of climate models can’t model the climate. Seems to me like that’s a problem with the models rather than a problem with the climate, but hey, what do I know, I was born yesterday …
[UPDATE 1] Further evidence that nothing abnormal is happening is given by the individual US state record high temperatures. Here are the number of US state record high temperatures per decade, from the US National Climate Data Center (NCDC):
Figure 3. US state high temperature records, by decade. In the period 1930-1940, twenty of the fifty US states had their highest recorded temperature.
As you can see, the recent decades have not had record-beating high temperatures, nor are they unusual or abnormal in any way. Nearly half of the high temperature records were set back in the 1930-1940 decade.
[UPDATE 2] Here is another look at the lack of any abnormalities in climate data. I will add more as they come up. This is data on snow extext, from the Rutgers University Global Snow Lab:
Figure 4. Snow cover variation, Northern Hemisphere. Transparent blue line shows the month-by-month cover, and the red line is the average snow cover.
So, nothing to see here. There is no evidence that the climate has gone off course. There is no evidence of the claimed reduction in snow cover which is supposed to provide a positive feedback to warming. In fact, the surprising thing is how little the snow cover has changed over the last forty years.
[UPDATE 3] We often hear about the vanishing polar sea ice. Usually, however, people only look at half of the picture, Arctic sea ice. Although you wouldn’t know it from the scare stories, we do have a South Pole. Here is the record of global sea ice, 1979-2006
Figure 5. Global ice area variation. Blue line shows the month-by-month area, and the red line is the average area. DATA SOURCE
This illustrates the non-intuitive nature of climate. As the global temperature was climbing from 1985 until 1998, global sea ice was increasing. Since then it has decreased, and currently is where we were at the start of the satellite record. Variation in the average is ±2%. Nothing unusual here.
[UPDATE 4] Another oft-mentioned item is tropical cyclones. Here is the record of Accumulated Cyclone Energy, for both the Globe and and Northern Hemisphere, from Ryan Maue .
Figure 6. Accumulated Cyclone Energy. Upper line is global, lower line is Northern Hemisphere. Area between lines is Southern Hemisphere
As you can see, there is nothing out of the ordinary in the accumulated cyclone energy either. It goes up … it comes down. Nature is like that.
[UPDATE 5] Arctic temperatures are often cited as being anomalous. Here’s the record for Alaska;
Figure 7. Alaska Temperature Average from First Order Observing Stations. DATA SOURCE .
The Alaskan temperature is regulated by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). The PDO shifted from the cool phase to the warm phase around 1976 [typo corrected, was incorrectly listed as 1986], and has recently switched back to the cool phase. As you can see, other than the step changes due to the PDO, there is little variation in the Alaska temperatures.
[UPDATE 6] There has been much discussion of the effect of rising temperatures on rainfall. Here is the CRU TS3 global precipitation record:
Figure 8. Global Precipitation, from CRU TS3 1° grid. DATA SOURCE
As in all of the records above, there is nothing at all anomalous in the recent rainfall record. The average varies by about ± 2%. There is no trend in the data.
[UPDATE 7] People keep claiming that hurricanes (called “cyclones” in the Southern Hemisphere) have been rising. They claim that damage from hurricanes in the US have been going up. Here is data on hurricane damage:
Figure 9. Normalized US Hurricane losses, in 2009 dollars. SOURCE
The figure above shows normalized US hurricane losses for 1900 to 2009. It shows an estimate of what hurricane damages would be if each hurricane season took place in 2009. The dark line shows the linear best fit from Excel. Obviously, there is no trend. This makes sense as there has also been no trend in U.S. landfall frequencies or intensities over this period (in fact, depending on start date there is evidence for a slight but statistically significant decline, source in PDF).
In terms of global tropical cyclone frequency, it was concluded that there was no significant change in global tropical storm or hurricane numbers from 1970 to 2004, nor any significant change in hurricane numbers for any individual basin over that period, except for the Atlantic (discussed above). Landfall in various regions of East Asia26 during the past 60 years, and those in the Philippines during the past century, also do not show significant trends.
[UPDATE 8] You’d think, from all of the shouting about the greenhouse radiation, that we would have seen some change in it over the last few decades. Here is NOAA data on average outgoing (from the earth to space) longwave (greenhouse) radiation (OLR).
Figure 10. Global Outgoing Longwave Radiation. NOAA Interpolated OLR
Change in the average OLR over the period of record is less than ± 1%, and change since 1980 is only ± 0.5%. The current average value is the same as in 1976.
[UPDATE 9] OK, how about droughts? After all, droughts are supposed to be one of the terrible things that accompany warming, and the earth has warmed over the last century. Here’s the Palmer Drought Severity Index for that time span, 1901-2002:
Figure 11. Palmer Dourght Severity Index. CRU self-calibrating PDSI Once again, despite going up some and down some, we’ve ended up just where we started.
[UPDATE 10] More on the Arctic. From Polyakov et al ., we have this:
Figure 12. Arctic Temperature Anomaly . DATA SOURCE
The study used temperature stations from all around the shore of the Arctic Ocean, plus buoys and ice stations. It covered the area north of the Arctic Circle, that is to say the entire Arctic.
This matches an analysis I did last year of the Nordic countries. Here is a result from that study.
Figure 13. Nordic Land Temperature Anomaly. Original caption says “I used the NORDKLIM dataset available here . I removed the one marine record from “Ship M”. To avoid infilling where there are missing records, I took the “first difference” of all available records for each year and averaged them. Then I used a running sum to calculate the average anomaly. I did not remove cities or adjust for the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect.”
Note that, as we would expect, the temperature of the Nordic Countries is similar to that of the Arctic as a whole. This adds confidence to the results. I show the trends for the same intervals as in Fig. 12.
Again, there is nothing out of the ordinary here. The recent Arctic warming is often held up as evidence for human influence on the climate. The data shows the Arctic warming from 1902-1938 was longer and stronger than the recent warming. There is nothing for CO2 to explain.
Figure 14. Changes in storms in Lund and Stockholm, Sweden. Increasing values shows increasing storms.
About this graph, the authors say:
(1) There is no significant overall long-term trend common to all indices in cyclone activity in the North Atlantic and European region since the Dalton minimum.
(2) The marked positive trend beginning around 1960 ended in the mid-1990s and has since then reversed. This positive trend was more an effect of a 20th century minimum in cyclone activity around 1960, rather than extraordinary high values in 1990s. Both the 1960s minimum and the 1990s maximum were within the long-term variability.
(3) Because the period between the 1960s minima and the 1990s maxima spans a substantial part of the period covered by most reanalysis datasets, any analysis relying solely on such data is likely to find trends in cyclone activity and related measures.
Can’t be much clearer than that. There’s no change in North Atlantic storminess.
[UPDATE 12] More on rainfall, this time extreme rainfall and floods. I took the data from Trend detection in river flow series: 1. Annual maximum flow, and used it to compare record river flows by decade. Here are those results:
Figure 15. Maximum River Flow Index for US, European, and Australian rivers.
The math on this one was more complex than the record state temperatures. The river records are of different lengths, and they don’t span the same time periods. Of course, this affects the odds of getting a record in a given year.
For example, if a river record is say only ten years long, the random chance of any year being the maximum is one in ten. For the longest record in the dataset above, it is one in 176. In addition, the number of river records available in any year varies. To adjust for these differences, I took the odds of the record not being set in that particular year for each stream. This is (1 – 1/record length). I multiplied together all of those (1-1/len) odds for all the records available in that year to give me an overall odds of that year not being a record.
Finally, I took the average of those overall odds for the decade, and multiplied it by the actual count of records in that year. This gave me the maximum river flow index shown above. If there were lots of short records in a given decade, we’d be more likely to get a record by chance, so the record count in that decade is accordingly reduced. On the other hand, if there were only a few long records in that decade, there’s not much chance of a record being set randomly in that decade, so the count would be reduced less.
As you can see, there is no sign of a recent increase in the adjusted number of records. Or as the authors of the study say:
The analysis of annual maximum flows does not support the hypothesis of ubiquitous growth of high flows. Although 27 cases of strong, statistically significant increase were identified by the Mann-Kendall test, there are 31 decreases as well, and most (137) time series do not show any significant changes (at the 10% level).
Once again, we see no sign of the changes in climate predicted by the UN IPCC. What were the changes they predicted?
Figure 16. Observed and Projected Changes from the UN IPCC Third Assessment Report.
As you can see above, there is no increase in extreme drought, precipitation, extreme high temperatures, or cyclone events.
[UPDATE 13] Oh, yeah, a pet peeve of mine. You know how they always say “Yeah, but nine out of the last ten years have been among the ten warmest years of the record”, as though that proved that the last ten years was an unusual, anomalous time?
The trouble with this argument is that in a time of rising temperatures, that is often true. The temperature is rising, so where would you expect the warmest years to be?
How often is it true? Thanks for asking, here’s the data from the GISS temperature record .
Figure 16. Number of “Top Ten” years in the GISS global temperature record up to that point that occurred in the ten years previous to a given year.
So yes, nine of the last ten years were in the top ten years in the record … but that was true three times in the 1940’s. So once again, there is nothing unusual about the recent warming.
[Edited to Add] I got to thinking about the IPCC WG1 report, which is the science report. People always claim that it contains nothing but science, and none of it has been overthrown. So I pulled up the Summary for Policymakers. Under the second section, called “Direct Observations of Climate Change”, the very first item says (emphasis mine):
Eleven of the last twelve years (1995–2006) rank among the 12 warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperature9 (since 1850). The updated 100-year linear trend (1906 to 2005) of 0.74°C [0.56°C to 0.92°C] is therefore larger than the corresponding trend for 1901 to 2000 given in the TAR of 0.6°C [0.4°C to 0.8°C].
Since the claim was slightly different than the one I analyzed above, I went back and looked at the top twelve. Here they are:
Figure 17. Number of “Top Twelve” years in the GISS global temperature record up to that point that occurred in the twelve years previous to a given year.
Once again, nothing unusual … yes, the earth has been warming, but not in any unusual or anomalous way.
Next, there is no “therefore” in the comparison of the trends. The mere fact that a number of the warmest years were in the last 12 does not guarantee an increase in the trend. If the post 2000 trend continued to increase regularly and very slightly, there would always be 12 of the warmest years in the last 12 … but the 100 year trend would steadily decrease.
[UPDATE 14] The predicted acceleration of sea level rise is one of the favorites of those who want to scare people about CO2. Since 1992, sea level has been measured by satellite. Here is the record of sea level rise over that period:
Figure 18. TOPEX satellite sea level data. The satellite measures the sea level rise using radar. DATA SOURCE
As you can see, rather than accelerating, sea level rise has been slowing down for the past few years. Another inconvenient truth …
[UPDATE 15] Extreme weather events are a perennial favorite among the forecast ills from purported climate change. I found good data on the maximum three day rainfall totals for eight areas on the US Pacific Coast. The areas are Western Washington, Northwest Oregon, Southwest Oregon, Northwest California, North Central California, West Central California, Southwest California, and Southern California. For each record, I ranked the results, and averaged them across the 8 records. This gave me a ranking index showing which years had the most extreme events over the entire region. Fig. 19 shows the results, with larger numbers showing higher ranked years (those with more extreme rainfall events).
Figure 19. Extreme rainfall events, averaged over eight US Pacific Coast climate zones DATA SOURCE
Thanks Willis.
I did what you did last year, with the same result.
It has been very difficult to get that information out.
I’m very glad you did.
Nice way to put it.
Of course, there are peer reviewed papers to the contrary, that the current warming isanomalous, and needs explaining. But the statistics (used in them) are questionable, and there are other papers to the contrary. Which brings us back to where you are.
Clear and to the point. Even the most moronic politician, like Ed Milliband, should be able to grasp what Willis has laid out above.
Thank you for such a simple clear description of this NON PROBLEM they have wasted billions of dollars on, which they are trying to use to Tax the developed countries for more Billions (or maybe Trillions) of dollars.
Willis. William of Occam would no doubt agree with you. It’s the simplest of all explanations, that there is nothing there to explain, at least as regards CO2.
That will be shocking to many. But what a treat it is to see the whole thing unravel, albeit in slow motion.
Exactly!
As an old Land Surveyor I should have said “Precisely”.
In ancient times the Sumerians and Babylonians came up with the flood myth to scare the population from ‘making too much noise which angered the gods’. It was the theocratic way to deal with population growth. But it didn’t work, population size kept growing and innovation helped deal with increased demand for food, housing and fuel.
The ancient Hindus, Turks and Egyptians deified cows to prevent their slaughter as the milk was very important to a population who could not afford a meat diet and to a farming culture who did not know how to deal with increased demand for meat. Here theocracy instead of reason helped out again.
And that’s the way politicians work. Instead of giving us honest rational conversation, even in a so-called age of reason and enlightenment, they churn out the same kind of lies that theocracies did for centuries. Instead of saying we need to build a modern infrastructure and renewable energy to deal with the energy security problem, they fed us Biblical styled horror stories about the world drowning or burning if consumers don’t atone for their sins and abandon certain freedoms. Gaia will turn her anger upon us if we do not heed the wisdom of her modern Noah-styled prophet (Al Gore).
We’re having these heated debates, mud-slinging, name calling, fights, fanatics trying to use science to advance their political ambitions, etc. And all because the energy security issue has been transformed via AGW theory into a moral and spiritual issue because the powers that be decided to frame it as a religious issue, which brings out a lot of heated emotions and conflicts which achieve nothing for the majority and allow a minority to profit.
Get rid of this AGW nonsense. Admit that its time is up. Reframe it as an energy security issue that the whole world should take part in. Introduce global personal carbon trading between very rich individuals and very poor individuals with everyone else in between free from the trade, so that the poor may decide as individuals to live low carbon lives while earning an income from the rich who benefit. We can scrap most of the welfare system this way, streamline it and make it more efficient.
Brilliant! Willis, you have an incredible talent for explaining complex, or in this case, really straightforward, (except for those whose eyes and ears are sealed shut), issues, in clear plain terms. This little essay should be on the front page of all of the dailies. You make it obvious that we have a case of “if it aint broke, why fix it!”
Are we to conclude from this that even anthropogenic global urban heat island climate change has not been scientifically proven? I’ll bet that Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and even the Great Pumpkin aren’t real either. My beliefs lie shattered at my feet!
That’s one of the best explanations I have seen, since the whole CRU business was exposed.
Thankyou, Willis.
The article would be fine if the fundamental question AGW proponents were asking was the cause of recent warming. Actually that is not what most of the AGW people are arguing. Their question is not “what has caused the recent warming” but “will pumping billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere cause future warming”.
That is a legitimate line of study – as yet with an inconclusive set of answers. I think the IPCC made a big mistake, and spoiled their argument badly, by trying to link the most recent period of warming to AGW.
The other reason we shouldn’t be wasting those billions $ is much more obvious, it won’t make a scrap of difference.
The International energy Agency ( IEA ) has warned OECD countries that even if they reduced their GHG’s to zero by 2030 they will not stabilize co2 levels in the atmosphere at 450ppm.
Why, because by 2030 non OECD countries will be producing more than 25 billion tonnes of ghg’s while OECD countries will be producing less than 15 billion tonnes.
Martin Ferguson Minister for resources and energy ( Australia) states that in the next 10 years China alone will bring online about 1000 average sized coal fired power stations, equivalent to 34 times Australia’s coal burning generation capacity. ( July 2009)
So even if you believe the AGW nonsense it’s still a complete waste of time and money, Lomborg got it right we should be spending our resources on adaptation, whether we are battling natural climate change or whatever.
Thanks for this. Nothing has really changed. True. When I see trends of only 0.25 to 0.5 degree per century I always get suspicious. I mean how accurate was our equipment 100 years ago? If there is some warming due to humans it is probably due to AHF and not AGW. I mean for example, how much cooling water is used (to produce water vapor) for nuclear energy? Water vapor is a stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
I have proven for myself that the increase noted in carbon dioxide is nothing to be afraid of, it is just a scam. There is a whole industry now based on this lie and even our pension money is invested here. If you want to probe the issue, just ask the so-called experts this question::
I will agree that CO2 traps heat (from earthshine 24hours per day) because of the absorption of CO2 in the 14-15um wavelength. I say, good, fine I believe you. But likewise there must be cooling because of various absorptions of CO2 in the range from 0-5 um (from sunshine 12 hours per day)! This cooling must logically take place everywhere where there is CO2 and where sunlight hits on the molecule regardless of height or pressure.. It is even so apparent that this happens that this radiation can be measured as it reflects back from the moon. So my question is: exactly how much cooling and how much warming is caused by the carbon dioxide?
So far no one has been able to show me the balance sheet i.e. exactly how much cooling and how much heating is caused by CO2.
What I have found is that I cannot find this research because it seems to me that such an simple observation of mine (ie. that CO2 also must cause cooling) has never been taken into account. Where the IPCC got its values from (for “forcings”) is a mystery to me but it is appears not to be based on actual measurements (research) that would produce a formula of some sorts. I think they were all just weighted values.
Willis-
I have used the same line of reasoning to hit otherwise sensible skeptical, pro-science people over the head with, to no avail.
Take, for instance, raw-US surface temperature data, and juxtapose it with UAH satellite data, and there is about the same rate of temperature rise: about 1C degree per century.
In the US, “Bill Nye the science guy” was heard to proclaim on MSNBC that of course recent epic snow storms blanketing the 120 millions in the Northeast are because of global warming! Why? Because added energy (from ACO2) HAS to go somewhere~
NEVERMIND that humidity levels over decades are actually declining, and that new record high temperatures in the US (by state) are absent.
Once in the grip of a theory, normally sensible and scientific people are incredibly averse to assessing a widely-accepted belief. One is reminded of the famous Stanley Milgram experiments of the 1960s.
In these, it was shown that people would inflict killing levels of pain on an innocent “test subject” merely on a scientists say so – shades of the Final Solution!
My only solution is the stern infliction of repeated doses to Popperian skepticism! Take the mindless and brainwashed and put reality testing into them.
Excellent post Willis. The only addition I would make is the infamous graph that Dr. Pachauri used. I would contrast the limted data long term of your graphs with the more universal data but short termed of his graph. The comparison would be the antimethodological approach of Dr. Pachuri using trends of decreasing length until using lengths less than 30 years conflicting with the very institution that he heads. Such grandstanding deserves more contempt that the climategate scientists. One can correct the science with publishing the correction. How does one address such antimethodological approachs by the very person in charge of making sure the methodology is correct?
Very well put, and I for one, understand. So do many others.
Why, then, have supposedly intelligent politicians the world over seized upon the (according to them, indisputable) proposition that the world is warming, and that it’s our fault?
How come they are so gullible? Well, I think we all know the answer to that one – they’;re not, but they DO recognise an opportunity to exert greater control on the populace, frighten them half to death, and relieve them of their cash at the same time.
The most surprising thing is that, having been caught with their hands in the till, they continue to bluster their innocence, and continue with their preposterous dogma.
How do we shake this ideology? How many are involved, and how deep does it go? We know that the UK Labour party are fully on board, and refer to sceptics as “flat-earthers”, “deniers” or even “liars”. We also know that the mainstream press have a fear of fronting for sceptic science, as do the BBC who are merely the Pravda of the British government. It obviously goes far deeper than most of us are aware, and names of organisations such as “Bilderberg”, “Frankfurt School”, “Club of Rome” and the “Fabian Society” seem to appear regularly.
If this is some deep-seated, worldwide plan to change our lives, what can we possibly do to oppose it? Who can we trust? We can see that Investigation Groups, Think-Tanks, and similar organisations consist of members who have their own agendas borne of the common cause – how can we EVER achieve an independent enquiry into this sinister movement, when almost everyone seems to be part of it? It’s like a bad dream – we can’t rust anybody. They have true sceptic scientists by the short and curlies, in that they dare not raise their heads above the parapet for fear of losing credence, funding, posts or all three. It’s an insidious cancer. Is there a cure?
We cannot know the answer to the anthropogenic effect without precise knowledge of our climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide. And this, of course, is a difficult bit of knowledge to acquire. We cannot make sensible and safe policy prescriptions without it, however, and all efforts should be bent toward its acquisition. Everything else is just blowing in the wind.
================================
‘The more things change the they stay the same’ – I’ve just read an account of a parish priest in south west Scotland writing in the early years of the 19th century – ” Frost and snow have been of such rare occurence, and of such short continuance, that the children in Whithorn run the risk of becoming as incredulous of the effect of cold on water as the Emperor of China”
I live less than ten miles from the Armagh Observatory and can confirm that it has been rather parky of late.
Brass monkeys have observed singing soprano.
(Thats “monkeys” please note, not “The Monkees”, the four piece, pop combo of the late 1960s, Davy Jones et al)
THERE IS NO ANOMALY. IPCC AR4, Ch 3 quotes a warming over the last century of 0.6 C and a standard deviation of 0.25 C. The 0.6 C warming is within +/- 3 standard deviations, or +/- 0.75 C. The warming is not significant; it falls within natural variation. THERE IS NO ANOMALY by IPCC’s own numbers.
So here’s the test…
Can the models (which require CO2 increase to match current trend) replicate any of the earlier warming periods without invoking a CO2 increase? Perhaps one of the modellers out there can demonstrate this for us and then release the code and data for scrutiny?
Jabba the Cat (04:09:45) :
Even the most moronic politician, like Ed Milliband, should be able to grasp what Willis has laid out above.
What! Flash Gordon and his pete Milipede! Surely you are mistaken.
Thank you for this explanation, Mr. Eschenbach. It is simple and elegant. Not to mention convincing. Quoting a major proponent of climate change and global warming to make the point is very helpful. I doubt it will satisfy the majority of believers, but it will help me explain my point of view, and I appreciate it.
@ TLM (04:28:52) :
“Their question is not “what has caused the recent warming” but “will pumping billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere cause future warming”.”
The historical record shows no major increases in temperature with increasing output of CO2 into the atmosphere, which suggests that the influence of CO2 is considerably less significant than has been made out. It is therefore fair to say that in the near future it is unlikely to be a significant factor.
I hope that with recent events and the rise of questioning voices in the scientific community that we will soon see other more sensible theories advanced for the operation of the mechanisms of climate change on this planet which have a greater foundation in reality.
Thanks, Willis, for pointing this out.
It’s a good thing we can quote Phil Jones now for agreeing with one of the key skeptical positions.
Allan M (05:02:50) :
Sorry. Flash Gordon and his pet Milipede.
“Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (04:21:07) :
[…]
Introduce global personal carbon trading between very rich individuals and very poor individuals with everyone else in between free from the trade, so that the poor may decide as individuals to live low carbon lives while earning an income from the rich who benefit”
I strongly object. Political price-fixing is price-fixing, market distortion is market distortion, no matter how you put it. Using tax payer money to subsidize needed developments – like developing better solar power, better energy storage – is ok, but distorting the entire economy by INSTALLING wind power and solar power while they are still marvelously impractical is complete madness and leads to trillions wasted and misspent. With that kind of money you could develop fusion power – whether tokomak based, laser based, fusor based or cold fusion based – a 100 times over. Carbon markets are artificial and only good for all kinds of crookery.
Strange that the graph here of the Central England Temperature record does not much resemble the data as shown here, by the people who produce the record.
Strange too that you plot a 25 year “trailing trend”, the physical meaning of which is not obvious – as you can see by the fact that it does not show your claimed rise from 1680 to 1740. If you were to take 25 year moving averages, or smooth using a filter with a 25 year window, you’d get something that looks very much like this.
Perhaps it’s better, though, not to smooth, not to filter, not to over- or under-interpret. Let’s just look at the ten hottest years in the CET. Here they are, in reverse order: 2007, 1989, 2003, 1995, 1997, 2002, 1949, 1990, 1999, 2006.
Anything about those years strike you as unusual? Nothing that makes you curious enough to seek an explanation?
“Since these warming periods were before the modern rise in CO2, greenhouse gases cannot have been responsible for those rises.”
This statement is very bizarre. Don’t you know when CO2 concentrations actually began to rise? Please read this, and revise your statement as necessary.
This is EXACTLY the question I (and thousands of other Joe Sixpacks like me) have been asking for years…from the very beginning. We have never gotten a reasonable answer. If there is nothing unusual going on, then what is all the fuss about? Or if we have been warmer in the past, then why is only modern warming “man made?” They have no answers for these most basic questions. It is good to see a scientist publicly asking as well.
We have been taught man is “bad” our whole lives in our schools. It is the mantra of the Left. Man must be controlled and throttled back. The entire AGW cult has more to do with that mindset than actual temperature observations.
But they cross the line when they try to tax us for this nonsense. And when they start taking away freedoms and economic opportunity (or economic sustainability) based on “carbon output”, it gets downright personal. Joe Sixpack is waking up to all kinds of nonsense…because he is not getting any answers to very basic questions like the one you have presented.
Thank you Willis. As ever, spot on.
In fact it was your description of your attempts to obtain information from the CRU that first got me interested in the whole AGW issue.
Then – like, I am sure, most other reasonably intelligent and genunely interested ‘ordinary’ people – I quickly became really angy with the degree of arrogance, rudeness, character assassination and general stupidity that even my most mild (and often self-deprecatory) enquiry would spark off in response.
I didn’t like it personally, but the positive upside of such behavior is that it can actually mobilize us ‘masses’ … we get indignant, we get upset and pissed off, and we are roused to start asking questions and digging deeper for answers.
And – only a very short time later – here we all are with the most salient question of all, the subject of your piece.
So thanks again.
If you take out UHI, manipulation, hiding data, hiding declines, cherry picking (Yamal), hockey stick illusions, data torture then the rise in temperatures over the last 35 odd years is utterly unremarkable and can be explained by natural variability.
That depends whether you think that trends of 0.25 C per century or 0.57 per century are significant, either statistically or practically. To close the loop, your article might imply that those rises are due to sunspots and so on, and show how we are climbing out of the last little ice age.
I suppose a deeper lesson to take is that individual data sets seem unremarkable, but the combined, averaged, adjusted and homogenised “global” temperature set is alarming. Maybe, as you have addressed many times on this webiste, that says less about the data, and more about the data processing.
It remains to be seen whether politicians like Ed Miliband (as Jabba the Cat hopes) are willing to grasp the undeniable logic Willis Eschenbach displays here, uprooting for good the withering tree of AGW lies and deception. European pols, having hitched their fates to the CO2 racket for decades, are stubbornly reluctant to face the truth.
And their clandestine schemes of using the AGW jihad to establish some kind of Orwellian world governance, getting rid of democracy, are still being pursued: just watch the heinous and absurd regulations the EU keeps imposing on us.
Holy Hologram
There’s truth in what you say and there is a quote from Al Gore somewhere that confirms it… Human beings need something to believe in and unite behind. Religion did that for us for thousands of years. In the 20th century it tended to be political ideology. Now there is a basic human need to espouse a cause, and if religion and politics no longer wash with the educated and sophisticated masses, let environmentalism take their place.
I don’t think one needs to postulate a conspiracy. It is a natural instinct in people to have something to believe in, and politicians probably believed what they were hearing from climate scientists too, in the absence of any official contrary opinion. But no doubt politicians can make use of that instinct when it suits them.
Many thanks Willis. I myself use the CET to show that there simply is no significant warming to explain. It’s good to see it laid out in a different way. Anyone can look at the full data here http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cetml1659on.dat Since the mid 1990s we have been hitting 10+ deg c (average England yearly temp). However, just like global, the temps don’t seem to be rising, but flattening. Unfortunately, with such a long record the Met Office often use it to say “warmest ever” or whatever. A running 10-year average is much more indicative, but the Met Office won’t use it for the obvious reason that it shows cooling since 2008.
TLM (04:28:52) :
The article would be fine if the fundamental question AGW proponents were asking was the cause of recent warming. Actually that is not what most of the AGW people are arguing. Their question is not “what has caused the recent warming” but “will pumping billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere cause future warming”.
That is a legitimate line of study – as yet with an inconclusive set of answers. I think the IPCC made a big mistake, and spoiled their argument badly, by trying to link the most recent period of warming to AGW.
Actually, the AGW argument changes, chameleon-like as it continually strives to adapt to the fact that the truth has a way of coming out eventually, despite their best efforts to squelch it. In any case, the argument that the rise in atmospheric C02 over the past century or so has been in any way responsible for the unremarkable rise in temperature has not been proven, let alone man’s measely 3% contribution, so the idea that it might cause future warming is just silly, and further study of this non-problem wasting $billions more idiotic.
The IPCC didn’t make a mistake; they were a mistake.
From the start, if considered a Y axis in degrees, any movement up and down was a Nano-anomaly, impossible to feel by anybody.
But, “In other words, we have spent billions of dollars and wasted years of work chasing a chimera, a will-of-the-wisp. This is why none of the CO2 explanations have held water … simply because there is nothing unusual to explain!”
So, there were “casualties” but it was not my faultmy “friendly fire” was with good intentions, . How easy!, after the majority of goals intended by the scamers have been already reached, as for example the status of “dangerous substance” for an essential for organic life gas as CO2.
Who is going to revert all wrong changes in legislation all over the world?
Who´s gonna take out of the minds of such a lot of innocent and naive people who swallowed the whole lie from toes to head?
What about all those enviromental secretaries or ministeries created all over the world with the purpose of spoiling businesses and destroying employment giving industries, by making impossible their existence?
Will politicians and the ones who have profitted with the scam, change laws or pay the money back?
Really stupid question. the black line is the 25 year trailing trend, in degrees per century, referring to the left hand Y axis.
that now shows warming at 5c per century (as it has before, both up and down).
Is that really right, that the CET temperature is so volatile that it can show trends of that magnitude?
What is the minimum trend that can be statistically proven for these datasets with this level of variance?
To me, they both look like random walks, rather than the outcome of ‘forcing’ changes.
Those who would claim that this blog is antiscience need look no further than this post, such is the absurdly narrow scope of scientific enquiry posited here. Absence of references to philosophers of science to support the position developed here further displays contempt of learning.
If the rising of the sun were of no scientific concern, why did Western philosophic thought not contend to meerly let it rise, rather than spending millennia trying to understand it.
Has science no role in making predictions? If its remit is restricted to explaining anomalies and unexpected occurences, then predictions must be left to tarot card readers.
I don’t buy the argument made in this post.
The grounds for thinking that rising CO2 will, overall, lead to higher average surface temperatures are well estabished. See, e.g. Jeff Id’s treatments of the subject at “the Air Vent.”
“What is the sensitivity of climate to CO2?” “What are the delays before CO2’s effects are manifested?” These are important issues.
In recent time, say 1900 to 2010, temperatures have gone down at location X, stayed more or less the same at location Y, and risen at location Z. So stipulated.
Composite global records paint a picture of significant overall rises in average temperature. Unfortunately–as all here know–the quality of the data in these records is variable and in some cases poor. The quality of the metadata is worse.
Once the data are cleaned up and properly analyzed, what will the trend of the past centrury or so look like? My guess is that an unusual trend of rising temperature will remain–a slightly less steep version of what AGW Consensus advocates currently display.
At Lucia’s Blackboard, there’s a current thread for discussing how recordkeeping, archiving, sharing, and analysis can be improved.
Such projects are likely to be expensive in dollar amounts, though trivial as a percentage of GDP. Such money would be well-spent.
The notions that there are no causes for concern or investigation are unwarranted, in my opinion.
TLM (04:28:52) :
We only learn about the future by understanding the past. If the past has been distorted either by politicians or by some other method of distortion then we cannot know anything about the future. Alas, also, we can only ever make reasonable predictions about perfectly linear systems. They do not exist in the natural world. The reason that most ‘skeptics’ get so annoyed is not because we think that global warming does not exist, but that we do not know what the significance of that warming might be. Willis’ analysis and that of SteveMc, Ross Mc etc, demonstrate that historically the current trend of warming is not significant in human historical time but it may be in geological time or it may not be. Because of the shenanigans of Mann, Hansen, Briffa, Amman and so on, and so on, we have lost the last 20 years worth of knowledge and opportunity to better understand what we should have done and to have done it within our current economic budget.
These people and their supporters have ruined 20 years worth of research!!
Poor old Lamb, god rest his soul, wasted the best period of his career by having these idiots throw it away.
The ghost of Big Jim Cooley
The MetOff have also pumped up the numbers in recent years with the rest of the greenpeace publicists.
As to the significance of 0.7°C. The month of Jan2010 had an anomoly by satelite measurement of 0.7°C. How do you all feel? Still alive? The world ended?
Henry@veronica
“I don’t think one needs to postulate a conspiracy. It is a natural instinct in people to have something to believe in, and politicians probably believed what they were hearing from climate scientists too, in the absence of any official contrary opinion. But no doubt politicians can make use of that instinct when it suits them”.
True!
I am a (semi-retired) chemist and I decided for myself to determine whether or not carbon dioxide (CO2) and our carbon footprint is really to blame for climate change as claimed. I did this because I felt a bit guilty after watching Al Gore’s movie. But I could not find anything definitive that would prove to me that CO2 is to blame. In fact, I found that there is untruth in Al Gore’s story. A lot of CO2 is dissolved in cold water and comes out if the oceans get warmer. Cause and effect, get it? Smoking causes cancer but cancer does not cause smoking. But Al made it look from the past that our CO2 output must be the problem.
One would think that a person Al Gore’s caliber must have known that they were busy telling us an untruth or if he did not know then he must have realised by now. My question is;why does he not come out in the open and admit his mistake?
To err is human….
Just as we thought that the battle against unprecedented AGW may now possibly be won or become a stalemate this appears in The Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthcomment/geoffrey-lean/7223753/Do-we-want-to-ignore-climate-change-and-risk-losing-all-this.html
“Do we want to ignore climate change and risk losing all this?
There is a growing conviction that the cost of ignoring climate change will be far greater than of tackling it now, writes Geoffrey Lean.”
“Guess who just produced this pronouncement on how humanity is heating up the planet? “The basic science of the greenhouse effect is sound (ie more anthropogenic CO2 means more warming).”
Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the increasingly embattled chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? Nope. Professor Phil Jones, under cross-examination from the inquiries into the notorious emails from his Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia? Try again. Ed Miliband, the increasingly vocal Energy and Climate Change Secretary? Not even close.
Give up? It was none other than Dr Benny Peiser, the leading climate sceptic and director of Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation.
If you’re surprised, you shouldn’t be. For Lawson himself has said much the same, telling a parliamentary committee a couple of years ago that it was “fairly clear” that “man-made emissions, largely carbon dioxide, have almost certainly played a considerable part” in the warming of the globe.”
So as Dr. Jones is (partially at least) moving in one direction it is alleged that arch sceptics are moving the other way. You could not make it up. Life is stranger than fiction. And that in the Telegraph as James Delingpole is elsewhere declaring that the CRU independent enquiry team is anything but independent in its constitution:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100025934/climategate-the-official-cover-up-continues/
Climate models are man made artefacts! So because temperature behaviour cannot be replicated by a man made artefact – then is cause must be man made?
rw @ 5:21. Sure the years at the end of a rising trend will be the hottest. Your point? And Phil Jones has just admitted rates of temperature rise significantly similar to the ’75-’98 rise three other times in the last century and a half. Where is the anthropogenic signature?
=====================
This…after profitting himself with more than 23 million pounds. How nice!
The only problem with Willis’s rational explanation is it does not take into account the ‘magic’ CO2 tax. The brilliant invention of magic CO2 as a taxable entity that can be used by any government. The invention is that this trace gas, that no one can see or smell, has so far been successfully tied to weather. It has then been lionized with magical properties that need to be controlled. Now I would like to see an essay on the power of magical CO2 that made sense.
kim is right. And I notice that rw doesn’t show the raw CET record, but only the ‘adjusted’ temps. Here’s the raw CET temperature record: click
I wonder when RealClimate will post the Phil Jones interview and start doing damage control?
Et tu, Benny?
======
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/80971-chamber-to-challenge-epa-on-greenhouse-gas-regulations- OT You may want to link to this. US Chamber is going to sue EPA for not following the law per the determination of harm.
But Willis, when you say there is no anomaly to explain, you are incorrect. The anomaly is precisely the lack of warming – and it’s a travesty that we can’t explain it.
Henry @ John Peter
Just as we thought that the battle against unprecedented AGW may now possibly be won or become a stalemate this appears….
Don’t worry . The graphs we have (even these ones on top of this post) all show that a turning point is coming towards cooling. In fact we know this tipping point lies at 2003. We are now having a bit of a lag before the whole world cools again. \We must now hope that it won’t get as cold as during the Napoleonic times. The story is told that during his attack on Russia you could cut the meat off your horse while it was still alive – it was frozen.
We are going to laugh at all these warmers soon. I don’t know where they have the “science that proves CO2 is to blame”. I could not find it. See previous postings.
jabba the cat,
“Clear and to the point. Even the most moronic politician, like Ed Milliband, should be able to grasp what Willis has laid out above.”
You are being loose with the facts when you label Mlliband a moron. In the early 1900s, Dr. Henry H. Goddard proposed a classification system for mental retardation based on the Binet-Simon concept of mental age. Individuals with the lowest mental age level (less than three years) were identified as idiots; imbiciles (sic) had a mental age of three to 7 years., and morons had a mental age of seven to ten years.
Perhaps you would care to choose a different classification from the above list.
Henry Pool
If to err is human, then you are truely human.
“A lot of CO2 is dissolved in cold water and comes out if the oceans get warmer.”
This was an important process at the end of the last glaciation, but it does not explain the current rise in atmospheric CO2. Multiple independent lines of evidence point to this.
1) The Suess effect – the change in the atmosphere ratio of C12/C13 in the indicates c13 depleted anthropogenic sources rather than natural sources.
2) The decline in atmospheric O2 tracks the rise in CO2. This is expected only if the CO2 derives from combustion.
3) The oceans are undersaturated and are absorbing CO2 rather than releasing it.
TLM,
Theory states that increasing greenhouse gasses takes more and more added gases to cause equal temperature increment increases (approximately 1.2 degree C per doubling of CO2 from the theory) if there were no feedback effect. The rise in CO2 since 1850 would have caused more than half of the effect from a full doubling by this theory, but the actual rise was less than 0.8 degrees C (and may in fact have been much smaller due to selective use of data in cities). In addition, much if not all of the rise is likely a natural recovery from the LIA. This clearly refutes that there was a large positive feedback, and in fact supports a large negative feedback effect, reducing the CO2 gain effect. This implies that additional significant increases of CO2 would have little to no effect. There is nothing in the “pipeline” to cause a different outcome.
I have to agree with a point made by Richard Telford. Just because something always happens doesn’t mean there is no value in scientific inquiry regarding it. If you asked someone a thousand years ago, they would have told you the sun revolved around the earth; it was obvious as you could see it with your own eyes. It wasn’t until much later that folks like Brahe, Kepler, Copernicus, and Galileo shook up the establishment.
That being said, real learning often happens when observations DON’T match theory, such as the case of planetary meanderings that required “epicycles” to explain their motion under the geocentric view of the universe, but under the heliocentric view of the solar system, weren’t required. A theory needs to explain and fit the data, not the other way around, something that Climate scientists need to keep in mind when they create models that don’t sufficiently match reality.
Sorry, that should have been
“your horse’s arse” in my earlier story
I am not sure if that is allowed here?
As a spasmoidal scoliotic gibbous person I object to your use of the words “congenital… abnormalities.”
[Just joking! Scrap PC!!!!!]
It’s old, but here’s another way of saying it.
http://www.countingcats.com/?p=4670
Another thing you might try is downloading the whole HadCRUT3 gridded anomaly dataset, and plotting the whole thing out, not just the global averages. I think it looks something like this.
Weather is not climate, and signal-to-noise is low. Global warming is not detectable at any local scale.
@ Vincent (06:36:07) :
“You are being loose with the facts when you label Mlliband a moron. In the early 1900s, Dr. Henry H. Goddard proposed a classification system for mental retardation based on the Binet-Simon concept of mental age. Individuals with the lowest mental age level (less than three years) were identified as idiots; imbiciles (sic) had a mental age of three to 7 years., and morons had a mental age of seven to ten years.
Perhaps you would care to choose a different classification from the above list.”
Thank you for your historical input.
Hmmm…difficult one this…could we agree on imbecile for the time being?
Just exactly what unusual, unexpected temperature anomaly are we trying to explain?
I still think that the compilation of increasing time windows in the icecore study that is put up here in Wattsup, is the best for stimulating the gray cells of the scientist on the street, and/or somebody who can read graphs.
It has two advantages:
a) a long humbling time perspective
b) the ice proxy temperatures are not involved,as far as I know, in climategates.
The regional records are useful too, as a second punch.
If you look at the CET temperature graph, the rate of increase between 1695-1733 was greater than the increase from 1962 – 2006. I chose minimums to maximums to try and compare apples with apples. Thus the rhetoric that “more rapid increase in temperatures than we have ever seen before” is perhaps not true. I did compare CET temperatures, not global temperatures, as prior to 1850 we only get proxies for global temperatures which have been proved to be unreliable. Overall the linear trend line shows about 1 degree warming over the period. If you look over the period 1930 to 2008 the change in anomaly based on the 1961- 1990 mean is very similar to the graph shown where the New Zealand NIWA discusses Temperature trends from raw data. This suggests that for at least one part of the southern hemisphere, the temperature trend is almost the same as that in our little bit of the northern hemisphere. Could one stretch this to suggest the way CRU and NOAA compute their global temperatures is perhaps not as good as they think it is?
I do not know where rw (05:21:15) got his data from. If I use a 30 year moving average on the CET data I see an approximate spread from 8.9 to 10.2, again just about 1 deg over the period.
The linear trend line is y = 0.0026x + 8.7261
Willis, re rw (05:21:15) : comment:
does he not make some good points?
Richard Telford (05:51:54) :
Has science no role in making predictions? If its remit is restricted to explaining anomalies and unexpected occurences, then predictions must be left to tarot card readers.
Surely the point is that the so-called ‘climate science’ is no better than tarot cards. I seem to remember a Japanese scientist recently comparing it to “astrology.”
But, what is there but change?
rw,
It looks like the underlying data is the same but presented slightly differently. Your link to the met office data starts in 1780 and misses the late 17th century warming. Why would that be?
I also noticed the way the Met office have drawn the red line. At first glance it seems to show a suddenly rising temperature trend post 1976. When I looked more closely, I could see the trick. What they’ve done, is connect the lower temperature bars from the earliest time periods to the highest temperature bars in the post 1976 period. What you end up with is a line that shoots up after that time. Maybe there’s a reason for doing that, other than to imply an alarming rate of warming, but I can’t see what it could be.
TLM: it’s true that the AGHG modeling efforts began as a very legitimate way of answering the question you mention and others. But surely, if you have been paying attention, you have noticed that in the last few decades the media, fuelled by the IPCC and powerful scientific institutions, have led everybody to believe that the answer we’re seeking is the one Willis tries to answer. You have seen Al Gore’s movie or the IPCC pronouncements with hockey sticks at the background, haven’t you? Hasn’t the mainstream position become that the warming of the past decades cannot be ”explained” without AGHGs?
Willis, thank you for perfectly articulating the thoughts of many of us.
Any and all rain in the southwest from Texas to LA are now the anomaly
Joe Romm and NOAA say drought is now permanent.
http://climateprogress.org/2009/01/26/noaa-climate-change-irreversible-1000-years-drought-dust-bowls/
The dust bowl is here for good. “irreversible dry-season Precipitation”
I am sure there is bed wetting which does increase humidty.
Joe’s rant was 12 months ago.
RE: John Peter (06:05:20)
It looks like they are trying to say ‘OK we can’t prove that the danger of anthropogenic catastrophic climate change is real, but in view of the dire series of catastrophes we have been taught to fear, we must insist, in an abundance of caution, that everyone do all we think necessary to prevent them and save the world unless you can prove beyond any irrational doubt that this is not the case.’
Orson:
Here is more info on the Wetter = Warmer thesis. On a global scale, it doesn’t seem to hold up.
HotRod 6:57:13. See kim 6:14:09.
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anna v. 6:55:56. Please see what David Goldman, AKA Spengler, has revealed about an email from Greece. Please tell me you’ll be alright.
====================================
Brilliant work, Mr. Eschenbach. It is exactly what must be understood by all in the climate debate today. It is heartening to see that a chastened Phil Jones now admits that the science is not settled, that the Hockey Stick has been overthrown. Jones might be the crack in the wall that lets some light into the Alarmists’ fortress.
The two temp records from Ireland and England do show little temperature increases, as calculated by degrees per century.
Phil Jones wasn’t asked a question about temperature increases in degrees per century, based upon the worldwide record. Jones was asked and answered a different question about whether worldwide temperatures increased at similar rates in several different decadal time frames.
The rate of temperature increase can be statistically no different from each other for these decadal trends, while also having a worldwide temperature record increase at a greater amount per century than the two island records (Ireland and England). I would expect that sites strongly affected by ocean temps would warm more slowly than sites not so affected.
So if Jones had been asked about worldwide warming per century, I think his answer would have been a higher number than for the two island records. That would likely have been a legitimate answer, based upon the existing records, as interpreted by UAE, NASA, HADCRU, UK met office, etc.
The comeback to that would have been: yes, but have those records been adequately corrected for heat island effects, station movement, etc.?
So that is the question for science — what is the worldwide temperature trend when we have adequate coverage, have appropriate correction for heat island and local effects, and don’t use temperature records from several hundred miles away as a proxy for a missing station.
http://pub41.bravenet.com/forum/static/show.php?usernum=3444295554&frmid=18&msgid=854577&cmd=show
Jim Masterson tried a post here but posted at Numberwatch instead.
Seems he has been tracking the Death valley temperature data.
What is interesting is that he detects the Hand of Hansen post 2003.
How many strategies do these “climate scientists” have?
1) manipulate the data wih steo function corrections
2) misrepresent the data; definition of Rural vs Urban, and with proxies, mix in instrument data where the proxy data doesn’t confomr to the theory (but real instrument data or value added?)
3) selectively exclude surface temperature stations where, presumably, the manipulation would be too obviously unjustified e.g. high latitude and high altitude.
4)…? what other tricks do they have?
How do they keep it all straight?
“Henry chance (06:59:39) :
Any and all rain in the southwest from Texas to LA are now the anomaly
Joe Romm and NOAA say drought is now permanent.
http://climateprogress.org/2009/01/26/noaa-climate-change-irreversible-1000-years-drought-dust-bowls/
”
From the linked press release:
“The authors relied on measurements as well as many different models to support the understanding of their results.”
“Relied on” is funny, neurolinguistic programming speak: implies reliability where there is only fantasy. Kudos to Solomon, seems to be a great fairy tale inventor. I can make a model tell any story i like as well but unfortunately i’m not a ruthless cheat with government grants to back me up. NOAA is a sick joke.
From Richard Telford (06:36:37):
2) The decline in atmospheric O2 tracks the rise in CO2. This is expected only if the CO2 derives from combustion.
3) The oceans are undersaturated and are absorbing CO2 rather than releasing it.
I’m an engineer, not a chemist, but I I have some trouble with these statements.
With respect to 2), I’d like to see data or some other evidence that atmospheric O2 is declining. This doesn’t make any sense to be, as increasing atmospheric CO2 creates a more favorable environment for plant life, which in turn generates more O2. Also, the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere is insignificant compared to the percentage of O2 so I don’t know how you could detect a “combustion signature” in atmospheric O2 anyway.
I’m really having trouble wrapping my mind around 3). The oceans may not be saturated, but they are more than likely in equilibrium (maybe I’m getting equilibrium and saturation confused). Chemistry class was a long time ago, but I remember that the solubility of gasses in liquids increases as the liquid temperature decreases. So, warmer oceans mean lower solubility. Wouldn’t the sea water give up some of the dissolved CO2 to adjust to the new equilibrium point? Looking at it another way, since the oceans aren’t saturated (i.e. capable of dissolving more CO2 at their current temperature than what is already there), why wouldn’t the atmospheric CO2 decline towards zero until saturation is reached? Obviously it doesn’t…the CO2 content simply adjusts to the new equilibrium point.
Statement 1) smells funny to me, also, but I don’t have the background to evaluate it thoroughly. I’d have to question what is so unique about the C12/C13 ratio from anthropogenic sources vs. natural sources.
DirkH (05:19:20) :
“With that kind of money you could develop fusion power”
I do mean fusion. Wind power is a crock and the best way for us to get solar power would probably be a space-based solution of transmitting power from as near as possible to the Sun to receivers on Earth. I don’t think anyone has put any worthwhile research into that because wireless power transmission is still in its infancy.
“Carbon markets are artificial and only good for all kinds of crookery.”
If you read what I wrote I specifically implied that carbon trading should be between very rich and very poor individuals as a one-to-one transaction with no market for anyone else to take advantage of. Carbon trading wouldn’t exist for anyone else. There should be no emission trading schemes for companies either. It achieves nothing and the consumer loses out.
Hi Willis
Great article (again)
I collect many of the historic temperature records here and have analysed some of them under the ‘articles’ section.
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
I hope to add another 6 or so in the next week. If anyone can point me to pre 1850 records please let me know.
Like Willis I can see nothing at all out of the ordinary. Temperatures rose to the peak of the MWP, dropped sharply during the initial period of the LIA and have recovered ever since, but with numerous peaks and troughs.
The decade around 1730 appears remarkably similar to the last decade if contemporary observations and written records of that period are looked at in conjunction with the instrumental records.
Temperarures have risen slightly since the depths of the LIttle Ice Age. Who knew?
Thank our lucky stars we are living in a relatively benign period of climate-we don’t know what is around the corner.
tonyb
Orson writes:
“In the US, “Bill Nye the science guy” was heard to proclaim on MSNBC that of course recent epic snow storms blanketing the 120 millions in the Northeast are because of global warming! Why? Because added energy (from ACO2) HAS to go somewhere~”
Of course the energy *does* go somewhere. That somewhere is hot air coming from certain mouths.
One way to try and resurrect the CO2-warming hypothesis is to throw the ice core CO2 records partly under the bus. By assuming actual CO2 measurements from the 1800’s are accurate (rather than being ignored), the ice core CO2 proxy record can be adjusted to conform. Then, with the assumption that the ice core CO2 /measured CO2 correlation is maintained further back in time, and with additional adjustments, the CO2 variation in the past can be remade to support the CO2-warming hypothesis. I expect to see this line of reasoning start to show up in the next few years.
In the run-up to Copenhagen, prior to Climategate, we saw the “Three Legged Stool” of anthropogenic global climate change exposed for those capable of seeing it without any assistance from the bootleggers, the baptists or the media.
Leg 1: Zero carbon emissions (”350″, Gavin Schmidt)
Leg 2: Zero animal husbandry (Ban Ki Moon)
Leg 3: Population Controls (John Holdren, Cass Sunstein)
Seat: World Government (EU President, early Copenhagen draft)
The stool above would arguably have been the most expensive piece of truly ugly furniture in the history of the world, had it been assembled.
Perhaps we should all thank Phil Jones, Kevin Trenberth, Kieth Briffa, Tom Wigley, Mike Mann and the rest of the “Team” for their valuable assistance in preventing its assembly. We are truly blessed!
Spector
It looks like they are trying to say ‘OK we can’t prove that the danger of anthropogenic catastrophic climate change is real, but in view of the dire series of catastrophes we have been taught to fear, we must insist, in an abundance of caution, that everyone do all we think necessary to prevent them and save the world unless you can prove beyond any irrational doubt that this is not the case.>
I think you just summed it up. In primitive tribes, when the volcano erupted, the shaman said the spirits were angry and must be appeased. Throw in a virgin. Every year that the volcano didn’t erupt was now proof that throwing in a virgin prevented eruptions. If the volcano DID erupt again, that was proof that they weren’t throwing in ENOUGH virgins, so go get more. The shaman wasn’t interested in determining the link, if any, between virgins and eruptions. He was interested in fitting the data to his theory so he could maintain his position as shaman.
Mr Eschenbach,
Thanks for your clear simple straightforward demonstration that the current warming in not unprecedented. It would be helpful if you could also show how the Met Office adjusted the historical record to produce the graph that rw (5:21:15) refers to, http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/ that appears to show unprecedented warming.
I have been on Tim’s Website Deltoid and engaged those found there with some irrefutable facts..
I got called a Moron, Stupid, Idiot, Denier, a buffoon, a denier of Science and on and on..
I was summarily dismissed as a kook. I tried to debate those found there and was told I would not understand the Science..
I am an ENVIRONMENTALIST.. My DEGREES are in Environmental Sciences.. I have been in this field for 20 years and am considered one of the experts in the field of Environmental Compliance. I am one of few who hold International Certifications and have taught for years on the subject. I work Superfund sites.. I assist Industry and Educational facilities clean up and stop polluting the Environment.. Some of the worst polluters are “Scientists”. I work every day with these types trying to get them to stop pouring Lab Compounds down the drain.
I challenged them..
What do you do? Talk.. Theorize.. Talk some more…
All I got was abuse.. You see they can’t handle descent. These types want to shut you up and shut you down..
I did make one mistake I linked one source from WUWT and I was immediately jumped upon by everyone. They obviously do not much like those found here.
The issue I have with them (Deltoid and believers) is simple.. They feel they are above it all. They’re Scientist after all. They know more and are better therefore to decide what is best for the rest of us. The fundamental flaw with that thinking is GIGO.. Garbage In Garbage Out. If their fundamental basis for understanding AGW is flawed then their output would therefore be flawed as well. Their undeniable belief that others cannot understand the Science and are therefore deemed sub-human is what does in fact amaze me.
Ref – A C Osborn (04:09:51) :
“Thank you for such a simple clear description of this NON PROBLEM they have wasted billions of dollars on, which they are trying to use to Tax the developed countries for more Billions (or maybe Trillions) of dollars.”
_____________________
We are no longer talking about Chicken Little & Co. (Jones et al), they’ve done their damage. They (and their silent colleagues) started the hysteria and now realize they were wrong, stupid, slightly mistaken, ahead of their time, etc., etc.. The barnyard panic is, however, still very much ongoing. The geese, ducks, pigs, cows, horses, sheep, goats, peacocks, hens, chicks, donkeys and jackasses, and whatnot, are all in such a frightful tizzy; why they’re still going more crazy by the minute. They are much too excited to see that something’s changed.
When you’re in the middle of a stampede, it’s a little hard to see what’s happening more than 5 feet ahead of you.
Sometimes, only sometimes, “providence” lends a hand and the –so to speak– weather changes, if only briefly. Perhaps the Winter of ’09-’10 can dampen and chill the insanity down to a moderate roar. Perhaps Big Al and Company will realize they need to find another planet to sell their Snake Oil Elixir on. Perhaps the gods of Olympus, our present day “Doctors of Science & Philosophy” can find the courage to tell the barnyard critters what is and ain’t known about the weather (in 25 words or less).
Perhaps our famous “Free Press” will learn to love truth again and try to sell papers and airtime the old fashioned way –honestly. Perhaps? Call me a dreamer.
Climategate prof admits he coked the books:
bbcworld http://bit.ly/bTirvj
kim:
“rw @ 5:21. Sure the years at the end of a rising trend will be the hottest. Your point?”
My point is made perfectly well by your simple statement of the fact. Did you in fact read the post? Did you see the big bold question “Just exactly what unusual, unexpected temperature anomaly are we trying to explain?”? Do you wish to understand why there should be the current ongoing change in the Earth’s climate that you yourself talk about?
“And Phil Jones has just admitted rates of temperature rise significantly similar to the ‘75-’98 rise three other times in the last century and a half. Where is the anthropogenic signature?”
An anthropogenic signature cannot be found merely in the gradient of a slope. Try reading the latest IPCC report to learn more. There’s a chapter on attributing climate change.
Vincent – if you looked really closely, you might have seen this:
“the red line is a 21 point binomial filter, which is equivalent to a 10 year running mean”
This is the BEST answer to the complications on both sides. No formulas needed, no counter-formulas needed. Just look at a few truly solid data points, without adjustment, and show that nothing special is happening now.
“The ghost of big jim cooley”
“A running 10-year average is much more indicative, but the Met Office won’t use it for the obvious reason that it shows cooling since 2008.”
Have a look at this page. What is the red line on the graph?
Eyeballing the graph Figure 15.1(B),/b> from your link shows CO2 at around 300 ppm in 1910 and 310 ppm in 1940, so the statement does not require revision, and is certainly not “very bizarre”.
An excellect post. Wasted billions on the lying likes of Phil Jones, Michael Mann, James Hansen, and their ilk with their host institutions. Heads must roll.
However, don’t throw out the baby…you know. There has been global warming since the LIA and we still do not know why. Why is a very important question — modern Milankovich? Landsheidt? Others? Those scientists who have had to work their you know whats off ouside of significant funding sources and outside of “establishment institutions” may be coming up with some intriguing answers, or at least with new questions. Let’s keep the excitement of the public for “global warming” as an important research — especially in the face of “global cooling” — and let the scientific processes and method be returned to the open and “free market”.
This search is important. People, citizens of developed countries, most students — at least those in the American school system, preschool thru college — have been misled. But their excitement about “knowing” more about our beloved Earth is not misplaced enthusiasm. It can be turned toward “good”.
I’ll try that last paragraph again:
Eyeballing the graph Figure 15.1(B) from your link shows CO2 at around 300 ppm in 1910 and 310 ppm in 1940, so the statement does not require revision, and is certainly not “very bizarre”.
Thank you, Willis.
You’ve again shown that scientific questions can be asked and explained in such a way that non-scientists can understand what the point is.
You’ve shown again to the ordinary guy or guyette that graphs aren’t scary but explanatory.
I wish I could remember who it was who said that a scientist, who cannot explain his work or hypothesis in such a way that the proverbial man on the Clapham omnibus can understand, has no place in the scientific community.
Science is not a religion, with some high priests and lower acolytes, to which the rest of us have to bow our knees when they pontificate from on high in a language no one else is supposed to understand, never mind question.
Since science explores the world we live in, it stands to reason that science must be able to explain the findings to all of us, who, after all, also live in this world.
Thanks, Willis – you’re one of those who reaffirm in their writings some fundamental things I was taught as a science student, quite a while ago.
“Richard Telford (06:36:37) :
2) The decline in atmospheric O2 tracks the rise in CO2. This is expected only if the CO2 derives from combustion”
So a change in CO2 from 0.0284% to 0.0387% would drop Oxygen by 0.02%. Now, although nominally 20.95%, atmospheric O2 varies much more that CO2 does, during the day and night cycle and during the Winter/Summer cycle.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to measure a change in O2 levels over the last 50 years. Oxygen sensing technology is not good enough to measure O2 to three decimal places now. Medic’s and biochemists still crave an accurate, stable, device to measure O2 levels in gas or liquid. The fact is we cannot. Typically, oxygen levels are calibrated using H2O2 and catalase (or a Pt/Mn catalyst) as we have an extinction coefficient for H2O2.
Your statement is bollocks. No one can, or has, made measurements of atmospheric O2 to 0.005% over the last decade, never mind the 1960. The fact that O2 dissolves in water, about 250 uM at 15 degrees, also buggers up measurement as the level of water vapor is variable.
We cannot even transfer gasses or liquids between vessels with that precision. Using modern HPLC/FPLC valves we have a dead space in the order of 2 nl’s.
The Teflon used in the same valves (and that sit on the end of plungers of syringes) have a oxygen concentration of between 1 and 2 mM, the EXACT solubility is dependent on water vapor pressure. You can get other materials with lower O2 solubility, but there is always the O2/H2O competition for the void-space in the plastic matrix. There is no known material, that can be used as a plunger or valve housing, that does not have this property.
Transferring gases or liquids, with defined levels of O2 is essentially impossible. The mass action ratio of atmospheric oxygen is against you. All your materials are O2 saturated and can only be scrubbed chemically. O2 free gasses, that you buy, are not O2 free. You must used an inline scrubber to get rid of all the stuff in the line.
Many of us, who work with oxygen utilizing enzymes, have tried. The only way to measure O2, with precision, is to used myoglobin, sperm whale myoglobin or leg-haemoglobin and optical spectroscopy. You make deoxy-Mb (which is very, very hard) and add a know volume of O2 XuM, then observe the spectral change. I will get the O2 concentration +/- 2.5%, as I have done this before, you will get +/- 1000%.
An excellent and lucid post. Thank you.
PS: BTW I liked http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a7c87805970b-pi way of showing the overall picture.
rw (05:21:15) The graphs above show the temperature, the one you linked to show the anomaly from the 1961-1990 average. That’s why they’re different.
Best explanation ever.
btw, have you realized what else Jones was saying?
“… when you talk about the global temperature … CRU PRODUCES the land component, with the Met Office Hadley Centre PRODUCING the marine component.” (capitals are mine)
Didn’t we know it already?
Science try to explain whatever natural phenomenon we don’t have an explanation for, not just anomalous behaviour. It is written in the chromosomes of science, not a philosophical concept.
Its still worse than we thought
Now, this is very UNPATRIOTIC, Willis!
This must stop right here and now.
You know the temperature is going up!
Remember that we have 2500 SCIENTISTS saying AGW is true.
( No, they are not WWF or Greenpeace. )
And we have lots of Peer Reviewed papers saying so too.
( No, not Pal Reviews. )
The Science is settled and its very Robust.
Now go home and accept Cap and Trade and shut up!
hehe
Did Jones email this information to Hockey Stick Mann? If he did, they are at odds with one another as in, no consensus. Me thinks this marriage as about to end in a nasty divorce.
OT but interesting. It seems that at the moment every one of the 48 contiguous states plus Washington DC has at least partial snow cover:
http://www.nohrsc.nws.gov/snow_model/images/full/National/nsm_depth/201002/nsm_depth_2010021305_National.jpg
I wonder how often this happens?
This not congenital:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100213/ap_on_re_us/us_united_states_of_snow
RW
The MET data is to quote
Since 1974 the data have been adjusted to allow for urban warming.
When I looked at the GISS records for the same period for my local UK station there was no adjustment downwards for UHI (should have because it was an airport site) but all the data before 1920ish had been reduced . No explanation, no reason nothing. Without this added early decrease the local site raw data shows no warming in 120 years, temps in 2008 were back to 1880 levels.
Henry@ Richard Telford
Richard: You say:This was an important process at the end of the last glaciation, but it does not explain the current rise in atmospheric CO2. Multiple independent lines of evidence point to this.
1) The Suess effect – the change in the atmosphere ratio of C12/C13 in the indicates c13 depleted anthropogenic sources rather than natural sources.
2) The decline in atmospheric O2 tracks the rise in CO2. This is expected only if the CO2 derives from combustion.
3) The oceans are undersaturated and are absorbing CO2 rather
where were you at school? I remember one of the first tests was to prove that CO2 dissolves in water. That happens all the time in cold water, I think they call it sinks.
Where the water gets warmer the equilibrium of that chemical reaction shifts more back to the left and it comes out from the water into the atmosphere. The increase in CO2 was only 0.007% (70 ppm) since 1960. It did not make any measurable dent in the oxygen content. Most equipment cannot even measure the change in the oxygen content, it is too small.
Obviously I do not deny that the current rise of 70 ppm’s from 1960 in CO2 is manmade. But is it relevant?
I will agree with the warmists that CO2 traps heat (from earthshine 24hours per day) because of the absorption of CO2 in the 14-15um wavelength. I say, good, fine I believe you. But likewise there must be cooling because of various absorptions of CO2 in the range from 0-5 um (from sunshine 12 hours per day)! This cooling must logically take place everywhere where there is CO2 and where sunlight hits on the molecule regardless of height or pressure.. It is even so apparent that this happens that this radiation that caused this cooling can be measured as it reflects back from the moon. (we can prove this). So my question is: exactly how much cooling and how much warming is caused by the carbon dioxide?
So far no one has been able to show me the balance sheet i.e. exactly how much cooling and how much heating is caused by CO2.
I cannot find this research because it seems to me that such an simple observation of mine (ie. that CO2 also must cause cooling) has never been taken into account. Where the IPCC got its values from (for “forcings”) is a mystery to me but it is appears not to be based on actual measurements (research) that would produce a formula of some sorts. I think they were all just weighted values.The formula that Svante Arhenius had is completely wrong.
rw (05:21:15) :
“Strange that the graph here of the Central England Temperature record does not much resemble the data as shown here, by the people who produce the record.”
The Met Office version of the CET you reference is manipulated by cutting off the first century of records and by using 1961-1990 (the HadCRU standard) as the reference period.
Additionally the modern record has been adjusted for UHI. If other examples of this process are any guide, this would entail lowering past temperatures and raising modern ones.
The Met Office, I am sure, will tell us that this manipulation is not intended to make the data appear more alarming.
@ Jabba the Cat (04:09:45) :
I have a friend who, back in college in the campus center, set up a Naugahyde chair on a table with a petition to save the Naugas, whose existence was threatened from being hunted for their valuable skins. Several eco-minded concerned people signed it.
Apparently there is nothing so dumb that you cannot convince at least some people that it is true. Especially when “Nature is being threatened by Man.”
But DO they attempt to explain non-existent ‘anomalies’ that (again) do not (prima facia) exist in either the CET or the Armagh Observatory (in Ireland) temperature records?
THAT’S the issue I would like to see RC (realclimate.org) ‘team’ TAKE UP and explain …
Anyone – any RC devotees care to take a stab at this – anyone? Bueller?
.
.
Vincent (06:58:32) :
That is one of the oldest statistical tricks in the book. It is based on the fact that there is no really satisfactory way to extend a smooth (except a trailing smooth) to the end of a data set. One alternative used in a number of statistical software packages is to tack on the first data points after the last and use these for the smooth. This is only appropriate for data without a trend. Since Met Office can hardly believe that there is no trend in the CET this is deliberate deception in my opinion, particularly as they don’t use the whole data set, but rather start it at a low point, which will inflate the trend at the end.
In other words, cherrypicking and faking as usual. By the way it was not the Met Office that created the CET, it was Gordon Manley, rw (05:21:15) please take note.
Partial excerpt:
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association issued a news release Friday afternoon stating that the group had joined other associations in petitioning EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to reconsider the EPA finding that greenhouse gas emissions are an endangerment to public health. According to the release, the petition “is based upon information uncovered during the recent ‘climategate’ scandal, which seriously calls into question the scientific validity behind EPA’s finding.”
“It’s become evident that EPA’s endangerment finding may be based on flawed data,” said Tamara Thies, NCBA chief environmental counsel. “The fact that EPA did not choose to reconsider its finding after the extent of the climategate scandal was revealed publicly is perplexing to say the least; ignoring climategate will not make it go away.”
NCBA further states that “The petition asks EPA to convene a proceeding for reconsideration to thoroughly reevaluate EPA’s heavy reliance upon the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports which have been called into fundamental question. As part of this proceeding, the petition asks that EPA: prepare a complete and objective record for the reconsideration proceeding which contains all the relevant scientific data, studies, and viewpoints and is cleansed of questionable or one-sided data; obtain and fully disclose all computer programs, data and algorithms used to “homogenize” all temperature records upon which EPA relies; subject the temperature records and programs to an independent review by qualified and objective scientists and statisticians; and determine whether or not there is any statistically valid demonstration of unprecedented global warming over the last century.”
Finally, NCBA and the petitioners are requesting a stay in any further regulatory actions or rulemakings which are based upon the endangerment finding until these fundamental requirements of sound science, legal due process, and valid administrative rulemakings are completed.
From: http://www.dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtna….sOverride=false
The Petition (pdf ): http://www.beefusa.org/uDocs/Petition-for-Reconsideration.pdf
Your link:
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/
The CET link ref’d by Willis in the article:
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/data/download.html
Are these not the same source, the metoffice?
rw, your ref’d chart is titled:
The 1st chart by Willis is titled:
Do things become any clearer?
.
.
The four horsemen of the climate apocalypse are: Jones, Hansen, Pachauri and Gore.
The only way they can be slain is by public self-confession of the truth – there is no other way our gullible political leaders are going to accept the facts – so, one down, three to go.
The other three are going to be tougher nuts to crack. From a financial point of view, they have much more to lose and they are also surrounded by very much more powerful fact spinning organisations.
So to paraphrase Churchill’s great statement: ” Never in the field of human science has so much almost been lost as result of the actions of so few.” So far, the loss is ‘only’ billions, if Copenhagen had succeeded it would have been many trillions – all to achieve absolutely nothing.
You say, “Jones also makes the interesting argument in the interview that the reason he believes that recent warming is anthropogenic (human-caused) is because climate models can’t replicate it … in other words, he has absolutely no evidence at all, he just has the undeniable fact that our current crop of climate models can’t model the climate. Seems to me like that’s a problem with the models rather than a problem with the climate, but hey, what do I know, I was born yesterday …”
I agree absolutely. I said this in my blog here (http://sunriseconsulting.blogspot.com/2010/02/illuminating-interview-on-uk-channel-4.html) on 2nd February as a result of the interview Prof Bob Watson gave to Channel 4 news. The only evidence they have is that they can’t explain the warming without human causes. Hence they need to keep hiding anything that might start to explain it.
But your post is highly significant. For Phil Jones to say that current warming is not statistically different from previous warming periods is surely an admission of defeat! What else needs to be said? I hope this reaches the MSM.
From a hardcore AGW skeptic: The Willis argument is too strongly made and does miss the essence of science: Science is not circumscribed in its subject matter to include only anomalies. Regularities can also be important. That the sun rises daily in the morning was not an easy issue for the human race. It took good science in the era of Galeleo, Newton, Copernicus, Kepler, et al to overcome the Ptolemaic explanation. the power of science to account for the commonplace lends credence to its explanations of the strange, arcane, and remote.
There is an anomalie in our era: The rising production of CO2 by humans. Good science includes considering possible effects of our CO2 production. It is reassuring that our science shows that humans produce only a few percent of the annual budget for CO2 production on Earth, and that CO2 is a minor component of Earth’s atmospheres GHG’s. Furthermore, the recent failure of global temperatures, however poorly measured, to show a steady correlation with rising CO2 level is further reassurance that CO2-caused problems are or (ought to be) low on the list of human concerns (echoing Lonborg here). Good science plays a role here and ought to be encouraged.
Phil Jones said: “Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length.”
So why are stations being removed from the data set all over the world by GHCN??
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/12/noaa-drops-another-13-of-stations-from-ghcn-database/
If anyone from YouGov (yougov.co.uk) is looking in here, can I ask: what is the point of having a survey in which one question offers only a choice between either “Climate change is a myth” or “Climate change is the greatest threat to the world”? The respondent had to plot their answer between 1 (greatest threat) and 10 (myth).
There was no way to record a response of: “Neither”.
There was no way of saying, as I believe, that climate change is happening but the climate has always changed, and in the past CO2 and global temperatures have been higher than they are now, and the planet is still here supporting life (so, no, not the greatest threat).
So the – misleading – published result will be: either most people think it is a myth or the greatest threat. Talk about deliberately skewing the result. Is YouGov run by AGWers – I think we should be told.
Henry chance (06:59:39) :
I like how Romm’s story likens the future to the Dust Bowl period of the 30s without realizing the analogy disproves the proposition. 🙂
I have just been looking at the Mean Central UK Temperatures using the Hadley Centre Data, for all those in the UK, did you realise that in the whole of 2008 we only had one single day where the mean Temperature was below Zero, at a staggering -0.3C?
Doesn’t one’s memory play tricks on us, I could have sworn that the winter was colder than that.
“…In other words, we have spent billions of dollars and wasted years of work chasing a chimera, a will-of-the-wisp….”
We have NOT ‘wasted’ billions of dollars and time. We would have done that if we had burned the money or dropped it in the sea.
Instead, we have used the money to make some people very rich and given them lots of prestige. The money has not been wasted, it has been misspent. It has been used to do something. In fact that something has involved the ruin of science, and we may have to spend a similar amount rebuilding science’s shattered image…
Hmmmm
Data replotted from your source gives different results:
http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/7086/cet.png
heating trend is 3degC per century (0.0026/month)
Yo didnt fit your trend to the filtered data did you? This would remove some of the latest warming.
Of course, getting the story out is almost impossible when you have politicians like Obama tasking NOAA to watch the climate and give companies climate change advice, as if companies really have to plan for climate change – implicitly indicating climate change to be a critical factor (now ) in a business plan?
And now Obama wants a “global warming agency” to study the problem, apparently blatant enough in its goals to not call it a “climate change agency” (I admit not to know what the name will eventually be, it was discussed as the former).
Politicians do not deal in reality, just the fabrications that they can get other people to recognize as vague possibilities. Obama has no interest in the facts – what he needs is huge new revenue streams to feed in huge new government.
Re: Richard Telford (05:51:54) and Allan M (06:58:15):
I agree that it’s too narrow to say that science tries to explain only anomalies (and that it’s far too narrow to say that science tries to explain only change). Yet the anomaly view has some pedigree. C.S. Peirce held that all real inquiry is a struggle that begins with surprising observations. In this view, prediction is entirely a step in the process of testing an explanatory hypothesis. That view helpfully anchors prediction in efforts to resolve issues in observation and theory. But it seems to me that prediction can be a primary motivation which can send one looking for discrepancies among observations and theories – that anchor is not automatically lost when prediction is the main goal.
I can see four general inquiry-stimulating “unsettlings” at least:
1. Bafflement at the complex or complicated. E.g.: What _has_ happened?
2. Surprise at the anomalous, the seemingly unlikely. E.g: What _is_ happening?
3. Suspense over the vague. E.g.: What’s _going to_ happen? (Prediction.)
4. Hesitancy about the unfamiliar, the uncolligated, that whose lessons have not been learnt. E.g.: What _would_ happen (if…)?
And searches at least four kinds of answer: In what light would the phenomenon seem (1) simpler? (2) more usual or normal? (3) clearer, more significant or informative? and (4) deeper, less nontrivial? – each of which can be helpful in any of the above questions.
However that is all very general. If there is no major anomaly in the temperatures, then the questions which would be raised by such an anomaly are obviously not raised. That is not to say that climate raises no questions and is not something about which to wonder and worry. One thing C.S. Peirce seemed right about: questions normally need to be genuine, producing really motivated struggle for answers, in order to have a chance of leading to genuine, scientifically fruitful and sound research.
Ack, sorry, I meant to write “deeper, less trivial,” not “deeper, less nontrivial.”
Anthony, btw WUWT is mentioned in the NCBA petition. Just thought you’d like to know. 🙂
Climate models don’t include the effect of clouds in their operation, so it’s not surprising they aren’t reliable and don’t provide answers that make sense. That only confirms that the climate models are not to be relied on, It’s a bit of a leap to say it’s down to man. That sort of reasoning went out with alchemy.
It’s my new word for AGW supporters – ‘alchemists’, who make wild pseudo-scientific assumptions based on unsupported beliefs.
“kadaka (09:17:32) :
@ Jabba the Cat (04:09:45) :
I have a friend who, back in college in the campus center, set up a Naugahyde chair on a table with a petition to save the Naugas, whose existence was threatened from being hunted for their valuable skins. Several eco-minded concerned people signed it.
Apparently there is nothing so dumb that you cannot convince at least some people that it is true. Especially when “Nature is being threatened by Man.””
Yeah, everybody knows that naugas shed their skin so they don’t need to be killed. Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauga
rw (05:21:15) : & HotRod (06:57:13) :Willis, re rw (05:21:15) : comment:
does he not make some good points?
Good, clear article Willis, thank you. Re: rw, The graph rw links to has 1/5 the temperature variation than the graph shown by Willis. I took that line from rw’s graph and laid it over Willis’, to scale.
http://i49.tinypic.com/x6dkxt.jpg
Mr. Eschenbach
If one separates summer and winter trends, than picture becomes even simpler. Nothing extraordinary I agree.
Here is my personal take and a contribution to CET debate (I would be interested to know what you make of it).
Recorded UK temperatures have oscillated, during last 300 years with a period of about 50+ years. While in the long term winters’ temps have risen (0.4C/century), summers’ have hardly moved (0.05C/century).
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETt.htm
The bottom half of the graph shows de-trended temp changes (upward trend removed from the data). It is obvious that both summer and winter temperatures show similar natural oscillations (sometime in phase and sometime out of phase – that is another story) plus linear (but different) upward trends, which I think are due to a slow recovery from the Little Ice Age.
This corresponds well with plenty of the anecdotal evidence of the very cold winters (frozen Thames etc), but very little about unusually cool summers.
The graph also shows that UK currently may be entering the ‘next 50 year’ cooling period. If so the government would do well to start concerning itself with reliability of its energy supplies.
More temps graphs at: http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/GandF.htm
You may be interested in this page by a certain Phil Jones which gives more information on the CET set and also shows the record for the four seasons as well. This bears little resemblance to the plot referred to by RW, which is on the Hadley Centre web site.
It is ironic that Phil Jones’ piece starts off: “Global temperatures are rising and have now reached unprecedented levels compared to the last millennium”
I notice that “The series starts in 1659. Developed by Manley (1974), and enhanced by Parker et al. (1992) who added the daily series back to 1772 …”. Now am I being overly sensitive when I see that the series was enhanced by Parker et al .
Perhaps somebody who knows what they are talking about could comment on what has been done to the raw data as explained in the Parker paper ( http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/data/cet/Parker_etalIJOC1992_dailyCET.pdf ).
Re: tfp (Feb 13 09:52),
You dropped a decimal point somewhere. If the trend were in fact your 3 C/century, then the temperature change from 1800 to 2009 would be about 6 C. Instead it’s about 0.5 C. My guess is that the x axis is in decimal years and so your slope is 2.58E-03 C/year not month. I’ve made worse mistakes.
“Jones also makes the interesting argument in the interview that the reason he believes that recent warming is anthropogenic (human-caused) is because climate models can’t replicate it … in other words, he has absolutely no evidence at all, he just has the undeniable fact that our current crop of climate models can’t model the climate.”
It is clear from his comment that it’s a deep mistake in his thinking, oh wait a moment, that’s not a rational statement of a cause and effect based upon evidence or facts… it’s a “belief”… Phil Jones admitted that he “believes that recent warming is anthropogenic (human-caused) is because climate models can’t replicate it”. Ouch. So it’s his default explanation based SOLELY upon “belief” that humans cause global warming! No wonder he never wanted to address any of the criticism for he realized that it’s belief not tested by the scientific method… and when it does come under scrutiny a journalist digs it out and Phil Jones splatters himself as a “humans are the cause religious believer with a scientifically unsupported belief” rather than as a serious scientist who lets the science overrule his personal biases that his “beliefs” would create.
This is why beliefs have no place in science – they interfere with the actual process of the scientific method. Peer review is supposed to dig out these personal biases but that failed in this case due to private belief driven personal agendas “to save the world” when there was and has yet to be any evidence presented that there is any danger as claimed.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” – Carl Sagan.
So far all we gotten are the extraordinary claims and not even ordinary standards of evidence. Sad, really sad and they claim climate science a “science”. What it is is a major fail. Professor Phil Jones you get an “F” and are hereby booted out of science class for letting your “beliefs” drive science and public policy without the HARD evidence required. I think there is a tab, in the many multiple of billions of dollars, that needs to be paid back. Let’s see… what will your earnings for the rest of your life be? That’s a start. Now who collaborated with you in the propagation of your “belief based cult science”? Let’s garnishee their lifetime wages too… oh and Maurice Strong hiding out in Communist China… hmmmm… Al Gore got Blood & Gore on his hands… let’s recover the funds earned from An Inconvenient Truth to pay back some of the public monies that were wasted on this belief without hard evidence of Phil Jones. Ah, Michael Mann how much do you make… on it goes… oh you too David Suzuki, cough up the dough to recoup the public funds… that includes your investments and income from The Nature of Things.
Belief based science is not science, it’s religion. Real scientists learn to recognize their beliefs and bias and set them aside going with the evidence to prove or disprove various hypothesis. In so doing they are being true to the Objective Reality of Nature and to the public purse and the tax payers who support their research.
Hypothesis Lock In is a scientific crime. Yes, scientists should pursue various hypotheses to obtain evidence or counter evidence but when you ignore the counter evidence at what point to you stop being a scientist and instead become a member of the clergy pushing a belief against hard counter evidence? As soon as you ignore counter evidence and don’t give it and those presenting it a fair evaluation and consideration you’ve crossed that line. Certainly by the time you’re yelling “denier” and “skeptic” other invective personal attacks you’re not longer a scientist interested in the scientific method, you’re some weird form of mutant high priest clergy member of a cult group. In other words, you’ve become a really bad scientist pushing.
We need evidence. Hard, verifiable evidence. That is how we separate the bogus hypothesis from hypotheses that to various degrees of accuracy represent what is really going on in the Objective Reality of Nature.
We need evidence. Hard, verifiable evidence. Audible and repeatable by anyone with the skills. Open for all to see. Any science funded by the public OR that public policy is based upon MUST be Open Source Science. Write your public representatives and urge them to make new laws FORCING scientists to comply with the most open standards of Open Source Science: all data, all notes, all tapes, all videos, all conversations, all emails, all letters, all funding sources, all participants, all witnesses, all analysis methods performed including those that didn’t work out, all math used, all spreadsheets, all software systems used, all data files, all program files, all program logs, all versions of their papers, all reviewers notes for any published or not-published papers, all conclusions, all conclusions that they dropped, …, everything they did! That’s to permit serious auditing! No more than a six month delay on anything prior to publication and after publication no delays at all. If they want public funding monies or to have public policy set by their alleged scientific conclusions they need to show their work just like everyone had to in high school algebra and science class! They are supposed to be professionals, so let them prove that too along with their claims and conclusions!
I mistook the black line for the temperature in Willis’ Chart, please disregard above.
Allan M (05:02:50) : “Sorry. Flash Gordon and his pet Milipede.”
Oui! Cela est meilleur!
Ref – pyromancer76 (08:21:31) :
“…Let’s keep the excitement of the public for “global warming” as an important research — especially in the face of “global cooling” — and let the scientific processes and method be returned to the open and “free market”.
“This search is important. People, citizens of developed countries, most students — at least those in the American school system, preschool thru college — have been misled. But their excitement about “knowing” more about our beloved Earth is not misplaced enthusiasm. It can be turned toward “good”.
————-
I believe the “excitement of the public” is actually better described as panic (that is, for those who care anything at all about the matter). Now the quandry is, when they realize it was all a political AND “voodoo science” climate sham, what will happen? I have a strong feeling that their reaction will be outright anger -if and when they realize they’ve been duped- and a total ‘turn-off’ to many (if not all) “science” matters in future. When you say, “It can be turned toward “good”.”, I say that is very unlikely. People don’t put their heart and soul into a cause, and when shown to be the ‘fool’, turn around and jump right into another pot of ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ water.
Note on previous article(s):
U.N. climate panel admits Dutch sea level flaw
IPCC admits to “55% below sea level” mistake. While blaming it on the Dutch. The science remains settled, the report remains sound.
What is a good temperature for roofing tar for easy brush-on application, and where do we get the chicken feathers?
Spector ()7:08:55)
‘OK we can’t prove that the danger of anthropogenic catastrophic climate change is real, but in view of the dire series of catastrophes we have been taught to fear, we must insist, in an abundance of caution, that everyone do all we think necessary to prevent them and save the world unless you can prove beyond any irrational doubt that this is not the case.’
Quite. In the good old days human sacrifice to the gods was a feature of several civilisations!
It’s great that the careful inspection of a few trees can provide assurance that the forest is not endangered but a glance at the forest provides the same assurance. The geological time history of the climate is available and indicates our current epoch is almost as cold as it ever gets and has CO2 levels about as low as they ever get. Most of the time during the last billion years the flora were lush and the fauna plentiful at much higher temperatures and CO2 levels. What exactly do we have to fear if we were to return to those conditions? Surely it would take hundreds of years at the least so no one would drown from rising sea levels. I fear a return to glaciation much more.
Even if one was to accept the IPCC’s claim of a 0.6 deg C rise in global average temperature over the past century (and there is sufficient reason to be skeptical of this claim, given the absence of impartiality within the IPCC ), this is an increase from 286.4 deg K to 287.0 deg K over the past century, which is a 0.2095% increase in temperature on the Kelvin temperature scale. This also represents a 0.8406% increase in the black body radiation. If you were to increase the setting of your home’s thermostat in the winter, from 21.0 deg C, and increase it by the same percentage, I doubt that you would even notice the difference (the end result would be 21.62 deg C). The AGW alarmists would have the entire population of the earth believing that this tiny increase in the heat energy of the earth system is responsible for any and all extreme weather events, you name it, all sorts of events are blamed on global warming, and they say man is responsible. If there is a reduction in the annual seasonal snowfall, it is due to global warming, but a major snow storm is also due to global warming, according to the alarmists. (Calling Bill Nye, the science guy!) The math presented above says they are wrong. When AGW alarmists take the position that is equivalent to “Heads I win, tails you lose”, you know you are dealing with a group of propagandists and con-artists.
Ref – Pascvaks (10:40:47)
Sorry. Should have also said:
Two groups will never surrender to the truth (‘weather’ hot OR cold) – the first are the anarchists who grasp any excuse to destroy the established status quo, they will simply find another ‘cause‘ to hit people over the head with; the second are a peculiar breed who seem to be genetically incapable of admitting their wrong about anything.
This is really twisting what Phil Jones is saying. Yes, the rate of warming in 1910-40 is similar to recent. No surprises there.
But in saying that 1860-1880 is not statistically different, he carefully explains why. It’s a short period of time, so the trend already has large error bars. And there was a lot of measurement uncertainty. So saying that the difference is not statistically different is not saying that they are similar, It’s saying that the trend 1860-1880 is not well enough measured to differentiate it.
Just recently our local radio station had an interview with a population control
“expert”-this guy had to have a pair of well-oiled jackboots on.He blamed the USA for all the world’s problems-including”the very real” AGW.His greatest fear:
“Optomisitc, expectant, immigrants” to the USA!(read those with brown/black/yellow skin.)-which would only increase our output and productivity-and harm to the planet.China was also a problem”that may have to be delt with.” How or why he did not say,but implied that a Billion happy, prosperous,people-should not try to emulate the United States..
His bottom line: No emigration or immigration should be allowed.Forced sterization upon those who are “unsuitable” and a USA with fewer,not more
people.This in the name of saving the planet and a reduced”Carbon Footprint.”
for the world. This is done in the name of “Settled Science”.
Sounds to me like the Eugenics movement has found a new home.
Sorry about being somewhat O/T,but it is curious how this old chestnut has reared it’s head-just as things are unwinding…
Optomistic,darn,,,
[“Optimistic.” I will gladly loan you my extra space bar ☺ -mod.]
“Nick Stokes (11:02:50) :
[…]
But in saying that 1860-1880 is not statistically different, he carefully explains why. It’s a short period of time, so the trend already has large error bars.”
Oh, large error bars, measurement uncertainty, when it fits us, right? For years the MWP and the LIA got explained away, so certain where they. And now, when it fits us, there is a lot of measurement uncertainty?
Back a few weeks ago another site did several posts on CET warming. They looked at the temperatures in a couple of very simple ways that produced some interesting visuals. FWIW,
http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/01/central-england-temperatures-unprecedented-warming-during-last-decade.html
Any degree of temperature change, regardless of the cause, will have a climate zone affect. Meaning that anomalies may be biased depending on placement of sensors. However, with sufficient sensors placed in open spaces within each climate zone on a world-wide basis, and accurately measured over a 200 year period, a more accurate assessment of climate change can be made that will either show a direct correlation with natural climate change factors, or will go against natural climate change factors. As in: The temperature will be the reverse of what is expected given the concomitant natural climate drivers and systems. The temperature will far overshoot the normal range for that climate zone, etc.
The reason for the 200 year period is to take into account the rare concurrence of natural climate oscillations that cause greater temperature change than under more mixed conditions.
Till that data is in, we shouldn’t pollute with sooty, dirty brown belching emissions, garbage strewn about, or return to lax controls on hazardous products like mercury.
rw (05:21:15), thanks for your questions. Questions are always more valuable than agreement.
Plot it yourself, and see what you get …
I filtered it with a 17 year window. If you don’t know what a 25 year trailing trend is, I fear this is not the place for an explanation.
As both the CET and the Armagh graphs show, there has been a slow but steady warming. Here’s a question for you. In a period of slow but steady warming, where will we be most likely to find the ten hottest years?
a) At the start of the record.
b) At the end of the record.
Perhaps you could enlighten us as to why this is “curious”, or why it requires an explanation.
Since the greatest warming in the CET and Armagh records is before 1850, I think that the statement that those were “before the modern rise in CO2” is quite accurate. The same is true of the 1850 – 1870 warming.
Even the 1910 – 1940 warming is generally not ascribed to CO2, even by AGW adherents. This is because the total CO2 change is too small. The rise from pre-industrial time to 1940 is only responsible for a theoretical increase in forcing of less than half a watt per square metre. This is far from enough to be the cause of the warming.
As a result, Phil Jones and other CO2 adherents generally say that the only place that we actually see the effect of CO2 is the 1970-1998 rise. So I stand by my statement.
Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Science is what we use to explain anomalies, to elucidate mysteries, to shed light on unexplained occurrences. For example, there is no great need for a scientific explanation of the sun rising in the morning. If one day the sun were to rise in the afternoon, however, that is an anomaly which would definitely require a scientific explanation. But there is no need to explain the normal everyday occurrences. We don’t need a new understanding if there is nothing new to understand.
PLM – I love your post Willis and will forward it to family who normally are persuaded by the “news” to “believe” in AGW. Howver, I’ll take the challenge! Many seemingly mundane occurrences such as a “rising” morning sun have caused extreme behavior by humans. Define “rising” – Relative to ones time/space. The investigation into the “rising” sun had a lot to deal with the aforementioned Copernicus, Galileo, etc. and much turmoil including Al Gore et al’s infatuation with “flat earthers”.
Anyway, an appropriate ongoing investigation into climate should be pursued, not the hysterical political efforts taking place even after Climategate. I have contacted my representative politicians to quash the CLIMATE SERVICE being pushed by the President. Last I looked our grandchildren’s credit was used up – especially for cronyism wasteful (misspending) redistribution of future financial credit.
Great piece, Willis. I would consider it a dagger to the AGW theory, except for the fact that the hypothesis is somewhat like Rasputin – it will not die very easily.
Everybody else – here is what Willis said when he started:
Science is what we use to explain anomalies, to elucidate mysteries, to shed light on unexplained occurrences.
Now, how is that statement “narrow” or “anti-science” (an accusation made by one blogger on this particular post)? The entire world was, at one time, unexplained and unknown to us. So shedding light on unexplained occurrences seems to me to be exactly what science has done over the millenia. Implicit in the statement, too, is the fact that in order to explain anomalies, one must know what is ordinary, what is natural or normal in terms of existing conditions.
The Carl Sagan quote posted by pwl above says it all. Extraordinary claims DO require extraordinary evidence. And nothing that I have seen to date tells me that we are experiencing anything other than natural variation. We need to understand a LOT more about climate, a LOT more, before we can decide that the “anomalies” we see are extraordinary or not. We have only begun to scratch the surface of this subject, I believe. Any scientist who tries to tell me otherwise is barking up the wrong tree.
TLM (04:28:52) :
Absolutely not. The AGW proponents, starting with James Hansen and including all the rest, claim that we are already seeing the effects of AGW. Don’t you recall the claim that warming caused Katrina? Haven’t you heard the claims that warming is causing islands to sink? Haven’t you read that the recent “snowpocalypse” on the US East Coast was a result of AGW? Haven’t you read the articles claiming that warming is causing species extinction? There are thousands of claims of this type.
Richard Telford (05:51:54)
If you need “references to philosophers of science” to make a blog “proscience” rather than “antiscience”, then RealClimate and Bad Astronomy and ClimateAudit and a host of other blogs are antiscience. The idea that you need to quote philosophers in order to make a blog scientific is nonsense.
Your post is antiscience. It makes no substantive objection to my work. It does not fault my logic or my data. It does not say anything scientific about what I have done.
Instead, it makes a hand-waving claim that because I did not quote some un-named “philosophers of science”, the entire blog is “anti-science” … riiiiight …
So since you didn’t quote a single “philosopher of science” yourself, I suppose that proves that your post is “anti-science” as well?
Dear Willis,
you did it again. And I liked it, really,
your “down to earth approach” is allways valuable.
If your available time allows, keep supplying.
KlausB
His premise – you use science to study change – is strained. Actually it’s probably a dud. Climate is worthy of study, whether significant anomalies are being observed at the moment. Not that AGW isn’t just a tempest in a tea cup, so to speak. Maybe more like a squall in a soup bowl.
I want to see a poll with the following question answered:
Do you believe scientists have proven that human CO2 emissions will result in future climate changes that are significantly more dangerous to humans than the future climate changes that will occur without human CO2 emissions?
I would bet that more than 60% would answer no and that should drive the political debate — meaning, no one thinks we should do anything about CO2 emissions.
JimBob (07:37:37) :
Measurements of atmospheric Oxygen concentrations (actually O2/N2 ratio) are avaliable for about the last 20 years from http://bluemoon.ucsd.edu/images/ALLo.pdf This is Ralph Keelings’ group’s data. His PhD thesis from 1988 is online, and a Nature article http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v358/n6389/abs/358723a0.html describes some of the early results.
All things being equal, increasing the temperature of some water will cause it to outgass. But if you increase the partial pressure of the gas in the atmosphere, you can overcome this tendency and dissolve more gas. There wouldn’t be concern about ocean acidification if CO2 was not being absorbed by the oceans.
Photosysnthesis preferentially uses 12C over 13C, resulting in plant material, and hence fossil fuels, that are depleted in 13C, and an atmosphere enriched in 13C. When fossil fuels are burnt, the atmosphere becomes less enriched in 13C. There is a figure at http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/iso-sio/graphics/isomlogr.jpg
http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/4705/philjones.jpg
AMac (05:52:07)
See my posts, The Unbearable Complexity of Climate and The Thermostat Hypothesis, for a discussion of whether CO2 will lead to higher temperatures. The short answer is that the grounds for thinking that it is inevitable that increasing CO2 will significantly warm the globe are far, far from “established”.
Again, you are putting the cart before the horse. Before we can ask “what is the sensitivity of the climate to CO2”, we have to ask “is the climate sensitive to CO2”. And that is the subject of this post. To date, we have no evidence that CO2 has had any measurable effect on the modern climate. Start with that and work forwards, but don’t start with “CO2 has an effect on the climate and the question is how much”.
Your guess may or may not be right, and there’s lots of people who agree with your guess. I am merely pointing out that spending billions of dollars based on a guess seems … well … a bit premature, and definitely unscientific.
Back up here, my friend. I did not say there was no cause for investigation. It is a fascinating subject to investigate. We investigate all kinds of theories and hypotheses. And I am on record for years as supporting better record-keeping and better instrumentation and better sharing, that’s a no-brainer.
What I am saying is that to date, we have no anomaly which requires explanation. All we have is a fascinating theoretical puzzle, not a practical present-day problem that we should spend billions of dollars trying to remediate.
Where is the unusual occurrence that we are spending billions of dollars trying to explain?
Classic error.
You seem to think AGW theory exists to explain recent warming.
That is wrong.
AGW theory arises from (first) an understanding of the radiation properties of the CO2 atom and (second) the interactions of these physical properties in a broader climatic system. Warming is the prediction that results from AGW theory.
Vincent (06:30:40)
Oh, very good. For those who didn’t catch it, this is a funny back-reference to Kevin Trenberth’s statement in the released CRU emails, viz:
Funding climate-alarmism is a mistake, but real research on climate is extremely valuable and it should be funded to the teeth.
Willis: “Science is what we use to explain anomalies, to elucidate mysteries, to shed light on unexplained occurrences.”
No, Willis, science is now a propaganda tool that politicians use to control the world’s population.
As noted elsewhere, scientists “are not not half as stupid as they seem when they lie about the obvious.”
Pavlov’s dogs were trained with dog biscuits; Scientists have been trained with grant funds.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Emeritus Professor of
Nuclear & Space Science
Former NASA PI for Apollo
“the ‘magic’ CO2 tax.” (and almost all climate change “action”) is a solution in search of a problem.
It is a case of world class busy bodies not having anything better to do with their time, for the most part. Whatever scientific realities exist (and can be the basis of legitimate and rational scientific discussion), the political cult left them behind years ago and is now a self-sustaining entity. There’s a lot to be said for the fact that all this gained traction immediately after the final* and complete discrediting of the Marxist/socialist world view. Those people had to go somewhere and do something. The means have changed but the basic goal has not.
*final – well, it’s sure to rear its ugly head again, as all bad ideas eventually come back around, so final is said advisedly
Willis Eschenbach (12:08:04) :
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t”.
Willis;
You are correct, it was true then and remains true today. If only all things were so clear. One un-realized prediction is enough to discard a theory.
Thank you for the reminder.
Nick Stokes (11:02:50), your idea is not clear.
No surprise? You’ve just agreed with my thesis, that there is no anomaly. Yet there are thousands and thousands of articles saying CO2 is the cause of the recent unusual warming … how is that not a surprise?
I’m not sure what your point is. I say that there is no statistically significant anomaly. Phil Jones agrees. You say that the data is poor, which is so evident as to not require comment. It was poor in 1860, and it remains poor to this day … so?
What is your point? That if we could truly measure the 1860-1880 temperature very accurately, it might be less than the 1970-1998 warming? Or greater than the 1970-1998 warming? Those are the only two possibilities, and neither one of them invalidates my argument, that there is no recent temperature anomaly which requires explanation …
Willis Eschenbach (11:48:38)
Claims need to be supported by evidence. Is that not the rule here? You made a claim as to the nature and scope of science, I asked for your evidence. If you cannot provide a citiation or other evidence, how do we know you are not just making it up?
Should I have supplied citations? I don’t need to. That’s the beauty of being a skeptic, I don’t have to prove you are wrong, just show that your argument isn’t convincing. I can sit back and proclaim “I don’t believe you. Show me the evidence”, and let you do all the hard work.
Ben U. (09:55:47) supplied some interesting information.
Ron Broberg (12:07:02) :
“Warming is the prediction that results from AGW theory.”
That is correct and since… (as Willis has remined us)
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t”.
One un-realized prediction invalidates the Theory, that is why it was an is a travesty.
Neil Ferguson (11:57:13)
I agree, Neil, climate is definitely worthy of study. How could I not agree, it’s my chosen field?
But billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of hours are being spent, not on studying climate, but on a very narrow focus – trying to “explain” recent warming.
However, we have no evidence that recent warming is unusual in any way, shape, or form. There is nothing there that requires an explanation.
That’s the problem that I’m highlighting.
According to the BBC, Rajendra Pachauri will not resign because it will “be a scalp for the skeptics” and the science of climate change, which is “a snake pit”, will be the worst for losing him.
“…Pechauri’s critics also claim that his business interests – as a consultant to energy industry giants – could represent a conflict of interest. But his supporters say he’s a tireless champion in alerting people to the impact of climate change on developing nations.”
They say a lot more in praise of this genius on the BBC’s Profile programme
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qll1r
slightly OT, but over on RealClimate the current post is about a paper analyzing CO2 levels over the last millenium. The following is, I kid you not, verbatim from Gavin:
————–
I found some other results of this study interesting. One such involved the analysis of time lags. The authors found that in 98.5% of their regressions, CO2 lagged temperature. There will undoubtedly be those who interpret this as evidence that CO2 cannot be a driver of temperature, a common misinterpretation of the ice core record
————–
LOL. Did I misunderstand something? The data shows that the correlation between CO2 and temperature is the opposite of the theory, so obviously any conclusions from this are a misinterpretation and the theory stands?
If you have 40 minutes to spare look at http://clients.westminster-digital.co.uk/minesite/microsite/events/56/video/index.aspx?companyid=56_4
In Australia its the long term drought period we are now expereincing that is mostly used to “prove” climate change. Yet even though we generally only have long term data for up to 150 years, that data shows that based on 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10 year rolling averages the period up to around 1906 was as dry or drier than the current period.
And in “panic” government here have spent $billions on desalination plants that will consume incredible amounts of CO2 producing energy and increase our cost of water by 3-6 times!
Note however that I still support initiatives to reduce energy consumption in first world countries because it is my view we are being excessive in energy consumption
@richard Telford (12:29:14) :
“Willis Eschenbach (11:48:38)
“You made a claim as to the nature and scope of science, I asked for your evidence.”
I gather you are predisposed to argue. What he actually said was “Science is what we use to explain anomalies, to elucidate mysteries, to shed light on unexplained occurrences.”
There is nothing all inclusive about that statement. It simply states one of the uses of science; it makes no claim to be a complete description of science.
Do you claim that is not one of the uses of science?
Abduction Willis!
Hey, are you going to help on the UEA inquiry? I’m setting up a blog
and will give you authorship rights?
mail me.
Re: kim (Feb 13 07:25),
anna v. 6:55:56. Please see what David Goldman, AKA Spengler, has revealed about an email from Greece. Please tell me you’ll be alright.
Do you mean the one in the Asian Times blog?
I hope I will be alright one way or another. Hope springs eternal in the human heart, after all.
We have lived through inflation of 30% 30 and 40 years ago, and survived. The problem now is that the government cannot print money and fool the fools as happened then.
I do not know about the content of the e-mail. I think it is more mismanagement than corruption per se, and selling political influence and socialism to the masses. We have three more times the civil servants we need because of this. In addition we have an enormous military burden: because of the belligerence of Turkey which continually threatens our islands and neighboring lands we are forced to keep a large army ( more civil servants) and continuously buy weapons. This last is the reason of the EU turning a blind eye in the past to excess borrowing since we buy from Germany and France.
The basic reason for the mess is the world economic crisis which brought forth the weakness of the greek economy.
It is true that people are averse to paying taxes, everybody. In polls 80% are saying they are willing to help solve the problem but when it comes to paying taxes, it is the other fellow who should do it. Tax evasion is an olympic game.
So, as it used to be in the former soviet republics, a lot of civil servants moonlight in other jobs not registered in the open economy : from helping in their wife’s shop to tutoring or driving a taxi while holding down another job, the majority of greeks are hard working, but hiding income from taxes.
It will take sometime to computerize everything so as to catch most of this.
What does Average Temperature Mean?,
It means that the maximum temperature has gone down and the minimum has gone up, is that the Jones & Wang no UHI effect or does CO2 only come out at night.
Andrew30 (12:29:45) : One un-realized prediction invalidates the Theory, that is why it was an is a travesty.
Sorry. Way too many indicators that we are warming.
Even Willis agrees that there is recent warming: “So in fact, according to Phil Jones (who strongly believes in the AGW hypothesis) there is nothing unusual about the recent warming either.”
Willis Eschenbach (12:27:12) : Thanks Willis. The semantics used by the “Climate Change” community has always confounded me. Your article goes straight to the heart of the problem, with the mis-use of the word anomoly, when we are actually discusing temperature variations. The dictionary defines an anomaly as: “Any occurrence or object that is strange, unusual, or unique. It can also mean a discrepancy or deviation from an established rule or trend”. As no rules or trends confirm the present existance of any strange, unusual or unique variations to the Earth’s atmospheric temperature, there are no anomolies, only misunderstandings, mistakes or mischievousness. For example, the dramatic jump in Global Temperature Anomoly, reported by UAH for Jan 2010 – up by 0.44 degC in a month. Now that was an “Anomaly”! At that rate, we’ll all be toast by Christmas!!
Also, the Earth does not have a “climate”. If it does, I would like to hear the definition from someone. Astronomers never refer to the “climate” of planets”, only to their atmospheric properties. I would venture to suggest that the USA does not have a climate – or Britain or Australia or most countries.
P.S. Willis: the weather records for the USA (Eastern seaboards), including the records kept by Charles Peirce of Philadelphia, to date cover 220 years. Canada, Australia and NZ have records going back 150 years or so.
Regards, Bob.
How about “Alclimists”? (allusion to Al)
They have put themselves in a position where they can’t back down from a bet. That’s the comeback you should make to their sneers, to put them in their place: Put up or shut up. Here’s a comment I posted a couple of days ago in response to someone who had run into a similar bunch of know-it-alls:
Ron Broberg (12:07:02) :
…the CO2 atom…
*snicker*
AGW CO2 theories arose from having some data that could indicate warming, noticing CO2 levels were going up, and trying to link the two. The basic radiative properties of the CO2 molecule may have been studied in the lab, but it was not understood how it behaves in the real world, in the atmosphere, and those properties alone cannot account for the warming. Thus AGW CO2 theories rely on “positive feedback mechanisms” involving H2O, which have not been demonstrated to exist but AGW CO2 theories need them therefore their existence is assumed and cited as fact, whatever they are.
The “A” comes from assigning blame for recent warming to mankind, thus gaining favor among the eco-crowd and making it a political issue. Which was bad science. For proper science, the concept should have been worked on until it could say for X atmospheric concentration of CO2 there should be Y global average temperature. Near as I can tell, this has never been done, and real research is showing they are quite a long way from doing so, if it is at all possible. What they do have is computer models using what they think they know that show what might happen if they are right. If they ever do get to X yields Y, then they can figure out how much of the recent CO2 increase is due to mankind, note how much added temperature this has yielded, and let the assorted political interests do with it as they will. And that would be correct and proper science.
(…)
You seem to think AGW theory exists to explain recent warming.
(…)Warming is the prediction that results from AGW theory.
Chicken and the egg logic. Noticing warming lead to AGW CO2 theories, which try to explain why there was warming and why there will be more. Warming to AGW CO2 theories to warming. If they could not explain recent warming then they would not exist, as they are expected to hindcast to verify their ability to forecast.
Well, if one accepts they exist for reasons other than generating funding.
Rob (13:13:29) : Rob, Could you please tell me how I can get a copy of the excellent video presentation by J Richard Wakefield. Thanks, Bob.
Thanks, anna v. That’s reassuring.
=====================
Two comments:
1. The question of whether “it is accepted that CO2 will have a warming effect” is open until all the feedbacks are fully understood. There is not even any reason I have seen to believe that the feedbacks are constant – they may well be very variable.
2. The question of whether decadal temperature trends are statistically distinguishable is meaningless when there are major autocorrelation and long-term time series factors involved. All that can reasonably be said is that common sense tells us from the historic charts that there is a lot going on we don’t understand and that nothing much seems to have changed recently.
DeWitt Payne (10:14:57) :
My guess is that the x axis is in decimal years and so your slope is 2.58E-03 C/year not month.
Too true. my engineering caution deserted me. Apologies!
What is evident from my plot is that the period from 1985 to present does not (yet !!) conform to the general linear trend. Adding a trend line to 1985 to present gives a warming of 4.4degC/century (got it right this time I think)
http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/7086/cet.png
The current trend in CET is negative so there is a possibility that in a decade or so there will be a return to the .3C/100year average. But can we wait to find out?
Looking at satellite data:
http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/6361/amsu.png
data: http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
the channel CHLT (no longer reported – too much of an incline??!!) gives a temp increase of 11C/century.
It would be interesting to know why this channel was dropped.
REPLY: Still can’t stay away, shiny new email address eh Bill? You never did respond to this after accusing me of improper conduct. Me thinks its time for you to be put into the troll bin, since changing email addresses and handles is a no no.
…
OK Fine, final question then. Your electronics company there in the UK has a contract with the U.S. Navy for some avionics test systems. Somebody takes that design, reverse engineers it, and sells a product based on your work. Is that fair use?
That’s the case with me here. All my pages have a copyright notice on them. I did the work for over two years, and Menne et al took the work and made something from it without permission, against my protestations even. Unless you are prepared to say your company’s designs should be fair game for anyone to use and profit from, I suggest you kindly refrain from criticizing my project further. – Anthony
Please excuse my lack of familiarity with the detail of this thread, but my response to Willis’ perceptive post is that there is indeed a valid question here requiring scientific research. The question is: as ~ 30% of the current atmospheric CO2 load, i.e. ~ 105ppmv, is of anthropogenic origin, why are we not seeing a uniquely definable global mean surface temperature warming signature indicative of this, noting that signfiicant anthopogenic CO2 addition commenced in circa 1850?
A closely reasoned and dispassionate analysis of the data supporting the 30% anthropogenic CO2 addition since 1850 is based on DELC13 signatures of volcanic vs vegetation vs petroleum vs methane, with the analysis found here
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html
Note also that the DELC13 data also indicate that ~ 55% of the total anthropogenic emission load is now resident in the biosphere and oceans. I found Ferdinand’s analysis compelling and robust.
” Bob (Sceptical Redcoat) (14:19:43) :
“Rob (13:13:29) : Rob, Could you please tell me how I can get a copy of the excellent “video presentation by J Richard Wakefield. Thanks, Bob.”
Click on the graaphic in the referenced posting. Left click to play in place, right click to go to YouTube to play.
(Sorry Mac owners – don’t know your rules.)
kadaka: Chicken and the egg logic. Noticing warming lead to AGW CO2 theories, which try to explain why there was warming and why there will be more.
Same error Willis made.
AGW predicts warming.
It wasn’t invented to explain it.
Warming did not lead to AGW CO2 theories. CO2 warming theories were advanced in the 19th Century. The issue was again addressed in 30’s and 50’s by guys like Callendar and Plass.
Modern AGW theories started their run in the 1970s – so their predictions predate the “recent warming” trend that Willis alluded to above. At least, come before a statistically significant trend was present.
Point to kadaka for correcting my atom ~ molecule error.
Truly snicker worthy.
Bob (Sceptical Redcoat) (14:19:43) :
Rob (13:13:29) : Rob, Could you please tell me how I can get a copy of the excellent video presentation by J Richard Wakefield. Thanks, Bob.
Utube,
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OjPJnEtfUE )
ha,
I like the large error bar argument. It’s actually right. But what people dont see is how “large error bars” are also used to “confirm” AGW.
For example, you have models that have large error bars and the measurements are “consistent” with them. meaning you cant reject the Null.
It’s funny how everyone ( except lucia) remembers that there are type II errors.
Oh well, glad to see nick point that out.
ot,
Saw this on realclimate,
Anand Rajan KD says:
13 February 2010 at 1:32 PM
Mr. Machanick:
155.Much as I dislike schadenfreude, the news that climate denier Chris Monckton has come down with heat stroke is a delicious irony. No doubt he thinks it’s a case of frostbite.
Kind of like how Phil Jones felt that the death of the denier John Daly was cheering news, isn’t it? I totally agree.
Can you believe any blog would allow such comments.
As far as I know, the only reconstructions which show otherwise are based on proxies, not actual temperature measurements. And also as far as I know, none of those proxies have been shown to be terribly good temperature proxies.
Anyone who says it one more time that the debate is over and the science is in, only proves he’s either a liar or a dumb idiot of the highest order. This thread proves my statement is true.
Oliver K. Manuel
“Pavlov’s dogs were trained with dog biscuits…”
Some of them. Pavlov trivia: he had to reject about 25% of them because they wouldn’t accept the harness. He called it the “freedom reflex.” It’s very odd that everyone learns about fight/flight/freeze and other assorted reflexes from Psychology 101, but not freedom. You’d think the psychology textbooks would at least mention it.
Squalor and Genamum (04:37:18) :
Hear, hear!
The whole argument is stupid.
Quite simply, there is NO record of energy contained, even in the atmosphere, let alone the Earth!
Cooling will be crowed about by the sceptics, warming by the warmists.
Until energy is monitored, there will be no settling of the argument!
Global temperatures say nothing.
DaveE.
Seems like the BBC have removed or re-written the part about models failing to replicate warming so it’s our fault!
Was there one minute, disappeared on a page refresh.
Hope someone has the original cached.
REPLY Try Google search for that story (you didn’t say which) and check google cache link
Willis Eschenbach dismissed rw’s query about the 25 year trailing trend with the put down, “If you don’t know what a 25 year trailing trend is, I fear this is not the place for an explanation.”
On the contrary, this is precisely the place to explain what you mean by it. Including the “I filtered it with a 17 year window” statement.
My understanding of it is that a value on your ” jagged black line” is computed from monthly values from the preceding 25 years, (though I don’t see how the 17 year window fits into this). This understanding is supported by your graph, where the start of your jagged black line is 1685 and the start of your blue monthly values is 1660, 25 years earlier, as far as can be judged.
It is never possible to adequately compare smoothed data from the end of a time series with that from the interior of the graph, because the final values of the smoothed graph require data from years that have not yet occurred. Using such a long 25 trailing trend exacerbates this problem. Since you were specifically wanting to compare recent rates of warming with earlier periods would it not have been better to use a much shorter period of time for the smoothing?
Re: davidmhoffer (Feb 13 12:41),
Yes, you did. Although it’s a common misunderstanding. For glacial/interglacial transitions, CO2 would act as an amplifier, not the principle driver, of temperature change. The same goes for albedo change (the fraction of incoming sunlight that is reflected rather than absorbed) due to the change in ice area at the poles. Would you accept the argument that a change in albedo has no effect on temperature because the temperature starts to go up before the ice melts?
Thanks for the reply.
I was referring to this in you original article –
“JONES BBC INTERVIEW:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
Jones also makes the interesting argument in the interview that the reason he believes that recent warming is anthropogenic (human-caused) is because climate models can’t replicate it … in other words, he has absolutely no evidence at all, he just has the undeniable fact that our current crop of climate models can’t model the climate. Seems to me like that’s a problem with the models rather than a problem with the climate, but hey, what do I know, I was born yesterday …”
That whole part about models failing to replicate AGW has vanished from the BBC website.
Can’t find a cache of the original.
Willis,
Thank you.
Anthony, do you have any best post awards programs? Willis should be in the running if you do.
John
Richard Telford,
Charles Darwin managed to write an entire book on evolution, that you might have heard of, entitled On the Origin of Species. I’ve read it a few times. Darwin made no references to philosophers, that I can recall. The book is one long disquisition on observed natural phenomena with some comparisons to artificial selection (i.e. plant breeding and animal husbandry). Does the lack of philosophical references make Darwin’s little oeuvre non-scientific, according to your standards? Just asking.
DeWitt Payne:
Yes, you did. Although it’s a common misunderstanding. For glacial/interglacial transitions, CO2 would act as an amplifier, not the principle driver, of temperature change.>
Since C02 adds not a single calorie of energy into the system, it can’t amplify anything. The only thing it can do is change the temperature gradient and/or effect amplitude and time constant of cyclical variations.
Very well put. There is NOTHING abnormal to explain.
The Hundreds of thousands of hours of work, and billions of dollars that have been expended are just in an effort to create that abnormality, create a crisis, which they have not managed to do in any scientifically credible manner.
What a monumental waste of time, energy and resources that could be so much better spent elsewhere!
Richard Telford (12:29:14)
Making what up? What evidence did you ask for? What am I missing here?
Slioch (16:57:37)
I’m not sure what you are asking here. There are two separate lines on the graph. One is a 17 year gaussian smoothing of the data (red). The other is a 25 year trailing trend, which is (as the name suggests) the trend of the previous 25 years (black). You seem to be conflating the two, although I’m not clear if that is what you are saying. Perhaps you might clarify your question/objection.
w.
DeWitt Payne (17:08:28)
I have read this claim many times, that CO2 “amplified” the interglacial transitions, but I have found no actual evidence that this is the case. Do you have any cite for this? Please don’t send us a cite about climate models, I’m asking for evidence.
Here’s another question which still remains unanswered, despite 3 + years of asking it over and over again: WHY is the temperature not higher in those areas with increased greenhouse gases? IOW, why is it not hotter in Atlanta, GA than in Phoenix, AZ (almost same latitude and altitude)? Just where are the effects of all the water vapor in the sky in Tahiti? It NEVER gets above about 33 C there. Why? Would someone please explain these FACTS, using all your understanding of IR, greenhouse gases, etc.
Kevin (17:22:37)
The actual quote was:
He means, of course, that the climate models can’t replicate what he disingenuously calls “the warming from the 1950s”. (I say disingenuous because there was no warming from the 1950s through the 1970s.)
You’ve got to admire the brass balls of the logic, though … “We can’t explain the warming with what we know, our climate models can’t replicate it, so it must be from humans”. I am always astounded that these guys call themselves scientists.
A scientific statement describing the situation would be “we don’t know what caused the warming, but that’s no surprise, there’s lots of things we don’t know about the climate”.
Re: Willis Eschenbach (Feb 13 12:27),
Willis, my point is as Phil Jones tried to explain, and you glided right past it to a facile soundbite. If you take a short period of time to compare trends, you will not get a statistically significant result, especially if the underlying error is large. The cooling trend from 1880-1890 would also have been not different, to a statistically significant level, from the trend any of those warming periods. That’s one reason why it’s generally recommended that you check trends over thirty years at least.
AGW predicted warming on the basis of the accumulation of CO2 and the radiative consequences. And it warmed. The warming is not the proof of the AGW effect, but it’s certainly consistent with it.
Mr Eschenbach,
I’m curious why you didn’t address ocean warming, which is where most scientists believe the excess heat content is accumulating.
It’s important to point out gaps in the theory, but it gives a confusing impression when the area with the largest heat storage capacity on Earth – the oceans – are left out. I’d appreciate it if you could help me understand why you’re not looking at ocean temperatures.
JAE
WHY is the temperature not higher in those areas with increased greenhouse gases?>
For the same reason that in a warming trend the arctic zones heat up much faster than the equatorial zones despite greenhouse gases like water vapour and ozone being pretty much absent. There are a lot of processes that move energy around the planet and it is the sum of those that result in a given temperature in a given place. Just as most of the greenhouse gas (water vapour) is at the equator, the heat trapped there raises the rate of convection which moves energy away from where it is being trapped. as a consequence temperature variability is muted at the equator where there’s lots of greenhouse gas, and accentuated at the poles where there’s not much. Over simplification but you get the idea.
Excellent summary of the situation.
Sad that the complicit media “erased” some of the damaging testimony — but, that sort of thing is expected.
Today Fox News had an interview with a skeptic about global warming and the weather. I only caught the tail end of the interview. She announced that President Obama has formed a cabinet level post, not authorized yet by Congress, to be Climate Guardians. The administration has dropped global warming as a concern and is now focused on climate change and pollution. They are citing the recent snow storms as evident that pollution (CO2) is causing major storms. Thus it doesn’t matter what the average global temperature is any more, any major weather disturbance is reason to control CO2 emission and install cap and trade. Thus, administration dos not need IPCC or CRU or NASA science to justify the control of carbon in the atmosphere. I am flabbergasted! They have thrown science under the bus! Have any of you heard about the new Climate watchdogs?
” mandolinjon (19:54:19) :
“Today Fox News had an interview with a skeptic about global warming and the weather. I only caught the tail end of the interview. She announced that President Obama has formed a cabinet level post, not authorized yet by Congress, to be Climate Guardians.”
This is the same NOAA power grab that was announced last week.
http://tinyurl.com/yaxodbe
@TLM (04:28:52) :
“The article would be fine if the fundamental question AGW proponents were asking was the cause of recent warming. Actually that is not what most of the AGW people are arguing. Their question is not “what has caused the recent warming” but “will pumping billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere cause future warming”.
What I think they are asking is “will pumping billions of dollars into researching CO2 get me millions in research dollars ?”
More on the non-anomalies at this site … the edifice built on sand is crumbling fast …
Nick Stokes (19:26:03)
So if it is meaningless as you suggest, why did Phil Jones mention it at all? My point, as Jones said, is that there is no statistically significant difference between the three periods of warming.
Now, if the most recent warming had been longer, there might have been a statistically significant difference. And as Phil said, if the earliest warming had been longer, there might have been a statistically significant difference. And if my aunt had wheels, she’d be a tea tray.
So what? We have to work with what is, not what might have been.
The fact remains that the most recent warming is not different from either earlier period, one of which seven years longer than the current period. It is also not different from earlier warming in the CET and Armagh records.
If it makes you feel better, throw out the earliest modern warming period entirely. Notice what difference it makes to my conclusions. NONE. Erase the period you are bitching about and there is still nothing to indicate that the recent warming is unusual in any way. Which is what I said above.
So you can take your accusations of a “sound bite” and stuff them where the sun don’t shine. I explained this before. If you don’t like it, fine. If you didn’t understand my earlier explanation, fine. But don’t try to insult me by calling my explanation a sound bite just because you are the one who was soundly bitten …
PS – you say
Ummm … wake up and smell the coffee. There has been no statistically significant warming since 1995. AGW predicted warming on the basis of the accumulation of CO2 and the radiative consequences. And it didn’t warm. The lack of predicted warming is not the falsification of the AGW effect, but it’s certainly consistent with it.
TLM (04:28:52)
So if I understand you, you are saying the fundamental question being asked is not whether the recent warming was caused by CO2, and a fundamental question the IPCC asked was whether the recent warming was caused by CO2 …
Well, that’s clear as mud.
Look, before we can answer your question (will CO2 cause warming in the future), we first have to answer a simpler question: does CO2 cause warming now or in the past? I mean, we can’t answer questions about the future, can we? We can only answer questions about the present and the past.
So the only way to answer your question about the future is to show that CO2 caused (or didn’t cause) the historical warming … you see the problem?
Re: Willis Eschenbach (20:36:29)
That article mentions Anthony Watts’s work on temperature stations and their problems. I’ve thought for years now that Anthony’s angle was promising and fresh, targeting some clay feet. There are folks who get their paperwork right and get taken in and, on the other hand, there are folks who are hands-on and find the devil in the details. Okay, that’s simplistic. One should talk to both the accountant (CYA paperwork) and the construction site manager (cut some corners and git ‘er done). Jeez, now I’m being even more simplistic. I should just cut to the chase and say that I’m really doubtful about those who say that they’ve already factored temperature-station problems in, nothing to see here, move on etc.
Paul Daniel Ash (19:26:22)
As Phil Jones pointed out in his interview,
So neither Phil nor I are ignoring the ocean temperatures in any sense.
Ummm … wake up and smell the coffee. There has been no statistically significant warming since 1995.
72% chance of a warming trend.
14% chance of a cooling trend.
Can’t cross ‘go’ and collect $200 yet.
But I’m a patient man.
Mr. Eschenbach,
Thank you!
Clear thinking is one of the rarest and most valuable things in this world.
davidmhoffer:
I like the way you summed up the whole “climate change” religion in the most concise and scathing manner:
In primitive tribes, when the volcano erupted, the shaman said the spirits were angry and must be appeased. Throw in a virgin. Every year that the volcano didn’t erupt was now proof that throwing in a virgin prevented eruptions. If the volcano DID erupt again, that was proof that they weren’t throwing in ENOUGH virgins, so go get more. The shaman wasn’t interested in determining the link, if any, between virgins and eruptions. He was interested in fitting the data to his theory so he could maintain his position as shaman.
Re: Willis Eschenbach (Feb 13 21:09),
“We have to work with what is, not what might have been.”
No, you’re working with arbitrary intervals that someone made up. If you choose short intervals, you have less chance of getting a statistically significant result. It doesn’t disprove anything.
Nick Stokes (23:27:14)
“Arbitrary intervals that someone made up”? You’re not following the bouncing ball here. We’re working with the start and the end of intervals of warming. Nobody made the intervals up. Nobody “chose” the length of the intervals as you claim. They were set by the instrumental record. You know, they start when it started to warm up, and they end when it started to cool down … take a look at the record if this is still confusing to you.
As I said, you can throw away the short warming record if you want. It makes no difference. Don’t like it? Go argue with Phil Jones. He said, and I quote,
Throw out the short record you don’t like, the remaining are still “similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.” Which is what I said, that the recent warming is in no way unusual or anomalous. Why is this so hard for you to understand?
What are you trying to assert here, Nick? What is your point? You say “It doesn’t disprove anything”, which makes no sense. What is “It”? What are you saying “It” doesn’t disprove?
I have made a simple claim. Modern warming (1975 – 1998) is not unusual. It is not distinguishable from earlier warming periods. It is not an anomaly. Similar warming has happened in the past, and more than once. There is no indication that it is any different than earlier warming, which is generally agreed to be from natural variation.
If you disagree with those statements, say why and how. Because saying “It doesn’t disprove anything” doesn’t mean anything to me.
A Great article and some facinating comments. It is good to see there are still many of us fighting this AGW rubbish. They are hoisting themselves, as they say, with their own petard.
I have a couple of interesting links in my blog today that shred the CO2 theorgy nicely.
http://just-me-in-t.blogspot.com/2010/02/semantics.html
>>>rw (05:21:15) :
>>>Strange that the graph here of the Central England
>>>Temperature record does not much resemble the
>>>data as shown here, by the people who produce the record.
Yes it does. You have picked an anomaly graph, instead of a temperature graph. Here is the original data.
http://www.climate4you.com/CentralEnglandTemperatureSince1659.htm
It has just a hint of UHI effect in the last 40 years, which gives 1oc of extra warming.
.
@ Ron Broberg (15:06:33) :
My, you like using bold. Hope you don’t mind if I skip it when quoting from your post.
AGW predicts warming.
It wasn’t invented to explain it.
Warming did not lead to AGW CO2 theories. CO2 warming theories were advanced in the 19th Century. (…)
*ahem*
From here:
Did you catch it this time?
Tyndall thought there were massive layers of ice in the past, which now were gone. To him, this was evidence of warming, and drastic warming at that. From this came greenhouse theory, then AGW CO2 theories later.
Warming did lead to AGW CO2 theories.
GW CO2 theories (no “A”) were invented to explain warming. After expanding them to AGW CO2 theories by figuring in the additional CO2 contributions by humans, they were used to explain recent warming.
Any further arguing is over semantics. And will miss an essential point, that current AGW CO2 theories do a shoddy job of even attempting to account for natural reasons for recent warming, preferring to instead squarely blame man for the warming. And that is a travesty.
Re: Willis Eschenbach (Feb 13 23:46),
“Nobody “chose” the length of the intervals as you claim.”
Well, where did they come from. Nature doesn’t ring a bell at the end of a warming period. 2008 was cool, 2009 warmer. If 2010 is cooler again, is that the end of a warming period.? As Ron Broberg pointed out for warming since 1995, There’s only a 26% chance that you’d get that from random (natural?) variation. It’s not long enough to get 95% certainty, but it’s warming.
Jones carefully caveated his statement by
“Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length.”
It didn’t come across well in the interview format, but he’s clearly explaining the issue re statistical significance. Then he says, carefully:
“So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.”
He could (and probably should) have simply said, “in answer to the question, no, they are not identical”. He’s trying to make the question make scientific sense. You’re turning it back into nonsense.
This is altogether too straightforward and inarguable. How are we going to provide employment for “thousands of scientists” who thought there was “overwhelming evidence” of human-induced global warming – when even Blind Freddie can see that there isn’t a job to be done?
For several centuries now, scientists always and everywhere have respected the principle of “Occam’s Razor” – which requires over-complex hypotheses to give way to simple and elegant explanations of the available data.
An explanation that “it must be wrong because my model can’t replicate it”, is undercut by the fact that the models can’t replicate the other two modern warming periods either. This argument has been met in the past by denying that the 1860-1880 and 1910-1940 warming rates were reasonably comparable with 1975-2009. Now the guru himself, Phil Jones, has stated unequivocally (on the BBC no less) that all three periods “are similar and not statistically significantly different”.
Game,set and match!
Reply
Excellent post. I always thought that CET record falsifies the claims about unprecedented temperature and unprecedented warming very easily.
http://www.climate4you.com/CentralEnglandTemperatureSince1659.htm
Willis, another great post.
The AGW data falls apart every time we actually focus on individual stations, rather than the gridded pea soup that the “world data records” try to feed people.
A request to posters: please don’t degrade things like shamanism by comparison with climate science fraud. There are shamans with skill and integrity, who work in ways nothing remotely like what has been fancifully suggested, and there are sham shamans, just as there are good and bad scientists; the shams do not invalidate the true discipline. You need to do adequate research before you can pronounce on this – research from the best of all sides.
In response to my query to the Met Office about differences between station data and CRU data, they gave me the following statement. It seems the data cannot be relied on.
“It is inevitable that available archive versions for some stations will differ between data held by National Met Services, including the Met Office, and those in the archive prepared by the Climatic Research Unit at University of East Anglia. Indeed, explicit wording to this effect was required in the letters sent to gain permission to release data under the purview of each NMS. Most of these data recovery and digitisation efforts occurred in the days before widespread computer networks, designated world data centres etc. Therefore such vagaries as the choice of record version (there are often several paper records for the same station that may differ), choice of stored data accuracy, exact location details, and length of record digitised are
bound to differ for at least some stations. Further, either the NMS and/or CRU may have applied adjustments to the data. Differences between the archives cannot be used in any meaningful or quantifiably defensible sense to infer the absolute quality of either the CRU archive or records held by others. “
RE: Ron Broberg (12:07:02) : “AGW theory arises from (first) an understanding of the radiation properties of the CO2 atom and (second) the interactions of these physical properties in a broader climatic system. Warming is the prediction that results from AGW theory.”
The ‘W’ in AGW stands for warming so one cannot separate the ‘theory’ from the prediction. You seem to be confusing the ‘Greenhouse Effect’ with the [Catastrophic] Anthropogenic Global Warming ‘theory’ — more correctly ‘hypothesis’ or technical legend. I believe this technical legend is in fact based on a lack of public understanding CO2 absorption and its minor role as a greenhouse agent.
Recently, Science Magazine Online has reported a NOAA study indicating that stratospheric water vapor (SWV) concentrations decreased by about 10% after the year 2000. They say this has reduced the temperature increase from 2000 to 2009 by about 25% compared to that due to other greenhouse gases. They also say there is also some evidence that SWV increased between 1980 and 2000, which would have enhanced the warming during the 1990s by about 30% compared to estimates neglecting this effect.
Terrence C Mills ( Terry Mills, T. C. Mills ) and David I. Harvey at Loughborough University have published several analyses of the Central European record. They’ve also studied other temperature records.
I had a specific URL, but I’ve lost it and can’t find it again.
The base aim of HEIs is to bring in income.
They spent 20 years bringing in income.
It appears that this income stream may be under strain.
So they’ll try and find some other ones.
That’s what, ultimately, HEIs are about. Income generation.
What’s truth got to do with that, unless it stops income coming in??
<i
So neither Phil nor I are ignoring the ocean temperatures in any sense.
I’m not sure what you mean, sir. Your presentation shows two graphs from the CET and Armagh. The Hadley Center data graph is quite different.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/CR_data/Monthly/HadCRUGNS_3plots_index.gif
Nick Stokes (01:05:17) :
Then he (Jones) says, carefully:
“So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.”
He could (and probably should) have simply said, “in answer to the question, no, they are not identical”.
That being the case, the following link compares the warming rates with the log of CO2 and includes the four periods:
http://leif.org/research/CET2.png
The red lines are CO2 concentration. Please explain to us why CO2 had no effect on temperature in the previous periods.
Paul Daniel Ash
I’m curious why you didn’t address ocean warming, which is where most scientists believe the excess heat content is accumulating>
I shall bow to Willis’ response to you, he being an actual scientist and me just a pretend scientist, but I find these scientists pursuing excess heat content in the ocean a bit amusing. Having attributed the properties of energy generation to CO2, and/or underestimating or ignoring negative feedbacks in their models, they are desperately trying to find a place where the energy they invented to warm the planet is going, since it isn’t warming the planet. The notion that perhaps the energy they invented never existed doesn’t seem to have crossed their minds, so the big gigantic ocean must be where its going.
The problem is the physics doesn’t work. Sunshine being short wave, it can penetrate the ocean up to as much as 300 meters. In brief, it could in theory heat up the top 300 meters of ocean. The long wave radiance re-radiated by CO2 and water vapour can only penetrate the top few millimeters of ocean. Heating up such a thin layer of water would certainly transfer SOME energy to the ocean, but MOST of what we are talking about would result in that thin top layer evaporating into the atmosphere, taking the heat with it.
So if some scientist finds a gigantic heat reservoir in the ocean that is coming out now or in the future, I can understand how past fluctuations in solar energy might have built that. Longwave radiation… not so much.
Paul Daniel Ash (06:29:05) :
The Graph you kave linkd to is an Anomaly graph, not actual mean Temperatures.
Lucy Skywalker:
A request to posters: please don’t degrade things like shamanism by comparison with climate science fraud>
My apologies Lucy. I had no idea you had a soft spot for shamans. Obviously there were shamans who plied their craft with great skill in order to guide and benefit their tribes, and these may even have been in the majority. I should not have used a broad brush.
How about Nostradamus instead? He built a reputation for being able to predict the future, but the historical record shows that he was sued repeatedly by his customers when his predications failed to materialize. His response was to make MORE predictions that the court had to wait and see the result of, while he continued to sit on his fat fees. What this shows is that having the ability to tell the future is not nearly so important as being paid to up front.
Hi you all!
I have noticed that a hot debate is still the issue on whether or not CO2 has anything to do with global warming. Personally I donot believe anymore in global warming as such because it cannot happen. Earth has its own cooling plant with a built-in thermostat.
But before I realised that, I looked at the carbon dioxide issue, mostly because of Al Gore’s movie (made me feel guilty about driving a car)
I will agree with the warmists that CO2 traps heat (from earthshine 24hours per day) because of the absorption of CO2 in the 14-15um wavelength. I say, good, fine I believe you. But likewise there must be cooling because of various absorptions of CO2 in the range from 0-5 um (from sunshine 12 hours per day)! This cooling must logically take place everywhere where there is CO2 and where sunlight hits on the molecule regardless of height or pressure.. It is even so apparent that this happens that this radiation can be measured as it reflects back from the moon. So my question was and is: exactly how much cooling and how much warming is caused by the carbon dioxide?
So far no one has been able to show me the balance sheet i.e. exactly how much cooling and how much heating is caused by CO2. My point is that we (scientists) really have not established if CO2 really does cause warming. They did tests with 100% CO2 but that is the wrong kind of science. You have to prove your theory in the proper range i.e. 200-500 ppm. Every scientist knows that properties differ at various concentrations of solutions.
It appears that I cannot find this research because it seems to me that such a simple observation of mine (ie. that CO2 also must cause cooling) has never been taken into account. Where the IPCC got its values from (for “forcings”) is a mystery to me but it appears not to be based on actual measurements (research) that would produce a formula of some sorts. I think they were all just weighted values.
(e.g. “global warming” related to the conc. of CO2 since 1750 AD. Theory: Let us have planet, add some carbon dioxde, see if the temp. went up , it did, so that must be it. But that is working at a solution to the problem, if you are 100% sure what the cause of the problem is. Nevermind Willis’ theory here that we donot really have a problem – which I agree with)
Like Willis said earlier, all I could find is computer models. Svante Arrhenius formula does not work. If his observations had been correct, earth should have been a lot warmer by now.
So what I donot understand is: why don’t one of these so-called warmists (Leonardo di Caprio?) sue the gas companies (for causing global warming) instead of trying to convince us that it is our problem. Then you must see how quickly the gas companies will find the money to carry our the proper research to prove that it is not the carbon dioxide….
To me, the whole CO2 science is an unbelievable scam, the hottest hoax of this century. Obviously there must be big interest groups, those that are bigger than the gas companies, (even our pension funds!) that want this scam to continue.
I’m a fake scientist too. However, 300 metres of seawater times the surface area of the world’s oceans (~3.61 X 10^14 sq. m.) sounds like a “gigantic heat reservoir” to me.
Willis Eschenbach (20:36:29) :
More on the non-anomalies at this site … the edifice built on sand is crumbling fast …
Willis, notice how they are all jumping on Anthony & Joe’s band wagon now that the tide has turned.
Lucy Skywalker;
A request to posters: please don’t degrade things like shamanism by comparison with climate science fraud>
My apologies Lucy, since of course there were good shamans and bad shamans, and the latter may certainly have been in the minority. Throwing virgins into volcanoes just got a lot more press… er… stone tablet references… than curing fever did. May I pick on Nostradamus instead?
He has to this day a mysterious reputation for predicting the future, but examination of his personal records by historians shows that he was repeatedly sued by clients when his predictions failed to come true. What this shows is that it is far less important to make accurate predictions than it is to get paid in advance for them.
I’m a fake scientist too. However, 300 metres of seawater times the surface area of the world’s oceans (~3.61 X 10^14 sq. m.) sounds like a “gigantic heat reservoir” to me.>
It is gigantic. Point being that the Sun is capable of heating it, greenhouse gases are not.
Tim Clark (07:03:21) :
Opps. wrong graph.
http://leif.org/research/CETandCO2.pdf
Nick Stokes (01:05:17) :
Re: Willis Eschenbach (Feb 13 23:46),
“Nobody “chose” the length of the intervals as you claim.”
Well, where did they come from. Nature doesn’t ring a bell at the end of a warming period.
Phil Jones doesn’t seem to have a problem identifying them. Nor do I. Nor does Willis.
You seem to be in a minority. We have the consensus. 😉
The periods also coincide with other indices like PDO, LOD and changes in the rate the magnetic north pole moves around. In fact, so many natural variables swing together on this, poor little Billy no mates co2 seems all lost and alone, not correlating with anyone at the party.
“Paul Daniel Ash (08:07:55) :
I’m a fake scientist too. However, 300 metres of seawater times the surface area of the world’s oceans (~3.61 X 10^14 sq. m.) sounds like a “gigantic heat reservoir” to me.”
Very good. And what do we call the heat in that reservoir? Ocean Heat Content – OHC. And has it risen since 2003? No, it hasn’t.
Richard Telford, your claims on behalf of Ralph F. Keeling are at odds with his own published work. Here is a rather a nice non-copywriten paper that covers the fiendishly difficult background to measuring the steady state levels of atmospheric gasses. Note also how he is very modest with his claims, knowing that the system he is viewing is very complex. In this paper he is measuring changes in Ar/N2. Note that N2 concentrations are biotic, but Ar is not. Keeling is doing very nice science, and points out the problems associated with measurement.
I urge you to read it before trying to state that the fall in O2 levels is due to CO2 generation.
http://bluemoon.ucsd.edu/publications/mip/Ar.pdf
RE: Henry Pool (08:00:51) :
In the case of the CO2 Greenhouse Effect, I think this is more a case of settled public perception rather than scientific understanding. Here is one recent article:
New Research into Greenhouse Effect Challenges Theory of Man-Made Global Warming
“A former NASA contractor whose theory demonstrating that the greenhouse effect is constant and self-regulating and that increases in human CO2 emissions are not the source of global warming is fighting an uphill battle to publish his controversial work.
“Developed by prominent atmospheric physicist Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi, the new theory is enormously significant because it demolishes the prevailing doctrine of anthropogenic greenhouse warming (AGW), which blames humans for pumping CO2 into the atmosphere and triggering runaway global warming that could eventually lead to catastrophic climate change.”
http://www.examiner.com/x-32936-Seminole-County-Environmental-News-Examiner~y2010m2d9-New-research-into-greenhouse-effect-challenges-theory-of-manmade-global-warming
It’s time to halt Cap and Trade and all other forms of Carbon Taxation until the scientific community have produced a truthful and transparent appraisal of what, if anything, is happening. I am a Heating Engineer and Energy Assessor – my whole objective is to conserve a our natural resources until viable, economical alternatives can be found, and to saving businesses money. I know (being an expert!) that you can only get a pint of milk out of a pint bottle and it eventually becomes empty – that I believe of oil and gas.
The businesses are struggling, especially in this economic climate. I get many enquiries (corporate to small private) where the solutions to them meeting their targets are beyond their financial means- even with grants (which are false economy anyway). At present they know they will be penalised by the carbon tax regulations, but they are not able to do much about it. The EPBD 2006 (Energy Performance in Buildings Directive), is at the moment being reviewed by the European Parliament and more than likely extended with even more regulations, policies and policing to enforce the regulations. If it turns out that most of the data is inaccurate and corrupt, then this will go down as the biggest Political and Corporate scam and theft of all time – billions absolutely and totally wasted. That money could have been invested in alternative technology, which would have solved their problem anyway – even if warming did turn out to be true. Unfortunately it looks as though the Chinese and Indians have beaten us to it
with their alternative energy technology.( they have no global warming policy to worry about).
Its now time to bottom it all out, cut out the bad once and for all and move forward. If these recent revelations turn out to be true, in a way, we only have ourselves to blame for not being more vigilant – there must have been enough doubters, scientists and politicians out there over the last forty years to question the events that have led us to this situation?
I suggest that top threads should be flagged and/or included in a pop-up listing in the sidebar.
DirkH
Very good. And what do we call the heat in that reservoir? Ocean Heat Content – OHC. And has it risen since 2003? No, it hasn’t>
There’s some easily accessed data that doesn’t make a conclusive point, but should make anyone on the CO2 bandwagon pause and go huh? Over here http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ you can see a plot at 3400 meters of the CO2 concentration in the atmoshpere (this is the one IPCC et all keep referring to). You can easily see that CO2 concentrations peak about july/august each year.
Now zip over to the AMSU-A site where you can see their satellite temperature data. You will need java installed on your browser. Click on the “global atmospheric trend” link and you can look at any channel or year that you want on the graph. Unfortunately they don’t have a channel at 3400 meters, but they do have one at 4400 meters which is reasonably close. Every year peak around July/August. Then turn on the “near surface” channel. Every year, peak around July/August. Now turn on the Sea Surface channel. Oops, where did the July/August peak go? The peak moved to more like february/march and actually has a depression in July/August.
So… what ever energy transfers are taking place between atmosphere and near surface seem linked, though which drives which is a different question, the oceans merrily wander around responding to input variations from the sun and angle of the earth’s axis to it (which would maximize energy input in feb/mar due to preponderance of ocean in southern hemisphere) and pretty much ignoring any long wave energy transfers from the atmosphere.
Which would fit exactly with the physics….
Now zip over to the AMSU-A site
AAAAARG forgot the link:
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
Henry@Spector
But why do we not get the big oil companies to give a grant to research the whole issue again (seeing that so many people have come to “believe” that CO2 is a problem) ?
I don’t know about the site you are quoting, why doesn’t the guy stand up for himself?
Anyway, again, he does not show me a balance sheet…i.e cooling in W/m3/24 hour versus warming in W/m3/24hour?
and i meant peak of sst in march/april not feb/mar
too much wine today I think.
Henry Pool (09:53:26) : “I don’t know about the site you are quoting…”
Neither did I, but just for reference, according to the Wikipedia, Examiner.com is a media company based in Denver, Colorado, that operates a network of hyper-local news websites, allowing citizen journalists to share their city-based knowledge on a blog-like platform, in over 100 markets. It is a division of Clarity Media Group, with the primary investor being conservative billionaire Philip Anschutz.
Rob (13:13:29), nice video. It supports what EM Smith as been saying for quite awhile. The warming that we have seen is at night and at higher latitudes. Note you don’t see the warmers addressing this because it cuts the legs out of any argument that AGW will lead to major problems.
The real impact of the recent measured warming (if you accept it as true) is longer growing seasons, more arable land and higher crop yields. Not exactly a catastrophe.
BTW, has anyone wondered about the oddity with AMSU? Both channels 4 and 5 are tracking almost exactly with last years ups and downs. I know it’s only been a month and a half, but it still seems unusual.
I wish I May
I wish I Might
Have My global
warming tonight
Could the milder winters we observed in the Uk since the 90s have anything to do with increased water vapour in the stratosphere which recent research seems to indicate occured because of tropical storms at this time?
DocMartyn (08:54:05)
An interesting technical paper. But a little further digging on at Keeling’s group’s site would have uncovered several papers describing how they interpret their results on oxygen concentration. For example Langenfelds et al 1999 Partitioning of the global fossil CO2 sink using a 19-year trend in atmospheric O2, Geophysical Research Letters, 26, 1897-1900. http://bluemoon.ucsd.edu/publications/ralph/25_Partition.pdf
There are numerous other paper by this group linking a decline in oxygen concentration with fossil fuel combustion. I don’t know why you find this so contentious: burning carbon consumes oxygen. With sufficiently precise instrumentation, like that Keeling has produced, this can be detected and used to help partition the CO2 sink into its various components.
RE: Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi’s theory of climate stabilization:
For what it is worth, here is a You Tube Video I have just found where Dr Miklos Zagoni explains his Hungarian colleagues new research on Greenhouse gasses that show CO2 will not increase the Earth’s temperature any further. (April 27 2009)
Nick Stokes (01:05:17) :
Re: Willis Eschenbach (Feb 13 23:46),
(…) As Ron Broberg pointed out for warming since 1995, There’s only a 26% chance that you’d get that from random (natural?) variation. It’s not long enough to get 95% certainty, but it’s warming.
(…)
Following that Ron Broberg link, one gets:
I’ve searched this page for “26”, you’re the only source of that percentage. I followed the link in the Ron Broberg post, which came from Willis Eschenbach (20:52:24). No 26% there either.
Where did you pull that 26% from?
kadaka (01:34:23) :
Nick Stokes is prone to mis-quoting all the time so being out by a factor of at least 2 is good for Nick Stokes. For example he loves to quote from NOAA reports and swear blind that that is how the adjustments are done rather than actually read the code for himself instead.
He’s also not too good at checking back to the original sources as opposed to just taking what is written in a report as gospel. In that sense he’d make for a perfect IPCC reviewer.
Cherry picking? Check. Incomplete information? Check.
All the hallmarks of a Willis Eschenbach post are present.
Boris,
“Cherry picking? Check. Incomplete information? Check”
Stop looking in the mirror at yourself.
RE: Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach “So my question remains unanswered … where is the anomaly? Where is the unusual occurrence that we are spending billions of dollars trying to explain?”
One might argue that the climate in England must be abnormal due to fluctuations in the Gulf Stream. One might ask Dr. Mann to do a study based on tree-ring proxies to get more ‘reliable’ data beyond the influence North Atlantic. One might…
Willis Eschenbach appears to have convinced some people that there is nothing even “slightly abnormal” about temperatures in “Merrie Olde England”, which have only been increasing slowly.
Of course, if you plot the temperatures on a graph with a range of 40deg.C, as Willis does, then you can guarantee not to show much of any warming that has occurred. You could call it, “hiding the increase”.
But, if you want to see how things have actually changed, then use a graph with an appropriate scale on the y-axis. Like this one, for example, which shows the ten-year average CET temperature anomaly since the seventeenth century:
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/cet10y.jpg
Slioch, I don’t think those anomaly graphs are going to be very trendy from now on.
Slioch (14:12:39) :
(…)
Of course, if you plot the temperatures on a graph with a range of 40deg.C, as Willis does…
The first graph goes +25 to -10 deg C, a range of 35. The second goes +20 to -10, a range of 30.
Oh well, not like I should expect something truthful and straightforward from you. Considering where that too-simplified graph you linked to comes from, http://tamino.wordpress.com/, is a blog titled “Open Mind,” with the current most recent post being:
Open Mind. Yeah, sure. Uh-huh. Right…
kadaka (22:08:40)
Yes, you are quite right, the merrie Olde england graph has a range of 35deg.C, not 40.
I’m sure I remember noting that it was 35C – I must be getting glaikit … .
But otherwise I find nothing of merit in your post. The graph I linked to shows the ten year average of the Central England Temperatures series and clearly shows the warming that Willis Eschenbach goes to great lengths to hide. What does it matter what the source of the graph is?
Although I rate Tamino’s abilities and clarity of thought very highly, (and the “Summer and Smoke” February 15, 2010 article to which you refer, here:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/summer-and-smoke/#more-2279
is a must read for WUWT followers) … the “too simplified graph” to which you refer can be replicated by anyone with a little skill with Excel, so its origin is irrelevant.
But in what way is it “too simple”? It contains all the data from the CET series with the temperature values averaged over ten year periods. That has the advantage of largely smoothing out the influence of such things as El Nino/La Nina episodes or volcanic eruptions and all the other events that cause short-term changes to the temperature series. By “simplifying” the graph this irrelevant noise is largely removed and the underlying changes made more obvious. There are of course more sophisticated methods of smoothing graphs, but it seems to me that the great advantage of ten (or five or whatever) year averages is that most people can replicate them themselves: they can take the raw data and see from their own efforts that what people like Tamino are saying is true.
Tamino’s graph has a range of a couple of degrees or so: entirely appropriate since that is the range of temperature variation involved.
You tell me why it is appropriate to draw a graph with a range of 35C for England or 30C for Armagh unless your purpose is to obscure the warming that has occurred.
Kadaka – the origin matters, because the graph or its underlying data might well have been tweaked, or corrected, or adjusted, or homogenised.
We know from Prof Phil Jones that the current warming was matched by earlier global warmings in 1860-80 and 1910-40. Is it just bad luck that CET (as per your graphical version) missed out on both of these previous events?
à monsieur Watts et ses “afficionados”
peut-être seraient vous intéressés par le “truc” (trick?) de Mr Watts concernant la présentation des données HadCET?
http://www.climat-evolution.com/article-serie-ancienne-un-autre-point-de-vue-45051548.html
j’espère que vous pardonnerez l’énorme faute d’orthographe.
Il faut lire:
“peut-être serez-vous intéressés….”
Barry Brill (03:38:24)
I think your post was addressed to me rather than Kadaka. You state, “the origin matters, because the graph or its underlying data might well have been tweaked, or corrected, or adjusted, or homogenised.”
Then go to the source of the information here:
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/ssn_HadCET_mean.txt
Paste this into Excel. Go to Data (in Excel 2007 if you have it) click on Text to Columns and just follow through the wizard so that you get the five columns of data (year, spring , summer, autumn, winter) in five separate columns. Average the seasonal data in another column to the right to give you annual means, then again average those annual means into ten year means. Plot a graph of the results. (You get a better graph if you subtract 9 from the ten year average temperatures, so that the range is from c. -1.5 to +1.5 .) It is just the same as the one Tamino provided (though not as pretty, at least not with my limited IT skills).
It is just ridiculous to go on year after year being misled by graphs like that provided by Willis Eschenbach when the raw data is there for the picking and anyone with a computer and the most basic skills can see for themselves what the data actually shows.
Tamino’s (and my) graph does show the 1910 to 1940 warming (though the ten year averages are centred on 1915, 25, 35 etc. so it is slightly different) and also ac. 20 year rise around 1860.
Slioch (02:03:14) :
Why is something a “must read” that starts off talking about “D’Aleo and Watts’s denialist document”? What benefit is derived from reading such overtly biased drivel that one must experience it? What is next? Will you recommend I study anti-Semitic hate speech to understand the politics in Israel?
Nah. As you stated in Slioch (07:04:26), the seasonal data was used, not the monthly as Mr. Eschenbach used. There is no trend line, no rate. It uses anomalies instead of real temperature values. As opposed to using a baseline range of years to compute anomalies as we are used to seeing, it looks like the graph was simply centered. Heck, it doesn’t even mention what the red dashed lines are. Too simple.
For the CET data, my attempt at graphing it with 5-degree major intervals also resulted in a +25 top line. The maximum value in the data is 19.7, apparently the software (Open Office for me) likes to have enough margin for a nice display so +25 it is. In the above graph, the 25-yr trailing trend data clearly dips below -5, so -10 gets chosen for the bottom line. Nothing nefarious there, the 35 deg range is simply how the graph turned out. For the Armagh graph, I can clearly see data above +15 and below -5, so +20 and -10 lines are generated, a 30 deg spread. For the CET graph, you could argue the top line should have been forced to +20, but that gets rid of the nice space where the trend info is.
Besides, what you seem to fail to realize, you are really complaining not about the range but about the aspect ratio. If the Y-axis was longer with the same range then you could more clearly see whatever-it-is you are going on about. If you are going to try to successfully complain about something, at least complain about the right thing.
Slioch (02:03:14)
I post it that way to show the amount of warming compared to something that we are familiar with — the month-by-month change in the actual temperature around us. That way, people can see that the furore is about a trivial change in a system that changes much, much more than that on a monthly basis.
However, my point is not the absolute size of the change, that’s a huge red herring you are dragging across the trail. The issue, whether you look at it big or small, is that there is no difference between the recent warming, the warmings of the last 150 years, or the warmings back as far as we have records.
Perhaps you’d care to comment on that, rather than on how the information is presented. Because the information is the same no matter how it is presented …
Slioch, I fear I don’t understand your long post about how to make a graph in Excel. You claim that my graph is “misleading” … umm, it’s the data. You get to see the changes. The data is the same, however, and it show NO STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT RECENT WARMING. Which is also what Phil Jones said. Forget the graph, that’s just a presentation tool. Do the math, and report back with your findings …
Have you found a statistically significant warming post 1980, as the AGW supporters claim? If so, please let us know, as I can’t find one in the data.
Also, why are you using monthly data that is averaged into seasonal data, and then averaging it to yearly data, then averaging it into ten year bins? All that does is reduce the degrees of freedom, making it less likely that you will find statistical significance.
Oh, yeah, Slioch, one last question.
You praise Tamino. I invite Grant Foster (Tamino, but too chicken to put his own name on his blog) to make his case here, where he cannot censor opposing views. I do not censor your, or anyone else’s, scientific views. The open exchange of ideas is crucial to the scientific process.
Tamino, on the other hand, censors anyone who disagrees with him. I asked too many questions on his site, and now he censors everything I write.
Do you really think that censoring people who disagree with you is science? … Serious question, bro’, I’d appreciate an answer.
Slioch, I just went and ran the CET numbers as you suggested above, averaging to annual and then into decadal bins. Here are my results for trends of different lengths:
Largest 30 year trend, 1690 – 1710
Largest 40 year trend, 1690 – 1720
Largest 50 year trend, 1690 – 1730
Largest 60 year trend, 1680 – 1730
Largest 70 year trend, 1670 – 1730
Largest 80 year trend, 1670 – 1740
Largest 90 year trend, 1670 – 1750
(Decadal averages listed by starting year of the decade, so “1690 – 1710” means the decade starting 1690 through the decade starting 1710, or thirty years.)
As I said, the issue is not how we graphically present the data. It is whether there is anything unusual about the recent warming. No matter how you slice it, as far as I can see the answer is no. The largest trends at a variety of lengths were over two centuries ago.
Now of course this is public science, so I invite you to check my results. I think that they are right, but I’ve been wrong many times, so let me know.
A final note. Because you have binned the data, the number of degrees of freedom is quite small. Because of this, only the trends of 50 years and longer are statistically different than zero at p less than 0.05 …
Hi Guys
Interesting discussion and debate – and I have to admit I have not followed all the details. However I do know that a lot of data is corrupted by the energy consumption in the vicinity of tempereature measureing stations. One can look at http://fitzgallery2.youthsite.net/main.php?g2_itemId=2575 to get some idea about concentrations of energy consumption (and yes before someone critisises me for the bleeding obvious, I realise this is a manufactured image because you’d never get clear skies over anything like this area at the same time).
Wherever there is an energy usage concentration temperature measurements are affected. In my state of Victoria in Australia, the CBD of Melbourne with a population approaching 4 M has a temperature profile that may be up to 2 degrees C higher than the surrounding area around the city (just checked at the moment and its plus 1.4-1.8 degrees C).
Hence would suggest that unless someone has long term temperature data from a wide range of locations where energy consumption is low (this would exclude data from any significant urban area, and arguably exclude all data from the Eastern half of the USA), has a good knowledge of natural phenomena that impact on temperatures generally (for example the irregular movement of weather patterns towards or way from the equator that may dramatically alter rainfall patterns from time to time and hence surface temperatures, or el nino and other oscillations) and really good data analysis skills, then we can never prove anything in respect of climate change.
However it is a simple matter to look at the data and come to a view that first world countries are consuming energy at an unsustainable rate. And then have the determination to influence governments and others to do something about that waste.
Saves an awful lot of arguments!
@ John Lambert (05:04:32)
Why do you think first world countries’ energy consumption rates are unsustainable? Do you have any evidence of that? You dont think mankind will be able to figure out ways to use even more energy in the future in sustainable ways, as he always has? Why the doom and gloom?
We once were thought to be running out of whale oil for lamps, and wood for fires and building, and you name it…but we didnt. We still have all those, and every other natural resource we ever used. We never ran out of a single one. Can you think of one we ran out of? We just found other sources and better technologies. Incidentally, we have enough plutonium to power all our electric needs for the next several thousand years. I bet we come up with heretofor undreamed of better things than that in that time. If we even need to.
@ Bubba
I have a simple view based on the ideal of the whole world having a smilar lifestyle. To achieve this goal would require annual energy consumption world wide to increase by 4 times. If the increase was to be supplied by oil and gas alone then production would need to increase 7 times – and there would be huge cost increases based on market demand. If the increase was to be supplied by coal alone then production would need to increase 15 times – and there would be huge cost increases. If the increase was to be supplied by nuclear alone then production would need to increase 70 times – and there is huge resistance to expanding nuclear energy electricity production in first world countries, and huge resiatance from first world countries to allowing many less advanced countries to go down the nuclear path because of fears of terrorism or nuclear weapons production (note if every nuclear power plant that has been proposed to date was built it would only double nuclear output.
Not only would you and I be paying several times the cost of current power, but the costs of all the things we purchase would go up dramatically because the cost of energy to produce them would go up, and the items sources from China, India, Korea and other low energy consumption countries would increase by 10 – 100 times because both energy costs and labour costs would increase dramatically.
The end result necessarily would be a significant lowering of the standard of living we enjoy.
That’s why the energy usage rate of first world countries like USA, Canada, the original EU countries, New Zealand and Australia is unsustainable.
John Lambert (13:39:25)
Aaah. So there is “huge resistance” to nuclear power in the first world. (Except for France, of course which gets almost 90% of its electricity from nuclear.)
So what you are saying is that the energy “problem” is political, rather than any real issue with natural resources or pollution or supply and demand. In other words, we have the means, the experience, the smarts, and the financing to sustain many times our energy usage right now, but certain people simply refuse to allow this to happen. Very well. That seems the most easy “problem” to fix, since no one I know is willing to give up their rising standard of living for a tiny minority’s political well-being, or some environmentalist’s irrational religion.
So we really have no need to pay “several times the cost of current power.” Nor do we have any reason for “the cost of all the things we purchase to go up dramatically” because of any energy reason either. We have oil and gas and coal to last for many decades at our current expanding usage rates, which is plenty enough time to convert to nuclear. We know how to contain the pollution those emit, and we know there is no CO2 causing any unprecedented or disastrous warming either. No need to lower anyone’s standard of living whatsoever. No need for any cost of items from China and India to go up “100 times” for any energy cost reason.
The increasing energy demands of the entire planet are are completely sustainable for thousands of years after all! Another crisis averted! Glory be!! We have the technology. We have the means. But do we have the political will to fight off the Gore’s and the Phil Jones’ of the world to keep mankind prospering?? We have indeed solved the argument as you have desired. That was pretty simple. End the elitist aims of socialism and government control over free people, thereby ending the energy crisis. Here’s to the very bright future ahead! Cheers.
Bubba and John, although this discussion is a good and interesting one, could I ask you to move it to a thread discussing future energy needs? I’d like to keep this thread focused on the idea of the lack of any abnormal warming.
Many thanks,
w.
Willis
Happy to oblige. Will leave your discussion reiterating my comments that until someone puts together a data set that enables “climate change” to be identified separately from the localised effects of high energy consumption raising temperatures at weather stations in cities and high energy consumption areas there will never be a proof either way
John Lambert (12:25:55) : edit
Thanks, John. If you take up the discussion elsewhere, let me know where, I wasn’t kidding that it is an interesting issue.
Regarding adjusting for the effects of industrialization, see Ross McKitrick’s article that does just that …
I’ve added more non-anomalies to the list.
Thanks Willis for all these updates. That really gives us a better picture. It proves that the zero hypothesis must be considered true: there is no global warming.
From this, my new hypothesis is this:
Carbondioxide (CO2) is good for life. My theory is that as CO2 rises this is good as it would lead to better crops (acting sort of like fertilizer) and would stimulate forest growth. To ask for a reduction in CO2 may be just as non-sensical as to ask for a reduction in water vapor.
Who wants to live in a desert?
Hi Willis
Read “Quantifying the influence of anthropogenic surface processes and inhomogeneities on gridded global climate data” by Ross R. McKitrick, and emailed him congratulating on his effort. The fact that at the broad level of analysis he used, the global “temperature increase” of 0.4 degrees C was halved is of great significance. I went on to point out the extreme difficulty in actually proving temperature change even at an individual site. And I used Australia’s two largest cities as examples.
Sydney CBD temperatures are moderated by the ocean along Sydney’s East and the harbour it surrounds. As a result maximum temperatures are generally much higher in the western areas of Sydney. And hence determining any urban energy consumption driven heating effect on the Sydney CBD is challenging.
Melbourne in contrast does not have an ocean influence. However it is well recognised that on average air temperatures reduce by 1 degree C per 150 metres increase in altitude. And Melbourne is at 33 m elevation and effectively within a basin with 40% of the 73 weather stations within 110 km being at altitudes 75 metres or more higher (~ 0.5 degree C difference). Just determining the altitude effect at each site is a challenge.
The global air temperature anomaly graph infers that ideally 150 years of continuous data is available, though it may be possible to use as few as 70 years. And the last 30 years are critical. The Melbourne site has 155 years of continuous data up to 2010. There is one site with 102 years of continuous data but it is at an altitude of 435 metres; a second site has 66 years of continuous data – however the spread of the Melbourne urban area means it has been part of the urban area for 25 years; and another site has 51 years of continuous data – but it is on the other side of the Dividing Range. Three other sites have 86 – 108 years of data, but the weather stations have been closed for at least 10 years.
AS a result just to analyse, calibrate and adjust Melbourne’s temperatures for the urban heating effect – it appears to lead to maximum temperatures around 1.5 degrees C higher than surrounding non-urban areas – would be very challenging and probably require weeks of detailed analysis.
And to do sufficient sites to accurately determine any global air temperature change could take 100’s of man years of work.
I’ve added more updates, including a Top Ten update …
w.
Hi Willis, may I suggest that you re-post everything now, so that more people will be able to see everything –
this is looking impressive.
rgrds.
Henry
Thanks, Henry. Let me think about that one, I hate to do things twice.
w.
John Lambert (06:58:44) : edit
Thanks, John, congratulations are always welcome, we need more activism to both acknowledge good work and call out bad.
For another look at the UHI issue, see Roy Spencer’s work here and here.
w.
Willis,
Fig. 7, your text:
“The Alaskan temperature is regulated by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation ( PDO). The PDO shifted from the cool phase to the warm phase around 1986, and has recently switched back to the cool phase. As you can see, other than the step changes due to the PDO, there is little variation in the Alaska temperatures”
I think the PDO shift from cool to warm phase was around 1976, not 1986. Matches the shift in temperature better as well…
Greg (16:00:35)
My bad, typing too fast. You are 100% correct. I’ll change it in the head post.
Many thanks,
w.