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
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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.
.
@ur momisugly 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.