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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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!
@ur momisugly 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.
@ur momisugly 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.