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
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
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) :
@ur momisugly 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.