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
rw (05:21:15), thanks for your questions. Questions are always more valuable than agreement.
Plot it yourself, and see what you get …
I filtered it with a 17 year window. If you don’t know what a 25 year trailing trend is, I fear this is not the place for an explanation.
As both the CET and the Armagh graphs show, there has been a slow but steady warming. Here’s a question for you. In a period of slow but steady warming, where will we be most likely to find the ten hottest years?
a) At the start of the record.
b) At the end of the record.
Perhaps you could enlighten us as to why this is “curious”, or why it requires an explanation.
Since the greatest warming in the CET and Armagh records is before 1850, I think that the statement that those were “before the modern rise in CO2” is quite accurate. The same is true of the 1850 – 1870 warming.
Even the 1910 – 1940 warming is generally not ascribed to CO2, even by AGW adherents. This is because the total CO2 change is too small. The rise from pre-industrial time to 1940 is only responsible for a theoretical increase in forcing of less than half a watt per square metre. This is far from enough to be the cause of the warming.
As a result, Phil Jones and other CO2 adherents generally say that the only place that we actually see the effect of CO2 is the 1970-1998 rise. So I stand by my statement.
Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Science is what we use to explain anomalies, to elucidate mysteries, to shed light on unexplained occurrences. For example, there is no great need for a scientific explanation of the sun rising in the morning. If one day the sun were to rise in the afternoon, however, that is an anomaly which would definitely require a scientific explanation. But there is no need to explain the normal everyday occurrences. We don’t need a new understanding if there is nothing new to understand.
PLM – I love your post Willis and will forward it to family who normally are persuaded by the “news” to “believe” in AGW. Howver, I’ll take the challenge! Many seemingly mundane occurrences such as a “rising” morning sun have caused extreme behavior by humans. Define “rising” – Relative to ones time/space. The investigation into the “rising” sun had a lot to deal with the aforementioned Copernicus, Galileo, etc. and much turmoil including Al Gore et al’s infatuation with “flat earthers”.
Anyway, an appropriate ongoing investigation into climate should be pursued, not the hysterical political efforts taking place even after Climategate. I have contacted my representative politicians to quash the CLIMATE SERVICE being pushed by the President. Last I looked our grandchildren’s credit was used up – especially for cronyism wasteful (misspending) redistribution of future financial credit.
Great piece, Willis. I would consider it a dagger to the AGW theory, except for the fact that the hypothesis is somewhat like Rasputin – it will not die very easily.
Everybody else – here is what Willis said when he started:
Science is what we use to explain anomalies, to elucidate mysteries, to shed light on unexplained occurrences.
Now, how is that statement “narrow” or “anti-science” (an accusation made by one blogger on this particular post)? The entire world was, at one time, unexplained and unknown to us. So shedding light on unexplained occurrences seems to me to be exactly what science has done over the millenia. Implicit in the statement, too, is the fact that in order to explain anomalies, one must know what is ordinary, what is natural or normal in terms of existing conditions.
The Carl Sagan quote posted by pwl above says it all. Extraordinary claims DO require extraordinary evidence. And nothing that I have seen to date tells me that we are experiencing anything other than natural variation. We need to understand a LOT more about climate, a LOT more, before we can decide that the “anomalies” we see are extraordinary or not. We have only begun to scratch the surface of this subject, I believe. Any scientist who tries to tell me otherwise is barking up the wrong tree.
TLM (04:28:52) :
Absolutely not. The AGW proponents, starting with James Hansen and including all the rest, claim that we are already seeing the effects of AGW. Don’t you recall the claim that warming caused Katrina? Haven’t you heard the claims that warming is causing islands to sink? Haven’t you read that the recent “snowpocalypse” on the US East Coast was a result of AGW? Haven’t you read the articles claiming that warming is causing species extinction? There are thousands of claims of this type.
Richard Telford (05:51:54)
If you need “references to philosophers of science” to make a blog “proscience” rather than “antiscience”, then RealClimate and Bad Astronomy and ClimateAudit and a host of other blogs are antiscience. The idea that you need to quote philosophers in order to make a blog scientific is nonsense.
Your post is antiscience. It makes no substantive objection to my work. It does not fault my logic or my data. It does not say anything scientific about what I have done.
Instead, it makes a hand-waving claim that because I did not quote some un-named “philosophers of science”, the entire blog is “anti-science” … riiiiight …
So since you didn’t quote a single “philosopher of science” yourself, I suppose that proves that your post is “anti-science” as well?
Dear Willis,
you did it again. And I liked it, really,
your “down to earth approach” is allways valuable.
If your available time allows, keep supplying.
KlausB
His premise – you use science to study change – is strained. Actually it’s probably a dud. Climate is worthy of study, whether significant anomalies are being observed at the moment. Not that AGW isn’t just a tempest in a tea cup, so to speak. Maybe more like a squall in a soup bowl.
I want to see a poll with the following question answered:
Do you believe scientists have proven that human CO2 emissions will result in future climate changes that are significantly more dangerous to humans than the future climate changes that will occur without human CO2 emissions?
I would bet that more than 60% would answer no and that should drive the political debate — meaning, no one thinks we should do anything about CO2 emissions.
JimBob (07:37:37) :
Measurements of atmospheric Oxygen concentrations (actually O2/N2 ratio) are avaliable for about the last 20 years from http://bluemoon.ucsd.edu/images/ALLo.pdf This is Ralph Keelings’ group’s data. His PhD thesis from 1988 is online, and a Nature article http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v358/n6389/abs/358723a0.html describes some of the early results.
All things being equal, increasing the temperature of some water will cause it to outgass. But if you increase the partial pressure of the gas in the atmosphere, you can overcome this tendency and dissolve more gas. There wouldn’t be concern about ocean acidification if CO2 was not being absorbed by the oceans.
Photosysnthesis preferentially uses 12C over 13C, resulting in plant material, and hence fossil fuels, that are depleted in 13C, and an atmosphere enriched in 13C. When fossil fuels are burnt, the atmosphere becomes less enriched in 13C. There is a figure at http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/iso-sio/graphics/isomlogr.jpg
http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/4705/philjones.jpg
AMac (05:52:07)
See my posts, The Unbearable Complexity of Climate and The Thermostat Hypothesis, for a discussion of whether CO2 will lead to higher temperatures. The short answer is that the grounds for thinking that it is inevitable that increasing CO2 will significantly warm the globe are far, far from “established”.
Again, you are putting the cart before the horse. Before we can ask “what is the sensitivity of the climate to CO2”, we have to ask “is the climate sensitive to CO2”. And that is the subject of this post. To date, we have no evidence that CO2 has had any measurable effect on the modern climate. Start with that and work forwards, but don’t start with “CO2 has an effect on the climate and the question is how much”.
Your guess may or may not be right, and there’s lots of people who agree with your guess. I am merely pointing out that spending billions of dollars based on a guess seems … well … a bit premature, and definitely unscientific.
Back up here, my friend. I did not say there was no cause for investigation. It is a fascinating subject to investigate. We investigate all kinds of theories and hypotheses. And I am on record for years as supporting better record-keeping and better instrumentation and better sharing, that’s a no-brainer.
What I am saying is that to date, we have no anomaly which requires explanation. All we have is a fascinating theoretical puzzle, not a practical present-day problem that we should spend billions of dollars trying to remediate.
Where is the unusual occurrence that we are spending billions of dollars trying to explain?
Classic error.
You seem to think AGW theory exists to explain recent warming.
That is wrong.
AGW theory arises from (first) an understanding of the radiation properties of the CO2 atom and (second) the interactions of these physical properties in a broader climatic system. Warming is the prediction that results from AGW theory.
Vincent (06:30:40)
Oh, very good. For those who didn’t catch it, this is a funny back-reference to Kevin Trenberth’s statement in the released CRU emails, viz:
Funding climate-alarmism is a mistake, but real research on climate is extremely valuable and it should be funded to the teeth.
Willis: “Science is what we use to explain anomalies, to elucidate mysteries, to shed light on unexplained occurrences.”
No, Willis, science is now a propaganda tool that politicians use to control the world’s population.
As noted elsewhere, scientists “are not not half as stupid as they seem when they lie about the obvious.”
Pavlov’s dogs were trained with dog biscuits; Scientists have been trained with grant funds.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Emeritus Professor of
Nuclear & Space Science
Former NASA PI for Apollo
“the ‘magic’ CO2 tax.” (and almost all climate change “action”) is a solution in search of a problem.
It is a case of world class busy bodies not having anything better to do with their time, for the most part. Whatever scientific realities exist (and can be the basis of legitimate and rational scientific discussion), the political cult left them behind years ago and is now a self-sustaining entity. There’s a lot to be said for the fact that all this gained traction immediately after the final* and complete discrediting of the Marxist/socialist world view. Those people had to go somewhere and do something. The means have changed but the basic goal has not.
*final – well, it’s sure to rear its ugly head again, as all bad ideas eventually come back around, so final is said advisedly
Willis Eschenbach (12:08:04) :
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t”.
Willis;
You are correct, it was true then and remains true today. If only all things were so clear. One un-realized prediction is enough to discard a theory.
Thank you for the reminder.
Nick Stokes (11:02:50), your idea is not clear.
No surprise? You’ve just agreed with my thesis, that there is no anomaly. Yet there are thousands and thousands of articles saying CO2 is the cause of the recent unusual warming … how is that not a surprise?
I’m not sure what your point is. I say that there is no statistically significant anomaly. Phil Jones agrees. You say that the data is poor, which is so evident as to not require comment. It was poor in 1860, and it remains poor to this day … so?
What is your point? That if we could truly measure the 1860-1880 temperature very accurately, it might be less than the 1970-1998 warming? Or greater than the 1970-1998 warming? Those are the only two possibilities, and neither one of them invalidates my argument, that there is no recent temperature anomaly which requires explanation …
Willis Eschenbach (11:48:38)
Claims need to be supported by evidence. Is that not the rule here? You made a claim as to the nature and scope of science, I asked for your evidence. If you cannot provide a citiation or other evidence, how do we know you are not just making it up?
Should I have supplied citations? I don’t need to. That’s the beauty of being a skeptic, I don’t have to prove you are wrong, just show that your argument isn’t convincing. I can sit back and proclaim “I don’t believe you. Show me the evidence”, and let you do all the hard work.
Ben U. (09:55:47) supplied some interesting information.
Ron Broberg (12:07:02) :
“Warming is the prediction that results from AGW theory.”
That is correct and since… (as Willis has remined us)
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t”.
One un-realized prediction invalidates the Theory, that is why it was an is a travesty.
Neil Ferguson (11:57:13)
I agree, Neil, climate is definitely worthy of study. How could I not agree, it’s my chosen field?
But billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of hours are being spent, not on studying climate, but on a very narrow focus – trying to “explain” recent warming.
However, we have no evidence that recent warming is unusual in any way, shape, or form. There is nothing there that requires an explanation.
That’s the problem that I’m highlighting.
According to the BBC, Rajendra Pachauri will not resign because it will “be a scalp for the skeptics” and the science of climate change, which is “a snake pit”, will be the worst for losing him.
“…Pechauri’s critics also claim that his business interests – as a consultant to energy industry giants – could represent a conflict of interest. But his supporters say he’s a tireless champion in alerting people to the impact of climate change on developing nations.”
They say a lot more in praise of this genius on the BBC’s Profile programme
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qll1r
slightly OT, but over on RealClimate the current post is about a paper analyzing CO2 levels over the last millenium. The following is, I kid you not, verbatim from Gavin:
————–
I found some other results of this study interesting. One such involved the analysis of time lags. The authors found that in 98.5% of their regressions, CO2 lagged temperature. There will undoubtedly be those who interpret this as evidence that CO2 cannot be a driver of temperature, a common misinterpretation of the ice core record
————–
LOL. Did I misunderstand something? The data shows that the correlation between CO2 and temperature is the opposite of the theory, so obviously any conclusions from this are a misinterpretation and the theory stands?
If you have 40 minutes to spare look at http://clients.westminster-digital.co.uk/minesite/microsite/events/56/video/index.aspx?companyid=56_4
In Australia its the long term drought period we are now expereincing that is mostly used to “prove” climate change. Yet even though we generally only have long term data for up to 150 years, that data shows that based on 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10 year rolling averages the period up to around 1906 was as dry or drier than the current period.
And in “panic” government here have spent $billions on desalination plants that will consume incredible amounts of CO2 producing energy and increase our cost of water by 3-6 times!
Note however that I still support initiatives to reduce energy consumption in first world countries because it is my view we are being excessive in energy consumption
@richard Telford (12:29:14) :
“Willis Eschenbach (11:48:38)
“You made a claim as to the nature and scope of science, I asked for your evidence.”
I gather you are predisposed to argue. What he actually said was “Science is what we use to explain anomalies, to elucidate mysteries, to shed light on unexplained occurrences.”
There is nothing all inclusive about that statement. It simply states one of the uses of science; it makes no claim to be a complete description of science.
Do you claim that is not one of the uses of science?