Over on the EU Referendum, Richard North points out the absurdity of media coverage on the arrival of spring. We’ve seen this before, for example at the Union of Concerned Scientists, they have this essay:
Early Warning Signs of Global Warming: Spring Comes Earlier
Even the daffodils are confused, though in that article the writer cites weather, not climate.
Here’s what North has noted about the confusion of the press:
Almost exactly three weeks ago, the press release queen, Louise Gray, was prattling about early springs as a result of global warming.
Fortunately for her, her kindly employer has spared her blushes, not requiring her to write the piece today, which tells us: “For those celebrating St David Day on Monday, there will be a noticeable absence of daffodils as the country’s growers say the cold snap has left their crops a month behind schedule.”
Britain’s “Arctic winter”, incidentally, was officially declared the coldest in 30 years “as parts of the country were lashed by gale force winds and torrential downpours.”
Strangely enough, almost exactly a year to the day, little Louise was writing under the headline, “Latest spring bloom at Kew for 20 years” – the strap reading: “After a succession of early spring blooms, flowers came out later this year than for 20 years because of the recent cold snap.”
Read the rest here at the EU Referendum
@ur momisugly Bill Parsons (13:37:37) :
From here in central Pennsylvania I use the Possum Indicator. It’s less than a five minute drive from here to town, from less than a minute out it’s a winding hillside road with woods on both sides. When there are two same-day or three still-fresh remnants, as found more than twice in the same week, the coming of Spring is signaled.
Late in the evening, middle of last week, I went to town in the truck, and was driving downhill on a one-way street. Assorted wildlife has really been making a home in town over the last decade or so, guess they’ve been finding the winters easier to bear away from the wilderness. So a possum suddenly runs out in front. I did not engage in emergency driving procedures, as it was a possum and not a potential pet, and I was driving a truck. Checked the rear view mirror, yup, there it was…
Next day, early in the morning, I found a dead possum out in front of the house, middle of the road. Looked to have been squashed right there. I have not counted that as two same-day due to the locations, and because I suspect God pulled a prank on me as a mild reproof. Otherwise, nothing lately, no Spring coming.
Oh, there are also some bulb-based flowers next to the block foundation alongside the house, the South-facing end, that have reliably come up slightly early, even through snow. Irises I think. No sign of them yet. However they were next to the old masonry chimney, which I had to knock down when I discovered it was too leaky. The new one I put up is double-walled insulated stainless that stays so cool to the touch that icicles have been noted hanging off the lower edge of the rain cap. Thus that “flower indicator” will need a few years for the recalibration check before further use.
crosspatch (13:47:00) :
Apparently the US has had the first February in over 60 years without a single reported tornado.
Have we run low on trailer parks? It’s well known you rarely can have a tornado without a trailer park nearby to generate it. Check the statistics based on the TV news reports. Nearly every time, first comes the trailer park, then comes the tornado. The remainder has been attributed to modular homes, as it is suspected due to the similarities that modular homes may also generate tornadoes.
That, my friend, is gross. When the milk of human kindness was being meted out, did you claim lactose intollerance?
It was about 90 deg these past 2 days in Taipei after an especially cold winter.
It’s weather.
Despite the lull in warming over the past 10 years, there is little doubt we have been in a warming trend for the last 35 years. That may very well reverse and we will have another 30 year cycle of a cooling trend. We should know in another 5-10 years (if we can trust the data, which is doubtful).
David Corcoran (12:03:25) :
“Icarus (08:39:47) :
This is puzzling – are we supposed to believe that one late spring somehow trumps 20 early ones (or whatever the figures are)?
Phil Jones said there hasn’t been any significant warming for 15 years. It isn’t one late spring. Global satellite-measured temperatures matter (since surface readings are so easily jiggered). “
Why have just one 15-year period to examine in the global satellite record, when you can have many? –
http://174296586818593280-a-1802744773732722657-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/europa62/climatechange/rss-with-various-trendlines/RSS%20with%2015-year%20trendlines.jpg?attachauth=ANoY7crSA2-A2fGxI732UG3xxOu5LEBF4h7dLv5NUxkWQBeilbQyoYYCYDaOGGIJaSmCxDt9DtmbSxHVRgjflWhrXGW6_fL98pic3yTuVmINgXLecU8HTCbol1pUPOQucEpVhRS84j3-KyWhREBYcs5PRk0BRM3nllYeQDh-jZ6LiMGlWokAYGOyfrFl0J6VRmmB_Zzp0DO9dGbgZWVoU3TcV0QvMViuEsSXID6hqdIqfBwCzGofD3mRx08W5DADKs1McV_6h6mn31YBRc0xbmPamcbwTaYJjQ%3D%3D&attredirects=0
Notice that they are all positive. They range from about 0.1°C per decade to 0.3°C per decade – quite a large range. It makes more sense to use 22-year trends as this tends to smooth out the effect of the 11-year solar cycle:
http://174296586818593280-a-1802744773732722657-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/europa62/climatechange/rss-with-various-trendlines/RSS%20with%2022-year%20trendlines.jpg?attachauth=ANoY7cq2mZBhx–rvWTe5hbZlqqypCjXuxMWlk3aE2amRlCuRibmyyLQ4uBsQz-P0CQMcb5gXdKNZoyqhzDn-XlDejVfrgK7tZe2iI9AGc8RGz63m5eue9NFCJWj_-izIhoQR0swfm0lfXgOwIr4Ow_9e5nDfJ1sxncasy4VmXPkcsbUJDWxoO8y-w47swoJWjeAjqEAQl2aWvwAZDnqm2ER9JMa8shBxLp0pZA3evLjq0VqmyKfG5Sp-DEMS2gO_m_bSj3sIGNDe7gMqNVK_GKnYxd_GP838g%3D%3D&attredirects=0
I think you can safely conclude that the global satellite record shows warming of about 0.18°C per decade, just as the climate scientists have been saying for many years.
R. Gates (14:40:46)
I’m not sure we’re on the same page here, the assertion that CO2 caused *any* additional warming during the natural variations demonstrated in the ice cores is an unproven theory/assumption.
Something unknown started the warming in question for however many years and then just handed the warming off to CO2? They’re taking an A-then-B-then-C correlation and use it to posit a B-then-C causation.
I’m sorry but that seems to me to be the cart before the horse, and while I’m not one to call anything impossible… it does qualify, IMO, as an extraordinary claim that should be subject to extraordinary proof. “Take our word on it” for something as counterintuitive as that is not acceptable.
That’s my $0.02 at least
@Bill Marsh (09:56:55) :
“But hey, if the warmistas are right you’ll soon be raising grapes as far north as York.”
Has happened before – but humanity didn’t fry, only got a bit drunker 🙂
I’m pretty sure the barbapapas are going to be mighty peed off because they didn’t have to leave the planet. I’ll be glad when they return from planet B.
Patrick Davis (07:56:06) :
Our daffodils just came out, NW Ca.
It has been the same cloudy, rainy w/rare sunny day since 2nd week of December.
We have someone who writes from Innis Falls, Australia, speaking of an early winter. More info requested.
In other news, while the daffodils are not signaling a Northern Hemisphere springtime, it has been raining fish in Australia. What season is signaled down under by the falling of the fishes?
Pure nonsense. The human contribution of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is such a small percentage of an already miniscule percentage of the gaseous atmosphere, it is on the very edge of instrumental detectability. The human contribution is small enough to be smaller than the error ranges for the instruments used to measure it. The Earth is experiencing an extreme scarcity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere only very very seldom seen before in the past 550 million years in which vertebrate life forms have existed.
Didn’t think you were a warmer, to good a sense of humor.
I don’t know about the dendochronologists, though. Steve McIntyre seems to have a broader territorial range extending all the way from Starbucks to the ridgecrests. How about you. Run across any of the two legged skunks in the High Country lately?
North Central NC – 03/01/2010. It has not been uncommon over the last 25 years I’ve lived here to see the Bradford (ornamental) pair trees blooming by the first week of March and the grass starting to green. Not this year… not even close. Temperatures are forecast below freezing for most of the next week. Normal min. temps are 34F. Feb. probably ran about 5F below normal. There were only 2-3 day during the entire month that reached or exceeded the historical average.
I’m somewhere between amused and disgusted by groups like the Union of Alarmist Scientist. Isn’t it interesting that they can’t provide a citation for a study that’s less than a decade old? Isn’t it ironic that the “deniers” are the ones spouting “misinformation”?
crosspatch (13:47:00) :
“Apparently the US has had the first February in over 60 years without a single reported tornado.”
Gee, I must have missed the report on the evening news
Nick,
We may indeed be talking two different things. I certainly get your point I think– that is, who can say what real proportion of warming is caused by CO2 versus whatever started the warming to begin with. How do we know that 1/2 to 5/6 of the warming was caused by the CO2. Here is where the rubber meets the road, for if you study the ice cores specifically, down to the very little variations, you see that yes, a period of warming might have preceeded a rise in CO2, but then (after the first 800 years or so) the little variations in the temperature usually (more than half the time, and some say up to 5/6 the time) follow a rise in CO2. It is as though something kick-starts the warming, but then the CO2 levels, perhaps through positive feedback loops, drive the rest of it.
So again, the central issue is whether or we humans have given this CO2 positive feeback warming cycle the boost it needed to get going or not. We know that CO2 cause the initial warming, but we know for certain (based on solid science) that CO2 can indeed keep a positive-feedback warming cycle going. Humans have given a huge potential boost to CO2 levels, and the “warmists” would say this has been enough to get us into a warming cycle.
Also, FWIW, my educated guess and suspicion is that methane may have been the culprit that initially caused these ancient periods of warming. Methane from the sea beds may have been released in great enough quantities to start the warming, and after this methane was released and broke down, the warming temps released more CO2 from the soil, and this started the cycle. There is some evidence of this in the record, see;
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n3/full/ngeo454.html
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=20791
http://www.nhne.org/news/NewsArticlesArchive/tabid/400/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/4621/language/en-US/Melting-Methane-Ice-Triggered-Ancient-Runaway-Climate-Change.aspx
Now methane doesn’t stay in the atmosphere very long before breaking down, but it is 22 times or so more powerful of a greenhouse forcing gas than CO2 and it would make one hell of a trigger to start some ancient warming cycles…and then once it was gone, the raised CO2 levels would perpetuate the warming.
Finally, it is interesting to note that methane levels are currently rising in the atmosphere and the melting of permafrost seems to be at least one of the culprits, though the jury is still out.
This is the contributed The physics behind CO2 as a greenhouse gas is not in dispute either. Raising CO2 levels will trap more heat– the only question is whether this forcing is greater than any natural variations
Except to meteorologists. “Meteorological spring” runs from March through May.
“Almost exactly” – WTH does that even mean?!
D. Patterson (16:22:04) said :
“R. Gates (14:40:46) :
But humans have caused CO2 to explode upward (from a historical perspective….]
Pure nonsense.”
For the past 800,000 years or so, CO2 had not exceeded about 300 ppm and averaged about 220. With it now approaching 400, and most of that huge rise coming since the industrial revolution. This is great chart:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png
NOTE: This is not the dreaded “hockeystick” chart…but only looks like it. The data on this chart are not in dispute, and they come from ice core samples, and have been taking from multiple sites in multiple locations by multiple scientists.
Yes indeed, relative to the past 800,000 thousand years, CO2 levels have exploded upward since the industrial revolution…and human activity is most certainly the cause.
I have to laugh at all the gardening magazines that have been telling people over the past years that the temperature zones have been moving north. Encouraging people to plant plants that are way too tender for their “real” zones.
I’ll bet a lot of people got royally burned in their gardens this year.
R Gates
“For the past 800,000 years or so, CO2 had not exceeded about 300 ppm and averaged about 220. With it now approaching 400, and most of that huge rise coming since the industrial revolution. This is great chart:””
I like this one better.
Would you say that we have been lucky? or very unlucky?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.png
R. Gates (16:42:03) :
If C02 were to drive the climate AFTER it was kick started, why didn’t it drive it BEFORE it got kick started?
Because the predominant greenhouse gas on Earth is water vapor, and as the temp drops, so does the evaporation.
And for all those times when C02 really was single-digit percentage, while the temp of Earth was dropping into Ice Age levels, the C02 was lagging behind but still couldn’t hold up it’s end of the bargain.
This is a job for a new whizbang petaflop computer modeled climate driver.
I love the “Early Warning” web page – Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid at its best:
* Early Warning Signs of Global Warming: Arctic and Antarctic Warming
* Early Warning Signs of Global Warming: Coral Reef Bleaching
* Early Warning Signs of Global Warming: Downpours, Heavy Snowfalls, and Flooding
* Early Warning Signs of Global Warming: Droughts and Fires
* Early Warning Signs of Global Warming: Glaciers Melting
* Early Warning Signs of Global Warming: Heat Waves
* Early Warning Signs of Global Warming: Plant and Animal Range Shifts
* Early Warning Signs of Global Warming: Sea-Level Rise and Coastal Flooding
* Early Warning Signs of Global Warming: Spreading Disease
Let’s add the ones they might have left out:
* Early Warning Signs of Global Warming: UEA Head Steps Down (Oh, excuse me, that was autumn, wasn’t it?)
* Early Warning Signs of Global Warming: Climate Warmers run out of speculations; Pigs Fly
* Early Warning Signs of Global Warming: Michael Mann shows humility, admits he left out the MWP (Oh, no! Is that hell freezing over?)
* Early Warning Signs of Global Warming: Steve McIntyre, Anthony Watts, The Chiefio, John Christy, Richard Lindzen Ross McKittrick share Nobel Peace Prize, for saving the planet from abject poverty and billions dead
* Early Warning Signs of Global Warming: Climate Research Unit dies. Overdose of CO2 suspected.
* Early Warning Signs of Global Warming: Hockey Stick code found; Jones swears he didn’t know it was in the shoe box in his freezer next to the body parts [swears out loud “It’s a McIntyre plot to get me!”]
* Early Warning Signs of Global Warming: Polar bears turn brown again, for the first time in 150,000 years. (They turned white as an adaptation – obviously not something they could ever do again.)
* Early Warning Signs of Global Warming: Gas Prices drop, as entire world realizes planet it is not going to end
* Early Warning Signs of Global Warming: Met Office Completes Jones et al re-do; Data with Corrected and Vetted UHI Shows Cooling of 1970s Never Ended
* Early Warning Signs of Global Warming: Pachauri vigil ends with glacier plowing him under
Bill Parsons:
“That, my friend, is gross. When the milk of human kindness was being meted out, did you claim lactose intollerance?”
Actually, many people are killed each year attempting to avoid small animals that venture out on the road. I happen to drive a bit in the Nevada desert from time to time and the first thing the cops will tell you is DO NOT attempt to avoid jackrabbits and other small animals. The shoulders of the road are soft, if you go off, you can flip. Or that person behind you might not see the animal and your panic braking might cause an accident.
Seriously, never attempt to avoid a small animal in the road unless you have plenty of time to slow down.
For all you “spring is coming earlier and earlier!!!!!” phenology chicken littles, check out the studies cited in the Working Group II/Fourth Assessment Report that you all refer to:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch1s1-3-5-1.html
Most of those studies end in the late nineties or in 2000. DUH!!!!!! Wait five years and then see if spring is really coming earlier.
Out in the Skagit Valley in Western Washington, they’re all up in arms that the daffodils and tulips will come too early. Last year at this time it was still very cold, and they were up in arms because the flowers were late. You’d think these people had never had to deal with delays or early blooms.