Guest post by Steven Goddard
Photo Credit : BBC News
Last April, I wrote an article titled Global Warming and “The Early Spring” which highlighted one of the favorite AGW myths, that CO2 is making winter warmer and spring arrive earlier. Here is the 2010 UK update.
In 2005, the BBC wrote this article :
Wildlife winces at early spring. A survey involving 65,000 wildlife sightings suggests that frogs and bumblebees are among the hardest hit. “Climate change is not something that is happening a million miles away – it is going on in our own back gardens,” said nature presenter Bill Oddie.
Here is one from Global Change Biology :
Early spring in Europe matches recent climate warming August 25, 2006 Conclusive proof that spring is arriving earlier across Europe than it did 30 years ago is published today in the journal Global Change Biology.
Real Climate wrote about it last year :
Breaking the silence about Spring. Early Spring has the potential to be immensely influential, a real turning point in the popular appreciation of climate change impacts among laypersons and scientists alike. Read it.
England – Earlier first flowering date. One of the most comprehensive studies of plant species in Britain revealed that the average first flowering date of 385 British plant species has advanced by 4.5 days during the past decade compared with the previous four decades: 16% of species flowered significantly earlier in the 1990s than previously, with an average advancement of 15 days in a decade. These data reveal the strongest biological signal yet of climatic change. Flowering is especially sensitive to the temperature in the previous month, and spring-flowering species are most responsive (Fitter and Fitter, 2002).
From The Daily Mail
Riot of colour: As spring comes earlier and earlier each year, such species as hawthorn and hornbeam will cut off more and more light to the bluebell which will cause it to decline disastrously
* So how is that warm winter/early spring theory doing in 2010?
From The Guardian
Severe winter delays bluebell season National Trust predicts three-week wait for nature’s blue carpets
Usually from about now they spring up in the far south-west then spread like a Mexican wave across Britain. But the National Trust says today that nature-lovers could have to wait until the end of the month before carpets of English bluebells begin to appear in woodlands. The charity believes that after the coldest winter for more than 30 years the English bluebell season is likely to be up to three weeks late. The plants depend on warm ground temperatures and the prolonged frosts will have impacted upon their ability to grow.
From The Guardian
Small is fatal for our songbirds in Britain’s great winter freeze. A survey by the public in Britain’s gardens reveals the toll on wildlife caused by weeks of Arctic conditions
Few people may have been wanting more evidence of the ferocity of recent weather. Nevertheless they got one from an unexpected source last week: the Big Garden Birdwatch. Organised by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), it involved members of the public reporting bird sightings in their gardens over the last weekend in January. More than half a million responses were received and a count showed precisely how this year’s winter – the coldest in 30 years – has taken a toll of the nation’s small songbirds, such as the goldcrest and the coal tit.
From The Guardian
Spring about to ‘explode’ in Britain, conservationists say Experts believe release of pent-up energy after such a long, hard winter could produce the most spectacular spring in years
From The BBC
Why is it going to be a stunning spring? I’s been the longest and coldest winter in years, but the pay-off will be a spectacular spring, conservationists say
Conclusion : An early spring is climate, but apparently a late spring is just weather. When can we expect retractions from The Guardian, BBC and Real Climate?
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“When scientific organisations issue statements of consensus that fly in the face of observational evidence, all they do is destroy their own credibility.”
Do you have any real examples or just discombobulator boiler plate?
Tom W (17:55:28) :
Fact: According to CRU’s Phil Jones, temperatures have not increased since 1995. Your Nobel Laureate friends can relax. Their fears appear to be unfounded.
What most people fail to understand is that physics only calls for a 1C rise with a doubling of CO2. The catastrophic projections are based on some extremely shaky theory of positive feedbacks, that has little or no support in observational evidence.
The trolls seem to be on the move these days. Any of you been rooting around under bridges and disturbing them?
Seriously, though, just about every thread for the past week seems to have attracted at least one, and often several, super-energetic troglodytes who seem hell-bent on diverting the discussion.
I scanned back across a bunch of articles, and noticed that some of them were posting more or less non-stop for the better part of a day or night. Is somebody running an AGW call center out there somewhere? That kind of dedication generally requires remuneration.
/dr.bill
Tom W
Most of these societies have been infiltrated with activists obtaining back door appointments.
I’m interested in Digsby’s post above. It flies in the face of the anomoly charts featured on here in recent posts. The speculation was GHCN/GISS, etc., are extrapolating cherry picked warm stations to the entire arctic.
Digsby’s post seems to imply Siberia was record cold. What gives? I suspect Russians know how to measure temperature in Siberia a lot better than Hansen, et al can extrapolate it for them. WUWT?
Tom W (16:17:34) : there is no consensus and …and … consensus is irrelevant
Yes.
Tom W (10:48:53) :
Climate science is settled – the world is warming
Published Tuesday April 6th, 2010
http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/opinion/article/1007536
Time to pack it in lads…
——————–
Wow – you argue this on the evidence of the mighty Telegraph Journal, a tiny regional newspaper, based in Saint John, New Brunswick, owned by the local oil and pulp-and-paper Irving family, which virtually owns the province of New Brunswick. This family of oil tycoons in the past has been suspected of influencing both provincial politics and the content of the papers. Thomas Mueller, who is based in Rothsay, is well-known to local readers as a frequent writer of letters to the editor on many subjects, his letters always being of a left-wing bent. Kind of a local crank. I’m not a local any more – sometimes his letters also appear in the National Post, and jog my memory. Good to understand what you consider to be quote-worthy authorities on global warming, Tom W. I’ll take you even less seriously in future.
Sorry tom, but that’s just retarded.
So are you in agreement with everything said on your behalf? Did President Bush speak for you? Or Paul Martin or Chretien or Blair or whoever was your alleged leader? Really? Always? Accurately?
You’ve now officially jumped the shark.
Steve Goddard (18:09:31) : Fact: According to CRU’s Phil Jones, temperatures have not increased since 1995. Your Nobel Laureate friends can relax. Their fears appear to be unfounded.
Is that your best example? Not very impressive because it is FALSE.
What Jones did in fact say is that the period 1995 is too short to obtain a statistically significant warming AT THE 95% CONFIDENCE LEVEL but only just. In other words it is implied that he can find statistically significant warming at lower confidence level.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
Steve Goddard (18:09:31) :
In fact Jones found a warming of .12 C per decade with a confidence level slightly below 95%, a result far from your claim that he found no warming.
Who exactly is misrepresenting the science here?
Tom W
Yes, Had-Crut shows temperatures warming out of control.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend
Steve Goddard (20:56:54) :
Tom W
Yes, Had-Crut shows temperatures warming out of control.
Let’s review.
Right after it was noted that the statistical significance of a warming trend DECREASES with the length of the interval used and that 1995-2009 was too short to obtain 95% confidence. What does Steve do in addition to cherry-picking the starting point 1998? He DECREASES the length of the interval even more to make it even less statistically significant.
Tom W (17:41:12)
i don’t follow your reasoning. Rephrased: There’s very little reasoning. A great deal of invective and vituperation. That is: Nothing but attitude and arrogance.
Do you work for the CRU by any chance?
Tom W (21:05:27) :
No, what I showed you is that any warming that occurred after 1995 occurred prior to 1998 – and there hasn’t been any since.
Some trend.
Tom W (21:05:27) :
Last year’s nitpicking issues against a tide of truth. Been there, seen it worked it to death.
You might as well say that a piece of tissue plus a piece of tissue makes double the tissue in a sea of Andrex. Better still, you might as well argue that doubling the speed of the train will decrease the distance between London and Edinburgh.
“i don’t follow your reasoning. Rephrased: There’s very little reasoning. A great deal of invective and vituperation. That is: Nothing but attitude and arrogance.”
No big deal. People who hold strong opinions on subjects they know nothing about often claim those who know something are ‘arrogant.’
“No, what I showed you is that any warming that occurred after 1995 occurred prior to 1998 – and there hasn’t been any since.”
Unlike Jones, Steve doesn’t care about statistical significance.
At least we have here for all to see.
Tom W (21:20:05) :
Quite so. Its no big deal. On the other hand, Alice might have thought the Queen of Hearts as fairly arrogant. Oh! But then what did the lion think of the Ice Queen?
Its time to close the wardrobe door.
Tom W (21:25:59) :
So you are saying that Had-Crut shows recent warming.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend
Steve Goddard (14:45:18) :
The UK has been warming for 100 years. Is that far enough back for you? 2 cold SEASONS doesn’t mean diddly squat.
AndrewP (22:21:25) :
UK summer temperatures have warmed by less than half a degree over the last 80 years, and even that small amount is probably mainly due to UHI effects.
https://spreadsheets.google.com/oimg?key=0AnKz9p_7fMvBdHo2OEhzQzF1VEZMdzBuZ3kxTWpPdkE&oid=1&v=1270619652296
BBC environmental commentator, Richard Black, seems to have
missed the three week late bluebell and other plants advisory.
His posting of 7 April 2010 covers a report by Mr. Richard
Smithers of the Woodland Trust:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8606406.stm
and describes their data acquisition and processing technique thusly:
They’ve arrived at a fomula derived from these multiple-source observations that essentially says that for every 1 degree
centigrade in increased average temperature (based on the
Central England Temperature Record) you’ll get plants blooming
five days earlier than they did 30 years ago.
Thus, 2.0+ degrees increase = 11 days “earlier”.
Bibbity, bobbity, boo. Climate science is so simple !
R.S.Brown (00:37:53)
that means three weeks late represents a temperature decrease of 4.8C than was the case three years ago in England, and that the temperature has on average decreased suddenly on a hockey stick formulation back to where it was 33 years ago
My goodness it is simple
The opinion piece that Tom W linked to, claiming that it was the coup de grace for CAGW scepticism, was, in fact, so pathetically (even laughably) weak that I became instantly suspicious that he must actually have come here to satirize the CAGW side of the argument. And I still can’t decide if that is really the case or if rather he is just another sophist troll who cares nothing for truth but only for massaging his own bloated ego in public.
Tom W (15:55:52) :
The lack of observations in the southern hemisphere is therefore partially compensated by the fact that the surface air temperatures has a much smaller spatial and temporal variability over the ocean than over land and is therefore easier to estimate.
The air masses over the ocean are neither homogeneous nor static. Temperatures within *any* maritime air mass will vary by 3°C or more, and they can move pretty rapidly (for air masses) because there’s very little in the way of surface friction to slow them. Temperatures reported at sea until well into the 1950s were from merchant ships or warships transiting the sea lanes. A ship’s thermometer during the analog age was marked in increments of one degree and assumed to have a *standard* calibration error of .2°C. But installation error on those ships was completely ignored, and installation error can be measured in whole degrees C. You can not assume accuracy of a tenth of a degree covering a 5° x 5° grid square based on a single measurement when the instrument measuring it may have calibration and installation errors of two or more degrees C.
Actually Figs 10 through 17 go back to the mid to late 1800’s.
Figure 13 is a graph of temperature, the remainder are graphs of anomalies or models and the synthetic adjustment to those models. The anomaly and temperature information also included grids in which *no* measurements were taken before 1920 and, in about 8% of the total area (the Southern Ocean and Antarctica), measurements were sparse or nonexistent until the International Geophysical Year — 1957.
Astonishing how often climate discombobulators mess up simple facts.
That’s a two-way street, innit?
If I didn’t know better I think it was deliberate.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were deliberately ignoring my question — how can you posit an *accurate* (to a tenth of a degree C) measurement of an entire hemisphere during a time period when observations over 60% of the total area were only made in 5% of that area — the sea lanes — and were made by people using instruments that are only marked in whole degrees and which probably had inherent errors of additional full degrees?
Now add that well over half of the entire hemisphere was only measured sporadically (or not at all) until well into the Twentieth Century and HadCRUT specifically says it *estimated* those maritime surface temperatures -– which means they took a guess.