Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I got to thinking about how the information about temperatures is presented. Usually, we are shown a graph something like Fig. 1, which shows the change in the US temperatures over the last century.
Figure 1. Change in the US annual temperatures, 1895-2009. Data from the US Historical Climate Network (USHCN DATA) [Yes, it’s in Fahrenheit, not Celsius, but hey, it’s US temperature, and besides I’m doing it in solidarity with our valiant allies, all the other noble countries that are bravely fighting a desperate rear-guard action against the global metric conspiracy … Liberia and Myanmar …]
Whoa, this is obviously a huge and scary change, look at the slope of that trend line, this must be something that calls for immediate action. So, what’s not to like about this graph?
What’s wrong with it is that there is nothing in the graph that we can compare to our normal existence. Usually, we don’t even go so far as to think “Well, it’s changed about one degree Fahrenheit, call it half a degree C, that’s not even enough to feel the difference.”
So I decided to look for a way to present exactly the same information so that it would make more sense, a way that we can compare to our actual experience. Fig. 2 is one way to do that. It shows the US temperature, month by month, for each year since 1895.
Figure 2. US yearly temperatures by month, 1895-2009. Each line represents the record for a different year. Red line is the temperature in 2009. Data source as in Fig. 1. Photo is Vernal Falls, Yosemite
Presented in this fashion, we are reminded that the annual variation in temperature is much, much larger than the ~ 1°F change in US temperatures over the last century. The most recent year, 2009, is … well … about average. Have we seen any terrible results from the temperature differences between even the coolest and warmest years, differences which (of course) are much larger than the average change over the last century? If so, I don’t recall those calamities, and I remember nearly half of those years …
To investigate further, Fig. 3 looks at the decadal average changes in the same way.
Figure 3. US decadal average temperatures by month, 1900-2009. Red line is the average for the decade 2000-2009. Photo is Half Dome, Yosemite.
Most months of the year there is so little change in the decadal averages that the lines cannot be distinguished. The warming, what there is, occurred mostly in the months of November, December, January, and February. Slightly warmer temperatures in the winter … somehow, that doesn’t strike me as anything worth breathing hard about.
My point in all of this is that the temperature changes that we are discussing (a global rise of a bit more than half a degree C in the last century) are trivially small. A half degree change cannot be sensed by the human body. In addition, the changes are generally occurring in the winter, outside of the tropics in the cooler parts of the planet, and at night. Perhaps you see this small warming, as has often been claimed, as a huge problem that “vastly eclipses that of terrorism” (the Guardian). Maybe you think this is a pressing concern which is the “defining issue of our era” (UN Secretary Ban Ki-Moon).
I don’t. I’m sorry, but for me, poverty and injustice and racial prejudice and totalitarian regimes and recurring warfare and a lack of clean drinking water and torture and rampant disease and lack of education and child prostitution and a host of other problems “vastly eclipse” the possibility of a degree or two of warming happening at night in the winter in the extra-tropics fifty years from now.
Finally, the USHCN records are not adjusted for the urban heat island (UHI) effect. UHI is the warming of the recording thermometers that occurs as the area around the temperature recording station is developed. Increasing buildings, roads, pavement, and the cutting down of trees all tend to increase recorded temperatures. Various authors (e.g. McKitrick, Spencer, Jones) have shown that UHI likely explains something on the order of half of the recorded temperature rise. So even the small temperature rise shown above is probably shown somewhere about twice as large as it actually is …
My conclusion? Move along, folks, nothing to see here …
[UPDATE – Steven Goddard points out below that the USHCN does in fact include a UHI adjustment in their data. The adjustment is detailed here. I don’t agree with the adjustment, because inter alia they claim that the UHI reduces the maximum temperatures in cities. This is contrary to my personal experience and to many studies that find it is hotter in the cities during the daytime as well as at night. But they do make an adjustment.]
R. de Haan (07:08:11) : BBC News “.. Lord Oxburgh .. explained: “We read 11 key [CRU] publications spreading back over 20 years and a large number of others. We then spent 15 person days interviewing the scientists at UEA.
“I don’t know what more we could have done and we came to a unanimous conclusion.” ”
In a court case, it is normal for both the prosecution and the defence to be heard. If only one side is heard, a unanimous decision in their favour is inevitable. Maybe there was something more the panel could have done …..
George,
I appreciate you standing up for Anna– it tells me a great deal about your character. But I did not attack her in a personal manner– only her statement, “the science is settled”. You certainly seem like a very educated person, as do the great majority of people on this site, but when I hear either AGW believers, or skeptics say, “the science is settled,” when nothing could be further from the truth, it really gets under my skin. AGW science is far from settled, and to suggest such, no matter which side you’re on, or how many degrees you have or papers you’ve written, is simply either more of a political statement, or ignorance, but it is not a statement of science fact.
Kate (02:12:25) : stated
“A leaked document has revealed the US government’s strategy in the UN climate talks….
5.) Embed this mechanism into a UN Treaty, which will legally bind all countries and their governments to the mechanism for ever. No future elected government will be able to stop paying carbon dioxide taxes because of the Treaty which was entered into by a previous head of state or representative.”
This is the type of propaganda the globalist want us to believe. It is not true. We Americans, have been fed a line of Bull, I mean propaganda for years. The first is “Treaties supersede the U.S. Constitution” The Second follow-up lie is “A treaty, once passed, cannot be set aside”.
Quotes from the U.S. Supreme Court on the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty.
This case involved the question: Does the NATO Status of Forces Agreement (treaty) supersede the U.S. Constitution?
“”This [Supreme] Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty.” – Reid v. Covert, October 1956, 354 U.S. 1, at pg 17.
The Reid Court (U.S. Supreme Court) held in their Opinion that,
“… No agreement with a foreign nation can confer power on the Congress, or any other branch of government, which is free from the restraints of the Constitution. Article VI, the Supremacy clause of the Constitution declares, “This Constitution and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all the Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land…’
“There is nothing in this language which intimates that treaties and laws enacted pursuant to them do not have to comply with the provisions of the Constitution nor is there anything in the debates which accompanied the drafting and ratification which even suggest such a result…
“It would be manifestly contrary to the objectives of those who created the Constitution, as well as those who were responsible for the Bill of Rights – let alone alien to our entire constitutional history and tradition – to construe Article VI as permitting the United States to exercise power UNDER an international agreement, without observing constitutional prohibitions. (See: Elliot’s Debates 1836 ed. – pgs 500-519).
“In effect, such construction would permit amendment of that document in a manner not sanctioned by Article V. The prohibitions of the Constitution were designed to apply to all branches of the National Government and they cannot be nullified by the Executive or by the Executive and Senate combined.”
At this point the Court paused to quote from another of their Opinions; Geofroy v. Riggs, 133 U.S. 258 at pg. 267 where the Court held at that time that,
“The treaty power as expressed in the Constitution, is in terms unlimited except by those restraints which are found in that instrument against the action of the government or of its departments and those arising from the nature of the government itself and of that of the States. It would not be contended that it extends so far as to authorize what the Constitution forbids, or a change in the character of the government, or a change in the character of the States, or a cession of any portion of the territory of the latter without its consent.”
“This Court has also repeatedly taken the position that an Act of Congress, which MUST comply with the Constitution, is on full parity with a treaty, the statute to the extent of conflict, renders the treaty null. It would be completely anomalous to say that a treaty need not comply with the Constitution when such an agreement can be overridden by a statute that must conform to that instrument.”
Source …http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/staterights/treaties.htm
It has been suggested that a state can enact laws to nullify a treaty “when the State deems the performance of a treaty is self-destructive. The law of self-preservation overrules the law of obligation in others.”
Given the bank bail outs, health care law, the food safety bills , Cap and trade, and the recession, we should be able to vote the more corrupt congresscritters out of office. Then nullify some of the worse laws passed in the last year or so.
R. Gates (19:15:04) :
Sure you did. You compared her to Yoda.
Re: R. Gates (Apr 14 19:15),
But I did not attack her in a personal manner– only her statement, “the science is settled”.
I think this needs a reply, since english is not my first language ( I have no idea what Yoda is, for example).
I had said:
And as a scientist, I think the scientific issue is settled, and I have been reading up for over two years. Ready to write a masters I am. The slow increase in heat , slow once UHI effects are taken into account, is not a cause for alarm, but for continuous observation. If it reaches over the medieval warm period start looking for population shifting projects and/or dams a la the Netherlands.
If it goes down the hump towards cooling, as chaotic models are predicting, well and good.
In my english, “scientific issue” does not mean “science”. A “scientific issue” is an “issue” that needs a scientific gauge to be resolved, and being settled does not mean that the science is settled. Science is never settled, but sociology needs decisions, and it is a sociological decision that is the “scientific issue that is settled” as far as the input from science goes, as I further explained.
Let me give an example. The value of the speed of light is very important in a lot of measurements and finally in everyday life. There may be new measurements and there are many theories refuting the constancy given by relativity and it may be that one of these will have more evidence in the future. For the sociological issues touching on the uses of the specific speed of light ( all electricity and magnetism related applications in our society) the issue of the speed of light is settled nevertheless.
So even AGW as a theory is not settled ( meaning whether CO2 has an appreciable contribution or not to the observed slow heating), the measurements are such that the issue of its effects on society are settled, in my opinion, because they are bounded by the cost versus benefit for societies and not by the bounded, as the cleaned measurements show, scientific issue .
This is my last on this navel gazing topic :).
R. Gates (19:15:04)
Previously by R. Gates
R. Gates, perhaps you didn’t notice, but that’s a very personal attack. You have not said a word about her ideas or her scientific claims. Instead, you have made an ad hominem attack on what you perceive to be her lack of education, claiming that makes her unfit to question the holy priests.
You AGW supporters are obsessed with whether the person is qualified to disagree with some scientific statement, as if that made an iota of difference.
Either what Anna said is right, or it is wrong. Period. If you think she is wrong, don’t waste time investigating her credentials. Show us exactly where and how she is wrong. Anything else is smoke and mirrors.
Some of the people in the climate game with the very best, most impeccable credentials and degrees and titles are liars, cheats, and frauds who (as the CRU emails show) will go to any length, even break the law in order to keep people like Anna from expressing her views. We are sick of your underhanded tactics. Your focus on her education is a pathetic attempt to discredit her.
You wonder why you are not getting any traction here? Because, not only do you personally attack people instead of adding to the science content of the discussion, but when someone calls you on it, you put on your most beatific face and say “I did not attack her …”
I was born yesterday, but even I am not dumb enough to fall for that one.
Willis said:
“You have not said a word about her ideas or her scientific claims.” (referring to my comments about Anna)
—————
Seriously Willis? Wasn’t my whole post about her idea or scientific claim that the “science was settled” ? That’s a pretty strong scientific claim I’d say…
Your claim that I personally attack people is absurd. Questioning her “2 years of study” in coming to the conclusion that the “science was settled” is hardly a personal attack. If there was a personal attack here, I’m sure the good sensors of this site would have found it (and I would applaud them for it). I actually find your accusatory tone and suggestion that I make personal attacks more of a personal attack than anything I did to dear Anna. Perhaps the truth is that just because I’m one of the few people who come here who thinks there is a decent chance that AGWT is correct, that you’d just like to paint me as making personal attacks, and can stand the fact that I challenge such bold claims as “the science is settled” when it comes to AGW. Someone needs to be honestly skeptical about the predominant AGW skepticism that issues forth from WUWT.
I come here for the science and intelligent discussions. If it appears that I am making personal attacks, I trust that the site sensors will snip them, and make the necessary warnings to me. For Anna to make the incredible claim that the “science was settled”, she’d better be prepared to face some strong questions to back up such a claim…and certainly more than “I’ve been studying it for 2 years…” when many good scientists have been studying it for decades and are not ready to make such a claim. If this is a personal attack, than there are some pretty thin skins here.
Your indignation over my supposed attack on Anna is misplaced at best…
In response to anna v (20:58:49) :
Anna, I know nothing about you, and if English is not your first language, you certainly do quite will with it.
Your statement, “the scientific issue is settled” and the statement “the science is settled” when it comes to AGW seem to me as essentially the same. It is a strong statement and obviously I disagree. You also said you were studying it for 2 years, and were writing a masters. Other than working on a Masters Degree, I wouldn’t know what that could mean. Either way, in my mind this doesn’t really amount to an impressive set of credentials when making such a strong statement about AGW. Now it was revealed to me after your post that you’ve got a PhD in particle physics. Very impressive and congratulations on a great career– I’m jealous, as that is an area that facinates me to no end. But be that as it may, and despite your study of the climate for 2 years, and your PhD, I don’t honestly feel that anything has been settled related to AGW, and WUWT would hardly be getting the hits it does if the issue was settled. What would all this discussion be about, if it was settled?
If you took my statements as a personal attack on you, please know that they were in no way intended as such. I really only addressed the credentials you mentioned (2 years of study, masters), and certainly knew nothing else about you personally, so no personal attack was intended.
Having said all this, if someone, anyone, want’s to make the statement, regarding AGW, that the science is settled, then they’d better damn well present the most powerful set of original research findings that the world has seen in the past 30 years. (regurditating old cherry picked data and reformatting it into new fancy graphs does not count). Many great minds are working around the world day and night to get to the truth of this issue, and it mocks them tremendously to suggest the science or scientific issue regarding AGW is settled. If you’re going to mock them with such a claim, you’d better have some very very powerful original data and research to back it up, otherwise you’re just another AGW skeptic full of hot air…
“The average human has one breast and one testicle. ”
~Des McHale
for the record, you are putting words into my mouth.
:Re: R. Gates (Apr 14 21:58),
Seriously Willis? Wasn’t my whole post about her idea or scientific claim that the “science was settled” ? That’s a pretty strong scientific claim I’d say…
As i said in my reply above, I never said “the science is settled”, because I strongly believe that science is never settled, there is always more to discover.
A scientific issue is not science. An issue may be settled and the science will still be unsettled, and not only because the issue encompasses much more than science, but also because science is never really settled.
see my Re: anna v (Apr 14 20:58),
Maybe English is not your first language either?
Re: all of R. Gates:
meh- take your anger to RC.
Hi Anna. My first language is Semaphore- it’s all the arm waving without the screaming and shouting.
Great job Willis, but the AGW alarmists have long ago adopted the mantra; “Don’t confuse me with the facts my mind is made up”
“”” R. Gates (19:15:04) :
George,
I appreciate you standing up for Anna– it tells me a great deal about your character. But I did not attack her in a personal manner– only her statement, “the science is settled”. You certainly seem like a very educated person, as do the great majority of people on this site, but when I hear either AGW believers, or skeptics say, “the science is settled,” when nothing could be further from the truth, it really gets under my skin. AGW science is far from settled, and to suggest such, no matter which side you’re on, or how many degrees you have or papers you’ve written, is simply either more of a political statement, or ignorance, but it is not a statement of science fact. “””
I pasted your entire message R. just to be sure I didn’t cherry pick.
First of all; I can’t ever recall anyone ever coming here and declaring “the Science is settled” (other than jokingly of course). Even the very ardent supporters of the AGW thesis who write here at WUWT don’t do that; they also are smarter than that; as are those who are less than impressed by the AGW claim. The IPCC, and Al Gore; even President Obama; have all publicly stated that; silly as that statement is. The real science of climate; has barely gotten started; it is far from settled.
And that “science is settled” issue is a red herring; you did make some very ungentlemanly remarks regarding Anna’s educational background; and I really think you owe her an apology on that.
We have a very eclectic crowd of people assembled here; who have every possible kind of skill set; specially scientific imaginable, and at all levels; and they represent all sides of the issues; specially those surrounding climate; and the political implications of some climate issues.
And we all are learning more that we ever knew there was to learn; and we also all make mistakes from time to time; hang around long enough and you’ll find some of my real boners. Well Phil usually jumps in before I go jumping off any really high cliffs; and I really appreciate that; because I am here to learn too.
We certainly aren’t going to solve too many problems here; or maybe influence too many politicians; but I think Anthony and his volunteer army of weather station (Owl box) auditors have already done some real important shaking up of that system.
I’d like to think we had some influence in crashing the Copenhagen hugfest; but I’m pretty sure that neither Willis, nor Steve Goddard actually hacked the CRU server.
Speaking only for myself, I’m happy to have people like you who appear to be firm believers in the AGW hypothesis post here, and fill us in on details of evidence we may not be aware of.
As for me; I’m NOT a skeptic; I’m quite convinced without reservation; that nothing untoward is going on climatewise that is cause for alarm and massive disruption of civilization. And following the AGW path is going to doom most of the world’s still developing nations and their people, to a future of abject poverty that is unnecessary and undeserved.
I believe it was you who said there were thousands of PhDs working on these climate issues. That strikes me about the way I was stunned when I attended my younger son’s orientation meeting at San Francisco State University. A lady next to me proudly told me her daughter was starting there and was going to major in “Ethnic Studies.” San Francisco State is probably World famous for its “School of Racism”; because that’s aboiut what they teach in “Ethnic Studies”. I felt very sad for her daughter’s future
growing up in a nation that has tried its best to put the trappings of racism behind it; only to have that impeded by teaching institutional racism, under the euphemism of “Ethnic Studies.”
So what does that have to do with thousands of PhD climate scientists.
I can’t recall ever reading in any newspaper of even the trade journals I read (including SCIENCE, and similar) any ad from any company trying to hire a “climate scientist”. Well I know plenty of Meteorologists; some making extremely good money forecasting the real weather for people who have a lot riding on what the weather is really going to be; rather than the “partly cloudy” pablum we get on the 11PM news.
But what is some company trying to create productive jobs or tools or products for people going to do with a PhD climate scientist.
What a sad waste of a lot of potentially creative talent.
Well my soap box is about to collapse; I always thought Latin Teachers were superfluous; but now they are replaced by the climate scientists.
No wonder so many of them find employment only in places that want to turn out more competition for them.
Thanks guys for the conversation, but no apologies are needed. The internet is such that anybody can claim to be anything and have any number of degrees. Unless one uses a full identification, which for personal reasons I explained on an old thread years ago I do not intend to do, one should roll with the punches.
One should be looking at the statements and judging them by their content.
I thought that the issue of what society should do about CO2 is settled by the data that contradict main “projections” of IPCC and the GCM models, long before climategate appeared on the scene.
I have often stated the falsifying points here in other threads with links something like this:
1)there is no CO2 induced hot point in the troposphere
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/GHGModsvsReality.jpg
2)Temperatures are in stasis the past ten years while CO2 is rising merrily
3)There is no positive feedback http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf
5)the oceans are not heating http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/31/nodc-revises-ocean-heat-content-data/#more-15879
All these settle the issue for me on whether society should urgently do something for the slight heating observed since the Little Ice Age.
And this, without entering in the data manipulation issue revealed starkly by climategate.
I have at least two other ways of presenting data for perspective. First, I plot global temperature on a y-axis scale of 0 – 25 degC, with horizontal lines depicting estimated lowest ice age temperature, maximum cretaceous era temperature, and mean global temperature over the last century or so. I call the upper and lower bounds the “life zone.” On this graph, I plot the global temperature trend from 1850 to present (practically a horizontal line) and the IPCC’s model projected range (well within the “life zone” – no “runaway warming tipping point” there).
In my second variation, I show a map of the U.S. showing isopleths of mean annual temperatures. Using arrows, I show how far north one would have to move to stay at the same temperature based on IPCC’s low and high projections (not even arguing with the IPCC). For example, an Iowan would not even have to leave the state to stay “cool,” even at IPPC’s highest projected change. I also use an arrow to represent retirees who regularly move from the Northeast to Florida to escape the cold (a difference of about 15 deg C!). When northerners stop moving south because their weather stays balmy, we might begin to worry.
The problem with Figs 2 and 3 wrt Fig 1 is that the first two have “zoomed out”, ie they use a scale of 10 degrees per interval, while the first uses a scale of half a degree. By using a larger scale in the later graphs, the changes illustrated in the first are minimized. Put it like this: You own a piece of forested land, and suspect that someone’s been cutting down your trees. Fly over at 30,000 ft and it may look like nothing is wrong (graphs 2 and 3), but take a closer look at treetop level (graph 1) and smaller changes become apparent. The question then is: “is a relatively small change of 2 or so degrees (C) significant?”
Day to day, the answer may be “no”. Go outside on a summer day, and you may not be able to tell if it’s 21C or 23C. However climate change isn’t about day to day temperatures at one location, we’re talking about average temps for the entire year across the globe. So here, is a change of 2-3 degrees C significant?
The answer is yes. Here’s an example – I live in Alberta, Canada. The southern part of the province is dry grassland, while the north is in the heart of the Boreal Forest and is rich in wetlands. A shift of 2C (considered by most to be a modest prediction of what is likely to happen in the next few years) would shift the climate surrounding the city of Lethbridge roughly a four hour drive north to Central Alberta – affecting the province’s agriculture and ranching industries, as well as the access cities like Calgary have to freshwater.