Guest Post by Steven Goddard
Steve McIntyre points out that NOAA’s Susan Solomon saw fit to exclude a statement of measurements from IPCC WG1. With such certainty then, it’s no wonder she’s certain that our current situation is “irreversible”. Well then, let’s not worry about it if one of NOAA’s lead scientists says the effects are well nigh irreversible. What she’s serving up is pure alarmism.
NOAA has issued a warning to the occupants of (some) planet :
Global warming has reached the point of no return, a study published in the Tuesday edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by a joint team of the U.S., French and Swiss researchers concludes. Even if the world reduces emissions of CO2 to the level before the industrial revolution, it will take at least 1,000 years to reverse the climate change effect that have already taken hold, AP on Sunday quoted the team as saying. Dr. Susan Solomon of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research laboratory led the study. “People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide the climate would go back to normal in 100 years, 200 years; that’s not true,” she said, adding the effects are well nigh irreversible.
That got me wondering what she meant by “back to normal.” Perhaps it means sea ice at normal levels? No that can’t be it, because sea ice area has already recovered to “normal.”
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
Perhaps she means violent weather, like strong tornadoes? Longing for a return to the 1970s, when there were lots more of them?
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/tornado/tornadotrend.jpg
In 1908, a hurricane formed on March 6, the earliest on record. Ah, for the good old days of early spring hurricanes…..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1908_Atlantic_hurricane_season_map.png
In 1954, Hurricane Alice formed on December 30, the latest on record. Nothing like a New Year’s hurricane to brighten up the holidays.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1954_Atlantic_hurricane_season_map.png
In 1961, Hurricane Carla made landfall in Texas. It was the most intense hurricane to ever hit the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Carla
In 1900, a hurricane killed 8.000 people in Galveston, Texas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveston_Hurricane
In 1780, a hurricane killed more than 27,500 people in the Carribean.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hurricane_of_1780
In 1960, 60% of the farmland in China received no rain. Somewhere between 20 and 43 million people died due to extreme weather and mismanagement by the socialist government.
In the 1930s, the US suffered extreme heat and drought, resulting in the dust bowl. It was the warmest decade on record in the US (at least before USHCN cleverly adjusted it downwards.)
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/fig1x.gif
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_bowl
To Steve Goddard (12:56:25) :
OK, I see what’s going on. The size of the wind field gets the same maximum weight (25) as actual intensity can (25), and in practice seems to get more weight (from the HSI PDF). This makes sense — it isn’t just the brute strength, but also how widely the strength is applied.
This new HSI means that older hurricanes are mostly left out, because (as the text in the PDF says), reliable wind radii data are only available since 1988. Thus estimates for earlier hurricanes are derived from SLOSH data (! where do they get these names?) and must be considered rough estimates (section 5 of PDF, 1st paragraph). And true enough, 21 of the 27 hurricanes in Table 3 are more recent than 1988.
So I understand what you have quoted, but it probably understates the intensity of earlier storms for which we know little about the size of the wind field. Again, your basic point is still good, whether it is Carla (1961) or the Key West hurricane of 1935 which is the most intense.
“Even if the world reduces emissions of CO2 to the level before the industrial revolution,…”
Will we be allowed to chip hand axes?
The AGW folks want to claim that the increase of global temperature is linear with CO2 concentration. Satellite temperature data shows that to be false.
Many skeptics seem determined to prove that there actually hasn’t been any warming at all.
The satellite data shows an amazing correlation between the rate of increase of CO2 and the temperature anomaly. This is a middle ground that irritates the AGW folks because there would be no pending catastrophe, but receives little support from the skeptic community because it admits that temperatures have been rising.
Such is life…
nandheeswaran jothi (15:09:08) :
Thanks for the information. I lived through the past too, and certainly don’t remember the climate being any better.
In Colorado, we seem to have reverted back to cold weather like in the 1980s, and it is truly disappointing. I had hoped global warming would be more reliable.
enneagram (14:17:51) :
Do you actually read my posts or do just assume that I represent something that you don’t agree with?
If AGW proves to be a load of hogwash then I’ll join in a collective sigh of relief! But just because I challenge the notion that it is a load of hogwash doesn’t mean that I don’t also challenge AGW. I am a skeptic when it comes to all sorts of science & I try to view all of it with equal impartiality.
I have challenged Steve Goddard here purely on his assertion that sea ice extent has retuurned to normal and our difference I guess ultimately rests on how to define what constitutes “normal”! What is important here is that we come up with a definition and that we stick with it henceforth. Otherwise we will be continually bogged down with moving goal posts & a “get out clause” which relates to lack of pre- satellite data or longer term trends etc, etc.
I am in fact completely astonished by the lack of “best practice” as regards climate science as has been highlighted on this site. But if you live by the sword, you die by the sword – so if you are accusing people of manipulating data etc, you may stand to be accused of the same thing if you make statements like “sea ice area has returned to normal”. It has NOT in arctic for any meaningful period of time.
OK Steve, I agree nobody predicted the -ve AO this year & maybe there will be a reversal of ice loss in the arctic if this continues in future years. But I remember very similar statements being made in 2001, which proved to be a one off. If you’re right – great! But if you’re wrong, how much longer do we have to wait before we agree that climate is changing due at least in part to AGW?
jeff brown (14:08:40) :
Please note that CO2 levels vs Temperature are not linear.
It is an exponential relationship.
Initially CO2 increases [as a GHG] causes an increase in Temp.
But, because of the exponential relationship, the CO2 can keep doubling, and doubling with very little increase in temp.
The whole system is self-regulating, and always has been.
There will not be a runaway condition.
Ben,
In 2005, The Independent declared that the Arctic was “past the point of no return.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/global-warming-past-the-point-of-no-return-507030.html
Great Piece, so much truth but these Alarmists keep up the heat from their made fire of alarmisim. They just do not get it. Hyperbole to the Max, and they expect the public to buy their garbage. They are Blind…….The earth is one degree warmer then it was before the industrial revelution………OMG it will never be the same……..LMAO at these fools on a hill……John….
It’s snowing in ” spring time ” Harbin right now and the city is at a standstill.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/regional/2010-04/13/content_9722339.htm
http://china.globaltimes.cn/society/2010-04/521854.html
“Global warming has reached the point of no return,”
thank goodness, it’s about time.
Now can we all go on about our business and stop this crap?
I do not want to return to ‘normal’.
That would just mean that the weather is going to change again,
and all this crap will start up again.
Saying something is “irreversible” can backfire on people like Solomon:
If it’s “irreversible”, people are less inclined to want to take any action, since they can’t do anything about it.
@Jeff brown (14:08:40) :
Today, WE are putting the CO2 into the atmosphere and the temperatures are responding.
– – – – – – –
Do you mean like the way temperatures responded during the years c. 1880 through 1910 and again c. 1945 through 1979? Where’s the CO2 vs temperature correlation during those intervals that you appear to be so confident of?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.svg
It will be interesting to see the 2009 summary of Denali National Park Alaska weather (due soon?) and how fast we are accelerating from “normal” there and how the Park is going this year. Might make up for the “abnormal” conditions of 2008 or is Denali still in denial?
http://www.nps.gov/dena/naturescience/upload/2009-RMUpdatesfinal.pdf
(Page 39)
Weather Notes for 2008:
• The mean annual temperature was 3° F below normal – the coldest year since 1999.
• The mean monthly temperatures were colder than normal for each month except March.
• It was the fourth snowiest April on record with 21.4 inches of total snowfall.
• July was wet; there were 2 inches more rain than normal.
Temperature:
• Maximum temperature 79° F on July 5.
• Minimum temperature – 37°F on February 10.
• Mean annual air temperature 24.6°F (colder than the historical average of 27.2°F).
Don’t think the Park is in too much of a hurry either to change its “normal” opening dates.
“”” Alberta Slim (15:42:55) :
jeff brown (14:08:40) :
Please note that CO2 levels vs Temperature are not linear.
It is an exponential relationship.
Initially CO2 increases [as a GHG] causes an increase in Temp.
But, because of the exponential relationship, the CO2 can keep doubling, and doubling with very little increase in temp.
The whole system is self-regulating, and always has been.
There will not be a runaway condition. “””
So what actual instrumented measurement data that supports your assertion of an “exponential relationship” or a “logarithmic relationship, dpending on which way you plot it.
How many doublings and redoublings of cO2 do you have in your instruemental record; and how much better is your fit to an exponetial or logarithmic graph, than it is to a simple linear graph ?
Just asking.
Susan,
To gain the wisdom of the ages, repeat the following mantra. Start slowly and gradually increase your speech rate until you realize the wisdom you have gained. Ohwa tagoo siam. Ohwa tagoo siam.
I have a feeling the poor kid was just trying to say that the winter of 2009/2010 was finally over and there’s no chance of any more snow in Dallas, TX.
Thanks Kid, we needed that $4.86 Million study. We would have never known.
This is actually wonderful news. We no longer need to worry about stopping the warming, since it is unstoppable. Now, we can begin to focus on what needs to be done to prepare for the coming changes.
No need for Cap and Tax. No need to reduce the burning of coal, or to burn our forests for biofuel as Duke Energy is planning to do in North Carolina. No need for windmills that despoil the view and kill birds. No need for subsidies to build solar panel farms to produce outrageously expensive power.
The irony is that climate change is indeed unstoppable, because we didn’t cause it in the first place, or at least not much of it.
Ben Kellett, I can help you with your problem. The choice of 1979-2000 as a basis of comparison or standard of “normal” for ANY climatic phenomenon is completely arbitrary. Statistically, 1979 to the present would represent a more reliable sample. The real question is, are current conditions outside the known natural variability of the system? Pre-1979 pictures of US submarines at an ice-free North Pole would tend to say no.
Inisting that a 20-year period, starting at the beginning of the satellite record, somehow is the gold standard for “normal” is like the old joke about the drunk looking for his car keys under the street light. When a friend points out that he lost them some distance away, he says “the light’s better over here”.
jeff brown (14:51:26) :
Jeff, I don’t think you’ll get any objections from WUWT readers on your points.
Your points, however, do not justify the alarmism or cap and trade, which seems to be the end goal of the alarmists.
A trillion (or more) dollars per year not going to cap and trade would go a long way to addressing your points.
It is the heart of the matter that these AGW promoters may actually believe we are living in the midst of a climate apocalypse.
But if it is irreversible, how can playing with CO2 by way of treaties and laws- which has utterly failed every time it is tried, reverse the apocalypse?
Susan gave a lecture at Oregon State that was video-taped. Now the local PBS affiliate shows the lecture at least once a week — late at night. It’s scary, and I don’t mean the subject matter.
In the video Susan rails on and on about how the planet is “burning up”. Her principal anecdote in support of her theory is about an Eskimo village that had to be moved away from the shore because waves from the ice-free Arctic Ocean were causing beach erosion.
Oh the humanity!
She fails to note, however, that Eskimos used to move their villages quite often, before they were ensconsed in government issue trailer homes. And that the trailers were mis-sited. And that the Eskimos are probably happy to get new ones somewhere else. And that the beach erosion, if there really is any, is not caused by global warming. And that if the best ancedotal evidence of global warming she can come up with is translocated Eskimos, she’s pathetic.
hunter (17:19:33) said:
It’s all about feeling good. Didn’t you know?
DirkH (13:56:10) wrote:
“Oettinger didn’t bury it but says the comission will make results public when they are ready (“wenn sie [the commission] fertig ist””
The main meaning in German of “wenn” is not “when”, but “if”. Should we re-examine the quotation?
IanM
@Jeff brown. Oh, I see. I am not a Scientist, I don’t understand, so I should shut up.
It’s that attitude that will have Scientists being the first up against the wall when the Revolution comes. I really don’t like being patronised.
Obviously I should not be taking the time to educate myself and try to be informed. I should just sit back and let the Pigs control my life (Obvious 1984 reference, if you can’t pick it up).
Steve,
Your post is timely. This was the same tired eco-babble I got to listen to on the way home this evening: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/04/13/pm-eaarth-new-reality-q/
Oh if we could only get back to that perfect world of 50 years ago…
They do read letters on air and I think they even record it in the authors’ own voices. So, if you’re interested you might want to fire off a modified version of your post in rebuttal.