Gotta love what’s in the yellow highlight.
Since that story was printed in USA Today about the Wegman issues, I’ve been getting an influx of anonymous whiner trolls that are saying things like this:
| Tamsie |
Submitted on 2010/11/22 at 11:29 am
speaking of obvious, it’s becoming glaringly obvious that WUWT (and most other contrarian sites) are avaoiding the Wegman scandal. I wonder why that is? |
Heh, what’s obvious is that you haven’t done your homework. We’ve had several posts well in advance (starting October 8th, 2010) of the current hubub being stirred up by the USA Today article, which was late to the party by about a month. But, they don’t seem to have the in depth coverage we do.
So for those too stupid or lazy to use the search feature of WUWT, here is our collection of Wegman coverage in chronological order, they are indeed enlightening and far more in-depth than the USA today article:
On Wegman – Who will guard the guards themselves?
Wordsmithing
Mashey Potatoes, Part 1
Dipping Into The Sour Mash, Part 2
Manic Flail: Epic Fail
How to solve attribution conflicts in climate science
Bradley Copies Fritts
Because Nothing Ever Happens In November…
On Bradley: Blackmail or Let’s Make a Deal
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
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Same challenge for you Smokey – what events will convince you that AGW is correct? Will it be 5 more years of unrelenting warming? 10 years? 20 years?
All the supposed “skeptics” (who of course FAIL to be skeptical of anything that supports their fantasy of CO2 being an inert or beneficial trace gas) are quite humorous as they parade around with their limited facts and boldly proclaim – we’ve seen all this before (as they OMIT any mention that ALL previous variability has a natural explanation – while they have NO explanation for the current warming).
But be a true scientist – make a prediction/hypothesis about what the future holds. Carefully compare observed reality to your prediction and change your understanding based on the data – that is all we, the true skeptics, are asking of you.
So – be honest – what will convince you AGW is happening? Or is your mind so closed that NOTHING will convince you? That is not skepticism. That is ideology.
PS – as for Ferdindand Englebeen – he may more than I know on the subject, but he has not communicated that he knows more. He has rather put up a series of very thin defenses, including the old canard – “no warming for the last decade” – which is provably false. So color me unimpressed so far. But who knows what the future holds.
Sorry, AT, you don’t get to ask that question. The point of the true Null Hypothesis is the following: until proven otherwise, all trends and variations are assumed to be part of natural variability. Since the climate changes since the beginning of the Halocene, and more recently since the end of the LIA, are entirely consistent with the current state of affairs, your claim that the recent increases in temperature etc. are due to AGW and CO2 still lack a disproof of the Null Hypothesis.
Better get on it! The world awaits.
Actually Thoughtful says on November 26, 2010 at 5:08 pm
However, when someone uses a moniker like Actually Thoughtful you know you are dealing with a wanker.
Actually Thoughtful says:
November 26, 2010 at 11:52 am
Hmm. You seem pretty set in your ways. I note you don’t respond to the fact that the earth has warmed by .07C during the decade you claimed no warming! And no, the “endpoint bias” bit has been thoroughly debunked.
Come on AT, I have responded that your 10 years was actually beginning in a natural caused low and ends at a natural caused high. If that isn’t begin-and-endpoint bias, so give me your definition.
And the temperatures are already outside the “envelope” of model projections. Only by using some tricks like non-conventional filtering, that is hidden.
I have some experience with models (be it for chemical processes, not climate). Your (and that of several climate modelers) reasoning is that if we don’t have another explanation, then it must be CO2. That may be true if you know all influences which cause climate changes. But as I could prove, that is by far not the case: no model is capable of reproducing (let be “project”) any natural oscillation. Not ENSO, not the PDO, NAO, AO,… If you see that one ENSO event causes a difference of 0.7°C in less than 2 years… There are hints of climatic ENSO cycles, ~70 years cycles, ~1000 years cycles, etc. into the far past. As long as there is no knowledge of what the natural cycles drives, the computer models which mainly counts on CO2 for their warming are simply worthless. As good as a process model that I made failed, because some raw material vendor swindled – without our knowledge – with the specs.
Further, as I have already said: a few% change in clouds can have the same (or more) effect than a doubling of CO2. No model can reproduce cloud cover as it is observed. See e.g.:
http://www.nerc-essc.ac.uk/~rpa/PAPERS/olr_grl.pdf
And nature isn’t interested in CO2 for cloud cover: it comes and goes as nature likes:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/308/5723/847.abstract
Thus, if already two important influences on temperature/climate are not calculated by the models as should be, how in heaven can these models be trusted in their “projections”, mainly based on an overestimate of sensitivity for GHGs?
We need at least 20 years more to have more or less reliable data to know the effect of 2 full PDO cycles. Thanks to more and better data in the next decades about cloud cover and ocean heat content, solar changes and eventually volcanic events, the (real) influence of aerosols, etc., the models can be refined with increasing knowledge of natural variability. Until then, I don’t think any model can and should be trusted.
I will probably not see that happpen, but my children were raised with the same sense of healthy skepticism…
Brian H: “Sorry, AT, you don’t get to ask that question.”
Good to know how a true skeptic is treated on this site! Of course you don’t want to go on record (no matter how high you set the bar) – given that, as long as we continue to release CO2 into the atmosphere – it is going to get worse and your line in the sand will melt under the waves.
What most people don’t even realize is that this is happening with NO notable solar activity. When we have an active sun and an El Nino in the same year – this whole thing is going to be very, very obvious. Russia’s last summer will look like a Sunday picnic by comparison.
Richard Sharpe – when you are confident in your position – you don’t have to resort to name calling. Do some research – post when you have something interesting to say.
SIGH.
“Come on AT, I have responded that your 10 years was actually beginning in a natural caused low and ends at a natural caused high. If that isn’t begin-and-endpoint bias, so give me your definition.”
Look – only the clueless deniers pick two points, then draw a line and call it analysis. You don’t appear to be BOTH of those things – so you do know better. Climate does not respond to the forcings in a linear path – adding exactly .017/year. Natural variability will push some years well over, and some well under. But a trend line is developed to count the temperature during the intervening years as well. (To my shame, I don’t recall the mathematical term – all the data points below the trend line must be balanced by data points above the trend line).
Otherwise, you don’t even have 2 years – you have 2 instants in time. That may be how “science” is conducted in some places, but not by climate scientists. So please – this one is pretty much a dead horse – please don’t bruise your toes on it.
“And the temperatures are already outside the “envelope” of model projections. Only by using some tricks like non-conventional filtering, that is hidden.”
So you were for natural variability before you were against it? Take a look at Hansen 1988. Critically evaluate it. That was 22 years ago – we have learned a lot since then. The models were never presented as a crystal ball – rather this is what you can expect under business as usual – and LO! Flooding in Pakistan, acidifying oceans, melting polar ice, Greenland’s ice sheet melt accelerating, warmer nights, shorter winters – all that was predicted is coming to pass. If the current temps are out of spec for the model – wait a few years! All of this is happening with a quiet sun and La Nina. That is not going to last.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/308/5723/847.abstract
I thought you didn’t believe in aerosols?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/aerosols-global-warming.htm
It appears that aerosols can explain the 1975-1990 slow warming. But they don’t explain the current, multi-decade warming.
As for cloud cover – absolutely true that water vapor is the biggest factor in warming/cooling. But you have to factor in that increasing clouds keep heat in 24 hours a day, but reflect heat for only 6-12 hours a day. So while there is some debate, cloud cover is likely a positive (reinforcing) feedback. What drives cloud cover? Heat. And the earth retains more heat as more CO2 is injected into the atmosphere,
http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas-intermediate.htm
“And nature isn’t interested in CO2 for cloud cover: it comes and goes as nature likes:” Wait a minute! Aren’t you saying the paper on aerosols (which you elsewhere doubt, if I recall correctly) is your get out jail free card on the claim that “natural variability” explains all the warming? I don’t think so. Aerosols masked global warming for 15-20 years – one man-made driver influencing another man-made forcing. But the two together don’t prove your point. Nothing in the abstract supports your claim. I admit have not read the full text.
So we are 67% through your two full PDOs – and the warming trend is very obvious. The next 20 years are going to have to be COLD to back us out of this.
AGW explains almost all the observed phenomena – natural variability would need to return to a zero trend at some point. Can you show a similar 40 year period of heating that then returns to the zero trend (actually goes below to keep the trend at zero). Without, of course, a solar influence, a CO2 influence or a volcanic influence – all of those ARE in the current models and ARE in our current observed situation – persistent warming with no change in outside influences – other than man-made CO2 (and other greenhouse gases).
Are you really willing to bet your children’s and grandchildren’s future on this? If were in Vegas I would not take the bet you are championing. While it is POSSIBLE that all the available evidence is a carefully arranged house of cards – gonna come crashing down any day now – it is EXTREMELY LIKELY that the only changes to the outcomes will be very minor corrections, as we learn more. But the chances are EQUALLY likely that things will be worse, rather than better.
Skepticism means getting down to the truth – not just repeating your position over and over again, immune to any facts or logic that expose the trouble with your logic train. By all means, be skeptical – be a scientist. Mann, Schmidt, Hansen, countless others are leading the way. But don’t be an ideologue – for whom truth is unnecessary.
Actually Thoughtful says November 27, 2010 at 7:44 pm
Ahhh, yes, the misplaced confidence of the clueless who don’t have the courage to use their real names. Come back troll when you have found some courage.
Richard Sharpe – when you are confident in your position – you don’t have to resort to name calling. Do some research – post when you have something interesting to say.
Actually Thoughtful says:
November 27, 2010 at 8:46 pm
Look – only the clueless deniers pick two points, then draw a line and call it analysis. You don’t appear to be BOTH of those things – so you do know better.
I am not sure who is clueless in this case: just make a (Wood for Trees) plot of the linear trend from 2001 to 2010 instead of 2000 to 2010: the trend is going from +0.06°C/decade to -0.06°C/decade. That is caused by the strong influence of the 1999-2000 La Niña. Thus still a beginpoint bias, even on a trend. That is no reason for me to say that the temperatures are falling, only that these are flat + natural variability over the past decade.
So you were for natural variability before you were against it? Take a look at Hansen 1988. Critically evaluate it. That was 22 years ago – we have learned a lot since then.
But still they have no clue about the extent of natural variability. To repeat the obvious: the Hansen estimate was based on the strong upgoing trend of 1975-1988. Before that the temperatures were flat, even slightly cooling. All the warming was attributed to GHGs, nothing to natural variability, while the PDO shifted in the same year 1975. Temperature follows the C scenario since 2000 (low CO2), while CO2 levels follow the B scenario (bussiness as usual). See:
http://climateaudit.org/2008/07/28/hansen-update/
Even including the 2008-2010 temperature trend, that still is around the C scenario.
Flooding in Pakistan, acidifying oceans, melting polar ice, Greenland’s ice sheet melt accelerating, warmer nights, shorter winters
The melting of Greenland’s ice sheet was as high and accellerated faster in the period 1930-1950, including higher (summer) temperatures than today:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/greenland_temp.html
Flooding in Pakistan? All natural. Warmer nights, shorter winters? 95% natural (just my guess, which is as good as that of the faulty models). Acidifying oceans? So small that it is unmeasurable in the normal natural variability of the ocean’s pH, thus only based on calculations. Further, coccoliths and coral reefs flourished in warmer oceans at CO2 levels 10-12 times the current ones. Fish can live in pH changes of several units…
I thought you didn’t believe in aerosols?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/aerosols-global-warming.htm
It appears that aerosols can explain the 1975-1990 slow warming. But they don’t explain the current, multi-decade warming.
I have written a lot of comments (without much response) about the (non-)influence of aerosols at RC, but as (former) modeler, I know that one can fit any past trend if one has more than a few variables to “tune” the result. See the non-influence of the huge change in aerosols 1990-2000 in Europe:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/aerosols.html
Here the result of different forcing attributions to aerosols: one can halve the effect of 2xCO2 (thus halve the temperature increase in the year 2100) simply by reducing the effect of aerosols, while the emulation of the past temperature still is the same (even slightly better):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/oxford.html
I need to make an update of “my” model up to 2010, as the low-CO2-influence scenario probably fits the latest period even better.
Further, the Skeptical Science article is about global dimming. That is attributed to aerosols by some, but that can’t be true: while the industrial nations (North America, Europe) reduced their SO2 emissions, SE Asia increased their emissions with about the same amount, but global dimming reversed.
90% of all human aerosols are emitted in the NH and most stay there before being washed out by rain, but global dimming was measured as good in the SH. Thus has more to do with cloud cover than with aerosols . Moreover, as most aerosols are emitted in the NH, the warming of the oceans (the best measure for heat balance changes) should be (far) less than in the SH. But we see the opposite:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/oceans_heat.html
But you have to factor in that increasing clouds keep heat in 24 hours a day, but reflect heat for only 6-12 hours a day.
Sorry, you have no idea what clouds do: low lying clouds have an average cooling effect, high altitude (cirrus) clouds have a warming effect. That is known by all scientists. The models include a reduction of low clouds with increasing GHGs, thus a warming feedback effect, which is not seen in reality. But (low) cloud cover responds to solar activity and ocean cycles (or reverse, that is a matter of debate).
So we are 67% through your two full PDOs – and the warming trend is very obvious. The next 20 years are going to have to be COLD to back us out of this.
You forget to mention that we had two warm halve periods and one cooler, need some additional 20 years for 2 full cycles. Even so, other long-term cycles also play a role: The Alps and Norwegian glaciers now reveal artefacts of people passing 6,000 years ago where lots of ice were during thousands of years. Some ice free passes in the Alps during Roman times still are covered with ice. And the MWP probably has been warmer than current at a lot of places, if not globally. All natural…
Thus without detailed knowledge of what did drive these natural cycles, forget all these dire “projections” (NOT predictions) of models which don’t reflect several major influences on climate like cloud cover.
Are you really willing to bet your children’s and grandchildren’s future on this?
I am old enough to have seen a lot of this kind of predictions come and go. As the wealth of children in general increases compared to their parents, they will be rich enough to take the necessary measures, if necessary at all, including relative affordable alternatives for fossil fuels.
Mann, Schmidt, Hansen, countless others are leading the way.
Sorry, what I have read written by Mann (exchanging inconvenient data of proxies by “better” infilled data to “hide the decline”) and the continuous censoring at RC (I did give up to post there when half my posts were censored, although always on topic) by Gavin Schmidt and the alarmist nonsense of Hansen, is not really my way of thinking of what a scientist should say or do.
Heh. Mann, Schmidt, Hansen et al are trying to organize a march down a species-wide economic rathole. It is not observed that any of them have compromised their own lifestyles in the slightest to share the global penury they are so eager to initiate and enforce.
[snip . . not even clever spelling. . mod]
Re: Ferdinand Engelbeen
Regarding begin/end point bias – I suggest we do what climate scientists do and ignore any time period less than 30 years for serious discussion. While this still subjects you to begin/end point “bias” (I think about this very differently, but I see what you are worried about) -that bias is very, very minor over 30 years or more. So be gone with 10 year analysis, where obvious trends can be overwhelmed by short term phenomena.
This does eviscerate much of your argument – but it gets us closer to your precious 60 year TWO PDO.
So here is the graph at 60 years:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1950/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1950/trend
I see .12C/decade, and this includes the 1950-1975 years when not much was happening (CO2 was climbing, but had not yet become the primary forcing on earth’s temperature). If we start in 1973 (choosing the warmest year in the 70s to not only avoid start point bias, but to actually give your argument the most charitable view) and go until now (again – La Nina so most favorable to your argument) – we get .16C/decade!
So even taking your argument at face value (60 years required to rule out natural variability) – we see warming. And we see that it correlates to CO2 (greenhouse) emissions. The data is in black and white – no effort to obfuscate or play games of any sort. Just wanting to KNOW what is happening so we can plan accordingly
Yes – I too have seen many scares – Y2K being the silliest of them all. I agree it is worth casting a skeptic gaze on any alarmist claims. The problem is that I, and many people better educated than I in this area, HAVE cast a skeptic gaze. And rather than finding the alarmist (ie IPCC) being alarmist, I find them being too conservative (it is, after all a political document (here I mean the report for policy makers – the supporting material of the IPCC has held up incredibly well under intense attack from those threatened by the reality of AGW).
As for Hansen 1988 – The fact that temps are slightly closer to C than B is not the point. The scenarios are for what regime of CO2 pollution we have. And B is the scenario, so B is what you must look at. (If we had cut emissions then we would have to look at C).
So B slightly over states the pollution and uses an climate sensitivity of 4.2C/doubling of CO2.
For Hansen to be correct, he would have needed to use 3.4C/doubling. And what do you know – IPCC 2007 says the range is 1.5C-4.5C with 3C being the most likely (and the 4.5C being a weaker boundary than the 1.5C).
It seems that climate scientists have a clue about natural variability (from observed results in the real world during the instrumentation era) yet you proclaim :”But still they have no clue about the extent of natural variability.” Not sure what your basis for that claim is.
How many years will you require before you stop pretending global climate disruption is natural variability? You said 60 years – above I demonstrate that even using 60 years natural variability does not explain the temperature record.
But over here we have this theory -AGW – that explains night-time warming, Greenland ice sheet melting, and on and on.
If cloud cover could randomly change in the direction towards warming in the past – where is that in the record? Were we simply lucky from 1850 to 1980? When will it stop?
Of course it will stop when/if we stop injecting CO2 into the air.
I would slow down on accusing me of not having a clue about anything, but especially cloud cover. You are the one who has to keep moving the goal posts and keeps losing every specific point you bring up. Here is what clouds do, and why.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008JD011470.shtml
http://news.discovery.com/earth/clouds-climate.html
And so it goes.
Actually Thoughtful says:
November 28, 2010 at 12:55 pm
So be gone with 10 year analysis, where obvious trends can be overwhelmed by short term phenomena.
This does eviscerate much of your argument – but it gets us closer to your precious 60 year TWO PDO.
So here is the graph at 60 years:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1950/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1950/trend
Why not have a look over 100 years? That shows some more interesting periods, even if the thermometers were more scarce (especially over the oceans) and the global average more uncertain:
http://tinyurl.com/288alyh
I have added the trend over the full period and the trends during strongly increasing temperatures: 1910-1945 and 1975-2000 plus the CO2 increase since Mauna Loa started. I couldn’t plot the ice core CO2 data, but for 1910-1945 the increase was about 10 ppmv, while for 1975-2000 it was 35 ppmv, thus 3.5 times the previous extra forcing. Despite that, the trends are nearly as steep and the intermediate period 1945-1975 even shows some cooling and again after 2000 there is little to no trend anymore.
Thus mainly some natural influence increased temperatures 1910-1945, with little help from CO2, and the same natural influence probably caused the decreasing/flat trend 1945-1975, and even if there was any influence of human aerosols, it probably was more a warming one, not a cooling one (smoke of coal is not really white…), see further.
Thus remains the question in how far the second temperature rise (and the now near decade flat trend) is natural, anyway certainly not CO2 driven, as the climate models pretend. The climate models don’t include, neither reflect any of these natural cycles, thus attributing the full increase to CO2 increase, because that is the only implemented forcing which has an upgoing trend in that period. But of course that gives problems with the 1945-1975 period and the 2000(1)-current period.
And rather than finding the alarmist (ie IPCC) being alarmist, I find them being too conservative (it is, after all a political document (here I mean the report for policy makers – the supporting material of the IPCC has held up incredibly well under intense attack from those threatened by the reality of AGW).
Well that is a matter of belief more than of knowledge I suppose, but discussing this item would be good for many pages on this blog. Quite off-topic (as most of this is).
As for Hansen 1988 – The fact that temps are slightly closer to C than B is not the point. The scenarios are for what regime of CO2 pollution we have. And B is the scenario, so B is what you must look at. (If we had cut emissions then we would have to look at C).
I don’t understand your reasoning: the B scenario is what the emissions do, but the temperature increase doesn’t follow the B scenario but the C scenario. That means that temperature reacts as if there was no CO2 increase anymore. Thus the effect of more CO2 in the past decade(s) is completely neutralised by something natural. Thus that “something natural” could have been responsible for part of the increase in the period 1975-2000 as good as for the standstill now… In my opinion, if that lasts for the next two decades, that results in a halving of the average range of the IPCC for 2xCO2, thus a sensitivity of 1.5°C for a CO2 doubling. Not much to worry about, even benign for most of the globe: the number of species, agriculture and human survival. Thus forget the doom scenario’s.
Not sure what your basis for that claim is.
See Fig. S1 of Barnett e.a. result of climate models vs. natural cycles:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2005/07/07/1112418.DC1/Barnett.SOM.pdf
How many years will you require before you stop pretending global climate disruption is natural variability?
As I said already, some 20 years from now, then we have had two full PDO cycles: two warming and two cooling/flat halves. Then we may have enough observations, including better ocean and better satellite data, to attribute the right sensitivity to the proper influences.
But over here we have this theory -AGW – that explains night-time warming, Greenland ice sheet melting, and on and on.
Night time and winter warming in Europe is mainly caused by increased water vapour, not by more CO2 (feel the day-night difference in a desert vs. in a humid country, both have similar overlying CO2 levels). Of course CO2 caused some warming (0.9°C for 2xCO2, according to the Modtran calculation of absorption lines) and therefore also increased water vapour levels (increasing the warming – not considering clouds – to 1.3°C for 2xCO2), but water vapour changed 4 times more than theoretically in Northern Europe (North of the Alps), simply by a positive NAO, which brings more warmer, wetter air from over the Atlantic farther over the continent.
And as already said, Greenland melting was as huge (but 1.5 times faster rising) in the period 1930-1950, with higher (summer) temperatures then. All natural.
If cloud cover could randomly change in the direction towards warming in the past – where is that in the record?
Clouds seems to give a lot of extra warming or cooling, just by a change of a few %, but not sure if that is “randomly”, I only know that there are cycles in cloud cover, which are directly tied to ocean cycles and solar cycles. If that is the cause or effect for ocean cycles still is debatable. As long as we don’t know what the ~1000 years cycle (Roman Warm Period, Medieval WP, Current WP) caused and its total climatic effect, it is only speculation to attribute all recent warming to only CO2.
Further: here how global dimming changed over the years. Some (mostly climate modelers) attribute that to (human) aerosols (as your source also does), but that gives some impossibilities.
Others attribute that to changes in cloudiness:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/308/5723/847.abstract
but even more interesting is the (free) suplementary information:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2005/05/02/308.5723.847.DC1/Wild_SOM.pdf
Interesting are figures S9, S11 and S12, resp. China, Australia and India:
China sees an increase in solar radiation since about 1980, while their air pollution with aerosols (from dirty coal…) certainly increased with at least the same amount as what the Western world reduced. Thus it is impossible that the increase of insolation is caused by a decrease of aerosols.
Then Australia: there is ample human pollution there from the sparce population (the only really bad ones I saw there was from burning “biomass”, sugar cane rests, in a sugar factory, and from bush fires), but the recovery in insolation since about 1990 is remarkable for a non-pollution…
Then India: here it may be true that the notorious brown cloud caused regional dimming up to now, but that is a warming aerosol, which may have helped the regional warming and melting part of the snow/ice in the Himalayas due to brown ash deposits.
Further, most of the aerosols in the free atmosphere are natural, not human. The difference is not detected by satellites, which only sort on reflectivity for different diameters, which causes overattribution to human aerosols in the models:
http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/publications/heald_2005.pdf
You see, one need to read a lot of literature to weed out speculation from real facts…