Old, but untold. Trenberth treated us to a trick in his Halloween interview with Bill Sweet by changing the sign on his own most famous quote. As Trenberth now tells it:
One cherry-picked message saying we can’t account for current global warming and that this is a travesty went viral and got more than 100,000 hits online.
The email in question actually bemoaned how Trenberth couldn’t account for the LACK of global warming:
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.
Global warming… LACK of global warming. Hey, what’s the difference?
This is Trenberth’s answer to having his doubts exposed by the ClimateGate leak: just cover them back up. Pretend that the revealing email said the opposite of what it actually said and PROBLEM SOLVED. The guy’s a genius. No wonder he rose to the esteemed lead author position.
Of course he’s not fooling anyone who knows what he actually said. Add that lack of warming does have to do with the state of global warming, and most knowledgeable people will grant Trenberth the benefit of the doubt, but should they? Ignorant people will be fooled, and Trenberth has a habit of misleading the ignorant.
Here is Trenberth in a follow-up interview with Sweet (after Sweet was apparently inundated with comments and email calling Trenberth a liar and castigating Sweet for playing softball—yay WUWT):
Sweet: Can you say something about the widespread belief that solar activity somehow accounts for the temperature changes we’ve seen in recent decades?
Trenberth: That’s easily disproven. It’s nonsense. Since 1979 we’ve had spacecraft measuring total solar irradiance, and there’s been no change—if anything the sun has cooled slightly. There’s nothing in the record that indicates that the sun is responsible for any of the warming in this period.
Trenberth knows full well that “solar activity” refers primarily to solar-magnetic activity, which varies by an order of magnitude over the solar cycle, while total solar irradiance is almost invariant over the solar cycle (which is why it is called the solar constant). Does he really think he can disprove the theory that 20th century warming was caused by solar activity without looking at anything but the least active solar variable?
Again, the knowledgeable will not be fooled, but it is perfectly clear that Trenberth’s intent in this instance is to deceive the ignorant. He is also providing us with an example of what he was talking about in his original IEEE interview when he said:
Scientists almost always have to address problems in their data, exercising judgment about what might be defective and best disregarded.
That pesky data about solar-magnetic activity and earthly temperatures being highly correlated? (“The long term trends in solar data and in northern hemisphere temperatures have a correlation coefficient of about 0.7 – .8 at a 94% – 98% confidence level.”) “Best disregarded.”
And it is easily done. Just change out “solar activity” for the least active solar quantity and, voilà. As easy as replacing “lack of global warming” with “global warming.”
As J.R. Ewing put it, “once you give up integrity, the rest is easy.”
Any other “lumpies”? (Santa must have had anti-CO2 alarmists in mind when he chose coal for the bad. Like crosses for vampires.)
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R. Gates says:
December 26, 2010 at 11:12 am
Response to JPeden:
December 25, 2010 at 6:28 pm
________
The essential point– that there recent evidence for heating of the deeper ocean [explaining Trenberth’s missing heat] – is valid and I’ve provided the links for readers to understand the issue on a more honest and thorough level than your ad hominems on me would allow….
Gates, it’s not an ad hominem if it’s true – Gates’ lack of credibility – which, thanks, your non-responsive, rotely perseverating claims above only confirmed again! And what’s perhaps even worse, since you will not allow your apparent claims to be disproven, they really don’t claim anything at all.
Now Bob Tisdale is dismissing a solar explanation for late 20th century warming by looking at the absence of any warming effect from TSI, exactly what my post criticizes Trenberth for doing. Asked about those who think climate change is being driven by solar activity, Trenberth says he can “disprove” this by noting that TSI has “if anything… cooled slightly.” But TSI is not “solar activity.” TSI is “the solar constant.” It is known for staying very close to constant over the 11 year cycle in solar activity (short for solar-magnetic activity).
Not only does Tisdale follow Trenberth in substituting the solar constant for solar activity, but he even seems to think that I am doing the same thing (making a TSI based argument for recent climate history). In short, he has no understanding of the subject I am addressing and doesn’t even seem to have read my short post, yet he feels no compunction about castigating me for various supposedly gross errors. In particular, it was terribly inappropriate for me to point out how even the AGW alarmists acknowledge thousands of years of evidence for a solar-activity/climate link.
Well, I invited Bob to shipwreck here. Looks like that is what he is determined to do. Okay, let’s finish it out. Go ahead Mr. Tisdale, point out how TSI and solar activity are correlated, making them equivalent or something, and I will explain to you why they are very very different.
Hint: just look at how you use TSI in your argument. You quantify it’s effect, based on its physical nature. That quantified effect does not, cannot, account for the physical effects of the solar flux and other components of solar magnetic activity.
Also, a friendly piece of advice if you are willing to take it. Why don’t you stop pretending you understand this subject better than me, when the evidence is that you have never even looked at it. If you wrote a post on something I was not particularly knowledgeable about, I can’t imagine jumping in with an accusatory presumption that I was catching you in some kind of misfeasance. Wouldn’t that be kind of crazy?
Trenberth trying to revise his infamous “lack of warming” statement into “current global warming” is a fact.
Trenberth ignoring all the dynamic variables implied by the phrase “solar activity” by limiting his response to “total solar irradiance” is a fact.
And those pixels on graphs showing a consistent warming trend appear to have no relationship whatsoever to the aggregate of chilling weather unfurling in the real world since the sun went quiet.
Alec Rawls: Regarding your December 27, 2010 at 1:06 am , since you now claim to be an expert on the relationship between solar variability and global temperatures, or at least you claim to be more knowledgeable than I am about the subject, you must have spent untold, countless hours sorting through data while performing your own research. This should mean that there is a readily available long-term (since 1900) solar dataset that you have used to confirm the beliefs you have presented in this post and thread. Please prepare a graph of that dataset, and compare it to a global temperature anomaly dataset, from 1900 to present. And please provide a link to the solar dataset you used. There are many who blog here at WattsUpWithThat, including solar physicist Leif Svalgaard, who would be very interested in how you “account for the physical effects of the solar flux and other components of solar magnetic activity.”
I and countless others await this simple product of your research.
Joel Shore wrote to Alec Rawls, “But, of course, you are going to be showing us a plot proving me wrong…which I eagerly await.”
That’s curious. You and I are on opposing sides in the AGW argument, but we both await the same thing. The final sentence of my last comment read, “I and countless others await this simple product of your research.”
Alec and Bob, two points.
1) Since the oceans accumulate and dissipate heat over mutidecadal timescales, the appropriate way to use the TSI data (which correlates well to sunspot number) is to integrate it as a cumulative total departing from the ocean equilibrium value. This shows that the influence of the solar contribution to global temperature is likely significant.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/nailing-the-solar-activity-global-temperature-divergence-lie/
2) We don’t yet understand the other ways variations in the spectral composition of solar irradiance affects Earth’s climate through the effect of various wavelengths on atmospheric chemistry, but the fact that EUV increased some 50% from the end of the Maunder Minimum to now is hardly likely to be insignificant, since EUV affects ozone production.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/solanki-krivova-vieira-crucial-new-solar-paper/
Bob Tisdale says:
Yeah…I was thinking much the same thing. If a post is such that both Bob Tisdale and Joel Shore can agree on how wrong-headed it is, then that’s saying something!
tallbloke says:
It would be a more significant visual test of how well-correlated the two things that you plot are if you were to plot them both on the same graph rather than on graphs one above the other. Also, it is quite an oversimplification that you do not in some way include the “negative feedback” described by the Stefan-Boltzmann Equation (i.e., as the oceans heat up, they radiate more)…which would tend to cause the warming to level off over time even if solar didn’t return to the arbitrary “neutral” level that you have chosen. Imagine if scientists ran climate models without this effect included in them…I don’t think people around here (including myself, actually) would be too happy about that!
tallbloke says: “Since the oceans accumulate and dissipate heat over mutidecadal timescales, the appropriate way to use the TSI data (which correlates well to sunspot number) is to integrate it as a cumulative total departing from the ocean equilibrium value. This shows that the influence of the solar contribution to global temperature is likely significant.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/nailing-the-solar-activity-global-temperature-divergence-lie/”
Please plot, on the same graph, the Global SST anomalies and a scaled version of the “cumulative total sunspot area”. These two datasets:
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/ssa-sst-ssn.jpg
Thanks
Tallbloke: Figure 8 “Ly-a irradiance” of Krivova et al (2010)…
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/solanki-2010-1.gif
…which you have displayed in your post here…
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/solanki-krivova-vieira-crucial-new-solar-paper/
…may have increased 50%, but it still peaks in 1950, as does sunspot number and TSI, so any attempt to explain additional warming since 1950 as a response to solar variability is still difficult.
Bob, see my point (1). The issue isn’t just instantaneous peak amplitudes, but the cumulative effect of solar variation.
Also, although the peak amplitudes fell after 1960 (which possibly overcounted sunspots during the highest ever cycle) the cycles were short, with steep up and downramps, and short minima.
Solar activity was well above average for the whole of the second half of the C20th.
Bob Tisdale says:
December 27, 2010 at 7:45 am
Please plot, on the same graph, the Global SST anomalies and a scaled version of the “cumulative total sunspot area”. These two datasets:
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/ssa-sst-ssn.jpg
Not sure what you are getting at. That is what is plotted on that graph.
What I will have a go at is plotting cumulative sunspots against SST with the PDO and AMO removed. Maybe you could help me with that? This would smooth out the dips and peaks around 1900 and 1940 and help you see what I’m talking about I think.
Tallbloke replied, “Not sure what you are getting at. That is what is plotted on that graph.”
What you provided here…
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/ssa-sst-ssn.jpg
..are two separate graphs and you’ve placed them top to bottom. What I asked for was to have them appear on one graph, a comparison graph like this:
http://i52.tinypic.com/2mq4xax.jpg
If you’d rather I do it, please provide links to the datasets that make up the “cumulative total sunspot area” data and any equation that’s required.
Thanks
Joel Shore says: “Yeah…I was thinking much the same thing. If a post is such that both Bob Tisdale and Joel Shore can agree on how wrong-headed it is, then that’s saying something!”
Maybe we’ll both be enlightened by Alec’s upcoming plot of a solar variable and global temperatures–or we may be enlightened in another way.
Joel Shore says:
December 27, 2010 at 7:45 am
it is quite an oversimplification that you do not in some way include the “negative feedback” described by the Stefan-Boltzmann Equation (i.e., as the oceans heat up, they radiate more)…which would tend to cause the warming to level off over time even if solar didn’t return to the arbitrary “neutral” level that you have chosen. Imagine if scientists ran climate models without this effect included in them…I don’t think people around here (including myself, actually) would be too happy about that!
Joel, thanks, constructive criticism is always welcome. I think your contribution here is important for the pressure it puts on us to be clear with our arguments.
Small changes in SST cause bigger changes in atmospheric temperature. You can see this in the effect of the 1998 El Nino on SST and UAH lower troposphere temps. Higher emission by the ocean is to some extent suppressed by higher LT temps. This is evidenced by the way ocean heat content continues to build while the 98 El Nino plays out. There’s a limit to how fast the ocean can get rid of heat. Other factors are involved. The 98 El Nino cased a huge spike in humidity above the tropics. This retained heat and spread it out. We’re talking about a coupled ocean air system here. The terrestrial amplification of the solar signal identified by Nir Shaviv in his JGR paper on using the oceans as a calorimeter has to be taken into account too.
I didn’t choose an “arbitrary “neutral” level” for the ocean equilibrium value, I derived it from two different lines of investigation; the long term sunspot average over 250 years, and the average value over an extended period when SST didn’t vary much.
I understand why this can’t be regarded as a rigorous scientific procedure. It is an engineering estimate. The reason I think it is reasonable to use it is that since our data is so uncertain for SST’s and OHC anyway, it’s as good as anything else out there. You may disagree.
Check my second link too. The effect of changes within the solar irradiance spectrum are uncertain too. I’m just trying to point the way to a better understanding of the sun as it relates to climate change, not making strong claims for the completeness or accuracy of my method.
Cheers and seasons greetings to you.
Alec Rawls: I just noticed that you’ve linked your post about ocean cycles to your name in your most recent comment. This post:
http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2008/04/ocean-oscillations-are-not-masking.html
After you’ve enlightened all who are awaiting your documentation of your solar/global temperature beliefs, I’ll be happy to discuss with you the very obvious error in your ocean cycle post.
Tallbloke and others, please don’t give him any hints. We’re all awaiting his documentation of his solar-global temperature link. After we’re finished with that, we can discuss his ocean cycles post.
Regards
Bob Tisdale says:
December 27, 2010 at 8:52 am What I asked for was to have them appear on one graph, a comparison graph like this:
http://i52.tinypic.com/2mq4xax.jpg
If you’d rather I do it, please provide links to the datasets that make up the “cumulative total sunspot area” data and any equation that’s required.
Bob, with you now. As it happens, I’ve already started work on updating the graph. Please could you help by pointing me to those graphs you did of the global SST with the effects of PDO and AMO removed, and I’ll include those for comparison too.
Thanks.
Tallbloke says: “Bob, with you now. As it happens, I’ve already started work on updating the graph. Please could you help by pointing me to those graphs you did of the global SST with the effects of PDO and AMO removed, and I’ll include those for comparison too.”
You have my email address, or access to it as a WUWT moderator, don’t you? Let’s do it that way.
Bob, email sent.
tallbloke says:
December 27, 2010 at 6:29 am
the fact that EUV increased some 50% from the end of the Maunder Minimum to now is hardly likely to be insignificant, since EUV affects ozone production.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/solanki-krivova-vieira-crucial-new-solar-paper/
The ‘fact’? Big word there. The Krivova paper is based on the obsolete Group Sunspot Number and is thus not valid. Now, people often use out-of-date data if it supports their theory.
My recent AGU-presentation outlines the Group Sunspot Number problem: http://www.leif.org/research/AGU%20Fall%202010%20SH53B-03.pdf
Ken Schatten, Ed Cliver, and yours truly are putting these arguments together in a paper we’ll submit to Solar Physics so it’ll be proper peer-reviewed and reference-able.
tallbloke says:
Actually, the greater response in lower troposphere temps will tend to limit the effect of the solar forcing and tend to speed the approach back to equilibrium because this greater rise in temperature means (via the Steffan-Boltzmann equation) that there is a larger rise in radiation back out into space. This is why the “lapse rate feedback” is a negative feedback in the climate system.
If you prefer, you can change “arbitrary” to read that it is a fitting parameter that you have essentially adjusted to get agreement with the data. Hence in any comparison of your integrated solar vs the SSTs, one needs to be aware that there are essentially two-parameters in that fit (this one and the one controlling the relative scaling of the SSTs vs the cumulative total sunspot area).
Well, I think the point is that there are two extremes: one that compares the current solar activity to the temperature and yours that compares the cumulative (i.e., integrated) solar activity to the temperature are two extreme case. The correct picture would be somewhere in between these two extremes since there is a cumulative effect but it is also going to be reduced by the negative feedback that higher temperatures result in higher terrestrial emission back out into space. Essentially, one applies in the limit that the heat capacity in infinitesimally small and the other in the limit that the heat capacity is infinitely large. (One way to incorporate this would be to have the “neutral level” itself be a function of the SSTs since the is effectively what is going to be the case…because as the SSTs rise and the atmospheric temperatures rise also, the amount of heat that the earth radiates back out into space is going to increase.)
And, likewise to you!
Leif Svalgaard says:
December 27, 2010 at 10:21 am
Hi Leif,
FYI the paper I refer to is fully peer reviewed and referenceable .
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 115, A12112, 11 PP., 2010
doi:10.1029/2010JA015431
Reconstruction of solar spectral irradiance since the Maunder minimum
N. A. Krivova, L. E. A. Vieira, S. K. Solanki
You say it uses the group sunspot number and that this is invalid. I believe that the invalidity of the group sunspot number is your opinion, rather than an fact established by peer reviewed referenceable science. Is that correct?
I look forward to reading your pdf, and good luck with getting it converted to peer reviewed referenceable science. Thanks for the link.
And merry christmas you old Grinch. 😉
tallbloke says:
December 27, 2010 at 11:02 am
FYI the paper I refer to is fully peer reviewed and referenceable .
As are hundreds of AGW papers, no?
You can read the full paper here: http://www.leif.org/EOS/2010JA015431.pdf
I believe that the invalidity of the group sunspot number is your opinion, rather than an fact established by peer reviewed referenceable science. Is that correct?
‘fact’? being peer-reviewed does not make something a fact. But, you are correct, it is my and Schatten’s opinion [Ken is one of the inventors of the Group Number]. We have, however very good reasons for this considered opinion.
Leif Svalgaard says:
December 27, 2010 at 11:14 am
You can read the full paper here: http://www.leif.org/EOS/2010JA015431.pdf
I believe that the invalidity of the group sunspot number is your opinion, rather than an fact established by peer reviewed referenceable science. Is that correct?
‘fact’? being peer-reviewed does not make something a fact. But, you are correct, it is my and Schatten’s opinion [Ken is one of the inventors of the Group Number]. We have, however very good reasons for this considered opinion.
Thanks for the ‘production’ copy of the paper, my preprint had all the graphs at the end, yours is much nicer.
I’m sure you have good reasons. Just as the peer reviewers of the Krivova et al paper had good reasons not to reject on the basis that it used the GSN, given the current levels of solar activity. Maybe they think your unvarying sun theory may have a bit of a reworking coming up?
tallbloke says:
December 27, 2010 at 11:33 am
Just as the peer reviewers of the Krivova et al paper had good reasons not to reject on the basis that it used the GSN, given the current levels of solar activity.
I think you have a misconception of what peer review is. Using GSN would not be a reason for rejection. Peer review does not address the validity of a paper, but whether the analysis is done correctly. The reader’s themselves decide on basis of the information given whether the paper is valid.
Maybe they think your unvarying sun theory may have a bit of a reworking coming up?
You have this somewhat backwards. What we are showing is that the Sun in the 18th and 19th centuries varied a lot more than the GSN suggested. The standard deviation of GSN over the interval 1749-1876 was 28. We think it should be 43.
Leif Svalgaard says:
December 27, 2010 at 11:46 am
What we are showing is that the Sun in the 18th and 19th centuries varied a lot more than the GSN suggested. The standard deviation of GSN over the interval 1749-1876 was 28. We think it should be 43.
Well, it all depends on whether you are considering solar variability over the 130 years from 1749-1876 or solar variability over the entire period from 1749-2010. Increasing the SD over the short term while at the same time raising the amplitudes to bring the run of cycles more into line with the long term average might be seen by some as another step in the direction of massaging the sun into having less variability.
I’m happy for there to be two schools of thought on this. Let them compete as we move through this exciting time in history when the sun is defying our long cherished conceptions of its behaviour at points in history beyond our direct knowledge.
How is it going with extending the geomagnetic analysis to earlier times before 1876?