Tale of the Global Warming Tiger

Guest Post by Ira Glickstein.

Once upon a time, long ago and far away, three brave warriors decided to do something about the tiger that was terrorizing their village.

The first approached the tiger’s head and whacked it with a stick. The tiger ate him! The second struck the tiger’s middle with a knife. It clawed him to death. The last brave young man decided to sneak up from behind. He managed to snip a piece out of the tiger’s tail.

Of course, nipping the tiger’s tail did not do much to solve the problem. Nevertheless, the villagers celebrated his pluck and luck and everybody felt quite satisfied – until the next tiger attack.

Like the fictional warriors of my Tiger’s Tale, Global Warming Alarmists and Warmists attack the “Tail” which, in this instance, is a metaphor for human-caused warming (AGW – Anthropogenic Global Warming). It makes them feel good to talk about reducing the causes of warming over which we humans may have some control: CO2 from fossil fuels and land use that reduces the Earth’s albedo. But, since AGW, like the Tiger’s Tail, is a minor part of the threat, their solutions, the cap and trade scam for carbon indulgences and painting our roofs white and wearing reflective tinfoil hats for albedo, are all out of proportion. Yes, we should do what we can to improve energy efficiency and use nuclear and clean coal and renewable sources and recycling and much of the rest, but we should not wreck our economies taking actions that can have little effect to solve a problem that is not any kind of crisis.

There seems to be general agreement here at WUWT that the official climate Team has exaggerated the extent and danger of Global Warming by adjusting past temperature data in a manner biased (perhaps by about 0.3ºC) towards supporting their dire projections for the future. We believe the actual net temperature increase (perhaps about 0.5ºC) since 1880 is nearly all due to natural processes, including cycles of the Sun, ocean oscillations, and other causes not under human control. But, we are reasonable skeptics who do not deny that human actions are responsible for some, relatively small amount (perhaps about 0.1ºC) of the rise in temperatures.

When a system engineer is faced with a complex problem, he or she does a divide and conquer to break it down into more manageable subsystems. These are analyzed to determine which are the heavy hitters that deserve the most attention, and which are of limited consequence.

The base chart for the above graphic is from NASA GISS and indicates a rise of a bit over 0.8ºC from 1880 to the present. NASA plots this as an “anomaly” from the average for 1951-1980. NASA’s red line is a five-year running average that indicates a negative (cooler) anomaly from 1880 through the mid-1930’s and a positive (warmer) anomaly from the mid-1970’s through the present. The annotations in green and violet are my initial attempt to sub-divide the anomaly into: 1) Data Bias, 2) Natural Cycles, and 3) AGW (human-caused warming).

The green line represents my estimate of the actual temperature anomaly. Therefore, the distance from the green line down to the lowest part of the red line, near 1880, represents data bias and measurement error, where NASA has adjusted data they previously published to make that part of their curve cooler. That part of their data bias amounts to about 0.1ºC. The distance from the green line up to the highest part of the red line, near 2007, is where NASA has adjusted data they previously published to make that part of their curve warmer. That part of their data bias amounts to about 0.2ºC.

The violet line represents my estimate of the actual anomaly minus the human contribution. Thus the vertical space between the violet and green lines represents AGW, which I estimate to be about 0.1ºC at the present time. The vertical space between the violet line and the lower data bias line represents the remainder, which must be due to natural processes not under human control, which I estimate to be about 0.4ºC.

I do not claim a high level of accuracy for these estimates and freely admit they may be off by 50% or more, which is why I have specified them with only one significant digit of precision. I find it humorous when government-funded climate and sunspot researchers state their estimates to two or even three or more significant digits, and then go back and change their estimates by far more than that precision indicates. (The humor fades when I realize I am paying for their efforts.)

In subsequent postings, I plan to detail how I came up with these estimates. Meanwhile, I will appreciate it if WUWT readers provide their own estimates which I will record and average for everyone’s amazement. Please state the temperature anomaly, in degrees Centigrade, you think is due to: 1) data bias, 2) natural processes, and 3) AGW. You may simply provide the numbers or you may also explain how you arrived at them.

This is what you may look forward to:

1) The Past Is Not What It Used to Be – About Data Bias: How the official climate Team adjusted past temperature data to exaggerate warming, and how the low quality of measurement stations and their encroachment by urban heat island (UHI) developments have distorted the historical record.

2) Normal Seasons of the Sun – How natural processes beyond human control, including Solar Cycles and Ocean Oscillations, are the actual cause of most climate change.

3) Some People Claim There’s a Human to Blame – Yes, human actions, mainly burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use, are responsible for some small amount of Global Warming.

4) Is the Global Warming Tiger a Pussy Cat? – If, as many of us expect, natural processes lead to stabilization of global temperatures over the coming decades, and perhaps a bit of cooling, we will realize the whole Global Warming uproar was like the boy who saw a pussy cat and cried tiger.