Guest post by Ira Glickstein
Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame,
But I know, it’s my own damn fault..
The original Jimmy Buffet lyrics say “woman to blame” but I changed it to “human” in the title of this post. Perhaps I should have left it as “woman” since, without their civilizing influence, we men would still be huddled in caves, wearing bearskins, and human-caused global warming would not be an issue. In 1880, WS Gilbert said women were the really civilized humans, while Darwinian Man, even when well-behaved, was nothing more than a Monkey Shaved :^)
This is the fourth of my Tale of the Global Warming Tiger series where I allocate the supposed 0.8ºC warming since 1880 to: (1) Data Bias, (2) Natural Cycles, and (3) AGW (human-caused global warming), the subject of this posting. Click Tiger’s Tale and Tail :^) to see my allocation and read the original story.
ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING (AGW)
This posting is about how human activities, particularly burning of fossil fuels and land use changes have contributed to the global warming experienced since 1880. According to Willis Eschenbach’s excellent WUWT posting (with the same title as mine – great minds think alike :^);
I think that the preponderance of evidence shows that humans are the main cause of the increase in atmospheric CO2. It is unlikely that the change in CO2 is from the overall temperature increase. During the ice age to interglacial transitions, on average a change of 7°C led to a doubling of CO2. We have seen about a tenth of that change (0.7°C) since 1850, so we’d expect a CO2 change from temperature alone of only about 20 ppmv.
Thus, about 80% of the CO2 rise from about 280 ppmv to 390 ppmv since 1880 is due to human activities.
I estimate that 0.1ºC of the supposed 0.8ºC warming is AGW, where we humans are to “blame” (assuming that that tiny amount of warming will make much of a difference, or, even if it does, that it will turn out to be bad).
In comments to my previous postings in this series, some WUWT readers have suggested that the entire supposed 0.8ºC warming since 1880 is data bias. In other words, there has actually been no net warming at all. I disagree. Even if the terrestrial temperature record since 1880 is questionable, particularly in light of repeated “adjustments” by the official climate Team that appear to overstate the warming, it seems to me the satellite data, available since 1979, clearly proves there has been considerable net warming since that date.
Other WUWT readers agree we are in a warming cycle but claim that natural processes are responsible for ALL the warming. Their main argument is that rising CO2 and other carbon gas levels do not cause much if any warming, and, even that amount of warming is counteracted by additional clouds that raise the Earth’s albedo. I agree the great majority of warming is natural, but I think it is clear that human activities are responsible for some of it. Yes, clouds almost certainly have a net negative feedback (despite virtually all the official climate Team models to the contrary), but, for the negative cloud feedback to work, temperatures must rise at least a little bit to generate the additional clouds.
DESCRIPTION OF MY GRAPHIC
The above graphic traces my estimate of the actual warming since 1880, and my projection several decades into the future. To liven it up I have drawn the curves atop a photo of some white-roofed houses in Greece and quoted from The Independent, 27 May 2009, under the headline Obama’s climate guru: Paint your roof white! they say:
Some people believe that nuclear power is the answer to climate change, others have proposed green technologies such as wind or solar power, but Barack Obama’s top man on global warming has suggested something far simpler – painting your roof white.
At the time, Anthony posted the news on WUWT, suggesting:
Maybe now NOAA will get rid of all remaining rooftop climate monitoring stations or stations sited over asphalt …
An alert reader, E.M. Smith, went further and wrote:
Lets start a surface stations project to paint the black roofs and asphalt under temperature stations white. We can do it to “save the planet from global warming and offset carbon”… and it would actually work to get the global temperature record down too ….
Undoubtedly, land use changes such as clearing forests and paving large areas with asphalt and erecting buildings have generally reduced the albedo of the Earth and thus increased warming. I don’t think Secretary Chu’s white roof idea will have much effect, but, any effect it does have will be in the direction of reducing warming, and I doubt it could ever be so successful that it pushes us into catastrophic global cooling!
Natural Cycles: The green line represents net warming not under human control or effect, and it shows a rise of about 0.4ºC since 1880.
The lighter green line is my projection of Natural Cycles assuming that Solar Cycle #24 will have a low Sunspot peak of 60 or less in 2013 or later, and that the following SC #25 and SC #26 will be similarly low and long. It is virtually certain SC #24 will be low, but pure speculation regarding SC #25 and SC #26. Of course, the varying strengths of ocean oscillations and volcanic eruptions and other hard to predict events may affect natural processes in either direction from my projections.
I have sketched a thin green line that indicates what may happen if we get a series of particularly strong events, similar to the El Niño that caused global temperatures to peak in 1999, and/or if subsequent Solar Cycles return to their previously high Sunspot levels.
AGW The violet line represents the sum of Natural Cycles and AGW and it shows an additional net rise of about 0.1ºC since 1880.
The lighter violet line is my projection assuming human activities will continue more or less as they have in the past, with minimal reductions in human-generated carbon gases and land use patterns, showing an additional nearly 0.1ºC rise between 2011 and 2050, for a total AGW since 1880 approaching 0.2ºC.
I have sketched a thin violet line indicating what may happen if Natural Cycles follow the thin green line projection and if, in addition, humans accelerate emissions of carbon gases and land use patterns that reduce the Earth’s albedo.
WHY AGW IS REAL
According to Roy Spencer, PhD:
Greenhouse components in the atmosphere (mostly water vapor, clouds, carbon dioxide, and methane) exert strong controls over how fast the Earth loses IR energy to outer space. Mankind’s burning of fossil fuels creates more atmospheric carbon dioxide. As we add more CO2, more infrared energy is trapped, strengthening the Earth’s greenhouse effect. This causes a warming tendency in the lower atmosphere and at the surface. As of 2008, it is believed that we have enhanced the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect by about 1%.
Absent the greenhouse effect of the atmosphere, the Earth would be cooler by about 33ºC, and 1% of that is 0.33ºC, which is more than the 0.1ºC I have allocated to AGW and that does not even include land use effects. But, again according to Spencer:
Net feedbacks in the real climate system — on both short and long time scales — are probably negative. A misinterpretation of cloud behavior has led climate modelers to build models in which cloud feedbacks are instead positive, which has led the models to predict too much global warming in response to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
He explains that IPCC climate models assume a feedback of from 0.9 to 1.9 W m-2 K-1, and that any value below 3.3 represents positive feedback, while any level above that is negative feedback. He concludes from his study of satellite data that:
the line slopes diagnosed from the satellite data … might actually be an UNDERESTIMATE of the true feedback occurring, which could be 7 W m-2 K-1 or more.
If that turns out to be true, then the actual sensitivity to CO2 doubling would be far less than the 2ºC to 5ºC or more projected by the IPCC. Indeed it could be 0.5ºC, or even less. As current CO2 levels are about 390 ppmv we are about 40% to a doubling from historic 280 ppmv levels, the actual temperature rise due to the human component of AGW could be 0.2ºC.
In addition, burning of fossil fuels has a side effect of increasing light-colored aerosols that reflect Sunlight and thus prevent some of it from reaching the surface, counteracting some of the warming due to atmospheric CO2. Efforts to clean the air are said to have reduced such aerosols and, inadvertently, caused more warming.
Please note that I have low-balled my AGW value by about half because I discount the approximately 20% of rise in CO2 levels as due to the temperature rise itself causing less CO2 to be absorbed by the polar and winter temperate oceans and more to be emitted by the equatorial and summer temperate oceans and I also believe there are other negative feedback components yet to be exposed. I expect some WUWT readers will challenge even my low estimate and I request you back your challenges up with science-based reasoning, which I would love to hear.
CONCLUSIONS AND REQUESTS
If readers have additional information or corrections to what I said about AGW, or if there are other related factors I missed, I would appreciate detailed comments to improve my summary.
It seems to me that my estimate of 0.1ºC for AGW is justified, and perhaps a bit understated. I am open to hearing the opinions of WUWT readers who may think I have over- (or under-) estimated this component of the supposed 0.8ºC rise in global temperatures since 1880.
In my first and second and third postings in this Tale of the Global Warming Tiger series, I asked for comments on my allocations: to: (1) Data Bias 0.3ºC, (2) Natural Cycles 0.4ºC, and (3) AGW 0.1ºC. Quite a few readers were kind enough to comment, either expressing general agreement or offering their own estimates.
What do you think? I have been keeping a spreadsheet record of WUWT reader’s opinions, which I appreciate and value greatly, along with their screen names, and I plan to report the results in the next posting of this series:
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.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“Perhaps I should have left it as “woman” since, without their civilizing influence, we men would still be huddled in caves, wearing bearskins,……”
I have found this to be a fallacy as persistent and unsupported as AGW .
“WS Gilbert said women were the really civilized humans, while Darwinian Man, even when well-behaved, was nothing more than a Monkey Shaved .”
I suggest WS Gilbert was seeking affections from a particular woman when he offered that quip, and not any profound philosophy. Or perhaps he was parodying himself, throwing gender insults as simian feces theses?!
Don’t get me wrong. I like the company and tender attentions of a lady more than most. But without the requisite male gender bashing, please…… It’s uncivilized.
Your postings were otherwise interesting and informative, Ira!
Actually, the relevant Jimmy Buffett lyrics are from “Boat Drinks”:
I should be leaving this climate
I got a verse but can’t rhyme it
I gotta go where it’s warm
Boat drinks
Waitress I need two more boat drinks
Then I’m headin south fore my dream shrinks
I gotta go where it’s warm (I gotta go where it’s warm)
I gotta go where it’s warm (I gotta go where it’s warm)
I gotta go where it’s warm!
I gotta go where there ain’t any snow
Where there ain’t any blow
‘Cause my fin sinks so low
I gotta go where it’s warm!
Much as I like the fun of estimating effects … and it is a useful exercise … I really think the approach should be more scientific. After all, we criticise the warmists for coming up with meaningless estimates unbacked by science, and then what are we doing?
Please consider this approach instead
1. Create a noise model for the climate signal. This would consist of frequency of response and amplitude.
2. Having produced a model, calculate the probability that the global warming temperature signal was produced by that signal.
3. By inference calculate how “improbable” it is that mankind is not warming the globe.
When I tried this approach, I first did a simple fourier analysis of the signal and then looked at the amplitude of the frequency spectrum (real^2+imaginary^2)^.5 from this you get a graph of amplitude versus frequency and you may then estimate the noise by the slope on a logarithmic graph to obtain the approximate noise function in terms of 1/f^n.
At this point my knowledge of fourier statistics fails me, but in principle it should be possible from the frequency spectrum to derive a likelihood that the global temperature signal is natural.
Of course, you could extend the time series using proxies, but unfortunately all proxies project their own frequency profile onto the curve, and e.g. trees are notorious for long term growth of the whole forest which significantly reduces the response of individual trees to long term temperature change.
I would like to see how it was determined that 80% of the rise in CO2 is due to human activities.
Well, we add around 7 Bil. metric Tons Carbon per year. A bit over half is absorbed by other sinks. Perhaps a bit “ages out” (depending what the CO2 persistence rate actually is). The rest accumulates in the atmosphere, which contains c. 760 BMTC.
So over the last 10 years we have increased atmospheric CO2 by c. 4%.
200+ BMTC are emitted naturally by other sources (atmosphere, ocean, volcanoes, soil/organisms), but that amount is reabsorbed by those same sources (except the volcanoes) to no net gain.
So, yes, I think the CO2 increase is mostly due to man. But I don’t think CO2 has much effect. Maybe +1C per doubling. There are no new positive feedbacks we can see (that haven’t been with us since 1650).
Ira,
I for one think your division of the components of the 0.8ºC reported rise is very close (± 0.1ºC for each component). That’s very close to my conclusions though it might be more 0.4ºC bias and 0.3ºC natural cycles.
If I were to comment deeper it would be on a more planetary level of cause, effects, and relationships. The equations being used to describe our atmosphere are not holding when applied to other atmospheres. The radiation equations are either wrong or assumptions are being made that don’t hold universally to all atmospheres. That’s what I take away after a year of study in this “climate scientology”.
Sir:
First, full disclosure, I am not a meterologist, climatologist or atmospheric physicist but merely an applied biologist/chemist of many decades. I have tried to follow the global warming/climate change/AGW “debate” for a number of years to arrive at a reasonable, and reasoned conclusion. All of use have been asked, are being asked and will be asked to make decisions, many political, regarding this subject that could involve trillions (many, many trillions) of dollars plus other changes to the way we live. Consequently, quality decisions will be required and these require quality data and, also, data that inspires confidence so that we can be equally confident about the decisions we make. Your post is persuasive, as are others presented here and in other locations on both “sides” of this debate, which is a problem for those of us without the technical background to judge. Therefore, my thoughts consistently go back to the data sets based on the many discussions that I have read and heard.
My undergraduate days at Southwestern at Memphis, now known as Rhodes College, were filled with the words “critical analysis” of data, which included appropriate experimental design to get the data needed, correct handling of the data and analysis that included statistical treatment tempered with common sense and logic. Nothing new there for those of us trained in the sciences (and other disciplines as well! – no emails please!). Excepting the data from the “satellite era” (still a few questions there), my confidence level is not high at all for earlier quantitative information in the ether and the confidence decreases with time going backward. Certainly data analysis can and should proceed but I will not be confident in the analysis or conclusions, particularly if the data have been unduly manipulated.
Using indirect indicators (when used or discussed) does not help my confidence as both words imply some level uncertainty. Such indicators may be all we have, and analysis can proceed, but I will not be confident. I have studied indirect indicators for temperature in aquatic environments and the variation is enormous. A note here, this lack of confidence is not reduced by statistical treatment because my lack of confidence is not just related to variability but the reasons for the variability.
So, here I am. As a proponent of good experimental design, I will, for now, land with those that question the precision and accuracy of the data prior to the satellite era (and that may get questioned). Historical data sets must be verified to near universal agreement, which may not be possible except for the satellite era, if public confidence in any decision is expected. My feeling is that natural cycles are at work but data quality may be so poor that we really don’t know what has happened. If pressed further, I will rely on “means, motive and opportunity” and follow the money.
My apologies for the length.
I wonder if these modelers recognize that water vapor is a vicious beast in the modeling arena. We see discussions of Clouds being modeled as net positive or net negative feedback onto the system when the reality is that each cloud type has a different type of effect.
Water can be used as a refrigerant. It isn’t as effective as Freon of course, but its ability to phase shift within atmospheric temperature/pressure ranges distinguishes it greatly from CO2, which cannot exist anywhere on our planet as a liquid in nature (at least above the ground). I may be stretching the analogy a little to call water a refrigerant, but it does transport way more energy than CO2.
That we are attempting to model this as a forcing parameter should be enough by itself to make all modeler question their own results. They should be modeling precipitation/evaporation/condensation/etc to be better able to assess what is happening.
And then there’s this post on Jo Novas site.
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/02/the-oceans-clouds-and-cosmic-rays-drive-the-climate-not-co2/#more-13061
Ian
Although there is a certain element of reasonableness to the various apportionments that you make, I cannot help but consider that the requisite data is either too uncertain or missing such that any apportionment is little more than a matter of conjecture.
The data problem even extends to CO2 levels. I consider the jury to still be out on the pre-industrial level of CO2, and I consider that the uncertainty behind this level was deliberately down played by the IPCC since this would totally scupper the theory that they wished to promote.
Re: According to Roy Spencer, PhD: “.. As we add more CO2, more infrared energy is trapped, strenghtening the Earth’s greenhouse effect. This causes a warming tendency in the lower atmosphere and at the surface.”
Absent the greenhouse effect of the atmosphere, the Earth would be cooler by about 33°C, and 1% of that is 0.33°C, which is more than the 0.1°C I have allocated to AGW and that does not even include land use effects.
Why would it be cooler without it? Water vapour convects heat away from the earth, this is its main claim to fame in the real greenhouse atmosphere on earth which would be desert conditions extremes without it.
This ‘trapping’ of IR just does not make any sense, we don’t live in a test tube. I find this emphasis on how much CO2 is ‘adding’ just not sensible, like water it also cools the earth. That’s the real greenhouse effect.
CO2 can’t trap IR, CO2 can’t trap heat. CO2 can’t accumulate in the atmosphere. It is heavier than air, it continually displaces air to come to earth and readily joins with water to come down in rain. It does not readily rise up into the atmosphere. Doubling CO2 means only that double the CO2 will fall to earth, one way or another. Where it gets eaten.
http://www.biocab.org/Heat_Transfer.html
evanmjones says:
January 31, 2011 at 3:19 pm
Don’t be so sure the ‘extra’ CO2 is anthropogenic. The argument is that it must be fossil carbon because of isotope ratios. Supposedly the only source of fossil C is man burning coal, natural gas, or oil.
There are other potential sources of old C. One is naturally vented methane. Methane from natural sources can be converted to CO2 either by oxidation in the atmosphere or by methanotrophs that eat it and convert it to CO2. Another possible source of isotope-depleted methane is very old rotting vegetation, perhaps the melting tundra permafrost. These sources are influenced by ambient temperature. Methane clathrates at some depth in some locations may shift equilibrium to gas if the sea temperature rises. Methanogens and methanotrophs are more active at higher temperatures as well.
I suspect when the planet cools, we will likely see these sources slow down and CO2 derived from methane and the decay of old vegetation will revert to their prior less active state.
Reading Ira’s post, there is no description of the methodology or calculations used to come to his conclusions about the role of GHG’s. I can’t see how anyone can endorse these results, praising this work, and criticizing climate scientists for bias. Climate Scientists have studied this question, and use scientific models to come to their conclusions.
The three graphs on the following web page show that most of the change in temperature between 1860 and 2000 has come from anthropogenic sources.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm
“..here is a summary of the IPCC model results of surface temperature from the 1800’s – both with and without man-made forcings. All the models are unable to predict recent warming without taking rising CO2 levels into account. Noone has created a general circulation model that can explain climate’s behaviour over the past century without CO2 warming.”
Looking at the graph of model runs with only natural forcings, and comparing it with the graph using natural and human related forcings, it looks like about 0.2C of the change comes from natural forces; and about 0.7 C has come from human influence.
“Some People Claim There’s a Human to Blame”
The number one fault with almost all AGW discussions assumes that warming is bad. The deaths from cold weather compared to warm seasons proves beyond all doubt that cold is bad and warming is good. May I suggest, “Some People Claim There’s a Human to Thank” is more logical, even if less poetic.
Furthermore, plant life over geological eons has managed to bury enough carbon as to make carbon dioxide a scarce resource that was limiting plant growth. The rest of the biosphere should thank humans for digging the carbon back up and burning it to supply the plants with badly needed CO2.
@Dale Rainwater Glickstein
“I disagree. Even if the terrestrial temperature record since 1880 is questionable, particularly in light of repeated “adjustments” by the official climate Team that appear to overstate the warming, it seems to me the satellite data, available since 1979, clearly proves there has been considerable net warming since that date.”
When something is in question it essentially is a bunch of accumulated stuff. So, essentially, it probably is not just the adjustment, whether they be a by your please all natural late technical report or a bad and evil form of rapport.
Considering how many places there seem to be that has way higher temperature ‘an normal but has no station coverage, today, what then did the coverage be way back when but even poorer.
The most common temperature reading during the 19th century seem to have been made in populace, for its time urban, areas. And the resolution of the readings back then was, compared to today, only so and so.
Don’t get me wrong, the readings back then, when researcher seem to have been a wee bit more stoic in their responsibilities, were probably top notch, however the technology not so much (after most tend to use the cheapest stuff available that seem to work as it should.) But still hardly no coverage. Although the coverage of deep Africa might have been better back then compared to today, even with today’s sats apparently.
To pick a day when coming out of an apparent cold period and later say it is somewhat warmer but isn’t that akin to claiming there has been some net warming since the end of the last ice age. But to marvel come this summer there will have been an astounding amount of net warming from today. :p
Why is it that everyone seem to think it is ok to mix and match readings from, not only, different technologies, but different resolutions, and top it off with different amount of readings per technology and resolution, like it has no meaning. And everyone seem to do it by getting everything to fit the highest definition and newest technology standard when they ought to seek the common denominator which means to fit to days partially crappy toys’s high def reads to yesterdays partially crappy toys low def reads.
Of course the crazed hippies rectified all that crap to crap mapping by trying to get everyone to focus on just that last 50 years.
Now how many weather satellites have we today, compared to 1979?
What difference in amount of readings, definition and resolutions, and accuracy, exists, and how and what standard should it all be converted too? And why do we not have complete coverage of Africa still, and other parts, and, apparently very important, the poles, by satellites? If it is of so much import than why isn’t it allowed to cost as much?
Why is it that there appear to be no climate tossers around that can be objective enough to want to set a good and proper average? Think about it? Is ’61 to ’90 a proper average since 1750? How about ’79-’09 since the fall of Julius Caesar? Is ’79-09’ even a good and proper representative average for the time period 1910 through 2010? Or put another way, what average and over which time period should be considered a good and proper static average and the one that everything else should be measured against to see if it is to be considered an anomaly or not? The common denominator should it be for the last hundred years, the last thousand years or since the birth of Christ or since the rise of civilization in Egypt or since the last 10 000 years or the last hundred thousand years? (Why is it that neither rational climate folks nor the crazed climate hippies can’t decide something as simple as that even?)
See how little we know and can agree upon? So many contribuants all proposing their personal favourites. I believe, just to bring forward my personal favourites, that but the following conclusions can be drawn:
1) climate science has developed from a geophysical discipline into to a social science
2) as the IPCC for various reasons have lost their credibility, there is no (longer an) authority to refer to to distinguish between good and bad climate science.
3) Current climate doesn’t appear to be worse than historical climates for most of humanity
4) There is little or no evidence indicating that we are thrifting towards a disaster should we continue to burn fossil fuels at the current pace
5) “Climate” is a poorly defined human construct with a high complexity which is still marginally understood.
So at the end of the day the 0.1 C AGW since 1880 may or may not be a reasonable estimate, who knows?
eadler says:
“Looking at the graph of model runs with only natural forcings, and comparing it with the graph using natural and human related forcings, it looks like about 0.2C of the change comes from natural forces; and about 0.7 C has come from human influence.”
Model runs, eh? Like the model runs that predicted the “fingerprint” of AGW – the tropospheric hot spot? The models were wrong. Every one of them.
Models are not evidence. They are only tools. And when used in climate science, models are unreliable. In fact, they are used by tools in blog posts as a substitute for empirical evidence.
The UN/IPCC’s 3°C per doubling is based on pseudo-science. A group of invited scientists and NGOs were paid to arrive at the conclusion that human emitted CO2 is causing the current *mild* natural warming cycle.
To arrive at that unscientific conclusion the IPCC had to use a fantastic sensitivity number, and disregard the short persistence of emitted CO2. The IPCC preposterously claims a persistence of a century.
And every additional CO2 molecule has a smaller effect than the one emitted before it. That fact is conveniently omitted by the climate alarmist contingent.
Finally, carbon dioxide – called “carbon” by the scientifically illiterate – is a harmless and beneficial minor trace gas. At current and projected levels, more CO2 is better. Plants thrive on it, and a warmer world is a healthier world. Cold kills. If stupidity killed as easily, skeptical realists would be the only ones left discussing the evidence.
Ira, I think you’re right but for a different reason.
I’ve been wondering why it is that scientific types, who know from archeological research that humans flourished when it was warm, should WANT it to get cold.
Simple answer: all professional scientists are hard-core leftists, so deeply imbued with the Culture of Death that they instinctively prefer whatever causes the extinction of the human race. They don’t have to think about it.
If most pro scientists had been females, the natural female need for more heat would partially overcome the leftist instinct, and would lead to a more rational “set point”.
Who always wants to turn up the thermostat? Women.
Would weather station records be updated to indicate when, and how much, the surrounding colors change?
Ira, please stop using fancy images for the background of your graphs. It makes your graphs very difficult to view and IMHO, essentially worthless. Thank you!
Dr Glickstein, I notice that you do not mention UHI.
You also do not mention your own examination of temperature changes that you may have studied at various individual locations.
There is too much theorising going on in this whole debate between proponents and oponents of the AGW concept.
Too little direct observation and analysis.
My own observations of certain specific locations shows that it is sometimes possible to determine the contribution of UHI to the changing temperature records.
When UHI is absent, there is no visible long term temperature trend.
When it is present and can be identified, there is no other visible cause for such changes.
(R aquared values very, very small).
When I mention long term, I refer to locations with continuous records of well over 100 years.
Women were such precious commodities in caveman days that genetic evidence seems to indicate women were regularly stolen from neighboring groups, and not without much violence involved in the taking. This leads me to propose that women did not have as long of a lifespan as men did. One can make an educated guess as to why. The very thing that made women sought after, also killed them quite frequently.
Eadler says:
“Looking at the graph of model runs with only natural forcings…”
The notion that anyone can accurately quantify the total effect of natural climate forcings since 1880 would assume our current understanding of the dynamics of long term climate change is essentially complete.
I don’t think we’re quite there yet. Do you?
How much of the current bit of warming is by natural forcings or AGW? The only thing I’m quite sure of is, no one really knows. I’m also quite sure that mainstream climate science is deliberately dishonest about uncertainty. You can’t advocate for economy wrecking CO2 reductions and be honest about uncertainty at the same time, can you?
‘Frank Lee MeiDere says:
January 31, 2011 at 1:23 pm
I’d comment, but I’m still looking for that damned lost shaker of salt’
Better find it soon before salt is outlawed.
Co2 is a pussycat. Water , water vapor and clouds are the tigers.
I actually compared the US Annual Mean Temperatures (1880 to 2010) chart I downloaded from NASA GISS in January 2011 (not 2008) and compared it with the 1999 NASA GISS US Annual (1880 to 1998).
The reason I used US data is that I paid the bill for NASA GISS (or some other US-funded agency) to re-analyze the data and I do not like the value I got for my money. I believe historical US land surface data (along with data from other Western-oriented countries) is probably more reliable than much of the data from the rest of the world and projections of sea temperatures. Thus, if US land data can be re-analyzed to change trends by 0.3ºC, no one knows what might be done with all the world’s data.
What possible explanation can you come up with for a systematic error where data prior to 1950 was about 0.1ºC too warm and had to be cooled down, and data after 1960 was about 0.2ºC too cold and had to be warmed up? Do you think the thousands of people taking temperature readings on thousands of thermometers in the US had a systematic warm bias up until 1950 and a systematic cold bias after 1960? I guess that is possible, but I think the folks who did the re-analysis may have had some bias as well.
I do not assume NASA GISS US Annual 1880 to 1999 is correct either. I only observe that it differs from NASA GISS US Annual 1880 to 2010 by 0.3ºC, looking at the same years. And I picked years that were more than five years from the end points because I wanted to be sure the five-year smoothing would not affect the results.
I agree :^)
Even if the terrestrial temperature record since 1880 is questionable, particularly in light of repeated “adjustments” by the official climate Team that appear to overstate the warming, it seems to me the satellite data, available since 1979, clearly proves there has been considerable net warming since that date.
Yes, the satellite data show net warming since 1979. What they don’t show is that the warming exceeds natural variation. Absent such proof, I don’t think you can winkle out a signal for anthropogenic warming. The planet has been warmer in the past—when the human population was smaller, land use changes were less, and industrialization had yet to contribute to CO2 emissions through fossil fuel burning. The planet gets warmer, then it gets colder, then it gets warmer again. It’s cyclic.