Global Warming is a Pussy Cat

There are or were only about 6000 land stations in the GISSTemp records. Various investigators have analysed in good detail New Zealand, Australia and parts of Europe. WUWT readers have done grand work on the American mainland records. So the UHIE problem seems to have been nailed down in many areas. Also, the great dying of records in 1990 is well connected to the sudden global temperature anomaly rise in 1990. The work seems to have been done.
What is left is for someone to pull the “counter-fixed” station data into a group file and repeat the process that gives us a global history. Your work is interesting in that it shows that some have done this, at least with part of the data. When do we see a “data revealed” Skeptic graph? When do the Watts et al put their/our cards on the table and say “This, is what is really going on!”?

Ira:
My estimate of 0.250° 0.250° 0.100° (sum 0.6°C) is from the year 1998
( http://www.agust.net/sol/ ). As most of the other estimates add up to 0.8°C we can scale this old estimate up to approximately 0.33° 0.33° 0.13° (sum 0.8°C).
(Sorry for the precision in the numbers. I would have liked one significant number, maybe something like 0.3° 0.3° 0.2°).
When asked, I often answer that about half of the observed warming could be caused by humans, about half caused by natural variations, plus some measurement error. Then I add that uncertainty is so great that the word “half” can mean anything in the range 20% to 80%. Probably in favor of natural variations…
This does not affect your result. The result 0.179C (~ 0.2°C) for AGW is well acceptable in my mind.

John Peter says: February 8, 2011 at 12:38 am
“I am not really surprised that the AGW estimate pans out at 0.179C. … That would give a decadel increase of around 0.02C rather than the AGW 0.2C per decade.”
I’m not sure of this 0.2C. I thought the IPCC had a range 0.13 – 0.52C/decade!
If, as I recall, the typical noise figure in the temperature record is around 0.1C/decade, then it’s already unlikely to have had this masking as to have had a decade without warming there would need to have been at least -0.13C/decade of climate noise.
If there is no evidence for further warming this century**, as the minimum required noise to hide this “warming” increases, we should get more and more confidence that the predicted warming is not happening. (aka BS)
Just for fun, I’ve tried to estimate when this theory is busted!
I hope you forgive my statistics (I’ve not found a single article on the probability statistics of 1/f type noise as the climate has) but using a rule of thumb, I’d guess that the equivalent of 95% confidence is a difference between predicted and actual of:
0.2 C in any one decade (2x typical noise of 0.1C = 95% confidence Gaussian)
0.17C in two decades (90% confidence)
0.13C in three decades (80% confidence)
I’ve scaled these figures down based these of it being unlikely to have two successive years of cooling to “hide” the warming. Having a run of one decade of cooling is twice as likely has two decades of cooling, which is again twice as likely as three decades of cooling. I suppose I ought to use single sided probability distribution figures, but as it’s only a rule of thumb (and unlike climate “scientists” I’m not paid to be right) I’m not being fussy.
This means the prediction of a minimum of 0.13C/decade warming is busted if by:
2011 it had cooled 0.07C
2021 it has warmed by 0.09C
2031 it has warmed by 0.26C
So it looks to me that if proper statisticians looked at it, the GW scam is busted if:
a) The trend since 2001** at any time shows net cooling below -0.07C/decade
b) or by 20165 there’s no net warming.
** (since 2001 – the year of the IPCC prediction of 1.4-5.8C by 2100)

Marshall at 2:37 said:
“According to some physicists a global average temperature is meaningless. To get an accurate temperature of anything is must be at equilibrium. This planet’s climate is never at equilibrium.”
The Earth is in DYNAMIC equilibrium, not STATIC equilibrium. Many systems, including bobcat-rabbit populations, are in dynamic equilibrium. This is an equilibrium which varies with some predictability around a mean, and has feedback systems. But your point is well made.
From what I can see, the IPCC concept is that the Earth’s climate is, in fact, in a static equilibrium periodically distorted by unique events of limited, if perhaps large, time-frames. Something happens, and we have an ice age, then the something ends and we go back to the Garden of Eden days, defined of course by pre-industrial (without the LIA). When and the conditions of when that is, I’m unsure, but I suspect it is much like 1955, the time the Team was born or at university. God was in his Heaven then, and all was good with the world. (I’m supposed to put /sarc, I think.)
The idea that the planet is naturally in static equilibrium is one based on stable insolation, stable oceanic circulation patterns of a decade or less, and static albedo in all the important places. Minor variations on the theme are not supposed to add up one way or the other. Man has the only non-random, unidirectional impact on the environment, right now through his production on atmospheric CO2. With this assumption, all post 1940 climate change can be attributed to anthropogenic causes.
I’m not saying I agree with this, but I believe this is the basis of AGW. CAGW is just the exaggeration based on the effects of the inclusion of the precautionary principle to policy advice. The PP says that of any set of scenarios, the worse of those is to used as a basis for action, as the cost of assuming wrongly on the lesser side is greater than the cost of assuming wrongly on the greater side. The cost, of course, is sociological, not economic, which is why dollars cannot be used to argue against excessive action: it’s about people, not wallets, after all.
But your distrust of the accuracy and precision of the temperature rise, and what it all “means” is mine, as well.
I’ve been looking at the annual and hemispheric variation in insolation and albedo based on simple geometry and general planetary data from satellites. I am disturbed that my easily-determined findings about orbital eccentricity and axial tilt mean that
1. Jan to July the insolation varies by 23.2 W/m2,
2. the albedo of the earth in January is 0.3408 and in July, 0.2469, causing a to-the-ground difference of 20.5 W/m2 (157.3 vs 177.8 W/m2) in heating power.
3. in Jan the southern hemisphere receives from the sun 185.9 W/m2 vs 155.2W/m2 in July (for the NH, 166.2 vs 173.7 W/m2),
4. over the course of the year cloud cover varies by 15 – 20%.
5. the differences in hemispheric albedo over the year OVER-counter the insolation variations such that the planet is 2.3K warmer at aphelion than at perihelion.
These variations show what a dynamic system we have. That we have basic stability at all is a result of rapid balancing forces. The math “mean” gives an illusion of stability in insolation (340.5 W/m2) and warming (236.4 W/m2) that does not exist through the year. How well do these balancing forces work? Since weather is regional but is the basis of climate (climate is the average sum of weather on a seasonal level), can we say that the insolation and albedo variations regionally do not over time have a non-random variation of , say, 0.5%? 0.05% is 1.18 W/m2, what the IPCC more-than-says will kick up the planet’s temperature, and 138% of what Trenberth and Schmidt say is “missing” heat below 1000m in the oceans (0.85W/2).
All the above is background to say that the most important non-variant factor, the sun’s heat, is in fact quite variable. The math just makes calculations easier by calculaating as if the energy heating the earth is a constant within negligible amounts. The new measurement is 1360.5 +/-0.15 W/m2 (340.125 on a whole Earth, surface-area basis). That is the average, but that around a large annual range, but is what impacts the heated portions of the earth really +/- 0.15 W/m2?
We all recall wet, cold summers: the differences of a region, the differences of a time. It is common for Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, to be warmer than Calgary, whether it is summer or winter (much to the chagrin of Calgarians). If regional differences make a significant impact on the global record – as Hansen, with his “better” Arctic record implicitly agrees – then the variation in impact is clearly greater than +/-0.15 W/m2 on a regional scale. Weather does impact global “climate” indicators.
The error bar for both accuracy and precision are not those derived from a gross summation of the planet at the largest of levels of insolation but also, for our purposes, in the heating, i.e. tempertures. To get a hard look at the temperature variation issue, perature, check the ARGO float data: look at year-to-year temperatures on a hemispheric level. The graphing functions are simple to do. What you see is large regional differences not just annually but within the year. What is heated, when it is heated, and how much it is heated are very distinct but variable.
I’m saying it is not just input of energy that is of regional and time significance for global numbers, but transport as well. Heat in at point A goes to point B. And it is not random in time or space. The ARGO data show that condensed numbers of SST cover up important local variations that are not considered in the error bars.
I suggest temperature measurements (instrumental and observation) are less important than time-and-location variations. The Arctic warms more than the Antarctic AS IS WELL KNOWN, for the NH always warms more than the SH due to albedo differences, but is the “error” bar in Arctic naturally greater than that elsewhere? I’d suggest it is. But is it treated as such? No. A global “error” bar of 0.1K or less is used. The math makes it so. But is it, at least in terms of impact?
All regions are treated the same and over all periods of time. It is easy to show that input energies and temperature variations are not the same by region and time. Nor should they be, as symmetry is a theoretical concept at a macro-level, not a reality. Is the planet is in an equilibrium (dynamic or not) to 0.1% heating (0.25W/m2) or 0.4K? Seems unlikely.
I strongly suggest
1. that the IPCC and here-in discussed error bars are inappropriately small,
2. that the error bars are mathematical artefacts and not reflective of the variations that cause temperature anomalies locally or globally,
2. that the temperature variations including those of the LIA could be the result of minor, semi-random variances in input and albedo that constructively and destructively interfer overtime, and
3. that much discussion and calculation within the CAGW position is of portions that are impossible to identify as global, as opposed to regional in nature, or of amounts attributable to man when regional and time differences are considered.
We quibble, to use a phrase I have used elsewhere, about the nature of boots on angels dancing on the heads of pins. Until we separate out regional from global causes and effects (including those of time), global averages or changes from past averages SIGNIFY nothing attributable to either man or nature.
The IPCC, Gore, Hansen et al have lead us down the path of simplicity in a complex world. Data fudging is about making regional differences disappear to show a pre-determined global trend. Salinger in New Zealand was not an outlier in his field, just an obvious figure in a large, empty space. If we were to interpret the various datasets on a regional basis – as we would, for instance, for population growth – I know we would not see a global change attributable to CO2. The mathematics of global inclusion is PC; the mathematics of regions is not (try discussing population growth per country, for an instance of non-PC behaviour).
Global warming is not global. I doubt either camp would deny that. The meme says that regional warming has a global cause, but is expressed differently (like cold and more snow in winter 2011) in different regions. A handy, PC concept. But break it down over the last 20 years, stop adjusting local temperature records to match global/large, non-related regions, and throw in the legitimate local variation, and the non-global nature of climate changes will reveal themselves.
Remember: two people 6ft tall standing with one 3ft tall does not a trio of 5ft tall people make.

I still don’t quite understand why the satellite sensors aren’t calibrated by pointing them all to the same empty part of space and measuring the cosmic background temperature. Then the drift of each individual sensor can be compared to the same source (or can they not measure temperatures that low?) That’s what I get for watching the film “The Dish” and seeing the moon used as a pointing reference for acquiring the moon landing signals. What else in the universe could likewise be used as external reference points?

did I miss it or was UHI not mentioned at all ?