Quote of the Week – Grist thinks spontaneous human combustion might be a convincing bit of evidence for AGW

R. Gates says;
“Seems you want to change the metric here? Didn’t know you were discussing types or quantities of manufacturing. Of course the revolution continued to accelerate after 1800, but it began well before. You always seem to want to aim for precision, and if there are any youngsters reading this site, we wouldn’t want them go away thinking the Industrial Revolution started after 1800, when in fact is started several decades before that.”
The industrial revolution is generally credited to have started in the U.K., mid 1700’s. Supporting this belief is reported data of Great Britain’s annual birth and death rates that remained, on average, stable at 30-35/1,000 until 1760. After 1760, death rate began to fall, while birth rate remained stable until the 1800’s. By 1820 or so, the annual mortality rate dropped to around 20/1,000. Whatever the real cause for decreased mortality, the industrial revolution likely played some or a major role. Therefore, it can not be said the industrial revolution started before 1760. It didn’t spread to Europe until early 1800’s and not the US until some time after that.
More to the point about when the industrial revolution started taken from Alvaro S. Pereira’s “When Did Modern Economic Growth Really Start? – The Empirics of Malthus to Solow”, Dept. of Economics, University of British Columbia:
“More recently, several studies have cast doubt on some of the premises of this
traditional view. It is now clear that the Industrial Revolution was much less sudden and
less dramatic than previously thought (Harley 1982, Crafts 1985, Crafts and Harley 1992,
Clark 2001). Due to the slow rates of both GDP and per capita GDP growth2, the
Industrial Revolution has been depicted as a mere growth spurt, not very different from
others in the past (Clark 2001, Goldstone 2002).”
From International Arctic Research Center, Syun-Ichi Akasofu’s “Global Temperature Changes During the Last Millennium and Prediction for 2100”:
“It is clear from this particular set of data that the linear warming began in about 1825,
more than 100 years before the use of fossil energy began to increase rapidly, in about 1946, and that the rate of warming can be approximated by the same straight line of gradient of 0.5°C/100 years until 2000. However, it appears that the committee did not pay much attention to the long term nature of the linear warming trend.”
So, Anthony’s point is well taken. He is not changing the metric. He is simply pointing out a significant weakness in the AGW argument, that is, human CO2 emissions could not have substantially changed until mid 1800’s or later, due to the industrial revolution. Pointing out it’s historic start decades before 1800 is nit picking in this context. Yes, it started in England around 1760 or later, but no, it did not start in mass until many decades later. And yes, warming from the LIA started long before the industrial revolution produced significant quantities of CO2.

Gary Mount says:
October 25, 2011 at 12:03 am
“Speaking of Arctic Ice:
Why have the first two sea ice extent charts on the sea ice reference page stopped getting updated about 3 weeks ago?”
Apparently, the same instrument that gets UAH temperature data gets some (but not all, apparently) of the sea ice data. I should say “got”. A bearing went dry (exceeded its designed lifespan), and it had to be shut down. Dr. Spencer reported on it here… as you say, about 3 weeks ago. Bummer! I guess there’s a new instrument to be launched early next year. Wish it luck!
Best,
Frank