Guest post by James Padgett
Many of you are aware that the concept of continental drift, proposed by Alfred Wegener, was widely ridiculed by his contemporaries. This reaction was in spite of the very clear visual evidence that the continents could be fit together like a giant puzzle.
I think this is where we are in climate science today. There is an obvious answer that many experts cannot see even though a young child would understand when presented with the evidence.
Our current crop of experts cannot see simple solutions. Their science is esoteric and alchemical. It is so complex, so easy to misunderstand, that, like the ancient Greek mystery religions, there is a public dogma and then there are the internal mysteries only the initiated are given access to.
And then there are the heretics who challenge their declared truths.
That isn’t to say that many climatologists aren’t smart. On the contrary, they can be very smart, but that doesn’t preclude them from being very wrong on both collective and individual levels.
One of the most brilliant men alive in the last century, John von Neumann, believed that by the 1960’s our knowledge of atmospheric fluid dynamics would be so great, and our computer simulations so precise, that we’d be able to control the weather by making small changes to the system.
It is true that the climate models used today do a very good job with fluid dynamics, but despite that understanding we can neither predict nor control the weather (and the climate) to the degree he imagined.
An incredible genius, he made a mistake. He didn’t understand the fundamental chaos that made his vision impossible.
In regard to the climate, I hope my simple vision is closer to reality than the excuse-filled spaghetti hypothesis that currently brandishes the self-given title of “settled science.”
My proposal, that climate is primarily driven by solar and oceanic influences, is probably believed by more than a few skeptics, but hopefully I can make a compelling case for it that both small children and climate scientists can understand. To that end I’ll take a quick look at the temperature record from 1900 until the present. I will explain the case for the oceanic/solar model and articulate the excuses given by the anthropogenic camp for the decades that inconveniently do not line up with the hypothesis of carbon dioxide being the primary driver of climate change.
1900-1944:
This period is largely warming. What could possibly be the cause of that?
The sun seems to be the obvious answer. It is so obvious in fact that even most mainstream climatologists admit its influence in these years. Some also say there is an anthropogenic effect in there, somewhere, and they could be right, but it certainly isn’t obvious.
And while the Atlantic is in its cool phase over the earlier part of this period, the largest ocean, the Pacific, is warm,especially in the last couple decades, but when it turns into its cool phase….
1945-1976:
We get 30 years of cooling in the surface station record.
According to proponents of the anthropogenic model, the unprecedented increase in carbon dioxide following World War II was not only masked, but overpowered by sulfate emissions. That is an interesting excuse, but this cooling period exactly matches the cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).
So much so that when it goes into its warm phase in…
1977-1998:
We get 20 more years of warming:
which is kicked up a notch towards the end as the Atlantic goes into its warm phase:
That leaves us with the final period from…
1999-Present:
After the super El Nino of 1998 temperatures have largely flat-lined and perhaps even dropped slightly. Both the Atlantic and Pacific are in their warm phases and the sun remains at the “high” levels following the recovery from the Little Ice Age, but the Pacific seems to be wobbling cooler and cooler as it shifts back into its cool phase.
True we are the “warmest decade on record,” but we are also the only decade on record with both oceans in their warm phases in a time of relatively high solar activity. The only comparable time would be during and around the 1930’s and early 1940’s, around the time of the Dust Bowl, and the sun wasn’t as active back then – and that’s assuming the records are an accurate reflection of global temperatures back then.
So how do climate scientists explain this lack of warming for over a decade? Ah, well they blame the sulfates again – a classic excuse, while others say that the heat has teleported deep into the oceans. I say teleported because there is no record of the journey of that missing heat into those unmeasured depths from the well-measured depths it would normally have had to travel through in order to get to that abyss.
Of course, others say this time period is simply not statistically significant, but the only period of heating we can’t directly trace to the sun, the time from 1977-1998, a mere twenty year period, is certainly statistically significant in some minds.
To that I only have one question for them:
Are you smarter than a 5th grader?
Cheers,
James Padgett
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ferd berple says:
November 5, 2011 at 9:23 am
R. Gates says:
November 5, 2011 at 6:21 am
This is muddled thinking at it’s worst. The climate does not change by chance.
God plays dice with the climate.
_____
Nice sentiment, but they’d have to be loaded dice.
ferd berple says:
November 5, 2011 at 9:24 am
“Dave Springer says:
November 5, 2011 at 9:17 am
The classic cautionary tale is to plot shoe size against income. Very high positive correlation – the bigger the shoe the larger the income.”
>I’ve got to get myself some bigger shoes!
Statistically speaking, you betcha!
Responding to RockyRoad
November 5, 2011 at 9:58 am
_____
How could you find the minimum period in which the anthropogenic signal could be seen if you didn’t include the anthropogenic forcings? Should they have run the models with CO2 and other GH gases being held at a year 1600 level? Did you read the entire paper? Sound like perhaps not…
Good article but rather late to the party:
“A change in the heat coming from the sun may not have an immediate effect unless it is in phase with the overall average state of the various oceanic oscillations.
Thus a decline in solar energy will have an immediate effect if it occurs at a time when the overall balance of all the oceanic oscillations is negative as now (2007 to date) when the end of solar cycle 23 is significantly delayed and the late start of cycle 24 suggests a weaker cycle than we have had for some time.
A cooling effect of such a solar decline will be delayed if it occurs at a time when the overall balance of all the oceanic oscillations is positive (1998 to 2007) when solar cycle 23 started showing it’s weakness in relation to previous solar cycles but the Pacific Decadal Oscillation was still positive.
An increase in solar energy will have a delayed effect if it occurs at a time when the overall balance of the oceanic oscillations is negative (1961 to 1975) when solar cycles 18 and 19 were historically intense but the effect was masked by the negative Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
The warming effect will be immediate if it occurs at a time when the overall balance of the oceanic oscillations is positive (1975 to 1998) during the historically active cycles 21 and 22.
Remember that there is a variable lag between the initial solar effect of warming or cooling on the Pacific Ocean and that effect then working through all the other oceanic oscillations so it is difficult to establish the overall balance of the oceanic oscillations at any given time. In fact it is more likely that observed changes in the trend of global temperature will be the first and simplest indication as to when a global shift from solar/oceanic warming mode to solar/oceanic cooling mode and vice versa has occurred.
Indeed on the basis of my previous article about weather being the key it may be possible to get even earlier warning of changes in global temperature trend from observation of the preferred positions of the jet streams and the main high pressure systems.”
from here:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1487&linkbox=true&position=5
“The Hot Water Bottle Effect”, first published 25th June 2008.
and followed by a number of articles presenting more detail as to how the oceanic and solar influences interact over time to shift the permanent climate zones and lead to all the changes that we observe.
Volker Doormann says:
November 5, 2011 at 9:44 am
Extend the blue curve back to 1600…
No problem, Sir.
http://volker-doormann.org/images/hadc_ghi6_1000.gif
And note how poor the fit is from 1750 until today.
malagaview says:
“Why is 20 years statistically significant when 10 years is not?
More importantly: Is (Tmax + Tmin) / 2 meaningful or statistically valid?
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/11/4/australian-temperatures.html”
When I questionned the use of (Tmax + Tmin)/2 as a substitute for Tmean, some months ago, I was torn apart by Steve Mosher who provided me with a link to data which appeared to confirm that the approximation was correct. Having read the paper in the Bishophill link, perhaps I gave up too easily. Or perhaps Mr. Mosher can reply to malagaview’s second question in the light of the evidence to which the Bishophill blog refers.
For any period of time why should the average of the peak and the trough provide an accurate estimate of the area beneath the curve?
Volker Doormann says:
November 5, 2011 at 9:44 am
Extend the blue curve back to 1600…
http://volker-doormann.org/images/hadc_ghi6_1000.gif
Considering that the two largest tides are due to Jupiter and Venus, the two next ones [of half the magnitude] due to Earth and Mercury and all the rest smaller by a factor of ten or more, what you plot cannot be the sum of the tides. That sum would show the Jupiter period modulated by Venus and much smaller contribution from the rest.
Paul Homewood says: November 5, 2011 at 5:52 am
Katharine Hayhoe tells us climate started in 1965. http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/questions-for-katharine/
Perhaps if this thread can be reposted here at WUWT, Prof Hayhoe might be encouraged to respond to some more very pertinent, basic questions. And in the light of the recent 10-10 follow-up, I’d like to remind warmists that skeptics are still asking for open debate.
I wonder how shoe sizes work with the short man syndrome ?
Volker Doormann says: November 5, 2011 at 7:14 am
Simple summation of solar tide functions from couples of six slow moving planets suggests that the main global temperature effect on Earth is controlled by the solar system: http://volker-doormann.org/images/hadc_ghi6_1850.gif
Leif Svalgaard says: November 5, 2011 at 8:30 am
Extend the blue curve back to 1600…
Volker Doormann says: November 5, 2011 at 9:44 am
…Done!
Leif Svalgaard says: November 5, 2011 at 10:21 am
…And note how poor the fit is from 1750 until today.
What strikes me is how good the fit is, ie to me, visually, this looks like a statistically significant correlation, even if not perfect, and I trust my …eyes.
But there is more: in Doorman’s first comparison graph, it is not just the overall picture, but even more the details, the nuances, that bob up and down together, over and over and over again. Now how does one measure statistical significance when we are clearly dealing with at least two scales of effect, one being over years and the other being over decades and centuries?
ferd berple says: November 5, 2011 at 7:02 am
…Gravity, relativity, quantum mechanics, these are some of the greatest triumphs in modern physics. Where is the physical mechanism to explain them? What causes time to pass slower in a gravitational field? What is the speed of gravity? What is the physical mechanism underlying the uncertainty principle? How can these great theories have any value without there being a physical mechanism to explain them?
Science has one great power – and only one. True science can DEMONSTRATIVELY and REPEATEDLY and RELIABLY predict the future
Well said ferd.
Santer et al et al et al 2011 linked above by R. Gates just says that the RSS-UAH lower troposphere temperature trend just needs to fall to about 0.11C per decade to be outside of the 90% confidence limits (not 95%) of the models (over about 15 years, the number stays the same as we move out to even more than 35 years).
http://muenchow.cms.udel.edu/classes/MAST811/Santer2011.pdf
So, what are the odds that RSS-UAH will fall to 0.11C per decade. Temps only need to decline the way they did in the 2008 La Nina for another year or so and the 90% confidence interval will be broken. Then Santer will be forced to declare a statistically significant lack of warming (or he will just come up with some other way of saying no warming is consistent with global warming).
The scientific community is regularly wrong en masse, not just for plate tectonics. Other notable gaffes include the failure to accept mitochondria as bacterial inclusions; the continued belief in the savannah theory of human evolution, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary; the failure of medical doctors to wash their hands in spite of overwhelming empirical evidence that it could reduce disease spread (Ignace Semmelweiss)(okay M.D.s aren’t scientists, but after hundresds of years of evidence, they still don’t wash their hands properly); the problems that evolution had gaining acceptance (and still does, but I mean in the scientific community); and many others. Max Planck summed it up “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” So until we get twenty or thirty years of non-warming data and the current warmista cadre all dies or retires, this seemingly irrational argument will continue. And truth won’t win the minds of the public as long as reporters are too lazy or too poorly educated to read the scientific literature themselves rather than having Al Gore (or David Suzuki in Canada) interpret it for them.
Lucy Skywalker says:
November 5, 2011 at 11:01 am
“…And note how poor the fit is from 1750 until today.”
What strikes me is how good the fit is, ie to me, visually, this looks like a statistically significant correlation, even if not perfect, and I trust my …eyes.
1) the fit between the blue and the green line after 1750 is terrible [i.e. not there], so either the blue or the green line is not a good representation.
2) but then before 1750 the fit looks better to your eyes, but we just established that one of the two could not be trusted when the data should be good.
3) the blue curve is not the sum of the tides [as I just pointed out]. Rudolf Wolf [who invented the sunspot number] was the first to postulate the tidal theory. Here is his graph plotting the sum of the four largest tides for the years 1835-1850: http://www.leif.org/research/Wolf-Tides.png
for times before and after you just repeat the curves.
Some researchers have attributed the lack of warming in the last ten years to a mysterious drop in water vapor in a relatively thin layer of the stratosphere. Of course, they are doing this in a belief context that temperatures should be increasing with CO2 at a rate that implies a near runaway degree of positive feedback magnification of the raw effect. Perhaps they should be asking what might have put that extra water vapor up there in the first place.
Scientific American:
“Is Water Vapor in the Stratosphere Slowing Global Warming?”
“A mysterious drop in water vapor in the lower stratosphere might be slowing climate change”
By David Biello – January 29, 2010
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-water-vapor-in-the-stratosphere-slowing-global-warming
KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is good.
And, while I do not discount the role of the PDO, I can distill this to an even simpler analysis. I did so here:
http://sbvor.blogspot.com/2011/10/amo-driving-best-climate-change.html
Notice in the previous link that…
Every bit of climate change over the last century (and more) can be explained by just two factors the AMO and whatever has been driving a steady, gradual warming of 0.5C/century ever since the LIA. I offered no cause for that second factor, only an observation that it exists. Could that second factor be the sunspot evidence presented by Padgett?
Having accounted for all climate change over the last century (and more) somewhat surprisingly leaves anthropogenic CO2 with no apparent role at all. Of course, we could speculate that whatever tiny bit of warming might have been created by anthropogenic CO2 was completely reversed by the observed negative water vapor feedback.
Click here to see how the UAH global satellite data fit into the AMO theory.
Click here to see how the USA data fit into the AMO theory.
Click here for my primary post on the role of the AMO.
Jason Calley says:
November 5, 2011 at 9:27 am
RE: chaos . Excellent post! The distinction between chaotic and random behavior in particular. I use to have this conversation (pre-retirement) with various aerospace managers and it usually resulted in glazed over eyes. 😉
Dave Springer says:
November 5, 2011 at 9:49 am
ferd berple says:
November 5, 2011 at 9:14 am
In which case the future is written and there is no such thing as free will. All our future choices are already determined by our current state. In which case the future is rather pointless. Quantum mechanics suggests otherwise. That the future is not deterministic. That is an illusion of scale. The future is not a place we are traveling to. The future is a probability.
For example: When you say you are going on vacation next week that is not entirely accurate. You are planning to go on vacation, and are taking steps to increase the probability that you will in fact go on vacation, but events are also in motion which could prevent you from going. Until the vacation actually arrives, you don’t know for sure that you are in fact going to go on vacation.
We like to believe that if we knew all the events going on in the world, we could determine in advance if we were actually going to go on the vacation. Our current level of understanding of the physical world is such that you cannot calculate this in advance, even with the computer that has not yet been built, at a very fundamental level.
You had no real choice in writing the above, of course, nor in your belief that you possess free will. And I of course had no real choice but to make exactly this response.
Seriously, the jury is still out on determinism vs. nondeterminism. There is no consensus even among quantum physicists. Even Stephen Hawking famously lost a wager to Leonard Susskind over this. Hawking argued that information could be destroyed, or at least hidden forever inside a black hole, because once something fell in the only way out was via particles quantum tunneling through the event horizon (Hawking Radiation). He argued that the tunnelling was predictable only statistically and so information about the particle before it entered the black hole was lost when it tunneled back out. This actually violates a fundamental tenet of quantum mechanics – conservation of information – and Susskind argued that you can’t get around that rule even with a black hole. The mathematical details are beyond my ken but after ten years and every theoretical physicist in the world throwing in his two cents Hawking conceded and conservation of information, and thus absolute determinism which follows from it, is still safely ensconsed.
======================================================================
Interesting discussion. I see no reason why determinism and non-determinism should be mutually exclusive. Also, there is some speculation regarding information – the Holographic Principle.
LazyTeenager says:
November 5, 2011 at 12:55 am
1900-1944:
This period is largely warming. What could possibly be the cause of that?
———
From the graph it’s seems that James associates warming with increased sunspot activity. And this seems to be consistent with theories about the origin of the little ice age.
So why dont we see a little ice age every 11 years? And the answer has to be backed by evidence, not hand waving or speculation.
###
If you can’t answer that for yourself, then I doubt that you have the sapience to contribute anything useful, but most of us knew that already.
Big feet generally indicates big body parts. Big body parts indicates a big person. Big people generally get more of the pie, than little people. We all learned that in grade school the first time some “big” kid took our candy. GK
Lucy Skywalker says:
November 5, 2011 at 11:01 am
Volker Doormann says: November 5, 2011 at 7:14 am
‘Simple summation of solar tide functions from couples of six slow moving planets suggests that the main global temperature effect on Earth is controlled by the solar system:
http://volker-doormann.org/images/hadc_ghi6_1850.gif ‘
What strikes me is how good the fit is, ie to me, visually, this looks like a statistically significant correlation, even if not perfect, and I trust my …eyes.
But there is more: in Doorman’s first comparison graph, it is not just the overall picture, but even more the details, the nuances, that bob up and down together, over and over and over again. Now how does one measure statistical significance when we are clearly dealing with at least two scales of effect, one being over years and the other being over decades and centuries?”
As I wrote above, relevant in climate science is the correlation coefficient of two different functions, but not any statistical significance, because a high correlation coefficient shows a strong geometric relation between two functions.
In climate science a real source has to be shown for real global temperature anomalies; it is not the question in physics whether there is a source or not.
All people who are involved in global temperature reconstructions do know that there are differences in timescale functions and amplitudes. Taking the time scale from the astronomic functions alike eclipses, heliocentric positions of celestial bodies can be determined in seconds in time and arcseconds of an ecliptic longitude angle.
Because of this fact it is not the question whether astronomy functions fit to the temperature proxies ( “14C” ), but more whether the assumed time scales of the temperature proxies fit to astronomy functions.
I wrote also on a global temperature frequency range of about four orders of magnitude (some month to 1.8 ky). It is self explained that it is not possible to show a comparison of all these frequencies in detail in one graph. Taking the saw tooth frequencies of 1/94.5 ky^-1 , 1/41.2 ky^-1, 1/29 ky^-1 or 1/23.6 ky^-1 from the Vostok core of Great Ice Ages the range of climate frequencies extends to about five orders of magnitude.
So I think the scientific climate question is, ‘Why do the imperfect reconstructed global temperature frequency spectra correlate with solar tide functions from real planets and its positions?’
Who in climate science cares on the statistical significance of a time decade or two?
V.
Are you saying – that which has been determined is constantly being modified by that which has not been determined? The holographic projection of the big bang would apparently account for the determined source. However, what do you attribute the non-determined source to? The only thing that occurs to me is the introduction of intelligence, hence purpose, implying choice.
I admit – It all makes my head swim. GK
Jason Calley November 5, 2011 at 9:27 am Chaos can be predicted, but there is a catch. Actually, two catches, and they are both very big. Chaotic systems can be predicted only if we have infinitely exact knowledge of all the beginning physical states, and only with a computer or calculating system at least as complicated — if not more complicated — the system which is being analyzed.
Pretty tall catch. Because of it, it follows then that you can never build chaotic models that predict. Which in turn means you can never prove them. At best, you can only say the system appears chaotic. Just because there are mathematical models with chaotic properties resembling the data does NOT mean they exist in nature.
Assigning a system to Chaos Theory is like assigning it to the Bogey Man. All you need to do is catch him to prove it. It’s the ultimate cop-out.
Chaos is not randomness, so at least we have the possibility of approaching useful prediction
But didn’t you say prediction was possible only with infinite knowledge and a Deep Thought class computer? So how then is there a possibility?
The Sun is at the root of all warming, and sunspots deserve more analysis! I still believe sunspots are a key indicator of where global temperatures are headed. Human activity does not yet affect the sun, but maybe Al Gore and his Hadcrut acolytes, including Phil Jones at the University of East Anglia can devise some new computer programs to prove that AECR (Anthropogenic Earth Carbon Releasing) affects the Sun, too.
I also believe there is likely validity in Prof. Svensmark’s theory about how the Sun’s variable-intensity heliomagnetic field shields Earth from those cloud-seeding inter-galactic protons, sometimes more and sometimes less, as it varies during the Sun’s long-term rising and falling magnetic cycles. Maybe more experiments at CERN, using its incredibly-complex CLOUD chamber, will advance that interesting theory, or they may not.
But my personal conviction is that there is indubitably a relationship between the Sun, its cyclic sunspots, and Earth’s climate. This is evident simply because the chart depicting the International Sunspot Numbers from 1745 to the present clearly shows big variations in peak numbers and shapes of the cyclic curves over that period. Go here to see this yourself: http://spaceweather.com/glossary/sunspotnumber.html
A correlation is obvious between sunspot numbers with climate warming and cooling temperature records since reasonably accurate measurements have been recorded over those last 260 years or so. I believe that the shape of a sunspot cycle’s rise, its peak number, and the shape of its fall can be matched to average climate temperatures for the corresponding time periods that follow.
I have roughly assessed those parameters and find that the rising shape, the peak value, and the stretched-out shape of the last cycle clearly resemble those for the cycles that ended around 1850 or 1880. Compare these time periods with their corresponding climate conditions and you may have an indicator of the near term climate to come.
It may be cooler than you imagined, and far cooler than IPCC’s doctored computer programs have been erroneously predicting.
BCBill says:
November 5, 2011 at 11:11 am
“So until we get twenty or thirty years of non-warming data and the current warmista cadre all dies or retires, this seemingly irrational argument will continue. And truth won’t win the minds of the public…”
____
I think a large contingent of the so-called “warmista” would be well enough convinced that AGW is not occurring if we get 30 years of cooling…as it will be self-evident. But the cherry picking of data from the peak of an El Nino in 1998 to a period of multiple La Ninas during the quietest solar activity in a century as evidence that AGW isn’t a real phenomenon is hardly scientific or convincing. Furthermore, we’d have to know what the global temperatures would be like during the same period if you reduced the CO2 levels to 280 ppm or so. Interestingly, we can do that via the climate models, and we get something that looks a lot like the Dalton Minimum.
In term of wining the minds of the public…with the exception of the intellectuals (who are the first killed in any revolution) it generally really isn’t rational arguments that win the group-mind of the public, but circus acts and emotional appeals. This emotional appeal is strengthened by physical reality being thrown in their face…i.e. my house being washed away might be a great point of leverage to paying more in taxes to build up flood defenses.