Global temps in a Crash as AGW proponents Crash the Economy

an interesting line in the blog there from Joe, and one I would suggest we look into in more earnest – “One has to wonder, how even the most dogmatic of them don’t look at the actual facts, how they can continue to carry on their denial….”
the D word. Perhaps the shoe is fitting the other foot now and it is those with their heads in the sand of CAWG who are indeed the “deniers” Turn their own weapon against them.

Joe, Are you claiming that if we measure CO2 levels at altitude that we will find lower percentages than at sea level? That’s what it sounds like.

Just a query about the WUWT climate widget page
Is http://wattsupwiththat.com/widget/ first temp graph on page,
apparently showing a REAL TIME temperature from UAH as it shows January 2012 already at -0.01C?
If so great idea please don’t modify as it will be the only real mean (estimated) UAH temperature time graph available as far as I can tell.

Joe vs. the English language. Joe wins!

One has to wonder, how even the most dogmatic of them don’t look at the actual facts, how they can continue to carry on their denial while the results of such things handcuff the American economy and cause untold misery for many as our wealth is not only redistributed, but dwindles. One can only conclude this is being done on purpose, and with purpose.

Bold mine. Of course it is. The only way to foist a world government on us is to break the economic back of the developed countries, with the US leading the way as the number 1 target. In a free world, such control cannot happen without creating a scare big enough to convince enough of the kingdom to hand over the keys to the stewards. Most people are willing to sacrifice liberty for security… until it’s too late to understand the true cost of that sacrifice.
Mark

herby jerky=herky jerky?
I hate to be critical of an excellent piece like that, but since “specific gravity” is by definition related to the density of water, wouldn’t “relative density” be the proper term?

I think you are drawing an artificial distinction between a climate driven entirely by cyclical processes, or entirely by a linear response to CO2. Why not the two combined? [with some other processes added in for good measure too!]

What does everyone think of Richard Betts’ post over on nature.com? See: http://blogs.nature.com/soapboxscience/2012/01/18/climate-science-%E2%80%93-moving-beyond-a-single-issue

Joe, your last sentence (One can only conclude this is being done on purpose, and with purpose.) is correct. Pick up a copy of Mark Levin’s new book; “Ameritopia”.

After reading McKitric’s postings, I figure that the earth will show a global “cooling” with our current economic downtrend. A lot of what we’re measuring is not global average temperatures, but waste heat from industrial activity.
http://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/ac.preprint.pdf
If you assume most of industrial production is concentrated in urban areas, where most of our thermometers are, you find that surface flux has increased about 3 watts or so over the last century due to an increase in energy output -comparable to the 3.7 watts we’d supposedly get from a doubling of CO2.

“One has to wonder, how even the most dogmatic of them don’t look at the actual facts, how they can continue to carry on their denial while the results of such things handcuff the American economy and cause untold misery for many as our wealth is not only redistributed, but dwindles. One can only conclude this is being done on purpose, and with purpose.”
IMHO, they don’t look at the facts because, for them, the climate and environment are religious and ideological issues, not scientific ones. Their religious creed or ideological belief system is centered on the Gaia hypothesis with humankind’s activities disrupting the workings of the living organism known as Earth.
I cannot say to what extent the Gaia hypothesis is true. But to the extent that it is treated as a religion today, the only sicence that matters to the Green Left is the “science” that fits in with this belief — including that of climate change. The emotional embrace of and devotion to the “religion” trumps any contrary science — science that is to be ignored and suppressed because the “religion” comes first.
Again this is just my opinion, but in my mind it explains the behavior of climate alarmists and environmentalists in this day and age.

“One can only conclude this is being done on purpose, and with purpose.”
Well duh…… it would be impossible (well, ok, improbable) that politicians were so utterly dumb as to fail to understand the implications of what they collectively legislate therefore we must assume that they know and understand their reasoning and actions. Are they doing this voluntarily or are they doing so under duress? Who is it that is pulling the strings? What are their ultimate aims?
There are many speculative (conspiracy theory) suggestions doing the rounds, some with extremely persuassive reasonings attached. Are there any AGW theorists with the additional global knowledge attending this blog capable of offering any further insight?
I realise this blog isn’t a political one and that this particular subject would be off-topic (of sorts) but it might reveal the thinking behind the warmist agenda and offer a possible counter argument that has greater weight than ‘nit picking’ over technical differences.
Can we allow just this one instance for off-topic speculation/reasoning?

As any lazy boss of a large organization will tell you, the easiest and quickest way not to do the job is just to say “yes” to everything that reaches your desk. When you say “no”, people get unhappy — they complain, they whine, they set up meetings you have to attend, etc. But say “yes” and it’s one quick signature then you’re off to the golf course. I think a lot of what we see from the current administration comes from that sort of dynamic — and with the way the US executive branch works, always saying “yes” leads to lots of stupid regulations from dysfunctional domestic bureaucracies like the EPA. I am confident that deep, dark conspiracies sound too much like hard work to appeal to our current president.

What influence does the higher specific gravity of CO2 have when convective mixing is substantial? I don’t disagree with the thrust of this post, but just don’t see the relevance of this factoid.

Joe Bastardi says: Nor am I going to question them as to why they believe a trace gas like CO2 (needed for life on the planet) with a specific gravity of 1.5 as compared to the atmospheres 1.0, was going to mix with air in a way to affect the earth’s temperatures

Actually Joe, scientists do understand this process pretty well, via a branch of physics called “The kinetic theory of gases.”
Look at it this way: suppose that the atmosphere did settle into layers, organized by molecular weight. Then there would be (in order) a thin layer of CO2 molecules at ground level, then a layer of argon atoms (lighter than CO2), then a layer of of oxygen molecules (lighter than argon), then a layer of nitrogen molecules (lighter than oxygen), and at the top, a layer of H20 molecules. But obviously that doesn’t happen (because if it did, we would all be dead).
Perhaps you would like to amend this opening remark, so that folks appreciate that this aspect of atmospheric science is well-understood?

Here in the Fraser Valley, BC the wind chill was -25 Celsius yesterday. The January all-time recorded low is -26.6.
Does that mean we’ve warmed by 1.6 degrees? /sarc

Same problem in the UK, stupid government who ignore climate history in favour of a few advisers who are gold plating their salaries whilst the rest of us get poorer trying to keep warm.

Joe,
Thanks for your fine work here.
Arguments pro and con CAWG – whether it’s real, how real, what to do, political / policy considerations; it’s all interesting.
But of most interest to me, are actual meteorological measurements, I mean if there’s global warming shouldn’t we be able to measure it? I am not an earth-sciences professional, but a mechanical engineer and have kept up on CAGW since Climategate 1.0.
Where’s the Global Warming? Where’s the “hotspot”? Why don’t the thermometers and satellites show the effects of man-made CO2? What am I missing? Shouldn’t the immanent catastrophe that is global warming from man-made CO2 be somehow measurable by something, somewhere?

Only one problem with this story:
why they believe a trace gas like CO2 … with a specific gravity of 1.5 as compared to the atmospheres 1.0, was going to mix with air
Well, even CFC’s with a specific gravity of over 2 are found up to 15 km in the stratosphere… If CO2 is released with huge quantities at once, it remains near ground and can suffocate (small) animals and even people. But once mixed by wind or heat (turbulence) is stays mixed, thanks to Brownian motion. Only in a stagnant air column it may show a small drop out after a long period of time, as one finds some 1% increase in CO2 after 40 years at the bottom of firn layers in Antarctica (Law Dome measurements)…
The level of CO2 in the atmosphere at sea level (Cape Kumukahi, Hawaii) is the same as at the 3400 m altitude Mauna Loa, Hawaii station…

Maurizio Morabito (omnologos) says:
January 19, 2012 at 5:17 am
Rejoice! By crashing the economy, AGWers are going to solve the immigration problem!

The administration has been touting that very fact.

Yes, we will be cooling for some time. But, the plateau will probably continue until ~2014/15 and when the sc24 starts declining, the cooling will really kick in. I predict at least ~flat linear trend for 1990-2020, if not negative.

Curiousgeorge, of course you’re right. Don’t forget to learn Fox and Pivens, Alinsky (dedicated his book to Lucifer?!?) et al. I’m guessing you already know these names, I’d encourage Mr Bastardi to do the same if he isn’t already educated about them.
Mr Bastardi, many thanks for this article, and all your work! Have enjoyed you since radio days doing spots during talk shows!

Missing troposphere heat, a cold ‘hot spot’, missing ocean heat, how these darned inconvenient facts keep interfering with the message. Quick someone, Mike, Phil, get rid of the PDO!

Maurizio Morabito (omnologos) says:
January 19, 2012 at 5:17 am
Rejoice! By crashing the economy, AGWers are going to solve the immigration problem!
Here, in Latin America, we are witnessing the return of millions of people. It´s real!
So things happen in this world of our Lord: “What goes up…must come down” as the lyrics of a song reads.
You see? that “democratic” thing, when exaggerated, puts the world upside down.

Robbie says:
January 19, 2012 at 5:36 am
Mr. Bastardi: You are constantly talking about cooling. I don’t see that in the graph from Roy Spencer.

Your PC monitor must be upside down. ;O)

@ Keith Pearson (formerly bikermailman, Anon no longer) says:
January 19, 2012 at 7:04 am
Curiousgeorge, of course you’re right…………………
========================================
Well, thanks, but I make no claim to being right. In fact, my wife would categorically disagree 😉
That said, there are many flavors of Utopia. These visions of Utopia espoused by various religions, for example, are consistently at odds with all others. Same for political, environmental, and so on. Each of the proponents/leaders of their brand of Utopia insists that “their way is the right way”, whether it be a pope, a president, a prophet, a chairman, or a secretary. They all believe that they are acting in the best interests of the world, and that all others are evil idiots. Hence, the never ending conflict that is the human condition.
What should be understood is that conflict – often violent – is a necessary ingredient of evolution and progress. Without conflict, there is stagnation and eventual extinction.

I think that the climate is driven by the ocean cycles like the PDO plus a 1/2 ° C warming.
There are peer reviewed studies which do a good job of explaining it.
http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~sakasofu/pdf/two_natural_components_recent_climate_change.pdf
The real warming is the long slow 1/2 ° C which is of interest to climatologists only.
Unfortunately for the alarmists there is no CAGW in evidence now or forever.

steven mosher says:
January 19, 2012 at 7:24 am
“From what Joe says about trace gas and from what he says about specific gravity it looks like Joe utterly misunderstands the mechanism of global warming. He thinks C02 traps heat. It doesnt. that is not the theory.”
Steven,
Thank you for weighing in here reiterating the basics. I appreciate it as I am always learning here at WUWT.
Now considering the radiative physics – would it be incorrect to reason that there should be more instrumental evidence showing effects of the added CO2? And please understand I am not asking the question in some sort of rhetorical way – it’s just that recent satellite data shows a temperature anomaly of 0.13 deg C and here it 2012 already. (Can you believe it’s already 2012!).

Alistair Ahs says:
January 19, 2012 at 5:44 am
What does everyone think of Richard Betts’ post over on nature.com? See: http://blogs.nature.com/soapboxscience/2012/01/18/climate-science-%E2%80%93-moving-beyond-a-single-issue
Wise words from Mr. Betts

@steven mosher, just what was the concentration of CO2 in that glass tube shown in the experiement? And just how much CO2, % terms of total atmosphere, will effectively fill in those “transmission windows?”

steven mosher says:
January 19, 2012 at 7:24 am
As we add more GHGs we fill up the holes over time and the atmosphere becomes more opaque.
According to the “water vapor is a ghg” settled physics, water vapor should have already done it all by itself. But if not, why not? It’s not because water vapor is less “opaque” to IR than CO2, because it isn’t. But if it is, then how will water vapor assist CO2 in producing the alleged CAGW warming, when it couldn’t do it before?
Why hasn’t CO2 = CAGW produced even one relevant correct empirical prediction yet? Is it even possible to falsify CO2 = CAGW? Why not?
Why is it not obvious that the alleged cure to the alleged CO2 = CAGW disease is already well proven to be worse than the alleged disease, which itself has not even happened in any way whatsoever? Would you take a drug known to have multiple ill effects on anyone taking it, in order to prevent a disease which has never existed?

Mr. Bastardi:
Nice, but there is a typo I think in between the two AMSU graphs
And oh my my, the trapping hot spot itself.. 400mb or 25,000 feet… coldest in the entore decade
Mosh:
Very nice explanation of how increased GHG’s contribute to the warming process.

spencer admits that the “discover” site contains unverified, uncorrected data. There is no point using these plots
Why do you keep saying:
“Nor am I going to question them as to why they believe a trace gas like CO2 (needed for life on the planet) with a specific gravity of 1.5 as compared to the atmospheres 1.0, was going to mix with air in a way to affect the earth’s temperatures”
This is unsupported by any scientific documents. GHGs do not hold energy so their SG is irrelevant. They slow the radiation leaving the earth – thus at a fixed watts/second input the output must equal this watts/second so the watts out must rise. i.e. the surface temp must rise to radiate more.

Speaking of job losses Joe, your administration and the green shirts just passed up 40,000 shovel ready jobs by delaying/cancelling the Keystone.
Oh, and trust me on this, it has nothing to do with wealth redistribution. There are plenty of mechanisms in both the economy and regulation to redistribute wealth. America has been supporting wealth redistribution for centuries, for example, by supporting free basic eduction for all and subsidzing higher learming for many, by supporting public transporation and a national highways program and a wealth of other programs and so on. And I also disagree with those that say these programs haven’t been highly successful.
This is purely a simple greedy money grab by jackbooted greenshirts in league with their new best friend bankers, who want to carbon trade, and with technology scammers, looking to harvest renewables subsidies. This is a concerted effort by the green shirts to return America to a peasant state and then prance around the country like Hitler in Lebensraum telling everyone how happy they are with their new condition.

It seems to me there are two “camps” in this field.
The Convection/Conduction Camp, and the Radiation Camp.
The Radiation Camp thinks that CO2 is king via radiation.
The Convection Camp thinks Water Vapour is king via convection and conduction.
Meteorologists are in the Convection Camp by default, me thinks.
(Unless they are forced by their bosses to state otherwise on e.g. TV)
Otherwise they would have to deny everything they learned at school ?
I am in the Convection/Conduction Camp, of course.
Here is the latest input from the meteorologists. A real CAGW killer.
Using the alarmist’s prime weapon , models, against themselves;
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00443.1

This chart should be at the top of the article http://icecap.us/images/uploads/gfs_t2m_anom_plan_16.png
And the article should be the opening article for the next week.
Great article, thanks for posting this.
I really miss Joe’s Weekly’s he did at AccuWeather and his regular comments, now supposedly behind the Weatherbell paywall that doesn’t make much sense for people outside the USA.
So I enjoyed this article written in the familiar Bastardi style.
Keep it up and good luck with Weatherbell

steven mosher says:
January 19, 2012 at 7:24 am
I see a problem with the physics of how CO2 is supposed to work, particularly p.46 of a report called the ‘Falsification of carbon dioxide’ at http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf

Henry Galt says:
January 19, 2012 at 8:02 am
There is something wrong with that list at: either it is km, not meters (although, measurements at 2400 km height?) or the ppmv’s are relative to the ground level, which is also impossible: the air pressure at 2400 m is less than at sealevel, but not that low. And real measurements at Mauna Loa (3400 m height) are similar as at the Hawaiian sealevel, because ppmv is a ratio between the number of CO2 volume/molecules to total air volume/molecules, not an absolute level…

Interesting post Mr. Bastardi, but I think you should check out the concept of gas diffusion before banging on too much about the specific gravity of CO2 like you expect it to settle at ground level or something.
Your understanding of weather is very enlightening , your grasp of basic physics may leave you open to criticism.

Crashing the economy reduces consumption. While reducing consumption likely won’t affect the climate one bit, we will feel better about ourselves as we won’t be killing the planet as much.
~More Soylent Green!

Look, the most damming evidence is the amazing drop in mid trop temps. This is above the boundary layer and it would figure the response against the normal would wait. Moreover, Dr Maue’s site was showing temps through December to be running pretty close to what december turned out to be.
You folks that are coming at me about co2 sg, apparently dont understand that simply put, it does not mix well with air. There was just an article about that here on WUWT. So how do you explain the very level that is supposed to be evidence of the GHG trapping hot spot, 400 mb, has plummeted in almost perfect timing with the la nina that came on. How do you explain, the response now evident in the global temps. And by the way, this is astounding, the Northern hemisphere between 25 and 75 n over a degree below normal, and forecasted to go to 2 below normal. You cant just blow that off, especially when you can see what temps have done in relation to the PDO in the past, and the fact that they have leveled off the last 15 years even as co2 has marched up.
So why is it you demand that I listen to your points, and then say, none of the opposite points that are occurring matter? Why is it that a simple test with objective data over the next 30 years, not proxy tree rings ( btw there is no “hockey stick in China as they have shown.. so I guess its everywhere else) or super Nino hansen readjusting temps, cant be the objective arbiter of this argument And by the way, isnt wishing for el ninos to warm the global temps in effect and admission that its the pacific that is in large part controlling the climate. Are you trying to say the minute amount of co2 in the atmosphere is controlling the tropical pacific temps.
It boggles the mind that you ask me to accept such things, when all I ask is we objectively measure right and wrong. The global temp drop now was right in line with what I forecasted in May, that a drop to one of the 3 months, Jan,Feb or Mar to -.15 c would occur. It is not brain surgery, and its not that I am brilliant, its that anyone that is objective about this can see what is going on.
And anyone objective about would agree to the test of this via objective methods ( satellite) that started when we came out of the last cold period. In the meantime enjoy the 5-6 dollar a gallon gasoline this summer and remember who said that under his plan energy prices would skyrocket, and that our energy secretary said we need gas prices the way that had them in Europe.. at that time around 8 dollars a gallon. I for one took them at their word, and you are seeing the results now, all because of a belief in what may be no more than a Utopian Ghost
Where are the trapping hot spots? How are the land masses of the northern hemisphere getting this cold in relation to norm. How can a warming world allow temperatures to crash to levels already in these area not seen since the last cold PDO. Its not Co2 its called nature, and the first part of it is the reversal of the PDO.

jjthomas~ As Anthony has had to point out in a number of other articles: what part of ‘Joe Bastardi wrote this’ don’t you get?

justthinkin: “A 0.00001% increase cause quadrupling of surface temps!” – you got both numbers extravagantly wrong there. Try again.
Mardler: “Mr. Statham – 40% of what, exactly?” – The 40% increase in CO2 since pre-industrial times.

Hi Joe!
Thankyou for a refreshing post!
Please dont take it too bad if commentators focus om some details, I´d guess generally they agree that we are headed for cooling, non the less and I think its super that your show the 400mb story.
You write: “However first came the flip in the PDO, seen nicely here on the Multivariate Enso Index chart, which clearly illustrates the colder Pacific when the earth was colder, the start of the warming period coinciding with the satellite era, and now.”
its very true indeed that Cold PDO normally comes with cooling:
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/the-siberian-pacific-climate-pendulum-251.php
(also to be found at jo novas)
Does this indicate that PDO is eventually either Sun or CO2 driven: No.
Or ? The thing is: We now have cold PDO (Indicating cooling) but the highest CO2 levels on record and this is not really a strong indicator for CO2 as driver of PDO. That was the short version :-).
Thankyou for posting Joe, we need people to shout out the essential situation.
K.R. Frank

Heh one more thing YOU SHOULD MONITOR THESE THINGS YOURSELF. I challenge each and every one of the AGW believers to watch the global temps on Dr Maue’s site ( they come in 4 times a day.. the 1-8 and 8.5 -16 day projections) and at least have the open mindedness to ask how can the pdo crash, the mid levels crash and now this, with the contention that its warming. These are not minor events. The Nov pdo was 4th coldest nov, the nov-dec was 3rd coldest… similar to the 1950s, which is what we are seeing now… (example hurricanes on east coast.. severe Texas drought, Anchorage snow records). ALL THESE THINGS HAPPENED THE LAST TIME THIS HAPPENED!!. It is astounding that this is either not known, or ignored. But here is the link, and you should be the judge, but for goodness sakes , at least look.
There is record cold at 400mb and 600 mb
and now this.
Is this all just a trick. If you arent looking, then you are hiding FROM THE DECLINE
day 1-8
http://policlimate.com/weather/current/raw_temp_8day_avg.png
day 8.5-16
http://policlimate.com/weather/current/gfs_t2m_anom_plan_16.png
heh anyone wanna bet if it gets that warm in the east, that will be used as evidence for global warming rather than the rest of globe so cold?
There a forecast most of us can agree one

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ……..check out Weatherbell , it is well worth the $$$ for a years veiw of the weather from Joe …….. the daily video’s are worth it , but you get a lot more for your bucks .
Carry on the good work Joe ………. give those hamsters an extra lettuce leaf they work so hard.

If this cooling scenario plays out in the medium to longer term we should then be justified in calling those in the AGW team “real deniers” which sort of makes it fair, doesn`t it ?

Guinea Pigs…..not Hamsters ……ooopsss……..the Co2 must be getting to me !!!

steven mosher @ 07:24 left a link to a video by Dr Ian Stewart. So, just what are Stewart’s recent pronouncements on ‘global warming’? From a 2008 BBC press release relating to his series, ‘Earth – the Climate Wars’, here are a few snippets demonstrating from which perspective he views the ‘science’ of the ‘problem’ and his consensus-backed plan for ‘fixing’ the ‘problem’:
“Until a few years ago, I was a bit of a climate sceptic.”
“What is truly scary about climate change is not any of the specific scenarios of rising seas or melting ice, but the sense that our planet’s climate exists on a knife-edge balance and we really don’t understand what pushes us over the edge, which makes our great chemistry experiment with the world’s oceans and atmosphere all the more short-sighted.”
“If society is to make any progress on effectively dealing with climate change at a regional or global level, what is imperative is that ordinary people help build a political climate at grass-roots level that accepts the problem exists and demands some serious actions by business and government. For me, that begins with people accepting that there is no hiding place left in the science – the overwhelming consensus of the vast body of scientists that study climate is that the trends we are seeing in the air, the oceans and in our ecosystems are entirely consistent with the theory of global warming, while the alternatives offered by sceptical scientists – even the much heralded role of the Sun – so far fail that test.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/proginfo/tv/wk38/feature_earth.shtml
________________________
Same old appeal from authority arguments – incorporating all the usual suspects…..

Joe, I have to correct you on “…it was a matter of time before the global temperatures, which have leveled off, would start falling in the same herby jerky fashion they had risen when the PDO turned warm at the end of the 1970s.” There was no warming whatsoever in the eighties and nineties that you are talking about – it was all faked. Satellite temperatures cannot see it. What they do see is a series of ENSO oscillations about an average temperature that remained constant for twenty years, until the super El Nino of 1998 arrived. That was the start of real warming, ten years after Hansen’s 1988 testimony that global warming was here and we were to blame. Take any temperature curve that shows that warming, say HadCRUT3, and plot it on the same coordinates as the satellite curve. You will see the same El Nino peaks that satellites show and in between the peaks are cool La Nina intervals. But what strikes you is that the El Nino peaks, at least the four first ones, are all in the same positions in the two curves but La Nina valleys in between have all been made shallow. This gives their curve an upward slope they call the late twentieth century warming. You find the same thing with GISTEMP and worse with NOAA. This manipulation has been going on since the late seventies and continues in the twenty-first century. An example is the absurdity of claiming that 2005 and 2010 were warmer than the 1998 super El Nino. The question is, what changed in the late seventies? For one thing, 1978 was the year when James Hansen, an astronomer on the NASA Pioneer Venus Probe, suddenly transferred to GISS because “The composition of the atmosphere of our home planet was changing before our eyes…” I lived through that period but my eyes somehow missed it. His first task at GISS was to define “The basic GISS temperature analysis scheme … when a method for for estimating global temperature change was needed …” And lo and behold, global temperature started to rise when his method was put to use. They have never published the actual details of how they estimate global temperature change but Climategate tells us that they manipulate temperature and throw away the original data. But they have resolutely refused to use any satellite temperature measurements since the beginning and they still do. The only hint I have is a popular article I read in the nineties which stated that temperatures go up and down but the high temperatures are the real temperatures. I had no interest in any details at the time and Google cannot find the article now. Bur it does not matter because the manipulation of temperatures is there for all to see. See figures 24, 27 and 29 in my book “What Warming?” (Amazon).

Joe, I agree with your sentiments, but atmospheric gas layering? I’m at ground level and still breathing…

Sigh…
Missing the point, some of you are…
Contrary to the positive, condescending assertions I’ve just seen two of, No, there is no actual proof or even compelling evidence that human activity is increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. What you have there is a hypothesis bolstered by a belief.
In fact, the more CO2 there is, the more plant life eats it. Plants do this thing, maybe you’ve heard of it… they GROW… and multiply. Plants can be microscopic. Plants and plant life will remove as much CO2 as all human activity can possibly provide. Then, once they’ve consumed as much as they can, they do this other thing common to life: they die.
Nobody’s arguing that there is measurable concentration of CO2 that is human contributed. But it’s rather childishly naive to believe that an increase in CO2 is caused by human emissions.(Correlation != causation). The planet is self-regulating for CO2 concentration, always has been, always will be… otherwise the conditions required for complex life would never have been maintained long enough for us to appear on the scene.

Atmospheric temperatures are responding exactly as expected for a double-dip La Nina. The energy that is not being released from the ocean to the atmosphere is…staying in the ocean! Ocean heat content is at record high levels when looking over the past 30+ years. Very high probabilty of seeing record instrument global atmospheric temps by 2013-2015, as the next El Nino cycle releases that energy and occurs near Solar Max 24.

Ian Wi says:
January 19, 2012 at 9:02 am
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
That was a good read Ian.

This is not going to end well. We may have both megadrought and crop destroying freezes / delayed spring / summer warmth.

Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
January 19, 2012 at 12:28 pm
==============================================
http://chiefio.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/nhk-world-jaxa-co2-chart.jpg

Nor am I going to question them as to why they believe a trace gas like CO2 (needed for life on the planet) with a specific gravity of 1.5 as compared to the atmospheres 1.0, was going to mix with air in a way to affect the earth’s temperatures.
———
What’s this confused hand waving about?
We know damn well how CO2 varies with height because it is measured.
The theory of this is also simple and agrees with measurement.
And the result is —- CO2 does NOT vary much with height at all despite it’s specific gravity.
So Joe makes a claim that is wrong and which also even if correct would have a tenuous relation to the greenhouse effect.

“Face it Mr. Bastardi: CO2 is having some effect on climate. Even Roy Spencer acknowledges that. So in fact we are already looking at the human signal when staring at Roy’s graph.”
Robbie,
Not sure what “signal” you are referring to. If in fact scientists have found thier signal (AGW signal), there would be partying at the IPCC.If such a signal in fact was found, the implications would be enormous, and if that signal could be directly tied to CO2, one would think a group of scientists would be picking up thier Nobel Prize for Science.
Like many Alarmists, you get caught up on short term (12-18 months) weather phenomena. You end up playing wack-a-mole with signals, ice melts, droughts, blizzards, and heat waves. The minute some “extreme” weather event occurs, you wack it over the head and tag it as proof of CAGW (or Climate Change, or Climate Disruption).
Joe Bastardi does have a tendency of getting overly excited at times. But Bob Tisdale’s critiques aside, Bastardi’s points should be listened too. A shift in the PDO represents a long term (30-40 years) shift in global temperatures and weather patterns. But, taken as a whole, the earth doesn’t cool or heat evenly. And as we know with the Little Ice Age, there were plenty of droughts and heatwaves around the world, even as the global temperatures were heading steadily downward (check-out Europe in the 14th and 15 Century). The earth doesn’t normally warm or cool in such drastic fashions as you may allude to. The PDO officially went negative 3 years ago. I seriously doubt the global temps will crash as such as to erase 35 years of warming overnight.

) along with a 100 billion dollar subsidy to fight global warming world wide, it is costing each ACTUAL TAX PAYER close to 7000 dollars (1.1 trillion divided by 150 million tax payers).
——-
So Joe reckons he is an economist now.
Let’s do a reality check. The USA spends around 1.5 trillion dollars per year on it’s security apparatus. Does this cause the US economy to collapse? No it does not. This proves that government expenditure of a magnitude much much higher than that expended on climate change does not harm the economy so Joe’s argument fails.
Personally I would be inclined to fact check everything Joe says.

Observations trump theory. Every time. The end.

Latitude says:
January 19, 2012 at 12:36 pm
From:
http://www.suite101.com/news/japanese-study-of-carbon-dioxide-measurements—the-real-story-a395051
Any figures from this study that show known areas of high CO2 emissions (such as North America, Europe and Asia) to be on the lower end of the scale illustrate that the gound-based networks are better developed in those regions, therefore the rate of uncertainty is low – not that the CO2 emissions measured are low. Likewise, areas that are near the upper end of the scale are in less developed countries, therefore their rate of uncertainty is high – it does not suggest that CO2 emissions in these regions are higher than other regions.
Thus that graph is about the certainty of the CO2 measurements of the satellites vs. the ground based measurements, nothing to do with where the places of highest or lowest emissions are…

Could we stop it already with the “Libruls hate oil” nonsense? The Obama Administration has accelerated the permitting process for drilling, The Brits (evil socialists) and the Norwegian (red-fanged commies) all drill to their hearts’ content.
Keystone XL, you say? Ask the Republican Governors in its path what they think. It is NOT unreasonable to review that proposal properly.
The argument is stronger when it stays non-partisan.

Ferdinand Engelbeen says (January 19, 2012 at 12:28 pm)
“For a doubling of CO2, the average growth of all crops is about 50%, not 100%. ” and
“If we should stop all CO2 emissions today, yes the CO2 levels would sink, but slower than most here expect (but much faster than what the IPCC expects…). A half lifetime of about 40 years to get rid of the extra 100+ ppmv…”
Interesting! Some questions:
(1)Does this mean, in your opinion, that current climate science has underestimated the takeup of CO2 by biosystems?
(2) If so, would this extend the estimated time needed for CO2 to double?
(3) Does your figure of 50% relate to the CO2-munching ability of a given amount of crops, or does it also reflect that more crops would grow in hitherto less-favoured areas?
I think this is an area neglected by the AGW picture.

CO2 ppm vs Altitude dervived from the CRC handbook (http://mitochondrally.org/myblog/163-ppm-of-co2-with-altitude-and-mass). I’m not sure on where the CRC handbook get’s it figures.
I’ve done a quick number crunch of ppm(altitude) x pressure (altitude) based on that table, and 99% of the mass of CO2 is below 900m, 95% below 490mm, 90% below 400m, 50% below 170m, 30% below 100m.
pressure(Z) = =100*((44331.514-Z)/11880.516)^5.25587712179759
Z= altitude in metres
Pressure in Pascals
(Equation derived from equation 9 in http://psas.pdx.edu/RocketScience/PressureAltitude_Derived.pdf, orginal from CRC handbook 1996 edition)

cui bono says:
January 19, 2012 at 1:46 pm
Current carbon cycle models make a difference in time constant between different reservoirs: a fast response from the ocean surface, but that has a limited capacity (10% of the increase in the atmosphere). Relative fast for the deep oceans and the biosphere and much slower for other reservoirs (chalk deposits in the oceans, silicate rock weathering,…).
Most carbon cycle models use the Bern model sink rates with different speeds and for each reservoir some limit over time. While the latter is true for the ocean surface (due to the Revelle factor), I see no reason for limits – in the foreseeable future – for the deep oceans and/or vegetation, thus the relative fast decay time of about 40 years for CO2 into the deep oceans and vegetation has no limit over time. Only if we burn all oil and gas and a lot of coal, up to 3000-5000 GtC over time, that will substantially increase the deep ocean CO2 content and that will return into the atmosphere, increasing the baseline CO2 content with 6-10% compared to pre-industrial levels for a very long period. But that still is far away today. Thus:
(1) I suppose that they underestimated the sink capacity of both the oceans and vegetation.
(2) Depends of the increase rate of the emissions: at the current, slightly exponential, increase of yearly emissions, the increase in the atmosphere is in a near perfect ratio to the emissions. If the emissions slow down for any reason, the ratio would decrease and with steady emissions, we will reach a new steady state level in the atmosphere where emissions and sinks are equal.
(3) The 50% is for crops in the best circumstances of availability of water, minerals and fertilizers and the optimal temperature. In real life, that depends of the type of crop and the other constraints: temperature, water, nutritients, fertilizers,… An extra advantage of more CO2 is that less alveoles are needed (and formed), that gives less water loss in dry/hot circumstances, thus less water is needed, thus more plant types can grow in such a climate.

pidge says:
January 19, 2012 at 2:03 pm
Still the table isn’t right:
– ppmv hardly changes with altitude: it is a ratio of CO2 vs. total air. That doesn’t change if the atmospheric pressure changes.
– if the real amount of CO2 at altitude is what is needed, then you can use the pressure changes: at the surface with 1 bar pressure and 387 ppmv (dry air), the (partial) CO2 pressure is about 384 microatm (wet air). At 0.5 bar (at about 6.000 meter) the CO2 ratio still is 387 ppmv, but the pCO2 halves to 192 microatm. So does the amount of CO2 per m3: halve the amount of air and thus also halve the amount of CO2 at 6,000 meter altitude per m3.
I don’t see any resemblance with the table of Richard J. Belshaw

WOW, been watching this for years now……..amazing stuff……let’s all live in sod houses and ride by bicycles. Oh, just in the USA

GregO says: January 19, 2012 at 6:30 am
Where’s the Global Warming? Where’s the “hotspot”? Why don’t the thermometers and satellites show the effects of man-made CO2? What am I missing? Shouldn’t the immanent catastrophe that is global warming from man-made CO2 be somehow measurable by something, somewhere?
Hi GregO. Big picture. Both the instrumental and thermometer records show a rise of ~0.16C/decade since satellite records began. The troposphere is warming, the stratosphere cooling, night-time temperatures are rising faster than day-time temperatures – all signatures of warming due to rising GHG concentration. Satellite measurement of heat escaping in the CO2 absorption bands show decline consistent with theory. In short, AGW is directly supported by measurement.
What is often “missing” for people is confusion between short term fluctuation and long term trend or regional effects and global behaviour. Consider the implications of the following link: http://www.skepticalscience.com/foster-and-rahmstorf-measure-global-warming-signal.html. As for “imminent catastrophe” that depends on the chosen definitions of “imminent” and “catastrophe”. I suggest Mark Lynas “Six Degrees” for understanding the potential effects of rising temperature and Knutti and Hegerl 2008 for a summary of studies on climate sensitivity http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf.

Ralph says (January 19, 2012 at 3:34 pm)
Absolutely. Mountaineers would suffocate.
90% is above 900m. 50% is above 5500m. 10% is above 17000m.
The shuttle Challenger disintegrated on re-entry at 20000m (20km or 13 miles) due to heat from air friction entering a hole in it’s heat-resistant foam. At this height it’s 0.06 bar.

Joe, you’ve always had a knack for the obvious, the facts! Love your work.
Best,
J.

“Joe Bastardi says:
January 19, 2012 at 9:28 am
You folks that are coming at me about co2 sg, apparently dont understand that simply put, it does not mix well with air. There was just an article about that here on WUWT.”
Great article, but sorry, I have to disagree with you here but agree with all others who have pointed this out.
It is a common misconception that buoyancy applies to gases as it does to liquids, however that is not the case. If we take a helium filled balloon in a room, it would rise to the top, however a CO2 filled balloon would go to the bottom. However if we poke a hole in each balloon, the individual molecules spread out very evenly. And in the atmosphere outside, the distribution of all gas molecules with the exception of water vapor, is very consistent. If all heavier molecules would sink to the bottom, then we would never have very heavy chlorofluorocarbons in the stratosphere. Helium atoms do escape from our atmosphere. However it is not due to buoyancy. You could have a CO2 molecule and a helium atom in the same place high in the atmosphere at the same temperature. Being the same temperature means the translational kinetic energy is the same. Kinetic energy is calculated by the formula E = 1/2mv2. Since the helium atom is much lighter than the CO2 molecule, its velocity at the same temperature is much higher so it can reach escape velocity and thereby leave Earth. By contrast, Jupiter has a larger gravitational field and a lower temperature than Earth, so it can hold on to its hydrogen and helium.
As far as the article on WUWT that you are referring to, if it is the one I am thinking of, then it showed that the CO2 varied between 360 and 390 ppm at different places on Earth due to where CO2 is produced and where it is used up and how long it takes to reach equilibrium throughout the atmosphere. But this lumpiness was NOT due to altitude.
Werner Brozek (retired physics teacher)

Ammonite says:
January 19, 2012 at 3:52 pm
GregO says: January 19, 2012 at 6:30 am
Ammonite,
Thanks for the reference – I just got in and I’ll give it a read later

Joe, if you are saying that there is a large variation of CO2 concentration as a function of altitude, that is simply wrong empirically. It’s several ppm or so at most. If you are saying that well-mixed gases of different molecular weights will spontaneously separate themselves in a 1g gravitational field, that is also wrong. Pure gases such as argon or carbon dioxde that are denser than air can be made to puddle in low spots for a short while, but if the low spot is open to the atmosphere, it never lasts. Diffusion and convection mix everything.

Smokey says:
January 19, 2012 at 3:08 pm
////////////////////
Further to your point, leaving aside the moral issues as to whether it is right to spend lots of money on defence, the fact is that it provides employment and real jobs for many many people and it is a signifcant source of foreign revenue earnings. All of which benefit the economy.
Spending on climate mitigation is the opposite. No real jobs, the exportation of industries abroad and a source of foreign expenditure all of which depress the economy.

I am thinking this will come soon
Stop breathing and farting.

Ferdinand:
The real response of the carbon cycle to temperature over the past 800,000 years is about 8 ppmv/°C
That might be true long term, but you are looking at data that is very highly smoothed (just by the nature of how it was taken). The rate I get short term is as high as 8.3 ppmv/°C/year (!) . This was done by looking at CO2 only during the el nino of 1998. dCO2/dt rate responds extremely fast to temperature, but temperature peaks and valleys don’t last long, so you don’t see much in an integrated total. The response to equilibrium may be as you describe, but without a doubt, the change in flow rate from a small temperature change is truly staggering. At least it was to me… The atmosphere responded instantly. Another corollary from that analysis is that temperature changes alone could, in fact, account for all of the changes in total CO2 concentration, if the temperature record were to be trusted. I’m not saying it DID, just that the rates indicate it COULD. Easily. With a lot of headroom.
The rate of transfer that is calculated by seasonal effects (that results in a back of the envelope time constant of 7 years), is the MINIMUM velocity that shows up in total. i.e, the fact that we can calculate such a rate indicates that the net of inflows and outflows cannot change at less than this rate. However, this, in itself, is no reason to assume that the rates in each direction are not MUCH higher. We only know the length of the difference in the size of the vectors. Based on the reaction to temperature, I suspect the two vector lengths we are subtracting are much larger than the difference would indicate. The flows in and out are enormous. The sensitivity of CO2 to temperature is enormous. Sensitivity the other way around remains to be seen, but is clearly much lower than the Cause would have you believe.

While there is evidence the PDO and ENSO are connected there is insufficient evidence to say that the PDO index is an after effect of ENSO.
Basil Copeland eloquently displays this in detail in a guest post here in 2009.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/12/pdo-enso-aleutian-low-or-some-of-each/
Basil does some fine analysis and backs up his observation with a paper from Miller (2004)
http://horizon.ucsd.edu/miller/download/jgofs/JO_60-1-11.pdf
The general outcome is, the PDO index has other areas of influence outside of ENSO and is responsible for climate shift regimes. I am in full agreement with Basils statements and direction.
An excerpt from this discussion from Tisdale:
Note how that “residual” opposes the PDO. This means, when the PDO is positive, the North Pacific SST anomalies are less than the global temperature anomalies, which, in turn, means that the North Pacific is subtracting from the global dataset, or cooling, not heating. And if the PDO is negative, the SST anomalies for that region are above global temperature anomalies, so the North Pacific is adding to the global temperature anomaly during those periods.
Why then do global temperatures tend to rise when the PDO is positive, if it’s not caused by the SST anomalies of the North Pacific? The SST anomalies of the Tropical Pacific are in synch with the PDO. Refer to Figure 9 in that post.
http://i41.tinypic.com/n14010.jpg
And what dictates SST anomalies in the Tropical Pacific? ENSO, not the PDO.
Recall that in the other paper I linked (the paper that first calculated the PDO), Zhang et al noted that the PDO lagged ENSO by a season (3 to 4 months). It’s tough for the PDO to control ENSO if ENSO preceeds it.
There are several problems with the response, Tisdale is incorrectly associating northern Pacific SST’s with global temperatures, more or less saying the SST’s in this area are in reverse to the temperature trends…so the PDO cannot have an influence on climate. But we know that for the PDO to be in its cool phase the north Pacific (in particular the north west Pacific) is generally experiencing warm SST’s. This shift to a warm north west Pacific is crucial to the cooling of the globe as we experience deeper and more frequent La Nina events. The cool PDO also includes a wind factor brought about by the inclusion of SLP. What Tisdale is missing is that the warm north western Pacific and the prevailing winds that come with a cool PDO can further induce La Nina action. The PDO is capable of driving ENSO.
This was observed in the back to back La Nina last year where we also saw the PDO index lead the ENSO index (which is not that unusual).
While science agrees that the north Pacific SST’s have a reasonable component of NON ENSO variability there is no way we can say the PDO is an after effect of ENSO.

Mr. Bastardi, “Currently, with gas so high because we are being handcuffed by an administration that won’t drill…”
Oil production has increased in the USA since the Obama administration took office. More oil is being drilled. Or were you being literal and believe it is up to Presidential administrations to do the actual drilling?

Torgeir Hansson, you say “the Obama Administration has accelerated the permitting process for drilling”. Maybe you mean as compared to their previously glacial pace for approving drilling:
http://lonelyconservative.com/2011/02/obama-admin-issues-one-drilling-permit-wont-issue-more-without-increased-funding/ This administration has been openly hostile to any energy production that is not done by their phony “green” cronies, such as now bankrupt Solyndra. The gulf drilling moratorium alone cost tens of thousands of jobs:
http://heritageaction.com/2011/07/obama%E2%80%99s-drilling-ban-by-the-numbers/
Obama’s recently decision against the XL Pipeline project will cost us many thousands of private sector jobs and undermine attempts to secure “friendly” oil supplies. The fabulous success of recent new drilling technology, such as fracking, has been achieved despite Obama’s administration, not because of it. These new techniques have helped lower our natural gas prices to 10 year lows, so the left-wing environmental community predictably wants to ban them.

Richard G – I invite you to look upthread to my challenge to Bastardi or any other so-called skeptic to commit to a time when the magic PDO will reverse all warming since 1980.
Been crickets since I issued the challenge.

“Actually Thoughtful says:
January 19, 2012 at 11:12 am
no Hadcrut3 here – those guys manipulate data!). Nope It is GISS for us.”
Even GISS shows absolutely no positive slope for the last 10 years and 4 months. See
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1980/plot/gistemp/from:2001.67/trend
#Selected data from 2001.67
#Least squares trend line; slope = -3.86942e-06 per year
Now I realize this is not 30 years, but at the same time, it is too long to just ignore and to spend huge amounts of money to ameliorate.

Werner Brozek – why is 10 years too long to ignore? Why have you cherry picked your dates so carefully?
Climate is defined as 30 years. We often see trends in less than 30 years. SkS has some great graphs the show how you see the world (your carefully picked time periods (down to the month!) and the actual over-riding trend (ie up and to the right – relentlessly, just as man-made CO2 emissions have increased). (and opposite or low/no correlation to obvious things like solar output, volcanoes, etc)
Will you slavishly follow your tiny time periods during the next El Nino? Or when the sun cycles into higher activity? Or when both happen at once?
Despite the desperately hopeful PDO piece posted to this same site, I assure you the future trend is warmer, not cooler. And I have no doubt you know this to be true.
You appear to be too smart to be taken in by the weather. Yet your post speaks a different message.

What I find interesting about people such as Ammonite is that they have set the bar so low (a decade of no trend is “meaningless” yet I suspect a month of, say, very low sea ice, is extremely significant), that if we hypothetically ended up with .5C-1C of mild and probably beneficial warming towards the end of this century, I suspect he would still regard this result as “vindication” of climate models.
Citing Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) is curious. If what happened didn’t happen, there would still be warming. Ah, OK…. The actual point of the paper is that natural variability is so great it masks the tiny CO2 influence. Not perhaps what Foster and Rahmstorf set out to prove, but the only reasonable conclusion to draw.

Michael D Smith says:
January 19, 2012 at 7:34 pm
Reaction on the second part:
The rate of transfer that is calculated by seasonal effects (that results in a back of the envelope time constant of 7 years), is the MINIMUM velocity that shows up in total. i.e, the fact that we can calculate such a rate indicates that the net of inflows and outflows cannot change at less than this rate.
One need to make a differentiation between fast responses and slow responses, especially for vegetation. The main seasonal flows are from warming/cooling mid-latitude oceans and vegetation. The tropic oceans are permanent sources and the polar oceans are permanent sinks, opposite for vegetation on land, both hardly influenced by seasonal changes. The main change in vegetation is the start of the growing season and the deterioration of leaves in fall . That is visible in the regional CO2 records, mainly in the NH.
A sudden increase of temperature increases average uptake of CO2 by mid-latitude vegetation, but also increases the CO2 release by the mid-latitude oceans. As one looks at the global influence of temperature, we see a global seasonal increase of about 5 ppmv for an about 1°C global increase during NH summer (more land). Again not more than 5 ppmv/°C on very short term. While the exchanges are huge, the natural variations in CO2 uptake/release are relatively small (less than 3% of the flows). Probably a result that oceans and vegetation react in opposite direction for temperature changes… But again, once the temperature is fixed at a different level, the CO2 rate of change levels off to zero when the new steady state is reached. In reality, that never happens as there are always year by year changes in temperature, but the longer term average is measurable in ice cores (and recently confirmed for 2 million years in sediments).
The long term changes include deep ocean temperature changes and ice cover / vegetation area changes, which brings the long term influence to about 8 ppmv/°C.
What we miss in the record is the reaction of CO2 levels to mid-term temperature variations from years to decades. But it would be quite strange that this would be different from the very short and very long term ratios…

Will Nitschke says: January 20, 2012 at 12:04 am
“What I find interesting about people such as Ammonite is that they have set the bar so low (a decade of no trend is “meaningless” yet I suspect a month of, say, very low sea ice, is extremely significant), that if we hypothetically ended up with .5C-1C of mild and probably beneficial warming towards the end of this century, I suspect he would still regard this result as “vindication” of climate models.
Citing Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) is curious. If what happened didn’t happen, there would still be warming. Ah, OK…. The actual point of the paper is that natural variability is so great it masks the tiny CO2 influence. Not perhaps what Foster and Rahmstorf set out to prove, but the only reasonable conclusion to draw.”
Hi Will. Lets agree not to put words in each others mouths. The underlying trend from Foster and Rahmstorf is ~ +0.16C/decade for satellite and terrestrial based systems. If that were all due to CO2 would you consider it “tiny”? If such a trend persisted an El Nino excursion of +0.3C would be eaten up in under 20 years to become the new norm under neutral conditions. +0.5C is only 31 years away at this rate.
The actual point of the paper is to indicate that known causes of variability are sitting on top of a rising trend. Further, F&Rs method of trend identification reduces volatility (residuals) to the point that statistical significance is achievable at ~ 5 years. So lets raise that bar. I predict that in ten years time the F&R series will read +0.16C (near enough) from its current value. Where do you stand?

steven mosher says:
January 19, 2012 at 7:24 am
From what Joe says about trace gas and from what he says about specific gravity it looks like Joe utterly misunderstands the mechanism of global warming. He thinks C02 traps heat. It doesnt. that is not the theory.
Mosher then links to a video clip in which the statement “effectively traps the heat” is made.
Brilliant.

Ferdinand:
Thanks for the detailed explanation, you have quite an understanding of CO2 flows.
You also explain:
The effect of 0.038% ppmv CO2 is hardly measurable on a small distance (although CO2 levels are measured by absorption at certain wavelengths), but is measurable over 100 m height in the atmosphere. The relative effect increases with height, as water vapour rapidely drops with height. But even at full water vapour saturation, there is an effect of CO2, as that mainly absorbs at wavelengths where water is less active for outgoing IR radiation over the full air column.
We know water vapor is by far the better GHG, when available, AND it has the ability to also transfer enormous amounts of heat due to phase change, (which transports the heat to high altitude where there is a better radiation window) so doesn’t the effect of CO2 simply change the height at which, all else being the same, H20 phase changes occur? I realize there is a wavelength difference, but isn’t the effect of CO2 in a H20-rich environment largely overridden? More CO2 makes clouds higher? I think this would make the effect of CO2 for the majority of the planet where clouds form basically zero.

Erinome says:
January 19, 2012 at 9:37 pm
“Then why is the stratosphere cooling?”
I don’t disagree with you. The point I was trying to make was that part of the previously measured warming was increase in the heat island effect due to increases in economic output.
Additional industrial output could partially mask any natural cooling, but we ain’t gong to get that with the current administration’s policies.

sceptical says:
January 19, 2012 at 9:06 pm
Mr. Bastardi, “Currently, with gas so high because we are being handcuffed by an administration that won’t drill…”
Oil production has increased in the USA since the Obama administration took office. More oil is being drilled. Or were you being literal and believe it is up to Presidential administrations to do the actual drilling?

Oil production has gone up but it’s not due to the Obama administration.
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/01/18/under-obama-oil-and-gas-production-on-federal-lands-is-down-40/

Ammonite,
Thanks for the response. I downloaded and plotted RSS last night and had my spreadsheet calculate a least squares linear regression and indeed it is increasing at something close to .16 C per decade. Correlation coefficient not too good and no surprise there.
Questions I ask myself;
1. Has GATA ever risen in relation to an arbitrarily chosen base number like this in the past prior to Man-made CO2? My answer: Probably. Ref Minoan/Roman/Medieval warm periods which we are at least a bit uncertain about so that’s why my answer is probably, but add the paleo records to the historic records and to me I accept it as a reasonable assertion that since recorded history climate has changed with temperature going up and down – why it does I haven’t the faintest idea – but I accept that temperatures and climates can and do change and further I would posit that those changes are likely to show up in local climates in more extreme versions. Maybe that’s what happened to some ancient cultures like the Indus Valley people, Mayans, Bronze Age dark ages, I don’t know, but climate change having a bad to catastrophic effect, particularly on a localized geographic area, and specifically if the population and their organizing governments cannot adapt to the new conditions is entirely plausible.
2. What is the correct temperature of the earth? For the sake of discussion, there are various starting points I have seen chosen in order to establish delta T with respect to some baseline. I believe the discussion here in this thread references the beginning of the satellite record for example. OK. I have also seen the beginning of the industrial era. OK. One could start anywhere. But is that starting point anything other than a convenient, arbitrary point for the sake of constructing a delta T versus time plot, or is there some branch of earth science (or any science) that by some means specific to their technical training, it is known by them that the earth should be some specific temperature? I mean this as a serious question and not rhetorical. I will ask the question another way – is there a temperature the earth should be right now, other than what it happens to be? An answer could be something like “the temperature of the earth should be 0.5431 degrees C cooler than it is now because (list rationale for earth not being at the right temperature – Man-Made blah-blah-blah, termites and methane, whatever…) and if only it was 0.5431 degrees cooler it would be great because (list things that would be better – more wild animals, better corals, bigger and better glaciers, more Arctic ice – tell me how the world would be better were it not for the heating above “normal”).
3. What about the correct level of CO2? Is there a correct level of CO2? It is claimed earth should never have more than 350 ppm CO2 because more than 350 ppm will result in heating (now in front of the word “heating” insert “Man-Made”, “Catastrophic”, “Meaningless”, “A steady DC offset from the natural”, blah, blah, La, La, – I think you get the point). CO2 concentration is now at something like 390+ ppm. This is a data point. RSS is at -.01 from its baseline. This is a data point. How does this lead to “blah-blah” in front of the word heating? This month the heating is a negative number.
Thank you for your best wishes and good luck to you as well.

Michael D Smith says:
January 20, 2012 at 4:53 am
We know water vapor is by far the better GHG, when available, AND it has the ability to also transfer enormous amounts of heat due to phase change, (which transports the heat to high altitude where there is a better radiation window) so doesn’t the effect of CO2 simply change the height at which, all else being the same, H20 phase changes occur?
Pure based on (laboratory measured) radiation energy absorption/re-emission, the influence of a CO2 doubling is not more than 0.9°C. That increase makes that more water vapour can hold in the atmosphere, which increases the GHG effect to 1.3°C. That is pure theoretical, but based on laboratory measurements for different single and combined air/GHG mixtures at different air pressures. So far so good.
The problems begin with clouds. The in/out energy balance of different types of clouds ánd changes in total cloud cover are some of the many big problems in climate models: In general, low level clouds have an overall cooling effect while high level clouds have an overall warming effect. But how much is a matter of debate and how higher temperatures affect cloud cover (or reverse!)? Even the sign of cloud cover response to temperature changes is not known for sure.
And you are right, water vapour changes states, not only in altitude but also in latitude: it is one of the main mechanisms that prevents overheating of the tropics and deep freezing of the near polar regions (except during glacial periods).
Thus in my opinion the climate models largely overestimate the positive feedbacks and even may have the sign wrong in the case of clouds. Therefore the effect of 2xCO2 is not zero, but lower than the 1.5°C low border of the IPCC/models range. After all we are very lucky to live on a water planet…