Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
The claim is often made that volcanoes support the theory that forcing rules temperature. The aerosols from the eruptions are injected into the stratosphere. This reflects additional sunlight, and cuts the amount of sunshine that strikes the surface. As a result of this reduction in forcing, the biggest volcanic eruptions are said to depress global temperatures, sometimes for years.
The idea that large volcanoes significantly cool the planet is widely accepted. This effect is built into the climate models, for example. It is a reflection of the dominant climate paradigm, which is that surface temperature is a linear function of forcing. Since it can be measured observationally that the volcanoes greatly reduce the global solar forcing, it follows that they must significantly affect the global temperature.
However, I hold that the climate system is not an inert slave of changes in forcing. I hold that the climate system immediately and actively responds to changes in forcing by adjusting things like albedo, cloud type, cloud formation times and locations, timing of Nino/Nina alterations, and the like, to quickly counteract any forcing changes.
Which means, of course, that according to my hypothesis, even very large volcanoes should a have very small effect on the global temperature. To see which hypothesis is true, mine or the standard AGW hypothesis, I devised a little game I call “Spot the Volcanoes”. Two of the largest volcanoes of the century occurred within a twenty year time span. See if you can tell where they occurred.
Figure 1. First difference (month-to-month change) in global surface air temperature. Timespan shown is twenty years. Two of the largest volcanoes of the 20th century are shown in this record. The volcano in the picture is Mt. Redoubt, Alaska, one of my favorite mountains.
In Figure 1, to make things a bit difficult, I show the month-by-month CHANGE in temperature. This is not the temperature itself, but the month-by-month change in temperature, called “delta T” (∆T). If the temperature is a function of the forcing, the eruptions should be making the temperatures drop for a while. So the game is, where in Figure 1 are the two eruptions? Make your choice before you take the jump …
The answer is shown in Figure 2 below. It contains the record of the atmospheric transmission over Mauna Loa. The two eruptions, of El Chichon and Mt. Pinatubo, are very apparent in the Mauna Loa (MLO) record. I have scaled the Mauna Loa record to the corresponding GISS estimate for the forcing from Pinatubo (in W/m2), in order to show the generally accepted size of the volcanic forcing.
Figure 2. As in Figure 1, plus Mauna Loa atmospheric transmittance observations. These observations are of the total amount of clear-sky sunlight making it through the atmosphere.
Now, I can already hear folks grumbling, that this was not a fair game, that it was rigged because it was the first differences and not the actual temperature itself. And besides, most people don’t spend much time looking at first differences, so it was too hard. And perhaps those folks are 100% correct.
So let’s play a bonus round of “Spot the Volcanoes”, this time using the real temperature data. Figure 3 shows a stretch of the HadCRUT3 global surface air temperature record. This time it includes one smaller and two larger volcanoes. See if you can spot where the big ones erupted:
Figure 3. A stretch of the HadCRUT3 temperature record containing one small and two large eruptions. Don’t bother trying to find the small one.
So once again, the game is to spot two volcanoes.
Now at this time,
.
We’ve got to play the game show music,
.
. dee
. dee
. da dee dee dum
.
So as to hide the answer,
.
Until you make your choice, of the exact location of the two eruptions in Figure 3.
.
So here it is.
Figure 4. As in Figure 2, showing the eruptions of El Chichon (1982) and Pinatubo (1993). The small eruption is Mt. Agung (1963).
I’m sure you understand my point. There is nothing to see. The kinds of temperature excursions we see after the volcanoes are not different from the temperature excursions before the volcanoes.
How big an effect should we have seen, given the IPCC assumptions about climate sensitivity? Well, the average change in forcing over the three years following the Pinatubo eruption is ~ -1.7 W/m2. Now, that’s about half the forcing change expected from a doubling of CO2, maintained for three entire years … and where’s the response? Using the IPCC numbers, we should have seen a temperature drop of 1.4°C at equilibrium, and three years after the step change we should have seen at least a full degree of that …
Instead of a full degree of cooling after Pinatubo, or even half a degree, we see maybe a tenth of a degree of cooling.
But wait, as they say on TV … it’s even worse than that. The drop after Pinatubo may be just by chance, because after the earlier El Chichon eruption we see maybe a tenth of a degree of warming … and the average three year change in forcing for El Chichon is only trivially smaller than Pinatubo, at ~ -1.6 W/m.
So this is a great natural experiment regarding changes in forcing. From these observations, as near as we can tell, half the forcing change expected from a doubling of CO2 was applied for three full years, at two different times, and it resulted in … well, pretty much nothing.
So I’d say that the volcanic eruption data strongly supports my thermostat hypothesis, which says that changes in forcing are almost immediately and nearly completely offset by opposing changes in other aspects of the climate system.
w.
PS—Here’s the double bonus question … the UAH lower temperature record:
Figure 5. UAH MSU satellite based global lower tropospheric temperature record.
This time the game is a bit different. Are there one or two volcanoes in the record, and where is it / are they?.
Now at this time,
.
We’ve got to play the game show music like last time,
.
. dee
. dee
. da dee dee dum
.
So as to hide the answer,
.
Until you make your choice, of the exact location of the two eruptions in Figure 5.
.
So here it is.
Figure 6. As Figure 5 plus transmittance information.
Note that as with the surface temperature record, the globe cooled slightly after Pinatubo … and that as with the surface temperature record, the globe warmed slightly after El Chichon. And since the post-Pinatubo drop is indistinguishable from the post-1983 and the post-1988 drops, there is no reason to assume that the post-1991 drop is due solely to Pinatubo.
Which in my opinion is why all of the analyses focus on Pinatubo, while poor El Chichon is roundly ignored because it didn’t get the memo about causing a temperature drop.
PS—Does this mean volcanoes have no effect on the climate? No, it just means that because of the immediate and basically “equal but opposite” response of the climate system to forcing changes, the effect is much more local, much shorter lived, and much smaller than would be expected if the IPCC estimates of climate sensitivity were correct.
FURTHER READING: Climate forcing by the volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo
[UPDATE] People have asked for more information about how the climate responds to counteract the cooling action of the volcano. Figure 7 shows the response of the albedo to the Pinatubo eruption. The albedo immediately began to drop, allowing more and more sunlight to warm the surface.
Figure 7. Anomaly in post-albedo solar isolation for the period 1984-1998. The transmittance change due to the volcano is shown in red. Albedo data from Hatzianastassiou et al.
You can see that it’s not too hard to spot the volcano in this graph … which is exactly the reason why it’s so hard to spot in the other graphs.
w.
KR says:March 16, 2012 at 1:24 pm
But I cannot consider grand conspiracy theories rational…
HR says:March 16, 2012 at 5:06 pm
….. The argument fails when the best you can say is it’s all just a conspiracy.
I have never seen any argument from Willis mentioning a conspiracy.
It does not take a conspiracy: Simply requires a loose association of similar interests/rewards: (then we have a pretty powerful positive feedback loop at work!):
Government: taxes, revenue … perhaps hope of triggering a ‘new economy’
Government departments/authorities: Funding, power, promotions.
Economists: a ‘new economy’
Banks/trading institutions: volumes (and how!) derivatives, commissions, fees, trading profits, maybe a ‘new economy’.
NGOs: Funding , power, and the chance for lazy faux-idealistic kids to traipse around the globe pretending it is all for a noble cause and nothing to do with the fact they are too lazy to work for a living.
UN: power, influence, money, growth, self-perpetuation (note the positive feedback loop involving all of these.)
Scientists: at the lower levels: large amounts of funding, and you’d better come up with something ‘interesting’ to get funding next year.
Senior scientists: Promotions, recognition, speaking engagements and articles and all the extra income that entails.
Michael Mann: Everlasting Fame and Glory and all that vainglorious bas***** require to stoke their egos (…and the cash probably helps).
Larry Ledwick (hotrod ) says:
March 16, 2012 at 8:15 pm
Larry, why do I have to do all the work to correct your nonsense?
There exist records for the Denver temperatures, you know. Next time you have some anecdotal urban legend, LOOK IT UP FIRST before you come torment me with it.
Here’s the Denver winter temperatures. The red dot shows the 1883 winter after the Krakatoa eruption. It’s right about an average winter temperature for Denver, and it’s above freezing. Nothing unusual at all.
As I said, the plural of anecdote is not data.
w.
Jim D says:
March 16, 2012 at 9:02 pm
It would be, but that’s not what happened after Pinatubo.
w.
By saying there was less reflected sunlight immediately after Pinatubo, you realize you are disagreeing with everyone who has written papers on this issue, even Lindzen and Choi, don’t you?
Willis’ words
“These guys will look you in the eye, assure you of their honesty, and switch the pea under the shells. You are very, very naive to trust them.”
Apologies Willis a con trick carried out en masse is somewhat different to a conspiracy, although not so different you need to start suggesting I might be a liar. Even so it’s still no more convincing an argument.
Jim D says:
March 16, 2012 at 9:47 pm
Well, Lindzen and Choi say very little about Pinatubo, it’s only mentioned once … but their chart (figure 1b) looks just like mine inverted, so I’m unclear what you are saying here. My figure 7 is just Lindzen and Choi inverted. Here’s how I read the sequence.
Immediately after Pinatubo, the injected aerosols immediately reduced the sunlight reaching the surface.
Right after that, however, the albedo started decreasing as the world started cooling. In a cooler world we get less tropical cloud and it forms later in the day.
As a result, the amount of sunlight reaching the surface soon was well above its pre-eruption levels, and only returned to normal levels when the imbalance was redressed.
My claim of strong negative feedback post-Pinatubo is buttressed by the Douglas paper I link to in the head post.
w.
HR says:
March 16, 2012 at 10:19 pm
Thanks, HR. The problem is, when you claim I’m talking about a conspiracy and I’m not, you’re either mistaken or a liar. Since I had NEVER MENTIONED THE WORD, and since I am very careful when and how I do use it, and since there’re lots of anonymous folks on these threads who do lie without hesitation, “liar” has to be included in the possibilities. Sorry, but you brought it on yourself—if you try to put false words in a man’s mouth he may bite you, it’s a very bad thing to do. Next time just quote my words, then there will be no confusion.
Regarding whether it is a good argument, it’s not an argument at all, nor was it intended to be one.
It is advice on how to approach their claims … which is to approach them like you’d approach a three-card monte game on the streets of New York. Not trusting them and believing them as you obviously do, but checking and verifying everything they say. Sure, they may be right … but you’d be foolish to assume that they are. Far too many of these AGW alarmist scientists are publishing absolute bollocks.
All the best,
w.
PS—I’d advise you approach everyone’s claims in that same way, including mine, but for different reasons. I (and the other ethical scientists) won’t be lying to you, but any of us could certainly be wrong, and climate science peer-review these days is worthless.
“Jerkwagon” – interesting! I guess you really don’t like being called out on a really basic mistake. Talk about spitting the dummy.
From the IPCC 2001 report:
“The effective climate sensitivity is a measure of the strength of the feedbacks at a particular time and it may vary with forcing history and climate state.”
From the IPCC 2007 report:
“The nonlinearity of the climate system may lead to abrupt climate change, sometimes called rapid climate change, abrupt events or even surprises. Abrupt climate changes … may be truly unexpected, resulting from a strong, rapidly changing forcing of a nonlinear system.”
It’s clear that you genuinely weren’t aware of the basic definitions. If you start from a position based on a fundamental misunderstanding, do you think you will come to sensible conclusions?
First it might help a lot if you gave a citation to where you got those temperature records so we could talk about the same thing. The National Weather Service does not publish any such temperature data on their web site that I have ever been able to find.
Second it would also be helpful if you told us what that temperature record is ??
Third “Larry, why do I have to do all the work to correct your nonsense?” because it is you who are proposing a hypothesis that there is no volcanic cooling, because you cannot see it in your temperature delta T graphs, and it is your job to answer challenges to that assertion.
Is that graph the daily average temperature for Denver (from what source)?
I just spent the better part of a page showing you is useless for the purpose you are using it for?
As shown in the short examples I listed, our average temperatures and delta T graphs based on them are useless because of the local topography and the local meteorological conditions. The same applies to all average temperatures but it is much more significant of an issue in areas like where I live which are subject to down slope winds and the ebb and flow of cold air masses due to local micro climates.
In mid winter we can have a short period of Chinook winds that briefly raise the air temperature 30-40 deg F then a sub zero air mass can push back up against the mountains and hold the air temperature at sub freezing or even sub zero temps for the rest of the day. That brief spike of chinook heating totally screws up the daily average. You might have 22 hours where the temperature holds between 10 deg F and -10 deg F and 2 hours of 40 deg F, giving you a simple arithmetic average temp for the day of 15 deg F when the real average temperature would be slightly above 0 deg F if you appropriately weighted the temperatures for their duration.
Even without chinook winds, we are subject to strong inversions, at Stapleton airport (the old station of record until DIA was built) and down town Denver which was the temperature recording location prior to the construction of Stapleton we are subject of huge discontinuities of temperature in just a few miles due to inversion effects. The city of Denver sits in a basin connected to a river valley. In the winter time cold air slides down that valley at night and in the day time gets pulled back up toward the city. On smoggy days you can watch the ebb and flow of this cold inversion like the incoming tide in a harbor.
The Core city of Denver might be at 20 deg F while a mile or two away in the Highland neighborhoods of west Denver it might be 50 degrees. On the same day and time 30 miles down the Platte river valley it might be sub zero temperatures. This is a worst case environment for the sort of mind bendingly stupid smearing of temperatures used in the “official temperature records”.
When I was in 8th grade I had a paper route on the west side of the metro area, on the high ground of the route in the spring, it was shirt sleeve warm with temps in the low 50’s and just a mile away in the valley it would be below freezing and all the parked cars had frost on the windshields.
Without dealing with that sort of microclimate the current temperature records are absolutely useless for any sort of high resolution detection of small sub degree C temperature trends.
This is completely ignoring the issue of lapse rate where nearby cities might have elevation differences of 1 – 2 thousand ft elevation, making comparisons meaningless without consideration for both the elevation difference and the humidity conditions at the time the temperatures were taken. I traverse a 1000 ft elevation change going too and from work, and that is traveling on the “flat” plains going north and south along the front range.
I will repeat my key point which you have totally ignored, a lack of a temperature dip in your plots does not necessarily mean that there was not any significant cooling, because the data does not recognize or in any way represent the duration of temperature changes.
The lack of an easily identifiable temperature dip in the chart, could just as easily be proof that the data analysis method has no skill at seeing volcanic cooling as it is proof that volcanic cooling did not exist.
A day that had a low temp of 5 deg F and a high temp of 40 deg F will have exactly the same average temperature recorded in the record regardless of how long that high temperature existed. It might have held at 5 – 10 deg F all day and only briefly spiked to 40 degrees F for 15 minutes or it might have had a low of 5 degrees and quickly climbed to near 40 degrees and held there for hours. That difference would be totally unnoticed in the average temperature data, but would be very obvious to the person on the street, it would show up in peoples heating bills, and in the heating degree day data (especially if it was properly integrated on say hourly intervals).
With modern data gathering technology there is no legitimate reason that heating degree day info cannot be gathered in real time with 5 or 10 minute resolution for the temperature changes. The power utilities have used heating degree day information for decades because it has a strong correlation with actual fuel used in home heating and hence demand on their utilities. That strong correlation exists even if the data is gathered over very coarse time intervals.
Larry
Steve from Rockwood says: March 16, 2012 at 4:26 pm
You can stick a volcano icon under any low period in the temperature record.
I’ve done some (1750 – 1850) about a year ago (as a favour for one of the regulars), eventually will go back and do the rest:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-D.htm
Not all areas get evenly affected. When Eyjafjallajokull erupted in 2010, most of West Europe’s airports were closed, but Reykjavik was not (jet stream and prevailing winds come to mind). See possible effect on the CET (not much in the GTs)
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET1690-1960.htm
Are the Global temperatures reliable: the last 40 or so years is a carbon copy of the AMO, or is it the other way around? But then the experts tell us that the AMO is to blame for 1960s.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GT-AMO.htm
It looks as everyone wants to run a marathon and they never done a mile. The CET is relatively accurate record, if one can understand what is going on there then next step to the N. hemisphere and global is easier, and correlations are not to bad:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETGNH.htm
suddenly everyone is an expert on the global without knowing their back yard.
I am not an expert on anything , just like to mess around with data, have no idea about ‘mineral exploration’, I hope my daughter should know, she got an MSc from Oxford uni (cost me a bit), seen few calderas and recently descended (about 700m or so) down Callinan and Kimberley mines, uncommon for a girl not yet 23 .
Sorry, that rumble was far too long.
From a paper that tries to explain (unsuccessfully in my opinion, YMMV) why temperatures didn’t drop after Krakatoa, and why the models do such a miserable job simulating it …
Note that the average of the models predicted a drop of about half a degree, when in the event it wasn’t even two tenths of a degree. It seems to me that they are trying to get out of admitting the very low sensitivity implied by the Krakatoa data.
w.
if you calculate the volume of the spherical shell around mother earth (R = 6371 km) with 40km (according to Wikipedia, “The eruption column – of Krakatoa – reached the stratosphere, an altitude of more than 43 km (140,000 ft)” of air above it, you get 1103737860360 km3 or 1.1 E12 km3
again according to Wikipedia, Tambora ejected some 160 km3 and Krakatoa some 21 km3 of ash (and stones), meaning 0,0000000078 and 0,0000000010 of the shell was “filled” by the volcanoes …
do very large erupting volcanoes have some influence on climate ? … maybe
do very large erupting volcanoes have a big influence on climate ? … most probably not
I’m a civil engineer, and that is what my back of the napkin calculations tell me, whatever “real scientists” have to say about it …
And what the CET do at ‘the Krakatau’ event
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-Krakatau.gif
ref: http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/9/5447/2009/acpd-9-5447-2009-print.pdf
page 5461
PS—Again let me say I object to “removing El Nino”. You are taking the temperature of one tiny part of the earth’s surface, regressing it against the whole surface, and subtracting the regression. Consider that you could do the same with a patch of the North Atlantic … could you justify doing that?
Willis, please, don’t be silly. http://virakkraft.com/Nino34-tropical.png
Right after that, however, the albedo started decreasing as the world started cooling. In a cooler world we get less tropical cloud and it forms later in the day.
Tropical cloud cover decreased 1985-2000 so no reason to link that to Pinatubo.
http://climate4you.com/images/HadCRUT3%20and%20TropicalCloudCoverISCCP.gif
and in a warmer world we get less tropical cloud (or more likely, less cloud -> warming), so wrong again.
Yes Vukcevic, you found the cold spot,
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2012&month_last=2&sat=4&sst=1&type=trends&mean_gen=0112&year1=1884&year2=1887&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=reg (but the data is far from global)
lgl says: March 17, 2012 at 5:21 am
……….
It’s more to do how the Jet stream and Rossby wave meandering gets affected by plume of volcanic hot air and ash rising into the stratosphere. Kamchatka’s volcanoes are notorious in deflecting jet-stream and splitting the polar vortex:
http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/56/34/77/PDF/SSW.pdf
I agree with Willis that you can’t really see the volcano impacts in the record. Most importantly, if there is an impact, the temperature response per forcing is much, much lower than the climate theory is based on.
But let’s assume there is an impact. Simple regression predicts that Pinatubo reduced temperatures by -0.5C. El Chichon was -0.35C. This is how it would look and what would happen to UAH sat temperatures if we added these temporary reductions back.
http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/2993/uahvsvolcanoimpacts.png
Now we can see that perhaps the two volcanoes in the early part of the record have distorted the temperature trend. It is not going up anywhere near what the Raw record does.
Now we can see that the 1982-83 Super El Nino shows up in the record. Now we can see that the ENSO’s impact is much more clear. UAH Volcano-adjusted versus the impact of the Nino 3.4 Index.
http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/4831/uahvolcadjustedvsenso.png
But there appears to be more going on. Some parts don’t match up very well. Let’s see how the AMO might be related.
http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/4194/uahvolcadjvsamo.png
Now we can put them all together in one model. UAH temps versus the impact of the Volcanoes, the ENSO, the AMO and a warming trend (which might be due to the Ln(CO2)). Note that the Volcano impact declines a little now since there are other elements involved. Pinatubo falls to -0.3C and El Chichon to -0.2C. I think this model works pretty well.
http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/2716/uahmodelfeb12.png
That leaves a very small warming trend in UAH sat temperatures, just 0.039C per decade which is consistent over time and has a mostly random error value now. This is much lower than the IPCC AR4 forecast on the same basis.
http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/6456/uahwarming.png
From ERBE presented by both Lindzen and Choi papers (the later one has more about Pinatubo), the shortwave for the first two years shows a strong reflection over the previous average. The next few years show a smaller reduction from the average for several years. The biggest signal by far is the increased reflection and it affects the first two years. So your statement only applies to the weaker recovery period.
markx – Leaving behind the ad hominem fallacies (Willis’s accusations of lying at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/16/volcanic-disruptions/#comment-925452, rather than actually discussing the data), what you are essentially claiming with your science “positive feedback loop” is that: 97-99% of climate scientists (surveys, checks on published article orientations), the science advisory groups in every country, are so bedazzled by the funding they receive (paying primarily for equipment and grad students), so enamored of the 10-year old used cars they drive (because grants don’t change academic salaries), that they are willing to uniformly distort masses of data in multiple fields (ice extent, spectroscopy, satellite readings, ocean temperatures, plant growth region shifts, on and on) for the last 150 years to support the theory of anthropogenic global warming???
Seriously? Have you ever dealt with the herd of maddened cats that are grad students looking to make a name for themselves by proving something against the consensus?
If you want to look at a field where this kind of distortion might be rather more likely, examine pharmaceutical approval studies. Literally billions of dollars ride on approval/disapproval of drug manufacture, with studies often paid for directly by the pharma companies. There’s a definite reward cycle there, and there have been some instances of bad science as a result.
Which are not 97% of the studies. And which get caught. Because of those pesky facts. Reality is a harsh critic – and if you really want to destroy your science career, your reputation, prestige and position, make up some facts – reality will show you up.
KR says:
March 17, 2012 at 7:44 am
“Which are not 97% of the studies. And which get caught. Because of those pesky facts. Reality is a harsh critic – and if you really want to destroy your science career, your reputation, prestige and position, make up some facts – reality will show you up.”
Is Michael Mann’s science career destroyed yet? Does he drive a 10 year old car? Has Al Gore been publicly repudiated by scientists for the errors in his productions. Unfortunately, “reality” may not rear its ugly head for another generation.
“Have you ever dealt with the herd of maddened cats that are grad students looking to make a name for themselves by proving something against the consensus?”
We would love to embrace this idyllic image of “Nullius in verba” grad students. Alas, reality shows a somewhat more sordid picture as exemplified in the climategate emails.
As for driving a 10 year old car, would you rather be an academic driving a 10 year old car or serving burgers at McDonalds and driving a ten year old car.
Re 97% of Climate Scientists agree: Two references below sourced from Wikipedia
Not quite so absolute:
The EOS article (reporting the work of Kendall and Zimmerman had a 30% response level from 10,257 ‘earth scientists’. 90% of respondents were US based, and 8.5% of the respondents published extensively in the area of climate change.
82% indicated they thought ‘human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures’.
Not quite 97%. Not quite a full response rate for something so important. Any chance ‘dissenters’ may have been reluctant to participate?
The PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) publication is interesting, dividing researchers into two groups; those convinced by the evidence (CE) of ACC (anthropogenic climate change) and those unconvinced by the evidence (UE) of ACC and using a method of ranking by amount of publication and citation.
Here is where the 97% figure comes from: “The UE group comprises only 2% of the top 50 climate researchers as ranked by expertise (number of climate publications), 3% of researchers of the top 100, and 2.5% of the top 200”
Ie, so we have 97% of the top 200 “most frequent publishers” being in agreement with the tenets of anthropogenic climate change (ACC)
This is from a total survey group of 908 scientists with more than 20 publication on the topic of climate , (CE 817, UE 93)
Well, a few ranked in both groups, but that looks like 10% of the top 900 climate scientists don’t agree, and if we include those with less than 20 publications we find 34% of the top 1385 don’t agree.
Note the source of the CE group is primarily from the lists of IPCC AR4 Working Group, those engaged most fully in the ‘business of global warming’.
Is it likely they get more opportunity to publish and certainly more funding than those on the outer?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming#cite_note-1
KR March 17, 2012 at 7:44 am said:
“……. are willing to uniformly distort masses of data in multiple fields (ice extent, spectroscopy, satellite readings, ocean temperatures, plant growth region shifts, on and on) for the last 150 years to support the theory of anthropogenic global warming?…..”
KR, I don’t think anyone claims there is mass ‘data distortion’ going on, although I do wonder myself at the amount of ‘calibration adjustment’ of past temperature records (97% of which is in the ‘required direction’ …. OK, I made up that number…..)..
Most of the data/science listed above is not greatly in dispute, except in some cases in relation to the claimed accuracy of readings.
The argument is more about how much of the present warming is anthropogenic, how much future warming we are likely to see, and how much of that is likely to be anthropogenic.
Basically it all comes down to interpretation of the available data, and models.
Robert Austin – “Is Michael Mann’s science career destroyed yet? Does he drive a 10 year old car? Has Al Gore been publicly repudiated by scientists for the errors in his productions. Unfortunately, “reality” may not rear its ugly head for another generation.”
Perhaps so, and no, I don’t know what car Mann drives. So far, there’s really no solid indication that they’re wrong.
And perhaps, just perhaps, the 97% consensus is actually right?
One of my favorite “classic” articles on the topic is Svant Arhennius 1896 “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground” (http://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf) – clear and reasonably technically accessible. On page 265 of that article he notes increases in carbonic acid (the term at the time for atmospheric CO2) would result in polar amplification of warming, diminishing differences between day and night temperatures, more warming over land than ocean, albedo feedback from melting ice, water vapor feedback (p.263), and a climate sensitivity of ~3C/doubling:
“Thus if the quantity of carbonic acid increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase in nearly arithmetic progression.”
That was 116 years ago, working from basic principles. The ‘fingerprints’ he worked out then are being observed now. Nothing he wrote has been disproven – some numbers have shifted due to better data, but his conclusions still hold. At what point do you accept the evidence? At what point do you decide that perhaps your preconceptions are incorrect, unsupported by the data? At what point do you stop searching for maverick academics with contradictory hypotheses that don’t hold up to examination?
How much evidence is enough to convince you? This is an important question – if the answer for you is “There will never be enough”, then you’re not speaking of science, but rather of belief, devoid of factual support.
KR says:
March 17, 2012 at 7:44 am
As counterpoint to your arguementum ad verecundiam (from authority) and argumentum ad populam I suggest reading http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.ca/2012/03/false-positive-science.html for an interesting article on “false positive” science or the “incorrect rejection of of the null hypothesis” problem.