This may be the only entry ever made by Bob Tisdale that doesn’t contain a graph. I thank him for the unsolicited notice he gives to WUWT – Anthony
Date: May 11, 2012
Subject: New York Times Op-Ed Titled “Game Over for the Climate”
From: Bob Tisdale
To: James Hansen – NASA GISS
Dear James:
I just finished reading your opinion that appeared in yesterday’s New York Times. I enjoyed the title “Game Over for the Climate” so much that I’m considering changing the title of my book to something similar, like “Game Over for the Manmade Global Warming Scare.” Yes. That’s got a nice ring to it. Thanks for the idea. I’ll have so see how difficult it would be to change the title of the Kindle edition. Yet, while I enjoyed the title, the content of your opinion shows that you’re still hoping to appeal to those who are gullible enough to believe your claim that carbon dioxide is responsible for the recent bout of global warming. I hope you understand that many, many persons have weighed your opinions and found them wanting.
The internet has become the primary medium for discussions of anthropogenic global warming, as I’m sure you’re aware. You have your own blog. Your associate at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies Gavin Schmidt is one of the founders of the once-formidable blog RealClimate. What you may not be aware of is that one of the other contributors to RealClimate Rasmus Benestad in a recent post expressed his feelings that all of their work there might have been for naught [my boldface].
However, if the notion that information makes little impact is correct, one may wonder what the point would be in having a debate about climate change, and why certain organisations would put so much efforts into denial, as described in books such as Heat is on, Climate Cover-up, Republican war on science, Merchants of doubt, and The Hockeystick and Climate Wars. Why then, would there be such things as ‘the Heartland Institute’, ‘NIPCC’, climateaudit, WUWT, climatedepot, and FoS, if they had no effect? And indeed, the IPCC reports and the reports from the National Academy of Sciences? One could even ask whether the effort that we have put into RealClimate has been in vain.
I can understand Rasmus Benestad’s doubts when a website skeptical of manmade global warming, WattsUpWithThat, has gained visitors since 2008 while RealClimate is floundering. The web information company Alexa shows that WattUpWithThat’s daily reach began to surpass RealClimate’s in May 2008. And for the last 6 months, Alexa could no longer rank RealClimatebecause its percentage dropped too low. On the other hand, the daily reach of WattsUpWthThat increased greatly and WattsUpWthThat has become the world’s most-viewed website on global warming and climate change.
Over the past 30 years or longer, James, you’ve created a global surface temperature record called the GISS Land-Ocean Temperature Index. It shows global surface temperatures have warmed since 1880. While there are some problems with that dataset we need to discuss, it is something you can be proud of. But in those 3 decades, you’ve also developed and programmed climate models with the sole intent of showing that manmade greenhouse gases were responsible for that warming. Those models are included, along with dozens of others, in the archives used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for their reports. Unfortunately, your efforts with climate models, and the efforts of the other modeling groups, have not been successful. Far from it. And since your opinions are based on the results of your climate models, one has to conclude that your opinions are as flawed as the models.
I’m one of the independent researchers who study the instrument-based surface temperature record and the output data of the climate models used by the IPCC to simulate those temperatures. Other researchers and I understand two simple and basic facts, which have been presented numerous times on blogs such as WattsUpWithThat. Keep in mind WattUpWithThat reaches a massive audience daily, so anyone who’s interested in global warming and climate change and who takes the time to read those posts also understands those two simple facts.
Fact one: the instrument-based global surface temperature record since 1901 and the IPCC’s climate model simulations of it do not confirm the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming; they contradict it.
The climate models used in the IPCC’s (2007) 4th Assessment Report show surface temperatures should have warmed about 2.9 times faster during the late warming period (1976-2000) than they did during the early warming period (1917-1944). The IPCC acknowledges the existence of those two separate warming periods. The climate model simulations are being driven by climate forcings, including manmade carbon dioxide, which logically show a higher rate during the later warming period. Yet the observed, instrument-based warming rates for the two warming periods are basically the same.
If the supposition you peddle was sound, James, manmade carbon dioxide and other anthropogenic greenhouse gases should have warmed the surface of our planet at a much faster rate in recent decades, but they have not. In other words, there’s little evidence that the carbon dioxide you demonize in your op-ed has had any measurable effect on how fast global surface temperatures have warmed. We independent climate researchers have known this for years. It’s a topic that surfaces often, so often that it’s joked about around the blogosphere.
Some independent researchers have taken the time to present how poorly climate models simulate the rates at which global surface temperatures have warmed and cooled since the start of the 20th Century. We do this so that people without technical backgrounds can better understand that very fundament flaw with the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming. I resurrected it again in a two-part post back in December 2011 (see here and here), both of which were cross posted at WattsUpWithThat. I’ve published numerous posts about this since December using different datasets: sea surface temperature, land surface temperature and the combination of the two. I’ve published so many posts that show how poorly the IPCC’s climate models simulate past surface temperatures that it’s not practical to link them all. The posts also include the new and improved climate models that were prepared for the IPCC’s upcoming 5thAssessment Report. Sorry to say, they show no improvement.
Fact two: natural processes are responsible for most if not all if the warming over the past 30 years, a warming that you continue to cite as proof of the effects of greenhouse gases.
In your opinion piece, you mentioned the predictions you made in the journal Science back in 1981. Coincidentally, that’s the year when satellites began to measure the surface temperatures of the global oceans. Those satellites provide much better coverage for the measurement of global sea surface temperatures, from pole to pole. You use a satellite-based dataset as one of the sea surface temperature sources for your GISS Land-Ocean Temperature Index (LOTI) data. That NOAA sea surface temperature dataset is known as Reynolds OI.v2. It is the same dataset I have used to illustrate that natural processes, not greenhouse gases, are responsible for surface temperature warming of the global oceans since 1981. Since land surface temperatures are simply along for the ride, mimicking and exaggerating the changes in sea surface temperatures, the hypothesis you promote has a significant problem. Climate models are once again contradicted by observation-based data.
I’m one of very few independent global warming researchers who study sea surface temperature data and the processes associated with the natural mode of climate variability called El Niño-Southern Oscillation or ENSO. ENSO is a process that is misrepresented by many climate scientists when they use linear regression analysis in attempts to remove an ENSO signal from the global surface temperature record. Those misrepresentations ensure misleading results in some climate science papers.
ENSO is a natural process that you and your associates at GISS exclude in many of the climate model-based studies you publish, because, as you note, your “coarse-resolution ocean model is unable to simulate climate variations associated with El Niño-Southern Oscillation processes.” In fact, there are no climate models used by the IPCC that are capable of recreating the frequency, magnitude and duration of El Niño and La Niña events. And I know of no scientific studies that show any one climate model is capable of correctly simulating all of the fundamental coupled ocean-atmosphere processes associated with ENSO.
If climate models are not able to simulate ENSO, then they do not include a very basic process Mother Nature has devised to increase and slow the distribution of heat from the tropics to the poles. As a result, the climate models exclude the variations in the rates at which the tropical Pacific Ocean releases naturally created heat to the atmosphere and redistributes it within the oceans, and those climate models also exclude the varying rate at which ENSO is responsible through teleconnections for the warming in areas remote to the tropical Pacific.
Climate scientists have to stop treating ENSO as noise, James. The process of ENSO serves as a source of naturally created and stored thermal energy that is discharged, redistributed and recharged periodically. Because these three functions (discharge, redistribution and recharge) all fluctuate (see Note 1), impacts of ENSO on global climate vary on annual, multiyear and multidecadal timescales. Common sense dictates that global surface temperatures will warm over multidecadal periods when the frequency, magnitude and duration of El Niño events outweigh those of La Niña events, causing more heat than normal to be released from the tropical Pacific Ocean to the atmosphere and to be redistributed within the oceans. And the opposite will occur, global surface will cool, when La Niña events dominate ENSO over a multidecadal period. It is no coincidence that that is precisely what has happened since 1917.
Note 1: El Niño events (the discharge mode) are not always followed by La Niña events (the recharge mode). Both El Niño and La Niña events can appear in a series of similar phase events like the El Niño events of 2002/03, 2004/05 and 2006/07 and the La Niña events of 2010/11 and 2011/12. El Niño and La Niña events can also last for more than one year, spanning multiple ENSO seasons, like the 1986/87/88 El Niño and the 1998/99/00/01 La Niña. When a strong El Niño is followed by a La Niña like the El Niño events of 1986/87/88 and 1997/98 it is very obvious that two portions of ENSO are acting together and redistributing warm water that’s left over from the El Niño. The results of the combined effects are actually difficult to miss in the sea surface temperature records.
The satellite-era sea surface temperature data reveals that ENSO, not carbon dioxide, is responsible for the warming of global ocean surfaces for the past 30 years, as noted earlier. It illustrates the effects of La Niña events are not the opposite of El Niño events. In fact, the satellite-based sea surface temperature data indicates that, when major El Niño events are followed by La Niña events, they can and do act together to cause upward shifts in the sea surface temperature anomalies of the Atlantic, Indian and West Pacific Oceans. And since the Eastern Pacific Ocean has not warmed in 30 years, those ENSO-induced upward shifts in the Atlantic-Indian-West Pacific data are responsible for practically all of the global sea surface temperature warming for the last 3 decades.
I have been presenting and illustrating those ENSO-caused upward shifts for more than 3 years. I have plotted the data, discussed and animated the process of ENSO using numerous datasets: sea surface temperature, sea level, ocean currents, ocean heat content, depth-averaged temperature, warm water volume, sea level pressure, cloud amount, precipitation, the strength and direction of the trade winds, etc. And since cloud amount for the tropical Pacific impacts downward shortwave radiation (visible light) there, I’ve presented and discussed that relationship as well. The data associated with those variables all confirm how the processes of ENSO work for my readers. They also show and discuss how those upward shifts are caused by processes of ENSO. I’ve written so many posts on ENSO that it is impractical for me to link them here. A very good overview is provided in this post, or you may prefer to read the additional comments on the cross post at WattsUpWithThat.
James, you are more than welcome to use the search function at my website to research the process of ENSO. With all modesty, I have to say there’s a wealth of information there. I’ve assembled that same information in my book If the IPCC was Selling Manmade Global Warming as a Product, Would the FTC Stop their deceptive Ads? You might prefer the book since then you’d have a single source of more detailed discussions on the topics presented in this memo. It also illustrates and discusses how the climate models used by the IPCC in their 4th Assessment Report show no skill at being able to reproduce the global surface temperature record since 1901. Using those IPCC climate models in another group of comparisons, it shows that there are no similarities, none whatsoever, between how the sea surface temperatures of the individual ocean basins have actually warmed over the past 30 years and how the climate models show sea surface temperatures should have warmed if carbon dioxide was the cause. An overview of my book is provided in the above-linked post. Amazon also provides a Kindle preview that runs from the introduction through a good portion of Section 2. That’s about the first 15% of the book. Refer also to the introduction, table of contents, and closing in pdf form here. My book is written for those without technical backgrounds so someone like you with a deep understanding of climate science will easily be able to grasp what’s presented.
In closing, I was sort of surprised to see your May 10, 2012 opinion in the New York Times. I had discussed in the second part of my August 21, 2011 memo to you and Makiko Sato that ENSO, not carbon dioxide, is responsible for the recent 30-year rise in global sea surface temperatures. You must not have read that memo. Hopefully, you’ll read this one.
Sincerely,
Bob Tisdale
William McClenney says: “I, for one, would be very interested in reading Bob’s musings on the phasing of El Nino/La Nina and the AMDO/PDO. Apologies if he has already done so and I have not evolved there yet.”
The PDO represents the spatial pattern (warm in east/cool in west and central, and vice versa.) of the sea surface temperature anomalies of the North Pacific north of 20N. The PDO doesn’t represent the sea surface temperature anomalies of the North Pacific and is actually inversely related to it. It’s also an aftereffect of ENSO, with sea level pressure explaining the difference, so I don’t really pay attention to the PDO. See:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/an-introduction-to-enso-amo-and-pdo-part-3/
and:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/an-inverse-relationship-between-the-pdo-and-north-pacific-sst-anomaly-residuals/
and:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/yet-even-more-discussions-about-the-pacific-decadal-oscillation-pdo/
I also wrote a post about multidecadal changes in sea surface temperature anomalies here. The longer title of the post was, Do Multidecadal Changes In The Strength And Frequency Of El Niño and La Niña Events Cause Global Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies To Rise And Fall Over Multidecadal Periods?:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/multidecadal-changes-in-sea-surface-temperature/
>>>IAmDigitap says: May 12, 2012 at 4:06 pm
>>> TREEMOMETERS
You missed out the pests, disease and herbivores, in your assessment of Hansen’s treemometers.
And as a word of advice, I think people would read and absorb your posts more readily if you used less caps and wrote more coherently. Your present version looks like it was originally drafted with crayons.
.
Ian W says: @ur momisugly May 12, 2012 at 4:23 pm
…..And others – infrared radiation does not penetrate more than a few microns into the water surface. Any warming it does create merely results in surface water molecules evaporating and taking the latent heat of evaporation with them. However, the higher frequencies in sunlight, visible light and ultraviolet, do penetrate deeper into the ocean and heat it. But after a few hundred meters even that light is greatly attenuated…..
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Here are the graphs that go with your information.
Broad view of entire spectrum showing top of atmosphere, at surface and 10m below the ocean from Colorado.edu: http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/images/instruments/sim/fig01.gif
Close up of just the ocean broken down by wavelength ranges: http://www.klimaatfraude.info/images/sverdrup.gif
NASA on where the changes occur in the solar spectrum and the percent. (Sun is a variable star)
NASA (2/5/2010) “Satellite data show that the sun’s total irradiance rises and falls with the sunspot cycle by a significant amount.”…At solar maximum, the sun is about 0.1% brighter than it is at solar minimum….A 0.1% change in 1361 W/m2 equals 1.4 Watts/m2. Averaging this number over the spherical Earth and correcting for Earth’s reflectivity yields 0.24 Watts for every square meter of our planet. and another article by NASA (
09/22/2009) says Solar minimum is a quiet time when we can establish a baseline for evaluating long-term trends,” he explains. “All stars are variable at some level, and the sun is no exception. We want to compare the sun’s brightness now to its brightness during previous minima and ask: is the sun getting brighter or dimmer?” The answer seems to be dimmer. Measurements by a variety of spacecraft indicate a 12-year lessening of the sun’s “irradiance” by about 0.02% at visible wavelengths and 6% at EUV wavelengths…
From that we can infer that the greatest variability in the wavelengths of solar energy that reach the earth’s surface (not euv) are the wavelengths that penetrate the ocean the most. Therefore it is not the 0.1% variation in total solar insolation over a solar cycle that Dr. Svalgaard tries to drum into our heads that is effecting the world’s oceans but a higher variability in the more energetic wavelengths between the 0.02% variation at visible wavelengths and 6% variation at EUV wavelengths.
The ocean then acts as a giant capacitor storing this energy during La Niña and discharging it during El Niño.
Paper: http://ilws.gsfc.nasa.gov/ilwsgoa_woods.pdf
Bob Tisdale @May 12, 2012 at 1:11 pm,
Definition of DATA (Merriam Webster)
1:factual information (as measurements or statistics) used as a basis for reasoning, discussion, or calculation
2: information output by a sensing device or organ that includes both useful and irrelevant or redundant information and must be processed to be meaningful
3: information in numerical form that can be digitally transmitted or processed
The outputs of climate models are not data because they are not FACTUAL. (Multiple models produce multiple results, all of which cannot, by definition, be factual.)The model outputs are the results of REASONING, DISCUSSION or CALCULATION. They are not INFORMATION OUTPUT BY A SENSING DEVICE.
Model outputs present the results of analyzing and processing DATA.
The “wonder” of climate models is that they weave a mixture of good data, bad data and missing data into multiple “compelling”, if inconsistent, CAGW scenarios. Surely even Rumplestiltskin must be impressed
Bob, this was an excellent article which I will recommend to friends and enemies alike.
However, I think I must clarify what Rasmus Benestad actually meant in the blogpost you refer to.
I have read Benestad in Norwegian previous to this, so I know this is what he means, and it goes like this:
– There is a difference between scientists and ordinary people. Scientists are convinced by science, ordinary people by emotions.
– Therefore, the scientists must find emotional ways to reach ordinary people so that they, too, can be convinced that the world is on its way to catastrophe.
That’s what Benestad means when he asks whether the Realclimate articles have been of any use. In previous articles in Norwegian, he has complained that the climate scientists haven’t communicated well enough. That is to say, for Benestad and his camp, there is no question of whether they are right. They just have to find the right way to convince the ordinary people who will not listen to science. Appeal to the emotions, tell scary stories. And it rather be huge stories, because all the smaller articles wears people down. Rather a 911 story or a Katrina story – go see for yourself.
Benestad therefore asks for some event just as in Crichton’s book State of Fear. And reading the comments to his post, that is just the scary position that his like-minded readers take.
If one uses available data, it does not cost much to publish in a peer-reviewed journal. The cost of scientific research generally stems from the equipment and time needed to gather all those ice cores, soils samples, etc. It may be difficult to get into a journal such as Geophysical Research Letters, but for good reason since journals such as those are conservative in what data/assertions they let through.
I am skeptical of this open letter. I take it as nothing more than musings on a blog, since the ideas have not been vetted or cited by others to build further research into a more comprehensive theory. I have not heard of any scientific academy/group that endorses these ideas. The National Academy of Science holds more weight and has scrutinized the evidence far more than any blog.
http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf
Budgenator says:
May 12, 2012 at 5:45 pm
In “Game Over for the Climate by James Hansen, published in The New York Times, he says, “If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.” That statement leaves me dumbfounded, has he forgotten that Canada is a sovereign country? What does he think we should be doing, and who is the “we” he’s speaking to? ….
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Who is the we? That is a key question because it answers the question of what is driving Hansen and why he is still working for the US government. Maybe The Director-General of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy, can give you a hint.
Like many others involved with “climate change” the IPCC, Agenda 21 and globalization, Hansen does not consider himself a citizen of the USA but rather a citizen of earth and therefore he does not even acknowledge national boundaries as actually existing. He is way ahead of us along with Pascal Lamy and Maurice Strong. To them a global government is a done deal and it is only a matter of telling nations that they are no longer sovereign.
Pascal Lamy:
From WTO.org
Looks like the vote is in to form a world government and all that is left is working out the details, at least in the minds of Hansen, Strong, Lamy and their friends. Given that Hansen works for the US government this tidbit from the US intelligence community is rather instructive.
“The National Intelligence Council (NIC) is the Intelligence Community’s (IC’s) center for midterm and long-term strategic thinking.” The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) is a coalition of 17 agencies and organizations within the executive branch that work both independently and collaboratively to gather the intelligence necessary to conduct foreign relations and national security activities. Our primary mission is to collect and convey the essential information the President and members of the policymaking, law enforcement, and military communities require to execute their appointed duties.
Looks like Hansen is just following orders from higher up.
Vincent says:
May 12, 2012 at 9:57 am
I’ve got one problem with ascribing temperature to ENSO – is it the cause or the effect?
Does ENSO drive the temperature or does the temperature drive ENSO?
BTW, I count myself as sceptical of AGW, but this is not an argument until you find a driver.
==
Thanks for posting that, I was reluctant to bring in something puzzling me after watching a documentary on the theory that a particularly terrible drought destroyed the Maya who then numbered in millions, I’ve posted the following elsewhere with no luck.
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I watched a documentary a couple of days ago on the reason the Maya civilisation collapsed – Dick Gill spent 20 years exploring it and shows it was drought. The Mayan area has no natural lakes, rivers or underground water, relies completely on water collected during the summer rainy season, around 800 AD this failed. During the telling of it he said that normally the rains come because of a particular high pressure system which more or less stays put, somewhere in the Atlantic I think, but that this moved considerably further south than it normally does which altered the climate by making it colder in the north, which in turn didn’t bring the rains up into the area. All this to ask, is this the mechanism which triggers the El Nins? If so, what moves the high pressure system?
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/ancient-apocalypse-maya-collapse/
The graphic and that explanation are towards the end of the docu, sorry can’t say exactly but around forty minutes in.
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I’ve just looked at the documentary again to find exactly what was said, it begins around 20 minutes in. It’s really quite fascinating and there are some very interesting choices of words used in this, shown on BBC4 a few days ago. My comments in [ ] and best I could to get the transcript accurate.
V.O. “Could freezing weather in Europe be linked to drought in Central America? The experts were extremely sceptical.”
Gill “The first thing that I did was to get in contract with distinguished and respectable meteorologists to ask them what kind of a tie can there be here? No one had really looked at this before. I seem to have been the first to have stumbled across this.”
[Gill got this hunch by looking at recorded temps from dendrochronolgy of Swedish records and finding an unusual freezing period at the same time as the collapse of the Maya which he hypothesised was caused by drought. Onwards. He then found out that there is one weather system which links Europe and Central America – the North Atlantic High Pressure System. He then spent two years> looking at thousands of numbers on hard copy for the highest pressure in the 20th century. ]
V.O.: ” Areas of high pressure are associated with calm settled weather. There are high pressure systems in the North Atlantic. One in particular normally stays near Europe and that’s where it was for most of the time, but Dick discovered that just once during the 20th Century this system moved towards Central America – that was the time of severe drought in the Maya Lowlands and it was a period where the coldest Arctic temperatures were recorded for the 20th Century.
“Weather systems half a world apart could be linked. Only one man who could tell – climate modeller Tony Broccoli of NOAA”
[Only one man? From NOAA? And clearly a green… 🙂 ]
Tony: “I can say make the Sun stronger or brighter and see what happens to the rains in tropical Africa or drought in the mid-western United States.”
V.O.: “In his virtual world Tony has a unique overview of the Earth’s climate.” [Unique??]
Tony: “This map shows us the distribution of rain throughout the whole world for a particular time of year – in this case it is January and one of the interesting features is this rain belt that extends throughout the tropical regions. As we go through the seasons – January, February, March, we can see that that tropical rainbelt slowly shifts north, we see the rains come to Central America June, July, August, September.”
V.O. “Tony looked at what might shift these tropical rains away from Central America creating drought.
Here he starts with a tropical rain belt bang on the top of the equator, but when he makes the far north colder the effect is dramatic – the rain belt is forced south and doesn’t reach Central America, the result is drought.”
Tony: “It would only take a relatively small shift in the average position of that tropical rain belt to make the difference between abundant summer rains in Central America and drought conditions in Central America.”
V.O.: “Dick was now more convinced than ever that it was drought that had destroyed the Maya and support for his theory came from a most surprising place – the frozen North.”
[He got confirmation from Greenland ice cores, Prof Paul Mayewski Univ of Main]
V.O. “Paul has constructed a uniquely accurate history of global weather from his ice cores.” [that word again, uniquely, and now added accurate..] When he heard about Dick’s drought theory he decided to check his cores for the 9th Century.” [Looking for ammonium signature, lots of ammonium lots of vegetation warm and wet, little ammonium, not.] He found a “tremendous drop in ammonium in 1200 – not experienced such a drop going back 2-3 thousand years”.
V.O.: “But the final proof Dick was desperately seeking was just around the corner – out of the blue came a discovery made by three geologists, without any particular interest in the history of the Maya, a team from the University of Florida happened to be researching climate history at their favourite location – the Yucatan in Mexico.”
Prof Dave Hodell on sediment cores from a lake, unnamed.: “To understand how the climate has changed through the last several thousand years. We’re interested in how rainfall may have varied over that time period.”
[They found evidence of drought in a gypsum layer, when the lake fell very low. Looking for heavy and light oxygen – plenty of rain, light oxygen dominates, more of the heavy oxygen means it was dry. They examined snails.]
V.O. “Astonished – they found a surge of heavy oxygen – it was the worst drought in the last Seven thousand years.”
“Found one seed in the middle of this layer which they sent for dating – eureka experience – coincided with collapse of Maya civilisation, 9th AD.”
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So there you have the gist of it, and my question above. If this is the missing driver, that particular high pressure system moving from the North Atlantic south west towards Central America, what drives the driver?
Brilliant response, Bob.
Of course I have a nitpick. I would change this sentence, “…[climate models] do not include a very basic process Mother Nature has devised to …” to “…[climate models] do not include a very basic natural process which …”
I realize this is probably just a rhetorical flourish and I know what you mean. But of course Mother Nature didn’t ‘devise’ ENSO nor is ENSO the result of intelligence, nor does ENSO exist to serve a specific purpose. Using such phraseology caves to symantical propaganda of the Eco-nuts who personify and even Deify natural systems, and to the extent such beliefs are humored, it makes it harder to influence those religious believers with cold hard facts (pun somewhat intended) and objective observation.
joeldshore says: @ur momisugly May 12, 2012 at 7:32 pm
…I think things like Bob Tisdale’s letter here make nice exhibits as to why the “AGW skeptic” community is not going to be taken seriously by the scientific community. If you are seriously interested in influencing scientific opinion, you would not be doing such things. Are you guys really unable to recognize this?!?
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The scientific community is close minded and climate scientist are working to make sure it stays that way. Heck I am pretty darn sure the science community is very well aware climate scientist are lying through their teeth. Either that or they are purposefully deaf, dumb and blind since they do not want to jeprodize their paychecks. The people who matter, the Joe Sixpacks, does not read science journals but he does read blogs like WUWT and some even ask questions.
Just a few links:
The damaging impact of Roy Spencer’s science “… Kevin Trenberth received a personal note of apology from both the editor-in-chief and the publisher of Remote Sensing. Wagner took this unusual and admirable step after becoming aware of the paper’s serious flaws. By resigning publicly in an editorial posted online, Wagner hopes that at least some of this damage can be undone….”
Climate Science Money Trail Calls into Question Motive of Editor’s Resignation
WUWT: BREAKING: Editor-in-chief of Remote Sensing resigns over Spencer & Braswell paper
Caspar and the Jesus paper
Benny Peiser: Editorial Bias And The Crisis Of Science Communication
And that is not even getting into the very revealing Climategate e-mails that substantiate “Pal review” and the gatekeeping using the climate scientists own communication.
Given all this do you really think anyone is interested in peer reviewed any more? Especially when the corruption in science is so rampant?
Since you like peer-reviewed papers so much, here is one especially for you.
As a scientist and a lab manager for over thirty years, I am thoroughly disgusted with what I have seen happened to science over the last forty years. The very low quality of recent science graduates emphasizes the problem. They are no longer even worth wasting time interviewing for a job.
blackswhitewash.com, yesterday I replied: The cross post here at WUWT for the last one [unsent memo to Hansen] was the top WordPress post for a while.
http://i45.tinypic.com/2eztsuo.jpg
I wanted to see if it would work again this time, but it didn’t.
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
And here’s the update, showing that this post at WUWT has captured the top post at WordPress today:
http://i50.tinypic.com/2d9bamr.jpg
Thanks, Anthony.
There is some idea that AGW falling short of predictions means it does not
exist at all.
I consider that false. What the truth is: Fossil fuel burning is increasing
atmospheric CO2, and CO2 increase has an effect on global temperature.
The question is, how much? This does not have to be decided as either
100% of the degree advocated by louder proponents of existence of AGW,
or zero. What I see in the instrumental records is that the world warms in
response to CO2 increase, at about 40% of the degree proposed by the
loud advocates of existence of AGW.
Myrrh says:
May 13, 2012 at 6:48 am
Thank you, Myrrh, for setting out some evidence for the varied regional effects of shifting the global air circulation patterns around as per my proposition that all observed climate changes are a consequence of the latitudinal shifting of the permanent climate zones beyond normal seasonal variability.
The sun does the driving by altering the vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere and the oceans modulate the solar effect.
The slope of the tropospheric heights between equator and poles varies thus allowing the tropospheric air circulation pattern to slide latitudinally to and fro beneath the tropopause thereby regulating the speed of energy transfer from surface to space so as to maintain system stability despite external or internal forcing events.
The heating effect of more CO2 is zero but the price to pay is a miniscule shift in the climate zones.
Steve Oregon says:
May 12, 2012 at 7:32 pm
Can’t Tisdale’s letter to Hansen can be sort of a proxy test for any alarmist?
Just change the “Dear James” to Dear Gavin, Dead Ray, Dear Phil, Dear Ben, Dear David or any other alarmist and challenge them any of them to repsond.
Wait that’s what posting it on WUWT does.
OK so let’s hear your responses. We all know you are all reading this.
Bring it.
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They hide behind their foot troops like Joel Shore. Do you not understand? A CONSENSUS was reached and the DEBATE IS OVER, the only question left is how are we going to destroy western civilization, that CO2 belching monstrosity, and how fast.
Bussiness Insider International: The Inside Story Of Germany’s Incredible Green Power Revolution (Worth a read for the pro-green side of the story)
Journal of Energy Security: Post Mortem on Germany’s Nuclear Melt-Down
WUWT: Newsbytes: Germany Faces Green Energy Crisis
OOPs the link for Business Insider International: The Inside Story Of Germany’s Incredible Green Power Revolution: http://www.businessinsider.com/german-nuclear-wind-energy-2012-1?op=1
I’ll have to echo the concern that ENSO may be nothing more than an effect. Bob has done an outstanding job of showing the correlation between temperature increases and ENSO. However, correlation is not enough and we probably don’t have enough data at this time (need another 30 years at least).
For example, take my somewhat imaginary conjecture that Arctic warming could be the cause of recent increases in temperature. This would slow the flow of heat from the equator to the Arctic. The slowdown could lead to reduced cooling during La Niña and cause the next El Niño to produce a step change upwards. Seems to fit the data that Bob has provided, but is based on a different cause.
Just saying, we need to be skeptical of all ideas.
Oh sugar.. Mods if poss would you correct the close italics after “two years>/i>” in this paragraph 9?
[Gill got this hunch by looking at recorded temps from dendrochronolgy of Swedish records and finding an unusual freezing period at the same time as the collapse of the Maya which he hypothesised was caused by drought. Onwards. He then found out that there is one weather system which links Europe and Central America – the North Atlantic High Pressure System. He then spent two years>/i> looking at thousands of numbers on hard copy for the highest pressure in the 20th century. ]
atarsinc says:
May 12, 2012 at 11:35 pm
ENSO does not add heat to Earth’s radiative budget. JP
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ENSO is a modifier or as I said above a sort of capacitor. The oceans STORE HEAT and RELEASE HEAT later.
Here is an example from my state.
The raw 1856 to current Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation
Piedmont Cities ~ 100 miles from the coast.
Raleigh NC
Fayetteville NC
Lumberton NC
There are plenty of other examples of the oceans’ influence on temperature. You can go looking at the individual station data here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/ (click on map for general location and a list of stations will pop up)
Donald L. Klipstein says:
May 13, 2012 at 7:23 am
….What the truth is: Fossil fuel burning is increasing
atmospheric CO2, and CO2 increase has an effect on global temperature.
The question is, how much? This does not have to be decided as either
100% of the degree advocated by louder proponents of existence of AGW,
or zero. What I see in the instrumental records is that the world warms in
response to CO2 increase, at about 40% of the degree proposed by the
loud advocates of existence of AGW.
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Chemistry shows when water warms it gives off more CO2 and when water cools it absorbs more CO2. Also mankind’s contribution to the CO2 in the atmosphere is very small, humans cause only 3.4 percent of annual CO2 emissions. With the oceans covering 70% of the earth’s surface, changes in the temperature of the oceans are going to have an effect on CO2 and also on the air temperature.
CO2 LAGS temperature and is the result not the driver.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-natural-or-manmade/
Hey, wait a minute. I thought we were supposed to be clinging to clouds.
What drives the ENSO?
The incoming energy that causes the dynamics of El Niño and La Niña is radiation.
Gail Combs says:
May 13, 2012 at 5:22 am
The ocean then acts as a giant capacitor storing this energy during La Niña and discharging it during El Niño.
The problem is as I understand it, the radiation flux is more or less constant with minimum variation, whereas the dynamics of El Niño and La Niña are pretty huge in comparison. How come?
Do we need small changes in the radiation to be somehow magnified on Earth by an unknown mechanism? I don’t think so. There are many examples in nature with a pretty constant flow of energy along or through a surface, between say two media, like air and water, or water and sand, resulting in a wave pattern.
Can you say ENSO basically is a temperature wave pattern you may expect from fluid dynamics, just on a bigger scale? A giant capacitor producing giant waves?
If so, I would expect variation in radiation to affect mainly the amplitude of ENSO, and less the frequency. Just some intuition.
Myrrh says: May 13, 2012 at 6:48 am
Thank you for that fascinating information. I would like to add the Anasazi Droughts: http://www.learner.org/interactives/collapse/chacocanyon.html
Another article: http://www.cliffdwellingsmuseum.com/anasazi/digging-deeper-into-the-anasazi/major-anasazi-region-and-sites
There was also the devastating drought in the USA called the “Dust Bowl” and that was not they only one. See: North American Drought: A Paleo Perspective for the more recent droughts.
EEB says:
May 13, 2012 at 8:59 am
Hey, wait a minute. I thought we were supposed to be clinging to clouds.
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Climate is a complicated system with a lot of factors such as the sun, clouds albedo, oceans… That is why CO2 as the “Control Knob” is so laughable. We barely have touched on SOME, not all of the influences. The “Debate is settled”? – not even close. We are still at the stage of trying to identify all the possible factors. Until that is done you can not get anywhere close to an all inclusive theory on how climate works.
Why is this watermelon wringing his hands over “having a debate about climate change”. I thought his position was that no debate is needed and the science is settled?
I’ve been hooked on negative feedbacks for the last couple of years. I read the Hansen piece where he sees the sea rising 50 feet if we exploit the tarsands and oil shales. This would flood half the customers for this ‘dirty energy’, likely many powerplants, all the maritime shipping infrastructure. Now there’s a negative feedback!