Weekend Open Thread

Graeme No. 3 says:
Jim, Muller lives in the USA; they still use ℉ there.
What he has shown over 250 years is an rise of 0.057 ℃ per decade, or 0.6 ℃ per century.
When Prof. Akasofu calculated a rise of 0.6 ℃ for both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he was dismissed as a sceptic.
The only thing is that Muller finds a rapid rise since 1979. This is partly because he used the old trick of starting at a cold period, and partly because he used the official “figures” which have been “adjusted” upwards. This enables him to claim “unprecedented” warming caused by CO2. Had he started the recent trend in 1950 (to allow for a 60 year cycle) the rise would have appeared far less.
As far as I can see, Muller is trying to position himself as “the white knight” of AGW. He is smart enough to see that Mann, Jones, Hansen etc. are discredited (and to give him credit, probably disgusted with them) and wants to do papers as they should have been done (see that he has released code and data). His problem is his reliance on the corrupted temperatures.
So it is most unlikely we will see a 1 ℃ rise in the next 100 years, and with the sun “taking a holiday” more likely we will see a drop in temperature. The World would certainly agree with you that warming is good.
Nope. The BEST study used Celsius. It found 2.5C warming since 1750.

Perlwitz occasionally appears to insult people. I suggest this remedy:
http://oi47.tinypic.com/165bx2.jpg

Dr Perlwitz;
CA and/or this site.
search for “hide the decline”
Pick one Dr Perlwitz. Self education or self imposed ignorance.

Poems are made by fools like me, but only (Mann or Briffa) can pick a tree.

I thought I saw some statements on increases in nocturnal temperatures. If there’s been an increase, there’s been an equal day time increase.
I’ve analyzed NCDC’s Global summary of days data, calculating a daily temperature increase, followed by the night time drop in temp. I’ve subtracted the 2 getting a difference, and it is remarkably stable, and there is no trend, some years it goes up a little, some down.
http://www.science20.com/virtual_worlds/blog/updated_temperature_charts-86742
http://dkue3ufa3e1f8.cloudfront.net/files/images/Global%20Annual%201940-2010.jpg
In this image Diff(D*365) is multiplied by 365 giving an annual difference in Avg(rise – fall).

Climatefellas III – the writing on the wall.
Scene – The basement at Big Jim’s
Jim
I’ve called youse all here today ‘cos our climate protection business is facing the biggest threat since the punters saw those friggin’ emails.
This Muller guy ‘n his BEST crew ‘r crawling all over us – muscling in on the racket and making us look like maroons.
We gotta do something.
Eric
It’s really tough times out there boss, Muller & his team are putting it about that they’re the new boys in town and the punters are lapping it up.
Jim
OK – so we gotta do what we always do – blow ’em away. What’s da big problem.
Raypierre
It’s not that easy Jim – people are listening’ to their story and it’s kind’ve of new & fresh and they like what they hear also they seem to have the meeja on their side.
Jim
Meeja fer Chrissake! – just fix them like we always do – speak to Revkin, Borenstein, Black at the BBC and that other limey dimwit at the pantywaist green rag…….
Eric
It’s called The Guardian Jim – but Muller’s not just talking to our guys – he’s going over their heads and talking straight to the broadsheet editors & national networks.
Anyway it may not be such a problem – he tells everybody he’s on our side.
Jim
On our side, on our side! They say he’s letting the punters look at his DATA!
When you guys got made up in da racket – waddid we do?
We mingled our blood and made a promise – only team members get to see THE DATA!
Raypierre
Calm down Jim. It’s under control – all our media guys are explaining Muller’s joined our racket and he pretty well well agrees with everything we’re doin’………….. except mebbee Katrina…….
Jim
Whaddaya mean “except mebbee Katrina”………
Raypierre
Well he says it was only a cat 3 and probably nothing to do with the climate racket……..
Jim
NUTTIN TO DO WITH CLIMATE! Hurricanes are our best fear factor – they terrify the punters how can we keep ’em scared without hurricanes?
Eric
Well, the punters don’t scare as easily as they used to Jim – but don’t worry, Muller backs us on pretty well everything else.
‘Cept mebbee those emails.
Jim
Whaddabout the emails?
Eric
Weeeellll – he says they were probably an inside job by the CRU crew.
Jim
An inside job! Whaddaya mean an inside job – we told the punters they were a criminal heist by the Big Oil mob – that’s our pitch and he’s screwing it.
OK – I’ve heard enough – Muller’s gotta be terminated. I’ll send Mad Mike & his bagman Scotty the Strangler down there ‘n they’ll waste him.
Raypierre
Errr – we already tried that boss – there was a …kind of a … malfunction. Something happened as they were getting their hardware out’ve the trunk and they both got shot in the foot.
Came back in wheelchairs.
But I don’t think you should upset yourself as long as Muller’s basically on our side.
‘Cept maybe on weather extremes………..
Jim
WHAT…..ABOUT……WEATHER….EXTREMES!
Eric
Well, calm down boss, don’t let it eat you up – but Muller says this years weather is cooler over 98% of the globe and the extreme weather here’s just normal variation.
Jim
NORMAL VARIATION fer Chrissake! Who’s gonna give us $7BN a year to study NORMAL FRIGGIN’ VARIATION!
That’s it Muller’s gotta go – Gav & I will fly down to Berkeley tonite and fix him.
Gav’s the only one of you eejits I still trust.
Gavin
Yeeess – Jim. Of course you know I’m your strongest and most loyal supporter here and couldn’t agree more with your assessment of the situation – but, bearing in mind that my key role here has always been on the more strategic and advisory side I think…………
Jim
You’re a chicken hearted, meally mouthed limey pussy, Gav!
The rest of you are just as bad – there isn’t a soldier among you bunch of lilly livered girl scouts! – book me a ticket ‘n I’ll fly down there & do the job myself.
Wahhduwe know about this guy Muller……… does he have a favourite horse……. dog………gerbil……………..?
Jim leaves for the airport and the others look at each other nervously for a while – before Gavin breaks the silence.
Gavin
Well, as I said before and I’m sure you all agree, I’ve always been Big Jim’s main adviser and strongest supporter during the long years when he’s been building up the business.Years which have no doubt put an enormous strain on Jim as he went out there on his own, way ahead of the field and stuck his neck out pioneering the more controversial aspects of our enterprise. While Jim’s away doing the business in his..err..traditional, old fashioned way, I wonder if we shouldn’t take this opportunity to review some of our long term strategic objectives.
The other guys look at each other, hesitantly at first, and then nod – knowingly.

richardscourtney wrote at August 6, 2012 at 3:11 am:

There has been no statically discernible rise in global temperature for 15 years.

This is the x-th repetition of the same talking point to which I have already replied y times, and my again repeated answer won’t be any different from my previous one. The purpose of the talking point is that it allegedly proved some assertion that goes like “global warming has stopped” or so. As such it is scientifically meaningless and w/o any scientific validity. About as meaningless as claims like “global warming has stopped”, because there hasn’t been detected any statistically significant warming trend since last year, or since last week. On these time scales, as it is also true for a time scale of a decade or 15 years, the global temperature record is still dominated by natural variability, like the 11-year solar cycle as external forcing, or ENSO recurring every multiple years as the major mode of internal variability in the system on this time scale. Just because a statistically significant warming signal can’t be detected in the temperature record from one week to the next week, it doesn’t follow that there wasn’t any long-term global warming trend. The same is valid for 10 years, or 15 years.
In 50, 100 or 200 years, even if the globally temperature anomaly is significantly higher than today and further increasing, there still will be 15-year periods where the warming trend is not statistically significant. And Mr. Courtney will still assert that “global warming has ceased”, drawing flawed conclusions from non-robust results from statistical analysis.

The UK’s Hadley Centre for Climate Research reported that their model does not appropriately deal with natural internal variability (Smith et al, 2007), but speculated that natural internal variability might step aside in 2009, allowing global warming to resume.

Since Mr. Courtney omits to provide the information about the scientific reference, and only he exactly knows why, I only can guess he means this study [1].
Mr. Courtney’s assertion what the study allegedly says is a falsehood.
This is what is really said in the paper:
Our system predicts that internal variability will partially offset the anthropogenic global warming signal for the next few years. However, climate will continue to warm, with at least half of the years after 2009 predicted to exceed the warmest year currently on record.
It is clear from this quote that the authors say there was an anthropogenic warming signal also in the present, which is “partially offset” by natural variability. They also say, warming is going to continue after 2009. The warming that is also presently happening. This isn’t speculated in the paper, it is part of the prediction by the authors. There isn’t a single phrase to be found in the paper that says anything about “resumption of warming”.

The discussion of a resumption of warming was an admission that warming had ceased.

There isn’t any discussion of a “resumption of warming” in the paper, and there isn’t any “admission” of any “ceased” warming in there. This is totally made up by Mr. Courtney. I wonder whether Mr. Courtney even knows the paper, and where he gets his desinformation. Or does he know the paper and disseminate the falsehoods anyhow?

Subsequently, German modellers moved the date for ‘resumption’ up to 2015 (Keenlyside et al, 2008).

I suppose the paper to which Mr. Courtney refers here is this one [2].
Also this paper doesn’t say anything about global warming “ceased”, and that it was going to “resume” after 2015. Instead the authors state:
Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming.
Again, also these authors talk about natural variability offsetting anthropogenic warming on a scale of a decade, but nowhere in the paper it is stated there wasn’t any global warming signal at present. One can only offset something that is there.

A cessation of global warming cannot be an “acceleration in the trend” of global warming.

Again, the alleged statements about the “cessation of global warming” in the papers referenced by Mr. Courtney is a free invention by him.
My statements, based on my knowledge of the current state of climate science, are following:
1. There is a global warming process ongoing, which is a long-term trend over many decades and over centuries, caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from anthropogenic emissions.
2. Since about the second half of the 20th century, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from anthropogenic emissions has become more and more the dominant climate driver, compared to other climate drivers like solar variability, volcanic aerosols, tropospheric aerosols, land use etc. That is, CO2 hasn’t been the only climate driver since the Little Ice Age, or in the past before that, it only has become the most important one in recent decades, with increasing importance due to continuing CO2 increase in the atmosphere from anthropogenic emissions.
3. None of the other climate drivers have changed in the second half of the 20th century until today in such a direction or magnitude that they could have caused the statistically significant warming trend since the about mid of the 70ies.
4. With the given natural variability and the current slope of the warming trend due to greenhouse gases, it takes somewhere in between 15 and 20 years for the signal to become statistically significant with 95% probability. On time scales shorter than that, variability due to the 11-years solar cycle and due to internal variability like ENSO masks the warming trend.
The state of climate science was summarized and synthesized, based on many scientific studies published in peer reviewed specialist journals of the field, in the volume “The Physical Science Basis” of the IPCC Report 2007.[3] I’m almost absolutely sure that the new report that is going to be published in 2013 won’t contain anything that refutes or essentially changes my statements above. I don’t see any studies since the previous IPCC report, which brought revelations in contradiction to what is generally accepted in climate science as paradigm.
Also, neither of the two studies referenced by Mr. Courtney contains anything that was in any contradiction to my statements above.

Simply, Smokey is right that “the trend [in global warming] is not accelerating”, and Perlwitz’s claim that Smokey used the wrong data set merely distracts from the fact that Smokey is right.

And Mr. Courtney writes at August 6, 2012 at 3:16 am:

PS. Perhaps I should have mentioned that more than 80% of anthropogenic GHG emissions were after 1940.

Now, I’m glad that Mr. Courtney emphasizes this point, since it makes clear what Smokey and he believe what the alleged contradiction between empirical data and theory was. They believe, if CO2 accelerated after 1940, the global temperature should have accelerated too, if the CO2 increase caused global warming. Only, this argument is logically flawed, since it rests on the assumption that I claimed CO2 was the only climate driver, which changed global temperature since the Little Ice Age, and, hence, there was a linear relationship between CO2 and global temperature. However, I do not claim such a thing. I do not know any climate scientist who would claim such a thing, for the matter of fact.
And whether Mr. Courtney recognizes it and he only is silent about it to not embarrass Smokey I don’t know. But Smokey apparently isn’t able to see that he holds each other contradicting views at the same time about the relationship between CO2 and temperature. One one hand, he claims a close correlation between CO2 and global temperature, with global temperature supposedly leading and causing the CO2 changes in the atmosphere. On the other hand, he uses the apparent divergence between CO2 curve and temperature curve in recent years as argument for the claim that CO2 didn’t cause global warming. I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but Smokey doesn’t even have a blade.
[1] http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1139540
[2] http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature06921
[3] http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html

Jan P Perlwitz;
EXCUSE ME?
When it WAS warming up, and skeptics pointed out that this warming was well within natural variability, you and your ilk trotted out all sorts of reasons to explain that it was NOT natural variability and that the CO2 signals was clearly overcoming natural variability.
Now that it is NOT warming, you want to claim that it IS natural variability and that the CO2 signal does NOT overcome natural variability.
Further, when the current warming hiatus first appeared, the claim was made that it would have to be in place for more than 11 years before it could be attributed to something other than natural variability. Then, with 11 years approaching, it was changed to 15 years. Then, with 15 years approaching, it was changed to 17 years.
Your hypocrisy is astounding.
Read and of the material I suggested to you yet? Or are you intent on remaining ignorant as well as being a hypocrite?

Jan P Perlwitz says:
August 6, 2012 at 5:06 pm
there still will be 15-year periods where the warming trend is not statistically significant
The July anomaly for RSS just came out and it dropped from 0.339 to 0.292. So as of this date, RSS shows a totally flat slope for 15 years and 8 months going back to December, 1996. (To be exact, slope = -4.54789e-05 per year) The point that I want to make though is that 15 years and 8 months is 92.2% of the way to Santer’s 17 years. What happens then? See
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1995/plot/rss/from:1996.9/trend

Leif Svalgaard (August 4, 2012 at 1:36 pm)
“As Richard Feynman once said: “the easiest one to fool is oneself”.”
Is that what you told Jean Dickey (NASA JPL leading expert on earth rotation) when she published the pattern in 1997?
–
Gail Combs (August 5, 2012 at 5:32 pm)
“But do stay away from the Jupiter-Earth-Venus tidal cycles at this time. It detracts from the rest of your work.”
Some things are black & white.
http://i49.tinypic.com/2jg5tvr.png
If you would suggest otherwise: You might as well tell me 1+1 does not equal 2 and tyrannically demand that I accept that. As you can see, that level of social intractability is dangerous territory.
Other things are grey.
Am I prepared to make a final ruling on JEV? Absolutely not. Certainly WUWT is not the place to discuss JEV.