'Skeptical Science' Misrepresents Their Animation “The Escalator”

Bob T why bother with the truth team from “ss” ? After reading their in-house comments I now consider any commenter who sources their supporting arguments from sceptical science, as a troll.
Its probable that you have generated more traffic for that site than they have seen all month.
I mean its fun to watch the children get slapped down when they come to WUWT to bleat, but is it not cruel to seek them out in their cuccoon of digital security and beat them up with reality?

Even though it may be a disaster, the next ice age will be such a relief.

One is reminded of the M.C. Escher drawing of the stairwell that appears to keep rising but also mysteriously meets itself at the bottom!
To say that Cook has misrepresented ‘one’ thing is going for the soft target…much harder to find some aspect of the science that he is portraying correctly!

How can ANYONE publish these NONSENSE GRAPHS (Including WUWT) without making some ATTEMPT to put ERROR BARS ON THEM?
A LITTLE effort, putting S.D.’s on the NOISE would also be invaluable.
Just whining….
Max

As I remember it, RealClimate once argued that there had been another hiatus in global warming (thus implying that post-1998 was nothing unusual). They conveniently neglected to mention that the period they referred to included the 1991 Pinatubo eruption. This seems to be a factor in the SkepticalScience graph as well.

I remember, as a kid, playing at going up and escalator with my eyes closed but one foot on the step in front.
I could always tell when I got to the top because my feet would start coming to the same level.
Looks like the guerilla forces at Septic Science haven’t quite worked out that little trick yet.
Hey guys! When you get to the flat bit, it’s time to step off.

Bob – give up that phony “Volcano-Adjusted” feature. Volcanic cooling of lower troposphere is a myth – it does not exist. Read my book pp. 17 – 21.

What’s with the 5 month gap from June to November? All the other trends involve no gaps.

The SS animation appears to have been concocted as a way to diminish the perceived importance of the stagnation of temperatures over the last decade, trying to imply that the recent flat trend is just another illusion, an artifact of selection.
However, looking at the smoothed datasets one sees that the other ‘false trends’ do not appear, with the exception of a small dip around each of the El Chichon and Pinatubo eruptions of the early 80s and 90s respectively. In contrast, the ongoing slump in warming is quite clear, deeper and longer than those two, and unaccompanied by any major vulcanism.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/global-land-ocean-mntp-anom/201101-201112.png

The real “trend” all this data is a complex set of cyclic functions. However people are constantly fitting short term and long term segments with lines. It’s as if they are approximating the area under the curve by using the trapezoidal rule, rather than integrating the actual function. Why do that not abandon the linear regression nonsense and start thinking about Fourier transforms?

Put a sine curve on it. Of course the very diverse SkS people can’t do sine fits as they are linear thinkers over there. One track minds. They also have this amazing luck to always start their trending right at the bottom of the cycle. What a stupendously amazingly amazing coincidence!

the Atlantic Warm Period was warmer than the Minoan Warm Period which was warmer than the Roman Warm Period which was warmer than the Medieval Warm Period, which was warmer than the Present Warm Period
Now, who is going up on down escalators?

I don’t understand the GISS graph for 1880 to 2012–If I have been following the real science correctly, 1930s-40s were as warm as it is today and 1934 was the warmest year int he US–How could the graph look like that? I know the climatologists adjusted temps down for the past and adjusted current temps up to creat the hockey stick–but surely we are not using those adjusted tempreatures to make a point here? Are we, Mr. Tisdale? –it gets so confusing. I wonder if we could just get a page with unadjusted and historical data and use that for comparisons? It’s too hard to know who has adjusted what, when we keep using “their” adjusted graphs, how can we make a point?
I would say “just whining” but I really want to know. It’s very possible I missed something important–like the point….. the various graphs are driving me nuts.

Doesn’t anyone appreciate Bob Tisdale’s seminal assertion that the SST of the central east Pacific Ocean has not warmed over the last 30 years. This extremely important result lead you to two possible conclusions:
a) The cooling effects upon the surface of this vast area of ocean must perfectly balance the energy inputs from the universal warming of the atmosphere and oceans by increasing levels of CO2.
If this is to be believed then why isn’t this amazing result achieved in the rest of the world’s oceans.
OR
b) CO2 induced warming of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans is not the result of AGW.
I would favor the latter explanation.

At least we can all agree the world has been warming.

Guest Post by Bob Tisdale: “[…] It’s comparable to the trend in global surface temperatures since 1880. […]In the next few days, I’ll present PBS’s sleight of hand about “The Escalator” when they presented it in their Frontline report Climate of Doubt. They were pretty blatant about it.”
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Bob, this is very interesting about “The Escalator” and the “PBS’s sleight of hand”, thank you. But what about the use of therm “global surface temperatures“? Isn’t this “global” just another sleight of hand and a more important one?
What is the scientific reason to consider the thermometer network to be representative of the whole world or of the whole surface? Is there any scientific proof that they are? Because if they are not, we can not say that the calculated trends are global. No “global warming” then.
Or even a simpler question. So, we have a thermometer placed outside. How large is the area this thermometer can be scientifically considered to be representative of? Who proved it and how? I mean, the air is moving naturally in different directions, cold wind, warm wind etc.
Maybe you can clarify that.

bee bop says:
November 25, 2012 at 4:35 pm
At least we can all agree the world has been warming.
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Depends on your starting point. graph

If carbon dioxide influenced global temperatures as the CAGW crowd maintains, there would not be temperature plateaus of fifteen years or lengthy cooling periods while the atmospheric content of CO2 continued its ascent.

Chad Jessup says:
November 25, 2012 at 5:04 pm
If carbon dioxide influenced global temperatures as the CAGW crowd maintains, there would not be temperature plateaus of fifteen years or lengthy cooling periods while the atmospheric content of CO2 continued its ascent
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That is eactly the point of the escalator graph. The warming mainly driven by co2 is not a steady upward rise.

Greg House says:
November 25, 2012 at 4:46 pm
….What is the scientific reason to consider the thermometer network to be representative of the whole world or of the whole surface? Is there any scientific proof that they are? …
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Actually there has been a lot of work done on that question. The short answer is the data is rubbish.
A.J. Strata did an error analysis on the data.

Alarmists Hide Truth About (Lack Of) Global Warming
…this post [focuses] on two key documents that became public with the recent whistle blowing at CRU. The first document concerns the accuracy of the land based temperature measurements, which make up the core of the climate alarmists claims about warming. When we look at the CRU error budget and error margins we find a glimmer of reality setting in, in that there is no way to detect the claimed warming trend with the claimed accuracy.
The second document contains 155 graphs showing the raw global temperature measurements and ‘trends’ for every country from 1900 though today. It contains two version of the CRU ‘processing’ – one from 2005 and one from 2008. What is just amazing from this ‘raw’ data is the realization that many areas of the Earth are not showing a huge upswing in temperature. The raw data paints a completely different picture than the final ‘results’ we see in Al Gore’s charts.

Kommersant: Russia affected by Climategate
….On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.
The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory.
Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports.
Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.
The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.
The HadCRUT database includes specific stations providing incomplete data and highlighting the global-warming process, rather than stations facilitating uninterrupted observations.
On the whole, climatologists use the incomplete findings of meteorological stations far more often than those providing complete observations….

The ‘Station drop out’ problem (several more on either side of this article)
WUWT: On the “march of the thermometers”
Assume A Spherical Cow – therefore all steaks are round (several more on either side of this article)
“…So what does all this mean? It means that the bulk of all the rise of the numbers comes from instrument change, not from an increase at the individual stations. Further, it means that any temperature series codes (such as GIStemp) run on this data has a built in bias to deal with….”
PART1: The perplexing temperature data published 1974-84 and recent temperature data.

The problem is too much co2 leftover from the earth not absorbing it. Its just hard to get around. With extra co2 we get extra infrared being reflected back to earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report
The report is the largest and most detailed summary of the climate change situation ever undertaken, produced by thousands of authors, editors, and reviewers from dozens of countries, citing over 6,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent_climate_change
The dominant mechanisms (to which recent climate change has been attributed) are anthropogenic, i.e., the result of human activity. They are:[1]
!. increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases
2. global changes to land surface, such as deforestation
3. increasing atmospheric concentrations of aerosols.
There are also natural mechanisms for variation including climate oscillations, changes in solar activity, variations in the Earth’s orbit, and volcanic activity.
Attribution of recent climate change to human activities is based on multiple lines of evidence:[4]
….. A basic physical understanding of the climate system: greenhouse gas concentrations have increased and their warming properties are well-established.[4]
…. Historical estimates of past climate changes suggest that the recent changes in global surface temperature are unusual.[4]
…. Computer-based climate models are unable to replicate the observed warming unless human greenhouse gas emissions are included.[4]
…. Natural forces alone (such as solar and volcanic activity) cannot explain the observed warming.[4]

I saw that graph months ago and felt almost embarrassed for Skeptical Science for putting it up there. I’m glad you’ve taken them to task on it because I saw it plastered elsewhere on the web and that got me worried.

Yuri Barkin says Earth’s shells “galloped” in 1997-98. Ben Chao shares insights:
Chao, B.F. (2006). Earth’s oblateness and its temporal variations. Comptes Rendus Geoscience 338, 1123-1129. doi:10.1016/j.crte.2006.09.014.
http://www.earth.sinica.edu.tw/~bfchao/publication/eng/2006-Earth%E2%80%99s%20oblateness%20and%20its%20temporal%20variations.pdf
Climate scientists: Do you realize the implications for climate stat-inference assumptions?

What a convoluted story..
The “Up-the-down-escalator” is supposed to prove how easy it is for skeptics to cherry pick periods of cooling and present them as proof that the earth isn’t warming. It’s intended as an anti-skeptic device.
The fact that a flat trend can’t be found at that step would be pro-warming i.e. even cherry picking we can’t hide warming!
But SkS go out of their way to _lessen_ warming to present a narrative that skeptics have at their disposal some dodgy technique to hide warming. Ahhhh!!

Gail Combs says:
November 25, 2012 at 5:28 pm
The bigger problem is that taking thermometer readings at thousands of different places, and averaging them, doesn’t tell you whether the surface of the globe, or the atmosphere, is warming. It’s rubbish.

renewableguy says:
November 25, 2012 at 5:45 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report
The report is the largest and most detailed summary of the climate change situation ever undertaken, produced by thousands of authors, editors, and reviewers from dozens of countries, citing over 6,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies….
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OH, good grief.
Read The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert by Donna Laframboise, or at least read the review of the book by Dr. Judith Curry or you can read Donna’s short version here UN’s Climate Bible Gets 21 “F”s on Report Card

KR. It is childs play to remove noise and its obvious Bob does not deny the atmospheric climb because it is right there in his graphs. It’s the wood from the trees you cannot see.
Talking of wood from trees. Here shows temperature leads C02 output due to Solar heating of the Sea. Not related to C02 production. If it was air heating (due to C02) it would deny almost all of the yearly C02 cycle. Oh, note C02 lags heat in almost all years here.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/isolate:60/mean:12/scale:0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/isolate:60/mean:12/from:1958/plot/esrl-co2/isolate:60/mean:12/scale:0.2/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/isolate:60/mean:12/from:1958/trend
Here is C02, HadCrut3 and Sunspots. For mathematical honesty; ignore the last 1/4 cycle. Note heating to due to Sunspots which affects temperature in turn affects C02 production to the advantage of plant life. Also note C02’s rate increasing due to third world use picking up and taking over from the 90’s. Will need another decade to show the temperature drop due to the present Sun’s inactivity.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/fourier/high-pass:2/low-pass:30/inverse-fourier/normalise/from:1960/plot/sidc-ssn/fourier/high-pass:2/low-pass:30/inverse-fourier/normalise/from:1960/plot/esrl-co2/fourier/high-pass:1.5/low-pass:11/inverse-fourier/normalise
If you have issues with reality. I suggest you see a shrink.

Renewableguy says, “The warming mainly driven by co2 is not a steady upward rise”, an assertion which flies in the face of the laboratory experiments that log a steady rise in temperature when coupled with a steady increase in CO2. That is one bone of contention I have with the CAGW crowd, for if increasing amounts of atmospheric CO2 were such compelling arguments for elevating global mean temperatures, then one would not see decades long decline in those temperatures accompanied by increasing levels of carbon dioxide.
One needs to investigate the entire ensemble of atmospheric, oceanographic, terrestrial, and solar possesses to determine the underlying causes of temperature changes and not rely on a one-dimensional perspective.

Greg House says:
November 25, 2012 at 6:22 pm
..Thanks, Gail. But I mean, it is much worse and much easier. Why search for secondary errors, if the whole “global” thing collapses immediately, if the warmists are asked to prove that the thermometers are on the right representative places and there is/was a sufficient number of them. From my experience they can not prove it and it demonstrates that the whole “global warming” is a pure fiction…
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Oh, I agree whole heartedly.
Getting a good representative measurement of anything is not easy especially when the historic recorded measurements are to the whole degree and you are showing changes of 0.01C (snicker) I worked as a lab manager in Chemical QC since the 1970’s. When I heard the ASSumption that CO2 was well mixed, I laughed my head off. Uniform mixing is an ever present headache in the chemical industry. With ever changing sources and sinks and only natural mixing of the atmosphere, you are not going to see ‘well mixed’ but the myth was an absolute necessity because it allowed Callendar to pick and choose what historic CO2 measurements he was going to use. link

Bob Tisdale – I was referring to your illustration http://i48.tinypic.com/i42u6g.jpg, which contains segments less than four years.And those are just silly…
Even your 1987-1998 and 1998-2010 periods (your fourth figure) have uncertainties of something on the order of ±0.255 and ±0.201 °C/decade (GISTEMP uncertainties, which cover a larger area/more data), as I pointed out in my first message (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/25/skeptical-science-misrepresents-their-animation-the-escalator/#comment-1156940). You cannot, from that data and those time-frames, make any assertions of flat or “step” behavior. (Actually, you can, you do, but the data just doesn’t support it as real in any fashion…)
I’m still waiting for you to show the uncertainties of your various trends (of whatever length), relative to the noise in the data – some kind of demonstration that these are real trends, not cherry-picked short term noise (don’t forget auto-correlation). But I’ll not hold my breath.
Adieu

KR, the trend is still not outside the noise (something that AGW’rs nash their teeth about). Therefore the trend is not significant. I am into my next half century of life and trust me, the temperature trend is not outside the noise. I’ve seen decades much hotter, and much colder than the current one (think regional, not global average). Call me when the trend in Oregon rises above the short and long term natural noise (IE ENSO and volcano noise).

good very good

You can’t even feel temp differences by 0.2c. If they were honest enough to scale the chart in whole degrees, the entire thing would be a flat line.

Don’t even worry about their little, very short term step trick.
No need to play their game at all …. just show the chart back to 1880, or further if they wish, then ask them to explain the CAGW story again…

Greg House says:
November 25, 2012 at 7:13 pm
I am sorry, but who exactly and how experimentally proved that CO2 causes warming on the surface by sending back to the surface some IR it gets from the surface? Because IR from colder bodies does not necessarily cause warming of warmer bodies, it needs to be proven first….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
There is this From Dr. Spencer:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-101/
http://www.drroyspencer.com/research-articles/satellite-and-climate-model-evidence/
http://www.drroyspencer.com/research-articles/
About CO2 measurement at Mauna Loa: http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-background-articles/carbon-dioxide-growth-rate-at-mauna-loa/
From satellite data, graph 1
The graph is from SORCE:

The Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) is a NASA-sponsored satellite mission that is providing state-of-the-art measurements of incoming x-ray, ultraviolet, visible, near-infrared, and total solar radiation. The measurements provided by SORCE specifically address long-term climate change, natural variability and enhanced climate prediction, and atmospheric ozone and UV-B radiation….
SORCE carries four instruments including the Spectral Irradiance Monitor (SIM), Solar Stellar Irradiance Comparison Experiment (SOLSTICE), Total Irradiance Monitor (TIM), and the XUV Photometer System (XPS).
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/index.htm

There is this: graph 2 As a chemist who used UV Spectrophotometers professionally since 1972, I do not question these results as IR absorption spectra are well known and used by chemists in industry every day.
There is this from WUWT:
New paper: researcher in Germany has carried out a spectroscopic analysis of the impact of CO2 and other greenhouse gases’ contribution to warming.
Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.: Comments On The Andy Lacis Post On CO2 As A Climate Thermostat where Pleione @ November 11, 2010 at 11:35 pm mentions

On Mars, the relative CO2 pressure is 16 times that on Earth. The absolute CO2 amount (per surface unit) on Mars would translate to about 5000 ppm CO2 on Earth !! And all that HUGE amount of CO2 translates in a tiny increase of 3 kelvin from the -56C radiative temperature to the -53C observed average temperature….

Unfortunately he gives no references.
Articles by physicist Tom Vonk
CO2 heats the atmosphere…a counter view Read all the way to the end please.
Does CO₂ heat the troposphere ?
And by Jeff ID (An engineer?)
A reply to Vonk: Radiative Physics Simplified II
Note: If you look at what Tom Vonk says at the end of each article his articles do not contradict Jeff. Speciffically:

Caveat 1
The statement we proved cannot be interpreted as “CO2 has no impact on the dynamics of the Earth-atmosphere system” . What we have proven is that the CO2 cannot heat the atmosphere in the bulk but the whole system cannot be reduced to the bulk of the atmosphere . Indeed there are 2 interfaces – the void on one side and the surface of the Earth on the other side . Neither the former nor the latter is in LTE and the arguments we used are not valid . The dynamics of the system are governed by the lapse rate which is “anchored” to the ground and whose variations are dependent not only on convection , latent heat changes and conduction but also radiative transfer . The concentrations of CO2 (and H2O) play a role in this dynamics but it is not the purpose of this post to examine these much more complex and not well understood aspects .

“Even doubling or tripling the amount of CO2′ will have ‘little impact’ on temps” by Dr Duffy

Dr. Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ. Duffy received the New Zealand Science and Technology Silver Medal, in 2003 from The Royal Society of New Zealand. And has published 218 journal, peer-reviewed papers and conference papers including 10 patents and 62 technical reports.

The money quote from this article is:

…A man-made ‘greenhouse’ can only increase the residence time or hold-up time of heat just like a blanket. Likewise in the atmosphere, the ‘greenhouse effect’ acts as a mechanism to smooth out fluctuations or rises and falls in temperature (that is advantageous). It is a dampener! It cannot be a dominant factor for global temperature change. It is the sun that gives the heat energy and drives temperature change. Simply, if the sun’s energy decreases, then the ‘global’ temperature will fall; with or without any greenhouse effect (and vice-versa)….

Again this agrees with what Tom Vonk says.
Now on to actual proof of the dampener effect of the greenhouse gas H2O.
Sleepalot @ July 21, 2012 at 4:21 am comments:

I keep looking at this: air and ground temperature recorded in the N. African desert during a solar eclipse.
http://www.shadowchaser.demon.co.uk/eclipse/2006/thermochron.gif

(I could not get the graph to load this morning and it is not on the wayback machine. The 2008 eclipse data is also among the missing – http://www.shadowchaser.demon.co.uk/eclipse/2008/index.html)
In this comment Sleepalot Compares the Brazilian rainforest and the N. African Desert.
I took it a step further
comment 1
comment 2
So yes CO2 and H2O slow the flow of energy from the surface to space and on a molecular level can emit IR back towards the earth but the macro net flow is going to be from the earth to space unless the sun is shining. When the sun is shining in the presence of high humidity the flow of energy is again dampened.
Note that CO2 has a much much smaller effect that H2O does as humidity. All you have to do is look at the IR graph and the amount of H2O in the atmosphere.
One only has to look at the moon to see what the result is for no atmosphere. The day temperature is 107°C: Mean surface temperature at night is-153°C and the Maximum surface temperature is 123°C. (Note radiative transfer is only a one of the reasons for the difference)

renewableguy
If increasing CO2 levels, as the models seem to indicate, lead to catastrophic warming, how is it that with 20x the current amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, the earth had an ice age?
This is geologically well documented, I would like an intelligible response based on known science, as opposed to handwaving.

http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/images/instruments/sim/fig01.gif
It appears that from this graph one is saying that the ocean isn’t being heated directly by sunlight. I find that true in that sunlight can only penetrate so deep into the ocean. And yet I would imagine it would be easy for heat to travel from molecular bumping, from ocean currents and different forms of mixing.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/levitus-2012-global-warming-heating-oceans.html

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/11/27720/
“ there is a clear demonstration that without the radiative forcing provided by the non-condensing GHGs, the terrestrial greenhouse effect collapses because there is no structural temperature support to restrain the current climate water vapor from condensing and precipitating.”
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The relationship between H2O and co2 is the main driver of our climate. That is what drives our climate. From the ice cores, the absolute humidity levels are driven by the climate drivers such as co2 and orbital variation. In our recent ascent in temperature orbital variation is too slow to of effected our climate.Those listed below are not contributing to warming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent_climate_change
There are also natural mechanisms for variation including climate oscillations, changes in solar activity, variations in the Earth’s orbit, and volcanic activity.

renewable guy said
CO2 is not the only driver of climate but is necessary to explain what is happening
henry says
so how did you figure out you NEED CO2 to explain things?
There is not one study that shows that an increase in CO2 causes warming.
Those that do exist are more than a 100 years old and lack the cooling part and not one of any recent studies has a balance sheet of the amount of cooling and warming caused by an increase in x% of CO2 in the atmosphere with the right dimensions…….never mind the fact that the increase is (largely) caused by natural warming: (gigatons of bicarbonate in the oceans)
HCO3- + heat => CO2 (g) + OH-
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
Can I suggest you read this
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2011/08/11/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-aug-2011/
and you will figure out the science that we have all been trying to explain here to you from the beginning.If you do not try to understand it you will just stay ignorant.
.

Venter says:
November 26, 2012 at 7:14 am
Renewable guy, you handwaving and assertions based on beleifs don’t count as facts
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I have provided sources. This is the science that I am basing this in. You are welcome to rebut my sources.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/06/a-reply-to-vonk-radiative-physics-simplified-ii/
So finally, as a formal skeptic of AGW extremism, NONE of this should create any alarm. Sure CO2 can cause warming (a little) but warmer air holds more moisture, which changes clouds, which will cause feedbacks to the temperature. If the feedback is low or negative (as Roy Spencer recently demonstrated), none of the IPCC predictions come true, and none of the certainly exaggerated damage occurs. The CO2 then, can be considered nothing but plant food, and we can keep our tax money and take our good sweet time building the currently non-existent cleaner energy sources the enviro’s will demand anyway. If feedback is high and positive as the models predict, then the temperature measurements have some catching up to do.
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THe computers run the calculations for us to see what kind of sensitivity we come up with to changes in the atmosphere for a doubing of co2. The possiblity of climate sensitivity to be below 2*C appear to be very low. THe possibility of being higher are much higher than being lower.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Frequency_distribution_of_climate_sensitivity,_based_on_model_simulations_(NASA).png
They run this simulation thousands of times, each time changing the starting assumptions of one or more processes. When they put all the predictions from these thousands of simulations onto a single graph, what they get is a picture of the most likely outcomes and the least likely outcomes.
The pattern that emerges from these types of tests is interesting. Few of the simulations result in less than 2 °C of warming—near the low end of estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Some simulations result in significantly more than the 4 °C, which is at the high end of the IPCC estimates.
This pattern (statisticians call it a “right-skewed distribution”) suggests that if carbon dioxide concentrations double, the probability of very large increases in temperature is greater than the probability of very small increases.

renewableguy says:
November 26, 2012 at 6:50 am
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/images/instruments/sim/fig01.gif
It appears that from this graph one is saying that the ocean isn’t being heated directly by sunlight. I find that true in that sunlight can only penetrate so deep into the ocean….
___________________________________
Read the labeling on the second graph. The higher wavelengths (UV) penetrate to 100m or 330 ft. Or look at Dr. Robert E. Stevenson’s statement The infrared radiation penetrates but a few millimeters into the ocean.
70% of the earth’s surface is water. The higher wavelengths of sunlight, visible and above are where the ‘action’ is, not at the infrared wavelengths. And guess what? NASA has recently found that although Total Solar Insolation (TSI) may not vary much the mix of wavelengths does.

NASA: SORCE’s Solar Spectral Surprise
In recent years, SIM has collected data that suggest the sun’s brightness may vary in entirely unexpected ways. If the SIM’s spectral irradiance measurements are validated and proven accurate over time, then certain parts of Earth’s atmosphere may receive surprisingly large doses of solar radiation even during lulls in solar activity.
“We have never had a reason until now to believe that parts of the spectrum may vary out of phase with the solar cycle….
Some of the variations that SIM has measured in the last few years do not mesh with what most scientists expected….
However, SIM suggests that ultraviolet irradiance fell far more than expected between 2004 and 2007 — by ten times as much as the total irradiance did — while irradiance in certain visible and infrared wavelengths surprisingly increased, even as solar activity wound down overall.
The steep decrease in the ultraviolet, coupled with the increase in the visible and infrared, does even out to about the same total irradiance change as measured by the TIM during that period, according to the SIM measurements.
The stratosphere absorbs most of the shorter wavelengths of ultraviolet light, but some of the longest ultraviolet rays (UV-A), as well as much of the visible and infrared portions of the spectrum, directly heat Earth’s lower atmosphere and can have a significant impact on the climate.

graph black line is the expected, blue line is the actual from SIM.“(red) from another ultraviolet radiation-sensing instrument called SOLSTICE compare well with those from SIM”

EVE: Measuring the Sun’s Hidden Variability
…”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. These results, which compare the solar minimum of 2008-09 to the previous minimum of 1996, are still very preliminary….

It remains to be seen if that decrease in the sun’s “irradiance” in the wavelengths that effect the oceans have any effect. My SWAG is we will see more La Nina’s and a drop in Sea Surface temperatures over time if the sun remains in a funk. (Two days in November have been essentally spotless official sources found four groups of very tiny specks with a F10.7 flux less than 100 and we are at sunspot MAX!)
We are already seeing a stop in warming in the global sea surface temperatures according to the EPA graph, and the expected El Niño has not developed. The Update prepared by the Climate Prediction Center / NCEP on
26 November 2012 shows ENSO-neutral conditions continue and ENSO-neutral is favored through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2012-13.
renewableguy says:
November 26, 2012 at 6:50 am
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/images/instruments/sim/fig01.gif
It appears that from this graph one is saying that the ocean isn’t being heated directly by sunlight. I find that true in that sunlight can only penetrate so deep into the ocean….
___________________________________
Read the labeling on the second graph. The higher wavelengths (UV) penetrate to 100m or 330 ft. Or look at Dr. Robert E. Stevenson’s statement The infrared radiation penetrates but a few millimeters into the ocean.
70% of the earth’s surface is water. The higher wavelengths of sunlight, visible and above are where the ‘action’ is, not at the infrared wavelengths. And guess what? NASA has recently found that although Total Solar Insolation (TSI) may not vary much the mix of wavelengths does.

NASA: SORCE’s Solar Spectral Surprise
In recent years, SIM has collected data that suggest the sun’s brightness may vary in entirely unexpected ways. If the SIM’s spectral irradiance measurements are validated and proven accurate over time, then certain parts of Earth’s atmosphere may receive surprisingly large doses of solar radiation even during lulls in solar activity.
“We have never had a reason until now to believe that parts of the spectrum may vary out of phase with the solar cycle….
Some of the variations that SIM has measured in the last few years do not mesh with what most scientists expected….
However, SIM suggests that ultraviolet irradiance fell far more than expected between 2004 and 2007 — by ten times as much as the total irradiance did — while irradiance in certain visible and infrared wavelengths surprisingly increased, even as solar activity wound down overall.
The steep decrease in the ultraviolet, coupled with the increase in the visible and infrared, does even out to about the same total irradiance change as measured by the TIM during that period, according to the SIM measurements.
The stratosphere absorbs most of the shorter wavelengths of ultraviolet light, but some of the longest ultraviolet rays (UV-A), as well as much of the visible and infrared portions of the spectrum, directly heat Earth’s lower atmosphere and can have a significant impact on the climate.

graph black line is the expected, blue line is the actual from SIM.“(red) from another ultraviolet radiation-sensing instrument called SOLSTICE compare well with those from SIM”

EVE: Measuring the Sun’s Hidden Variability
…”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. These results, which compare the solar minimum of 2008-09 to the previous minimum of 1996, are still very preliminary….

It remains to be seen if that decrease in the sun’s “irradiance” in the wavelengths that effect the oceans have any effect. My SWAG is we will see more La Nina’s and a drop in Sea Surface temperatures over time if the sun remains in a funk. (Two days in November have been essentally spotless official sources found four groups of very tiny specks with a F10.7 flux less than 100 and we are at sunspot MAX!)
We are already seeing a stop in warming in the global sea surface temperatures according to the EPA graph, and the expected El Niño has not developed. The Update prepared by the Climate Prediction Center / NCEP on 26 November 2012 shows ENSO-neutral conditions continue and ENSO-neutral is favored through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2012-13.
renewableguy says:
November 26, 2012 at 6:50 am
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/images/instruments/sim/fig01.gif
It appears that from this graph one is saying that the ocean isn’t being heated directly by sunlight. I find that true in that sunlight can only penetrate so deep into the ocean….
___________________________________
Read the labeling on the second graph. The higher wavelengths (UV) penetrate to 100m or 330 ft. Or look at Dr. Robert E. Stevenson’s statement The infrared radiation penetrates but a few millimeters into the ocean.
70% of the earth’s surface is water. The higher wavelengths of sunlight, visible and above are where the ‘action’ is, not at the infrared wavelengths. And guess what? NASA has recently found that although Total Solar Insolation (TSI) may not vary much the mix of wavelengths does.

NASA: SORCE’s Solar Spectral Surprise
In recent years, SIM has collected data that suggest the sun’s brightness may vary in entirely unexpected ways. If the SIM’s spectral irradiance measurements are validated and proven accurate over time, then certain parts of Earth’s atmosphere may receive surprisingly large doses of solar radiation even during lulls in solar activity.
“We have never had a reason until now to believe that parts of the spectrum may vary out of phase with the solar cycle….
Some of the variations that SIM has measured in the last few years do not mesh with what most scientists expected….
However, SIM suggests that ultraviolet irradiance fell far more than expected between 2004 and 2007 — by ten times as much as the total irradiance did — while irradiance in certain visible and infrared wavelengths surprisingly increased, even as solar activity wound down overall.
The steep decrease in the ultraviolet, coupled with the increase in the visible and infrared, does even out to about the same total irradiance change as measured by the TIM during that period, according to the SIM measurements.
The stratosphere absorbs most of the shorter wavelengths of ultraviolet light, but some of the longest ultraviolet rays (UV-A), as well as much of the visible and infrared portions of the spectrum, directly heat Earth’s lower atmosphere and can have a significant impact on the climate.

graph black line is the expected, blue line is the actual from SIM.“(red) from another ultraviolet radiation-sensing instrument called SOLSTICE compare well with those from SIM”

EVE: Measuring the Sun’s Hidden Variability
…”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. These results, which compare the solar minimum of 2008-09 to the previous minimum of 1996, are still very preliminary….

It remains to be seen if that decrease in the sun’s “irradiance” in the wavelengths that effect the oceans have any effect. My SWAG is we will see more La Nina’s and a drop in Sea Surface temperatures over time if the sun remains in a funk. (Two days in November have been essentally spotless official sources found four groups of very tiny specks with a F10.7 flux less than 100 and we are at sunspot MAX!)
We are already seeing a stop in warming in the global sea surface temperatures according to the EPA graph, and the expected El Niño has not developed. The Update prepared by the Climate Prediction Center / NCEP on
26 November 2012 shows ENSO-neutral conditions continue and ENSO-neutral is favored through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2012-13.
renewableguy says:
November 26, 2012 at 6:50 am
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/images/instruments/sim/fig01.gif
It appears that from this graph one is saying that the ocean isn’t being heated directly by sunlight. I find that true in that sunlight can only penetrate so deep into the ocean….
___________________________________
Read the labeling on the second graph. The higher wavelengths (UV) penetrate to 100m or 330 ft. Or look at Dr. Robert E. Stevenson’s statement The infrared radiation penetrates but a few millimeters into the ocean.
70% of the earth’s surface is water. The higher wavelengths of sunlight, visible and above are where the ‘action’ is, not at the infrared wavelengths. And guess what? NASA has recently found that although Total Solar Insolation (TSI) may not vary much the mix of wavelengths does.

NASA: SORCE’s Solar Spectral Surprise
In recent years, SIM has collected data that suggest the sun’s brightness may vary in entirely unexpected ways. If the SIM’s spectral irradiance measurements are validated and proven accurate over time, then certain parts of Earth’s atmosphere may receive surprisingly large doses of solar radiation even during lulls in solar activity.
“We have never had a reason until now to believe that parts of the spectrum may vary out of phase with the solar cycle….
Some of the variations that SIM has measured in the last few years do not mesh with what most scientists expected….
However, SIM suggests that ultraviolet irradiance fell far more than expected between 2004 and 2007 — by ten times as much as the total irradiance did — while irradiance in certain visible and infrared wavelengths surprisingly increased, even as solar activity wound down overall.
The steep decrease in the ultraviolet, coupled with the increase in the visible and infrared, does even out to about the same total irradiance change as measured by the TIM during that period, according to the SIM measurements.
The stratosphere absorbs most of the shorter wavelengths of ultraviolet light, but some of the longest ultraviolet rays (UV-A), as well as much of the visible and infrared portions of the spectrum, directly heat Earth’s lower atmosphere and can have a significant impact on the climate.

graph black line is the expected, blue line is the actual from SIM.“(red) from another ultraviolet radiation-sensing instrument called SOLSTICE compare well with those from SIM”

EVE: Measuring the Sun’s Hidden Variability
…”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. These results, which compare the solar minimum of 2008-09 to the previous minimum of 1996, are still very preliminary….

It remains to be seen if that decrease in the sun’s “irradiance” in the wavelengths that effect the oceans have any effect. My SWAG is we will see more La Nina’s and a drop in Sea Surface temperatures over time if the sun remains in a funk. (Two days in November have been essentally spotless official sources found four groups of very tiny specks with a F10.7 flux less than 100 and we are at sunspot MAX!)
We are already seeing a stop in warming in the global sea surface temperatures according to the EPA graph, and the expected El Niño has not developed. The Update prepared by the Climate Prediction Center / NCEP on
26 November 2012 shows ENSO-neutral conditions continue and ENSO-neutral is favored through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2012-13.

Greg House says: “I am sorry, but who exactly and how experimentally proved that CO2 causes warming on the surface by sending back to the surface some IR it gets from the surface? Because IR from colder bodies does not necessarily cause warming of warmer bodies, it needs to be proven first….”
Gail Combs says: “There is this From Dr. Spencer: http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-101/ […]”
========================================================
Gail, I opened the first 5 links you presented and, frankly, I am not surprised: all of them are completely irrelevant, they contain neither description of even a single physical experiment in question nor a link to such an experiment.
I just hope it was not an act of obfuscation and you simply did not understand the topic.

renewable guy says
THe computers run the calculations for us to see what kind of sensitivity we come up with to changes in the atmosphere for a doubing of co2. (sic)
henry says
you cannot “calculate” that which has not been measured first. What actual measurement results can you show me?
It is people like you who only want ‘renewable” energy who retard science. How do you think mankind can do terra forming (for example on Mars) with 300 ppm CO2? You want at least 10 x as much to speed things (=life) up a bit? (up to 4000 ppm has been OK for submarines?)
Anyway, as I said before, do you really want to learn something here or do you just want stay ignorant?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/25/skeptical-science-misrepresents-their-animation-the-escalator/#comment-1157617

renewableguy says:
November 26, 2012 at 8:14 am
###########################################
THe computers run the calculations for us to see what kind of sensitivity we come up with to changes in the atmosphere for a doubing of co2….
…This pattern (statisticians call it a “right-skewed distribution”) suggests that if carbon dioxide concentrations double, the probability of very large increases in temperature is greater than the probability of very small increases.
______________________________________
The computers only run the formulas and data they have entered into them. If the wrong formulas are used it is GIGO. The fact NONE of the models predicted 15 years of no warming says they have a lot of kinks. ‘Fudge factors’ such as arosols have been added.
“With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.” ~ John von Neumann.
You can find the detailed argument Probabilistic(?) estimates of climate sensitivity here
Then there are the estimates based on OBSERVATION not models:
On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications by Richard S. Lindzen1 and Yong-Sang Choi2
“As a result, the climate sensitivity for a doubling of CO2 is estimated to be 0.7 K (with the confidence interval 0.5K – 1.3 K at 99% levels). This observational result shows that model sensitivities indicated by the IPCC AR4 are likely greater than than the possibilities estimated from the observations.” link
Full paper http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf
NASA, NOAA: total climate sensitivity is below 1.65 °C
link
Spencer & Braswell’s new paper

RichardM, SkS does not accept that their is a flattening of temperatures. 1998 was a warm year, but the years around it, especially before were much cooler. So the overall decade of 2000s was warmer than 1990s, with no dropoff in trend.

Renewableguy says
From all of this, you should have figured out by now that any study implying that the net effect of more CO2 in the atmosphere is that of warming, must exhibit a balance sheet in the right dimensions showing us exactly how much radiative warming and how much radiative cooling is caused by an increase of 0.01% of CO2 that occurred in the past 50 years in the atmosphere. It must also tell us the amount of cooling caused by the increase in photosynthesis that has occurred during the past 50 years.
henry says
That looks like something I said. Good. At least you read something. You might be on the right track.
so where is it \, that balance sheet with the right dimensions?
how much cooling is caused by a certain increase in CO2 by the re-radiation of sunshine?
how much cooling is caused by the increase in greenery? (Vegetation/ trees need CO2 and warmth, you know. Or did you ever see a tree grow where it is very cold?)
Finally, how, EXACTLY, does that all compare with the warming by the re-radiation of earth shine?
hint: I might be looking for something with TIME in it? And CO2 CONCENTRATION? etc.

HenryP says: “In fact, I doubt if you can even show me one calibration certificate of a thermometer from that time.”
Bob Tisdale says
I only present data, HenryP.
henry says
don’t worry about the ignorant, (like renewable guy), we will have them always with us.
they are just here to boost the website’s visits numbers.
(seeing that we all get upset with him/her and want to get in our penny’s worth)
I must say that I honestly seriously doubt data presented from, say, before 1925.
They could hardly build a car back then.
Fact is, you could not produce a calibration certificate of a thermometer from back then so I wonder how anyone can think that we really have a basis for “global” temperature from 1880 – 1920.
It seems our records of the flooding of the Nile (and perhaps other rivers?) are good from before 1925 and this seems to confirm my fit for the drop in maximum temperatures.
This forms the basis of my belief in a weather cycle of around 90-100 years.
Before they started with the carbon dioxide nonsense they did look in the direction of the planets, to explain this weather cycle, rightly or wrongly.See here.
http://www.cyclesresearchinstitute.org/cycles-astronomy/arnold_theory_order.pdf
To quote from the above paper:
A Weather Cycle as observed in the Nile Flood cycle, Max rain followed by Min rain, appears discernible with maximums at 1750, 1860, 1950 and minimums at 1670, 1800, 1900 and a minimum at 1990 predicted.
(The 1990 turned out to be 1995 when cooling started, looking at maxima!)
Indeed, one would expect more condensation (bigger flooding) at the end of a cooling period and minimum flooding at the end of a warm period. This is because when water vapor cools more, it condensates to form more clouds and more water (i.e. more rain).
Now put my sine wave next to those dates?
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
1900- minimum flooding : end of warming
1950 – maximum flooding: end of cooling
1995 – minimum flooding: end of warming
So far, to explain this for myself, I do not exclude a gravitational or electromagnetic swing/switch that changes the UV coming into earth. In turn this seems to change the chemical reactions of certain chemicals reacting to the UV lying on top of the atmosphere. This change in concentration of chemicals lying on top of us, i.e. O3, HxOx and NxOx, in turn causes more back radiation (when there is more), hence we are now cooling whilst ozone & others are increasing.
Hope this helps a few people.

I should add: The Climate change in a shoebox: Right result, wrong physicsExperiment should be run in an open top box or with a pressure relief valve of some type and measurements of the pressure.
PV=nRT and all that.

RHS says:
November 26, 2012 at 8:35 am
Renewableguy – Why should anyone believe a model which leaves out water vapor when water vapor has a concentration of 40,000 ppm vs. the CO2 concentration of less than 400 ppm?
######################
Im not aware that water vapor is left out of all models. CO2 is a noncondensing gas while H2O is a condensiing gas. That makes CO2 the driver of the absolute humidity of the atmosphere.

Gail Combs says:
No, the relationship between the SUN and H2O is the main driver of our climate. Without the sun we are a block of frozen gases. The Milankovitch cycles show the sun’s impact as dependent on the earth’s relative position link The other biggy is the position of the continents. Look up the colliding, of the Pacific Plate and the Caribbean Plate.
################################
Total solar irradiance has mildly decreased while has mildly decreased while temperature has increased. The continetal drift is too slow to be relevent in the last 40 years. The same with milankovitch cycles.
Table 1: Trends in °C/decade of the signal components due to MEI, AOD and TSI in the regression of global temperature, for each of the five temperature records from 1979 to 2010.

renewableguy says:
“Total solar irradiance has mildly decreased while has mildly decreased while temperature has increased.”
Like the rest of renewableguy’s beliefs, he is wrong. TSI was low during the LIA, and has increased [not “mildly decreased”] since then.
When you get your misinformation from SkS, count on being proven wrong.

D Böehm says:
November 26, 2012 at 11:50 am
renewableguy says:
“Total solar irradiance has mildly decreased while has mildly decreased while temperature has increased.”
Like the rest of renewableguy’s beliefs, he is wrong. TSI was low during the LIA, and has increased [not “mildly decreased”] since then.
When you get your misinformation from SkS, count on being proven wrong.
################################
I was refering to the last 40 years. At the beginning of the last century the solar activity was a little stronger than it is now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar-cycle-data.png

D Böehm says:
November 26, 2012 at 11:50 am
renewableguy says:
“Total solar irradiance has mildly decreased while has mildly decreased while temperature has increased.”…
____________________________________
And the IPCC has been doing everything they can to hide that fact. SEE: Judithgate
Do you have any info/paper to go with that graph BTW?

Tom in Indy says:
November 26, 2012 at 9:34 am
renewableguy says:
November 26, 2012 at 7:50 am
Over 90% of the heat goes into the oceans.
Then what happens? If AGW assumes nina’s/ninos are white noise, then how does continuous increase in CO2 cause random bursts of global heat over the period 1970 – present?
If you attribute these bursts of heat during the period to changes in CO2, then shouldn’t each step up in the chart be getting higher and higher? Or, at least the trend in step height be getting higher? 2 of the last 3 steps are shorter than the first
#####################################
I have noticed some skeptics believe that its just the El Ninos that warm the earth, when it isn’t really the case. 2011 was the warmest La Nina in the instrumental temperature record. Which to me is an indicator of a warming ocean.
http://planetsave.com/2012/01/20/2011-hottest-la-nina-year-on-record-eleventh-hottest-overall-noaa/
They didn’t say this in the article, but I believe it is with removal of different natural variations and this is the warming that is left from all the different temperature records.
http://c1planetsavecom.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/files/2011/12/global-warming-signal-e1324566531618.jpg

Gail Combs,
The graph is from here.
And I see that renewableguy is cherry-picking again, with his chart of temperatures beginning in 1980 [with a real scary y-axis]. This is why he cherry-picked 1980. Look at what happened before then. No global warming.
Now, I won’t be able to change renewableguy’s mind, which is belief-based and closed airtight. But for other readers, here is a long term trend chart showing that the steady rise in temperatures since the LIA has been quite linear, with no recent acceleration at all. The planet has warmed at the same rate for hundreds of years. It did not matter if CO2 was low, or high: the warming trend has remained the same.
Inescapable conclusion: any warming due to CO2 is too small to measure, therefore CO2 can be completely disregarded for all practical purposes.

Greg House says:
“Gail, I opened the first 5 links you presented and, frankly, I am not surprised: all of them are completely irrelevant, they contain neither description of even a single physical experiment in question nor a link to such an experiment.
I just hope it was not an act of obfuscation and you simply did not understand the topic.”
Gail Combs says: “I started with the theoretical physics. […] I have not run the actual experiment so I can not verify the results. Perhaps someone with access to very sensitive…”
=====================================================
which means that you do not know any, and indicates that probably none exists, which means that that your warming “radiative forcing caused by CO2” is a pure fiction, unproven scientifically.

D Böehm says:
November 26, 2012 at 12:51 pm
Gail Combs,
The graph is from here.
And I see that renewableguy is cherry-picking again, with his chart of temperatures beginning in 1980 [with a real scary y-axis]. This is why he cherry-picked 1980. Look at what happened before then. No global warming.
#########################
CO2 has been proven to be the culprit in our warming earth climate. RG
##########################
Now, I won’t be able to change renewableguy’s mind, which is belief-based and closed airtight.
####################
You can convince me with overwhelming evidence. RG
####################
But for other readers, here is a long term trend chart showing that the steady rise in temperatures since the LIA has been quite linear, with no recent acceleration at all. The planet has warmed at the same rate for hundreds of years. It did not matter if CO2 was low, or high: the warming trend has remained the same.
############################
What the sun did 100’s of years ago isn’t relevant to today. The last 40 years the sun has decreased and the temperature has increased. Along with other evidence gathered by science, co2 has been narrowed down by eliminating the other possible causes. RG
############################
Inescapable conclusion: any warming due to CO2 is too small to measure, therefore CO2 can be completely disregarded for all practical purposes.
#########################
You might want to do better than a blog for “Its the sun stupid”. There are satellites that measure the sun’s activity very precisely.
RG

James Sexton says:
November 26, 2012 at 12:29 pm
@ renewableguy
I’ve read your amusing banter here. You seem to be missing something important to back up your claims about the recent 15 year plateau in the temps. There are, of course many things to say about the global temp average and it’s usefulness or lack thereof, but putting that aside for now, let’s review the theory.
Prior to the industrial revolution, the earth was at a supposed quasi equilibrium. According to warmists, as the earth gained atmospheric CO2, the earth warmed, because of it. Temperature, (the measurement of heat transfer) increased because the earth was emitting more IR as a response.
##########################
With the same or less input from the sun, the co2 slows down the infrared escape causing warming at the earth’s surface. RG
########################
This would then be an ever increasing phenomena. What mechanism is described as causing a cessation of increasing of temps against the backdrop of ever increasing aCO2? IR travels at the speed of light, no?
#####################
Its not clear to me why the speed of light is important in this. The simple answer is the heat goes into the oceans. If we were all land, the earth would heat up quite a bit faster. The oceans are the reason for the lag in response to increased co2. RG

Matt G says:
November 26, 2012 at 1:43 pm
renewableguy says:
November 25, 2012 at 5:45 pm
“…. Natural forces alone (such as solar and volcanic activity) cannot explain the observed warming.[4]”
Yes they can indirectly, the warming is wiped out by just decreasing global cloud albedo.
#################
Let me help you out with your argument. Decreasing cloud albedo would allow more sunlight in
to heat up the earth more. Increasing cloud albedo would reflect more sunlight back into space thereby cooling the earth. lol Have a good day. RG
##################
http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/6873/had3vlowcloudvsolar2.png

For Bob Tisdale,
Re my previous (lost above): since you state that the warming of +0.06 deg C/decade observed between Nov 1994 and Dec 2000 shows “significant warming”, would you also agree that the warming since Jan 1997 – Oct 2012 in HadCRUT4, which shows warming of +0.05 deg C/decade, is also “significant”?
As you may be aware, there was considerable press coverage lately (including on this site) suggesting that the trend in HadCRUT4 since 1997 was “flat”.
Perhaps you would comment on why a 73 month period with a +0.06 deg C/decade trend shows “significant warming”, whilst a 188 month period showing a +0.05 deg C/decade is “flat”?
Thanks.

Matt G says:
November 26, 2012 at 3:21 pm
renewableguy says:
November 26, 2012 at 2:06 pm
Wow, you clearly don’t understand the graph and nature of the post.
What you said is correct, decreasing albedo increases sunlight to the ocean and land surface and in this case is a strawman argument. The graph shows how the removal of global low cloud albedo change removes the warming of the post 1970′s period, understand now?
##############################
Less albedo is predicted from clouds as the temperatures warm. You are right, I didn’t understand what you were saying.

D Böehm says:
November 26, 2012 at 2:15 pm
renewableguy asserts:
“CO2 has been proven to be the culprit in our warming earth climate.”
However, that is a completely baseless assertion. Nothing of the sort has ever been “proven”.
The global warming trend since the LIA is exactly the same, whether CO2 was 280 ppmv, or 394 ppmv. There is no acceleration of the [completely natural] warming trend. Therefore, CO2 has no measurable effect. None at all.
##########################
Ignoring what the IPCC says on the matter is significant. How are they all wrong? RG
####################
RG says: “You can convince me with overwhelming evidence.”
Absolutely false. I have proven that RG is impervious to logic. That is typical of a religious True Believer. Nothing will convince RG that he worships a false god. Glaciers could once again flow over Chicago a mile thick, and RG would still believe the nonsense that CO2 causes any measurable global warming.
#############################
So what are today’s conditions like? Changes in both the orbit and tilt of the Earth do indeed indicate that the Earth should be cooling. However, two reasons explain why an ice age is unlikely:
1. These two factors, orbit and tilt, are weak and are not acting within the same timescale – they are out of phase by about 10,000 years. This means that their combined effect would probably be too weak to trigger an ice age. You have to go back 430,000 years to find an interglacial with similar conditions, and this interglacial lasted about 30,000 years.
2. The warming effect from CO2 and other greenhouse gases is greater than the cooling effect expected from natural factors. Without human interference, the Earth’s orbit and tilt, a slight decline in solar output since the 1950s and volcanic activity would have led to global cooling. Yet global temperatures are definitely on the rise.
RG
#########################################
If RG has any testable, verifiable, empirical evidence showing in a cause and effect manner that a rise in CO2 causes a corresponding rise in temperature, I challenge him to produce it. If there was any such evidence, skeptics would be pounded over the head with it 24/7/365. In fact, there are no testable, verifiable, empirical measurements showing conclusively that X amount of CO2 causes Y rise in global temperature. None — RG’s baseless assertions notwithstanding.
###########################
For now I’ll let you read it. If you want to further discuss this, I’ll do this in a seperate post.
###########################
Next, RG says: “…co2 has been narrowed down by eliminating the other possible causes.”
Complete nonsense. That is nothing but the old Argumentum ad Ignorantium logical fallacy; the argument from ignorance, so beloved of climate alarmists: “Since I can’t think of any other reason, then it must be because of CO2.” Those ignorant alarmists disregard the oceans, the sun, Miklanovitch cycles, albedo, clouds, and many other possible causes, and instead zero in on the one thing that lacks any measurable evidence; CO2. Theirs is religious-based ignorance, and nothing any rational person says will make a dent in RG’s pseudo-scientific True Belief.
############################
RG
co2 has a measured amount of radiative forcing and is at the top of the list of ghg’s that effect our climate. Maybe that’s not good enough for you I suppose. If I’m wrong then so are 98% of the climate scientists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_list_of_greenhouse_gases
RG
Below are the natural mechanisms for variation of cliamte. The IPCC has ruled out these natural changes as the reasons for our climate change temperature. RG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent_climate_change
There are also natural mechanisms for variation including climate oscillations, changes in solar activity, variations in the Earth’s orbit, and volcanic activity.
###################################
Finally, RG posted a chart that purports to show that declining cloud cover causes global warming. But look closely at the chart. It shows that ∆clouds are the result of ∆T. Strike three.
#####################
Read my last post
renewableguy says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
November 26, 2012 at 3:45 pm

renewableguy says: @ November 26, 2012 at 12:13 pm
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
First have you watched Bob’s videos? He explains ENSO very well so they are well worth watching
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…There is an inherent level of risk associated with moving forward with enormous amounts of co2 being emitted into the atmosphere….
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No there is not. The log curve shows we are at the point of vastly diminishing returns, C3 plants are no longer on the verge of starvation. Heat is uncomfortable but COLDS KILLS! Also based on the past history of earth and the Milankovitch cycles, Solar Insolation is already low enough to trigger glacial onset. For the last 8,000 years, the Earth has been cooling at 0.25°C per thousand years. See In defense of Milankovitch

Lesson from the past: present insolation minimum holds potential for glacial inception
Because the intensities of the 397 ka BP and present insolation minima are very similar, we conclude that under natural boundary conditions the present insolation minimum holds the potential to terminate the Holocene interglacial. Our findings support the Ruddiman hypothesis [Ruddiman, W., 2003. The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era began thousands of years ago. Climate Change 61, 261–293], which proposes that early anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission prevented the inception of a glacial that would otherwise already have started….

In otherwords CO2 is PREVENTING the onset of the next ice age according to Ruddiman.
Even Joe Romm over at Climate Progress at one time stated:
Absent human emissions, we’d probably be in a slow long-term cooling trend due primarily by changes in the Earth’s orbit — see Human-caused Arctic warming overtakes 2,000 years of natural cooling, “seminal” study finds…
A new paper from Markonis and Koutsoyiannis shows orbital forcings signal in proxy and instrumental records: WUWT discussion
Vostok graph:Temp, CO2, CH4, O18 & solar Insolation (present on left) Note Insolation, the bottom brown curve is headed DOWN.
Insolation past million years (present on right)

Temperature and precipitation history of the Arctic
…..Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present) ca 11 ka ago and has been decreasing since then, primarily in response to the precession of the equinoxes. The extra energy elevated early Holocene summer temperatures throughout the Arctic 1-3° C above 20th century averages, enough to completely melt many small glaciers throughout the Arctic, although the Greenland Ice Sheet was only slightly smaller than at present… As summer solar energy decreased in the second half of the Holocene, glaciers reestablished or advanced, sea ice expanded, and the flow of warm Atlantic water into the Arctic Ocean diminished. Late Holocene cooling reached its nadir during the Little Ice Age (about 1250-1850 AD), when sun-blocking volcanic eruptions and perhaps other causes added to the orbital cooling, allowing most Arctic glaciers to reach their maximum Holocene extent…

Woods Hole Observatory: Abrupt Climate Change: Should We Be Worried?
Fossil evidence clearly demonstrates that Earth vs climate can shift gears within a decade, establishing new and different patterns that can persist for decades to centuries. In addition, these climate shifts do not necessarily have universal, global effects. They can generate a counterintuitive scenario: Even as the earth as a whole continues to warm gradually, large regions may experience a precipitous and disruptive shift into colder climates.
This new paradigm of abrupt climate change has been well established over the last decade by research of ocean, earth and atmosphere scientists at many institutions worldwide. But the concept remains little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of scientists, economists, policy makers, and world political and business leaders. Thus, world leaders may be planning for climate scenarios of global warming that are opposite to what might actually occur.

Solar activity reaches new high – Dec 2, 2003
…Geophysicists in Finland and Germany have calculated that the Sun is more magnetically active now than it has been for over a 1000 years. Ilya Usoskin and colleagues at the University of Oulu and the Max-Planck Institute for Aeronomy say that their technique – which relies on a radioactive dating technique – is the first direct quantitative reconstruction of solar activity based on physical, rather than statistical, models (I G Usoskin et al. 2003 Phys. Rev. Lett. 91 211101)
… the Finnish team was able to extend data on solar activity back to 850 AD. The researchers found that there has been a sharp increase in the number of sunspots since the beginning of the 20th century. They calculated that the average number was about 30 per year between 850 and 1900, and then increased to 60 between 1900 and 1944, and is now at its highest ever value of 76.

Since the late 1970s, the amount of solar radiation the sun emits, during times of quiet sunspot activity, has increased by nearly .05 percent per decade, according to a NASA funded study.
“This trend is important because, if sustained over many decades, it could cause significant climate change,” said Richard Willson, a researcher affiliated with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University’s Earth Institute, New York. He is the lead author of the study recently published in Geophysical Research Letters.
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In this study, Willson, who is also Principal Investigator of NASA’s ACRIM experiments, compiled a TSI record of over 24 years by carefully piecing together the overlapping records. In order to construct a long-term dataset, he needed to bridge a two-year gap (1989 to 1991) between ACRIM1 and ACRIM2. Both the Nimbus7/ERB and ERBS measurements overlapped the ACRIM ‘gap.’ Using Nimbus7/ERB results produced a 0.05 percent per decade upward trend between solar minima, while ERBS results produced no trend. Until this study, the cause of this difference, and hence the validity of the TSI trend, was uncertain. Willson has identified specific errors in the ERBS data responsible for the difference. The accurate long-term dataset, therefore, shows a significant positive trend (.05 percent per decade) in TSI between the solar minima of solar cycles 21 to 23 (1978 to present). This major finding may help climatologists to distinguish between solar and man-made influences on climate.
NASA’s ACRIMSAT/ACRIM3 experiment began in 2000 and will extend the long-term solar observations into the future for at least a five-year minimum mission. http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/solar_trend_change_climate.html

The Role of Solar Activity on Holocene Glacier Length Variability in the swiss Alps Hormes, A., Beer, J. and Schlüchter, C., 2006: A geochronological approach to understanding the role of solar activity on Holocene glacier length variability in the Swiss Alps. Geogr. Ann., 88 A (4): 281–294.

RG says:
“Ignoring what the IPCC says on the matter is significant. How are they all wrong?”
Another assertion, and an appeal to an authority that has been shown to be consistently wrong.
Next, RG says: “The IPCC has ruled …” Enough with the nonsense. The IPCC cannot ‘rule’ on science. They have been shown to be consistently wrong. “ruled”, heh. As if.
The entire CO2=CAGW scare is based on evidence-free assertions. There are no empirical measurements showing that ∆CO2 causes ∆T. None. The only real world evidence shows exactly the opposite relationship.
As usual, RG cannot produce any testable measurements that support his belief system. If something can’t be measured, it is nothing but a conjecture; a belief-based opinion. An evidence-free assertion. That works fine at pseudo-science blogs like SkS and RealClimate. But it fails at the internet’s “Best Science” site. What RG is peddling here is his belief.
Wake up, RG. The UN/IPCC is running a scam. And credulous believers like you are falling for it. They even admit it:
“One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore”
~ Ottmar Edenhofer, Co-Chair, UN/IPCC, WG-3

I’m actually curious as to how Bob can provide error bounds when the only data he has to work with has none.
Any answers KR?
DaveE.

renewableguy says:
November 26, 2012 at 1:26 pm
Its such a short time interval, that to say the ocean won’t warm anymore I think is premature…
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There are several factors that seem to indicate a shift change in the weather patterns. The 15 year halt in SST is just one of them.
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Real Climate brings out a study showing the skin effect of heating on the ocean. There is clear evidence that the skin effect helps to heat the oceans.
That is absolutely hilarious. 400 ppm of a gas vs zillions of gallons of water covering 70% of the earth – it brings to mind Bambi Meets Godzilla
Have you ever bothered to look at the relative energy of the sun’s spectrum vs the earth’s? graph or WHAT wavelengths the majority of the energy radiates? graph
And while you are at it read: THE ACQUITTAL OF CARBON DIOXIDE by Jeffrey A. Glassman, PhD

Werner Brozek says:
November 26, 2012 at 5:39 pm
renewableguy says:
November 26, 2012 at 4:56 pm
Did global warming stop in 1998, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2010?
None of the above. It depends on the data set, but on three data sets below, it is sometime in 1997 that the slope is 0 for all practical purposes. (It is actually very slightly negative so no one can accuse me of stretching the truth.)
1. HadCrut3: since April 1997 or 15 years, 7 months (goes to October)
2. Sea surface temperatures: since March 1997 or 15 years, 8 months (goes to October)
3. RSS: since January 1997 or 15 years, 10 months (goes to October)
See the graph below to show it all.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.25/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.0/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997
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15 years is to short a time actually. Notice the high uncertainty. And yet overall the temperature data bases show warming.
all of them are 1997 to 2012
GISS 1997 to 2012
Trend: 0.92 ±1.40 °C/century (2σ)
NOAA
Trend: 0.49 ±1.32 °C/century (2σ)
Hadcrut3
Trend: 0.12 ±1.42 °C/century (2σ)
Hadcrut4
Trend: 0.58 ±1.36 °C/century (2σ)
Best Land only
Trend: 1.82 ±2.43 °C/century (2σ)
NOAA land only
Trend: 1.54 ±2.21 °C/century (2σ)
RSS
Trend: 0.06 ±2.49 °C/century (2σ)
UAH
Trend: 1.06 ±2.52 °C/century (2σ)
Trend: 1.06 ±2.52 °C/century (2σ)
Trend: 1.06 ±2.52 °C/century (2σ)

renewableguy,
Who are you trying to convince with your assertions? The relationship between CO2 and temperature is not what you believe it to be. And the UN/IPCC has been flat wrong.
Really, you are arguing like a Jehovah’s Witness. Scientific observations falsify your beliefs, but you don’t give up, do you? Religious believers are like that. Facts don’t matter; emotion is everything.

renewableguy says:
November 26, 2012 at 6:41 pm
Thank you. So within the error bars, every single one of the data sets could be 0 since 1997. Perhaps the world should wait a few more years before spending a huge amount of money that may not be necessary. Sixteen years of no change is not something that should be ignored, especially since no model predicted it.

Camburn says:
November 26, 2012 at 6:33 pm
Anyone who goes to SS for information is doomed to failure and certainly has no understanding of the dynamics of climate.
They seem to have some company!
See: http://principia-scientific.org/supportnews/latest-news/71-the-courts-hans-jelbring-and-the-kiwis-bring-joy-for-greenhouse-gas-deniers.html
“Weaver, the IPCC’s chief climate modeler, has fallen foul of court rules because he, just like Mann, has been timed out for failing to advance his case since since it was filed in February 2011. This boils down to a bizarre refusal to comply with court rules to show what’s behind his science.”

@ renewable guy
In response to my query you wrote,

With the same or less input from the sun, the co2 slows down the infrared escape causing warming at the earth’s surface. RG

Are you saying the sun’s variance causes temp fluctuations?
Further, you write,

Its not clear to me why the speed of light is important in this. The simple answer is the heat goes into the oceans. If we were all land, the earth would heat up quite a bit faster. The oceans are the reason for the lag in response to increased co2. RG

The two statements are interesting. Most warmist literature I’ve read consider the energy from the sun as relatively constant. As to the oceans, once it starts emitting more energy, what causes it to stop and then start absorbing more?
The idea that the earth calls a “time out” and takes a break without an adequate description of the mechanism can be regarded as nothing more than a convenient fiction.
The speed of light is important because …. once the quasi equilibrium was established, the earth’s IR emissions increases. It wouldn’t decrease if the CO2 was sending all that energy back to the earth. It would constantly increase. Think about it for a minute, instead of regurgitating inanities.

One more ” slayer “, Greg House is back again with his no back radiation nonsense. Mods, can we put a stop to these kind of posts from the slayers?
[then who would be next and where do we stop? You are not forced to respond to his or any post and we are tolerant of opinions here . . mod]

Tisdale: “The intent of the animation is to show that global temperature anomalies can flatten or cool over decadal or shorter periods while warming over the long term.”
Really? Really?
You lost me right there in the first para. Actually, people should go read the original, the animation was to show the error of cherry picking time intervals and confusing noise with reality. While the original post was more tongue-in-cheek than a real scientific article–after all, it was “published” on the internet, right?–it was pretty funny and it made its point clearly.
That someone would actually try to answer it with real criticism is sort of cute (in a sad way), but I thought that made the response almost more humorous than the original article. Too bad it was not written in a more straightforward way so more people could appreciate it.
-T
PS You guys should really stop changing the data sets every paragraph, you start to look like used car salesmen. Stick with one and make your point. Sheesh.

Greg House: You have neither presented a description of a scientific physical experiment proving CO2 causing warming nor a link to it, so you apparently have nothing. Zero. Exactly like other warmists I talked to on various blogs.
Hmm. Would this perhaps suffice?
http://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/papers-on-laboratory-measurements-of-co2-absorption-properties/

Douglas Hollis says
….to understand the rationale of those who would claim (contrary to the observed data)
Henry@Douglas
Truth is that most global data sets including my own show a peak at 1998 and subsequently, a downward trend from the beginning of this century.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2012/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2012/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2012/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2012/trend
In my own data set I included maxima as well which gives us a sense of energy-in. Of these measurements I analysed about 650000 daily data from 47 weather stations from 1974. Clearly, I found a change of sign in 1995, from warming to cooling.. Obviously there is a bit of a difference between energy-in and energy-out, hence the difference between 1995 and 1998. Further to this the best fit I can find for the drop in maximum temperatures is given here
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
You cannot “cherry pick” so many daily data and come up with a curve that looks as though somebody has thrown me a ball. In fact, I hope that the sine wave is correct, because if the curve is binomial the expected drop in maxima will be a lot more.
So some climate change is indeed happening, but it is as a result of (natural) cooling.
The polar-equatorial differential is now increasing and “the weather” is trying to equalize this.
This is one of the reasons we are all alive today: the whole weather system protects us from extreme temperatures. Nevertheless, the steep fall in maxima still looks a bit frightening. But if you count back 90 years, you realize soon that we have been here before. But be prepared for wetter, snowier, cooler and more windy weather, with the occasional bad storm.

BTW: Did I miss somewhere in your post where you attempted to contact SkS and find out the _exact_ data set they used? Or suggest a mistake was made? I know they mentioned the rough intervals they used, but I also know that adding or pulling a single point at the ends of an regression can markedly change the slope.
Given that you are already so close to replicating their “results”, couldn’t that could be the simple explanation for the differences rather than accusing them of misleading the public?
You don’t even seem to consider it. Why?

Venter says: “One more ” slayer “, Greg House is back again with his no back radiation nonsense. Mods, can we put a stop to these kind of posts from the slayers?
[then who would be next and where do we stop? You are not forced to respond to his or any post and we are tolerant of opinions here . . mod]”
==========================================================
Thank you, mod, and please note that I have never said “there is no back radiation”.
My point is that the alleged warming (or slowing cooling down) effect of “back radiation” has never been proven even by a single scientific physical experiment, hence it should be considered as a pure fiction and not as a scientific fact. Sounds logical to me: no proof = fiction (assumption, conjecture, whatever), but not fact. In other words, I do not question the existence of this back radiation, but I do question the alleged effect.
At the very moment such a valid experimental proof has been presented I will change my opinion and congratulate warmists, because then this fiction would become science. I am completely open to any outcome.
It would be nice, if my opponents could refrain from distorting this simple point of mine, thanks in advance.

Douglas Hollis says:
“Is anyone on here seriously contending that there’s been no warming since 1998?”
See for yourself.
Depending on your time frame, global warming has occurred since the Little Ice Age. But it regularly pauses, with no regard to aerosols, CO2, soot, or similar factors. In other words, “carbon” has no measurable effect. Can you follow that logic?
Further, if we look back hundreds of years we see that global warming has to be entirely natural, because the long term warming trend has been the same, whether CO2 was low, or high — proving that CO2 makes no measurable difference to the planet’s temperature.
The entire “carbon” scare is a false alarm. I trust you can understand that now.