by Walter Starck (in Quadrant Online)
The average temperature for the Earth, or any region or even any specific place is very difficult to determine with any accuracy. At any given time surface air temperatures around the world range over about 100°C. Even in the same place they can vary by nearly that much seasonally and as much as 30°C or more in a day. Weather stations are relatively few and located very irregularly. Well maintained stations with good records going back a century or more can be counted on one’s fingers. Even then only maximum and minimum temperatures or ones at a few particular times of day are usually available. Maintenance, siting, and surrounding land use also all have influences on the temperatures recorded.
The purported 0.7°C of average global warming over the past century is highly uncertain. It is in fact less than the margin of error in our ability to determine the average temperature anywhere, much less globally. What portion of any such warming might be due to due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions is even less certain. There are, however, numerous phenomena which are affected by temperature and which can provide good evidence of relative warming or cooling and, in some cases, even actual temperatures.
These include growth rings in trees, corals and stalactites, borehole temperature profiles and the isotopic and biologic signatures in core samples from sediments or glaciers. In addition, historical accounts of crops grown, harvest times, freezes, sea ice, river levels, glacial advances or retreats and other such records provide clear indication of warming and cooling.
Recent Warming Nothing Unusual
The temperature record everywhere shows evidence of warming and cooling in accord with cycles on many different time scales from daily to annual, decadal, centennial, millennial and even longer. Many of these seem to correlate with various cycles of solar activity and the Earth’s own orbital mechanics. The temperature record is also marked by seemingly random events which appear to follow no discernable pattern.
Over the past 3000 years there is evidence from hundreds of independent proxy studies, as well as historical records, for a Minoan Warm period around 1000 BC, a Roman Warm Period about 2000 years ago, a Medieval Warm Period (WMP) about 1000 years ago and a Modern Warm Period now developing. In between were markedly colder periods in the Dark Ages and another between the 16th and 19th centuries which is now known as the Little Ice Age (LIA). The warmer periods were times of bountiful crops, increasing population and a general flourishing of human societies. The cold periods were times of droughts, famines, epidemics, wars and population declines. Clearly life has been much better in the times of warmer climate, and there is nothing to indicate that the apparent mild warming of the past century is anything other than a return of this millennial scale warming cycle.
Good News Unwelcome to Alarmists
This rather good news about a possibly warmer climate has not met with hopeful interest from those who purport to be so concerned about the possibly dangerous effects of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). On the contrary, their reaction has overwhelmingly been a strong rejection of any beneficial possibility. It is apparent that their deepest commitment is to the threat itself and not to any rational assessment of real world probabilities or the broader consequences of any of their proposed remedies.
Fabricating a Hockey Stick from Hot Air
This blanket rejection of any possibility other than the hypothetical threat of AGW has led to some strange behaviour for people who modestly proclaim themselves to be the world’s top climate scientists. Not only have they ignored and dismissed the hundreds of studies indicating the global existence of a Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, they have set out to fabricate an alternate reality in the form of a graph purporting to represent the global temperature for the past thousand years. It portrays a near straight line wiggling up and down only a fraction of a degree for centuries until it begins an exponential rise gradually starting at the beginning of the 20th century and then shooting steeply up in the latter part of that century. This hockey stick-shaped graph was then heavily promoted as the icon of AGW. It appeared on the cover of the third climate assessment report of the IPCC published in 2003 and was reproduced at various places in the report itself.
Among the emails between leading climate researchers released in the Climategate affair were a number which revealed a concerted effort to come up with some means to deny the existence of the MWP. The implement chosen to do this became known as the Hockey Stick Graph.
The methodology used to construct the graph involved the use of estimates of temperatures from a very small sample of tree growth rings from the Yamal Peninsula in far northern Siberia and ancient stunted pine trees from near the tree line in the High Sierras of California. This data was then subjected to a statistical treatment later shown by critics to produce a hockey stick form of graph even when random numbers were used as raw input data. To make matters even worse, the same tree ring data also indicated a significant decline in temperature for the 20th century, but this was hidden by burying it in a much larger number of data points from instrument measurements. The resulting study was published in the prestigious scientific journal, Nature in 1998. Remarkably, this very small, highly selected and deceptively manipulated graph was proclaimed to be an accurate representation of global temperatures and the extensive body of contrary evidence was simply ignored.
full essay here: http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2012/11/speak-loudly-and-carry-a-busted-hockey-stick
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Doesn’t a “30C” daily drop in temperature (avg ~18F world wide) through all of the excessive co2 in the atm, prove that even if there is a slight loss in cooling due to co2, it’s insignificant in the Earths ability to radiate heat through air?
“The average temperature for the Earth…”
Might as well stop reading right there. There is no such thing.
Wow, doesn’t all of the “revisionism” of climate science history by all of the alarmists make them the true deniers?
“………….for a Minoan Warm period around 1000 BC,…………”
Is this correct as per the post?
a picture, a thousand words ….
http://i47.tinypic.com/2i7mfex.jpg
Equally deceptive is the matching atmospheric CO2 level hockey stick which “confirms” the correlation and false hypothesis. This is banker driven, credit default swap faux science to FORCE Carbon commodity markets. The bankers first removed a stable Gold and Silver based monetary system, replaced with a fiat “trust” currency that they could inflate on demand. They now wish to convert to a decreasing based energy system that will automatically inflate as supplies are forced to be restricted to “save” the planet. See “Fractional Reserve Banking Begat Faux Reality” and then follow the money. Grant fed climate “scientists” are the handmaidens of this bank fraud.
I’m in the choir and I like the preaching.
Unfortunately, the current US administration is tone deaf and sleeps in on Sunday.
We will soon be hit with a tidal wave of “carbon” laws and attendant indoctrination.
It seems that we are now at this stage as per the Quadrant article.
When they realised that global warming had stopped they shifted gear onto extreme weather. Unfortunately, observations are not on their side as many have pointed out time and again.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/climatic-phenomena-pages/extreme-weather-page/
Anthony:
Thankyou for publishing this excellent summary.
I commend everybody to use the link so they can read all of the article. It is all very much worth reading. It states the basic facts and their clear implications in plain English.
It is truly excellent. Again, thankyou for bringing it to my attention.
Richard
It’s illegal to play ice hockey with a broken stick, as I examined here:
http://drtimball.com/2011/only-in-climate-science-can-you-play-with-a-broken-hockey-stick/
However, they were also playing with the wrong piece of equipment. Tree rings, the substance of the hockey stick are primarily measures of precipitation. They were playing tennis with a hockey stick.
And that is the core of the problem with AGW. To keep the meme alive, Warmists, some through delusion and extraordinarily pitiful science, others through nothing more than falsified data, keep hollering so as to make it appear that there is massive confirmation.
A good summary and an interesting comparison to the Italian earthquake legal decision. The IPCC is, however, straightforward in saying that they provide “scenarios”, not predictions.
The 5C rise, if it occurred, would be catastrophic on the basis of their unfolding of the consequences, but the IPCC does not say that it will occur. Indeed, even the idea that human activity is responsible for the majority of the last 0.7C* of warming is, by the IPCC, only very likely, even if it is at the 90% certainty level recently advised. That 90% means that there is still a 10% chance that humans are not responsible for recent warming.
The caveats are present. It is the MSM and normal human understanding that have turned the probability into a certainty. We do not take a 90% certainty to mean that we could be surprised. We act as if 90% certainty means that someone did 90% of the work required to show 100% certainty: the “thing” is certainly happening, but we have not done the work (or cannot do the work) to make that assertion.
CAGW is a debacle that will be solved naturally in time. Through a number of indications of temperature “stalling”, lack of key IPCC-defined signatures, PDO/AMO and solar models of heating causitive factors, within two years we easily could see the tide turning on CAGW. “Acidification” of the oceans will become the issue then, for the real agenda as easily seen in the pronouncements of Erhlich, Suzuki, Greenpeace and the WWF, plus Hansen and Strong, is to shut-down the consumption by humans of the inorganic resources and biological production of the planet. In this way the non-human biosphere will be “saved” through direct non-harvesting of our living foodstuff and environmental alteration (“degradation”) of the biosphere. When CAGW becomes unsaleable, other tactics still applicable to a growing and consuming human population will be used.
Personally, I see 2010 as the tipping point, the point at which the positive warming of the planet reached its peak. By 2015 I expect we will see declines that are progressive. Sealevels are also likely to drop for a couple of years anyway, as they are going into the back half of a normal short-term cycle right now, but they, too, should hesitate to rise as they always do during a cooling phase. Hansen et al will modify their temperature histories to maintain the illusion of continued warming, without doubt, in the same way that the sea-level rises were given a 0.5mm/yr rise to account for the post-glacial, isostratic rebound – a technically correct “adjustment” that creates a more “worrisome” number without actually representing a greater problem.
When will pieces like this get into the mainstream? Forbes already has had some skeptical articles. Bloomberg, who benefits from the panic, not yet. But it is coming. Trouble is, the economic and social damage of CAGW is in the relative speed of the two factions on the issue.
The article ends with:
A WAKE-UP call perhaps?
Perhaps the world’s politicians (not leaders, they are another bunch) have noticed that famine – 2008: Egyptians riot over bread – and high food prices can lead to civil unrest and ultimately the overthrow of the government that does nothing to correct the problem. Egypt — Revolution and Aftermath
The US government is not immune to this type of threat US Military Reveals Coup Plan To Topple Obama: … report red-lined to President Putin this morning warns that “various elements” within the US Military establishment are “actively planning” for the overthrow of President Barack Obama prior to the November elections…. And if the USA is not immune are other world politicians?
One can only hope this wake-up call has been heard.
Jeff Alberts says:
November 27, 2012 at 7:44 am
“The average temperature for the Earth…”
Might as well stop reading right there. There is no such thing.
__________________________
Keep reading because that is just what is said.
I dont know if anyone can answer this question I agree that it is difficult to measure average world temperature, but is to easier to measure world global temperature differences? The illustration I use is a house with two rooms; one at +50 C the other at -50 C. It makes no sense to say that the average temperature of the house is 0 C. But if one room heat to +51 C, and the other -49 C, does it make sense to say the house has been heated by 1 C?
It seems to me that a few years ago the warmists stopped talking about data and framed CAGW in a moral sense, in other words it became a purely moral issue, to believe in it gave one a higher moral ground than not to believe in it. Nevermind the facts; they want to shame people in to conformity – thinking that one is immoral if one is skeptical. As more and more people become skeptical, the warmists cry becomes more and more shrill. Now they want us to believe that we are seeing terrible weather events due to carbon dioxide alone, without an intermediate warming step. I think that current weather and climate are well within normal variation.
But what really bothers me about warmists is that they want others to do as they say, not as they do. I think that they should lead by example, and give up using electricity and home heat and driving cars and flying on jets and air conditioning. If they really believe, then they should all get together and live in a carbon-free community of their own making, and live like the Amish.
Minoan Warm Period 3000 years ago
Roman Warm Period 2000 years ago
Mideval Warm Period 1000 years ago
Kind of sounds like we were due for another warm period anyway.
No. Because it’s water vapor, not CO2, doing almost all of the heavy lifting (and warming) here. The warming caused by CO2 is rather small and is easily conflated with natural variance.
Congratulations to the CAGW community for their very effective propaganda campaign,which has brain-washed “true believers” like MiCro into thinking that CO2 is the cause of all warming and other other taxable disasters.
JackT says:
November 27, 2012 at 7:52 am
No, it makes them true liars. Blatant liars. Liars for hire. The worst kind of liars. And their lies have contributed to the deaths of millions of people worldwide. The implications go way, way beyond history revisionism or broken temperature alarmism. How they sleep at night is a real mystery.
“The purported 0.7°C of average global warming over the past century is highly uncertain.”
” Not only have they ignored and dismissed the hundreds of studies indicating the global existence of a Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, they have set out to fabricate an alternate reality in the form of a graph purporting to represent the global temperature for the past thousand years. ”
Let’s see if I get this straight. We are certain of a LIA, but uncertain of a rise in temperatures since the LIA. Certain of a MWP, but uncertain about the rise in temperatures
But then we find
“Clearly life has been much better in the times of warmer climate, and there is nothing to indicate that the apparent mild warming of the past century is anything other than a return of this millennial scale warming cycle.”
So, the LIA was certain ( where? how cold? how do we know?)
The rise of .7c is uncertain.
But, we are certain this uncertain rise is a “return of a millennial scale” warming.
Also, what the writer fails to take notice of are the reconstructions that use no tree rings.
details. details. details.
A good skeptic looks at all the evidence.
An fire inspector comes upon a the scene of a fire. He finds a gas can.
Somebody points out that lightning has been know to cause fires. In fact, the very scene the inspector is examining was burned to the ground 100 years ago by a lighting strike.
He thinks its a human set fire.
Somebody argues that lightning explains fires, in fact, this very spot was burned by a lightning caused fire.
Fires happened in the past. Big fires. Those fires were set off by lightning. Therefore, the null hypothesis is that all fires are set by lightning.
Hmm, ya, there is that matter of the gas can. Nevermind that. The science is settled. Ligthning cause fires and millennial scale “cycles” “cause” the rise in temperature. Kinda weird
to see that skeptics think this science is settled.
Interesting program on TV last nite (National Geo?) on a significant N Atlantic cooldown 4200 yrs ago causing a severe drought in the Middle East/east Africa that practically dried up the Nile! The Egyptian & Mesopotamian cultures were almost wiped out.
Cooling can cause disasters in areas even far from the cooling.
Jim Cripwell says:
November 27, 2012 at 8:34 am
I dont know if anyone can answer this question I agree that it is difficult to measure average world temperature, but is to easier to measure world global temperature differences?….
______________________________________
It is especially difficult when those who are ‘guardians of the data’ are continually messing with it. link
In my honest opinion the best bet is to look at what plants thrive where. If you can no longer get your tomato plants to set fruit it is getting colder. WUWT: The day of the killed tomatoes WUWT: Mexico’s biggest freeze since 1957 means US produce price will skyrocket
I would also be looking at the October Northern Hemisphere snow anomalies link In other words how soon is it getting below freezing in the fall?
Let us face it the real concern is (or should be) the food supply and therefore the growing season. Too cool to plant, to cool to set fruit/seed and too soon to freeze. These types of records have been kept long before anyone started measuring with thermometers.
When do you plant in the spring? When the guys fishing start sitting on the river bank instead of standing. A primative but effective measure of the soil warmth.
One measure that never seems to be mentioned is the change in temperature of caves. For example in 1970 the caves in lower Indiana was 52.5 F Vermont is in the forties and Sonora Texas ~70F.
CO2 instead of being castigated as the devil should be hailed as our savior because it make plants grow and makes them more drought resistant. C02-Enhanced …Yield (Yield increases observed among eight genotypes of tomato)
In the mid latitudes of W. Europe, based on the 350 year long CET records, there wasn’t much warming in the summer months except for the natural cycles.
However winters have similar natural cycles but with an average warming of about 0.4C/century, which translates to annual 0,26/century.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/MidSummer-MidWinter.htm
NASA GISS experts dismiss the CET as a local anomaly, but in their scientific wisdom tell us that a single tree from the Arctic circle in Yamal is an excellent representative of the global temperature trends.
Travesty and a swindle.
Steven Mosher says:
November 27, 2012 at 9:07 am
You’re daft, Mosher. The word “settled” doesn’t appear in the article even ONCE–only YOU put it there.
But he does point out that the Hockey Stick is one “study” based on very flimsy data using a bogus mathematical algorithm. (If you need somebody to spell out the “settled” consequences, I’d be happy too: PURE BS!)
There are numerous studies based on much more tenable data for the three warming periods immediately preceeding this one. And as a geologist, I put a million times more credability in those studies than what Mann perpetrated on mankind.
I suggest you have a cup of coffee before making an intellectual fool of yourself.
Mosh except the fire inspector in this case is paid more if it is a human set fire, so that’s how he calls it.