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
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This was very well demonstrated by Burt Rutan in his talk on WUWT-TV. His observations of the data for global average temperature is at around 11.39. But it is well worth viewing the entire talk:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/26/another-wuwt-tv-segment-engineer-and-aviation-pioneer-burt-rutan-on-why-he-doubts-global-warming/
vukcevic says:
November 27, 2012 at 9:30 am
“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.”
I’ve always wondered how there could be a century scale “local anomaly” when it comes to “global warming”. If the air temperature in one or more locations shows no trend, how could this be so if CO2 globally is increasing? Over the large time scales associated with planetary climate change, I would suspect that no place would be immune to a general rise in temperature over, say, 100 years or more.
Steven Mosher says:
November 27, 2012 at 9:07 am
The data for the MWP and the LIA are much more comprehensive and of much better quality than the data that is used to claim a 0.7C rise over the last century.
@Steven Mosher
Confounding quantitative and qualitative data again?
I’ll try to clear it up for “you” (*). Qualitatively we realize from many lines of evidence that it has warmed since the “LIA”, but question the accuracy of the quantitative assertion of 0.7 C of warming to some hypothetically relevant “average global temperature”.
(* – Since I know you understand this; I’m just wondering who is it you’re trying to confuse.)
Steven Mosher says:
Let’s see if I get this straight. When deliberately you twist and distort what was said, very rarely do you get anything straight. But, you knew that.
Johanus says:
November 27, 2012 at 8:58 am
MiCro says:
November 27, 2012 at 7:35 am
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?
“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.”
Johanus, that’s my point. The co2 is doing almost nothing, and as such it’s not even increasing water vapor.
“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.”
I agree with the general premise that 0.7C is small relative to measurement error, but the implied concept that adding more stations makes the margin of error greater is nonsense.
If the stations were merely kept in the same places in open rural areas, away from confounding variables like aircraft and expanding blacktop, then having a larger number in diverse positions would decrease measurement error.
Its factors highlighted in Watts surface station project, plus moving and updating equipment, plus artifacts like UHI and the corrections applied for UHI that screw everything up.
And if all of the known error from adding and altering stations could be correctly accounted for, and the trend really were 0.7C/100 years, the question would still loom unanswerable by anybody here: What should the trend have been? Higher, lower, just what its been? How would one prove that, other than arbitrary curve fitting exercises?
It was about 5F too cold for lunch-break basketball today in Raleigh.
@ur momisugly Mosh, what you need to do is show us the “gas can” – aka, the much-ballyhooed “human fingerprint” to the warming. Find it, and maybe you too have a Nobel Prize in your future.
“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…….”
Good evidence of relative warming or cooling????? Actual temperatures?????
Where is the evidence for this. How would one know a change in tree rings is caused by warmer temperatures vs more rain vs more CO2 vs more sun vs a hormonal growth spurt vs gently talking to them in the hope of motivating wood production?
RockyRoad says:
November 27, 2012 at 9:01 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.
________________________
Very true.
If there are any ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ in this mess, it has been done by the ‘Blatant Liars and Liars for hire’ who not only promote CAGW but the end of a viable civilization just as we are entering a cooling phase.
5 January 2011: World food prices at fresh high, says UN
Sunday December 5 2010 BRITAIN IS FREEZING TO DEATH “MIDDLE class families are among millions of Britons who cannot afford to heat their homes this winter, as elderly ride on buses all day to stay in the warm… a shocking picture has emerged of the bleak months ahead for 5.5 million households.”
Keeping the country short of water is now government – and EU – policy
They are pretty darn blatant about their aim to drive us all into poverty too.
I can not wrap my head around the fact that there are so many who KNOW they are intentionally condemning there children to poverty. I questioned one Prof. at a local college about it and he told me he explained it to his 10 yr old daughter and she was “Ok with it.” This is the same kid who was talking about buying a horse when she got out of college to me a few minutes before…. MAJOR DISCONNECT! These cocooned middle class socialists wouldn’t know what real poverty was if it bit them on the bum. What is more poverty is for us not them…. they think.
Talking about the average temperature of the Earth is nonsensical because of the extremes. Death Valley and Libya cannot be compared to Arctica and Antarctica. Here in UK we have the “benefit” of the Gulf Stream, which makes winters milder and summers cooler and both wetter. Compare with the Taiga in Russia or Southern Canada which are on the same latitude. The only way that temperatures can be said to be higher or lower is by comparing temperatures from individual sites over many years and only then if the thermometers are not situated on heat islands as most of them are.
RockyRoad says: @ur momisugly November 27, 2012 at 9:31 am
….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 credibility in those studies than what Mann perpetrated on mankind.
_______________________________
Geologists seem to be the only group not “seduced” by the CAGW BS because Geologists take the long view and are a lot harder to BS.
I am also more inclined to believe in what is ‘carved in stone’. It is a lot harder to adjust.
[snip. No chemtrails comments, please. Site policy. — mod.]
“The data for the MWP and the LIA are much more comprehensive and of much better quality than the data that is used to claim a 0.7C rise over the last century.”
Yeah, all those Vikings with their thermo couples and high-res thermometers and satelites kept really accurate MWP temperature records, I don’t think.
MiCro said:
“Johanus, that’s my point. The co2 is doing almost nothing, …”
Sorry. I misinterpreted the preposition ‘through’ in your sentence as having an ‘instrumental’ intent (i.e. ’caused by’):
Doesn’t a “30C” daily drop in temperature (avg ~18F world wide) through all of the excessive co2 in the atm…’
I still think it’s true that warmists have convinced a lot of folks (including the MSM) that ‘warming by CO2’ is a bigger problem than ‘warming by H20’.
Using Mosh’s analogy of the gas can – sure it may well be present – but did it ever have any gas in it? THAT is the true skeptical question, is it not?
Two Unanswerable Questions
I teach MBA Statistics, but I am not a statistician. I am an Engineer by trade who holds three advanced degrees in Business. However, I do have a love for and appreciation of math. As such, I am always skeptical of any use of data or data sets. This is especially true when it comes to Climate Change and the human contribution to the same. There are two questions which particularly disturb me the most, and until they are answered, I don’t have any confidence whatsoever in the current debate.
The first question is: “Is it possible to derive a single temperature that represents the average temperature of the earth for any given year?” Several scientists have clearly shown that this is not possible. There are several reasons for this answer. The first point being that the start and end points are purely arbitrary and using a calendar or solar year is still arbitrary. The second point is that our earth consists of solids, liquids and gasses each of which have their own temperature cycles. The third point is that the earth exists in four dimensions and selecting a single point to represent an average temperature of only one of the three elements can only be considered as arbitrary. It is certainly not a statistically valid number no matter how many statistical methods and tests were used to derive the number. A single, non-dimensional (it has a measurement value, but not a space/time value assuming that Einstein’s relativity is correct), number does not take into account the fact that we live in a space-time continuum that consists of four dimensions. Therefore, one must, if they are honest, conclude that no single number can represent the “average temperature” of the earth for any given period. I don’t care which side of the debate you are on.
The second question presupposes, that somehow we could magically derive an answer to the first question, and is: “Given that an answer to the first question is found, what is the “Ideal” temperature of the earths’ solids/liquids/gasses?” Does anyone know? Can they know? I think not.
My view is that until someone can answer definitely these two questions, then most of the Climate Change debate is no more than a flailing of the wind. And until someone on either side of the debate can provide me with such answers, I will continue to be skeptical of any claims.
Steveta_uk says:
November 27, 2012 at 10:26 am
“Yeah, all those Vikings with their thermo couples and high-res thermometers and satelites kept really accurate MWP temperature records, I don’t think.”
Maybe the thermocouples were bigger back then, eg, the Vikings barns that are being exposed now in Greenland?
The idea that a higher accuracy of an average temperature for the Earth leads to a better understanding of the climate music and its rules is a bad idea, along with the idea to reconstruct the average temperatures of the warm/cold times, because the ‘absolute average temperature for the Earth’ never have a scientific value in natural science.
A scientific value can begin if there is coherence of two or more functions in nature while the nature of the functions is more relevant than the absolute value of the function. And this is easy to understand because the accuracy in time of the climate frequencies is better than the reconstructed temperatures over time. Moreover the climate frequencies can be analysed and can be taken to find heat oscillators and its heat source for a physical heat current from warm to cold.
Unfortunately most of the capacity of people involved in climate war is used to fight against fallacies created by the mob in the social community, which includes bloggers, consumers of climate soap stories and well paid authorities in the universities and institutes.
AFAIK nobody in the climate science community talking about anthropogenic warming has taken the reconstructed temperature frequencies to be analyzed in the data of UAH, RSS, hadcrut4, etc. as a physical reality of heat ; the nature of these real oscillators are the key to the understanding the solar heat system.
V.
Steveta_uk says:
November 27, 2012 at 10:26 am
Actually, the evidence of the LIA and MWP could well be considered ‘more’ valid than a current temp data ‘rise’ of a few tenths of a degree – in the context of proxy data really just being an assessment of ‘differences’ and trends over an extended period of time. I don’t necessarily agree with the temperature values assigned or ‘put onto’ proxy data – but the trending is the most useful information as it is this that demonstrates the real likely natural variation of earths temps with time – contrast to a few decades of UHI affected and potentially maladjusted air temperature measurements, averaged, homogenised and tortured til they squeak, etc, etc!
There are three basic ways of reasoning:
Deduction (logically unassailable eg the theorem of Pythagoras)
Induction (arguing from the general to the particular eg the sun will rise tomorrow)
Analogy (of which the less said the better)
Whoever is so intellectually bankrupt as to use analogies, do not hesitate immediately to consign their opinions to the flames (whether caused by lightning or “gas can” it matters not).
Anthony,
Thanks for posting this hard-hitting critique of the state of ‘climate science’ and the problems with the current debate. An excellent piece.
My favourite excerpts (from the full essay):
“When serious shortcomings of the hockey stick study began to be exposed and questioned the climate alarmists closed ranks and proclaimed their preeminent authority and expertise but refused to engage in any genuine scientific debate with their critics. Instead, they appealed to a supposed consensus of experts, peer review, and personal denigration of any who dared to disagree.”
And…
“The essential difference between belief and science, or between alarmists and sceptics, is that the former assert certainty while the latter admit room for doubt. False claims of certainty and expertise by alarmist researchers have been a major obstacle to any rational public debate of the matter.”
Truisms. Thanks again. Kudos to Walter Starck.
Steveta_uk says:
“Yeah, all those Vikings with their thermo couples and high-res thermometers and satelites kept really accurate MWP temperature records, I don’t think.”
Again, the confounding of qualitative and quantitative data.
Evidence from the Vikings tells us qualitatively that the North Atlantic Region was warmer around 1000 AD than it is today. Added to that evidence is qualitative evidence all around the world that it was warmer in a lot of locales (spread out mind you such that one could reasonably conclude although without absolute certainty that most locales) circa 1000 AD than it is today. Therefore; the quantitative assertion that the world is 0.7 degrees warmer now than it was then is likely to be either in error or essentially irrelevant qualitatively.
But, of course, we could all be wrong and global average temperature is actually being (and has been for centuries) controlled by aliens.
simon abingdon: Induction (arguing from the general to the particular….
Er, I think it’s actually the other way around. But I would not dismiss analogy so lightly. An analogy may be purely illustrative. Or it may point to instantiations of general propositions. In either case it can be used or misused.
Can you please point it out to me? I saw no such statement, to that effect.