People send me stuff.
Reader Kurt writes:
I just found your excellent website and have book marked it and will visit it often for updates. One simple question the global warm-mongers have never been able to answer is…
…that if in fact warming is taking place as they claim, what then is the optimum temperature of the Earth? Can they give us a number? is it 55 degrees? 78 degrees? 85 degrees? 98.6? Al Gore says the Earth has a fever – then what is the “normal” temperature?
==============================================================
I thought about that long and hard, and thought to myself that it is sort of like a “Goldilocks” subjective temperature for porridge:
At the table in the kitchen, there were three bowls of porridge. Goldilocks was hungry. She tasted the porridge from the first bowl.
“This porridge is too hot!” she exclaimed.
So, she tasted the porridge from the second bowl.
“This porridge is too cold,” she said
So, she tasted the last bowl of porridge.
“Ahhh, this porridge is just right,” she said happily and she ate it all up.
But what is “just right” for Earth’s temperature? Depending on who you might ask, I suspect you’d get different answers.
The Neanderthals, who lived through the last ice age, 10,000 to 70,000 years ago, might say “uggghaa bok mak!” or in present language “warmer than it is now!”.
Ancient Greece, living in their age of enlightenment, which flourished during the 5th to 4th centuries BC might remark “είναι σωστό τώρα, τον πολιτισμό μας ευδοκιμεί” or “it is correct now, our civilization is thriving”.
The Romans, who lived through the Roman Warm Period from 250 BC to 400 might say “frigus quam praesens placere” or “cooler than the present please”.
During the Islamic Golden Age of expansion, 622-750AD, They might argue the temperature was “just right” for them.
In the Medieval Warm Period, from about AD 950 to 1250, when humanity started to thrive, they would probably say the porridge was “just right”.
Right after that, the Vikings in Greenland would probably have asked Onan Odin for some extra warmth.
During the Little ice Age, from 1300-1850 it would seem certain most people would ask for it to be warmer, especially since it had such a well documented negative effect on human history.
As for now for 1850 to present? Well, it just safe to call it the tail end of the Holocene Climatic Optimum although some people think it is too warm and are actively campaigning to reduce Earth’s temperature.
After thinking about how those previous civilizations in time might perceive their preferred temperature, and thinking about Kurt’s question, I realized that it might very well be an intractable problem, aka the Gordian Knot:
“Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian Knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter”
(Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 1 Scene 1. 45–47)
Or as Dr. Judith Curry once remarked to Congress:
Climate change can be categorized as a “wicked problem.”
As to the answer to Kurt’s question, the best answer I can offer would be this:
A temperature at which the widely geographically varied and widely climate adapted human civilizations and cultures can go about their lives without undue hardship.
But what is that optimum “just right” temperature numerically? Well, first it is a local-versus-global problem. A local temperature suitable for the Eskimos isn’t likely to be suitable for the indigenous people of the Amazon. Second, it is a question of global average.
The average temperature of the Earth is said to have been and is:
Between 1961 and 1990, the annual average temperature for the globe was around 57.2°F (14.0°C), according to the World Meteorological Organization.
In 2011, the global temperature was about 0.74°F (0.41°C) above that long-term average, according to the WMO’s estimates.
Source: UCAR/NCAR
So if we are to accept those numbers, our current global temperature is 57.2 + 0.7 = 57.9°F
Between 1961 and the present, Earth’s human population has gone from 3 billion to 7 billion, more than doubling, and in that time the global temperature changed only 0.7F according to UCAR/NCAR. Given the population growth, you could say that slight temperature rise has increased the human condition to a more favorable environment.
But, honestly, I don’t think the global temperature matters much in the scheme of things, because despite gloom and doom predictions of global warming to kill millions by 2030, the projections are still upwards:
![pop_005[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/pop_0051.gif)
I think it is science and adaptation that matters more than global temperature:
![World_Population_Chart[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/world_population_chart1.jpg?quality=83)
Source: http://econosystemics.com/AphetaBlog/?p=9
So probably, the best path forward from here is to shrug our shoulders at global warming, and to simply adapt, as mitigation (given the performance we’ve seen from current schemes to reduce Earth’s temperature) will be a true Gordian knot that will likely bankrupt us in the process.
Besides, our current warming from posited greenhouse gas effects may actually be helpful to us, because in climatic terms, there’s this maxim of mine:
If you don’t like the Earth’s climate, just wait a millennium.
And that is not too far ahead it seems, E.M Smith writes in Annoying Lead Time Graph
This graph from TheInconvenientSkeptic bothers me.
It bothers me because of what it says.
What it says, by two different modes of reading, is that we have no business being warm right now…
![LI-Holocene[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/li-holocene1.png?quality=75)
Click to enlarge
@Axel
The sixty-feet-per-week sounds harsh
The total rise: About a hundred
And that took centuries: a marsh
Became sea-bottom. Crawled, not thundered.
Happy New Year! Let it be
Full of new wisdom, and success
Let panic over one degree
Decline and fail, and Team confess.
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
Imagine – it’s Monday morning and you have a job interview. Outside it’s blowing a gale and it’s the coldest it could possibly be to produce instant slush but no snow. Your car is hating the cold and almost certainly has a flat battery. The alarm has just gone off and you poke your nose out of the duvet. At that moment your bed is at the optimum temperature for humans.
James Davidson says:
January 1, 2013 at 11:51 am
So would you prefer to live in a world at -18 deg Celcius or 14 degrees Celcius?
I was given to understand back in my college days that the earth had an internal heat source which was nuclear in nature. If heat is generated in the core of the earth, does that not effect the surface temperature even a little bit? None at all? Weird.
Steven Mosher says:
January 1, 2013 at 12:25 pm
“Now, comes the question, is it safe, is it wise, to go to a world that is 20C. That is, if you had the power to suddenly make the global average 20C, would you do it without thinking twice. Last time the earth avergae 20C, there were alligators at the north pole. no prudent person would argue that is a good idea to go to 20C.”
It all depends on how you get the global average of 20C doesn’t it. If daytime temps are 21C and nighttime temps are 19C all year round then bingo – you have an average of 20C. If we swing from 100C to -80C then you can say we have a problem. As it stands at the moment even if we do get an average of 20C we still won’t get alligators at the North Pole or South Pole since the axial tilt means that for 3 months of the year there is no sun and temps will still plummet to -70C or so.
I think maybe you need to think about things a little more.
Steve, one could also ask, “What is the optimum CO2 level for our world?” However, the problem with trying to answer a question like that also leads one back to the optimum temperature question. For, no matter what parameter is chosen, that parameter is part of a very complex system. So even if you could magically set the temperature at some “golden” place, what makes you think it would stay there? The same with CO2 levels, for by raising or lowering CO2 we are inadvertently also raising and lowering an overabundance of other parameters, most of which we probably don’t even realize exist. The error bars on our knowledge of this planet (solar system, universe) are much greater than the knowledge itself. We see through a glass, darkly (to coin a phrase). There are very few times, during the whole of recorded human history (which is, granted, rather short) where a problem is solved without creating many other (and sometimes more severe) problems. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy (Hamlet, 1, 5). I actually think that future generations will look back at us in much the same way we look back at Tulipmania, and wonder why we made such a fuss about nothing. Sorry, it has been snowing here the last few days, and I get super philosophical at those times.
My first thought is that we – like the rest of our planet’s inhabitants – pretty much have to get on with what we have. There is not much we can do about the Sun’s output, or orbital geometry, or volcanism, directly.
We can adapt.
As humans we are able, to a considerable extent, to adapt. We have clothes, and houses, and, more recently, gas and electricity. And caribbean holidays!
But
cui bono’s
comment about ‘freeze framing’ caused me to pause. Any substantial change in global average temperature will, I think, lead to changes in coastlines, watercourses, population distribution, crop and livestock productivity, and doubtless many more factors.
We live in a world where national borders – recently – have been pretty fixed. But look at Europe in the Nineteenth Century – wholesale changes in borders, with the creation of Italy and Germany, Norway splitting from Sweden in about 1900, then, about 1918 the shattering of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the creation of the Irish Free State – now Eire.
Perhaps the post-1945 stasis, or comparative stasis, as the Soviet Union broke apart after it lost the Cold War with Yugoslavia following somewhat bloodily, is the historically abnormal? Perhaps states, principalities, duchies, always merge and split?
What might be normal if, either, sea level rose by ( whatever, say 100 metres), or if glaciers returned to Liverpool, Illinois, and the course of the Neva River?
IIRC, studies have been published – no, not the same as verified – indicating that the previous warm period ended pretty quickly. A descent into a full Ice Age glaciation in decades, or less, possibly, would be somewhat disruptive, were it to occur.
Adaptation will help – but major energy, raw material, and container ports miles from the receding sea, as water gets tied up in glaciers, will certainly hamper world trade.
Will your Walmart, Carrefour or Tesco shelves be full of he world’s bounty without modern mega-ships, and mega-ports?
Regardless of the pleasure it might give to the warmistas, delightful chaps and chapesses though we know they are ( yeah, sarc off!), I think a smidgen of warming is preferable to the same amount of cooling, overall.
And, no, I don’t know which we will get. I fear it might be the cooling.
Auto
Tongue firmly in cheek:
It’s wicked. Or wicca. Plot the number of witches v.s. earth’s temp. It was warm until we started burning as many witches as trees. Draw a chart! You’ll see the hockey stick!
We can’t wait to see if the Malleus Malificarum is correct, if we wait, the earth will go up in the flames of divine judgment (Gaia if no one else, apparently the B* doesn’t like even one W*, or as Barbara Bush once said, “Rhymes with rich”). We need to burn them now!
“because there is a risk, we should not ignore pathways to mitigation. we should not unthinkingly dump C02 into the air if we have other choices or can develop other choices. Neither should we adopt mitigation plans, where adaption can work.”
Perhaps we should pause and inform ourselves further by sitting back and observing, measuring and learning more about how natural processes actually work. Instead of the current panicked policy of firing a decreasing store of ammunition into the dark, while betting humanity’s survival on hitting the target.
@Steve Mosher
You mention that TSI was approximately the same during the LGM as it is today. Whether or not that can be accurately determined is questionable enough, especially since the process of glaciation took place well before the LGM, I believe current theories show substantial differences between today’s TSI and that of 5-10,000 before the LGM. Leaving that aside, you proceed directly to CO2 as a causal factor, without considering any other conditions that could lead to cooler temperatures.
My degree in physics has taught me at least one thing: no single variable in an extremely complex system can be ignored. I’m not arguing for epistemological nihilism, but I would gently suggest that anyone who tries to infer climate sensitivity from three factors (temperature, TSI, and atmospheric CO2) is on extremely shaky ground. What we do know is that cold temperatures should lead to greater absorption of CO2 in the oceans so it’s certainly possible that the 200 PPM level that you cite was an effect, not a cause.
CO2 certainly causes some warming, but it’s extremely simplistic to infer climate sensitivity by attributing 100% of global temperature changes to GHGs.
I vaguely recall, but stand to be corrected, that some of the coral island atolls were being populated during the Medieval Warm Period.
Steven, first, thank you for a thoughtful and detailed post. I read most of it before looking to see who wrote it, and I was shocked. Onwards to your points:
Steven Mosher says:
January 1, 2013 at 12:25 pm
It would be useful if you would define “boundary condition”. A “boundary” implies a dividing line between two different things. What “boundary” is there in something like temperature.
OK, we can agree that there is something called “too hot”, and something else called “too cold”.
Absolutely not. The change in CO2 from glacial to interglacial is adequately explained by the change in sea surface temperature. You are assuming that about 100% of the change in temperature is a result of CO2 change. In fact, about 100% of the change in CO2 is a result of temperature change. This argument is completely wrong.
This question is premature. First, you need to answer the question, what are the chances that in 150 years we’ll still be burning fossil fuels for energy? Because that is how long it may take to burn the fossil fuels. I’d say that the chances of us still burning fossil fuels for energy in the year 2150 to be about zero.
I’m sorry, but as I just showed, the “evidence” you just presented is meaningless. We do not know how much temperature change, if any, we’ll get from increasing CO2. We have lots of speculation, we have lots of models.
We do have some evidence. For example, we have the evidence that the warming 1975-2000 is statistically indistinguishable from the earlier warming of 1920-1945. This means that the great increase in CO2 post 1945 made no noticeable difference in the warming rate. This is actual evidence, Steven, that the effect of CO2 was too small to measure, even over a quarter of a century.
In fact, the globe has been warming, in fits and starts, at about the same rate, half a degree per century for the last three centuries or so. The recent rise of CO2 has not changed that in the slightest, as near as I can tell. This is even more evidence that the effect of CO2 is very, very small.
I love it. A “plan” on how to shift the world off of fossil fuel, as if that will make the slightest difference. I guess I’ve seen too many such “plans” come and go, Steven, from the USSR’s five year plans to Jimmy Carter’s plans for energy independence to Obamas “plans” to make us a solar Eden. None of them have made the slightest difference. The market is inexorable. The only place we have solar is where well-meaning idiots are picking someone’s pocket to pay for how horrendously expensive it is … after decades and decades of unending work, still way too expensive.
A plan to get off fossil fuels? You’ll forgive me if I’m in a wait-and-see mode regarding that.
Should we burn “up to” three hundred and fifty ppmv as McKibben argues? Well, as of today we’re at 392.8 ppmv. If you can show me one single person who has been demonstrably harmed by that, Steven, I’ll shake your hand.
And when you, or anyone, comes up with a cost-effective way to reduce CO2 without increasing energy costs, I’ll be the first man to sign up. Kyoto ain’t it … cap-n-tax ain’t it … diluting gasoline with corn alcohol ain’t it …
Yea, that’s a great theory about the future, steven. Here’s an ugly fact about the present.
As your policies continue to increase the price of energy, current generations are demonstrably being harmed right now, today. Pensioners are shivering in fuel poverty today in Europe and the UK because they’re bought into your carbon alarmism. Increasing energy costs is one of the most regressive, repressive taxes imaginable. It hardly touches the wealthy, but it body-slams the poor … and you just look the other way and continue dreaming about causing a tenth of a degree temperature reduction in fifty years.
You want to accuse me of possibly maybe causing pain and suffering in a hundred years? Get real. Your short-sighted carbon policies are causing pain and suffering today. All you have to offer in return are incorrect calculations about the ice ages and promises of the possible avoidance of future suffering.
Perhaps you think that is a good deal, trading present suffering for a vague possibility of future gain. Me, I think that future generations will view the effect of the carbon hysteria on the poor of the planet and judge you harshly. You are ignoring current suffering in order to focus on some imagined future benefits. We don’t have to wait to see if your policies will make future generations “pay the price”. The poor of this generation are paying the cost of carbon hysteria today, and will continue while you sit in your warm office and ignore the damage your policies have already occasioned.
w.
@Steven Mosher
“At 800 ppm, the evidence suggests, we get a world that is somewhere between 17C and 19C, if not warmer. ”
There is evidence?
What kind of evidence?
Empirical evidence, historical evidence or ‘computer modeled evidence’?
Evidence that shows that a difference of 200 parts per million of CO2 (0.0002% of the Earth’s atmosphere) overwhelms all other ‘climate drivers’?
I always presumed the Climatic Optimum was so called because it provided optimum conditions for man and other life on Earth. So a Goldilocks temperature is implied by the name.
If warmists mention a Climatic Optimum they invariably precede it with “so-called”.
Likewise, the Medieval Warm Period becomes the Medieval Climatic Anomaly.
Newspeak: alter people’s thoughts by altering the language.
I like the Goldilocks metaphor. It evokes an image of carbon bureaucrats force-feeding the world with cold porridge forevermore.
Well, McKibben has, psychologically, anyway. And hasn’t Joe Romm’s head exploded more than once? Of course, one could argue whether those would be considered “harm”.
/sarc
Being of Scandinavian descent, I thought I might be the first to catch the erroneous reference to Onan, but was beat by several. But, to clarify, Onan is the poster child for coitus interruptus, not masturbation. Today, Onan’s successors might be those in government who enjoy all the benefits of screwing the rest of us over while not delivering on their stated aims. It would be better if, on the other hand, they were just screwing themselves.
Would it be getting too warm, at least within short time, if, say, species would go extinct and habitats shifting north? Would that indicate a non – normal temperature even without knowing what is “optimal”?
() yes
() no
Regarding Onan/Odin – fixed. Thanks everyone. I think it is a case of my familiarity with a product brand seeping into my consciousness, since I recently had to deal with a balky electric generator. http://www.cumminsonan.com/
I was thinking (erroneously) that Onan was the Norse God of power. Clearly it is the similar Odin. -Anthony
Yeah, Doggerland was a sort of Celtic Atlantis at one time. There would have been a tsunami from a slide in Norway that swept across it and wiped out most people happening to be sleeping there one night (might have been day, but to think if it happening at night is more dramatic). Most of that place probably got washed away in that event.
What are now the Persian Gulf and the Adriatic Sea would have been flat, fertile river valleys. These would have been places from which the people that originally founded the Mesopotamian and Greek and Roman civilizations would have originally come. They would have been forced to migrate to a land where living was harder as the sea levels rose and the climate began to dry out. It is no wonder that these cultures gave rise to such cultural legends that include stories of bountiful carefree times of the past and flood legends. Most of the areas that are flooded today are very flat in topology. A small rise in sea level could have deprived tribe of a lot of their territory and forced them into the area occupied by a different tribe or into “the wilderness”.
Meltwater Pulse 1A was a 20 meter rise in global sea levels over a period of about 200 years or so and even after that the sea level kept rising at a good clip though that period was a period of extraordinarily faster rise. Assume that most people at that time had their first child at 15 years old and assume that it was fairly common for someone to live to 40 if they made it out of childhood alive. Over 10 generations would have experienced that rise. A meter a decade of rise is amazing and that assumes the rise happened gradually in a linear fashion, we don’t know that it did. Parts of it might have come “all at once” as some melt water lake burst its containment. A meter of altitude above sea level can be a long distance over flat ground. Now imagine someone were to see four meters of sea level rise in their lifetime. Places that are under 12 feet of water when they died at 40 would have been the beach when they were a child. They would have told stories to the children about villages and tribes and water holes in locations that were then under deep salt water and the stories the parents of the elders told them would be under deeper water still. No wonder so many flood legends built up in so many different civilizations. Maybe Atlantis is what is now the Adriatic Sea and was a fertile valley watered by the Po and other rivers that joined it.
I believe you can see what used to be a shoreline in the Adriatic. If you pull it up on Google Earth, you will notice a feature that runs across the Adriatic from Pescara, Italy to roughly Sibenik, Croatia. “Upstream” of that feature is much shallower. In any case, the drastic change in sea level at that time over such a relatively short period of time SHOULD have made for some stories to explain it. Even of a lost civilization that was swallowed by the sea. What if one tribe migrated to Mesopotamia and another to Persia without either knowing the fate of the other but who had been aware of each other in the valley. Maybe they developed stories of the other tribe having been “punished” for their wicked ways and their own tribe having been saved. The possibilities are nearly endless but the way humans worked back then with stories passed by word of mouth from one generation to the next, it SHOULD have made for some interesting legends to be written down when we finally figured out how to do that.
We evolved on the African savanna. Mostly because it is too hot in the middle of the day for almost all other animals other than us. We were the King of the African savanna day-time. Now our language and technology has allowed us to survive the 6 month night-time 3.5 kms high on the Antarctic ice-sheet but we are made for the heat of the mid-day Sun.
Between 1960 and 1991 the global mean temp was 14.0°C and increased by 0.41°C by 2011. Really? Climatologists can resolve an average temp to 0.1°, or better still, 0.01°? No standard deviation? No testing for statistical difference? Pardon me if I find it difficult to believe that the measurements of global temperatures are that good.
Steven Mosher says:
January 1, 2013 at 12:25 pm
That is your worst post in many years. Go back to your thinking of 3 years ago and start again.
Timely post, I have been searching the reference pages trying to figure out what , assumed mean global temperature, is used with which global temperature anomaly graph.
I was trying to track down the post which mentioned the dropping of this mean from 15 to 14C and my inability to do so has lead me sideways.Ethanol has helped.
What kind of incompetent would graph temperature anomalies about a zero, of an assumed historical mean, without posting that mean under the graph.MET 1961-1990 mean, No number.
Without being sure, which mean is used, the discussion of changes amongst the anomalies becomes a discussion of ,how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
And because this is climatology, I will assume the worst, the undefined mean is deliberate, an intentional diversion of attention and effort.
A change of 0.5C looks so meaningful on a scale range of 3C(-1.5 to 1.5) Until you consider that the mean is 14 to 15C best guess? and has an uncertainty of 2C on a good day.
Richard Courtney points out in his 2010 brief to UK parliament, that the mean, means various things to various beings, but there is only one true global average temp, if such is possible.
So a little help here, NASA uses a 1951-1980 GMT of 14C , MET uses 61-90 MGT of ??Is it me or their site? Mosher up post uses 14-15C, well is that the best we have?
And if any of the key (IPCC) organizations did change their reference mean, when and what is the effect on claims of temperature rise?
Struck me that by reducing the mean 1 degree would allow one to claim to show a 0.5 warming in the face of a 1degree cooling, all else held equal.
Axel wrote about the advance of the sea experienced by our ancestors who lived on what is now the North Sea, and was a bit perturbed about the figure of 60 feet per week. He then suggested the idea that even two orders of magnitude (downward) might be feasible rate. I think that the surmise that the figures referred to sea /level/ is perhaps wrong. I believe that it may refer to the /horizontal/ advance of the coast line, not the sea level in a vertical sense.
“that we have no business being warm right now…”
That conclusion is not entirely supported by the graph:
1) You’d need to see a lot more than a partial cycle to determine “what now should look like”. For all I can tell from that graph there’s no correlation at all outside the snippet that’s shown and looking at the time frame I’d guess that during the last few peaks of the “leading indicator” the temperature remained cold as it would have been the last glacial period which lasted much longer than the current interglacial.
2) There no reason to believe Earth would have exactly equal and opposite rates of warming and cooling, it sure doesn’t for the diurnal cycle.
See figure 2 & 3: http://www.oneonta.edu/faculty/baumanpr/geosat2/Urban_Heat_Island/Urban_Heat_Island_Part_I.htm
3) There’s only one temperature driver? What about solar spectral variation for example? Considering the time frame: snow albedo?
A better statement IMO as opposed to the one quoted above would be:
That we are likely to be as warm as we are only by the thinest margin of thermal resistance, favorable albedo, and favorable shorter and longer scale forcing alignments such as solar spectral variations. An unfortunate confluence of unfavorable (to warmth) shorter and longer scale drivers could lead to a relatively rapid (geologically speaking) decent into glacial conditions.
Hopefully, our own paltry influence will assist in maintaining this interglacial.