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?
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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)
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)
Click to enlarge
Glad you hot your hands around that Onan / Odin thing.
That having been said, masturbation is under-rated – it’s having sex with someone you love!
Happy New Year
I was going to comment on Steve Mosher’s inane posting, but Willis Eschenbach has done the job for me and shot him down in flames.
“The Neanderthals, who lived through the last ice age…”
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From a Bloomburg article about George Church, a guy who wants to do a “Jurassic Park” on the Neanderthal genome:
“…[bring] mammoths and other creatures back from extinction. Why would we want to do such a thing? Well, it turns out that mammoths clomped around in the tundra and stopped trees from growing and taking over vast grasslands. The increase in trees since their disappearance has contributed to warmer temperatures because the trees don’t reflect light or consume carbon dioxide as well as grass. “We need practical reasons as well as inspirational ones with this technology”, Church says.
I see: it is not only industrialised nations, but trees as well that are evil.
In addition to de-industrialisation, it looks like we are going to have to replicate the biosphere of the past in order to have a “perfect” global temperature.
So practical and inspirational, huh?
Willis makes an important point. Energy taxes are about the most regressive taxes possible.
In large part the problem is that those arguing for these taxes don’t know any poor people and have no experience of being poor.
As my mother used to say, “Out of sight, out of mind”.
CO2 really ceases to matter much once albedo gets to a certain point. You can’t “trap” heat which is never generated in the first place. Greenhouse warming relies on light that makes it to the service being converted to long wave infrared. If you have a field of ice that reflects the light and does not convert it to LWIR, then it doesn’t matter if the atmosphere is pure CO2, the light simply gets reflected back out. If you want to look for a factor that amplifies greenhouse warming, it would certainly be albedo. But once you get snow that fails to melt one summer and provided you get a decent snowpack the following year that also fails to melt, all the CO2 in the world isn’t going to help you maintain temperature because you are reflecting that light right back into space and there isn’t any LWIR on which the CO2 can act. A small change in albedo would have a tremendous impact on the amount of warming CO2 can accomplish. CO2 doesn’t CREATE heat.
Heck, want to remove a huge amount of LWIR? Cover the Pentagon parking lot with a white cover. Now you don’t have a bazillion cars baking in the sun, each one a little greenhouse converting sunlight to heat that gets trapped by CO2, not to mention the black surface of the parking lot itself. You will have absolutely “removed” the impact of nearly all the CO2 above that parking lot. How much heat is converted from sunlight into LWIR by a car sitting in a parking lot in summer? No idea, but it is too hot to lay your hand on.
Go to the central Sahara, to an area of SE Algeria, an area known as Tassili n’ajjer, where all is bare rock, gravel ergs and sand. There you will encounter hundreds of rock paintings that record and testify to an era of the Holocene known as the Climatic Optimum. These paintings record the wildlife of those times: antelope, giraffe, ostriches, and such. Also recorded are human figures and cattle. The Sahara then was a verdant plain, full of lakes and rivers. The reason that this era is known as the Climatic Optimum is because global temperatures were warmer than today, some 4,000- 6,000 years ago. It is not known precisely how much warmer, but most guesses put it around 2 C. The reason that rainfall was higher was because the oceans were warmer and evaporation rates were higher. Deserts shrunk around the world, and the Great Salt Lake and the salt flats testify to this era of higher rainfall in the American West.
Global warming means more rain, shrinking of deserts, more arable land, and a longer growing season, and more food for a population that will double and redouble worldwide in this century. The scare talk about drought is concocted for the ignorant and the gullible.
A warmer world means a better world. It means milder winters rather than hotter summers. It means a lower heating bill and less snow and ice. Life flourishes in a warmer world. Cooling is the scythe of death.
Unfortunately the benefits of a warmer world are not to be ours. There was some hope that we could achieve this heaven on earth by burning fossil fuels, but the abysmal failure of AGW theory makes it clear that this will not happen. And now we see a cooling trend setting in.
We can argue with the Gibbons (Kibben, Kitten) of this world ’til we are blue in face and it will make no difference what so ever: and I think I can include Mosher in that group now BUT there really is only one question ” are humans capable of controlling or modifying the climate of a planet”? The answer ; Absolutely not !!! The energy required to bring the planetary system to equilibrium is way beyond are capability. Unless someone proves otherwise in the future , of course.
The sensible course is to adapt. Yes we need to avoid polluting everything we need to survive but the definition of pollution currently being proposed by the idiots of the AGW mob is ludicrous beyond belief.
“….the primary supply of energy, the sun, delivered the same TSI as today…” – Mosher
but there are other parameters that do change , and may affect the ratio of absorbed/radiated energy.
SIDC non-smoothed Sunspot number for December is 40.8 (well down on Novm. 61.4), while the annual SIDC non-smoothed SSN for 2012 is 57.6 (2011 55.6).
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSN.htm
It’s going to be: Sixteen Going on Seventeen” of no global temperature rise, optimum or not.
HNY.
John West says:
January 1, 2013 at 1:29 pm
“that we have no business being warm right now…”
John, your are technically correct but you are nit picking. IMHO
The big question is how do we change the temp? The OECD is forecast to increase emissions from 2008 to 2035 by 6%, yet the non OECD will increase emissions by 73%
If co2 emissions are supposed to be the problem I just wish Mosher and others would tell us how to stop development in China, India etc.
The USA is reducing emissions pronto via coal seam gas , but China etc emissions are soaring. So it’s time for the warmists to put up or shut up, show us the way. But please don’t forget the simple maths above or you’re wasting our time..
Reality is there is no such thing as a global average temperature and we would be better off if we stopped this type of discussion.
If the average global temperature is 14 C then we in South East Queensland are already living with 6 degrees C above the average. Obviously I realise that would change and we may have a climate more like Darwin, even Singapore.
I always find it amusing that climate pseudoscientists believe the Sun can’t heat the Earth anymore because they believe their method of calculating the “blackbody” temperature of the Earth based on one quarter Solar power 24 hours day is right – this seems to be the main thrust of their claims.
But the temperature the Earth radiates at bears no resemblence to the noonday maximum under the powerful Solar radiation on a clear day – so their calculation of a “blackbody” temperature is simply wrong – the solar radiation can heat the Earth to very high temperatures.
Once you accept that you realise it is the Sun, Stupid.
Matt says:
”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, too warm (above normal) and outside their adaptive ability for the species that go extinct.
No, not too warm (normal) or within their adaptive ability for the species that expand.
We would not be here if many species had not gone extinct. What is the optimum number of species?
What is the optimum assortment of species? Should alligators roam Greenland as they once did or should they be confined to NC and points south as they are now? Should aragonite or calcite forming organism dominate the ocean?
What is normal has changed many times over the course of pre-history and we owe our very existence to that driver of adaptation.
Willis: Thank you Sir !!!!!!
john robertson says: January 1, 2013 at 1:27 pm
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.
>This will straighten you back up John.
http://notrickszone.com/2012/08/16/data-from-leading-ipcc-scientists-show-global-temps-have-dropped-unprecendented-1c-since-1990/
Steve Mosher said:
“At 800 ppm, the evidence suggests, we get a world that is somewhere between 17C and 19C, if not warmer. some think (me included) we will get there at lower concentrations.”
I call BULL. That outcome only happens with huge positive feed–backs built into the models. The empirical evidence is the feedbacks and negative. So much for the 17-19 degrees idea eh
Steven Mosher says: January 1, 2013 at 12:25 pm
we have estimates for the LGM that range around 2-4C cooler, and ranges for the holocene optimum that range 0-1C warmer.
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Most temperature estimates put Holocene warming at 8-10 C above glacial temps. Putting the Holocene Optimum at 0 C above today is to deny the holocene optimum and is against the weight of evidence.
Since humans survived the last glaciation and thrived during the warm periods, the “best” temperature is between the glacial period temperature and the Holocene climatic optimum.
Is there really a need to get the facts in this debate or is a rat hole more important as Lord Christopher has mentioned ? Here is a link to a good article on gloom and doom prediction and the social response http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-31/end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-and-i-feel-fine.html
(@Steven Mosher)
Steve, I think you overstate what we know. In reality, we don’t know that much about what a quadrupling of the CO2 concentration will do to climate. But I do think that the question of what temperature would be optimal for humans (let’s say in terms of long term global GDP, there is no better measure at hand) is a sensible one, and as important as any other question about climate.
And I disagree with your picture of 4 degrees colder or warmer as approximately equally bad. We know ice ages are indeed bad for humans (too cold and too dry, and much worse on land than at sea); present society would be unimaginable under the climate of say 12,000 years ago. How we would do in a much warmer world is more uncertain, but the overall warmer and wetter climate and the reduced meridional temperature gradient which can be expected (leaving the continents where they are for now) combined with more CO2 for crops and other vegetation would likely be highly beneficial. Just avoiding the next ice age would already be a massive benefit (when comparing predicted consequences of different CO2 emission scenario’s, I would like to see solid evidence that we can before I would believe it). So even though we do not know everything, the warm/wet/high CO2 scenario has definitely the better cards given what we do know; we are less sure about how far to push it to get close to an optimum. I suspect that by the time we do know more and really have to make up the balance, the polar bear will have to adapt or, in the extreme case, make room for the alligator. At any rate, what global climate regime is optimal to human society is a very worthwhile topic to study. And it is not easy.
Gene!
What a marvellous piece. James Burke ConnectionsI will look for more,
Interesting question. The issue is less what is the optimum temperature for humans, but what the crops and creatures we survive from will require. The pace of warming and additional GHG’s is currently very rapid- forests can’t get up and move, so they burn, and crop genetics tend to be site and soil specific. The first 14 minutes of this presentation explains it well:
http://guymcpherson.com/2012/12/the-twin-sides-of-the-fossil-fuel-coin-presenting-in-massachusetts/
Stephen Richards says:
“John, your are technically correct but you are nit picking. IMHO”
Perhaps I am. I just wouldn’t want what E.M. Smith is saying to be taken out of context to mean something like: “we have no business being as warm as we are so it must be the man-made CO2”. I realize the timeframe of the graph precludes that conclusion but you know how the CO2 control advocates can twist our meaning. IMHO, we have to be very careful not to supply the alarmist mentality with more fuel than they already have with overly broad statements that can be easily taken out of context for the sake of people new to the “debate”. I do agree with what he’s saying, I just don’t like the way he said it. LOL, Oh my, that may be the definition of nit picking. Touché!
Meanwhile, back in the day.
http://members.shaw.ca/wellandwx/blizzard77.htm
The answer to that question is 21 degrees Celsius or 69.8 degree fahrenheit. The average annual temperature where I live is 24 degrees Celsius (Charters Towers QLD Australia) and I love it. I dont own a heater and our house only has one airconditioner that rarely gets used. Why 21 or 69.8? The greatest explosion of life on Earth occured about 530 million years ago. At this point in time the average surface temperature was approximately 69.8 degress fahrenheit. Yes, the oceans would rise but due to current land distribution with the continent of antarctica sitting on the South pole it might not be as much as most people think (refer average temperature of Antarctica). It is worth noting that carbon dioxide levels (plant food) at this time were around 4,000ppm or 0.4% which I believe is about the Earth’s Optimum level. The explosion of all life in the Cambrian era only reaffirms this hypothesis.
clipe says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
January 1, 2013 at 2:25 pm
Meanwhile, back in the day.
http://members.shaw.ca/wellandwx/blizzard77.htm
Back in the day of the looming man made Ice Age.