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
Europeanonion says:January 2, 2013 at 2:17 am
[…]
Perhaps we forget the lowering of the use of power in a warming environment that will equalise temperature change to some degree, everything does not have to be exponential.
Where is there exponential warming? No one forgot your first assertion, it never existed.
LazyTeenager says:January 2, 2013 at 4:57 am
[…]
Since the whole point of climate skepticism is a refusal to adapt I cannot believe you are serious when you speak of adapting.
Come on LT, I know you try so hard to live up to your name, but if you are to continue to comment, you might try reading what people say here instead of just fantasizing. The only non-adaption is being stuck on CO2, your ilk. It was a good theory but never worked out get over it, adapt man.
– – – – – – –
Kurt & Anthony,
Thanks for the question Kurt and Anthony your article addressing it in a comment-stimulating manner.
I offer up a different angle to Kurt’s question.
What is the spectrum of regional climates with all their associated parameters (not just temperature) that provides the most opportunity for mankind’s greatest productive achievement and for most efficient resource accessibility?
Perhaps it isn’t any specific global climate that can optimize mankind’s environment but a sufficiently varied spectrum of regional climates that can. It seems to make more sense to me when expressed that way.
John
phlogiston says: January 2, 2013 at 6:15 am – …. This might in turn result from by increased transpiration by more vigorous CO2-boosted vegetation, among other factors changing climate. …
CO2 ‘boosted’ vegetation exhibits the exact opposite, less transpiration because of a reduced number a stomata. CO2 is demonstrated to cause most plants to grow faster, healthier and be more drought resistant because having fewer stomata makes it easier for them to retain moisture.
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TFNJ says: January 2, 2013 at 2:30 am – More to the point, what is the ideal CO2 concentration?
I agree, that is the fundamental question to ask because CO2 is the primary gas of life itself. Plants will get by just fine without animals and or without a significant free O2 atmosphere, (they originally evolved without free O2). But we animals cannot get by without plants to eat and provide us free O2 to breath.
We depend on plants completely so THEY should be the determining factor of how much CO2 is the right amount of CO2 in the air – not us. From what I’ve read, the minimum CO2 concentration, (that above which plants do not seem to exhibit any significant additional benefit), is somewhere north of 1000ppm.
So forget about ‘ideal’ temperature, plants and animals have already demonstrated an ability to survive a range of global temperature swings of about 15 degrees C and we are currently about 7 degrees below the average global temperature of the last ~400 million years. So a few more degrees cannot only be expected to be no problem, if paleolithic history is a good indicator, a few more degrees will be a very good thing, (a greater amount of tropical area = more biodiversity **), and we will easily adapt to it. (** – One of my favorite challenges to alarmists is to answer which climate supports more species of life – Alaska or Ecuador?)
The ultimate climate challenge for humans should be in averting the next ice age not worrying over run-away global warming fantasies from computer models that apparently remain painfully incapable of describing the true complexity of natural climate variability.
I presume the rank and file alarmists prefer a temperature for the earth which they can feel confident is not being influenced in any way by humans.
But an endless assessment of human influence provides them with the endless worry, advocacy and resources for their many missions.
So they don’t really give a crap what any thermometer says.
Regarding any adapting to climate, when do we see any need to adapt to anything?
Because here in Oregon, from the ski slopes to our beaches and everything in between, there are no signs of anything needing adjustments.
When do we have to adapt and what sort of adjustments would we be making?
I think that many are conflating “optimum” GMT perspective. The optimum GMT for human habitation of the earth is that GMT (and CO2) which maximizes our food source. At some GMT the earth will produce the maximum plant and food production. That would be the optimum temperature and CO2 levels for the entire biosphere. We need to know what that parameter’s value is. We can then calculate the “effect” of any deviation from optimum as given decrease in living matter.
This would enable proper long term planning and contingency planning IMHO. Without this value, how can we possibly plan any mitigation. GK
“””highflight56433 says:
January 2, 2013 at 8:02 am
Ken Harvey says:
January 2, 2013 at 5:25 am
“What also gets ignored is the temperature arising from gravitation – air pressure that would exist were the sun to shine or not.”
I have tried to make that point as well. The thickness of the atmosphere has a direct affect on the surface temperature as a function of pressure. All things equal, a thicker atmosphere is warmer at the surface than a thinner atmosphere. Just ask Venus and Mars.”””
True. But there is more. 99.9% of the atmosphere CANNOT radiate in the infrared. It has no way of losing the heat it gets from the sun warmed surface or from compression. Yet it is always cold at the top. How come? It radiates heat energy directly to space. But you said… yes, yes, yes, it is that pesky CO2 in the atmosphere. It radiates to space 24/7/365. If it wasn’t for the CO2 in the atmosphere we would really cook down here on the surface.
Asking this question shows that you do not understand how environmentalists think. They don’t want an optimum temperature. Instead they want a natural temperature, i.e. the temperature that would occur with no human influence.
An Opinion says: January 2, 2013 at 11:40 am
Asking this question shows that you do not understand how environmentalists think. They don’t want an optimum temperature. Instead they want a natural temperature, i.e. the temperature that would occur with no human influence.
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My cat would never agree with that, nasty denier cat that she is.
Steve Oregon says: So they don’t really give a crap what any thermometer says.
..and are psychologically compelled to use whatever it says to blame themselves and, by association, all industrialized humans for a preconceived notion of ‘harming mother earth’. Maybe they do not view our desire for scientific truth as one for its own merit but rather as merely a means to escape their little guilt trip? They are certain that we are as ‘guilty’ as they are and then enraged, (no pressure!…), that not only do we refuse to share that burden – we ridicule them for inventing the burden in the first place, (as I am!).
The best temperature for earth is what ever it is.
We can’t choose. Reality is.
We seem to lack information in any useful form.
An estimated mean global temperature is fantasy, which is the IPCC stock in trade.
Anomo-lies are well named and appear to be an deliberate choice, use an imaginary zero,(a past mean global temperature, which moves at whim of chooser),create homogenized and bastardized yearly mean global temperature, and subtract your fictitious mean, plot this useless information (as it tells us little about energy flows on earth) and argue about what the hen scratches signify.
CAGW is fraud.
Climatology also known as climo-astrology amounts to a religion using pseudo science to present an illusion to a scientifically illiterate public. L Ron inspired?
Attempting to follow the scientific case, that the IPCC Team claim exists(but do not present), is to be sent on wild goose chases, referral circuses which are data free, structureless suppositions and endless circular logic. Carefully omitted evidence.Models all the way down.
IPCC AR4 being a perfect example.
A demand that mankind accept the wisdom & control of a few, based on the presupposition that Carbon Dioxide levels in the atmosphere can change the climate dramatically.
Its the same old scam, remember the term,”Everybody knows that”
Investigation usually reveals that no one has a clue.
The deeper I dig, often prompted by other commenters, the worse the stench.
I understand the caustic sarcasm of many of the early engagers with this cesspool, but I would also thank you for your patience.
I was not paying attention to the science of guessing the global weather, I had written off the UN as a corrupt waste years ago and am still focussed on making a living.
Only when the asinine stupidity of my Govt, citing CAGW(with its many names) came to impact on my bills and trade, did I start paying attention. Sure I had noticed the nonsense creeping thro the science magazines and full blown scares of the MSM, but that was the same as the eternal salt is bad, salt is good medical journal reports.
So where are we?
Can we agree on current mean global temperature? For what day?
What would this number signify about energy flows into, around and off our planet?
What would this tell us about climate drivers?
What was the mean global temperature for specific periods in the past?
Is plus or minus1 degree Celsius a significant unit, with respect to the accuracy of our estimates?
What value has the IPCC approach to climate brought mankind?
Am I wrong to suspect that the sanest action, today would to be tar & feather team IPCC and institute racketeering charges against the UN and Govt bureaucrats who instigated this fraud?
Would prison sentences for the treasonous acts of oath sworn politicians send a suitable warning?
Or do we just roll over and accept that fraud and theft by our “betters”, is just our lot in life?
For it is not just science is on trial here, the institutions of government, built over time to prevent civic harm from periodic waves of public hysteria, have not just failed to prevent, these institutions and policy processes have been used to create, promote and propagate public hysteria.
If left unwatched and unchecked govt through bureaucracy will attack its host.
Or as this UN inspired power grab has forced me to acknowledge ,
Your opinion of your government will never be higher than it is today.
Since Onan is a prominent manufacturer of energy conversion devices (generators) if that was indeed a slip, it was a very nice Freudian one!
As it was Christmas allow me this:
If I were God, would I plant the idea about how to generate energy the optimal way into man’s mind today? Certainly not; we would make the worst of it. He might do it however, if we proved to be mature and cared for the land, soil, environment and our debt-laden descendents.
Many great minds here have pointed out how temperature is dependent on the surroundings, how water, forest, ground-cover or build-up raise or lower it several degrees within short distance. Even many climatologists, that is students who are required to write something, find that observance attractive enough for theses papers.
I say: hit the warmists now, smilingly and graciously, as they they are already wobbling and acting desperately. Focus on nature and they will come, the revealing insights and mold-breaking ideas.
You really need to stop jumping between alternate realities. In this reality, skeptics nearly unanimously advocate it being cheaper and more intelligent to adapt to any climate change as it happens, rather than to adopt the arrogant and foolish concept of “The precautionary principle” and attempt to fix something that we don’t understand, especially since we don’t even know for sure if it is broken, and the possible consequences of spending huge sums of money on the fools errand of trying to fiddle with something as complex as the climate (assuming we are even capable of changing the climate in any meaningful way).
By the way in your above comment your assertion about “failed civilizations being due to climate change”, you are actually making an admission that climate change is nothing new or unusual. You need to check your notes when writing these posts. It is not very effective to shoot your cause in the foot when you post snippy remarks intended to belittle the opposite point of view.
Larry
Larry Ledwick (hotrod) says: January 2, 2013 at 7:16 pm
It is not very effective to shoot your cause in the foot when you post snippy remarks intended to belittle the opposite point of view.
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It’s called shooting from the lip and LT is full of holes, all self-inflicted.
“that we have no business being warm right now…”
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Or…the indicator leads for Foraminifera and not much else.
Mike M says:
January 2, 2013 at 10:16 am
phlogiston says: January 2, 2013 at 6:15 am – …. This might in turn result from by increased transpiration by more vigorous CO2-boosted vegetation, among other factors changing climate. …
CO2 ‘boosted’ vegetation exhibits the exact opposite, less transpiration because of a reduced number a stomata. CO2 is demonstrated to cause most plants to grow faster, healthier and be more drought resistant because having fewer stomata makes it easier for them to retain moisture.
Fewer stomata per mm2 of leaf. However what if CO2 increases growth rate of the plant so that there are many more mm2 of leaf to transpire?
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00048146?LI=true#page-1
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Steven Mosher says:
January 1, 2013 at 12:25 pm
My sense is that if people can’t agree to these rather vague principles then we will just continue with BAU and future generations will pay the price.
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Did you actually post that? The guy you just voted for is on the road to ever-more deficit spending, 16+ trillion, dwarfing anything in history. And you’re concerned about theoretical CO2 effects & future generations? LMAO! Do you wonder why so few take you (and all the other warmers) seriously?
phlogiston says: Fewer stomata per mm2 of leaf. However what if CO2 increases growth rate of the plant so that there are many more mm2 of leaf to transpire?
But there cannot be ‘many’ more squares because sunlight area is fixed. Tropical forest canopy is the perfect example, It is very thin and at the maximum height that the trees can structurally support (evolved to be very high with them all competing with other for millions of years). Growing more leaf area will not and can not generate more net production once all of the available sunlight area is being utilized.
However, while I suppose that what you are suggesting may be a factor in desert regions becoming greener, having new leaf area in places where there had not been any, those species are already especially stingy with water and, per your original musing- “This might in turn result from by increased transpiration by more vigorous CO2-boosted vegetation, among other factors changing climate.” – I’d still say no and that the simple fact that warmer air can hold more water vapor is the major constituent. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it will actually rain more, it only means that there is more water up there to fall if it does. But then as Antarctica already knows, being very cold means there is almost nothing up there to fall to begin with making it technically the driest place on earth.
The current spectrum of very cold regional climates (poles) to very warm regional climates (deserts & tropics) with many other kinds of regional climates in between is optimum from the perspective of providing climate test beds for technology development by the private sector for profit for any future climate.
Nature seems to have provided the optimun climate for supporting our best chance of adaptability for any kind of future climate.
: )
John
My take on this is that the right temperature is the one we are already adjusted to. It’s not whether a warmer, or colder, temperature is overall better or worse, it’s that the change in the temperature will disrupt all the adaptations we’ve made to the present temperature, causing undue harm.
As to the final graph, it’s the sort of thing that leads Ruddiman to hypothesise that CO2 released due to the land-use changes brought about by the dawn of agriculture have already acted to avert the next ice age. The radiative forcing numbers involved are a lot smaller than those in the global warming produced by industrialisation, and the observations are necessarily less accurate, and so there’s a big signal to noise problem in trying to prove his hypothesis, but it’s interesting.
The story could be something along the lines of:
1. Climate change in the middle east leads to a crisis in hunter gatherer societies, which develop agriculture as a way of surviving.
2. The spread of agriculture produces enough CO2 to avert the next ice age.
3. The surplus produced by agriculture allows for the development of increasingly complex societies.
4. Competition between different societies encourages the development of increasingly advanced technology.
5. Increasingly advanced technology creates the Industrial age and ends global food scarcity, leading to a boom in world population – famines now only happen because of problems of food distribution, rather than food production.
6. The Industrial age creates a massive jolt to the Earth’s climate due to a doubling/trebling/quadrupling(?) of greenhouse gas concentrations, undermining global agriculture and leading to a world food crisis, at around the point when global population appeared to be stabilising.
7. Civilisation collapses, and boiled human bones reappear in the archaeological record.
I hope we still have time to make the technological transition so that we can avoid step 6, and that I will live to see world population under control, and everyone still well fed. 2012 was not a good year for such a hope.
CO2 increase from 1800 to 2001 was 89.5 ppmv (parts per million by volume). The atmospheric carbon dioxide level has now increased since 2001 by 23.9 ppmv (an amount equal to 25.9% of the increase that took place from 1800 to 2001) (1800, 281.6 ppmv; 2001, 371.13 ppmv; November, 2012, 395.01 ppmv).
The average global temperature trend since 2001 is flat. (Some agencies show flat since 1997)
No amount of spin can rationalize that the temperature increase to 2001 was caused by a CO2 increase of 89.5 ppmv but that 23.9 ppmv additional CO2 increase had no effect on the average global temperature trend after 2001.
The ideal temperature for humans is generally between the 20c and 30c region. The technological advancements and warming climate have come at the same time of massive population increases. There is no doubt that both these have had massive contribution and dictated the successful rise in the population of the planet. This has lead humans moving away from the more comfortable tropical/sub tropical regions. Thousands of years ago civilizations without the recent technological advancement wouldn’t survive NH and SH winters. Therefore the planet is still too cold to live away from the sub-tropics without significant technological advancements that we have enjoyed. A planet between 19c and 22c would be the ideal temperature if there were no significant melting from ice caps.
I have never been supportive of we can’t cope with sudden global changes because we have them on a seasonal basis. If you were given a tent to live all the time in, would you choose anywhere above 45N+ or 45S+ today? When consider some of the finer details it becomes obvious that the planet Earth now is still too cold to live on for the majority of the human population. We rely entirely on technical advancements that give us energy to keep warm during the harsh winters that previous civilizations couldn’t establish.
Normal is the condition you’re best adapted to. Technology, by definition, widens that range and improves society’s adaptations. Lack of (or suppression of) technology narrows the range and worsens the adaptations. Pick one.
I find myself contemplating the fact that LazyT has brought up a good point. Made a bad one, but did touch on the right topic.
All those old civilizations wiped out by “climate change”.. I’ve looked into them.
The problem isn’t just ‘any old change’, and it certainly isn’t “warming”. Nope. Every one of them was wiped out in a Cold Excursion. From the fall of Akkadia, to the Hittites, to the Old Egyptian Empire, and on.
In the “old days’. before Climate Catastrophists started renaming everything, Historians named the various periods. The warm ones were always an Optimum. Holocene Optimum. Roman Optimum or Roman Warm Period. Medieval Optimum. The cold ones were named a Pessimum. The Migration Era Pessium. or Cold Period. The Iron Age Cold Period. (Respectively also known as the Dark Ages and the Iron Age Pessimum)
There is a cycle to history. Civilizations flourish and thrive when it is warm. They have wars and starve to death, decaying in chaos when it is cold.
The “Precautionary Principle” demands that we choose warm.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/the-crisis-of-1300-ad/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/akkadians-and-chad/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/irish-famine-of-40/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/8-2-kiloyear-event-and-you/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/of-time-and-temperatures/
For those wishing us all to standardize on the thermometer you prefer, well, a bit of history and why I’m going to keep using F and K along with C.
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/degrees-of-degrees/