Guest post by Philip Lloyd, Energy Institute, CPUT
The world is getting a little warmer. Of that there is no doubt. The measurements by which we know that it is warming are poor. The figures are not accessible, and keep on changing[1]. Many points at which temperature is measured are badly sited, and bound to give misleading results[2]. But in spite of this, all agree that the world is warmer than it was 150 years ago.
There are some fairly clear signals of a warmer world. The Arctic ice is less than it was[3]. Many glaciers are retreating[4]. Some glaciers – for instance, those on Kilimanjaro – are shrinking because the long-term precipitation is less than it was 150 years ago, not because it is warmer[5]. Others are shrinking from a warmer climate.
Where the sceptic differs from many other scientists is in ascribing the warming to human activities – specifically, the burning of fossil fuels and the concomitant rise in the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. The hypothesis is that the carbon dioxide traps infra-red radiation that would otherwise escape to space. This means that some of the energy received from the sun is not lost, and the trapped energy leads to a warming of the globe.
The physics of how carbon dioxide traps infra-red radiation is well known[6]. But there are other molecules in the atmosphere that also trap infra-red radiation. Water vapour is the predominant “greenhouse gas”[7]. What is not so clear is the extent to which the trapping of energy causes heating. There are wonderful mathematical models that claim to show how heating occurs. Unfortunately, all the models suffer from identifiable flaws, a point considered later.
A prime difficulty with the anthropogenic warming thesis is that it is not known how much of the warming is natural and how much might be caused by carbon dioxide. It is simple to illustrate this. Figure 1 shows the global temperature record as kept by the Hadley Centre at the University of East Anglia[8].
Figure 1 Global temperatures, relative to 1950-1990 average
The global temperature dropped from 1850 to 1860; rose until 1880; dropped until 1910; rose until 1945; dropped until 1980; rose until 2000; and has dropped slightly since then.
Figure 2 shows the carbon dioxide record. Careful measurements have been made at Mauna Loa on Hawaii since 1958[9]. The pre-industrial level of CO2 in the atmosphere is generally accepted to have been about 280ppm[10]. Figure 2 shows a reasonable extrapolation of the data back to about 280ppm in 1800.
Figure 2 Atmospheric CO2 concentrations, measured and estimated.
It seems entirely reasonable that the measured rise is the result of fossil fuel consumption. Figure 3 shows annual CO2 emissions over time[11]. In 1900 it was just under 2 billion tons per annum; by 1943 it was at 5 billion tons and then fell back and only exceeded 5 billion tons again in 1947. Thereafter it grew rapidly, passing 10 billion tons in 1963, 15 billion in 1971, 20 billion in 1986 and 30 billion in 2006.
Figure 3 Annual CO2 emissions from fossil fuel consumption.
Comparison of Figures 2 and 3 makes it clear that the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is almost certainly directly related to the emissions from fossil fuels. However, the low levels of emissions up until about 1945 make it clear that the impact of the fossil fuel combustion prior to 1945 must have been very small if not negligible. Therefore the changes in global temperatures prior to 1945, shown in Figure 1, were largely natural. The additional carbon dioxide from human activities cannot have played a significant part in the changes prior to 1945.
If most of the temperature changes prior to 1945 were largely natural, then there is great difficulty in determining how much of the temperature change post-1945 is natural and how much might be driven by increasing carbon dioxide. This raises the question of what the natural variation in temperature might be.
To answer this question, we turn to the Vostok ice core record over the past 9000 years[12]. The core was sampled every metre of depth, which represented ~20 years of accumulation in the upper layers and ~50 years in the lower levels. The temperature was estimated from differences in the oxygen isotope ratios. While a point measurement such as this cannot give a good measure of the average global temperature, it is a reasonable measure of changes in global temperature, and it is primarily temperature changes that are of interest.
The data are shown in Figure 4. There has been a slight cooling over the past 9 millennia, as shown by the least-squares line. The data were therefore detrended before further analysis – the mean temperature at any one date was added to the reported relative temperature. The detrended temperatures were what is known as “normally distributed”, i.e. there was nothing abnormal or skewed about them. Then the rate of change between each detrended temperature and the temperature approximately 100±20 years earlier was calculated and expressed as a rate per century. The results were also normally distributed, with a standard deviation of 0.94oC per century.
Figure 4. Relative temperatures over the past 9000 years.
Thus there is about a 2:1 chance that the temperature may vary by up to 1oC per century from natural causes, but only about a 1 in 10 chance that it will vary by more than 1.9oC naturally. Between 1900 and 2000 it varied by about 0.9oC, which is, therefore, within the range of natural variation. And that, in simple terms, is why there is scepticism about the thesis that carbon dioxide is causing global warming – there is no clear signal of any such warming effect.
However, the proponents of the anthropogenic warming thesis claim to have models that show how added carbon dioxide will lead to a warmer world[13]. There are major problems with these models, not least of which is the fact that the proponents claim that doubling the CO2 in the atmosphere will increase the temperature by over 3oC. This is well above any physical reason[14]. It results from arguments about the effect of water vapour in the atmosphere, which is supposed to exacerbate the effect of increased CO2.
The doubling effect is so far invisible. Other estimates have suggested that doubling the CO2 may increase the global temperatures by less than 1oC[15]. The evidence for this is building. For instance, there has been about a 40% increase in atmospheric CO2 since 1945, which would imply 1.2oC of warming if doubling the CO2 caused a 3oC rise. Figure 1 shows that the actual warming over this period has only been about 0.4oC. Has the globe cooled by 0.8oC while the added CO2 has been warming us? It seems unlikely.
There are further reasons to doubt the models. For instance, Figure 5 reproduces Figure 10.7 from the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report[16].
Figure 5. Model predictions of global temperature changes: atmospheric upper, oceanic lower
The sections are from the South Pole on the left to the North Pole on the right. In the atmosphere, altitude is expressed in terms of pressure, with sea level at 1000hPa and 11km being about 200hPa. Stippling on the figures shows regions where all the models agree within narrow limits.
The area of particular interest is the ‘blob’ over the equator and centred at about 200hPa. In 2011-2030 it is just less than 1.5oC above today’s ground level temperatures. By 2046-2065 it is expected to be about 3oC warmer, and by 2080-2099 about 5oC warmer. Thus this region is expected to warm by about 0.6oC per decade, if the models are to be believed.
For about the last 60 years, balloons carrying instruments have been flown into this region to obtain data for weather forecasts. Examination of the temperature records has failed to reveal any heating whatsoever[17]. Satellites have been flown since the late 1970’s, and some of their views through the atmosphere can be interpreted as average temperatures of particular regions[18]. The satellites show very slight warming – but nothing like 0.6oC per decade.
In science, a single experiment can suffice to prove a theory, if the experiment finds an unexpected result as predicted by the theory. Einstein’s 1915 theory of general relativity had to wait until 1919 for experimental proof, and subsequent widespread acceptance of his theory. Equally, any theory whose predictions fail experimental tests should be abandoned without further ado. In the present case, the anthropogenic warming hypothesis has led to theoretical models, but those models have failed experimental proof. Such is the strength of belief in the anthropogenic thesis, however, that the modellers are most reluctant to abandon – or even revise – their models. This is one of the strongest reasons for scepticism.
The anthropogenic thesis has also led to many predictions of the possible conditions in a warmer world. Some, such as the impact on the cryosphere, seem to be borne out. However, the models which, as noted earlier, are highly suspect, suggest such things as dramatic changes in precipitation. The evidence is negligible.
For instance, there is a very long record of rainfall for England and Wales, shown in Figure 6[19]. There is absolutely no sign of any change in the rainfall pattern over the last 60 years. Over the entire period, the annual average over 25 years is 913 ±18mm. The 18mm is the maximum deviation, not the standard deviation!
Figure 6. A 240-year rainfall record
Similarly, there are repeated suggestions that the sea level will increase rapidly due to the melting of ice and the warming of the oceans (warm water is less dense than cold, so it occupies a larger volume). It is true that the sea level is rising, but you seek in vain for any evidence that it has risen significantly faster since 1945 than before. Figure 7 illustrates this, using the tide gauge data from New York which extends back to 1858 with a gap from 1879 to 1892[20]. The regression line for all the data from 1870 to 2011 has a slope of 2.947mm/a; that from 1945 to 2011 has a slope of 2.948mm/a. There has been no significant increase in the rate of sea level rise at New York for the past 140 years.
Figure 7. A 150-year sea-level record.
Many of the fears about sea level rise are unfounded. Yes, the sea is rising slowly. Satellite measurements since the early 1990’s confirm a rate of rise of about 3mm/a[21]. However, there are already defences against the sea. It is necessary to allow for tides, storm surges and even tsunamis. The existing defences are measured in metres, not mm. An increase in the average level of 3mm/a can be offset by raising the defences by an additional brick every 30 years or so. The rising sea level is not a threat.
Of course, there are events where the defences prove inadequate. This was the case when Hurricane Katerina struck New Orleans. Several years previously, it had been reported that the levees were likely to fail[22]. They were old, and lacked modern design features. They failed, as anticipated, when the storm surge arrived. Their failure had nothing to do with ongoing rise in sea levels, and everything to do with weak defences.
However, there are repeated references in the literature to the New Orleans levee failure being the result of “climate change.” This illustrates a feature of the debate that reinforces scepticism. Disasters that have nothing to do with a changing climate are ascribed to “climate change” as a means of raising awareness about the supposed threats.
Nothing illustrates this aspect of the debate better than the ongoing accent on “extreme events.” A violent storm, such as the recent Sandy that struck New York, is immediately seized upon as evidence of “climate change.”
However, weather is ever variable. The vigour of every natural phenomenon has a wide range. Many phenomena, for example rainfall, are best described by a distribution which is very strongly skewed. Such distributions are quite counterintuitive when it comes to trying to define what constitutes “extreme”.
The problem is to decide how wide is the ‘normal’ range, a decision essential for describing an event as abnormal or ‘extreme’, that is, lying outside the normal range. A lot of data is necessary to define ‘normal’, which implies that data must be collected over a long period. The long period may exceed a human lifetime. If so, then few living individuals can have experienced the truly “extreme” events – and an event much less than extreme may be seized upon as an example of an extreme event when in fact it is no such thing.
In the case of storm Sandy, there has been an assessment of the intensity of all hurricanes and “post-tropical storms” (of which Sandy was one) that made landfall on the continental United States between 1900 and 2012. The data are shown in Figure 8[23].
A person born in 1900 would probably have experienced their most extreme event in 1936. However, that person might have lived to the age of 106, and would have seen two stronger storms. That might have convinced him/her that the world was getting worse. He/she would have been wrong, of course – the random nature of extreme events would have fooled them.
Figure 8. Power dissipation index of storms which made landfall on the US, 1900-2012
This illustrates quite nicely how long one must wait before one can determine even the 100-year event – and how just because there has been such an event, another nearly as bad can turn up in less than 100 years after that! The statistics of extreme events are counterintuitive, and very long baselines are needed before it is possible to decide if something is extreme or not.
There has been extensive concern about extreme events, partly because almost every day somewhere on the globe there will be an event that might be describable as ‘extreme’. The IPCC has issued a special report on the subject[24]. It can probably best be described as ‘delphic’ – a series of very cautious pronouncements that can be interpreted in different ways, depending on your viewpoint. Probably the best measure of the extent to which extreme events should be viewed as likely to be caused by climate change comes from a study of deaths caused by severe weather[25]. The results are shown in Figure 9.
It is clear that the absolute number killed each year has dropped since the 1920’s. In relative terms, the drop has been even more dramatic, from a peak of 241 per million to 5 per million. At this low rate, it is clear that extreme weather no longer presents the same risks as faced previous generations.
Figure 9. Deaths and death rates per million people from extreme weather events
The reasons for this steep decline are several. One is vastly better weather prediction, so that there is now adequate warning about possible extreme weather conditions. Secondly, there is much better communication of impending severe weather. Finally, with improved knowledge of severe conditions, mankind has learned to design structures that protect us from the hazards.
The final scare story that needs to be laid to rest is that of species extinction as a result of climate change. The popular press reports this regularly. “’Climate change now represents at least as great a threat to the number of species surviving on Earth as habitat-destruction and modification,’ said Chris Thomas, a conservation biologist at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. – – the predicted range of climate change by 2050 will place 15 to 35 percent of the 1,103 species studied at risk of extinction. The numbers are expected to hold up when extrapolated globally, potentially dooming more than a million species. ”[26]
However, science prefers predictions that are testable. A recent serious study concluded that “Surprisingly, [there is no] straightforward relationship between local extinction and limited tolerances to high temperature.” [27]. Indeed, this follows from common sense. Figure 10 shows the average monthly conditions for a sub-tropical southern hemisphere city. The boxes show the average daily maxima and minima, the lines show the highest and lowest temperatures ever recorded, and the lower and upper horizontal lines reflect the annual average temperature in 1900 and 2000 respectively.
Figure 10. Monthly temperatures in a sub-tropical city, and annual averages in 1900 and 2000
It is reasonable to ask how the relatively small average temperature change can be detected by organisms that every year are likely to be exposed to changes some 50 times larger, to which they seem perfectly adapted.
The final reason for ongoing scepticism is the behaviour of some of the proponents of the climate change thesis. It starts with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It has become a political body rather than a technical body. The best illustration of this is the publication of the Panel’s reports. It is preceded by the publication of a summary for policy makers. This summary often differs in material respects from the findings of the main report, and invariably puts a politically correct slant on what is supposed to be a dispassionate review of the scientific literature[28].
The IPCC’s work is not aided by the fact that much of the work reported is not scientific, but reproduced from activist literature. The Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise has documented this problem in detail[29].
For example, she tracks how a relatively unknown professor of epidemiology, Anthony McMichael, who had written a polemic in 1991, became a lead author of the chapter on malaria and the health effects of climate change, even though he had no professional publications about malaria and even though some of his conclusions were rejected by members of the Panel who were world experts on the subject.
Sections of McMichael’s book appeared almost verbatim in the IPCC’s Assessment Report in 1995. This led directly to the thesis that global warming will increase the spread of malaria. There is no evidence that this is likely, because malaria has been known in cold climates for centuries. Moreover, the spread of malaria is known to be almost entirely a function of social conditions and public health.
The fight against malaria is not helped by those who claim that climate change is part of the problem. If they had their way, the accent would be on addressing climate change rather than fighting malaria. This illustrates a danger of accepting a possibly flawed thesis too uncritically – resources may be diverted from essential activities affecting the lives of millions in the hope that there will be a positive impact on putative risks that could affect billions. Before taking such a decision, one needs to be very certain indeed that the putative risks can be avoided by the diverting of resources.
Another reason for scepticism is that the debate about climate change has revealed some major imperfections in the scientists themselves. Some players on the human-induced climate-change playing field have shown themselves to be only too human in the defence of the indefensible. For example, two scientists did what scientists are supposed to do – they peer-reviewed the work of some 200 other scientists[30]. They reported that:
“Across the world, many records reveal that the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium.”
This was totally contrary to the thesis that today’s warming was exceptional. Accordingly the believers in human-induced change forced the editor of the journal that had published the review to resign, and went out of their way to try to destroy the reputations of the two authors. All this (and more) was revealed when a series of emails found its way into the public domain from the Hadley Centre at the University of East Anglia[31].
The world is a bit warmer. The carbon dioxide levels of the atmosphere are increasing. Plants are doing better than before because of the higher carbon dioxide[32]. The sea is rising in a barely detectable way. Climatic disasters are no worse than previously. The animal kingdom is being squeezed by the growth of a single species, us, but that has nothing to do with global warming.
And that is why there is a climate of scepticism.
References
[1] http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/29/gisstimating-1998/ Accessed January 2013
[2]http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/watts-et-al_2012_discussion_paper_webrelease.pdf Accessed January 2013
[3] http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent_L.png Accessed January 2013
[4] Paul, F., Kääb, A. and Haeberli, W. Recent glacier changes in the Alps observed by satellite: Consequences for future monitoring strategies, Global and Planetary Change, Volume 56, Issues 1–2, March 2007, Pages 111-122, ISSN 0921-8181, 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2006.07.007.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818106001603) Accessed January 2013
[5] Mölg, T., and D. R. Hardy (2004), Ablation and associated energy balance of a horizontal glacier surface on Kilimanjaro, J. Geophys. Res., 109, D16104, doi:10.1029/2003JD004338.
[6] http://scienceofdoom.com/roadmap/atmospheric-radiation-and-the-greenhouse-effect/ Accessed January 2013
[7] http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/gases.html Accessed January 2013
[8] http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/ Accessed January 2013
[9] http://co2now.org/Current-CO2/CO2-Now/noaa-mauna-loa-co2-data.html Accessed January 2013
[10] http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/s2412.htm Accessed January 2013
[11] http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/glo.html Accessed January 2013
[12] http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/vostok.html Accessed January 2013
[13] Randall, D.A., R.A. Wood, S. Bony, R. Colman, T. Fichefet, J. Fyfe, V. Kattsov, A. Pitman, J. Shukla, J. Srinivasan, R.J. Stouffer, A. Sumi and K.E. Taylor, 2007: Climate Models and Their Evaluation. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. WG1, Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Solomon, S. et al, (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
[14] See Randall, D.A. et al, op cit p. 640: “A number of diagnostic tests have been proposed…but few of them have been applied to a majority of the models currently in use. Moreover, it is not yet clear which tests are critical for constraining future projections (of warming). Consequently, a set of model metrics that might be used to narrow the range of plausible climate change feedbacks and climate sensitivity has yet to be developed.”
[15] Spencer, R.W. and Braswell, W.D Potential Biases in Feedback Diagnosis from Observational Data: A Simple Model Demonstration, J Climate 21 5624-5627, 2008 DOI: 10.1175/2008JCLI2253.1
[16] Meehl, G.A., T.F. Stocker, W.D. Collins, P. Friedlingstein, A.T. Gaye, J.M. Gregory, A. Kitoh, R. Knutti, J.M. Murphy, A. Noda, S.C.B. Raper, I.G. Watterson, A.J. Weaver and Z.-C. Zhao, 2007: Global Climate Projections. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. WG1, Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Solomon, S., et al (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
[17] Douglass, D. H., Christy, J. R., Pearson, B. D. and Singer, S. F. (2008), A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions. Int. J. Climatol., 28: 1693–1701. doi: 10.1002/joc.1651
[18] Spencer, R.W. and Christy, J.R. 1992: Precision and Radiosonde Validation of Satellite Gridpoint Temperature Anomalies. Part I: MSU Channel 2. J. Climate, 5, 847–857.
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/1520-0442(1992)005<0847:PARVOS>2.0.CO;2 Accessed January 2013
[19] http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/pHadEWP_monthly_qc.dat Accessed January 2013
[20] http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/rlr.monthly.data/12.rlrdata Accessed January 2013
[21] http://sealevel.colorado.edu/ Accessed January 2013
[22] Fischetti, M. Drowning New Orleans. Scientific American, October 2001, pp34-42
[23] http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2012/11/us-hurricane-intensity-1900-2012.html Accessed January 2013
[24] IPCC, 2012: Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation. A Special Report of Working Groups I and II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Field, C.B. et al (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
[25] Goklany, I.M. Wealth and Safety: The Amazing Decline in Deaths from Extreme Weather in an Era of Global Warming, 1900–2010. Reason Foundation, Washington DC and Los Angeles, CA, 2011
http://reason.org/files/deaths_from_extreme_weather_1900_2010.pdf Accessed January 2013
[26] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/01/0107_040107_extinction.html Accessed January 2013
[27] Cahill, A.E, Aiello-Lammens, M.E., Fisher-Reid, M.C., Hua, X., Karanewsky, C.J., Ryu, H.Y., Sbeglia, G.C, Spagnolo, F., Waldron, J.B., Warsi, O. and Wiens, J.J. How does climate change cause extinction? Proc. Royal Soc. B 2012 doi: 10.1098/rspb.2012.1890
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/10/15/rspb.2012.1890.full Accessed January 2013
[28] http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/1207.htmAccessed January 2013
[29] Laframboise, Donna The Delinquent Teenager who was mistaken for the world’s top climate expert. Ivy Avenue Press, Toronto 2011. ISBN: 978-1-894984-05-8
[30] Soon, W. and Baliunas, S. Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years. Climate Research Vol. 23, pp89–110, 2003
[31] http://www.assassinationscience.com/climategate/1/climactic-research-unit-foi-leaked-data.zip Accessed January 2013
[32] http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/plantgrowth.php Accessed January 2013
Related articles
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Guest post by Philip Lloyd, Energy Institute, CPUT: “There are some fairly clear signals of a warmer world. The Arctic ice is less than it was[3]. Many glaciers are retreating[4]. Some glaciers – for instance, those on Kilimanjaro – are shrinking because the long-term precipitation is less than it was 150 years ago, not because it is warmer[5]. Others are shrinking from a warmer climate.”
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This is really bad.
No local or regional warming/cooling can be an evidence of a global warming/cooling.
The so called “global warming” is a sort of average thing by definition and by the way it has been calculated. Therefore you can have warming here and cooling there, but that does not say anything about the average. It is a junior high school stuff, actually.
The second thing is that the claims about glaciers are scientifically outrageous. I am sure that only very few people know that in the whole world only 226 glaciers from more than 100,000 (!) registered ones had been somehow more or less studied for more or less short time.
In their special report “Global Glacier Changes: facts and figures” (2008) the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) admitted this: “However, these values are to be considered first order estimates due to the rather small number of mass balance observations and their probably limited representativeness for the entire surface ice on land, outside the continental ice sheets.” They have buried this on the page 29, thus invalidating their own scaremongering on the previous pages.
The link to the whole report is dead now, but the report still can be found on the internet: http://www.filedropper.com/glaciers .
“The figures are not accessible, and keep on changing.”
This is often said but it’s just not right. GHCN Unadjusted is perfectly accessible. It comes directly from the original records and doesn’t change. Earlier versions were distributed on DVD.
Philip Lloyd,
The comprehensive and integrated aspects of your article make it a nice addition to a skeptic’s reference network. Thank you.
However, a couple of revisions are necessary in my opinion to make it worthy of the title ‘climate of skepticism’:
a) you say “The physics of how carbon dioxide traps infra-red radiation is well known[6]. But there are other molecules in the atmosphere that also trap infra-red radiation. Water vapour is the predominant “greenhouse gas”[7]. What is not so clear is the extent to which the trapping of energy causes heating.” The concept of ‘trapping’ is not scientifically accurate wrt the interaction of LWIR and the molecules of: H2O, CO2, O3 & CH4. It is extremely important to be very specific and accurate on this because all aspects of the alarming AGW thesis rests on what this phenomena implies. Please see a more accurate and understandable descriptions by either regular WUWT commenter ‘george e. smith’ or ‘rgbatduke’. Trapping terminology is insufficient.
b) The Carbon Cycle that is the basis of the latest IPCC AR’s contains: 1) inappropriate claims of reasonable small uncertainties, 2) insufficient evaluation of the sources of carbon isotopic ratios and 3) both significant unidentified and incorrect interpretation of the dynamic relationships between sources and sinks. A search of WUWT will lead to balanced sources of info. The Carbon Cycle subject is a central controversial dialog between scientists that is insufficiently resolved for an AGW thesis to be credible.
c) The accurate attribution of any warming in the industrial era to man’s activities rest on comprehensively and unambiguously separating it out of non-anthropogenic temperature signals. This area is work still in progress without achieving levels of significance. Also the historical temperature records and proxy records have critical impact on the attribution assessment. Concerns over intentional systemic bias introduced by scientific bodies charged with managing the databases cannot in a good scientific practice be disregarded.
d) The ocean dynamics are undervalued by the IPCC ARs and this need articulation in a ‘climate of skepticism’.
Again, I appreciate your initial effort. With all the WUWT input I think you will achieve a notable ‘climate of skepticism’. Good luck.
John
I think the article is pretty well written, typos and minor irritations aside. However, my instant reaction to the lead in paragraph – that we all agree there is warming – was
1) No, actually, I don’t necessarily agree – given that half the station data at least is affected by UHI, and the limited data we have cannot be expected to represent anything but a smidgen of an ‘interglacial time period’ (circa 12000years!). error bars greater than measured variation are a bit of a worry!
2) To define warming, per se, we need to define our reference point within the natural cycle too – so, when looking at the reconstructed temps over several hundred thousand years, we, with our alleged 0.1 to 1.0 degree of warming (pick the value you prefer!) are barely a blip on the natural variation ‘scale’ from ice age to interglacial.
So, I am not one who categorically accepts the global climate is warming. I do accept that current data may reasonably show a current ‘temporal’ warming trend – but the 70’s showed a cooling trend! – if you averaged across them, it’s less significant. Considering temerature swings across interglacials makes such ‘measured’ warming insignificant!. Hence, agreeing to the ‘warming’ is a bit more subjective that the author suggests IMO.
You should have put in something for the sun, maybe sunspot range from the 1700s.
If anyone evidence for being skeptical about climate, all they a have to do is come down here and see the severest frost we have ever had in Terra Del Fiago. A foot of ice formed over the pond out the front last night. This has never happened before.
RHS says:
January 18, 2013 at 12:23 pm
None of the records were for climatalogical purposes. They were just ongoing weather records. There is, admittedly anecdotal, evidence that some of it was just made up on the basis of, much the same as yesterday
We’re trying to base science on this?
Even the dubious concept that an average Earth temperature is meaningful based on this data is nonsensical
DaveE.
Thanks for this, very useful.
If there is one point which I think is really strong but not given enough attention it is the lack of rapid sea level rise. If the average global temperature really was rising at an unprecedented rate there would be significant ice melt from glaciers and ice caps and also thermal expansion of the oceans. So we can almost think of the oceans as a proxy for a giant mercury thermometer. They should be rising like crazy, but instead the rate of rise is slowing.
“Where the sceptic differs from many other scientists is in ascribing the warming to human activities ”
no it’s not.
1 degree of potential warming due to AGW is widely agreed. the difference is beyond the 1 degree. recent warming is 1 degree or less.
The link to the UNEP report in my previous comment is dead, I have found another one: http://ultramegabit.com/file/details/2juU0gDD0n8
gordan: your mercury analogy has nothing to do with melting glaciers
Nick Stokes:
At January 18, 2013 at 2:48 pm you write
Oh dear. NO! Clearly, you have not read this
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/memo/climatedata/uc0102.htm
Richard
Without disputing the scientific validity of Dr Lloyd’s essay, I question whether the definition of climate skepticism is unbelief in AGW. In my observation, the one constant throughout the skeptical community is that we refuse to buy the CAGW story. Some of us have never denied AGW (though if Dr Lloyd is right, perhaps we should have), but none of us think carbon dioxide emissions will lead to catastrophic warming.
Similarly, we shouldn’t let believers get away with epithets like “denier” unless they can show they understand (as they almost never understand) that they’re talking about “CAGW deniers.”
Call me skeptical if you want to, but how can a comprehensive climate summary ignore ocean heat?
Accident was it?
John W. Garrett says:
January 18, 2013 at 11:43 am
An excellent summation.
I am not as willing to accept the accuracy of the historic temperature record as you apparently are. There are huge swathes of the earth where I think records may not be reliable.
Do you really believe that Russian temperature records from, say, 1917-1950 are reliable? Do you honestly believe that Chinese temperature records from, say, 1913-1980 are reliable? Do you really believe that Sub-Saharan African temperatures from, say 1850-2012 are accurate?
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I probably agree. The trouble is that if you are saying that socialists cannot read thermometers and keep records, you are wiping out most of the world’s climate records for the last century.
NOAA, NASA, PIK, UEA, UK Met Office, Envro Canada and the EU all have clear socialist agendas. The universities of world have been strongly socialist for about 100 years with RADFEM and PC added over the last 50 years. All academic work is open to doubt by that standard.
Climate Ace:
Your entire post at January 18, 2013 at 4:16 pm says
It was clearly not an “accident”. A brief summarising article cannot include everything which refutes the nonsense of AGW. As you suggest, the issue of ocean heat does provide powerful refutations of AGW (e.g. missing ‘Trenberth’s heat’, missing ‘committed warming, etc.) but these matters are too technical for inclusion in a summarising article.
Also, “skeptical” is not one of the several words I would call you or use to describe you.
Richard
Very nice, Philip Lloyd. This is the kind of stuff I wish I could write.
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Guest post by Philip Lloyd, Energy Institute, CPUT: “The physics of how carbon dioxide traps infra-red radiation is well known[6]”
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Really? Your [6] is a blog article where you indeed can find a claim about the so called “greenhouse effect”, but no experimental proof that it really works in the real world.
One quibble:
“The world is getting a little warmer. Of that there is no doubt.”
Make that, “The world has got a little warmer”.
There is considerable doubt whether the world IS CURRENTLY getting warmer .
An excellent primer.
In my view, it would be worth making a nicely presented PDF of this article that we can save and distribute to friends and family who might be tempted to fall for the MSM propaganda.
Some information is well represented and documented. Other information is taken at face value, for unknown reasons and very little documentation. Not quite enough scientific questioning rigor applied to many of the ‘everyone’ agrees/accepts/knows positions…
I can roughly agree that the world is warmer; than it was since the last glacial advance period. We are in an interglacial! Warming and cooling are episodic and stable climate periods in history are basically nonexistant!
Until our weather can be demonstrated with absolute precision, accounting for every variable, Earth is just in another interglacial period.
When mankind has the knowledge, ability AND the wisdom to control Eath’s climate; then they darn well better figure out how to preserve interglacial’s maximum warm weather! Not have mankind run willynilly starving the poor, bankrupting society and NOT having a clue what effect they REALLY will have.
Perhaps if everyone goes to sea in longboats and raises sheep in Greenland we might get a real idea what the artic is doing… Which does absolutely nothing for whatever is going on in the Antarctic… Let’s face it, the 20th century’s climate changes are only proof for how little today’s climate scientists understand climate.
If we take the same rationale of assessing artic ice over very short timescales and apply it to seasonal snowfall; then it is obvious the world is going to freeze solid. Hold on, that was last month’s silliness, now we’re going to burn… Which to me is exactly what the climate alarmists are actually doing.
It’s what glaciers do. Snow falls and glaciers advance; less snow falls and glaciers retreat.
The last piece I read on this the loss of glacier ice on Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and Mt Fuji in Japan are more likely due to deforestation. Especially since the temperatures near Kilimanjaro have not shown any warming since satellites were able to measure the local, to Kilimanjaro, tempratures. http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2004/02/01/nature-study-debunks-kilimanjaro-glacier-myth.
Proven how? Temperature records near glaciers are very spotty. Taking glacier retreat average of Europe and applying it to the world neither proves Europe’s glaciers are retreating because it’s a warming world nor that other glaciers are also melting from the great heat at the mountaintops…
There are other accepted fallacies, but I’m not inclined to copy/rebut each one. Take CO2 growth; just where is the proof that CO2 growth is man’s fault? Every piece of information I’ve looked at guesses. Those with the best attempts at measurements attribute very little of the CO2 growth to mankind. Alarmists want people to believe every atom of atmospheric CO2 is there because of mankind.
Get real! Oceans emit CO2 when warming and absorb CO2 when cooling and no, this is not a net zero process. To many critters in the sea lock onto CO2 for their shells and skeletal structures; whether directly or indirectly it means CO2 gets deposited on the ocean’s floor as calcium carbonate and the ocean needs to absorb more.
Calcium carbonate forms an amazing array of mineral forms throughout the world and pretty much stays that way, until oceanic crust is driven under continental crust and the CO2 is released and vented via volcanos, copiuously! Man imitates this process when making quicklime, but that’s a minor burp compared to volcano emissions.
The deal is: when a claim is ‘agreed, accepted, trusted’ it is because the science behind the claim is proven absolutely and independently replicated.
Yeah, CO2 is a greenhouse gas; so what! Outside of the so called ‘well known’ physics, I do not know of any true proof that demonstrates with precision when, where and how much IR is absorbed by CO2 and how much energy is emitted by the CO2. For all I know, CO2 at the highest levels of our atmosphere may absorb incoming IR and re-emit more energy out to space than is truly being captured by CO2 via IR emissions from earth and subsequently radiating back and warming earth.
And maybe people think it is hotter nowadays;
A) because they can’t remember how hot it used to be
B) They’re so used to A/C that they believe the climate goons when they claim it is hotter!
If it is a claim, it must be proven. I have much doubt that the climate is little warmer, bit warmer or warmer… Read JoNova’s posts about how hot it is in Australia…
Aside from the technical details others have already pointed out like the nonsensical term “heat trapping”, a title like “A Climate of Skepticism” conjured anticipation of probing a little more into the socio-political climate that invariably summons skeptical thoughts; like how the CAGW advocates engage in obvious Zohnerism in support of their cause, or how any inconvenient questioning of the dogma is met with either censorship or vitriolic attack, or the blatant hypocrisy of the “priesthood” as one commenter put it: “I’ll start believing in CAGW when those most vocally advocating it start acting like they believe it”, or how they’re willing to break the law to advance their cause.
Climate Ace says:January 18, 2013 at 4:16 pm
Call me skeptical if you want to, but how can a comprehensive climate summary ignore ocean heat?
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What about ocean heat, Ace? Tell us what you know about ocean heat. Tell us about ocean chemistry while you are at it. Tell us all you know.
Which is nothing.
Mr. Lloyd wrote;
“The hypothesis is that the carbon dioxide traps infra-red radiation that would otherwise escape to space. This means that some of the energy received from the sun is not lost, and the trapped energy leads to a warming of the globe.”
Enough with the “TRAPS HEAT” nonsense already, please. Any engineer that has done any type of thermal management (yes, that is a real discipline within engineering and involves predicting and/or controlling the temperature of an object, volume, surface, etc.) knows that it is impossible to “trap heat”. It can’t be done. You also can’t “TRAP” infra-red radiation; you can carefully direct almost all of it to a specific location (search on “photon trap”) where it is converted to electrons.
But you MOST certainly CANNOT ”trap” energy be it thermal or electromagnetic.
A thermal insulator only SLOWS the velocity of heat flow. This is true if the insulator is a gas, a solid, or a liquid. It only functions in an insulating capacity if the velocity through the “insulator” is slower than adjacent materials. Thus fiberglass insulation (slow velocity) around a metal hot water tank (fast velocity) will cause the water in the tank to cool off more slowly, thereby saving you dollars/pounds/yen/etc. Conversely, a thin metal skin (aluminum siding, fast velocity) around thick house walls filled with fiberglass (slow velocity) will NOT speed up the cooling of the interior of the house. The material with the slowest ”speed of heat” becomes the “rate limiting process” and determines the “equilibrium temperature”, a total oxymoron BTW.
In the specific case of interest (i.e. the climate) the material with the slowest “speed of heat” is clearly the oceans/lakes, and they determine the “equilibrium temperature” of the planet.
Cheers, Kevin
“Guest post by Philip Lloyd, Energy Institute, CPUT says
The world is getting a little warmer…
…The world is a bit warmer…”
I apologize for my somewhat harsh tone. I understand that you are documenting why there is a climate of scepticism. But some of the nebulous agrees/accepts statements combined with many commenters loving your post wierded me out a bit…
A bit, just what does that mean? nebulous terms and words should be anathema in a science statement. We either know or we don’t know and vague undefined descriptive phrases should be avoided.
It is all too common a trait of the alarmists to state some science and throw in a lot of may, possibles, maybes, could be and so on…
An excellent book to read is James Thurber’s “The years with Ross”; where he describes working for Harold Ross during those years when Ross built the New Yorker into one of the finest publishers of literature periodicals. Yes, superb writers either wrote for or submitted stories to the New Yorker; but Ross was an, perhaps the editor for all of them.
I heartily commend to your observation where Thurber describes Ross’s extreme displeasure at the usage of nebulous undefined words by authors; words such as little, pretty and so on… And yes, Thurber does the equivalent of a nose tweak. Thurber also describes the extent Ross insisted that facts were checked before publishing them. And no, Ross did not rely, nor trust, his writers for knowing facts; he employed fact checkers separately.