From July 13th 2013 in Houston. I was invited to give a presentation, and I adapted Dr. Matt Ridley’s excellent essay: A Lukewarmer’s Ten Tests and added supporting graphs and commentary along with my own work and findings. The video follows.
The video is 53 minutes long including Q&A.
I’m sure some people won’t like what I have to say, and/or will take issue with it. For those that will immediately pounce on the location, Houston, to suggest “big oil” was involved, I’ll provide full disclosure. There was mostly an aerospace interest due to Houston’s role in the space program, there was not a hint of the oil industry there.
I received airfare compensation, meals, and lodging, plus $250 for my three days of time (two of which were travel) for speaking. Compare that to what Al Gore gets.
I welcome suggestions readers might have for improvements to the presentation.
Other related videos include:
57:52 
1:00:44 
52:10 Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
AW says: “For those that will immediately pounce on the location, Houston, to suggest “big oil” was involved, I’ll provide full disclosure.”
===============
Heh. You’re too nice to these, ahem, people. 🙂
By far the best hour I have spent in months. Thanks Anthony and Matt.
Excellent presentation. Thanks for all you have done to counter the political steam roller that uses CAGW – no wait-climate change- no wait- carbon pollution to forward their agenda.
Based on the applause just at your mention of WUWT and the comments from this group of doctors, perhaps there is some hope that the message is getting through.
Sorry about that world famous Houston humidity though. Perhaps the doctors could fix you up with climate adaptable hearing aids or better yet come back in the fall.
PB
Excellent presentation. I had to chuckle that Murphy’s Law never seems to take a break, kind of like magical CO2. 😉
Anthony, I have a thought you might want to consider. Could WUWT provide a repository for graphs, images, videos, etc. related to climate skepticism that anyone could contribute to. I’m sure there are several individuals that have built presentations like you did here. I think it would be a great resource to have a catalog of these to reference whenever we are having discussions with other people. For example, having Dr. Soon’s charts would be a great resource. The reference pages are great as far as they go, but this would be a nice extension.
Very nice presentation Anthony. May I ask if you will include the sun’s current behavior in any of your presentations in the near future especially with the sun possibly reversing polarity and lack of sunspots? And perhaps what effect the sun has on earth temperatures?
Thanks Anthony, on a lighter note perhaps, I’m afraid the problems with hearing aid batteries don’t improve but the effects may do. I’m retired and am fortunate enough to be able to play a lot of golf. You’d be amazed (perhaps you wouldn’t really) how often the battery starts beeping to warn of it’s impending demise when one is crouched over a crucial 3 foot putt. For those that don’t know about these things the battery beeps slowly at first but becomes more and more “demanding” as it nears death.
Do you back off the putt and put your aid in your pocket or do you, as I generally do, carry on and miss the putt anyway as the battery reaches a crescendo?
@Joe Kirklin Crawford says: “… the section (7) on adaptation might have been a bit short …”
I love thinking about adaptation and would love to hear Anthony talk more about it. This presentation was mostly about science though so I think it was appropriate not to bring up the policy aspects of adaptation, which then makes it a shorter discussion. The point that we are adapting and will continue to adapt pretty much stands on it’s own but maybe tie in the fertilization effect to really drive it home? I.E. we will change crops and use the extra CO2 to our advantage.
Very, very good and fair presentation Anthony. h/t. Seems all of the non-climatologist scientists and doctors there grasped the data correctly.
Still watching…….great presentation.
Suggestion: during the showing of the graph showing the temperature rise since 1850 you might suggest that some warming was expected as we came out of the Little Ice Age. Also mention the 1910 to 1940 temperature rise.
I recall hearing that the little ice age was bad perhaps more on the negative impact to agriculture than just temperature, specifically wheat, which could be ruined by wind or late season rain. So even if the definition of extreme weather in the LIA is different from today (flight cancellations), perhaps more extreme weather events may be an indicator of cooling instead of warming?
Thanks Anthony.
For me, one of the key points in your presentation is the logarithmic effect of CO2
Your salt analogy is interesting.
The analogy I have found very useful and easy to understand is the painted window analogy.
While painting a window to reduce incoming light, the first coat of paint will cut out 90% of all the light. Subsequent coats will only marginally increase the effectiveness.
Another example that truth is pretty inexpensive (Anthony’s very modest speaking fee) for those willing to search for it and think.
Our society is in a tailspin when we award outlandish speaking fees for Warmistas that are only in the business of brainwashing people with propaganda.
On the other hand, well done, Anthony. Great presentation! Post it on YouTube and let’s all help it go viral.
Excellent presentation! Thank you for sharing this. It should be required viewing for all high school and college students. I think one important addition would be the tight relationship between the temperature anomaly and sunspot cycles, as well as the longer term solar cycles.
pesadia says:
August 17, 2013 at 1:08 pm
You wrote: Having spent all (or most) of my life as profesional salesman, I am not scientifically educated.
Here’s a definition you may use to start your scientific education: Science deals with facts that are documentable and reproducible.
On Arctic Sea Ice decline.
This is one of the main talking points of those who support (C)AGW, the ‘canary in the coal mine’ and (might be) worthy of some extra attention.
Why not question the relationship between Arctic Sea Ice decline and CO2-Global Warming?
Is there a case to be made to contribute this to a natural cycle?
I found this (If correct) an interesting graph:
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/screenhunter_170-jun-15-11-10.jpg
Showing that Arctic Sea Ice was actually lower before 1975.
Anecdotal data also suggests that periods of declining sea ice might not be that unusual.
“It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated.
(This) affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.”
President of the Royal Society, London, to the Admiralty, 20th November, 1817
The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul, at Bergen, Norway.
Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.
Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.
Monthly Weather Review for November 1922. Washington Post (Associated Press) 1922
Arctic Climate’s alarming change
A mysterious warming of the climate is slowly manifesting itself in the Arctic and if the Antarctic ice cap and the major Greenland ice cap should reduce at the same rate as the present melting oceanic surfaces would rise to catastrophic proportions and people living in lowlands along the shores would be inundated said Dr. Hans Ahlmann noted Swedish geophysisist to-day at the University of California’s Geophysical Institute.
Dr. Ahlmann added that temperatures in the Arctic have increased by 10 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900. An ‘enormous’ rise from the scientific standpoint. Waters in the Spitsbergen area, in the same period, have risen from three to five degrees in temperature, and one to one and a half millimetres yearly in level. ‘The Arctic change is so serious that I hope an international agency can speedily be formed to study conditions on a global basis.’ said Dr. Ahlmann. He pointed out that in 1910 the navigable season along the western Spitsbergen lasted three months. Now it lasts eight months.
Townsville Daily Bulletin Saturday 31 May 1947
Excellent watch..!
Very well done and the ability for my kids to grasp the concepts presented was great to watch. Now its not just dad and what i have been saying its others in the field as well..
Can you stick this as top-post for a few days? It deseves it. I would like to point a few persons to it and right on top would be better, then they won’t even have to dig down for it. Please.
One tiny correction: The chart which you attributed to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute actually bears the imprint of the similarly-named, warmist Woods Hole Research Center, a confusion which I believe was the intent of the latter.
The presentation was excellent! However one graph was not quite right. At the 22.00 minute mark, you showed a graph by David Rose that showed the flat line from August 1997 to August 2012 and then said this was 16 years as it was written on the graphic. It is only 15 years (and perhaps a month). I would have said something like the following:
The graphic says 16 years however it is only 15 years, unless David Rose was thinking in terms of from January 1997 to December 2012. However since that article appeared, three data sets have surpassed 16 years with a slope that is at least a little negative.
For Hadsst2, the slope is flat since March 1997 or 16 years, 4 months. (goes to June)
For Hadcrut3, the slope is flat since April 1997 or 16 years, 3 months. (goes to June)
For RSS, the slope is flat since December 1996 or 16 years and 8 months, or 200 months! (goes to July) RSS is 200/204 or 98% of the way to Ben Santer’s 17 years.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.2/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.2/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.1/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.1/trend/plot/rss/from:1996.9/plot/rss/from:1996.9/trend
Seconding Wayne’s motion.
.
@ur momisugly Martin A says:
“$2,500 dollars for a battery after two years sounds expensive. 10¢ per mile in battery costs alone?”
This is common in battery powered cars, which is why in the UK a recent practice is to lease the electric car and rent the batteries, so when they need replacing it’s not your problem, though this no doubt falls under some subsidy/tax relief for the car manufacturers and then the government socialises the actual high costs amongst other tax payers…
Why would you use relative humidity trends to address whether there’s an increase in total water vapor?
Very well done, Anthony – solid, rigorous science yet laypeople and schoolkids will follow it easily, the people we really want to get the message out to. Seconding Rocky Road, I’d say this presentation should not only go on youtube but be shown in every schoolroom to every grade, at every corporate board meeting, at every service club meeting and in every church and synagogue – and in the Oval Office! I’d send copies to der Fuehrer, Obersturmfuehrers Kerry, Moniz and Jewell, and most of all to Schutzstaffelgruppenfuehrer McCarthy . . .
And let’s don’t forget the attendees at Gauleiter Boxer’s “Climate Change: It’s Happening Now” Senate committee meeting . . ..
I’ve been listening to the presentation and watching on and off, so far the sequencing looks really good, especially the time you spend at the beginning leading up to the creation of WUWT, that helps establish your level of interest and detail so that everything that follows can’t be readily dismissed.
A few notes from the latter half:
24:21 6. Climate sensitivity.
I haven’t noticed a definition. If there isn’t one up to this point there needs to be one here, just saying it’s the temperature change for a doubling of CO2 is fine, people who notice the log relationship that implies can wait for your explanation, people who don’t notice will need you explanation. While people will figure it out in the next two graphs, a brief mention will help keep people focused on the presentation.
2515: Big flaw here (to me, at least), though probably not to the typical audience. The graph credits the source as the “Woods Hole Research Center”, the text says “Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.” The former is is a bunch of warmist post normal science types, WHOI is a research center with a long record of accomplishment worthy of respect.
39:04 Pet peeve – Only use backslashes for Windows path names and Unix character escapes.
Both graphic and text say 1\2 or 3\4\5, please make them say 1/2 or 3/4/5.
41:18 Typo, ISN”T should be ISN’T. Ah, you typed a capital apostrophe. Perhaps you could bold that text instead of SHOUTING.
For more Woods, see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/10/when-you-dont-like-the-poll-numbers-make-up-your-own-poll/#comment-406771
Just watched it. Great presentation, Anthony!