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:
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Link directly to the posting, not to the front page:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/17/my-presentation-at-doctors-for-disaster-preparedness/
Then it doesn’t matter if it’s “sticky” or not.
Saren says:
August 17, 2013 at 2:30 pm
“I love thinking about adaptation and would love to hear Anthony talk more about it. ”
An interesting bit of adaptation, not necessarily to sea level rise but to a lack of land:
Singapore’s area has grown by 20% since the 1960ies.
They buy sand from Indonesia and Malaysia. Allegedly sometimes illegally.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/singapore/7221987/Singapore-accused-of-launching-Sand-Wars.html
http://www.dredgingtoday.com/2010/02/14/sand-war-singapore-vs-neighbours/
I think they should get the sand for free though, as a compensation for the pollution of their air when the forests in Indonesia and/or Malaysia burn…
@DirkH Not only air pollution but robbing them of temperature visa-vie sunlight dimming.
It makes me think of Washington Sate where the benefit of hydro-electricity is tempered by a long-term period of erosion – there are always trade-offs.
Oh maybe that black carbon from burning actually causes warming. I just like the idea of compensation for cooling – I think Canada would have a case against China for adding to our cooling 🙂
Anyway that is really interesting I had no idea that was going on. As Anthony mentioned in his presentation we do seem able to cope with rising sea levels fairly well.
Thank you. I assume it is ok to repost this?
Sure OK to repost Wayne
Excellent presentation Anthony. I would have paid $250 for a seat!
Excellent, Anthony. I especially liked the bit about CO2 not being smart. How does it know which cities to beam its little heat rays upon, and which to ignore?
The doctors got a chuckle out of that, too. They know quite a bit about CO2.
“…we are adapting and will continue to adapt..”
Moreover, even the planet is adapting – clouds, thunderstorms, other negative forcings.
Good Presentation but mostly worthless questions afterward
I think more needs to be said about the NOAA methods of mixing good and bad weather station sites. Is that process public or black box? And why not add a few slides on ice cores and satellite temperature data? One other slide listing all the places warming has supposedly been hidden out of regular view would help too, like deep ocean and under Antarctic ice shelf, etc.
Watched it from beginning to end — completely fascinated. Go Watts!
Eugene WR Gallun
Werner Brozek says:
August 17, 2013 at 3:29 pm
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.
I think you can add another month. If you use 1996.84 I think that takes you back to November 1996 and I still get a flat trend. Although, I’m not absolutely positive how woodfortrees does this conversion.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.84/to/plot/rss/from:1996.84/trend
Richard M says:
August 17, 2013 at 7:21 pm
I think you can add another month. If you use 1996.84 I think that takes you back to November 1996 and I still get a flat trend. Although, I’m not absolutely positive how woodfortrees does this conversion.
Note: For those who hate nitpickyness, just go to the next entry.
The way WFT works is by going to the next whole month from any number you put in. 10 months is 0.83333 of a year. So if you put in 1996.84, you get 200 months or from December 1996, just as if you would have put in 1996.9. However if you put in 1996.83, you get 201 months. You can easily verify this for yourself by clicking “Raw data” and seeing how many months are shown and also by checking the starting month. So while 1996.84 may appear to be 201 months, it is only 200 months. But that does not mean you are necessarily wrong about the extra month. The negative slope for 200 months is -0.000 24, but the positive slope for 201 months is +0.000 086. According to my calculations, the 0 point would have been hit around November 8. Of course this assumes a smooth transition from November 1 to December 1 which I have no way of verifying. Without having a clue what August will bring, I can justify claiming that the flat slope extends for 200.75 months. The 0 point is at 0.240 and the July anomaly was 0.222. So if August should stay at 0.222, then we would have at least 201.75 months of no warming. But something lower than 0.222 could easily give 202 months. We will have to wait and see.
Might I sugggest that Anthony place a permalink in the tool bar for his presentations? It would give many of us who share this kind of info a quick place to look for it and link to.
Bill
It was worth spending 53 minutes on your video because I learned some things I did not know. You are a good presenter but you are still a jerk for what you said about my work. J. Scott Armstrong has good advice for you. The one fact that I found most interesting in your presentation is that water vapor in air has been slowly going down since 1948. This is exactly the opposite of what IPCC says because according to them it should be increasing to implement that positive water vapor feedback they keep babbling about. You may recall that It is this positive water vapor feedback that is required to reach doubling sensitivities of two or three degrees that we are threatened with. Pure Arrhenius warming is only 1.1 degrees Celsius, not enough to frighten anyone. But water vapor feedback is not positive but negative according to Ferenc Miskolczi and decreasing water vapor in the atmosphere proves it. Next, volcanic eruptions. You have that all wrong. There is no such thing as volcanic cooling. The bulk of the eruption ends up in the stratosphere which it first warms. Cooling follows a year or two later but it stays there and never gets to the ground level. Aerosol cooling they talk about is hugely overrated. Such volcanic cooling as has been identified has nothing to do with volcanism but is simply a case of normal La Nina cooling, misidentified. The two volcanoes you show are Pinatubo and El Chichon. The “Pinatubo cooling” found on temperature curves is nothing of the sort – it just happens to be an ordinary La Nina in the right place where a volcanic cooling was expected. That is because Pinatubo went off exactly at the peak of an El Nino which was then immediately followed by La Nina cooling. See Figure 9 in my book. El Chichon is exactly the opposite – it went off at the bottom of a La Nina valley and was immediately followed by the 1983 El Nino. There just isn’t any La Nina in the right place to use as a stand-in for its volcanic cooling and volcanologists have been scratching their heads about it ever since. You would know all this if you had bothered to read my book. If you check your temperature curve you will find that the giant Krakatao has a miserably small cooling despite anecdotal reports about it because it falls into an intermediate space between an EL Nino and a La Nina. The anecdotes refer to a celestial display, not temperature. And the greatest eruption of the twentieth century, Katmai, has no cooling whatsoever associated with it because it erupted when an El Nino was just beginning to form. Now let’s look at the Arctic. It may not surprise you that it cannot possibly be caused by greenhouse warming. Arctic warming started suddenly at the turn of the twentieth century, after 2000 years of slow, linear cooling. It paused for thirty years in mid-century, then resumed, and is still going strong. Greenhouse warming is ruled out by the laws of physics because there was no measurable increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide at the time. Its probable cause is a rearrangement of the North Atlantic current system at the turn of the century that started to carry warm Gulf Stream water into the Arctic Ocean. That is why the Arctic is the only place in the world that is still warming. The rest of the world is going through a so-called “pause” of warming that nobody seems to understand. That is because they are either stupid or ignorant or both. This lack of warming has now lasted for 15 years. The IPCC was established in 1988 and ten years later, in 1998, warming stopped. This stoppage has now lasted for fifteen years, five years longer than the period when they could observe warming first hand. The pause should accordingly be the new normal since its length exceeds that of the previous short period of warming in action. The cause of the pause is no mystery, for it follows directly from Miskolczi’s saturated greenhouse theory. He published it in 2007 but was shouted down in the blogosphere and ignored by “real” climate scientists. But in seven years no peer reviewed objections were published, no doubt not for lack of trying. In 2010 he found a way to prove his theory using existing data. NOAA has a database of weather balloon observations going back to 1948. Miskolczi used it to study the absorption of infrared radiation by the atmosphere over time and found that absorption had been constant for 61 years while carbon dioxide at the same time went up by 21.6 percent. This means that the addition of this substantial amount of carbon dioxide to air had no influence whatsoever on the absorption of IR by the atmosphere. And no absorption means no greenhouse effect, case closed. Right off the bat, any and all predictions of warming based on the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide are invalid. Since they were often used to justify passing emission control laws these laws were passed under false premises and should be voided. This also makes the theory of anthropogenic global warming a pseudo-science that should be cast off into the waste basket of history.
[Good comments, thank you. Where do you want to interject paragraphs returns? Mod]
One suggestion.
Don’t just read the words from the chart. The audience is capable of reading. And you are much much better speaking more spontaneously
Dear Anthony,
If you choose to snip this entire comment, that’s just fine. I will completely understand. It is going to be a long one. You asked for suggestions and………. for what they’re worth from this non-scientist, anti-CAGW, person (I watched the video twice, btw),
HERE THEY ARE! #[:)]
Appearance and Speaking Style
Perfect. Don’t change a thing. You are the ultimate media professional, pleasant, competent, articulate, and well-groomed (sure nice you don’t wear a beard — that ALWAYS makes me wonder, “Why?” even if only vaguely…. “Is he suffering from depression? Insecure? Chip on his shoulder?” I’ve never seen a man who looked better in a beard than clean shaven (or with a tasteful moustache – ahem). Good volume and ad libbed responses to audience reactions. Engaging sense of humor — MORE sarcasm and mocking humor could be used; you do this with finesse. You are a natural comedian; loved the “Watt’s up, docs?” Your laughing at your own joke was highly appealing and no doubt made your audience even more ready and able to listen to your message than it already was.
New Title
Can Humans Control the Earth’s Weather? Ten Tests
[00:30] Re: “What We’ll Cover”
[Edited version – some for clarity or accuracy, some for style]
1. Observed Temperature Trend
2. Amplification and Feedback Error
3. Aerosols
4. Arctic Sea Ice
5. Climate Models Fail
6. [OMIT — Climate Sensitivity is an unhelpful concept — CO2 lags temp.]
6. (7.) Adaptation to Climate
7. (8.) Future Generations
8. (9.) Human CO2 Emissions
9. (10.) Integrity of Surface Temperature Record [Note: Make the bulk of this part of a separate presentation; it would make a great one.]
[01:18] About Me
Great! Just the right amount and it was all relevant and not mere narcissistic grandstanding.
Nice pace. ADD: your business name and its website (in yellow) AND wattsupwiththat.com (in yellow). Loved re: the electric car, “When it was working… it was great!” LOL.
Re: Arbor Day — DELETE “… and so I flew out to Lincoln, Nebraska…” and summarize entire story to: “As a result of my efforts, a quarter of a million trees were planted each year for ADD: ___ years.”
Temp trend graphs all good — nice use of laser pointer, helpful.
So many amazing things about your life have prepared you to be the ultimate Truth in Science Warrior — teacher pushing you into public speaking… student job where Stevenson Screen showed up… you know many more, I’m sure; “… everything in our past is God’s perfect preparation for the future that only He can see.” [Corrie ten Boom in The Hiding Place]
Ten Tests
[13:30] 1. Observed Temperature Trend
So FarADD (perhaps) “… [cooling in the ’70’s] and in the1950’s.”
[14:45] Re: “anomaly” ADD a slide showing on one side “Anomaly Graph” next to “Actual Temp. Data Graph” to make a blatant comparison of two types of graphs
2. Amplification and Feedback Error
— After any initial slide asks as a question: “… Perform as Advertised?” (or other question) Change later slides to read: “Did NOT Perform as Advertised.” (or to other statement)
– Don’t even mention CAGW conjecture; that only dignifies it.
-OMIT part about no temp. gauges at the poles, etc,… more distracting and potentially confusing than helpful
— KEY to emphasize: Polar temperatures are amplified whether earth is cooling or warming.
[16:55] ADD: Explicitly say: “Note, we are only talking about a difference of 1 to 3 degrees Celcius here.” (The graph makes the temp. spread look large, thus very significant.)
3. Aerosols
[17:55] Re: “They claim …
had to do with the fact thatWAS BECAUSE OF“… their excuse lately … .” — GOOD
— NO big volcanic eruptions — GOOD
ADD: “AND human aerosol emissions are negligible.”
[18:57] Revise to say: “Aerosols
alonecan’t explain the failure of the models to predict [what really happened].”[19:05] Revised: “Clouds, made by the Earth, are a more plausible explanation.”
4. Arctic Sea Ice
[19:48] “…
worse than expected… .” — It’s not worse, it is simply NOT A PROBLEM per se.[19:59] “Arctic sea ice
is in declinehas declined.” [“in decline” sounds like a steady trend][20:15] OMIT bit about “we don’t know if it’s a bi-polar dichotomy; we just don’t know… .”
Just EMPHASIZE the big fact: “The Antarctic is increasing and it has __ times more ice area than the Arctic.”
[21:12] OMIT soot, coal melt theory discussion — produces more confusion in audience, “Hmm, there was a LOT of soot in 1700’s England… hm, … . ” Just keep to your power points (remember this is a PUBLIC RELATIONS battle, too — a confused mind will shut down and not as readily hear what other facts you are presenting if you give them too much to process easily or the message on that point is slightly ambiguous — your audience is the general public, not just brainy M.D.’s). Also, coal is a good thing for the U.S. economy right now; until thorium reactors are on line (and they are a GOOD idea), clean coal is a good thing (and that industry needs all the help it can get with the Obamanation’s EPA breathing down their necks, i.e., don’t inadvertently help Obama, here).
5. Climate Model Fail
“the Pause”[no help with the CAGW “pause” propaganda] [22:05][23:05] Re: Spencer Graph, revise to read: “have failed.” (are failing is too weak)
[Generally, no questions, “Is this correct? Can we know that?” Instead, simply declare the truth.]
[23:30] FUN comedy from “Nature” clowns’ quote, “… we don’t know why… .” LOL.
[23:40] Replace: “they don’t fully understand just yet”
WITH “based solely on conjecture and speculation.”
[23:52] “Natural factors overwhelm
man-madehuman factors.”— ADD “Further, nothing unprecedented is happening (v. a v. Holocene, Roman, and Medieval periods); human CO2 did not increase, but temperatures did. [must keep emphasizing the “human CO2” factor which is the key; no one denies global warming per se]
6. OMIT Climate Sensitivity — there is NO evidence CO2 (much less human CO2) causes temperatures to rise; there IS EVIDENCE (per Salby and the Swedish scientist who replicated Salby’s results) temp. rise causes CO2 to rise, delayed by a quarter cycle.
That is, don’t concede the CAGW conjecture by “assuming [ad argumentum]” it “MIGHT” be a real mechanism. It only confuses your audience or, worse, gives the CAGWers aid in their chicanery.
OMIT Pat Michaels’ Sensitivity Graph — it is UN-helpful in an oral presentation.
[25:00] OMIT “… a lot of people are going to that number [2 or 2.2] now” – NO, NO, NO! No real scientists are agreeing there is ANY proven CO2 forcing at this time.
[25:22] Graph showing media’s typical CO2 and temp. one-on-one relationship mantra is NOT helpful — OMIT — There IS a close correlation between CO2 and temp, it’s just that CO2 lags temp..
[25:42] Soup Analogy — excellent way to describe logarithmic property of CO2, BUT, salt is very powerful, gram for gram, the analogy implies that CO2 is likewise very powerful in small amounts. Yes, the CO2 has the declining effectiveness you describe, BUT, its overall effect is NEGLIGIBLE (don’t mention this at all — not the paint on window, nothing; it only reinforces the CAGW speculation that CO2 drives temperature).
6. (7.)Adaptation
[28:10] “… is
probablyfar easier and makes more sense than highly uncertain attempts to avert it.”— ADD facts about people moving to hotter areas of U.S. and adapting just fine to higher temps. (e.g., from New York to Florida)
7. (8.) Climate and Future Generations
— (after mentioning wealth factor) ADD: 2) future generations will also have more knowledge and advanced technology [might want to add in the example of everyone assuming the world would soon run out of copper and then………….. SILICON…. no shortage of sand!].
8. (9.) Human CO2 Emissions
[30:12] ADD: There is NO proven problem; Nature emits 96% of the CO2, there is no evidence humans’ 4% does ANYTHING, much less anything significant to earth’s temperature.
— Re: “Fossil fuels are not going away… ” — REWORD so that you don’t imply that they ought to go away soon — they are doing a great job for the U. S. economy (we must remain adamant on this in the face of the pressure on that industry from the EPA) and that’s fine. Good point that when they do run out, IT WILL BE GRADUALLY, as their price in a free market goes up, replacements will arise.
[31:22] Re: “If climate change is an issue, and let’s assume it is… .” [this may have been a wise thing to say 5 years ago, not NOW, CAGW is SO OVER, now, don’t concede and, thus, help perpetuate it].
9. (10.) Integrity of Surface Temperature Record
[31:45] MAKE THIS A SEPARATE PRESENTATION (it deserves it; much excellent detail to tell)
— Just list the various example U.S. sites and their BASICS (not their whole interesting, but too long for this speech, story); but, DO include the Baltimore, MD 13 new records hilarity, great humor, there!
— KEEP in the “Results: USHCN… “graphs
[40:00] NICE use of laser pointer re: NOAA’s homogenizing flim-flam (to .3).
****************************************************
Well, that’s it! My suggestions. GREAT JOB, ANTHONY!
YOU ARE A TRUE HERO, America owes you so much.
Thank you.
Yours most sincerely,
Janice
We still don’t have any good pictures of Big Foot and UFO’s??
Obviously Big Foot flies the UFO’s and is simply smarter than we are and can either inject a false signal in the camera or simply not be where the camera is recording.
Problem solved!! 8>)
The message is strong. Opportunity knocks….
Perfect WUWT-TV episode !
“Big Foot flies the UFO’s … .” [Kuhncat]
LAUGH — OUT — LOUD.
I shouldn’t be surprised based on the the tone and quality of your postings Mr Watts, but seeing you (if not in person) engaging an audience in a live setting was really refreshing. Your presentation, voice, tone, and overall delivery show a side of yourself unknown to me. It is good to know how we’ll you comport yourself online and live which leads me to a further appreciation of your efforts. Thank you, with deepest gratitude.
Well done!
Anthony shoots. He scores!
Excellent speaker, excellent video.
(A pity you had to learn the true cost of electric cars)
Arno;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/17/my-presentation-at-doctors-for-disaster-preparedness/#comment-1393654 Excellent comments, please respond to Mod. to insert para separations.