By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The dwindling number of paid or unpaid trolls commenting here – dwindling because the less dishonest and less lavishly-funded ones realize the game is up – do not like The Pause. They whine that in order to demonstrate a long period without global warming I have cherry-picked my start date.
No, I have calculated it. I have not, as they suggest, naïvely cherry-picked 1998 as my starting-point so as to take unfair advantage of the Great El Niño of that year. I have not picked 1998 at all.
Instead have determined by iterative calculation the earliest month in the record that shows no global warming at all as far as the present. On the RSS dataset, which I shall use for the analysis to follow, that month is September 1996, giving 17 years 6 months without any global warming.
This graph has become famous. Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace (which is now, with frantic mendacity, trying to disown him), displayed it recently on Fox News, followed by weeping and gnashing of Medicaid dentures right across the leftosphere. Marc Morano has the graph as a lead indicator at the inestimable ClimateDepot.com. It is popping up all over the blogs.
The true-believers wring their tentacles and moan about cherry-picking. So let us deal with that allegation, and discover something fascinating on the way.
To put an end to the allegation that we have cherry-picked our start-date, let us start at the beginning of the satellite record. So here you go, from January 1979.
Oo-er! Instead of a zero trend, we now have a terrifying increase in global temperature, at a rate equivalent to a shockingly sizzling – er – 1.24 Cº per century. That is below the 1.7 Cº/century near-term warming predicted in IPeCaC’s 2013 Fifth Assessment Report. Well below the 2 Cº/century predicted in the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report. Scarcely more than a third of the 3.5 Cº/century mid-range estimate in the 1990 First Assessment Report. A quarter of the 5 Cº/century predicted by the over-excitable James Hansen in front of Congress in 1988.
Evidently, the predictions are becoming less and less extreme as time passes. But they are still well over the top compared with reality. Let us illustrate IPeCaC’s latest version of the “consensus” prediction, comparing it with the RSS real-world observation:
Whichever dataset one chooses, whichever starting point one picks, the rate of global warming predicted by the models has been and remains grossly, flagrantly, egregiously in excess of what is actually happening in the real world. It is this central truth that every attempt to explain away the Pause fails to get to grips with.
One of the slyest ways to pretend the Pause does not exist is offered by “Tamino”, one of the Druids’ white-robed, snaggle-bearded, bushy-eyebrowed archpriests.
“Tamino”, taking time off from his sun-worshiping duties at Stonehenge, invites us to suppose that in 1997 we had predicted that the previously-observed warming rate would either continue as is or turn horizontal. Where would the subsequent annual data points lie?
Tamino’s excited conclusion is that “fourteen of sixteen years were hotter than expected even according to the still-warming prediction, and all sixteen were above the no-warming prediction (although one is just barely so)”.
Phew! Global warming has not Paused after all!! The Earth still has a fever!!! Global temperature is continuing to rise – and at a faster rate than before!!!! What a relief!!!!! We said we were more certain about future global warming than about anything in the whole wide world before, evaah – and we were right!!!!!!
Up to a point, Lord Copper. The truth, if one goes looking for it rather than bashing and mashing the data till they fit the desired outcome, is much more interesting.
First, it is not appropriate to use annual data points when monthly data are available. Using the monthly data multiplies 12-fold the degrees of freedom in the analysis, and makes the picture clearer.
Secondly – and this cannot be said too often – trend lines on observed data, particularly where the data are known to be stochastic and the behavior of the underlying object chaotic, are not, repeat not, repeat not a prediction.
Let us play Tamino’s game of breaking the RSS dataset into pieces. But let us break it into three pieces, not two. Let us look at three periods: January 1979 to January 1993, January 1993 to January 1999, and January 1999 to February 2014.
It was Fred Singer who first pointed out this most startling characteristic of the post-1979 temperature record to me. We were sitting in front of the big computer screen and playing with the temperature datasets using my graphing engine in the library at Rannoch, overlooking the loch and the misty mountains beyond.
An otter was flip-flopping past the window, and the ospreys (a ménage a trois that year, with two adult males, a female and two chicks in the nest) were swooping down to catch the occasional trout.
Fred told me there had been very little trend in global temperature until the Great el Niño of 1998, and very little trend thereafter. But, he said, there had been a remarkable step-change in the data in the short period culminating in the Great el Niño.
The trend till January 1993 and the trend from January 1999 are indeed near-identical at just over a quarter of a Celsius degree per century. Not a lot to worry about there. But the trend over the six years January 1993 to January 1999 was a lulu. It was equivalent to a spectacular 9.4 Cº per century.
So, what caused that sudden upward lurch in global temperature? Since absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation, we know it was not CO2: for CO2 concentration has been rising monotonically, with no sudden leaps and bounds.
Indeed, no phenomenon in the atmosphere could really have caused this lurch. True, there had been a naturally-occurring reduction in cloud cover over the 18 years 1983-2001, and that had caused a forcing of 2.9 Watts per square meter (Pinker et al., 2005), greater by 25% than the entire 2.3 Watts per square meter of manmade forcing from all sources in the 263 years since 1750.
However, as Dr Pinker’s graph shows, the trend in cloud cover forcing was relatively steady, and there was actually a drop in the cloud-cover forcing in 1993-5.
Since solar activity did not change enough over the period to cause the sudden hike in global temperature, there does not appear to have been any external reason why, for six years, temperature should suddenly have risen at a mean rate equivalent to almost 1 Cº per decade.
Nor was there any more land-based volcanic activity than usual: and, if there had been, it would if anything have caused a temporary cooling.
When the impossible has been eliminated, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. The culprit is plainly not atmospheric, not extra-terrestrial, not land-based, but oceanic.
To kick atmospheric temperature permanently upward by almost 0.3 Cº, and to boot the centennial trend northward by almost a full Celsius degree, something drastic must have happened beneath the waves.
Perhaps the still poorly-monitored pattern of overturning that takes warmer water from the mixed upper stratum of the ocean to the much colder benthic strata temporarily slowed.
Perhaps we shall never know. Our ability to monitor changes in ocean heat content, negligible today, was non-existent then, for the ARGO buoys were not yet on duty: and even today, as Willis Eschenbach has pointed out, the coverage is so sparse that it is the equivalent of taking a single temperature and salinity profile of the whole of Lake Superior less than once a year.
Perhaps there was massive subsea volcanic activity in the equatorial eastern Pacific, beginning in 1993/4 and peaking in 1998. Again, we shall never know, for we do not monitor the 3.5 million subsea volcanoes on Earth (the largest of which, occupying a footprint greater than any other in the entire solar system, was only discovered last year).
But the curious thing about this sudden and remarkable warming over just six years – let us call it the Singer Event – is that so very little consideration is given to it in the ramblings of IPeCaC.
The Singer Event accounts for fully four-fifths of the global warming trend across the entire satellite era. Without it, no one would still be wailing about global warming.
But will you find the Singer Event mentioned or discussed in any of IPeCaC’s Summaries for Policymakers from 2001 onward? Er, no. It doesn’t fit the story-line.
Bluntly, unless and until the cause of the Singer Event is nailed down there is nothing whatsoever in the global temperature record during the satellite era to suggest that CO2 is having any detectable effect on global temperature at all.
Finally, just in case any of the trolls want to whinge about why I have confined the analysis to RSS, I prefer RSS because, alone of the five datasets, it correctly represents the 1998 Great el Niño as being significantly bigger than any other el Niño in the instrumental record.
There have been two previous Great el Niños in the past 300 years. Each of those, like the 1998 event and unlike any other in the global instrumental record, caused corals to bleach worldwide on a large scale. Bleaching is a natural defense mechanism against sudden ocean warming, and the corals have recovered from it just fine, as they have evolved to do.
But the corals are a testament to the fact that the Singer Event is something atypical. And it is the RSS dataset that best reflects how exceptional the Singer Event was.
But here, just to please the trolls, is the entire global temperature record since January 1979, taken as the mean of all five global temperature datasets (it is pardonable to take the mean, because although the coverages and measurement methods vary the discrepancies are small enough that they tend to cancel each other over a long enough period).
The bottom line is that the warming trend since 1979 on the RSS dataset was 0.44 Cº, while on the mean of all the datasets it was not vastly greater at 0.51 Cº. So, when the trolls argue that I am cherry-picking, they are arguing pettily about hundredths of a degree.
The Singer Event is highly visible in the five-datasets graph, and still more so in the earlier RSS graph.
I should be most interested in readers’ comments on the Singer Event, because I have been invited to contribute a paper to the reviewed literature about it. All help, even from the trolls, would be very much appreciated.
Instead of a zero trend, we now have a terrifying increase in global temperature, at a rate equivalent to a shockingly sizzling – er – 1.24 Cº per century. That is…Scarcely more than a third of the 0.35 Cº/century mid-range estimate in the 1990 First Assessment Report. A quarter of the 0.5 Cº/century predicted by the over-excitable James Hansen in front of Congress in 1988.
I’m puzzled. Have we misplaced a decimal point here?
“Scarcely more than a third of the 0.35 Cº/century mid-range estimate in the 1990 First Assessment Report. ”
3.5C?
From what I recall of my brief intro to catastrophe theory decades ago, a sudden step change to a new baseline is common in systems where you have a number of chaotically coupled variables. There was even a little demo with rubber bands and a rotating disc, you could maneuver the various bands over quite a range before the position of the disc changed much, but past a certain point it would suddenly shift to another semi stable position. This is pretty analogous to what we see in climate, and most assuredly not the result of a change in a single variable that the whole system is dependent on. Natural systems seldom seem to vary monotonically with one variable.
I think the oceans and their currents and oscillations are the prime suspects, the atmosphere is just too small a heat sink to do much, and down welling IR is absorbed in the top of the oceans and contributes little to ocean heat content.
Typo? Should that have read: “A quarter of the 0.5 Cº/[DECADE] predicted by the over-excitable James Hansen in front of Congress in 1988.”
if the question is ‘how long has it been since there has been any statistically significant warming?’ and the start point is the present and you work your way back, it is impossible to cherry pick a start date…
“1.24 Cº per century. That is below the 1.7 Cº/century near-term warming predicted in IPeCaC’s 2013 Fifth Assessment Report. Well below the 2 Cº/century predicted in the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report. Scarcely more than a third of the 0.35 Cº/century mid-range estimate in the 1990 First Assessment Report. A quarter of the 0.5 Cº/century”
Units!
I remember the 1998 El Nino in eastern Australia. Very calm and warm a summer it was for the surfers, hardly any ocean swells or cyclones at all. So I naturally learnt then to correlate warmer, at least in the SW Pacific, with less storminess, perhaps because a Pacific Ocean where heat is more evenly distributed means less temperature differential and therefore less storms, so we might, based on this, expect less storminess under global warming (the exact opposite of what we are often told). Also I read somewhere that the reason Magellan called it the ‘Pacific’, was because, despite being much bigger was much more ‘peaceful’ than the Atlantic, again possibly because, being larger, heat is more evenly distributed from the poles to the equator.
I have no problem with the Singer event around 1998 being some kind of widespread oceanic circulation and/or turnover event. This is not uncommon on the east coast of Australia for example, the temperature and strength of the east Australian current varies markedly from year to year, and can change character in a matter of days, with e.g. localised upwelling events, but which never last very long. However note that the temperature in the datasets rebounds down from the very high 1998 warming peak fairly quickly, suggesting some sort of sudden event that could also NOT be maintained, which suggests a sudden ‘release’ from a build up scenario, rather than a ‘gradual change’ type of scenario, very much like an oceanic downwelling/upwelling etc.
First, I am curious as to where you get the name “Singer Event”.
Second, the analysis does demonstrate how little we know about the inputs into the Earth’s climate. Clearly the climate does have inputs. And just as clearly the emphasis on CO2 does not appear to be justified.
“Oo-er! Instead of a zero trend, we now have a terrifying increase in global temperature, at a rate equivalent to a shockingly sizzling – er – 1.24 Cº per century. That is below the 1.7 Cº/century near-term warming predicted in IPeCaC’s 2013 Fifth Assessment Report. Well below the 2 Cº/century predicted in the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report. Scarcely more than a third of the 0.35 Cº/century mid-range estimate in the 1990 First Assessment Report. A quarter of the 0.5 Cº/century predicted by the over-excitable James Hansen in front of Congress in 1988″.
Typo alert
I thought RSS was a better data set because it includes more of the historical network data and less extrapolation into polar regions which skew the other data sets to a greater extent. Also, the homogenizing techniques that are used for this were calibrated to sat data specifically during the abnormally high warming rate period in question, further biasing the original data.
Seem to have jumped from deg/century to deg/decade mid-stream there.
This is what Bob Tisdale has been saying for years.
Excellent. Actual science based on real data not some computer prediction.
Comparing the Pinker 2005 plot to the cloud cover plot at the very bottom of http://tinyurl.com/nbnh7hq :
They have a lot of similarity, although with some differences as fits how Pinker 2005 is plotting a somewhat different quantity than the low cloud cover of the latter. Pinker 2005 is plotting flux anomalies for solar radiation reaching the surface, as should be affected by in part by haze, smog, smoke, etc. Also, there may be satellite calibration error in ISCCP data around 1994, suggested to impact high cloud cover data but also perhaps more, discussed by Dr. Shaviv in the Hebrew University debate.*
In temperature, there is of course an El Nino spike especially around 1998, but, in the preceding, I’m talking about cloud cover (related, as albedo change is the main climate driver, but not the same quantity).
That last plot in the prior link (and the many illustrations for other quantities above it) shows much relationship to cosmic ray flux meanwhile; this is a case where a picture is worth a thousand words, and, to see so, look at the plotting of both in the prior link (which also debunks some CAGW movement tricks attempting to hide it, since they have particularly targeted what their best operatives secretly recognize to be their greatest threat).
Although I am more emphasizing the prior link, note the Pinker 2005 paper (not linked in the article) is as a PDF at http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/science-2005-pinker-850-4.pdf
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* http://www.sciencebits.com/HUdebate
Very interesting phenomenon this “Singer step change”. I have been always intrigued by the speed of rotation of this sphere we live on. This speed and its changes are referred to as LOD influencing also weather patterns. see e.g. :http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/ask/a11608.html as a first reference. El Ninos are concurrent with a lengthening of LOD (Length of Day). As rotation dynamics influence density differences (temperature difference eg in water and air) I would not be surprised of a causal relationship.
I would argue the 1993-1999 period for selection is incorrect due to volcanic forcing from Mt. Pinatubo. After its eruption in 1991, you can see a clear and immediate downward trend in the data to 1993. We have a well-established scientific mechanism for short-term decreases in temperature due to volcanic eruption, and it’s borne out beautifully by the data. Looking at your average chart, if I disregard the cooling 1991-1993, assuming it’s (primarily) due to the eruption, I see a fairly consistent, linear, upward trend from 1979 through at least 2005, at which point temperatures appear to have leveled off. Mind you, this isn’t calculated in any way, but given the eruption, a consistent linear trend looks to be much more plausible than looking at just the 1993-1999 period.
If we go with your step change theory, your same graph appears to show .6 C of warming in the six-year period between 1985 and 1991, or 0.6 C of warming in the two-year period between 2008 and 2010. Granted, my examples are more cherry-picked than your six-year example (they start at the coldest point and end at the warmest), but they also don’t have as strong a scientific explanation for the observed cooling prior to their start.
devijvers says:
March 19, 2014 at 7:30 am
This is what Bob Tisdale has been saying for years
So, maybe we should call it the Tisdale/Singer Event?
1993 to 1999 represented a period of great political upheaval in the Soviet bloc countries and a large drop in the number of weather stations reporting. Could it be a difficulty in transitioning from one data series to another? How continuous are the data sets really?
I seem to recall a certain tendency to use UAH until a year or two ago. Why the sudden affection for RSS?
Don’t forget the biggest cherry pick of all……… 1979
and the biggest step change of all…. cooling the past
As always, Lord Monckton, an excellent presentation, which is guaranteed to have the bedwetters buying new sheets in bulk from Bed, Bath and Beyond…
One unique phenomenon that took place during the rapid global temperature rise from 1978~1998 were the 2nd and 3rd strongest back-to-back solar cycles in recorded history that occurred from 1976~1996. These two solar cycles marked the end of the strongest 63-year string of solar cycles (1933~1996) in 11,400 years (Solanki et al).
It’s also interesting to note that when the last strong solar cycle ended in 1996, so did the RSS global warming trend.
I understand that correlation doesn’t equate causation, but perhaps the rapid rise of ocean/atmospheric temperatures could be partially explained by these, dare I say it…, unprecedented solar cycles.
The jury is still out on the efficacy of the Svensmark Effect, but CERN’s CLOUD experiment results do hint that Dr. Svensmark may be on to something..
Anyway, Lord Monckton, another entertaining and informative post.
Thank you.
It’s interesting that you mention submarine volcanoes – it’s a subject most seem to avoid as we really know nothing about them. The recently discovered chain of 100+ active volcanoes stretching north between Iceland and Svalbard for example some of which are now nearing the surface must surely be an influence on arctic ice melt as well as OHC. The chain of 100+ discovered running north along NZ’s fault line is yet another. These active chains must deliver massive amounts of heat into the oceans and variations in their activity due to planetary changes could possibly account for sudden changes in OHC . And what of the active chains we haven’t yet discovered?
Most interesting breakdown of the data. There have been some significant Coral Bleaching events which would fit into the steep warming period too although I have yet to be convinced that temperature alone is the cause of these events as the corals in the warmer lagoons have, by my observations, recovered first and are anyway subject to much higher temperatures than the corals on the outside of the reef. If there was indeed a major undersea volcanic event, maybe a change in the water quality is involved.
Ignore if prior comment appears:
Comparing the Pinker 2005 plot to the cloud cover plot at the very bottom of http://tinyurl.com/nbnh7hq :
They have a lot of similarity, although with some differences as fits how Pinker 2005 is plotting a somewhat different quantity than the low cloud cover of the latter. Pinker 2005 is plotting flux anomalies for solar radiation reaching the surface, as should be affected by in part by haze, smog, smoke, etc. Also, there may be satellite calibration error in ISCCP data around 1994, suggested to impact high cloud cover data but also perhaps more, discussed by Dr. Shaviv in the Hebrew University debate.*
In temperature, there is of course an El Nino spike especially around 1998, but, in the preceding, I’m talking about cloud cover (related, as albedo change is the main climate driver, but not the same quantity).
That last plot in the prior link (and the many illustrations for other quantities above it) shows much relationship to cosmic ray flux meanwhile; this is a case where a picture is worth a thousand words, and, to see so, look at the plotting of both in the prior link (which also debunks some CAGW movement tricks attempting to hide it, since they have particularly targeted what their best secretly recognize to be their greatest threat).
Although I am more emphasizing the prior link, note the Pinker 2005 paper (not linked in the article) is as a PDF at
Marcos says:
March 19, 2014 at 7:17 am
if the question is ‘how long has it been since there has been any statistically significant warming?’ and the start point is the present and you work your way back, it is impossible to cherry pick a start date…
———————————
You beat me to it, and the fact that warmist commenters can’t grasp even this simple fact is a testament to what a scientifically stupid bunch of dupes they really are (as if we didn’t already know).
http://tinyurl.com/ogsy5qo
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* http://www.sciencebits.com/HUdebate
Total seismic energy? This guy Chalko seems a bit nutty, but he’s calculating an uptic in global seismic energy starting in 1998 that he attributes to global warming. See http://sci-e-research.com/quake-energy.html I was looking for something a little less agenda-driven, but didn’t have time. Maybe someone else has global seismic energy results.
Your mileage may vary.
While reading I assumed he had misused century for decade.The error must be edited.
Using the same logic according to which the pause started at 1997, we can find out warming lasted till 2008.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979/to:2014/detrend:0.555/plot/rss/from:1979/offset:0.6/plot/rss/from:1979/to:2008/detrend:0.46/plot/rss/from:1997/trend/offset:0.6/plot/rss/from:1979/to:2008/detrend:0.46/trend/plot/rss/offset:0.6/from:1997
(note: graph uses detrending and offsets to put both parts along each other in an easy to compare way. Absolute magnitude of the anomaly has no meaning in it).
One should think that the Pacific Ocean, given the statistics as to how it relates to the earth, should have a major impact on the world’s climate:
“Pacific Ocean, the world’s largest body of water. It lies between North and South America on the east, Asia and Australia on the west, and Antarctica on the south. The Pacific, including adjoining seas, has an area of about 64,186,300 square miles (166,241,700 km 2). It makes up almost 33 per cent of the earth’s total surface and 46 per cent of its water surface, and is larger than all land areas combined. The ocean is commonly divided at the Equator into the North and the South Pacific.
“Maximum dimensions are almost 11,000 miles (17,700 km) east-west (along the Equator) and 9,500 miles (15,200 km) north-south (near the International Date Line). Average depth is about 14,000 feet (4,270 m). Bordering the Pacific are numerous seas. They lie mainly in the west and include the Tasman, Arafura, Coral, South China, Philippine, East China, Japan, Okhotsk, and Bering seas.”
Source: http://geography.howstuffworks.com/oceans-and-seas/the-pacific-ocean.htm
Bob T. has indeed repeated the same mantra for years…albeit, Monckton’s graphics and arguments are a bit more persuasive than Bob’s.
Ditto on requesting clarification on what appears to be a series of typos.
I think it fair to say we know a lot more about the Earth’s climate today than we did 30 years ago, unfortunately it appears to be a drop in the ocean (no pun intended) to what we need to know to fully understand it! I still find it hard to believe that we can meaningfully measure globally averaged temperature to the nearest 1/100th of a degree in either scale, & certainly not rates of warming to the nearest 1/1000th of a degree!
Thank you for your tireless efforts to higlight the truth in the climate record and to withstand the brainwashing attempted by the AGW priests.
It is my contention (totally unproven) that a significant portion of the added atmospheric energy came from a gamma ray burst in mid to late ’97. I also accept that natural ocean oscillations probably had measurable contribution.
If you look at the last graph in your last article, you can see that from mid ’97 to early ’98, the mean temperature increased nearly 0.55 C. A similar increase is seen from early ’08 to early ’10, a time span four times longer than the ’97/’98 SPIKE! I believe that this indicates an external forcing much greater than the ocean dynamics can generate.
Anyone want to join my Gamma Ray Burst club and petition the world governments for lots of money to develope a solar umbrella to protect against the next occurance? Makes as much sense as destroying our carbon based economies to protect against a non-existant CO2 menace.
Bill
Kasuha says:
March 19, 2014 at 8:00 am
Using the same logic according to which the pause started at 1997, we can find out warming lasted till 2008.
Your troll “logic” leaves much to be desired. The start date of the global warming halt period is now, working back. The question is, for how long has this halt lasted, and the answer remains 17 1/2 years.
Trouble with all you skeptical denier types is you just can’t accept the science is always settled-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/sarah-knapton/10703970/No-link-found-between-saturated-fat-and-heart-disease.html
And coming on top of the doubts being raised over the usefulness of statin drugs there’s a serious problem of sceptical denialism breaking out everywhere and this must stop as there is an awful lot of Gummint lolly and important reputations at stake here people. Won’t you please think of the schoolchildren having to cope with all of this uncertainty and confusion?
If I were a “warmer” I would be tempted to argue that the step change connected with big El Nino’s is a response to instability caused by accumulation of energy in the climate system, caused by–global warming. Each step ratchets global temperatures up a notch, but is then followed by a period of stability. The only answer I currently have to that is that recent smaller El Ninos have been followed by a return to the current non-trend. Some forecasters are now saying that we are [may be] heading into conditions favorable to a large El NIno. Is there reason to think that future El Ninos will not produce this ratcheting effect?
Lord Monkton
As always I find your insights compelling and persuasive. A number of years ago, I wrote a paper for web publication entitled An Alternative View of Global Warming which explored the inverse relationship between zonal global temperature changes and changes in the strength of the earth’s magnetic field. Unsurprisingly, the greatest changes in both were occurring in the Arctic and there was a very strong inverse relationship between the slopes of zonal geomagnetic changes and zonal temperature anomalies. Interestingly, the abrupt changes in temperature involving rapid decreases, plateaus and increases seem related to the deterioration of the magnetic field strength and the occurrence of a poorly understood phenomenon called geomagnetic jerks. There were jerks just prior to the warming in the 1920’s to early 1940’s and a string of jerks in 1969, 1978, 1990 and 1999 with a hiatus during the relatively flat period in between. I can think of any number of ways the magnetic field changes can influence Earth’s temperature from cosmic rays and cloud formation to an increase in the depth of penetration of the solar wind into our atmosphere. If nothing else, this may explain why the Arctic is warming the most. You may want to take a look. The paper is at:
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/Johnston_MagneticGW.pdf
I remember the consensus in the 70’s that said we were going into the next ice age. I was a teenager then. 1979 was when the satellites got launched but, it was cold then. My suggestion would be to look at the observations from the ice and snowpack satellite that NASA launched in 1967 that caused that fury of drivel. 🙂
– – – – – – – – –
Zeke Hausfather,
Interesting observation.
I have the same recollection as you. Up to a few years ago the RSS was seen as running hot compared to UAH, but now the perception is reversed.
Question for Roy Spencer: I wonder what the backstory is? If UAH’s Roy Spencer is reading this thread . . . . perhaps he can add some thoughts?
John
Step changes are easily produced by adding odd-integer harmonic frequencies of form 2𝛑(2k-1)f. Since natural cycles are ubiquitous it is hard (for me) to imagine that such coincidences do not occasionally occur, and will necessarily reverse themselves. To avoid antagonizing our host, I will stop there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_wave
I do apologize for a couple of typos. I’ve asked Anthony to fix them.
Whaa
“Finally, just in case any of the trolls want to whinge about why I have confined the analysis to RSS, I prefer RSS because, alone of the five datasets, it correctly represents the 1998 Great el Niño as being significantly bigger than any other el Niño in the instrumental record.”
How do you know it correctly represents the el nino? just because its bigger?
You have 5 data sets ( really more but lets forget that)
UAH, RSS and STAR all measure the troposhere. You cant tell which is correct by comparing the three. You can only note the differences and try to explain them. They are different because they are not direct observation. They are a data product built from multiple instruments stitched together using corrections and adjustments. Further all three rely on algorithms based in physical theory which turns a voltage at the sensor into a brightness and then a brightness into a temperature using radiative transfer equations for microwave.
GISS, HADCRUT, NCDC, Berkeley, Cowtan and Way all create a temperature INDEX not a real temperature but rather a combination of SST and SAT. The all use different methodologies and different data. They “measure” a different aspect of the system than UAH,RSS, and STAR.
You can compare them to each other, but comparing them to UAH,RSS, and STAR is quite a different matter.
Bottom line: you have no basis for assuming that RSS is the most correct. To assert that you would actually have to know what the “real truth” was. You dont. A robust analysis ,as any reader at climate audit would tell you, is one that considers all the data sources. One might be able to argue that RSS is “the best” because it calibrates with radiosondes better, or it calibrates against NCEP better.. if you claim it captures the 1998 El nino better.. you actually have to show your damn work.
Of course in the past skeptics preferred UAH.
fake skeptics will change preferences like this to suit their purpose. They are as bad as Mann.
A real skeptic?
1. Will show all datasets.
2. will present where possible a detailed justification for selecting one dataset over another.
Judgement: Monkton is a fake skeptic.
Read farther. You will find he did include all 5 data sets.
The start date is obviously “right this second!” and searching back. Which bodes poorly for those who desire me to open my pocketbook to prevent more “warming”. From my cold, dead hands…
Combining DanJ’s geomagnetic input with earth rotation speeds as measured via LOD, it appears from literature that an active sun (sun spots en magnetic fields) slows down the rotation speed of the earth. A weak sun (low sunspot numbers and weaker magnetic fields) speeds up the rotation speek, shortening LOD. As understood from Bob Tisdale excursions here, el nino’s may be considered as safety valves preventing the atmosphere from overheating; see the temperature limits elegantly described by Willis Eschenbach.
James Strom– one factor that is working against abnormally strong El Niño events for the next 25 years or so is that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation entered its 30-yr cooling cycle in 2008.
During 30-yr PDO cool cycles, El Niño events tend to be weaker compared to El Niño events during 30-yr PDO warm cycles, while La Niña events during PDO cool cycles tend to be cooler compared to La Niña events during 30-yr warm PDO cycles.
Another phenomenon the CAGW warmunists have to contend with is that the 30-yr AMO warm cycle is starting to wind down and will enter a 30-yr cool cycle around 2022. Making matters even worse for the warmunists is that the current solar peaked last month and will be falling from now until 2020.
To add a cherry on top, the Umbral Magnetic Field (UMF) continues to fall, which Penn & Livingston predict may lead to the next solar cycle being the weakest solar cycle since the Maunder Minimum ended in 1715. If the UMF falls below 1500 gauss, Penn & Livingston believe we may enter a new Grand Solar Minimum, which could mean sunspots virtually disappear for 80 years.
Some scientists attribute the 4 Grand Solar Minimums (Wolf, Sporer, Maunder and Dalton) which to causing the Little Ice Age.
Many cooling events all seem to be converging at the same time, which should help bury the CAGW hypothesis once and for all by around 2020, which will make roughly 25 years of no warming trend, despite roughly 40% of all CO2 emissions since 1750 made over those 25 years.
1970 to 2030 looks like a rerun of 1910 to 1970. In effect slight solar warming from 1800 with the well documented 60 year cycle of warming and cooling imposed.
2000 was the crunch year for CAGW. If correct the normal cycles would be disrupted and the temperature would keep increasing. If CO2 had little or no effect the temperature would level out. It did. CO2 levels have little or no impact on global temperatures.
Even so, the power of the CAGW activists is such that even after a lengthy ‘pause’ senior politicians are crazily anxious to damage their economies on their command!
As a point to ponder – consider the Sahara where temperatures can drop by 35C in a day. If you exclude the warming period then in rather less than 24 hours. A freezer would cool things quicker, but not much else. The Sahara will have the same GHGs as elsewhere on Earth, so where is the CO2 effect?
Here’s something that should be put on 1000 billboards across the world:
Image—A hockey stick with its shaft slanting upwards & to the right and its blade flat. It’s transparently overlaid on a graph of the running mean of GASTA averaged from five sources.
Caption—”Who’s in Denial Now?”
Make that 10,000 billboards.
To be fair they are cherry-picking experts ,as without being able to select the ‘right’ dates, data etc the whole ’cause ‘ goes from having poor data to having no data. However if fair to say that in line with normal climate ‘science ‘ practice , dishonest and hypocritical in application.
May The Seeker After Truth often Come by Here, to enlighten us all.
I’m tempted to say, “I’ll never find another You”.
Bonne chance, mon ami !
Regardless of the starting point you want to choose. what it is clear is that there is little to no correlation between CO2 levels and temperature.
If they were, what would the correlation constant be? It is clear that if you calculate that constant during the nineties (from 1990 to 1999) you will have a different value than if you calculate the constant during the first decade of the XXI century. proving that CO2 levels cannot be the main driver of global mean temperature.
“there does not appear to have been any external reason why, for six years, temperature should suddenly have risen at a mean rate equivalent to almost 1 Cº per decade.”
—————-
Ah so, but there is one associated correlation, ……. or correlated association, ….. comet Hale-Bopp showed up at it’s brightest, …. in 1997, ….. right on “cue”, when the Singer Event started it vertical rise.
Those darned ole comets, …. always have been “omens and bearers of bad news”.
The graphic for the square wave link above has got to be the best visual representation I have ever seen to illustrate how multiple cycles superimposed on each other can cause an apparent step change. If you imagine the long period cycle to be 60 years and the next cycle being 11.5 years etc. (or even starting with one of the longer supposed natural cycles) it is easy to imagine how people lacking in life experience (ie too young to remember the previous flip in the flip flop cycle) would think there has been a sudden unexplained “unprecedented” change in the climate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SquareWaveFourierArrows.gif
If I am reading the comments about the use of Cº correctly … “units” as noted above …
Cº is correct in talking about a relative difference or change. Christopher Monckton of Brenchley’s use of C° is correct.
The difference between the following are all the same:
100°C vs 104°C
-20°C vs -16°C
37°C vs 41°C
The difference between all of the sets is 4C° … the difference is four Celsius degrees NOT 4 degrees Celsius.
4°C is an actual temperature. 4C° is a difference or change … ∆T.
Steven Mosher says:
March 19, 2014 at 8:42 am
“A real skeptic?
1. Will show all datasets.
2. will present where possible a detailed justification for selecting one dataset over another.”
You mean like this
http://climatedatablog.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/hadcrut-giss-rss-and-uah-global-annual-anomalies-aligned-1979-2013-with-gaussian-low-pass-and-savitzky-golay-15-year-filters1.png
and this
http://climatedatablog.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/hadcrut-giss-rss-and-uah-global-annual-anomalies-aligned-1979-2013-with-gaussian-low-pass-and-savitzky-golay-15-year-filters-1979-on.png
Curiously, minus the snark and actually doing the math re attribution, it seems like his lordship was trying to say something like this: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/pdf/1748-9326_6_4_044022.pdf
Or maybe he was just trolling his audience. One can never really tell.
Steven Mosher says:
March 19, 2014 at 8:42 am
“UAH, RSS and STAR all measure the troposhere….GISS, HADCRUT, NCDC, Berkeley, Cowtan and Way all create a temperature INDEX not a real temperature but rather a combination of SST and SAT.”
You missed the biggest difference between the two basis sets. One is an area sampling series (satellite) and the other is a point sampled (thermometer) and then in-filled to get to an area series.
They both have different time sampling methodologies as well.
However, whatever their individual methodologies are, they must all eventually converge in their rate of change output, regardless of any other consideration.
When you think that is likely to occur? And who is likely to have to make the biggest adjustments to do so?
It’s all about Sun activity – solar cycles. Expect at least 15 years of global cooling – which would throw the CO2/temp. correlation way off! Then everyone arguing about greenhouse gases are going to feel very foolish.
David C. says:
March 19, 2014 at 7:44 am
There were seven volcanic eruptions in 1989-94 rated VEI 3 or higher, including two big ones in 1991, ie Pinatubo, a 6, & Mt. Hudson in Chile, a high 5 or low 6.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_volcanic_eruptions_of_the_20th_century
These eruptions may have had the effect of increasing the apparent gain during the 1993-91 period. Increased volcanic activity on land (temporarily dropping tropospheric T) might also indicate submarine eruptions, too, with the effect of heating the oceans.
Steven Mosher says:
March 19, 2014 at 8:42 am
…
Judgement: Monkton is a fake skeptic.
**********************************
…. and a story teller, and a salesman with an earned reputation.
The only way to explain the results is that
a) warming or cooling of earth happens mostly via the oceans where there is mass. We know that water “absorbs” in the UV and visible region. Because of the mass, ultimately that light gets converted to heat.
b) looking at the amount of energy allowed through the atmosphere, we know that 1995 was the end of warming, i.e. up until 1995 we were positively adding energy (mostly stored into the oceans). About three years later, we saw the highest output (means) because there is some lag between energy-in (maxima) and energy-out (means).
I have explained it all before. If you don’t get it, you must be blind (or a poor scientist)
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
So, since 1998, we have currently started globally cooling.
It should be noted that we are cooling from the top latitudes down,
e.g. see here:
http://oi40.tinypic.com/2ql5zq8.jpg
With respect to 1998, the following have 1998 as the highest year. In addition, I will indicate how much higher the 1998 anomaly is compared to the next highest anomaly.
RSS (0.078)
UAHversion5.5 (0.025)
UAHversion5.6 (0.021)
Hadcrut3 (0.066)
Hadsst2 (0.045)
Hadsst3 (0.010)
Mosh, Regarding:
“UAH, RSS and STAR all measure the troposhere. You cant tell which is correct by comparing the three. You can only note the differences and try to explain them. They are different because they are not direct observation. They are a data product built from multiple instruments stitched together using corrections and adjustments.”
I have noted your contempt for Monkton is previous comments. Is it not SOP in statistics to graph the mean of three different, but roughly congruent data sets? Is the difference between these sets of sufficient magnitude to alter the conclusions reached, viz, no statistically significant warming since 1998.
Mr. Monckton, do you have a similar cloud cover graph that goes back a little further? I’m curious what cloud cover was like just before the 81-82 el Nino. I suspect unusually low cloud cover over the tropical pacific during the neutral and la nina prior to (and maybe during?) the ’98 el nino are what made the ’98 heat dump so big.
You might look at a regime shift detection routine for Excel at http://www.beringclimate.noaa.gov/regimes/
It will give you a statistical basis for finding dividing points in regular data sets. You must use judgement in setting parameters, but the results are standardized and a bit more defensible.
Cherry-picking is interesting.
When we looked back from 1998 and saw a warming trend over the previous few years, that definitely WAS NOT cherry-picking.
When we look back from 2014 and see no trend over the previous few years, that IS cherry-picking.
Seemples!
It must be one of those irregular verbs:
I carefully selected those trees.
You cherry-picked your dates.
He does not have a clue about climate.
What would 1991 to 1995 have looked like without Mt Pinotubo erupting?
It seems as if Tamino chose a very convenient time to stop his graph, namely around July 1997. The slope to that point is only 0.0068/year, which is certainly nothing to be alarmed about. Naturally, many future points are above this extended line. But had he gone to 1999, the slope would have been much higher at 0.015/year and way fewer years would have been above the extended line. And even 0.015/year is below anything the IPCC predicted.
See:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1997.5/trend/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1999/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1999/trend
I would suggest there are actually two “Singer events”, the first being around 1980.
Remember that El Chicon blew up in 1982. The explosion was almost as big as Pinatubo and occurred at the same time as the largest El Nino of the century until then was beginning.
Instead of a big spike, we ended with a drop in temperature.
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/EGECElChichon.pdf
@wbrozek
If you get my point:
we are cooling most positively (seen) from the top latitudes downwards
You would not yet see much global cooling at the lower latitudes, because all that happens is a shift in rainfall patterns, more towards the [lower latitudes]
More condensation at lower latitudes releases energy, which sort of compensates for the global cooling effect,
you agree?
Mr Mosher continues to wriggle and squeal like a stuck pig. For as long as he persists in starting from his preconceived notions, he will be likely to reach his conclusions by an unsound route. I’ve said it before, in science an open mind is of near-infinitely greater value than an open mouth.
I patiently explained why RSS got the Great el Niño more closely correct than the other four datasets. I pointed out that the bleaching of the corals was far more widespread in 1998 than during any of the other recent el Niños: but Mr Mosher, in breach of the Eschenbach Rule, truncates my explanation and then says I have not explained. That is not very grown-up of him.
Then Mr Mosher, having complained that I have only used one dataset, complains that I have used five. He complains that I should not average datasets that try to measure much the same thing by different methods. But I had already explained to him yesterday that even “Phil” Jones at the “University” of East Anglia compares the two satellite datasets with his terrestrial HadCRUT dataset, on the same graph, showing their near-coincident linear trends. So Mr Mosher has merely recited today the complaint he made yesterday, without even mentioning that that complaint has been comprehensively answered. That is not very grown-up of him.
And, as I said yesterday, if Mr Mosher does not wish “Phil” Jones to combine datasets compiled by different methods, then he should write and tell him so. But no, he will treat a fellow true-believer and a doubter differently, scientifically speaking. That is not very grown-up of him.
Mr Mosher insists that I should prefer UAH, because “in the past skeptics preferred UAH”. Perhaps he does not understand that “skeptics” do not think as the hard-Left herd or hive thinks. We think for ourselves, regardless of what the Party Line says. The fact that some skeptics may have preferred one dataset and some another is neither here nor there. But Mr Mosher, as a frequent visitor here, will know that every month I issue a graph of the IPCC’s range of near-term global warming predictions, compared with the actual temperature change, and that I take that temperature as the mean of the two satellite datasets. Averaging these two satellite datasets gives a result near-identical to averaging the three terrestrial datasets. So I use both satellite datasets together, for that keeps everyone except the incurably grouchy Mr Mosher happy. And being grouchy when there is really no need to be grouchy is not very grown-up of him.
He says I have “changed preferences” to suit my purpose. But what evidence does he have that I have “changed preferences”? And what evidence does he have that I do not publish regular updates of all five global-temperature datasets? To make silly accusations of that kind on no evidence is not very grown-up of him.
He says a real skeptic will show all datasets. And so I do – frequently. Taking the mean of all five, there has been no global warming for at least 13 years, and none distinguishable from the measurement, coverage, and bias uncertainties for at least 18 years. Mr Mosher’s reluctance to admit the reality of the Pause, and the widening discrepancy between what is predicted and what is occurring, and the inexorable detuning of the predictions with each successive IPCC report, is not very grown-up of him.
Then he says, again, that a real skeptic will present a detailed justification for selecting one dataset over another. Here he repeats himself pointlessly, and that is not very grown-up of him.
Marks out of 10: 0. See me after class. Must try harder.
are people really using 10 or 30 years of data and then extending out for over a 100 years? If the earth is in ice age cycles then any data must be referenced to that otherwise its just a decontextualised snapshot.
if earth is in an inter glacial warming period then one would expect warming, melting etc. the sea levels have risen 150m since the last ice age.
by decontextualising the data into 30 year snapshots then projecting the line the co2ers do not have to prove the ‘extra warming’ that they say co2 is causing.
if the co2ers are not claiming the ice age cycles are over then this is natural inter glacial warming and the temperature data shows its not a ‘catastrophic man made co2 express train’. The co2/temperature divergence shows that.
taking decontextualised snapshots and basing a whole narrative on it and demanding billions be spent on projections from it then name calling anyone who points out its limitations really is cherry picking.
Aaron asks whether I have any cloud-cover data before 1983. I am not sure that there are any reliable data before then, because that was the first time the satellites provided global coverage.
JauntyCyclist rightly points out that one should not base 100-year projections on 30-year trends. Indeed, one should not use trends on stochastic data for projection at all. And, in order to remove any naturally-occurring influence from the great ocean oscillations, which follow a 60-year cycle, one must either start a 30-year cycle exactly halfway through a 30-year half-cycle of the PDO, or use 60-year cycles.
Meanwhile, the Pause grows ever longer, month by month: and, even if a humdinger of an el Nino brings it to an end, my best guess is that the discrepancy between the IPCC’s predicted warming rates and what actually occurs will continue to widen.
If the Singer Event were to be major volcanic eruption sufficiently deep in the ocean to produce no visible surface effect (& that seems quite likely) it might be detectable by an element spike, in corals or mud in areas downwater. This is analogous to Alvarez’s Iridium Spike that proved the dinosaurs had been hit by a comet.
If this effect is so significant it may have ramifications for the concept of floating equatorial islands powered by ocean thermal (OTEC) generators. We should probably not build more than a few thousand (housing mere hundreds of millions) before being sure.
Aaron asks whether I have any cloud-cover data before 1983.
Henry says
(I think) forget about the clouds having an “own” agenda
The amount of clouds is a function of what amount of energy is allowed through the atmosphere,
that ended up in the oceans, mostly (70%)
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
if for example ice ages were a 100,000 year sine wave then taking a 30 year snapshot of that and projecting the line is going to do what? You could have 50 x 30 year snapshots with prediction lines. I wouldn’t bet any money on predictions like that
The truth, if one goes looking for it rather than bashing and mashing the data till they fit the desired outcome, includes probable error estimates of trends. Neither are to be found here.
leo geiger says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/19/un-cherry-picking-and-the-singer-event/#comment-1594007
henry says
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2015/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2015/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2015/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/to:2015/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2015/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2015/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2015/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2015/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2002/trendmple sttas
we are globally cooling
and if you had done some simple stats, you would have figured out that it will continue to cool until 2040, at least.
Leo Geiger says:
“The truth, if one goes looking for it rather than bashing and mashing the data till they fit the desired outcome, includes probable error estimates of trends. Neither are to be found here.”
Since Monckton graphed pre and post-1998 temperature data, application of error estimates is rather meaningless. That is to say, (unless you can explain otherwise) any errors are likely to be linear in direction and nature for the entire set.
For a really short introduction to dynamical systems theory aimed at people who study heat transfer, I recommend the book “Modern Thermodynamics” by Dilip Kondeputi and Ilya Prigogine, chapters 15 – 19. Even with uniform input on flat uniform surfaces, multidimensional nonlinear dissipative systems show complex behavior including “Turing structures”, vortexes, seeming square waves, traveling waves, spiral waves, and other non-intuitive structured output. For this reason, the apparent “step change” in mean temperature does not imply that it could not have been caused by continuous input, or continuous reduced rate of radiative output. And the pause does not imply that the heat accumulation has stopped — there could be another step increase in the near future.
Your analysis has not “eliminated the impossible” result of CO2 mediated increase in heat accumulation; it has eliminated the impossible intuitively simple low dimensional linear dynamics.
Neither does the Kondepudi and Prigogine show that CO2 is the culprit, or one of the culprits. All it shows is that a simple analysis is inappropriate to understanding the dynamics of the climate change.
I do not “believe” the CO2 hypothesis, only that present evidence does not either support accepting it or rejecting it.
I have mentioned that I took up a more serious study of this topic about 6 years ago when reading an article in Science that suggested that the role of the sun might be more subtle and indirect than previously known. Before then, I was like “everyone else” (except a few like Anthony Wattts, Bob Tisdale, and Willis Eschenbach.) The best evidence against the likelihood of a future upward step change is, in my opinion (sometimes it’s humble, sometimes not), the analysis of cloud cover and temperature provided by Willis Eschenbach.
I admire Lord Monckton’s dedication to this debate, and his contributions to WUWT, but I think the analysis presented here is too superficial to yield a reliable result.
henry@matthew r marler
have you any idea how and why UV and light and IR is converted to heat into the oceans?
Incidentally, I wrote a paper on turning round waves into square waves:
53. M. R. Marler, P. Gehrman, J. E. Martin, S. Ancoli-Israel, The Sigmoidally-transformed Cosine Curve: A Simple Mathematical Model for Circadian Rhythms with Symmetric Non-sinusoidal Shapes. Statistics in Medicine, 25:3893-3904, 2006, presented at the poster session at the Joint Statistical Meetings, Aug 2005.
It’s realistic for biological systems because the specific non-linearity in the model results from capacity limited (enzyme-mediated) processes, a lot of which have been studied at the molecular level. The sigmoidal transform has been applied to the output of non-linear differential equations that generate biological rhythms by, among others, Prof Emery M. Brown (MD, PhD) of the Harvard Medical School (and co-author of the new book Analysis of Neuronal Data, by R.E. Kass, U. Eden and E. M. Brown.) It is potentially relevant here if there are “capacity limited” instead of first-order relations in the transfer of heat in the climate system.
For more blatant self-promotion and a color photo, check me out here:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/matthew-marler/15/21b/9a9/
Disclaimer: If I am a troll, I am strictly a non-paid troll.
HenryP: have you any idea how and why UV and light and IR is converted to heat into the oceans?
Why?
I have written that the change in rate of transfer of heat into the ocean resulting from a doubling of CO2 concentration is not actually known. I have also written that the change in rate of transfer of heat from the upper atmosphere to space that would result from a doubling of CO2 is also not known. According to the heat transfer schematics of Trenberth and Fasullo, and of Stephens et al, about 23% of incoming solar radiation is absorbed in the upper atmosphere and is radiated back to space without warming the surface or lower atmosphere. That the effect of doubling CO2 concentration at that high altitude is not known I regard as a serious limitation, one of many that precludes accurate prediction of the effects of doubling CO2 concentration.
I wrote that the effects of doubling atmospheric CO2 concentrations in the Earth’s high-dimensional non-linear dissipative climate system are not known. Are you hinting that you know those effects? For goodness’ sake do not keep them secret.
HenryP says:
March 19, 2014 at 10:55 am
@wbrozek
If you get my point:
we are cooling most positively (seen) from the top latitudes downwards
It is my understanding that Cowtan and Way got their results because UAH showed more warming at the
poles and Hadcrut4 did not have good coverage there. And the graph here shows huge upward spikes in the winter months:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
an example of a decontextualised chart used by others to make specific [political] points.
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record_png
notice the “the zero on this figure is the mean temperature from 1961-1990.”
whats the point of that? what use is that?
if they placed this data within the context of the ice ages would it be remarkable or outside the range?
to decontextualise is to cherry pick. imo its to deceive.
Matthew R Marler says
According to the heat transfer schematics of Trenberth and Fasullo, and of Stephens et al, about 23% of incoming solar radiation is absorbed in the upper atmosphere and is radiated back to space without warming the surface or lower atmosphere
Henry says
well, actually they forgot about the peroxides and nitrogenous oxides (also formed TOA)
but if you understand about re-radiation (and, in this case, back radiation) , i.e. why it happens,
then you should probably also understand why the oceans heat up.
Radiation that ends up in the oceans also re-radiates (in the absorptive areas), and ultimately it must revert to heat because there is mass.
MarkB says:
March 19, 2014 at 9:43 am
Curiously, minus the snark and actually doing the math re attribution, it seems like his lordship was trying to say something like this: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/pdf/1748-9326_6_4_044022.pdf
Or maybe he was just trolling his audience. One can never really tell.
====================================================================
Whether or not MarkB is aware that Tamino is the principal author of the paper he links, said link invites comparison from another, http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth20110309.html ,
where Dickey et al come to a similar conclusion from a completely different angle: core dynamics govern surface temperature, which natural causes when accounted for and removed from the T record leave behind the alarming anthropogenic signal.
Funny thing though, there is no overlap between Tamino’s and Dickey’s causal agents–they apparently don’t talk to each other very much. Irrelevant. Zero agreement matters nothing as long as they arrive at the desired conclusion. The conclusion, after all, is settled science, toward which any and all orthodox roads lead.
With religion a thousand roads lead to hell, but only one to heaven. With climatism, a thousand roads lead to orthodoxy, one to denial. –AGF
if co2ers are convinced by decontextualised charts then i have some charts showing exciting opportunities in the stock and foreign exchange markets they might be interested investing in.
@wbrozek
Surely, you must agree that we are cooling from the top latitudes down?
As the people in Alaska have noted,
http://www.adn.com/2012/07/13/2541345/its-the-coldest-july-on-record.html
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130520/97-year-old-nenana-ice-classic-sets-record-latest-breakup-river-1
the cold weather in 2012 was so bad there that they did not get much of any harvests.
My own results show that it has been cooling significantly in Alaska, at a rate of -0.55C per decade since 1998. (average of ten weather stations)
http://oi40.tinypic.com/2ql5zq8.jpg
That is almost one whole degree C since 1998. And it seems NOBODY is telling the poor farmers there that it is not going to get any better.
NASA also admits now that antarctic ice is increasing significantly.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/22/nasa-announces-new-record-growth-of-antarctic-sea-ice-extent/#more-96133
Henry P: well, actually they forgot about the peroxides and nitrogenous oxides (also formed TOA)
but if you understand about re-radiation (and, in this case, back radiation) , i.e. why it happens,
then you should probably also understand why the oceans heat up.
Radiation that ends up in the oceans also re-radiates (in the absorptive areas), and ultimately it must revert to heat because there is mass.
Is that relevant somehow to my post about the non-intuitive nature of high dimensional non-linear dissipative systems? Or to my point that the effects of doubling CO2 concentrations on the rates of energy transfers are unknown?
Henry P: we are globally cooling
and if you had done some simple stats, you would have figured out that it will continue to cool until 2040, at least.
Oh Boy! Another extrapolation of a fitted model.
Severian: From what I recall of my brief intro to catastrophe theory decades ago, a sudden step change to a new baseline is common in systems where you have a number of chaotically coupled variables.
Exactly so. In a system that is poorly understood, the implication of an observed step change is obscure.
matthew r marler says
oh Boy! Another extrapolation of a fitted model.
henry says\
i don’t do models
I predict from observations
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/
it is called statistics
People might be looking at the sun in the wrong way.
Everyone seems to prefer TOTAL Solar Irradiance (TSI) as a way to describe the sun’s activity.
Yet the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite has been making measurements in the SPECTRAL Solar Irradiance since January 25, 2003 (http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/sorce/).
“…Of particular interest, the SORCE SIM [Spectral Irradiance Monitor] results indicate that some wavelengths in the visible and NIR are out of phase with the solar cycle (that is, more irradiance at solar minimum)…”
http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/sorce/2013/10/23/2012-sorce-science-team-meeting-summary/
For those that like data, look here: http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/sorce/data/ssi-data/
– – – – – – –
Matthew R Marler,
I hope to see your comment referenced above (and the subsequent ones) somehow made into a WUWT post.
You appear to have a much more circumspect view than Monckton’s in this context and subject.
John
all i see in co2ers narratives are the common bias errors in reading trading charts
Recency bias
Confirmation bias
Herding Bias
Attribution Bias
Addiction Bias
http://www.babypips.com/blogs/pipsychology/5-common-trading-biases-are-you-guilty-of-these.html
i wish i was the co2ers broker lol.
Mr. Marler has broken Eschenbach’s Rule, which is that in criticizing the head posting he should accurately state what he is criticizing. The head posting introduced and quantified the Singer Event, placed it in the context of the near-zero warming in the decades either side of it, demonstrated that CO2 concentration had risen monotonically since 1979 and could not in itself have induced so large a step change, and concluded that until the reasons for the step change had been found there was nothing in the global temperature record since 1979 that indicated CO2 must be to blame.
In short, I left open the possibility that accumulation of heat in the climate object (if it has been accumulating) might come though in the form of step-changes. But unless and until it can be shown that that is what has happened, and that the step-change is in some fashion a consequence of the accumulation of heat rather than of some process in the oceans, it is not sensible simply to blame CO2. The magnitude of the Singer Event, compared with the unspectacular changes in global temperature on either side of it, does raise interesting questions about how much we really understand about the climate. One can posit all manner of explanations for what has occurred, but at present the evidence that CO2 is to blame for the Singer event is lacking.
quote
But the trend over the six years January 1993 to January 1999 was a lulu. It was equivalent to a spectacular 9.4 Cº per century.
unquote
Is there any plankton data for that period? In March 2012 we flew to Madeira and I noticed a huge smooth, more than 20,000 square miles, which had formed under an Azores high. A smooth like that will warm the sea surface. Someone suggested it might be plankton which had caused it. I prefer the pollution explanation, but you never know.
JF
– – – – – – – – – –
Christopher Monckton,
I suggest we have a simple main post at WUWT that asks the simple question, “Is Eschenbach’s Rule valid on any intellectual or philosophical or practical level?”
John
The transparency of the ocean must be an important variable, but I’ve yet to see it mentioned anywhere. A decrease in transparency would keep the absorption of light closer to the surface, raising the surface temperature. Can’t see how to link CO2 to ocean transparency, so doubt it will get much attention from the “consensus”.
There have been comments on how multiple cycles superimposed on each other can produce what looks like a step change. Well, you don’t need multiple cycles, a single sine wave will do. Take three periods, the first spanning a low point, the third spanning the next high point, with the second covering the space between them. Bingo, a step change, with higher gradient the higher the sine wave’s amplitude and frequency.
BTW, I don’t buy Bob Tisdale’s step change, because of this.
Monckton of Brenchley: So, what caused that sudden upward lurch in global temperature? Since absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation, we know it was not CO2: for CO2 concentration has been rising monotonically, with no sudden leaps and bounds.
In conformance with “Eschenbach’s Rule”, that is the quote of yours that I was debating. We do not “know” that the step change was not a result of the smooth increase of CO2, because complex dynamical systems can produce step changes in response to smooth input. We also do not “know” that the step change *was* the result of increased CO2 — I agree with you there.
I used to think that we would have a really good estimate of the possible CO2 effect in 20 years, but I now think (unless something dramatic happens that I might speculate about some other time) that it will take more like 40 years. It’s not comfortable to recognize ignorance, but I think that is what we are stuck with now regarding the size of the hypothesized CO2 effect.
Keep up the good work. Your posts are a pleasure to read.
Henry P: I predict from observations
Ha ha ha ha ha.
The 1993-1999 “step change” is consistent with global temperature being suppressed following the Mt Pinatubo eruption at the front end and amplified by the 1998 El Nino at the back end. One doesn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to explain the “Singer Event”, it really is that obvious.
“Singer Effect” explained:
It was Fred Singer who first pointed out this most startling characteristic of the post-1979 temperature record to me. We were sitting in front of the big computer screen…….
HenryP says:
March 19, 2014 at 12:28 pm
@wbrozek
Surely, you must agree that we are cooling from the top latitudes down?
On the sea ice page, they say:
RSS Northern Polar Temperature Lower Troposphere (TLT) – 1979 to Present trend = 0.330 K/decade. That is 60.0 to 82.5. Of course this does not negate what you have said about Alaska.
However I am more interested in discussing global warming, or the lack thereof. As well, I feel more comfortable with what WFT allows me to plot.
wbrozek says:
March 19, 2014 at 12:08 pm
“It is my understanding that Cowtan and Way got their results because UAH showed more warming at the poles and Hadcrut4 did not have good coverage there”
You would be wrong then. UAH does not show warming at all at the poles recently. It has stalled just like all the rest.
http://climatedatablog.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/uah-arctic.png
The main problem with C&W is that, because of the very much bigger range at the poles of the signal, then if you do not correctly reduce it correctly you will get a warming signal out of it by accident.
I do not understand how people can take a series (satellite) which they have consistently been unable to align over their period of overlap to another series (thermometer) and then use a cherry picked, short term, co-incidence as the basis for a paper and be serious.
That is always going to be challenging to get right and I do not believe they have done so.
The clue, I believe, is that they got a faster rate of warming then is present in either of their contributing series and give no real explanation as to why and how that can be true..
Mike Jonas writes:
There have been comments on how multiple cycles superimposed on each other can produce what looks like a step change. Well, you don’t need multiple cycles, a single sine wave will do. Take three periods, the first spanning a low point, the third spanning the next high point, with the second covering the space between them. Bingo, a step change, with higher gradient the higher the sine wave’s amplitude and frequency.
BTW, I don’t buy Bob Tisdale’s step change, because of this.
The hypothesis of an Tisdale-Singer transition is much more simpler than multiple cycles superimposed, which must be shown to exist, and must have specific frequencies so the step change appearance is created.
For now, I prefer Tisdale-Singer transition over superimposed cycles.
Excellent article, but I have to nit-pick on this one. If I come upon a stuck door, and try to move it by monotonically increasing the force I apply, with no leaps or bounds, it just may happen that at a certain point the door breaks through its stuck point and suddenly flies open. IOW, correlation doesn’t necessarily mean any kind of direct proportionality.
Sounds like actual science to me….observe phenomena; posit theorems, examine evidence..etc.
I particularly appreciated the comment: in science an open mind is of near-infinitely greater value than an open mouth.
Monckton of Brenchley
In past year or so, I have, as well as several others, commented on the now called Singer Event. We have all noticed that the period of ~ 17 years before the El Nino/La Nina of 1997/2001 showed very little warming and the period after has shown the same small warming (Using UAH).
My first inkling of this was when I noticed the response of the Stratosphere to the Chichon and Pinatubo volcanos. The stratosphere seemed to react in a steplike fashion, first with rising anomaly followed by an anomaly lower than before the volcanic event. This got me to wondering whether the troposphere might react the same way. ie a large perturbation might cause a step to a different state. Bob Tisdale’ work seemed to indicate that this might be the case .
So in November 2008, I began to graph the UAH record. I decided to look at the time before and after the El Nino/La Nina event of 1997/2001. The before graph included the time between Dec 1978 and March 1997; the after graph between June 2001 and the present. These time periods were not cherry picked. March 1997 was taken at when the ONI Index was at zero just before the El Nino. June 2001 is when the index returned to zero after the La Nina.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
For UAH the resulting linear regressions are:
Dec 1978 to March 1997 0.36 degrees per century
June 2001 to present 0.48 degrees per century (UAH Version 5.6 as of latest data)
For your interest here are what the other temperature records show for the same periods.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1979/to:1997.3/trend/offset:0.1/plot/gistemp/from:1979/to:1997.3/trend/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1997.3/trend/offset:0.25/plot/uah/from:1979/to:1997.3/trend/offset:0.3/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001.6/to:2014.2/trend/offset:-0.2/plot/gistemp/from:2001.6/to:2014.2/trend/offset:-0.3/plot/rss/from:2001.6/to:2014.2/trend/plot/uah/from:2001.6/to:2014.2/trend/offset:0.12
Interestingly, UAH is the only record showing the same trend before and after the Event. The other records show higher positive trends before the event and negative tends after. RSS being the most negative by a wide margin.
I am waiting to see what happens by 2018 (1 santer). If this continues in the same way for another 4 years the CAGW guess (OK maybe hypothesis) will be in a deep hole. Maybe CO2 increases do cause stepwise increases. I will be interesting to see what happens if we have another big one.
The reason the rule works is to avoid logical fallacies which are really just clever lies covered up with further lies, like a bald faced lie covered with a mask. One can, for instance, use the common argument known as the Straw Man argument, say that your apponent said something, changing it into an argument that you can easily attack in some way, and then attack it and demolish it. The Eschenbach rule prevents that, if you want to demolish their idea, at least you must demolish their idea.
Straw Man (Fallacy Of Extension):
attacking an exaggerated or caricatured version of your opponent’s position.
For example, the claim that “evolution means a dog giving birth to a cat.”
Another example: “Senator Jones says that we should not fund the attack submarine program. I disagree entirely. I can’t understand why he wants to leave us defenseless like that.”
RichardLH says:
March 19, 2014 at 3:19 pm
You would be wrong then. UAH does not show warming at all at the poles recently. It has stalled just like all the rest.
I went by:
But is there a warming in the Antarctica? The UAH data-set (although contradicted by the majority of the Antarctica surface-stations especially those in inland and by the RSS data-set) shows a warming both for land and ocean there.
The above is from:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/03/cowtan-way-and-signs-of-cooling/
I must be missing something! However I have no clue what it might be.
“Step changes are easily produced by adding odd-integer harmonic frequencies of form 2𝛑(2k-1)f. Since natural cycles are ubiquitous it is hard (for me) to imagine that such coincidences do not occasionally occur, and will necessarily reverse themselves. To avoid antagonizing our host, I will stop there.”
How appropriate, because in the article’s analysis the author using a moving average, which is simply the signal convolved with – you guessed it – a square wave.
On both sides of this debate – please, start using proper signal analysis. You are all chasing phantoms from your poor choice of filters.
Ron House is of course right with his analogy of the jammed door: however, my point in the article is that until the mechanism that caused the Singer Event is understood it cannot safely be blamed on CO2. We can, however, rule out the kind of naive, linear relationship between CO2 concentration change and 21st century temperature change that the IPCC posits, for there was no step-change in CO2 concentration to match the step-change in temperature during the Singer Event.
It might be worth noting that if the most recent, slightly negative, temperature trend continues, then this will add to the zero trend length at both ends, e.g., five years from now we will be looking at, not 17.5+5=22.5 years of zero trend, but possibly a much longer one.
Monckton of Brenchley:
Why this attempt to suggest a single, causeless “Singer Event” when two real events created the difference in temperatures?
Your end date is at the end of the hottest El Niño in the instrument record. As you already said, it was a very hot time, so no more about it.
Your start date of January 1993 is in the trough in global temperatures caused by the very well-documented cooling caused by Mt. Pinatubo’s eruption. Here’s from the abstract of a paper John Christy published about Pinatubo’s cooling impact:
“By September 1992 the global and northern hemispheric lower tropospheric temperatures had decreased 0.5°C and 0.7°C, respectively compared to pre-Pinatubo levels. The temperature record examined consists of globally uniform observations from satellite microwave sounding units.”
(Geophysical Research Letters, Dec. 1992 DOI: 10.1029/92GL02495)
The sharp temperature difference between the volcanic cooling in 1992 and the El Niño in 1998 is very clear (and coincident with the “Singer Event” timeline).
It’s easier to see by looking at the overall RSS record, with your “Event” and the long-term trend lines included. Here’s a graph from woodfortrees. http://tinyurl.com/o4fpq4q
If it’s not cherry-picking, forgive me for pointing out that it certainly looks like cherry picking.
wbrozek says:
March 19, 2014 at 10:10 pm
“I must be missing something! However I have no clue what it might be.”
That all depends on how much ‘warming’ you see in this graph then.
http://climatedatablog.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/uah-antarctic.png
Daniel G. says:
March 19, 2014 at 3:59 pm
“For now, I prefer Tisdale-Singer transition over superimposed cycles.”
You might want to look at my recent thread on http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/16/crowdsourcing-a-full-kernel-cascaded-triple-running-mean-low-pass-filter-no-seriously/
where these two graphs show how there may well be some form of ‘cycle’ in there after all (with something longer underpinning it)
http://climatedatablog.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/hadcrut-15-year-ctrm-and-75-year-s-g-curves.png
http://climatedatablog.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/hadcrut-15y-ctrm-de-trended-with-s-g-75y-to-obtain-cycle.png
Sorry, but it seems to me that your analysis, breaking the data in 3 pieces, is pure artifact. Very much like the hockey stick.
The pieces have nonsensical length : 4, 6 and 15 years. why ? what kind of “singer event” can have a 6 year length ? why would the temperature stay “high” after the event, instead of going back to normal ?
Elsewhere you agree the CO2 can account for some moderate warming (1° / century, right ?), so to be logical with yourself you must NOT break the data in pieces of 0 warming.
Anyway any analysis based on temperature is bound to be bullshit, because of its intensive nature. Only analysis based on energy/heat have some chance to enlight the facts.
Mr. Monckton, “my point in the article is that until the mechanism that caused the Singer Event is understood it cannot safely be blamed on CO2.”
I agree, and suggest a path of investigation. I question how much atmospheric heating is due to release of heat stored during enso neutral and la nina conditions. My guess is that there are two main factors in how much the atmosphere warms: 1) The temperature of the ocean surface during el nino. 2) How clear the skies are over that water.
Perhaps during el nino the heat isn’t released from the ocean so much as the warmer water surface allows more SW to be transformed into latent heat. The water temperature and area of surface warmth likely are determined by conditions during neutral and la nina condtions (separating out which portion of the ocean surface temp is from GHG LW would allow us to figure how much more SW-latent heat is caused by GHG) . This is why I think looking at the ’81/2 el nino and ’98. Looking at the ocean surface temperature at the start of these events and comparing the with downwelling radiation during each event could give good insight into how heat transferes during these phases. If the system behaves as I sugggest, we can then look at what determines albedo in the region and perhaps make better predications of how el nino will affect the surface temps.
The three pieces into which I have broken the satellite temperature record are not, as the complicatedly pseudonymous paqyfelyc says, 4, 6, and 15 years long respectively. They are 14, 6, and 15 years: in short, good long trends with not a lot of warming either side of a manifest singularity.
Several commenters have plausibly suggested that the drop in global temperatures temporarily caused by Pinatubo at one end of the Singer Event and the Great El Nino at the other account for the sharp jump in global temperatures. But why did the global temperature remain on average 0.3 K higher than before the Singer Event? Until we understand that, disentangling the anthropogenic and natural components in global warming will surely not be easy.
For anyone who wants to verify the September 1996 date, it’s easy to bring up the RSS data
found here
and down load it into Excel. Once you’ve used the text to columns function to unscramble things and add a column of dates in a decimal format down Column A by using a formula that adds (1/12) to get 1979.00 1979.08 1979.16 1979.25 and so on, you can then figure the slope of the last two entries for 2014.00 || 0.262 and 2014.08 || 0.162 you should get a slope of minus -1.2 It’s then a simple matter to copy the formula
=SLOPE(D421:D$422,A421:A$422)
back up the column and then find the first minus slope working your way forward from 1979.
Indeed, I find that the first negative slope turns out to be October 1996, my spreadsheet on line 214 looks like this:
214 | 1996.75 | 1996 | 10 | 0.125 | -0.00027381
and the formula in Column E on that line looks like this
=SLOPE(D213:D$422,A213:A$422)
What it all means is that the RSS temperature has been flat since September of 1996.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
. . . But why did the global temperature remain on average 0.3 K higher than before the Singer Event? Until we understand that, disentangling the anthropogenic and natural components in global warming will surely not be easy.
Surely this problem is beyond the reach of all but the Druids’ white-robed, snaggle-bearded, bushy-eyebrowed archpriests. Or perhaps we should unlease some ninja climatologists on this conundrum, preferably guys with distinctively Asian names like Kosaka or Xie, because everyone knows they’re pretty smart. No Way is any bit of pause attribution going to be solved by some cow town academic.
Lord Monckton: So, what caused that sudden upward lurch in global temperature? Since absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation, we know it was not CO2: for CO2 concentration has been rising monotonically, with no sudden leaps and bounds.
Indeed, no phenomenon in the atmosphere could really have caused this lurch.
Marler: Your [referring to Lord Monckton] analysis has not “eliminated the impossible” result of CO2 mediated increase in heat accumulation; it has eliminated the impossible intuitively simple low dimensional linear dynamics.
Neither does the Kondepudi and Prigogine show that CO2 is the culprit, or one of the culprits. All it shows is that a simple analysis is inappropriate to understanding the dynamics of the climate change.
Lord Monckton: We can, however, rule out the kind of naive, linear relationship between CO2 concentration change and 21st century temperature change that the IPCC posits, for there was no step-change in CO2 concentration to match the step-change in temperature during the Singer Event.
It looks like you have converged to my position on this. However, it is not that clear that IPCC “posits”, or restricts its attention to, any naive linear relationship between CO2 concentration change and 21st century temperature change. Some of the models relate equilibrium climate sensitivity to the log of the concentration, including the T^4 relation of radiation intensity to temperature, but they are uninformative as to rates (I think the best and most cited current work on this line is “Principles of Planetary Climate” by Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, and it is chock full of nonlinear relationships); the GCMs posit nonlinear relationships, but they have a history of overpredicting.
We are not stuck in Limbo, which is a permanent assignment. We are in the midst of a large ongoing scientific project studying details and simplifications of a large and complex system. More excellent, but incomplete and insufficiently accurate, dynamical systems modeling can be found in “Nonlinear Climate Dynamics” by Henk Dijkstra, 2013, Cambridge University Press.
Sorry for the error 4+6+15 instead of 14+6+15, but it doesn’t matter. What does matter is
a) that the “short” period of brutal warming must be coherent with the length of the event that caused it. 6 years seems either too long or too short.
b) much more importantly, that the “good long trends” should have some moderate warming coherent with the 1K/century estimate you adopt, sir. Otherwise they cannot be considerated long enough.
So I think you should calibrate the first piece to respect the long trend of 1 K/century, which will extent it to just before 1998 el nino, I guess (I didn’t calculate it ), not january 1994.
As for the last piece of time, I see 2 possibilities.
Either you calculate it to respect the long trend which, I guess once again, will make it begin just after the aformentioned El Nino.
Or you considerate that 1998 El Nino brought a so large amount of energy in the atmosphere [enough to account for much of the difference between the 1K long trend and the +1.24K/century slope on the observed periode] that it triggered climat balance natural mecanisms that make this energy simply going slowly back where it belongs (in the ocean), and counter the long trend warming until this is done (could take tens of years, depending on the frequency of such El Ninon event). Which would explain the 0K/century slope since El Nino
Either way 1998 El Nino remains central in the explantion (other comments said that before me). No need of some other singer event.
Lord Monckton: “my point in the article is that until the mechanism that caused the Singer Event is understood it cannot safely be blamed on CO2.”
I quoted you, and you made a stronger point than that.
Lord Monckton: “my point in the article is that until the mechanism that caused the Singer Event is understood it cannot safely be blamed on CO2.”
Please note that this ‘event’ is at the centre/zero crossing point of the longer ~60 year cycle. No other explanation is needed.
http://climatedatablog.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/uah-global.png
Monckton of Brenchley says:
March 19, 2014 at 1:40 pm
“the Singer Event, placed it in the context of the near-zero warming in the decades either side of it, demonstrated that CO2 concentration had risen monotonically since 1979 and could not in itself have induced so large a step change, and concluded that until the reasons for the step change had been found there was nothing in the global temperature record since 1979 that indicated CO2 must be to blame. ”
—————————-
CO2 concentration have risen monotonically since 1958, …… have they not?
And would that not in itself negate the possibility that CO2 had anything whatsoever to do with the cause of the Singer Event?
Anyway, after all these years, I still do not understand why everyone is singling out CO2 as a primary factor in their discussion in/on thermal (heat) energy transfer in the atmosphere and/or the average increase/decrease in temperature of the near surface atmosphere ……. when H2O vapor (humidity) quantities (variable 10,000 ppm or 1% to 40,000 ppm or 4%) …….. far, far exceed CO2 quantities (currently 400 ppm or 0.040%) …….. when both have the same/similar physical properties of absorbing and emitting thermal (heat) energy?
Now given the above, ….. and the fact that thermal (heat) energy in the atmosphere is not cumulative from day to day, …… or year to year, …. then I have to assume that the overwhelming amount of H2O vapor (humidity) in the atmosphere, …. as compared to the amount of CO2 that is intermixed with it, …… will completely overshadow any warming effects of the CO2 by a factor of 25 @ 1% H2O vapor and a factor of 100 @ 4% H2O vapor ….. and thus render it impossible for anyone to be blaming and/or attributing any of said “warming” on said CO2.
Can not the aforesaid gas molecules transfer thermal (heat) energy to one another? And how is it possible, per CAGW claims, that a 100 ppm increase in CO2 will cause a far greater increase in near-surface air temperatures than will a per say 15,000 ppm increase in H2O vapor? And why are other variable factors (volcanoes, etc.) included when temperatures decrease ….. but no variable factors (H2O vapor) included when temperaturees increase?
Thus I do not believe it is possible for anyone to measure the “warming” effect of the lesser quantity of gas (CO2) in a mixture of two different gases when the quantity of the greater volume of gas (H2O vapor) is constantly changing from day to day and week to week. Especially when said greater volume of gas (H2O vapor) has a variable 25 to 100 times greater “warming” potential for said mixture than does the lesser volume of said gas (CO2) in said mixture.
So, …… JUST WHAT IS MY PROBLEM, …… in that no one else wants to talk about H2O vapor (humidity)?
Legatus says:
March 19, 2014 at 9:47 pm
John Whitman says:
March 19, 2014 at 2:21 pm
Monckton of Brenchley says:
March 19, 2014 at 1:40 pm
Mr. Marler has broken Eschenbach’s Rule, [. . .]
Christopher Monckton,
I suggest we have a simple main post at WUWT that asks the simple question, “Is Eschenbach’s Rule valid on any intellectual or philosophical or practical level?”
The reason the rule works is to avoid logical fallacies which are really just clever lies covered up with further lies, like a bald faced lie covered with a mask. [. . .]
– – – – – – – – –
Legatus,
Thanks for your well said thoughts on the validity of the Monckton mentioned ‘Eschenbach’s Rule’.
But, not to disrupt this thread, I suggest the interesting discussion of whether there is validity in any respect to ‘Eschenbach’s Rule’ be done on a thread dedicated to it.
John
As (among other things) statistics (from education), I have (at the end) to tell the simple truth: from 16 years to a few years back (ie possible border for determining the short-term trends) we have most of the trends radically significantly other than they want models for anthropogenic warming …
John Whitman: But, not to disrupt this thread, I suggest the interesting discussion of whether there is validity in any respect to ‘Eschenbach’s Rule’ be done on a thread dedicated to it.
I disagree.
I usually follow “Eschenbach’s Rule”, and I consider it universally applicable on this site. It is always helpful to everyone to quote exactly what it is that you are disputing or agreeing with. My neglect in that instance was a mistake, Lord Monckton drew my attention to my mistake, and I corrected my mistake.
RichardLH says:
March 20, 2014 at 3:00 am
Thank you! There certainly does not seem to be enough warming to increase the “real” warming by 2.5 times as they claim.
“my point in the article is that until the mechanism that caused the Singer Event is understood it cannot safely be blamed on CO2.”
The warming cannot be attributed to CO2. And, it is highly unlikely that the mechanism for the temperature rise is significantly affected by CO2. However, CO2 doesn’t really add heat, it reduces cooling. So, this mechanism could be dumping heat into the atmosphere, but temperatures decrease to a new, higher equalibrium temp after the dump. If this is true, it suggests positive feedbacks are highly unlikely.
Steve Case says:
March 20, 2014 at 5:17 am
Indeed, I find that the first negative slope turns out to be October 1996
WFT is much easier. Punch in RSS. Then “From” 1996.65. (If no “To” is punched, it automatically goes to the last date for which there is data.)
Then click “Add Series”. Then punch in RSS and From 1996.65 as before, but add “Linear Trend”.
It turns out that from September 1, 1996, the linear trend is: slope = -0.00027381 per year
However from August 1, using 1996.55, the linear trend is: slope = 3.14099e-05 per year.
So the real trend would be 0 some time in the beginning of August since 3.14099e-05 is less than -0.00027381.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.65/plot/rss/from:1996.65/trend
Christopher Monckton of Brenchley — said:
“I should be most interested in readers’ comments on the Singer Event, because I have been invited to contribute a paper to the reviewed literature about it. All help, even from the trolls, would be very much appreciated.”
————————-
In your commentary you mentioned these two (2) possibilities:
1. “pattern of overturning that takes warmer water from the mixed upper stratum of the ocean to the much colder benthic strata temporarily slowed”.
2.“Perhaps there was massive subsea volcanic activity in the equatorial eastern Pacific, beginning in 1993/4 and peaking in 1998”
—————-
If I retain your 2nd comment, ….. but reverse your 1st one to state: “pattern of overturning that takes the much colder benthic water to the upper stratum of warmer surface waters” …..
Then based on the “flow” path of the Thermohaline Ocean Circulation via this graphic, to wit:
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/material/conveyor2.jpg
And this definition of an el Nino, to wit: “equatorial Pacific region and beyond every few years, characterized by the appearance of unusually warm, nutrient-poor water off northern Peru and Ecuador, typically in late December”.
Then me thinks you have the two (2) ingredients or factors that could/would generate a super el Nino and/or the Singer Event.
But we will never know because no one was monitoring the temperature of the flow of benthic water before it started it’s up-swelling toward the surface.
And “yes”, me thinks “fluid logics” would tell that that “flow” of benthic water would continue on the same path for some length of time even though it’s temperature had increased (due to said volcanic activity).
Just my learned opinion for what its worth.
wbrozek said at 8:22 am, “WFT is much easier”
Thanks for the reply.
After I posted I realized my formula actually went back to September, not October. It’s difficult to get it right the first time through.
WoodForTrees is a great site, but just like fruits & vegetables I like the freshest data, and preparing it myself.
“I should be most interested in readers’ comments on the Singer Event, because I have been invited to contribute a paper to the reviewed literature about it.”
OK – here you go. Any qualified reviewer would take a very quick cut or two with Occam’s Razor and point out that when you have two real, measured events that are quite close together in time, but are caused by two different physical processes – volcanic cooling and El Niño warming – , that it is not necessary to propose a novel third event. Cause and effect are already in place to explain the temperature change during this brief period.
They might also point out that any suggestion that the rapid temperature change taking place over a short time is precisely the kind of natural variability that precludes labeling periods of 6 or 14 years as statistically valid “climate trends”.
If patient, they would further remind that volcanic coolings and El Niño warmings have been observed repeatedly and the mechanisms are fairly well understood – so for your Singer Event to be responsible for the temperature shift, it would be necessary for you to also explain why the known processes weren’t having their typical effects just this one time.
But your “perhaps” musing about the 3.5 million sea bottom volcanoes somehow having a role was quite funny – so I think I see your real intent.
Go, write, and submit the paper – but hurry. April 1 is fast approaching.
– – – – – – – – –
Matthew R Marler,
I have not analyzed the validity of ‘Eschenbach’s Rule’, but I think it would be a stimulating subject.
Your response shows you are interested in discussing it, in your case in supporting ‘Eschenbach’s Rule’.
My suggestion is that discussion such as yours be on a thread where ‘Eschenbach’s Rule’ is the topic of discussion.
It would be an interesting discussion perhaps, or perhaps not. It is a suggestion.
John
The guest author notes: “Several commenters have plausibly suggested that the drop in global temperatures temporarily caused by Pinatubo at one end of the Singer Event and the Great El Nino at the other account for the sharp jump in global temperatures. But why did the global temperature remain on average 0.3 K higher than before the Singer Event? ”
Sounds like something that would require some kind of accumulation of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Some measured increases in CO2, methane and flourocarbons.
That might explain why all the warmest years in the instrument record have occurred since 1997, instead of the cooling one would expect due to recent low solar radiance, a preponderance of ENSO neutral or La Niña conditions, increased SO2 emissions from China and India, etc….
Again, you attempt to paint a mystery with no cause when there are already existing processes that account for what is happening.
Mr Fagan should not be so petulant. He is allowing his belief system to stand in the way of rationality. It is not good enough merely to hand-wave about the curious non-linearity of the temperature increase, set against the linearity of the CO2 concentration increase, and then to say that the temperature, having been jolted upward by the Singer Event, stayed at a new, higher level because of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. It is necessary to understand and explain the mechanism, not merely to assume it because of an aprioristic belief that monotonically-increasing CO2 concentration must be the driver of stochastic changes in temperature. He will be able to read my paper on the Singer Event in due course: and it will exhibit greater depth than his pettinesses.
b fagan says:
March 20, 2014 at 2:15 pm
If “all the warmest years in the instrument record have occurred since 1997”, it’s only because the record has been so relentlessly, shamelessly “adjusted”. Besides which, I suppose you mean that the ten allegedly warmest years have occurred since 1997.
Without further adjustments of recent temperatures up & older ones down, the next 16 years should be cooler than the past 16. The eight years 1998-2005 (as the ever fungible “record” now stands) averaged only a statistically insignificant 0.0193 °C anomaly cooler than 2006-2013. If that trend continues, 2100 would be just 0.2075 °C hotter than 2013. Oooh, scary!
But the coming decades are liable to be more like the chilly 1950s, ’60s & ’70s, when the planet cooled after the balmy 1920s, ’30s & ’40s, than like the pleasant 1980s, ’90s & 2000s.
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/annual.land_ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat
1998 0.6337
1999 0.4546
2000 0.4268
2001 0.5494
2002 0.6114
2003 0.6219
2004 0.5762
2005 0.6502
Average: 0.5655
2006 0.5955
2007 0.5884
2008 0.5114
2009 0.5933
2010 0.6560
2011 0.5328
2012 0.5770
2013 0.6249
Average: 0.5848
NB: even in the adjusted record, 1995 was warmer than 2000, so that “all the years since 1997” is wrong.
Not wanting to bore his Lordship, or the readers, but I wish to point out from an earlier time when the trolls, first showed up on CM’s charting, I gave a definitive extraction of a set of axiomatic rules for the Monckton “keep it on the level” RSS charting game; to whit:
“””””…..george e. smith says:
March 4, 2014 at 4:01 am
“””””…..matfromdevon says:
March 4, 2014 at 3:13 am
Thats a bit od a cherry pick. If you look at the RSS data like this: ……”””””
Well the only problem with your cherry pick matfromdevon, is that it includes data from years before 1997, when anomalies were lower.
You clearly have just arrived at the game, and looked at the score, and you want to include the scores from earlier games.
The rules for Lord Monckton’s “RSS Game” are even simpler than the axioms of Projective Geometry.
Rule #1…Obtain the MOST RECENT RSS anomaly data.
Rule #2…Determine the EARLIEST PREVIOUS MONTH for which a conventional statistical trend analysis yields precisely ZERO TREND of course with the properly calculated uncertainty.
Rule #3…Subtract that earliest date from the most recent date, to obtain the total months of zero trend.
QED Fine.
That is the RSS Game; it’s not rocket science. You are in violation of rule #2. You are Red carded.
Christopher has not monkeyed with the rules, since he invented the game. So why introduce all this legally irrelevant pseudo evidence.
If you believe Christopher has watered the pitch, then show us your proof, that he has.
You are of course free to invent your own game, and see if it is more popular than Lord Monckton’s RSS Game. Good luck on that…..”””””
So there you have it Christopher.
Now, I cannot claim to have exhaustively researched your game, but I believe my set of rules is quite rigorous. However I am unable to prove that my axioms for the Monckton RSS game are unique. For all I know there might be an infinity of rule pairs that lead to your chart . Some times existence theorems can be a damn side more difficult, than actually obtaining a solution.
As for the scurrilous allegations of RSS cherry picking, Lord Monckton, I believe That my ingeniously derived axioms, will in fact work equally well, given any of the remaining four of the “Big five” data sets, so even though you justified your choice of RSS, I believe your algorithm is not restricted to only RSS.
However, I am not able to prove or disprove, that the same 17 years and six months, would be extracted from application of the axioms to the other four sets.
So “nuts” to your detractors, CM of B , I believe you are on quite solid ground.
Brenchley, you are mistaken if you feel I’m being petulant. I am simply responding to your request for assistance and comment before you subject yourself to likely disappointment after presenting a poorly-thought-out idea to any reputable journal for peer-review by qualified people.
To repeat – the conjecture about there being some kind of “Event” during the carefully selected time interval would lead any reviewer to say: “No, a temporary volcanic cooling ended, and then it was coincidentally followed closely by a temporary El Niño warming”. They’d then remind you about 1992 Mt. Pinatubo and 1998 El Niño events nestled in your 6-year period.
To give your “Effect” any room to act, you’d need first to explain those natural events away, and do it for just this one miraculous instance. Difficult, since volcanic cooling has happened often before and is well understood, and El Niño warming events are also well-known causes of sudden temperature increases, (as you pointed out yourself).
Hinting about millions of volcanoes secretly and simultaneously teleporting heat through kilometers of very cold abyssal water up to the surface is not a cause, except for mirth. And it doesn’t negate the real events which actually happened.
As Christy’s paper I referenced mentions, Pinatubo produced a -0.7C cooling in 1992. As you mentioned yourself, the 1998 El Niño was a very strong one. So what else is even necessary to explain this short interval of natural variability?
If you had a 6 year period that didn’t include these events – and the temperature still jumped that much – then you’d have something to investigate.
But you don’t.
Continue with your paper if you wish, but reviewers in science look for physical causes of the observed events, and those causes are already present and accounted for in the interval from Jan 1993 to Jan 1999. Natural events.
And again, to your question of why it hasn’t cooled since 1998, I advise you read about the greenhouse effect and look up the rates of increases in persistent greenhouse gases. That probably accounts for the bulk of the retained heat.
Regards.
b fagan says:
March 20, 2014 at 9:25 pm
I wonder why you find “teleporting” of heat from submarine volcanoes, many of which are close to the surface, so fanciful, when your fellow CACA adherents like Trenberth preach magical heat transfer in the opposite direction. My wonderment is further enhanced when I consider that superplumes from the mantle have been so robustly shown to influence volcanism in the earth’s crust during geologic history.
Enhanced volcanism on the scale of decades seems to me not only plausible but more likely than not. Finding evidence of recent submarine volcanism would thus seem a worthy area of research, rather than yet another opportunity for CACA advocates to disparage the search for valid explanations for the observations they are so anxious to attribute to the black magical qualities of the evil gas CO2.
george e. smith: The rules for Lord Monckton’s “RSS Game” are even simpler than the axioms of Projective Geometry.
Rule #1…Obtain the MOST RECENT RSS anomaly data.
Rule #2…Determine the EARLIEST PREVIOUS MONTH for which a conventional statistical trend analysis yields precisely ZERO TREND of course with the properly calculated uncertainty.
Rule #3…Subtract that earliest date from the most recent date, to obtain the total months of zero trend.
I have not commented on this aspect of Lord Monckton’s post here, but I agree with Mr. Smith. Of all the ways of answering the question “Is warming happening”, this is the one approach least liable to the disease of “cherry picking”. The most relevant temperature data point is the most recent; the 17 year period is supported by realistic simulations; the “rules” are unambiguous.
For comparison, if anyone is interested in consistency, the record of a flat temperature line is now longer than the record of warming had been when the AGW alarm replaced the global cooling alarm in the public rhetoric of the alarmists.
milodonharlani , I can only conclude that Monckton is pulling our leg with his “perhaps” about undersea volcanic heat acting globally and simultaneously to cause surface warming. I do so since it would have to happen without the accompanying poisoning of the oceans from the gigatons of chemical compounds that would be circulating throughout the entire water column in order to mix the ocean violently enough to move heat from the abyssal plain to the surface in just a few years.
Such a violent global volcanic event, from millions of volcanoes acting together, is so laughably implausible that he couldn’t mean it seriously. The ocean would be poisoned by the massive chemical releases needed to heat so much very cold abyssal water, and the change in ocean circulation patterns would have been extremely noticeable for that much heat to rise rapidly to the surface.
All he did was pick a starting date which was very cool due to Mt. Pinatubo temporarily lowering global temperatures, and pick an end date which is at the end of the biggest El Niño warming event in the instrument record. Both of those are natural events which happened to be about six years apart – cold first, then warm after.
So now he tries to distract from the two natural events to create some implausible event.
Regarding surface heat being drawn down into the ocean, that’s what happens in the Western Pacific every La Niña. Wind pushes westwards along the equator in the Pacific, the sun-warmed water piles up to along the western edge, and the imbalance leads to some of that water moving downwards. At the same time, the Eastern Pacific is cooler because water from the colder depths is moving up to replace what’s been pushed west. You can look it up – here’s one place to start. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ni%C3%B1o%E2%80%93Southern_Oscillation
The warmer surface waters in the Western Pacific are part of why Australia had a record hot year, the cooler waters in the East are part of why the US Southwest has drought conditions.
Please note that I’m talking about documented, natural climate events that explain the temperature difference.. This isn’t a “warmist” explanation, the greenhouse effect wasn’t part of this rapid shift from volcanic cooling to El Niño warming. It’s simply what’s understood about the natural processes.
b fagan says:
March 20, 2014 at 10:28 pm
Submarine volcanism does not occur on abyssal plains but high in the water column. Mid-ocean ridges & other areas of undersea volcano concentration are near the surface.
But more importantly, increased underwater volcanic activity is but one hypothetical explanation for the alleged “Singer Event”, ie the step up in tropospheric temperature from Jan 1993 to Jan ’99, which for all I know could be an artifact of data known to be hopelessly corrupt, as compromised at consensus climate science itself.
Sorry. “As” for “at”.
milodonharlani – here are two sources for reference on the mid-ocean ridges where most of the volcanic activity in the world’s ocean goes on.
Woods Hole – http://www.whoi.edu/main/topic/mid-ocean-ridges
NOAA – http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/05galapagos/background/mid_ocean_ridge/mid_ocean_ridge.html
Note this statement from an image on the NOAA page: “Bathymetric map showing a global view of the mid-ocean ridge (MOR). The mid-ocean ridge wraps around the globe for more than 65,000 km like the seam of a baseball, with an average depth to the ridge crest of 2500 m.”
The ocean is really deep, so most of the peaks of the ridge are also under thousands of feet of water. Iceland is an obvious exception, but there’s tens of thousands of miles that’s way down deep.
And remember, once you get away from the continental shelf, the ocean really is deep. Here’s a quote from the Wikipedia article simply titled “Ocean”
“The total volume is approximately 1.3 billion cubic kilometres (310 million cu mi) with an average depth of 3,682 metres (12,080 ft).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean
The bottom line is that the warming trend since 1979 on the RSS dataset was 0.44 Cº, while on the mean of all the datasets it was not vastly greater at 0.51 Cº. So, when the trolls argue that I am cherry-picking, they are arguing pettily about hundredths of a degree
////////////////////
I have not read all the comments, and I suspect that domeone has pointed out the obvious.
A straightr line fit through this data set from 1979 to 2014 is wholly inappropriate.
The fact is that there are two distinct periods. The first between 1979 through to about 1997, ie., before the 1998 Super El Nino. During this time, temperatures are essentially flat. There is no first order CO2/temperature relationship such that there is no first order signal of CO2 driven increase in temperatures during this period.
The second period is after the Super El Ñino to date. During this period, temperatures are essentially flat. There is no first order CO2/temperature relationship such that there is no first order signal of CO2 driven increase in temperatures during this period.
The RSS data set merely shows a one off and isolated temperature hike occurring in and around the Super El Nino of 1998. The temperature released by that even has not disipated. Unless the 19998 Super El Nino was in some way caused by CO2 levels increasing post the 1950s, then there is quite simply no evidence whatsoever of first order CO2 driven temperature increase. Put simply, no CO2 signal can be seen over the natural variabilty/noise of annual and/or multidecadal changes in temperature.
b fagan says:
March 20, 2014 at 2:15 pm
“Sounds like something that would require some kind of accumulation of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Some measured increases in CO2, methane and fluorocarbons.”
———————
Now just why did you intentionally omit the most potent one of the “greenhouse” gasses from your above statement, …….namely the H2O vapor (humidity) …. which could potentially have accumulated to be as much as 40,000 ppm?
Samuel C Cogar asks why I didn’t include water vapor.
I didn’t because while water vapor is responsible for most of the greenhouse warming, it is considered a feedback – its concentration in the air is completely dependent on temperature.
So, as the temperature goes up each degree C, water vapor increases about 7% (on average). But the reverse is true as well; cold air is dryer than warm air. This means the concentration of water vapor goes down with increasing altitude and also goes down as surface temperatures cool. Get cold enough and the air is completely dry – you’re getting no water vapor warming. It also explains why deserts cool much faster at night than other land – the air lacks the water vapor blanket.
In addition, water vapor only persists for a week or two before raining or snowing out again – a heat supply is needed to constantly evaporate more water. That could be sunlight or it could be the extra IR radiation from the persistent greenhouse gases.
This is a big part of why the top of East Antarctic ice cap is so cold. The top of the icecap is quite high up, so the air is dry from altitude as well as from the cold. It’s a cold, high desert. Any water vapor making it up that high basically immediately crystallizes out of the air – warming effect gone. Add in the reflectivity of the ice, and the low angle of sunlight at the pole, and you have a perfect place to avoid almost all warming effects except for the persistent greenhouse gases that are still mixed at that elevation. When the cooling started there, the decreasing water vapor feedback led to where we are today.
The Arctic is different since it’s at sea level, and surrounded by land. Water vapor can persist longer in the denser sea-level air, there are also more of the persistent greenhouse gases, and there is also the warmth of the ocean itself, and sunlight provides warmth in open water or on any exposed land surfaces around the Arctic Ocean. So, what we’re seeing there now is a set of positive feedback loops – increasing water vapor and decrease ice leads to more warmth, leading to more water vapor and less ice – positive feedback loop.
So yes, water vapor provides most of the greenhouse warmth, but only if it’s already warm enough to let water vapor consistently be replenished. Take away the persistent greenhouse gases and it is easy to freeze the Earth over. As it is, the greenhouse effect keeps Earth about 33C warmer than the average temperature of the moon, which gets the same amount of sunlight.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
March 20, 2014 at 5:18 pm
Mr Fagan should not be so petulant. He is allowing his belief system to stand in the way of rationality. It is not good enough merely to hand-wave about the curious non-linearity of the temperature increase, set against the linearity of the CO2 concentration increase, and then to say that the temperature, having been jolted upward by the Singer Event, stayed at a new, higher level because of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. It is necessary to understand and explain the mechanism, not merely to assume it because of an aprioristic belief that monotonically-increasing CO2 concentration must be the driver of stochastic changes in temperature. He will be able to read my paper on the Singer Event in due course: and it will exhibit greater depth than his pettinesses.
It seems that the Foster & Rahmstorf and the Kosaka & Xie papers have provided a hypothesized mechanism for the temperature vs CO2 concentration records that is considerably more rigorous than “hand waving” using independent techniques with mutually consistent results. It’s not clear whether you’re proposing a plausible alternative explanation, you’re unfamiliar with that work, or if you’re simply playing with an empty deck.
Samuel C Cogar says:
March 20, 2014 at 7:25 am
I totally agree with you. Water [in all its forms] is such a dominant influence on climate that any lack of knowledge on all its effects can be misinterpreted as something else. For example a year or two ago it was discovered that low level clouds absorb more sunlight than thought which caused warming. That warming had been ascribed to GHGs – and still is! We ARE talking about pseudo-science here!
To demonstrate the effect of water versus GHGs then it is best to look at an area which has little or no water and one which has a lot. I chose the Sahara desert and the Amazon rain forest.
The daily temperature in the Sahara can vary by up to 35C in less than 18 hours – baking hot in the day and freezing overnight. This also a good way to demonstrate the effect of GHGs – pretty much zero! GHGs will be much the same over the Sahara as the rest of the world. All one can say about GHGs is that they may make the hottest part of the day slightly hotter, but the effect will soon disappear once the sun is lower in the sky.
If Earth had no water then one can infer that the daily temperature ranges over the whole Earth would be far more extreme. It also demonstrates that the effects of GHGs are lost overnight so any warming must be started fresh EVERY DAY.
Now take a hot place with a lot of water – say the Brazilian rain forest. Here the daily temperature range is 2C to 5C, with an average temperature of 25C. The effect of water vapour has a dramatic effect on the climate. Note that the water slows down warming during the day and slows down cooling during the night. By definition this means it is not a GHG. It acts more like an insulator – call it ‘the Thermos Effect’! [If Thermos is not an international brand name then I mean a Dewar flask]
This is further demonstrated by looking at the annual change in temperature. The rain forest varies by only 2C over the year but the Sahara goes from daily maximums of 40C to 15C, further showing the lack of effect of GHGs.
Finally – whatever happened to the 60 year cycle of warming and cooling – has it ceased to exist?! Although the ‘pause’ shouts out to me that it due to this cycle it never seems to be mentioned! It is critical as it is the main indicator between CAGW and effects of the Sun and water.
Comparisons of the heating from 1910-1940 and 1970-2000 AND the pause from 1940-1970 and 2000-2030 are key indicators as to any effects from CAGW. If CO2 and other GHGs had any significant effect then I would have expected the current ‘pause’ to show SOME increase in temperature. It doesn’t. This suggests the influence of GHGs are FAR lower than even skeptics think.
An especially good reason to believe RSS over all other data sets is that all those other data sets initially had 1998 as the warmest year, and then, slowly but surely, by the successive rounds of data up-justiments they ended up in downgrading 1998. RSS is the only major data set that had not gone undergone any significant adjustments in the previous years. and that’s a very good prima faciae reason to prefer it over all others (including UAH which has been many times adjusted)
b fagan says:
March 20, 2014 at 11:38 pm
Much of the most active parts of the Mid-Ocean Ridge are shallower than its average depth of 2000m. Consider the Galapagos region, with its complex of shallow ridges, such as the Cocos, stretches of which are above 1000m. This hotspot lies athwart the waters affected by the ENSO.
There is also important submarine volcanic activity away from the MOR network, such as the Hawaiian chain.
Hi, milodonharlani.
Rather than try to locate every volcano that might contribute to Monckton’s fantasy heat source, first read this very brief bit about the “thermocline”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermocline
The reason I used “teleport” when describing what would have to happen to the heat, if somehow millions of undersea volcanoes lost it all at the same time, is that the heat would have to have disrupted the thermocline across all the oceans – which would be very much a known, detected event (by various navies at a minimum).
Notice a few things about insulation, too. The bottom water of the abyssal plains is very cold, just a few degrees above freezing, even though most of the active volcanoes in the world are spreading lava on the seafloor. Divers in Hawaii can swim very close to active lava flows without burning up. Animals live on thermal vents, within feet of the opening which might be spilling water that’s over 300 C.
That’s because of two things:
1 – rock is a good insulator, so when the cold water freezes the skin of fresh lava, much of the heat is trapped inside. That’s why you can also watch researchers walking on top of fresh, still active lava flows in Hawaii without bursting into flame.
2 – water can absorb an awful lot of heat, and the oceans have a tremendous amount of cold water. I’m not going to waste time trying to calculate required energy, but as a small experiment just think about how long it would take to heat the air above a billion-gallon tank of water that’s just above freezing. In a regular cook pot, you get convection cells from the warmed layer at the bottom rising and colder water falling to the bottom. In an ocean, you’d have literally miles of cold water that would be waiting to fall to the bottom before any appreciable heat could reach the surface.
So, my only conclusion about Monckton’s sly mention of 3.5 million undersea volcanoes is that he is pulling our leg. There’s no way to get them all to go off at once, and if they did go off at once, we’d have noticed long before the heat somehow made it all the way up to the level of the air.
anticlimactic says:
March 21, 2014 at 11:28 am
“I totally agree with you. Water [in all its forms] is such a dominant influence on climate that any lack of knowledge on all its effects can be misinterpreted as something else.”
——————
WOWEEEE, ….. I was thinking that I was reading my own thoughts as I was reading your commentary. Which just goes to show you that “great minds think alike” and via their use of intelligent reasoning and logical deductions they are far, far less likely to misinterpret the great expanse of growing timber as not being the forest they have avidly been searching for.
And I thank you, anticlimactic, for posting your commentary because just about everything you stated therein is the same or similar to what I have been “preaching” for the past 15+ years but which has always fallen on deaf ears and/or averted eyes and minds.
I truly believe their “blind” problem is “rooted” in the fact that most people have never been nurtured to “think for themselves” and to believe only what they are told by a “higher authority” and the fact that they have also been nurtured to believe that anyone who lacks a Degree(s), notoriety, work experience, peer approval and/or published literature in the science being discussed then said person can’t possibly know anything factual or relevant about the subject and should just be ignored.
Cheers, … now I gotta explain to b Fagan … the err of his thinking.
b fagan says:
March 21, 2014 at 10:35 am
“Samuel C Cogar asks why I didn’t include water vapor. I didn’t because while water vapor is responsible for most of the greenhouse warming, ………. it is considered a feedback – its concentration in the air is completely dependent on temperature. ”
——————
b Fagan, …. honestly, ……. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. And I say that because there are surely million of individuals that believe the same thing.
First of all your above statement is illogical. It’s illogical and ignorant to firstly claim that H2O vapor (humidity) is responsible for most of the “greenhouse” warming of the atmosphere … and then to completely ignore said H2O vapor (humidity) when trying to determine the cause of atmospheric warming. You threw the baby out with the bathwater and now you can’t find the baby.
And secondly, just what the ell does “considered a feedback” have to do with science, any science? Did anyone tell the H2O molecules that that is their function when in vapor form in the atmosphere?
And thirdly, so what if the H2O vapor in the atmosphere is completely dependent on temperature? Is not the CO2 in the atmosphere completely dependent on temperature? It sure as ell is. And if it gets cold enough it will precipitate out and fall to earth just like snow.
Now, lets clear up that “thingy” about H2O vapor being “considered a feedback” because I know where it originated ….. and I also know why most people use/apply it wrongly and thus come up FUBAR results that they actually believe are true and factual.
There are four (4) physical forms of H2O vapor in the atmosphere …. and said “feedback” thingy only applies to three (3) of them like maybe 50% of the time. And those four physical forms are referred to as humidity, ….. clouds, …. fogs ….. and mists ….. and said “feedback” thingy does not apply to the humidity (H2O vapor) in the atmosphere.
In essence, clouds, fogs and mists are bi-directional thermal (heat) energy buffers that function differently depending on the time of day. They will per se “feedback” heat energy to the surface at night time and will per se “feedback” heat energy to space during daytime …. with their mass density determining the amount of said buffering.
The earth’s atmosphere from the tropics to the northern temperate zone is “loaded” with humidity (H2O vapor) at all times, averaging between 1% (10,000 ppm) and 4% (40,000 ppm). and >1% in desert areas …….. and with the current 400 ppm of CO2 intermixed with it
Thus, at 1% humidity there are 9,600 H2O molecules that are absorbing and emitting up to 2X times the thermal energy for every 400 molecules of CO2.
And ya’ll actually believe that CO2 has a measurable affect on air temperatures.
FORGET it, the effect is so minimal that it should not even be considered.
Sam, let’s clear some of your stuff – and tell me where you got your ideas about greenhouse gases. I’m betting you are wrong about where I got mine.
1 – The only water vapor in the atmosphere is water vapor. Fogs/mists are condensed water droplets – clouds are water droplets and/or ice crystals. One thing water vapor does quite rapidly is condense into tiny droplets or ice crystals, leading to the fogs, mists, clouds you mentioned.
2 – I hadn’t realized you were from Mars until you mentioned CO2 precipitates out on your planet. My comments have been about climate on Earth, where CO2 does not exist at high enough partial pressure to precipitate out, even at the coldest points of winter on top of East Antarctica.
3 – “then to completely ignore said H2O vapor (humidity) when trying to determine the cause of atmospheric warming.” No, water vapor is a very powerful greenhouse gas, true. But because warming from it is a feedback to other sources of warming, it is a large part of atmospheric warming overall, but requires other forces to keep the atmosphere and surface warm enough to continue evaporation. So, the overall greenhouse warming on Earth is from IR trapped and re-emitted from H20, CO2, methane and the other trace gases.
So, as I’d already said about feedback loops, once something (either increased solar or increased persistent greenhouse gas concentrations) starts evaporating water, that evaporated vapor then starts adding its own warming – positive feedback. But take away the heat sources, and water vapor is replenished less and less as the atmosphere cools, then snow forms, reducing solar warming further, then you get a negative feedback which pulls water vapor ever faster from the air, reducing its warming effect… Eventually it’s so cold that the air would be extremely dry – that’s why wind-blown dust deposits are thicker during ice ages.
At our distance from the sun, water vapor alone can’t keep the planet above the freezing point of H2O. Persistent greenhouse gases are required, and the combination keeps the planet above freezing. In a billion years or so as the sun gets hotter, that will no longer be true, but we won’t be here then.
4 – down near the surface, there’s a lot of water vapor and less CO2, methane, whatever. But as I’ve been saying, water vapor condenses and precipitates out, so the higher you go the less of it there is, while the other gases stay well mixed throughout the troposphere and up into the stratosphere. And that means that the atoms that are actually radiating their IR out to space tend to the the high (and cold) greenhouse gases – since the water vapor is still far below where it keeps bouncing heat around in the denser atmosphere. That is what leads to warming – the higher (colder) it is where the IR finally escapes, the warmer it gets below.
Anyway, I first learned about the greenhouse effect back in high-school physics, many years before the IPCC was first formed. I’ve never watched Al Gore’s movies, since watching him talk is just so annoying (sorry, Al). When I read the different IPCC reports I already knew about the greenhouse effect.
But here’s a good, recent paper about the greenhouse effect that might benefit you – (it even discusses the greenhouse effect on Mars). Read and learn. “Infrared radiation and planetary temperature” by Ray Pierrehumbert — http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/PhysTodayRT2011.pdf
Or you could pick up “Atmosphere, Clouds, and Climate” by David Randall – part of the “Princeton Primers on Climate” series of books that started coming out about three years ago. Chapter 5 covers feedbacks, but overall the book covers what the title says.
Samuel C. Cogar: Is not the CO2 in the atmosphere completely dependent on temperature? It sure as ell is. And if it gets cold enough it will precipitate out and fall to earth just like snow.
I see that b fagan responded to that. I shall be interested to read your response. Where on Earth do you think that CO2 precipitates out and falls to Earth just like snow?
Antarctica, but I don’t think it makes it to the ground.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/13/results-lab-experiment-regarding-co2-snow-in-antarctica-at-113°f-80-5°c-not-possible/
b fagan says:
March 21, 2014 at 9:47 pm
“1 – The only water vapor in the atmosphere is water vapor. Fogs/mists are condensed water droplets – clouds are water droplets and/or ice crystals.”
——————–
No feces!!! And just where did you get your 1st clue? But more importantly, just where in hell did the water droplets come from, …… the Flying Spaghetti Monster maybe?
Now, …. try to ignore your mis-nurtured belief that you are the “sharpest pencil in the box” …… and read my statement again, to wit:
SamC said: “There are four (4) physical forms of H2O vapor in the atmosphere”.
That was a factually accurate statement because “the source” for all said four (4) forms ….. is H2O vapor …… and that statement was offered as a preface to the discussion that was to follow. (Because you seem to be inclined to “read-into-thing” to say what you want them to say …… and then you critique what you say they said. That is deviousness at its worst.)
There are four (4) more physical forms of H2O vapor in the atmosphere (snow, sleet, ice crystals and hail) which I made no mention of because they are irrelevant to this discussion.
=================
“2 – I hadn’t realized you were from Mars until you mentioned CO2 precipitates out on your planet.”
——————–
You sir, are a liar. I made no such statement.
==================
“No, water vapor is a very powerful greenhouse gas, true. But because warming from it is a feedback to other sources of warming, it is a large part of atmospheric warming overall, but requires other forces to keep the atmosphere and surface warm enough to continue evaporation.”
——————–
Lettme tell you again. Your above comment is not only delusional, but also illogical, as well as contrary to factual science. No one should be so arrogant as to think they can mandate what the physical properties of thermal energy transfers are for a specific molecule type. And it matters naught what their “mandate” refers to, be it feedback, backfeed, frontfeed, horsefeed or chickenfeed.
Thermal (heat) energy is transferred through the atmosphere via convection, conduction and radiation. Any molecule in the atmosphere can transfer thermal energy to any other molecule in the atmosphere via conduction. Air molecules that are capable of absorbing thermal energy via radiation ……. are also capable of emitting thermal energy via radiation ….. and depending upon the frequency of said radiation the aforesaid molecules can transfer thermal (heat) energy between one another. Thermal (heat) energy always transfers from hot to cold. (And if there is a mistake in my aforesaid, please point it out.)
===================
“So, as I’d already said about feedback loops, once something (either increased solar or increased persistent greenhouse gas concentrations) starts evaporating water, ”
——————–
Please cite me a specific “natural” example of … “greenhouse gas concentrations” …. causing liquid water to evaporate without the aid of an additional energy source? Surprise me, tell me something new I should learn today. And no included N2 or O2 gas in your example … or volcanic gases, ya hear.
=====================
“At our distance from the sun, water vapor alone can’t keep the planet above the freezing point of H2O. Persistent greenhouse gases are required, and …. yada, yada, yada ”
——————–
PHOOEY, …. miseducated commentary such as that was, ……. is utterly silly.
First of all, there is no such thing as a “greenhouse” gas ……. simply because the functioning of a “greenhouse” is in no way dependent upon the “type” of gas(es) that is/are confined within the physical structure of a “greenhouse” …… but is solely dependent upon the confinement of the gases within said structure.
The only place on earth that your per se “greenhouse” gases have any real effect on keeping the planet above the freezing point of H2O is the area from the Equator to and including the northern and southern Temperate Zones. The Pole Zones are immaterial because they never receive sufficient Solar irradiance to make any difference and besides, they receive none at all 6 months out of each year.
And here is a clue, … for you, …. there is pretty much persistent H2O vapor in the air from Pole Zone to Pole Zone …… and which averages from 1% to 2% in northern latitudes to 4+% in the Tropical Zones. And even if the atmospheric H2O vapor was only at 1/4% …… there would still be 3,600 ppm more H2O vapor in the air than all the other “greenhouse” gas ppm’s added together.
I don’t care if the atmospheric CO2 increases by 200 ppm ,,,, tomorrow, ……cause it don’t/won’t make no difference in the surface temperature.
Quit touting silly claims about CO2 …… and just “prove it”, …… prove it via an actual, measurable, verifiable experimental result(s).
Hi, Sam.
When you said “There are four (4) physical forms of H2O vapor in the atmosphere ” it took it to mean what you said. Sorry for taking you at your word.
As a hint, if you took the word “vapor” out of that statement, I’d have agreed with you completely. I was just pointing out that ice, water and water vapor are different phase states of H2O, and since that’s extremely important in Earth climate I felt it was important to set you straight. Try to, at least, but you double your mistake by saying “There are four (4) more physical forms of H2O vapor in the atmosphere (snow, sleet, ice crystals and hail) ” in your latest reply. Again, vapor is not liquid or solid or supercritical fluid or any other thing than a gas. So H2O can be all of the above things, but “H2O vapor” can only be a gas. Read up on phase change.
Regarding your living on Mars, you are right. You didn’t say CO2 precipitates here. You said this:
“Is not the CO2 in the atmosphere completely dependent on temperature? It sure as ell is. And if it gets cold enough it will precipitate out and fall to earth just like snow.”
Apologies for assuming you lived on Mars, since I did take your comments about CO2 precipitation to mean you thought it was possible here on Earth, since it never gets cold enough for CO2 to precipitate out and fall to earth just like snow. My bad.
Since you seem to think my closely reading what you actually write is “deviousness at its worst” I’ll stop reading what you write. Once I got to your un-clever attempt to redefine the term “greenhouse gas” I realized it’s very clear you didn’t even bother trying to read the Pierrehumbert paper I’d suggested to you.
I know I’m not the sharpest pencil in the box by a long shot – that’s why I read what the sharp pencils are writing, and I tried recommending some of that to you.
Here are a few sources that go over the real science, and they include references to lots of real papers by real scientists. I’ve read them all and recommend them if you are willing to learn rather than just seek confirmation for your existing view.
“Climate Change Evidence & Causes” from the US National Academy of Science and the Royal Society gives nice short descriptions of aspects of climate.
http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/exec-office-other/climate-change-full.pdf
The Discovery of Global Warming – A History – http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm
(The bibliography is huge and goes back to Ben Franklin and Joseph Fourier – Fourier was the first to discuss the greenhouse effect, back in the 1820s. This isn’t new science).
The “Princeton Primers in Climate” series. http://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/series/ppic.html
(I’ve only read five of this series so far).
And of course, there are the IPCC Working Group 1 reports at ipcc.ch. They also provide extensive bibliographies to document their conclusions.
Reply if you wish – after reading the above.
Matthew R Marler says:
March 22, 2014 at 7:59 am
“I see that b fagan responded to that. I shall be interested to read your response. ”
———————
b fagan responded with a lie about my person ……. and then critiqued the lie he told.
In reference to Monckton’s “heat source” being undersea volcanoes, to wit:
The thermohaline circulation is a “real life” example of fluid logics or fluidics.
Read more here about fluidics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics
And remember this, to wit:
“It takes almost 1,000 years for the (thermohaline) conveyor belt to complete one ‘cycle’”.
Ref: http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/conveyor.html
So, the question are ……
Was there “hot water” in the conveyor?
And if so, when did it get there?
And if it did, would it disrupt the flow of the conveyor?
Cheers
b fagan says:
March 22, 2014 at 11:09 am
Hi, B Fagan:
IMO the viscount isn’t pulling our leg, but merely suggesting an area of investigation, in which present knowledge is limited.
In the past 25 years or so understanding of tectonic activity has grown. There do appear to be superplume cycles at various time scales associated with supercontinent formation & break up, so shorter, even decadal, fluctuations in submarine & subaerial volcanism cannot be ruled out. Indeed, such variation is IMO more likely than not. As per Samuel C. Cogar’s comment above, there is however liable to be a lag in the effects of any such heating or cooling of seawater.
As but one example, the high sea levels of the Cretaceous owed more to thermal expansion of the oceans from active seafloor spreading than from lack of ice during that balmy Period. As with climatic fluctuations, superplume variation may well occur on short as well as long term time frames.
Some argue that the under air eruptions of Tambora, Krakatoa, Pinatubo, et al, have a short term cooling effect on climate (or weather, since brief), but under sea eruptions arguably might lead to warming locally & farther afield later. IMO the possibility merits study, preferably with measurement rather than just modeling with assumptions not in evidence, as in CACA.
Hi, milodonharlani.
Remember that in this whole discussion there is no need to even suggest this “Singer Event”. The two real events that did happen (Mt. Pinatubo, El Niño), the order they happened (cooling followed by warming) and the six-year spread are enough to explain the dramatic temperature swing.
Consider this – if Mt. Pinatubo erupted just as the El Niño was getting started, the cooling and warming effects – both natural events – would have partly cancelled each other out, and depending on which had the bigger impact, there’d have just been a much smaller warming or cooling.
So the six year swing was just an example of natural variability that, in this case, placed a cooling event 6 years before a warming event.
To use a weather example instead, if a cold front moves comes in on Monday and is followed by a warm front Monday night, I don’t try to invent, oh, a “Monckton Event” to explain why Tuesday is warmer than Monday. The existing knowledge about how warm and cold fronts move already explains what happened.
b fagan says:
March 22, 2014 at 2:17 pm
Please state the evidence which you believe exists for the proposition that the majority (51 to 90% or more) of climate change since 1950, 1900 or whenever is due to man-made carbon dioxide or some other human activity or product. Thanks, since I have not been able to find any such evidence, least of all in IPCC publications.
b fagan says:
March 22, 2014 at 2:52 pm
I don’t know if the RSS data are robust enough to support trend lines of two or three years, but it does appear from Viscount Monckton’s 1993-99 & prior chart that from late 1992 to late 1995 global T recovered from Pinatubo-induced cooling (but without regaining the 1983, 1987-88 or 1990-91 highs), then went sideways until the start of the El Niño spike in late ’97.
I would be interested in your reasons for adhering to Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Alarmism, if indeed you do ascribe to this hypothesis, IMO repeatedly falsified in both senses of the term. I see no credible evidence to the effect that humans are primarily responsible for whatever changes have actually occurred in global climate during the past century or so.
Hi, milodonharlini.
You asked me about some kind of belief system I didn’t quite understand. I believe that the science of greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect is real. I base this on several years of reading dry text-book information and dry peer-reviewed papers, some dating back over 150 years. It’s only my opinion, but I’ve been reading as much as possible (from non-blog sources of any flavor – I read the real science).
Question for you at the bottom, but here’s what I understand.
1 – the greenhouse gas effect is real, as demonstrated by the non-frozen planet we live on, and also observed on Venus, Mars, and the moon Titan.
2 – greenhouse gas concentrations are increasing in the atmosphere, and the declining pH in the oceans make it clear that the CO2 isn’t coming out of ocean water, that the ocean instead is absorbing CO2 from the air.
3 – burning materials like wood, coal, oil or natural gas produces gaseous CO2 at a specific ratio per weight of burned fuel
4 – the measured change in carbon isotope ratios in atmospheric CO2 indicate most of the increase is coming from ancient carbon sources.
5 – the measured increase in atmospheric CO2 and measured decrease in ocean water pH is consistent with the amount of low-14C carbon being burned – less a 10% or so amount taken up in increased plant growth. Energy companies and governments do a great job of documenting what is being produced and consumed.
6 – Physics shows that more greenhouse gas = more greenhouse effect. A sudden increase in greenhouse gas increases planetary temperature to the point where outgoing radiation can again match incoming solar radiation. Temperatures only drop when the GHG levels drop.
NOTE: This would all be true regardless of how the fossil carbon is released. There are indications that the Siberian Traps volcanic event actually ignited some coal seams, adding to airborne CO2 during that event.
SO – I’ve explained that I understand that the greenhouse effect is natural, regardless of what factor changes the levels of the greenhouse gases.
Please return the favor.
Can you explain why so many people appear to believe that a sharp increase in greenhouse gases will somehow not produce the natural increase in warming just because the release happens to be due to human activity this time?
I ask because I’ve repeatedly asked people for robust evidence that the greenhouse effect isn’t real, but never get any response.
Regards.
Oh – and you cannot derive robust climate trends from any three year period – natural variability, signal-to-noise and all that. One of the basics of climatology.
b fagan says:
March 22, 2014 at 4:53 pm
Very few climate skeptics deny that the greenhouse effect is real. You are missing the point & didn’t reply to the question I respectfully asked.
Rising CO2 since 1850 from whatever source (“natural” or anthropogenic) has so far been enormously beneficial to humans & other living things. Since the GHG effect is logarithmic, even a further increase from 400 to 600 ppm over the next 100 years (at present alleged rate of growth, if that happens) would also still be beneficial. Without the feedback assumptions in climate models, which assumptions are not based upon actual evidence from observation of the climate system, the effect of raising CO2 from 280 ppm to 560 ppm would be a negligible & beneficial 1.2 degrees C, if the gas behaves in complex nature as it does in a lab. Much or most of this theoretical increase has already happened at present 400 ppm, since the effect is logarithmic.
So there can be no catastrophic global warming without the water vapor & other feedback assumptions in the models, which assumptions are not in evidence. The models have been shown laughably faulty, so CACA is a baseless scam. No surprise, since CO2 has been 17.5 or more times higher than now during the Phanerozoic Eon without catastrophic results. Causes of the Permian mass extinction remain conjectural.
Nor is a dangerous change in oceanic pH in evidence. The climatic effect of CO2 without improperly assumed feedbacks is insignificant. I might get concerned at real greenhouse levels of 1000 ppm, but that’s very unlikely to occur in the next 300 years.
But please state why you think that an increase in man-made CO2 is responsible for 90% of whatever climate change has been observed since 1950, or whenever you want to start the final countdown, & why this is a problem if true.
“Very few climate skeptics deny that the greenhouse effect is real”. Well, in a very brief statistical sample (the comments on this thread) I’ve been conversing with exhibit ‘A’ and he’s got at least one fellow thinker here..
“the question I respectfully asked”.
Well, I was responding to your question ” I would be interested in your reasons for adhering to Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Alarmism, if indeed you do ascribe to this hypothesis. ”
That wasn’t respectful, and there is no scientific hypothesis like what you named. It’s a term that someone (not you, I’m sure) came up with so they can use a potty mouth acronym to label people they disagree with. About the level of maturity in Monckton’s “clever” trick with spelling IPCC. I haven’t called you names. I do question your sanguine interpretation of the science.
I don’t care too much about attribution of x% of changes in recent years. I agree with the broad statement that our impact is beginning to rise above the noise level of natural variability. So, here’s why I want us to increase energy efficiency and end use of fossil fuels as rapidly as possible.
Part of my job over the last 25-30 years is systems analysis, identifying risks and benefits in major IT application rollouts or changes, and advising clients on whether they should eliminate risks, allow them but plan disaster response, or a mix of both. You have to learn what you can and make plans knowing you never have all the data. Some risks are so clearly destructive that the money goes up front to eliminate them. Some are so minimal that you just document a cleanup process for when they happen.
There’s a big middle ground where risks are harder to quantify but potential damages are large. For those, it makes it worth spending some extra money up front to reduce the risk somewhat AND do the disaster recovery plan. Focus on the factors that present the greatest risk or tie to several risks. Sometimes customers ignore the advice or don’t want to spend the money. In some situations, it’s just not possible to get the project done and treat all risks – money is a finite quantity.
In all cases, taking the time to study, and plan, and then act is much less expensive and disruptive than waiting until the last minute. Studying and then doing nothing is also a path to sudden (expensive) disaster.
For reasons below, I think we’ve gathered enough evidence to move into the planning and acting phase. It’s not important to say “50% of this” or “climate event X is due to”. The basic greenhouse effect hypothesis is nearing 200 years old, and the estimated sensitivity range of doubling CO2 hasn’t changed all that much for a hundred years or so, and physics makes it clear that more energy will change the existing patterns of climate.
So –look at population growth, the projected energy demands from the developing world, global political instability, the increased demand for water, agricultural land, food (and increased meat/fish consumption) and the various potential risks from warming and from ocean chemistry changes.
One common factor is associated with a lot of the problems: fossil fuels. They were a great start-up for industrial society, but now we have real alternatives and fossil fuels are more trouble than they’re worth.
– Better-than-even odds that warming will be globally damaging by 2070s (note, we all know people who will be alive then).
– Political instability (Putin vs. Europe, all the fun that the Middle East has been just because of oil, Venezuela, etc) Nobody can stop sunlight or wind due to political disputes, and decentralized power generation even protects locals from internal disputes, so a solar-powered village in N Africa could get electified without worrying about some rebel or terror group cutting the power line miles away.
– Energy price shocks – the sooner we get away from energy that requires constant purchase the sooner we get away from the power of resource-rich nations to twist markets around their finger. Build a windmill and you are done spending money except for maintenance. And fossil prices will keep going up – it’s what happens in a market as demand increases. Canadian tar sands weren’t worth exploiting until oil reached a higher price level.
– Pollution (China admitted last April that pollution is now killing 1.2 million a year. Any developing nation getting into heavy use of fossil fuel now will NOT be implementing expensive emissions controls – I don’t want 3 or 4 billion people repeating the health damage/acid rain/water and air pollution that the developed world is still recovering from. The developing nations aren’t exactly flush with funds to care for people with chronic heart or respiratory diseases, either.
– Water – mining/extracting fuels from underground leads to direct pollution on-site, ocean pollution from spills or rig accidents, and to pollution events like the recent coal-related spills in West Virginia and North Carolina. Fracking out in the dry Southwest would stress limited water supplies even more. Increasing demand for agricultural and drinking water doesn’t need pollution plus unknown changes in precipitation patterns to contend with.
I think that climate change and ocean acidification are serious issues that we have to act on right now – in large part because the cause of both issues is a energy supply chain that is hugely damaging in other ways as well, and because we have many alternatives that will not only address the climate risks, but will address the other known problems at the same time.
Climate’s just part of it. If there were no alternatives to fossil fuel, we’d be screwed. But since there are lots of alternatives, and since fossil fuels create so many other problems, it’s time they go into history.
I’m done. Have a good week.
b fagan says:
March 22, 2014 at 2:17 pm
“As a hint, if you took the word “vapor” out of that statement, I’d have agreed with you completely. I was just pointing out that ice, water and water vapor are different phase states of H2O, and since that’s extremely important in Earth climate I felt it was important to set you straight.”
———————
b Fagan,
Getta clue, ….. I was not writing an abstract for your ….. pal approval.
Even if I had I’m sure you would have found reason(s) to reject it …. along with the inclusion of your disingenuous snide comments in your attempt to make me “look the fool”.
There are surely hundreds of other viewers of these posted commentaries, not all of which are as learned in the Science as you think you are. And thus the reason I use verbiage in my commentary that can be understood by all, Especially the less knowledgeable persons because if they can not “relate” to the verbiage being used ….. they sure as hell are not going to keep an open dictionary in their lap or a 2nd window “open” to Google for easy look-up of words and phrases so they can follow the conversation.
The #1 factor as to why the populace quickly accepted and believed the “junk science” of CAGW was the use of the term “greenhouse gas” because people the world over can “relate to” greenhouses as being “warm” when it is cool or cold outside …… and the fact that they are also known by the majority of the population as being “hothouses”. And thus their thinking was ….. iffen that CO2 is what is keeping those “hothouses” HOT …. then by damn we don’t want any more of it in our atmosphere.
And thus the #1 big arsed mistake that was made by the opponents of CAGW was letting the “flim-flammers” get by with using that utterly false term ….. and the #2 big arsed mistake being made by the opponents of CAGW is the fact they themselves use that utterly false term as much or more often than the “flim-flammers” do …… which only serves to re-enforce the publics belief in/of CAGW.
And you wonder why they won’t believe you when you talk factual science.
“Dat CO2 makes those hothouses HOTTER, ya know, cause everyone says so”.
Read my writing again, to wit:
There is no such thing as a “greenhouse” gas ……. simply because the functioning of a “greenhouse” is in no way dependent upon the “type” of gas(es) that is/are confined within the physical structure of a “greenhouse” …… but is solely dependent upon the confinement of the gases within said structure. Greenhouses are “closed systems” …. the earth’s atmosphere is an “open system”, …. thus it is asinine and idiotic to associate the two as being the same or equivalent.
Reply above was to milodonharlani @ March 22, 2014 at 5:14 pm
b fagan says:
March 23, 2014 at 2:06 pm
The hypothesis I stated was that of IPCC & all climate alarmists. To wit: that the world is in danger of catastrophic consequences from global warming primarily caused by humanity. IPCC rates the manmade contribution to supposed warming since 1950 at an absurd 90%, despite a complete lack of evidence to that effect.
No surprise that you couldn’t adduce any such evidence, since no one else has either.
milodonharlani says:
March 23, 2014 at 2:27 pm
“No surprise that you (b fagan) couldn’t adduce any such evidence, since no one else has either.”
———————
Right you are, and thus no surprise that he/she refuses to address any factual statements that discredits, disproves and/or negates his/her mimicked and/or paraphrased commentary.
A gossiper is incapable of proving, disproving, attesting to or explaining that which he/she gossips about other than to say ….. “That’s what I was told” ….. and no one is going to admit to their “gossip” source on a public web site after they have falsely inferred their “expertise” on the subject being discussed.
And this says it all, to wit:
b fagan says:
March 23, 2014 at 2:06 pm
“Part of my job over the last 25-30 years is systems analysis, identifying risks and benefits in major IT application rollouts or changes, and advising clients on whether they should eliminate risks, allow them but plan disaster response, or a mix of both.”
—————–
Shur nuff, ….. just accumulate a list of “fear factors” …… then mimic them when and/or where appropriate.
milo . “No surprise that you couldn’t adduce any such evidence, since no one else has either.” Well, I said my piece and gave you my considered opinions, since it’s not my job to also educate you about the ongoing science. But I’ve had needy clients in the past, so you get this one break. After all, you seem to get your information from an echo chamber, so I’ll give you this one last tip.
The terrible IPCC did this terrible thing and actually produced a separate chapter in their 5th “The Physical Science Basis” report. Yup, Chapter 10 – “Detection and Attribution of Climate Change: from Global to Regional”.
Here’s the link. http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_Chapter10_FINAL.pdf
I know you probably haven’t sullied yourself by reading it, but they give you an out: Skip all the pages and pages where they detail all the different changes in climate, and how much they think we are or aren’t contributing. AFTER those pages (and the charts) they 12-1/2 pages of references to the 600+ published papers and reports they reviewed for this single chapter.
So, rather than believe the IPCC, you can steal their work and look up the hundreds of papers yourself – they’re putting ammunition in your hand. Go to it.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
March 20, 2014 at 1:45 am
…..until the mechanism that caused the Singer Event is understood it cannot safely be blamed on CO2. We can, however, rule out the kind of naive, linear relationship between CO2 concentration change and 21st century temperature change that the IPCC posits, for there was no step-change in CO2 concentration to match the step-change in temperature during the Singer Event.”
I would carry this linear relationship discussion further. It seems that if T {temperature time series] is linearly related to C [CO2 time series] and if C oscillates; then T should also oscillate and at the same frequency. Since there is a readily seen annual oscillation in the CO2 concentration, why has no one commented on the apparent lack of an annual oscillation in any of the temperature time series, If the answer is that the T is linearly related to C with some lags — that doesn’t change the frequency just introduces a phase delay. Where is that C wiggle in the T?
b fagan says:
March 23, 2014 at 2:06 pm
……I think that climate change and ocean acidification are serious issues that we have to act on right now – in large part because the cause of both issues is a energy supply chain that is hugely damaging in other ways as well, and because we have many alternatives that will not only address the climate risks, but will address the other known problems at the same time.
Climate’s just part of it. If there were no alternatives to fossil fuel, we’d be screwed. But since there are lots of alternatives, and since fossil fuels create so many other problems, it’s time they go into history.
Its instructive that the one proven “clean energy technology” which you don’t happen to mention is Nuclear. Your preferred solution — Wind and Solar have failed to overcome the same fundamental limitation on their use which has beset them for thousands of years. They can not be counted on to deliver when there is a need. Unless and until energy storage is efficient, reliable and cost competitive with fossil fuels — well the wold will prefer fossil fuels.
By the way — the use of fossil fuels has improved the human condition by a greater amount than anything since the advent of agriculture — perhaps you would prefer that we go back to being hunters and gatherers?
westhighlander – you ask the typical straw man question: “the use of fossil fuels has improved the human condition by a greater amount than anything since the advent of agriculture — perhaps you would prefer that we go back to being hunters and gatherers?”. I answered that before you asked it – “fossil fuels. They were a great start-up for industrial society, but now we have real alternatives and fossil fuels are more trouble than they’re worth.”
I like nuclear, I didn’t mention it specifically, but I didn’t mention geothermal or hydro or biogas either. I think Germany made a really stupid decision to shut down their plants – France (and Illinois, where I live) get a lot of power from nuclear and haven’t been harmed by it. France’s electricity cost is in the lower half (or third, not sure) of prices in Europe. But I don’t like nuclear as the long-term solution since we still haven’t figured out the waste storage issue, or the fact that the fuel can also potentially be misused – as our current standoff with Iran demonstrates. I’d be in favor of allowing nuclear plants to get price protection while they supply baseline to solar and wind generation sites, so the percentage of renewables increases while grid stability is preserved. The other problem with nuclear is if something goes wrong, it can go really wrong. Latest estimates I’ve seen for cleaning up the Fukushima site are well over $200 billion US. I mention solar and wind because they’re both going to be available as long as people are around, and they don’t leave residues like coal ash or radioactives.
By the way, your “Unless and until energy storage is efficient, reliable and cost competitive with fossil fuels” is the kind of chicken-and-egg thinking that I advise against. Efficiency comes through deployment and improvement. The sooner we make a concerted effort, the faster it drops in cost – and in many locations storage using compressed air or pumped water is already pretty inexpensive. On the grid, storage isn’t critical until intermittant renewables provide ~15% of the supply, but we should be pushing storage solutions out as we ramp up – to keep the grid stable as we go beyond 15%. Changing existing energy infrastructure takes decades, so the goal isn’t “wait until unused technology is perfect” – it is the realistic “perfect the technology as we increase use of it”.
And remember, fossil fuel prices are only going to rise. That’s what happens to limited commodities as demand increases – which is happening as China, India, the Middle East, Africa all become much greater consumers of energy – and as we expect several billion more people in the next 50 years. The gunk we get from Alberta’s tar sand isn’t oil, they mine it and refine it and it only became worth doing when the cost of real crude stabilized at a new, higher level.
b fagan says:
March 22, 2014 at 4:53 pm
Hi, milodonharlini.
You asked me about some kind of belief system I didn’t quite understand. I believe that the science of greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect is real. I base this on several years of reading dry text-book information and dry peer-reviewed papers, some dating back over 150 years. It’s only my opinion, but I’ve been reading as much as possible (from non-blog sources of any flavor – I read the real science).
Question for you at the bottom, but here’s what I understand.
1 – the greenhouse gas effect is real, as demonstrated by the non-frozen planet we live on, and also observed on Venus, Mars, and the moon Titan.
2 – greenhouse gas concentrations are increasing in the atmosphere, and the declining pH in the oceans make it clear that the CO2 isn’t coming out of ocean water, that the ocean instead is absorbing CO2 from the air.
3 – burning materials like wood, coal, oil or natural gas produces gaseous CO2 at a specific ratio per weight of burned fuel
4 – the measured change in carbon isotope ratios in atmospheric CO2 indicate most of the increase is coming from ancient carbon sources.
Let’s start with 1:
Venus has a atmosphere totally unrelated to that of the Earth
Mars has essentially no atmosphere
Titan is a “fossil fueled” planet — the oceans would fuel your barbecue grill
1a: since you like astronomy — what about observed warming on some of the planets — no burning of fossil fuels here or there
2. We don’t know the source of the CO2 in the atmosphere — Indeed there are multiple exchanges between sources and sinks — some CO2 come from land sources and some from surface ocean sources, and even some from the deep oceans as emission from the abundance of unexplored submarine volcanoes There are also a myriad of sinks in addition to absorption in surface ocean waters and production of sugars by photosynthesis.
3. Burning materials containing carbon produces CO2 — no argument with this one — as long as you burn things completely — the for a given quantity of a fuel the production of CO2 can be calculated — however where it goes is highly complex — see #2.
4.” 4 – the measured change in carbon isotope ratios in atmospheric CO2 indicate most of the increase is coming from ancient carbon sources. ” — fundamentally flawed as while the decay rate of C14 is well known the production rate of C14 is governed by the flux of galactic cosmic rays and that it turn in governed by solar activity which we know varies substantially.
4a as in 2. since volcanoes both terrestrial and marine produce CO2 emissions deficient in C14 they will have the same effect as burning of fossil fuels
Hi again, westhighlander.
I’ll reply to your reply on the greenhouse effect and where the gases come from. I’m summarizing your comments a bit – they are all in quotes.
“Let’s start with 1: Where we’ve observed the greenhouse effect and your responses.
Venus has an atmosphere totally unrelated to that of the Earth
Mars has essentially no atmosphere
Titan is a “fossil fueled” planet — the oceans would fuel your barbecue grill”
— For Venus, I don’t understand your comment. It has very similar gravity to Earth’s, by all research the early atmosphere had lots of water like us, but being closer to the sun appears to have produced a runaway greenhouse effect, loss of most water, and an extremely hot surface (due to atmospheric pressure and greenhouse warming).
— Mars has an atmosphere that supports dust devils, planet-scale dust storms, CO2 snow, and also allowed for parachute braking for at least three of the Mars lander missions. If you want “essentially no atmosphere” go to the Moon. Earth and Martian dusts are quite similar, while lunar dust shows basically zero effects of weathering.
— That Titan has a different mix of gases doesn’t change the physics of the greenhouse effect. Titan’s much colder than the three planets, and under its conditions, molecular nitrogen can trap IR radiation – but it is still just an atmospheric gas trapping IR.
— Earth has water vapor. Venus still has traces, though most has been lost. Earth, Venus and Mars all have CO2. Nitrogen is opaque to IR on the inner rocky planets, but not out on Titan. But in all cases the greenhouse effect is still just the result of greenhouse gases trapping IR.
Please read the Pierrehumbert paper – http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/PhysTodayRT2011.pdf
“1a: what about observed warming on some of the planets”
– Please name these planets and provide references to the long-term temperature data and time-matched orbital distances from the sun.
“— no burning of fossil fuels here or there” — The greenhouse effect works on any atmospheric gas that meets the conditions in the local atmosphere. They do so whether the gases are the result of volcanoes, bubbling bogs or Exxon/Mobil.
“2. We don’t know the source of the CO2 in the atmosphere — Indeed there are multiple exchanges between sources and sinks.
3 – Fossil fuel burning matched to CO2 increases
4 – ratio of isotopes – what about volcanoes”
Of course the gases move in and out of the atmosphere, but the quantity of the persistent gases is increasing, despite drawdowns by oceanic and land sinks. Any given molecule goes in and out of air/plants/soil/water, but still the net % of atmospheric CO2 (and methane, and some flourocarbons, etc.) is increasing.
We know the ocean is taking in more CO2 than it is releasing because of declining pH of ocean waters. We know the additional CO2 is coming from above rather than from deeper waters because pH is declining faster at the surface rather than deeper down. This also prevents Monckton’s speculation of sub-sea heat mysteriously rising to the surface undetected. The heat would have to be transferred by rapid physical mixing, which would also change ocean chemistry throughout the thousands of meters of water column.
The carbon isotope ratio that I was referring to was the change in the ratio between 13C and 12C. Plants preferentially take in the lighter 12C isotope for photosynthesis, so fossil fuels from fossil plants have a less 13C than other carbon sources in the crust – like magma. The measured changes in 13C/12C ratios in atmosphere (and in skeletons of ocean creatures like corals and some sponges) show a decline consistent with the production of increasing amounts of fossil fuels.
Burning fossil fuels vs volcanoes – besides the change in carbon isotope ratios, other research on volcanoes produces estimates that their output is roughly 1/100th of current fossil fuel production. So, volcanoes put out more CO2 than humans at any point between Adam and Ben Franlin, but once we started mining coal in England in the early 1800s, we’ve really been applying ourselves.
See the following for more about volcanic-vs-human CO2.
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/archive/2007/07_02_15.html
http://www.agu.org/pubs/pdf/2011EO240001.pdf
Lord Monckton,
Do not believe, that the earth climate system is as simple as the IPCC suggest. The earth climate system is a comlex system meaning a lot of different dependences and chaotic behaviour. The AGW hypothesis does not consider the chaotic reality and does not carry conviction.
A complex system like our earth climate is characterised with multiple metastable states. Every state is instable or metastable. To change from one metastable state into another one, a certain amount of disturbance or anomaly is needed necessarily. Less anomalies cannot change the metastable state. Between two metastable states the state is instable, the feedback effekts are positive. Arriving the new metastable state the feedbacks change to strong negative. Each annomaly leeds to naturely counter-measures and the system is metastable until the next big anomaly will come.
The current global temperature seems to be stable since 17.5 years. The 1998 ElNino was a big anomaly and might chance the globle temperature from a lower to a higher state. Obviously the anomalies since 1998 were not big enough to change the state. I suppose the current global temperature is stable enough to withstand also the next ElNino, another global warming could be a non-existing ghost. On the other hand change of state is not reversible. A year touching the average temperature 1979-1997 does not lead to the former state.
The questions are:
– How does the stabilisation in the current state work? What are the negative feedbacks?
– What anomaly is necessary to destroy the stabilisation mechanism to change the climate?
– In what different metastable state could the climate be driven in?
– How does the stabilisation work in the next state?
It is not easy to answer this questions, but it is careless to ask not. After answering you can estimate the influence of CO2. I suppose there is no influence. Zero! This estimation is independant wether the CO2-forcing does exist or not, because the disturbance is too small.
Congratulation for your work. Please keep on! Regards, Dr. Kuhnle
(Sorry for language mistakes, it is German-English)
b fagan says:
March 25, 2014 at 2:07 am
I have read all the IPCC lies. Nowhere in any of them is a single shred of evidence that an increase in atmospheric CO2 from 280 to 560 ppm would produce catastrophic consequences. Some of the putative increase from ~280 in AD 1850 to ~400 now is probably from human sources, but so what? The increase has been highly beneficial to humans & other living things, & further increases will be, too. Should any problems arise, they can be adapted to.
CO2 has also come out of the oceans as earth has recovered from the Little Ice Age. It comes from layers below the surface. There is also zero evidence of any harm to sea creatures from whatever pH changes may have occurred, which are also not in evidence on oceanic scales.
The millennial scale trend is toward colder T, so the slight increase that might attend further CO2 increases will be a good thing. There was no catastrophic runaway global warming when CO2 levels were five, 10, 15, 20 & 25 times higher than now. Indeed, the world was often much colder than now at those levels. IMO anything up to 1000 ppm is good.
The only way to get 2.5 to 4.5 degrees C of warming from a doubling of CO2 to 560 ppm is by assuming H2O feedback effects which aren’t in evidence. The Holocene Climatic Optimum & the centennial scale warming periods since then were hotter than now, as was the prior Eemian Interglacial, without benefit of previous industrial ages.
CACA is without any scientific basis, whatever may be the case for a GHE in a lab. No basis for Catastrophe, questionable for Anthropogenic. Climate always changes & is doing so within normal natural limits, so no basis for Alarmism, either.
JT/Milo
John, JT, Milo, (or whatever your name is today) – I won the bet I made with myself that you would simply reject the entire chapter. Now I owe myself a nickel.
You said “I have read all the IPCC lies.” Somehow that sounds more like “I’ve read so many comforting blog posts that call the stuff lies that I don’t need to read the documents themselves”.
Did you read the entire chapter on attributions, or even the chapter’s executive summary? Or look up any of the papers they based their review on?
Did you ever read the overall Working Group 1 summary for policymakers?
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf
Absolute answers like “not a shred” kind of imply a mind that’s made up and won’t be swayed by looking and thinking for yourself. I only say that because the thousands of papers referenced in the different chapters of the report are, essentially, all the most current shreds of climate science available by the cutoff time for papers included in the 5th assessment.
Some of them are why the likely lower limit of sensitivity dropped from 2C to 1.5C. Some are why the earlier claims about cyclones were withdrawn. That’s why they do periodic reviews – to figure what is the current best understanding and report on it.