By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Pseudo-science by press release has become the norm among the Forces of Darkness. With as much fanfare as McGill University could muster, the recent paper by Professor Lovejoy was promoted via a typically head-banging instance of the genre.
The gushingly flatulent halation of the university PR-wallahs is typical of the verbal diarrhea habitual among practitioners of the Dark Arts. The ipsissima verba of Lovejoy himself in the press release are of particular interest.
Here is what he is quoted as saying:
“We’ve had a fluctuation in average temperature that’s just huge since 1880 – on the order of about 0.9 degrees Celsius. This study shows that the odds of that being caused by natural fluctuations are less than one in a hundred and are likely to be less than one in a thousand.
“While the statistical rejection of a hypothesis can’t generally be used to conclude the truth of any specific alternative, in many cases – including this one – the rejection of one greatly enhances the credibility of the other.”
Is the post-1880 variability in global temperatures “huge”? The most direct method to test this proposition is to examine the available temperature record since 1500, the starting date of Lovejoy’s analysis.
However, there is no direct global thermometer record going back that far. Accordingly, Lovejoy uses a ragbag of politically-correct reconstructions over various periods since then, inevitably including the long-discredited “hockey-stick” graph. Not only that, but an unpublished version of Richard Muller’s Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature record is dragged in as well.
There is one curious and significant omission on Lovejoy’s list of references. There is no mention of the Central England Temperature Record. Now, CET is the longest continuous regional temperature record we have. Despite its name, it covers most of England roughly from Lancashire in the north to Devon in the south. And it has been maintained since 1659.
No one doing a genuinely study of temperature change since 1500 would make ignore CET altogether. It has been maintained in a nation on which Fortune has smiled, so that there have been no interruptions owing to riot or revolution. It is on the right latitude to be – at least potentially – a respectable proxy for global temperature change over the period of study.
The most straightforward way to determine whether any proxy measurement – here, the part for the whole – provides a reasonable indication of how the Earth may have warmed and cooled over the period of record is to make a comparison between the proxy and the global record during the period of overlap.
First, let us apply this test to the “hockey stick” graph that Professor Lovejoy used. To establish that such a test is valuable, we go to no less authoritative a source than the World Meteorological Organization, one of the profiteering cheer-leaders of the panic pandemic.
Here, taken directly from the front cover of the WMO’s “Status of the Global Climate” for 1999, is a graph showing that three distinct series of tree-ring data faithfully replicate the sharp increase in global temperature over the 20th century.
Here is the “smoking gun” that proves how exceptional the growth in 20th-century was. There had been nothing like it in a millennium.
Just one problem with that. The original tree-ring data for the period 1960-1999 did not show temperature soaring. But the global temperature record for 1960-1999 did. So the tree-ring graphs, all three of them, were tampered with to truncate all three records in 1960 and to bolt on the real-world temperatures.
For the inconvenient truth was that the Jones and Mann data showed no increase in temperature after 1960 and the Briffa data showed a precipitate decline.
To “hide the decline”, the graph published on the WMO’s front cover in 1999 had had the real tree-ring data airbrushed out. All three tree-ring series were then falsely made to track the sharp increase in global temperature from 1960-1999.
Look closely at the WMO graph and it is clear that all three colors, one for each record, are shown as reaching all the way to the top right-hand corner of the graph.
Here, screen-capped from YouTube, is a slide from a presentation by Richard Muller showing what the data looked like before they were tampered with. The true graph show the tree-ring data as diverging markedly from global temperatures since 1960, indicating that dendrochronology is unable reliably to detect sharp increases in global temperature and should not have been used in Professor Lovejoy’s analysis.
There is no statement in the WMO report that the graph prominently displayed on its front cover had thus been altered. The WMO’s publication of the graph was, therefore, a criminal offense. It was fraud by misrepresentation and by breach of a position of trust, calculated profitably to deceive readers into thinking that the tree-ring data were reliable proxies for global temperature change and, therefore, that the inconvenient Medieval Warm Period had not been warmer than the present.
However, the WMO is one of the plethora of supranational organizations that are not subject to any jurisdiction. No one will go to jail for fraud by misrepresentation and breach of a position of trust, even though climatology now looks less like science than organized crime.
A similar overlap comparison test will now be applied to the Central England Temperature Record. We shall take two full 60-year cycles of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, so as to cancel any distorting influence of the 30-year positive or warming phases and the 30-year negative or cooling phases (we are in the middle of a negative phase at the moment).
The analysis will cover the 120 calendar years January 1894 to December 2013. Calendar years are used so as to avoid any distortion of the trend on the Central England record caused by the fact that it is regional rather than global and is accordingly subject to seasonal variation.
The mean of the monthly anomalies for the combined GISS, HadCRUT4, and NCDC global-temperature datasets over the period shows warming 0f 0.89 Cº. The CET monthly anomalies over the same period show warming of 0.90 Cº. Therefore we shall not need to tamper with the data to fit a preconceived result: the Central England series, over a sufficiently long period, is a not unreasonable proxy for global temperature change.
Having calibrated the CET dataset against the global instrumental datasets, we look back through the record to find the greatest centennial rate of warming before the Industrial Revolution. Here is the graph from January 1663-December 1762:
The rate of warming was 0.9 Cº, and that rate occurred over 100 years rather than the 124 years 1880-2013 covered by Lovejoy’s statement that 0.9 Cº was a “huge” temperature increase. And it was entirely natural warming. As Professor Lovejoy might put it, it is 99.9% certain that we were not to blame.
In passing, it is worth noting how small a “huge” 0.9 Cº temperature trend is when compared with the seasonal variability of regional surface temperatures. This variability is concealed by the usual suspects’ habit of showing global temperature changes only, so that any trend – however small – looks more drastic than it is.
There is a further simple test that can be done, this time using the mean of the three global terrestrial datasets. In this test, we shall compare the 60-year period before we could have had any measurable influence on global temperature with the most recent 60-year period after it.
From January 1894-December 1953, the warming trend was 0.44 Cº, very nearly all of which must have been natural. From January 1954-December 2013, it was 0.77 Cº, some of which may have been anthropogenic. But the fact that there was almost half a Celsius degree of global warming in the early 20th century, before we could have had anything much to do with it, does cast further doubt on Professor Lovejoy’s conclusion.
A final test is to take the mean of all five global-temperature datasets and see how far back one can go before encountering even the most insignificant warming trend. The dataset of datasets shows a zero global warming trend for 13 years 2 months, or well over a sixth of a century.
Now, long periods without global warming do happen. On the HadCRUT4 data, there was a zero trend from 1850-1900, a remarkable period of 51 years.
However, the failure of global temperature to change at all in this millennium since January 2001 is also remarkable, for two reasons. First, this is the longest sustained period without global warming since we might first have influenced temperatures in 1950.
Secondly, CO2 concentration is rising at record rates, yet temperature is not responding at all, suggesting, at the very least, that CO2’s influence on temperature is so small that it is easily canceled by natural factors that might otherwise have produced cooling.
Thirdly, the wretched computer models did not predict the Pause. Oh boy, did they not predict the Pause. Here are their very latest predictions, each model run shown separately in a spaghetti graph from the IPCC’s 2013 Assessment Report. I have updated the real-world trend to bring the record up to the present.
Now, the computers are programmed to assume, just as Professor Lovejoy assumed, that it is our influence on global temperatures that has caused the global warming of recent decades. That, and that alone, is why the spaghetti graph of model-predicted near-term global warming soars at a rate equivalent to 2.33 [1.33, 3.33] Cº/century.
And the real-world trend since 1950? Well, it’s equivalent to less than 1.2 Cº/century, below the lower bound of the IPCC’s current predictions. Another five years without global warming and the Sixth Assessment Report (if there is one) will look even more like a costly and sick practical joke than its predecessors.
Based on these simple tests using real-world data rather than mere models, the notion that the odds of 0.9 Cº global warming having been caused by natural variability are “less than 1 in 100 and are likely to be less than 1 in 1000” is, to say the least, questionable.
It was not we who caused the 0.9 Cº warming in Central England and, inferentially, worldwide from 1663-1762. It may not have been we who caused the 0.9 Cº global warming since 1880 either.
For this reason among many others, Professor Lovejoy errs in contending that he has “rejected” the hypothesis that much of the 0.9 Cº global warming since 1880 is natural. At the very least, we know that the half of it that occurred before 1950 had very little to do with us.
In the McGill press release, Professor Lovejoy concludes:
“This study will be a blow to any remaining climate-change deniers. Their two most convincing arguments – that the warming is natural in origin, and that the computer models are wrong – are either directly contradicted by this analysis, or simply do not apply to it.”
Nice try, but No. As will be evident from the temperature graphs above, the climate does change. We do not deny it. Some element in the global warming since 1950 may well have been caused by us. We do not deny that either. Long-established theory and experiment have confirmed that there is such a thing as a greenhouse effect and that by enriching the atmosphere with CO2 we may – to some extent yet to be determined – be enhancing it.
What we do deny is that aprioristic modeling elaborately contrived at taxpayers’ great expense to achieve a preconceived result manifestly at odds with observation and measurement but congenial and profitable to the classe politique has anything whatsoever to do with true science.
But then, Lovejoy was not intending to do science. Note the last two bullet points from a November 2013 presentation by him (hat-tip to Willie Soon):
Apparently the debate is not over and the science is not settled. Further, it appears the “scientific certainty” crowd got it profoundly wrong.
I would note that Lovejoy’s analysis surely proves beyond doubt that CO2 levels haven’t increased in 17 or more years, because if CO2 was causing all the temperature increases with 99% certainty, the pause can only be explained if CO2 levels had stabilized.
And then I’d note that his same method, when applied to the cycles of past glaciation and retreat of our still-occurring ice-age, would indicate that those cycles couldn’t be natural at all, being so much larger than the recent temperature swing (which has only a 1% chance of being natural), and so we can be 99.999% certain that the glaciations were caused by nefarious reptiloid aliens. Indeed, Lovejoy has showed us the way. There can be no doubt that the Earth has been under repeated assault from unknown alien interlopers and saboteurs.
Lord Monckton has thoroughly demolished Lovejoy. Unfortunately the lie has gone around the world twice already. How do we stop this?
If you ask 40 people if man is causing climate change, 40 will say yes. Most commenters here know this assertion has not been shown to be accurate. Yet here we are.
The graph has not been altered: it has been destroyed and is entirely different, and patently false. The usage of arbitrary ‘normals’ as a baseline further confounds the issue, reducing the entire measure to arbitrary nonsense. Has anyone ever seen the Warmists present a simple temperature averaging, say noon temperatures in Europe and America ,as taken 4 times a year on or about the same date using rural only stations from 1859 onwards? Of course not. Because that would show how trite the matter is.
David Ball says:
April 13, 2014 at 9:34 am
“Lord Monckton has thoroughly demolished Lovejoy. Unfortunately the lie has gone around the world twice already. How do we stop this? ”
Stop voting for the Bloc parties, and never spend a dime on “journalist”s output; unless the state forces you to.
@george Turner,
The same thought had occurred to me, a self rebutting analysis you might say.
0.9 C° in a century is not ‘huge’ – ???
As we say in engineering…Its in the noise and well down in it.
If its not, bring on every calibration certificate for each instrument involved. And that similarly applies to every piece of computing in the concluding processes. We might examine the mental state of the many involved as well. Not me of course.
Not a scientist, just a taxpayer who doesn’t understand why “settled science” requires continued funding.
BTW there’s currently an enourmous propaganda wave covering all of German media demanding de-industrialization NOW!, because IPCC. Looks like their 2,000 page tome hits the shelves.
I’ll check with my warmist colleagues tomorrow whether any one of them noticed it; mostly they’re too busy chasing cat videos in the Interwebs. (They’re Germany’s finest; engineers. Woe betide)
Looking at Hadcrut 4 between 1880 and 2010 the rise in temperature over approximately 2 x 60 year cycles (so any natural cycles should be cancelled), the global average smoothed temperature rise is only 0.7 deg C, Lovejoy talks about 0.9 fluctuation In that time, in an attempt to bring in as big a number as possible. Remember a sine curve fluctuates by 2 but has an average of zero over integer cycles. CO2 rose from 280 to 400 ppm. Now as CO2 increases it looks to me that by the time we get to 560ppm the temperature will have risen at most by 0.7*(560-280)/(400-280)=0.7*280/120=1.6 deg C. This is high given that I’ve assumed linearity and yet CO2 temperature rise is the more slow logarithmic and as temperature rises good old Boltzman radiation is proportional to T^4, there is no rise but a fall in atmospheric water column and also some absorption bands saturate. No amount of fancy statistical manoevering is going to convince me that anthropogenic CO2 will be anything but beneficial and temperature will rise nowhere near to Lovejoy’s 2.5-4.5 deg C scare mongering.
One of the reasons reading is taught by whole word sight in most countries now, whatever the talking points about guidance, is so that only certain desired words get through–like reject, climate deniers, and huge from the press release. Plus the constancy of the phrase “the debate is over.” The classe politique is far more familiar with the result of the Frankfurt School’s Radio Project than the rest of us. Repeat something about 5-10 times and it will be believed.
I went back to the Club of Rome’s Learning Project work from the late 70s this weekend to follow up on the implications of what is being called Adaptation for Climate Resilient Pathways by the IPCC. For precisely the reasons of reality not reflected in the models, Lord Monckton so ably laid out , the glee of using computer based virtual reality to provide the ‘experiences’ the students would be basing their beliefs on reality on was difficult to read from so long ago. It is precisely why though so much of K-12 education generally now, but especially science, wants to be using the computer. Years of deliberately created, visually mesmerizing images of catastrophe and linkages and playing with the effects of variables in simulated scenarios will be virtually impossible for anyone to override.
No matter how eloquent they are or able to document the pertinent facts.
All of this analysis is great, and it needs to be reiterated. However, there is a much simpler way to show Lovejoy’s analysis to be wrong. Here is how.
First, the following functional form is assumed:
T_globe (t) = T_anth(t) + T_nat(t) + error in measurement that isn’t actually measurement error but standard deviation of the means of three data set.
What Lovejoy appears to do is to fit a linear model of T_anth through T_globe, as a function of CO2 concentration. Then, he assumes that T_nath(t) is the fallout residual. See equations 5 and 6 for how this occurs.
THIS IS QUESTION BEGGING PLAIN AND SIMPLE. He assumes a functional form for the impact of the log_2 of CO2, and then fits that as linear to the mean of temperature change, Then he goes “oh look! the linear model fit well, therefore CO2 has this big impact!”. I could make the exact same linear model that uses the number of internet or cellular phone user instead of CO2 concentration and show that as we time progresses, temperature increases, This would do NOTHING to show causality, only correlation.
Again, this is question begging. Temperature has certainly gone up for a good chunk of the last century, so you could fit ANY model that also increases relative to time and get the same kind of results as Lovejoy.
Similarly, by stating that the natural variation is the residual after the CO2 forcing is subtracted is to make implicit assumptions about the time scale of natural variations. When he assumes that CO2 forcing is log-linear over a 100 year period, this will mask any natural variation that has frequencies that would sit on that slope. These assumptions, as Lord Monckton shows above, are clearly not valid!
Overall, the model is pure question begging and an assumption that correlation is causation.
Edit to the above: I should have said:
Clear and simply presented –
“trend for 13 years 2 months, or well over a sixth of a century.” (over a 7th but under a 6th)
” David Ball says:
April 13, 2014 at 9:34 am
…If you ask 40 people if man is causing climate change, 40 will say yes. Most commenters here know this assertion has not been shown to be accurate…”
David, there indeed can be human caused climate change But given that there is no “Global Climate”, we humans can only affect regional climates. Think massive irrigation or de-forestation, urban sprawl. Few are skeptical of this, I would think.
This post of yours David, demonstrates one of the problems with the CAGW debate, mis-nomers. Carbon Dioxide is not Carbon. ‘Humans change climates’,
Instead of ‘CO2 changes climates’.
We skeptics must stay on-point and focused in this debate.
Don’t let the charlatan alarmists frame the questions in a mis-leading way.
I like that plume of strings rising from the black in Monckton of Brenchley’s fifth diagram.
Doesn’t it remind one of those faked up photos of “smoke” coming out of chimmineys, by adding contrasty shadows to steam escaping.
Does Lovejoy have a way of separating out the portion of this “huge” 0.9 deg. C that is attributable to nothing more than the fact that in that hundred years, we went from basically no people on earth to now some seven billions of us.
Since he knows to 0.1% that we are doing it all, he must be easily able to resolve the various components of OUR influence; so just the populace component ought to be a breeze to find.
I assume Dr. Lovejoy has read this post by now, with follow-on comments. Writers love to read about themselves, good, bad, or ugly.
So, Dr Lovejoy, please join in and provide a formal rebuttal of these findings. Do so in an ethical manner, with no name calling…
We are all waiting….
There is no mention of the Central England Temperature Record. Now, CET is the longest continuous regional temperature record we have.
The CET trends during two solstice periods reveal some unexpected properties:
All warming is in the winter, no warming in the summer.
As far as Britishs are concerned, they know that rise in the N. Atlantic SST (AMO), the main regulator of the local temperatures, has been favourable in the past few decades, but that may not be same in future.
In addition the decadal CET periodograms show remarkable correlation with events below rather than above the ocean; if correct, today’s media GW hysteric appear to be grossly misguided.
When I early on promoted a plot of the Central England Temperature, online, I was roundly ridiculed by whole armies of online activists whose psychological defense mechanisms were that CET was but a single site and so was totally irrelevant, and also that Grant Foster (Tamino) has blogged that CET really formed a hockey stick. So, I dug up all the other very old records I could find to plot them in support of boring old CET and also demolished Tamino’s claim, revealing it as totally dishonest (and also how Phil Jones himself had a policy of doing the same lying with statistics in IPCC reports):
(A) http://s6.postimg.org/uv8srv94h/id_AOo_E.gif
(B) http://i49.tinypic.com/r245ex.jpg
Sorry, that is not in the topic, but it’s important for America. Forecast polar vortex on April 15.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/04/16/1500Z/wind/isobaric/70hPa/orthographic=-79.35,65.05,481
Convincing the public that the government can fix the weather stands as one of the greatest achievements in the history of agitprop.
@ren
I find your links to those simulations really helpful. Please continue to post them at relevant occasions. It appears winter ain’t over ’till its over.
NikFromNYC hi
Detailed comparison of the CET 1690+ and CET 1960+
If Lovejoy’s concern about a change in temp of 0.9 C is valid, he should be extremely worried about the trend over the past 5 years in Waterloo. The depth of ground frost this year is about 9 feet instead of the usual 4-5. Winnipeg reports ’50 ft’ in places though I wondered if it was 15 feet reported as 15 metres and then misunderstood. 15 feet is believable but portentous.
If it really was 50 ft a few years in a row it would become permafrost with cataclysmic results for the local farming environment.
Lovejoy is not unlike Nuccitelli or Cook. The quality of their “work” is so tragically poor that one tempted to conclude they are paid by “Big Oil” to undermine the credibility of CAGW.
bonanzapilot says: “Not a scientist, just a taxpayer who doesn’t understand why “settled science” requires continued funding.”
Because the data keeps unsettling the settled science and it needs highly skilled operatives to come up with new ways to massage the data in order to keep the scam rolling.
Not just anyone can do that, you need trained people, and that costs money.
Otherwise things may become “unsettled”.
McGill University. Never heard of it. Employing Mr Lovejoy seems unlikely to succeed in raising their profile. Either Lovejoy knew and ignored that that tempertures in previous cennturies had risen as quickly, or he didn’t know. In either case the University should not employ him.
Crispin w Waterloo
The temperature at Waterloo (Ontario) within 24 hours will fall by 20 degrees C.
vukcevik:
Antonio Stradivari’s (1644-1737) example of fine instruments overlaps with the former CET swing that has been blamed on bad thermometers. Climate “scientists” would themselves rather use old trees than old thermometers, it seems, even though they run backwards today. Though the absolute value calibration of a nice glass thermometer may have lacked a very accurate calibration before the Fahrenheit scale of 1724, the accuracy of temperature *change* records would be much more reliable since any error in absolute calibration is divided into about a hundred degree marks, so even a full degree error in the top or bottom absolute scale marks merely represents a hundredth of a degree difference in the spacing between individual degree marks.
for anyone who missed the ‘hide the decline vid’. an eloquent 5mins that should be shown to all policy makers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BQpciw8suk
Excellent as usual!
However a minor slip up occurred.
The dataset of datasets shows a zero global warming trend for 13 years 2 months, or well over a sixth of a century.
That should be well over an eighth of a century. But on the other hand, the time for statistically significant warming at the 95% level may well be over a sixth of a century or 16 years and 8 months.
also the vids of Climategate ‘hide the decline’ in depth explanation by Stephen McIntyre
The late John Daly observed that rural weather stations show no warming at all. And that is the case in central MN where I live. The past 25 years were about a tenth degree colder than 1901 – 1925.
” It (The Hadley Central England Temperature series) has been maintained in a nation on which Fortune has smiled, so that there have been no interruptions owing to riot or revolution.”
Well, for the period 1707 to 1722 the series was actually compiled using data from Utrecht. A charming city but not in Central England, last time I checked, and for the next few decades measurements were taken in unheated rooms rather than outdoors, and with a variety of instrument types.
ISTR Something about Lovejoy and measurement uncertainty? 😉 Couldn’t have been better that +- 1C until reliable observations become available from Hoy in London from 1770…
Perhaps not directly relevant to the case in hand, but I’m always amused by the fact that GCMs actually model quite different absolute global temperatures – only converting to anomalies brings them into line. Thus for AR4 runs as I recall the absolute global temperatures produced for around 2000 from the hindcasts across the various models ranged from 13 – 15 degrees.
Puts the 0.9 degrees into context.
How much of a problem? Well those that work in the field worry about it – among other things the atmosphere is after all generally regarded as a non-linear system.
Thanks, Christopher, Lord Monckton.
You rightly wrote:
“CO2 concentration is rising at record rates, yet temperature is not responding at all, suggesting, at the very least, that CO2’s influence on temperature is so small that it is easily canceled by natural factors that might otherwise have produced cooling.”
This has been going on since at least 13 years, since 2001 or very possibly more.
The Global Circulation Models have been failing since the very first run, showing that the “feedbacks” they so intricately calculate are not there.
The Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis is dead.
CET
This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
I think there is a serious problem with Lovejoy’s analysis which, unless I missed it, isn’t discussed here. For details see:
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2014/04/two-problems-with-1-claim.html
Thank you, Lord Monckton.
Look at the spaghetti graph. 50 years in the future the models are predicting 2C between the lowest and highest estimate. This can only be due to natural variability, because the models are all predicting the same set of facts.
So, the IPCC models are telling us that climate can vary naturally as much as 2C over 50 years. And this is from the IPCC.
The debate IS over. AGW is not supported by the evidence.
Time to move on and let the truth seep into public consciousness.
All you need to do when some professes to believe in AGW is stifle a titter, look sympathetic and murmur “that’s so last year, darling” and pat them on the head.
Lovejoy makes the statistical mistake of comparing proxies with thermometer records. He then concludes that since the proxies don’t behave statistically like thermometers, CO2 must be the cause.
You average sixth grader could spot the error in Lovejoy’s logic. Of course proxies and thermometers will not behave the same statistically. Why should they? Why use CO2 as the explanation? Occam’s Razor tells us they will not behave the same because they are not the same, without any need to involve CO2.
Lovejoy’s first error is in assuming that temperature proxies are thermometers. He then compounds this amazing feat of nonsense by assuming that nothing else in the world can affect thermometers or proxies except CO2.
Hi from Oz. Great article, Christopher. When will these wankers give up producing this low grade rubbish?
BTW – Minor typo in para 7?: “…since 1500 would make ignore CET altogether.”
I have a simple question, or rather observation. Over the years, they have adjusted the official temperatures of the past to offset a variety of issues. So, if the temps are not very accurate then how can you say there is any increase at all? It sounds to me like the measurement uncertainty of late 1800’s and early 1900’s is much greater than 0.9.
Just an observation
Phil Clarke says:
“…Couldn’t have been better that +- 1C until reliable observations become available from Hoy in London from 1770”
Apparently Phil missed the title of this article.
Thank you, Mr. Friedman.
I commend the blog post (http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2014/04/two-problems-with-1-claim.html) on your site to all and sundry–and note that Prof. Lovejoy left a comment there.
«We’ve had a fluctuation in average temperature that’s just huge since 1880 – on the order of about 0.9 degrees Celsius. »
0.9 degrees Celsius is “HUGE”?
Imagine a weather person forecasting, “Today’s temperature of 23°C will be followed by a *HUGE* drop to 22.1°C tonight!!!!”
An emergency room doctor blurting out, “The patients body temperature made a *HUGE* jump from the 37°C (98.6°F) to 37.9°C (100°F) !!!!!!!”
Because of my heat/AC settings, on any given day my living room temperature is anywhere between 21°C (70°F) and 24°C (75°F). Woah! More than THREE TIMES the *HUGE* change of 0.9°C.
Who would even notice a 0.9°C change of temperature in our bath water?
Perspective.
@Nigel S
…This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house, 50
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear’d by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,— 55
For Christian service and true chivalry,—
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son:
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world, 60
Is now leas’d out,—I die pronouncing it,—
Like to a tenement, or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame, 65
With inky blots, and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Reblogged this on Illuminutti and commented:
«We’ve had a fluctuation in average temperature that’s just huge since 1880 – on the order of about 0.9 degrees Celsius. »
0.9 degrees Celsius is “HUGE”?
Imagine a weather person forecasting, “Today’s temperature of 23°C will be followed by a *HUGE* drop to 22.1°C tonight!!!!”
An emergency room doctor blurting out, “The patients body temperature made a *HUGE* jump from the 37°C (98.6°F) to 37.9°C (100°F) !!!!!!!”
Because of my heat/AC settings, on any given day my living room temperature is anywhere between 21°C (70°F) and 24°C (75°F). Woah! More than THREE TIMES the *HUGE* change of 0.9°C.
Who would even notice a 0.9°C change of temperature in our bath water?
Perspective.
And again, for those whose acquaintance with English is only marginal.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com
He is picking which data to use then proving the assumption.
In other words he is 99.9% sure that the cherry picked and distorted hockeystick data and graph shows a hockeystick, (with flat temperatures in the past severely limiting natural variation, which is what is was also designed to do). He then essentially concludes he is 99.9% sure that the hockeystick data shows that recent global warming is not natural.
He is basically testing what the hockeystick was designed and contrived to show. A perfectly circular argument.
At the very least we can point out that the MWP is warmer than present and the LIA is colder than present. So the temperature difference between MWP and LIA is greater than 1 C maybe 2 C. Therefore 0.9 C change in 130 years is not improbable. Besides, we have a 30-year period (1945-1977) of slight cooling that is not attributed to man. So the cooling is natural but the warming is man-made? For sure if nature can cause cooling, it can also very well also cause warming.
BTW the cooling is sometimes attributed to aerosols. But we never stopped emitting aerosols in 1977 and the two biggest volcanic eruptions happened in 1980s and 1990s. So we should have more aerosol cooling after 1977 but we have warming instead. Incidentally the cooling and warming follow the PDO index, which is certainly not man-made.
There are plenty of aerosols going into the atmosphere 24/7/365 from mechanical draft cooling towers in process plants, power generation stations, large buildings, etc. The warm vapors leaving the tops of the cooling towers is water saturated air and water aerosols.
Please quantify the mass/hr produced by cooling towers as opposed to evaporation from natural sources. I believe the number as a percent will be very small. Remember that 70% of the earths surface is water.
PR offices of research institutions regularly issue highly misleading media releases. Research does confer a license for fraud. It is past time that the laws against false advertising be applied without prejudice.
“The gushingly flatulent halation of the university PR-wallahs is typical of the verbal diarrhea”
……………………
oh-oh.
The problem is getting this into the mainstream media. There is a massive propaganda campaign at the moment. This morning, Sir John Beddington was on BBC Radio 4 pontificating that, if we do nothing, there will be a 5 degree temperature increase by the end of this century and we must therefore urgently reduce production of CO2.
And this propaganda is being believed, quickly becoming what ‘everybody knows’, because the rational point of view has been effectively blocked and ‘not given a platform’ as the Warmists have been clamouring for continually; it seems they’ve succeeded now: every news programme has a ‘scientist’ repeating their creed and I have not heard even a mildly sceptical counter.
How can this seemingly very well coordinated strategy be countered?
“How can this seemingly very well coordinated strategy be countered?”
as its a political movement the best way is to focus on the mps. perhaps send a dossier and then ask them to explain why they choose to ignore the deception.
we know the bbc have taken the view to exclude all critical debate saying scientists do not debate with creationists so why should they debate with d eniers. But the climate debate is not a debate between religion and science but between scientists. So they have no excuse for silencing one side without exposing themselves to charges of propagandists and being a mere relay station.
[funny enough this weekend in the independent the bbc were complaining they got the same treatment they were dishing out on climate debate from the muslim press over the panorama programme investigating london boroughs lol]
At nearly 74 years and a New Zealander that first went to Europe in 1959 I have been back and forwards to NZ enough times to fill 11 passports, anybody that can prove to me that they REALLY !!! understand how big our planet is (2/3 water ) should show me the climate recording instruments that they placed in the middle of the Pacific Ocean .
In the McGill press release, Professor Lovejoy concludes:
“This study will be a blow to any remaining climate-change deniers. Their two most convincing arguments – that the warming is natural in origin, and that the computer models are wrong – are either directly contradicted by this analysis, or simply do not apply to it.”
Wrong and wrong. First, I know of very few skeptics that claim that all of the warming is natural in origin. The most that he “proves” (if he hadn’t made a number of errors in his study) is that the warming cannot be fully natural. So what. Who claims that. Second, the claim that the computer models are wrong is not contradicted by his analysis in any conceivable way.
0.76ºC is a more accurate figure for warming since around 1850, even the IPCC agree on that.
ANd apparently Mr Stealey did not read the article.
“The rate of warming (1663-1772) was 0.9 Cº, and that rate occurred over 100 years rather than the 124 years 1880-2013 covered by Lovejoy’s statement that 0.9 Cº was a “huge” temperature increase. And it was entirely natural warming. As Professor Lovejoy might put it, it is 99.9% certain that we were not to blame.”
Elsewhere His Lordship took issue with Lovejoy’s analysis on the basis (nter alia)of measurement uncertainty. Here, he is deducing a larger rise in an historical series that jumped across the English Channel then back again and for a period half of which predates the invention of the Mercury in Glass thermometer (1714).
And on a site which champions station siting quality. LOL!
Yes, .9 C in 130 years is not huge when compared to 12 C in 100 years which happened during the Bolling Oscillation about 14,500 years ago. But back then, we had much stronger insolation due to our orientation to the Sun in the Northern Hemisphere – Precession worked with Obliquity to cause big dents in those continental ice sheets really well. CO2 played not a role in that little episode, and CO2 still doesn’t.
I don’t think this paper should be discussed in detail at all. It’s using absolute junk as input (the Wahl and Amman “Jesus paper” version of MBH98 – read more on that paper in Andrew Montford’s book or on his Bishop Hill site), so IMHO that alone makes it a scandal that the Lovejoy paper made it through peer review. The only thing this paper proves, is that some climate scientists will never learn and that climate science peer review is defunct. It’s like using the piltdown man in a new article in paleoanthropology!
At Mr. Friedman’s blog posting (http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2014/04/two-problems-with-1-claim.html) that Prof. Lovejoy comment there included.
At 3:31 PM, April 13, 2014, Shaun Lovejoy said…
The claims in my paper are correct as explained, although the press release was obvious highly summarized.
For the first point – if I understood it properly – you are simply pointing out that the statistical rejection of a hypothesis does not allow you to make any conclusions about the truthfulness of any specific alternative. This point is correct and is clearly and explicitly acknowledged in the paper (e.g. last sentence): “While students of statistics know that the statistical rejection of a hypothesis cannot be used to conclude the truth of any specific alternative, nevertheless – in many cases including this one – the rejection of one greatly enhances the credibility of the other.“ (This last part is because we’re doing science, not statistics!).
Emily Litella had a shorter and more distinctive ‘last sentence. “”Oh, that’s very different…
“Never mind.” He should have use it instead.
Phil Clarke
I think you have been listening to our favourite bunny too much with your comments about CET.
Presumably with your reference to Utrecht you will no longer want to promote records-such as SST’s -on the basis that there is a huge amount of interpolation in then, especially the first century of records?
The Utrecht material was cross referenced with various English diaries and weather observations. There were some observations made in unseated room following an edict by jurin of the royal society, but by no means all.
I have seen manleys e xtensive records and also met with David Parker who created cet to 1772.
Manleys record is a good reconstruction which is the most scrutinised record of its type available and was the result of much diligent work. Better than tree rings I am sure you will agree.
Here is manleys document showing his work on CET
http://www.rmets.org.uk/sites/default/files/qj74manley.pdf
Tonyb
If the IPCC thought that most of the warming of the surface since 1880 was caused by man then it would have said so. Instead it has said since 1950. Lovejoy looks like he is trying to make new claims.
The 1910 to 1940 similar rate of warming and subsequent cooling has been a pain in their sides since 1988.
I took a class from Professor Lovejoy and, during his teaching, he discussed his research and, perhaps unintentionally, his approach and interests. He’s primarily a mathematician, interested in fractal and multifractal patterns in nature. Approaching matters as a mathematician, it is not surprising that he may assume that the data from which he works is absolutely accurate
TonyB –
Thanks – I note that Manley himself did not put much faith in the data prior to 1720 as they were the product of ‘reading from highly imperfect instruments in uncertain exposures’, and the figures are rounded to 0.5C for the monthly means. Not really suitable reliably to detect a trend of approx 1C over the period with any confidence.
The Met Office says the paper to cite is Parker et al: 1992 which updates Manley.
‘Up to 1722 available instrumental records fail to overlap and Manley needed to use non-instrumental weather diaries and refer to the instrumental series for Utrecht compiled by Labtijn (1945) in order to make the monthly CET series complete. Between 1723 and the 1760s there were no gaps in the composite instrumental records, but the observations generally were taken in unheated rooms […] Daily temperatures in unheated rooms are, however, not reliably convertable to daily outdoor values because of the slow thermal response of the rooms. For this reason no daily series truly representative of CET can begin before about 1770
Shame there were no voluteers with cameras around, in the UK and the Netherlands …..
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/Parker_etalIJOC1992_dailyCET.pdf
I think your problem is that the CETR you are using has not been “corrected” appropriately. If you pass it on to any number of pro-AGW scientists they will “correct” it for you and it will be come evident that you are wrong.
That’s because you didn’t average it with someplace totally unrelated and with a different climate, silly person.
/sarc
The paper may be another case of “garbage in / garbage out”, but without having read it, I suspect the method of analysis itself may be notable and interesting. Lovejoy is generally smart and good at what he does.
At middle latitudes, like in England or in Central Europe, +0.9°C means (more or less) 9 extra days for your crop to grow up… simply ENJOY IT!!!!
Phil Clarke
I have spoken to David Parker Himself at the Met Office regarding his 1772 record when I discussed my extended record. The reason that 1772 is the preferred one is that it is daily data as opposed to the monthly Manley data to 1659. The upsurge from 1700 to 1739 is also not really liked by those-such as the met office- who believe natural variability was limited prior to the modern age. Phil Jones has an excellent paper confirming the 1730’s were unequalled until the 1990’s. That is some hockey stick-well authenticated by other records.
Manley has been scrutinised numerous times by numerous people. It is a good record. However as Lamb said about historic temperatures ‘we can understand the tendency but not the precision.’
As a good general guide to LIA temperatures the extended CET record is without parallel and certainly has fewer faults than the use of novel proxies.
tonyb
“Phil Jones has an excellent paper confirming the 1730′s were unequalled until the 1990′s. That is some hockey stick-well authenticated by other records.”
Title? Date?
Surely you are not arguing that data points rounded to the nearest 0.5C can be used to detect trends of 0.1C/decade?
Phil
Here is my comment quoting Phil jones that the 1730′s was the warmest decade until the 1990′s and that natural variability might be underestimated.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/17/phil-jones-2012-video-talks-about-adjusting-sst-data-up-3-5c-after-wwii/#comment-1539164
tonyb
I located the paper, thanks, at least I think it is the one you were referring to, as you gave no details. interesting paper – the title is ‘UNUSUAL CLIMATE IN NORTHWEST EUROPE DURING THE PERIOD 1730 TO 1745 BASED ON INSTRUMENTAL AND DOCUMENTARY DATA’. Jones and Biffa. Revised version published 2006.
http://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-006-9078-6
They do indeed note that CET and other sources indicate a series of mild years in the 1730s, with the period 1729–1738 0.3C below the average for the last ten years before publication. But then came 1740, when temps plummeted 2.4C to give the coldest year in the entire series, famine in Ireland, and featuring the coldest May and October in the record. Somebody bent the hockey stick back on itself.
You didn’t answer the question, calculating a trend of 0.1C / decade, from data that has been rounded to the nearest 0.5C, as Monckton does here, is just bonkers, isn’t it?
I do not understand everything in this article.
If i draw a plot of temperature deviation from the mean – that means the plot has to be on both sides of zero. In those 60-years-averaged plots – which i doubt to be feasible if 20st century should be considered – shown here, somehow temperature deviation from mean seems always to be positive. Seriously?
Phil
Sorry I didn’t reference the document but wasn’t sure if you were still around as the party has moved on to another room as this article has dropped off the board.
Thought I had answered your question elsewhere but it may have been Mosh I had made the comment to elsewhere
I think we have to be careful with all historic reconstructions whether using proxies or referencing actual historic records that have been changed-for whatever reason. I agree with Lamb that we can understand the tendency but not the precision. So we can see the general direction of travel quite well and tighten it up by referencing observations/diaries/crop records etc.
However, personally I wouldn’t calculate a trend to tenths of a degree and try to defend it, although of course such precision is common as figures are averaged.
I think the 1695 to 1740 period is fascinating-such a huge jump then, as you say the hockey stick bent in on itself.
I would like to see some scientific papers on the subject as to the reasons for these dramatic ups and downs.
tonyb
In response to Hinnerk’s question, the Celsius scale on the temperature graphs indicates departures (or “anomalies”, as they are called) from the mean global temperature during some previous 30-year period (which may vary from dataset to dataset). Therefore, depending on the trend since the period from which the mean was taken, the departures over a given period may be largely above or largely below rather then half above and half below the mean.
In response to “tobyb”, the rapid warming from 1695-1735 marked the recovery of solar activity after some 70 years of near-zero sunspot counts – the period known as the Maunder Minimum. It is possible that some of the global warming of recent decades is a continuation of that recovery. No one knows for sure.
We are talking about calculating trends to a tenth of a degree. All these calculations rely on data that are much, much less accurate than a tenth of a degree. In fact, data collected are far too few to give us a comprehensive and accurate understanding of what is going on. The oceans, whose depths are vastly responsible for our climate are „terra incognita“ (or mare, rather) for researchers. There are too few data availabe. The ARGO grid is far too wide, if there is any. Nobody knows if there isn’t something going on under the seas we have not yet discovered and that might change our knowledge of the mechanisms of Mother Nature considerably.
It is absolutely vital to show where the bungling is and to call a spade a spade. (Thanks to Lord Monckton for this and his description of how the IPCC might describe such an instrument***GGG***).
It is absolutely vital to see academic procedures, namely pal-reviews, to be changed.
It is absolutely vital to stop funding scaremongering office-chair „scientists“ and bureaucrats.
It is absolutely vital to better our understanding of what actually goes on in our atmosphere and the seven seas.
We need a better database with free access and no Manns trying to keep up with the Joneses who sit tight on data and emails.
Money spent on collecting facts and data is, for the time being, the best investment.
There are many unbiased scientists capable of evaluating data properly without giving in to undue pressure, many seem to keep their head below the parapet at present.
These data might, hopefully, be the needle to burst the balloon of incompetent scaremongers, some too biased to see while others interested in their sinecure only.
Michael
This from Richard alley seems to answer my question about arctic ice cores . see full quote for context
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/richard-alley-on-old-ice-climate-and-co2/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
“First off, no single temperature record from anywhere can prove or disprove global warming, because the temperature is a local record, and one site is not the whole world. One of the lessons drawn from comparing Greenland to Antarctica and many other places is that some of the temperature changes (the ice-age cycling) are very widespread and shared among most records, but other of the temperature changes (sometimes called millennial, or abrupt, or Younger-Dryas-type) are antiphased between Greenland and the south, and still other temperature changes may be unrelated between different places (one anomalously cold year in Greenland does not tell you the temperature anomaly in Australia or Peru). ”
I wrote a long article about the Arctic warming in the period 1920-1940
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/10/historic-variations-in-arctic-sea-ice-part-ii-1920-1950/
much of the observed glacier melt in the Arctic and elsewhere occurred in this period. According to Phil Jones Greenland had the two warmest consecutive decades in the record in the 1930’s and 1940’s (again see his paper for context of what was being measured)
tonyb