By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The usual suspects have issued yet another “myth-busting” video in their continuing attempt to flog the dead horse of catastrophic Caucasian-caused climate change (CCCCC).
This latest droopy me-too effort is at sciencealert.com.au/features/20142309-26219.html.
Here are the main points in bold face. Science-based responses are in Roman face.
“Overall, temperatures are increasing”. This statement is unscientific because the starting and ending dates are not specified. Temperature has declined since the Holocene Climate Optimum 6000-10,000 years ago. The Old Kingdom, Minoan, Roman, and medieval warm periods were also warmer than the present.
Since 1950 there has been warming, but at only half the rate predicted by the IPCC in 1990.
In the 17 years 11 months from October 1996 to August 2014 there was no global warming at all, according to the RSS satellite dataset, whose output is not significantly different from that of any other global-temperature dataset.
“Storms, droughts, floods, ocean acidification, sea-level rise”: The usual litany. As for storminess, the trend in severe hurricanes, typhoons and tropical cyclones has been downward in recent decades; there has been no trend in landfalling Atlantic hurricanes for 150 years; and the U.S. has enjoyed its longest period without a major hurricane landfall since records began. There is no trend in extra-tropical storminess either, according to the IPCC’s special report on extreme weather.
As for floods, the same report, confirmed by the Fifth Assessment Report, says there is no evidence of any global increase in the frequency, intensity, or duration of floods.
As for droughts, Hao et al. (2014) show that the land area under drought has fallen slightly over the past 30 years.
As for ocean “acidification”, the ocean remains pronouncedly alkaline, with a pH around 8 (where 7 is neutral and values below 7, such as the 5.4 for rainwater, are acid). Why is rainwater acid? Because it is the “missing sink” that scrubs CO2 out of the atmosphere. When the rainfall reaches the ocean, it locally alters the pH at the surface by a minuscule amount. However, where rivers debouch into the ocean (as the Brisbane River does just opposite the Great Barrier Reef), pH can vary locally by large amounts: yet calcifying organisms thrive nevertheless. The oceans are strongly buffered by the basalt basins in which they lie: so our capacity to alter the pH of the oceans by our tiny alteration of the composition of the atmosphere is as near nil as makes no difference. And there is no global measurement network for ocean pH, for two reasons: first, no automated pH measuring device has proven successful; and secondly, notwithstanding the propaganda everyone in the field knows perfectly well that ocean pH is not going to change very much, and that, even if it did, calcifying organisms are well adapted to dealing with it.
As for sea-level rise, the GRACE gravitational-recovery satellites showed sea-level falling from 2003-2009 (Cazenave et al., 2009).
The Envisat satellite showed sea-level rising by a dizzying one-eighth of an inch during its eight-year lifetime from 2004-2012.
The intercalibration errors between the Jason-Topex-Poseidon laser-altimetry satellites are greater than the sea-level rise they pretend to find.
Sea level is probably not rising any faster in this century than it did in the last: and, since there has been no global warming for almost 18 years, there is no particular reason why it should be rising at all. A telling comparison between the reconstructed sea-level changes shown in Grinsted et al. (2009) and the schematic showing surface temperature change in IPCC (1990) indicates that sea-level was 8 in. higher than the present in the medieval warm period and 8 in. lower than the present in the little ice age.
“13 of the last 14 years have been the warmest since records began”: This, too, is an unscientific statement. Records began only in 1850. And, like it or not, there has been no trend in global temperatures for about 13.5 years on the mean of the terrestrial records and on the mean of the satellite records. Yet CO2 concentration has continued to rise at record rates. Absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation. The rising CO2 concentration cannot be causing the lack of warming evident over the past couple of decades.
“Not only Arctic but also Antarctic sea ice volume is declining”: Not a good moment to run this argument, given that satellites do not do a very good job of estimating ice thickness, but are at present showing a record high sea-ice extent in the Antarctic, a substantial recovery of Arctic ice even in the summer, and no appreciable change in global sea-ice extent throughout the 35-year satellite record.
“The Sun is dimmer, but temperatures are rising”. The Sun is indeed becoming less active, but global mean surface temperature is not rising. It is not falling either. Perhaps the modest decline in solar activity is being offset by a modest forcing from the additional CO2 we are adding to the atmosphere: if so, then the CO2 forcing is substantially less than the IPCC imagines. Indeed, Professor David Douglass of Rochester University has recently asked me an interesting question: has anyone attempted empirical measurements, rather than modeling, to determine the CO2 forcing? Please let us know in comments if you are aware of any atmospheric measurements on the basis of which the CO2 forcing has been quantified. The value in the IPCC’s recent documents was determined by inter-comparison between three models, and, given the lamentable performance of models in every other field of climate prediction, perhaps Professor Douglass has a point.
“We add 30 GTe CO2 each year, but Nature adds 780 GTe: however, Nature also takes away 780 GTe, so our net effect is to increase CO2 in the air.” Not quite right. We emit 35 GTe CO2 each year at present, but only half of this remains in the air: the rest is scrubbed out by rain or taken up by the ocean, trees and plants. Nor is it wise to assume a pre-existing balance of CO2 sources and sinks. Close examination shows considerable annual variations in the net CO2 increase in the air, suggesting that our monotonic influence is a rather small part of the picture.
“We know the CO2 remaining in the air is substantially manmade because fossil-fuel CO2 has less carbon-13 than the air, and the carbon-13 fraction in the air is falling”. The difference between fossil-fuel carbon-13 content and general atmospheric CO2 content is not as great as was once thought, and the carbon-13 content in the air is falling very slowly. This method of attribution is fraught with measurement and coverage uncertainties.
“The concentration of water vapor, the most potent greenhouse gas, is increasing, causing a positive feedback”. Not all records show the water vapor increasing, particularly in the crucial upper to mid troposphere. The “positive feedback” may even be a negative feedback. If water vapor were causing a strong positive feedback, global temperature should have risen at least as fast as the IPCC predicted in 1990, but it has risen only half as fast, leading the IPCC almost to halve its medium-term predictions of global climate change.
“CO2 lagged temperature change in the paleoclimate, but it acted as a reinforcing or positive feedback once the Milankovich cycles had triggered temperature change, amplifying it 9-fold”. Given the many uncertainties in paleoclimate analysis, no firm conclusion can be drawn as to the magnitude of the CO2 feedback. The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report put it at 25-225 ppmv per Kelvin – an order-of-magnitude interval that shows very clearly how unwise it is to assume that CO2 was the main reason for temperature change in the paleoclimate. After all, during the Neoproterozoic era 750 million years ago, equatorial glaciers came and went twice at sea level. There are no equatorial glaciers at sea level today. Yet today, to the nearest tenth of one percent, there is no CO2 in the atmosphere at all.
Now contrast the fact-based responses to the goofy scare stories of the “myth-busters”. If the news media had been willing to print facts instead of extremist predictions, the general population – and the scientifically illiterate politicians who represent them – would be in a better position to judge for themselves whether to be scared about manmade global warming. On the real-world evidence, there is no longer any legitimate pretext for fear, and still less for the “climate action” that that needless fear engenders.
And should not Ban Ki-Moon, having relentlessly ignored facts such as those briefly set out here, resign forthwith and for aye? He abandoned the impartiality that his office demands and took sides with communists and kooks by participating in the fatuous New York useful idiots’ climate march. He must go – and the U.N. with him. What little use it had has gone.
Nicely done. Always a pleasure to read your contributions.
Still no matter how eloquent the dissertation, the UNIPCC isn’t listening or reading this blog either. They don’t need to, because they know it is all false. The entire boondoggle is only continued, because it still fools the vast majority of the World’s population, or at least the vast majority of those who matter to the UNIPCC, that is to say POLITICIANS !
Politicians are eager to fool themselves over this, because Climate Change induced by CO2, can enhance one’s career, don’t yah know old bean, to say nothing of enhancing one’s wallet. It’s the economy stupid !
Sadly Lord Monckton, no amount of rational explanation can offset the deranged brains of those who are capable of deluding themselves. We should spend no more effort debating the issues around the reasons for the actions of the miscreants who profit from this IPCC enterprise of balderdash, at the expense of the world’s poor and poorly educated. Swear them under oath and put them before the courts, to justify their claims.
Really legal actions are required, when an Honourable Judge, having considered all the empirical evidence, and dismissed all the hearsay and fabricated evidence, can pronounce upon individuals who have transgressed, not only the Moral Laws, but also Natural Laws, and ultimately Criminal Laws.
… place at the apex of your order of creation a fiction. If you are born in the Middle Ages, call it God. If you live now, call it the Ecological Balance. Identify a perturbation in nature, then interpret it as a warning that we are living wrongly and should change our ways. Finally, earn yourself status, a pulpit, a Commons cheer, a living, or a research grant by elaborating on the perturbation and enumerating the ways we should change. …
Note that in every case the voice crying ‘I told you so’ has an ulterior motive. Science is wheeled on just as God was once wheeled on, as corroborating evidence (from a superior source) for something upon which the voice of moral reproof wanted to insist anyway.
In a more contemporary reflection, Mayberry RFD had an episode where Jamie Farr came into town as a gypsy, and put a curse on the town “no more rain” if they did not allow them to continue to scam the townspeople…. to the ire of Sherriff Andy Taylor. When Klinger came into the town and announced a 1 day reprieve, Andy’s bs meter was pegged. Sure enough, he flipped back the tarp of their gypsy wagon, and there was a short wave radio picking up early national weather service forecasts. Andy sent the riffraff packing. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence should send the whole IPCC/Gore and Hollywood nutjobs packing as well. The recent NYC garbage march was brazen. Regardless of the science, data, statistics, the answer is exactly the same…. world socialism. Did not Gorby and countless others lose their jobs for promoting communism? And why are there booths all over the place to free cop killer Abdul mumia jamal at such an event…..
I also had a crack at it earlier on FB:
I am surprised that they get away so often with the claim made at 4:59
So this is ‘science’ is it? No. It is more like propaganda. There is no balanced and reasoned debate it is pure activism. It is using sleights of hand and deception to misrepresent the science.
0:55 “Thirteen of the fourteen hottest years occurred this century”
OK. What does that tell us? It tells us that the planet is having a long term warming phase. Nothing unusual and it predates our CO2 production by a couple of centuries.
“The trend is warming” – Which trend? 1 Year? 10 year? 100 year? Without a specified time scale you cannot define a trend.
2:14 The sun. We hear about the brightness (TSI) but no mention of magnetic fields and sunspots. I wonder why those are ignored? Inconvenient?
So CO2 has been rising a lot recently… and yet the temperature has not changed for 18 years. That seems to be a problem for the theory that CO2 is a major driver.
Wild claims of projected future temp rises … based upon … the usual failed models.
Oh but the models are making accurate predictions!
Really? I have yet to see one.
At 4:21 we get a graph that appears to be an acurate prediction … until you look at the precision or lack of. (+/- .8C)Anyone drawing a line from 1650 would have come to the same prediction just on guess work.
4:59 the old CO2 temperature correlation graph! They admit that CO2 LAGS temperature so it is pretty clear that ocean degassing is the obvious reason. But that would not fit the narrative so they have to totally violate Occams razor and invent an even more complex ‘feedback’ postulate to make sure the blame can be attached to CO2.
The Feedback postulate is where they delve into real sophistry. 5:27 we are told that “90% of warming happens after the CO2 starts to rise”.
That sounds like it almost fits the claim because 90% is a bigger number than a mere 10% eh!
The Milankovich cylce caused the first warming and then the CO2 takes over because it such a powerful driver. (5:23)
5:29 we see that the temperature still precedes the CO2 levels but because it continues nine times as long at the initial phase this somehow makes it sound like CO2 is the culprit.
Three problems.
1. The period of warming is determined by the orbit of the Earth (ie the Milankovich cycle) and the time lag of initial warming (about 800 years) is determined by the oceans.
So what they are saying is that the Milankovich cycle is nine times as long as the degassing time lag. That is it. It is a consequence of oceans and Earths orbit. NOTHING to do with CO2. Yet they deliberately imply that the “90% of warming after initial increase in CO2” is somehow related to CO2 feedbacks.
2. The second problem is shown on the graph but ignored. Between 12 and 13 kyr ago temperature decreased for 1000 years. Think about that. CO2 had risen to an all time high and we are told that it is a major driver of temperature. Yet for some reason the temp just decided to wander down for 100o years. Pretty clear that CO2 is NOT a major driver. Note that the CO2 followed temperature down for this period. Odd if we want to believe that CO2 is the driver. It is obviously the driven!
3. At the end of the Milankovich cycle when the CO2 (which we are assured is the major driver) is at an all time high the temperature drops again. Once again, it is clear that CO2 is the driven not the driver.
5:40 There is no evidence of more storms or wild weather. Quite the opposite. The worst decade of hurricanes in the US for example was the 1970’s.
We then get the precautionary principle bereft of any quantitative analysis.
And finally we get a plug for Oreskes lame book.
This video, as you have correctly noted, is propaganda and it is aimed at a youth audience of course. The scroungy appearance of the lecturer is no accident. This video, IMO, was produced by someone who had some marketing expertise. Telling your kid not to believe this is like telling him that he should stay away from fast women.
“At the end of the Milankovich cycle when the CO2… is at an all time high the temperature drops again.”
They ignore that. Elide the Decline??
Given that IPCC science says temp change is logarithmic to CO2 atmospheric density, don’t these correlation graphs proffer strong evidence on the lack of causality of CO2 change on temps? That is, by their very nature of inviting humans to make a visual comparison of similarity, they visually “prove” that CO2 is not the main driver, or at all, of the temp changes represented whether one line proceeds or lags or even matches? In plain words, if it is true what they allege, the two plots would not be near symmetrical. A physical science-based correlation of CO2 on temps would exhibit flatter temp lines applying the log effect.
This paper is the only one I know about that has attempted to measure the greenhouse effect.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2011JCLI4210.1?journalCode=clim
“The AERI data record demonstrates that the downwelling infrared radiance is decreasing over this 14-yr period in the winter, summer, and autumn seasons but it is increasing in the spring; these trends are statistically significant and are primarily due to long-term change in the cloudiness above the site.”
BTW, I’ve been thinking about the CO2 log effect recently and wondered if the existence of atmospheric particulates like clouds (water and ice), dust, sand, soot, smoke, pollen, salt, bacteria, etc. had any affect on the numbers. These are near backbody absorbers of IR. That is, they would overlap in CO2’s absorption frequencies causing more of the radiation to be absorbed than would be the case in a pure gaseous atmosphere. This would leave less IR available to be absorbed by increases in CO2.
If the effect was great enough we could already be at CO2 absorption level of say 1000 ppm rather than 400 ppm in a pure gaseous atmosphere. Hence, it would take another 1000 ppm of CO2 to raise the forcing enough to provide another 1C of basic greenhouse warming.
Along with the question from Dr. Douglas it would seem this information should be available somewhere. But, I can’t find anything where it is covered.
Cogent. Bookmarked as a Watts’ Best.
Me too – this is useful summary for countering the misinformed comments made by scared followers of the cult in newspapers
ME three. I have been hoping for this post!
Lord Monckton:
Thankyou for your fine summary.
In it you say and ask
Empirical – n.b. not model-derived – determinations indicate climate sensitivity is less than 1.0°C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 equivalent. This is indicated by the studies of
Idso from surface measurements
http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/Idso_CR_1998.pdf
and Lindzen & Choi from ERBE satellite data
http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf
and Gregory from balloon radiosonde data
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/OLR&NGF_June2011.pdf
The publication and, therefore, the precise reference is at each link.
Richard
richardscourtney
September 25, 2014 at 12:31 am
Thank you so much for the links. As a working man (self-employed) I spend more time than I should on climate stuff, but haven’t read many of the earlier papers. Idso’s 1998 paper on temperature sensitivity of a doubling of CO2 at 0.46C/Wm^ -2 was a delight to read. The numerous corroborative natural experiments with solar radiation and CO2 radiative response (two of which were for Venus and Mars) were classic science in action. One has to ask, how could it be possible that this work didn’t inform the well known climate establishment and the IPCC? In timing, it coincided with M. E. Mann’s famous contribution. I noted the large number of authors cited didn’t include many of today’s establishment, but was surprised to see Slingo mentioned as having noted small increments in clouds could nullify CO2 warming of recent decades. What changed her tune, is an obvious question.
I’m sure Monckton will revel in this wonderful material.
Richard,
Thanks for the links. When the climate “establishment” begins to understand the value of an empirical approach to the study of climate, then we should finally see some progress in our understanding of climate processes. The present long term stagnation of this field is due to the persistence of insupportable theory, IMO, which persistence
is due in part to a fixed view inflexibility of most of the investigators
This was a gospel sermon from the Climate Priesthood class targeted to the True Believers. So full of lies and holes, debunking it was, for scientists like Chris Monckton, too easy. Still, the lies make you mad.
The Climate Priests will continue to tell whatever lie they need, with no remorse, no guilt, no hesitation. It is published solely to keep the AGW true believers from suffering cognitive dissonance from a chance encounter from some of the the recent press stories doubting the role of CO2 in our ever changing climate (what we used to call weather).
“Now contrast the fact-based responses to the goofy scare stories of the “myth-busters”.
It is obvious that the “debate” between the alarmists and the realists over climate has always been a war of politics. They clamor that “the debate is over” but fail to mention there has never been any real public debate at all. What we have had is over a quarter century of massive and well funded propaganda to convince the populous that we must hand over full control over our lives to various government entities to “save life on this planet”.
I have lived long enough to see several of these “environmental emergencies” that were claimed to require strenuous governmental intervention. The ozone scare, the banning of DDT, and the outlawing of Freon are just a few examples. As we go down these pathways to mindless propaganda, I sometimes wonder if the old adage that the truth will always come out is really the way the world works.
It would be wonderful if some organization would send very public challenges to the alarmists to debate on a variety of topics. The cowardly alarmists would probably reject the debate challenge with great disdain, but how many times can the other side duck honest debate and still retain any credibility?
It would be great to see Mann and the rest of the Team have to debate just the issues raised in this post by Lord Monckton. After that, I want to ask one of them if they know how well Polar Bears can swim.
This whole nonsense reminds me of the mindlessness of the Tulip Bulb bubble, but at least the tulip mania was not a tool of governmental control freaks. (as far as I know) http://www.damninteresting.com/the-dutch-tulip-bubble-of-1637/
Sorry, but the Brisbane river is south of the Great Barrier Reef. There are, however, many rivers that do flow onto the reef and quite heavily in the wet season.
“The concentration of water vapor, the most potent greenhouse gas, is increasing, causing a positive feedback”.
Well at least they mention water vapor this time in a by-sentence now (sorry can’t watch the video ATM so maybe they said more, I don’t know).
Of course they should start any explanation about the greenhouse effect with water vapor as it causes 95% of it. They should talk about the huge local fluctuations of this mighty greenhouse gas going from zero to 5% of atmospheric content; and of its violent swings with a residence time of 2 weeks (while moving thousands of miles). Of atmospheric rivers and water vapor plumes. Of cumulunimbus towers and thunderstorms and convection fronts spanning entire continents.
And then later, they could talk about that 5% bit player CO2.
I have a question………….
If I have a tub of dry ice [frozen CO2 aprox. 100%], and put my beer into it.
Does the dry ice back-radiate into my beer and make it hotter?
Of course not. It is a coolant.
Then how can 0.00006CO2 [man-made portion] back-radiate onto the earth and heat it up?
I understand that when a gas is heated it expands and rises in an open system[our atmosphere].
Dry ice is by definition a solid. Therefore it has a different set of vibrations, etc. than CO2 gas and this obviates your question. As to warmed gases rising, this is true, but the collisions of molecules in a gas will spread out any energy from absorbed IR to all the gases in the region and so there won’t be any rising a of a specific greenhouse gas. (BTW, CO2 having a molecular weight of 44, much higher than O2 [32] or N2 [28] and would sink toward the ground if it weren’t for the mixing of the molecules via collision. Finally,. H2O has a molecular weight of 18 which is lighter than these other gases, and since it is evaporated, particularly over the oceans, and does reduce the weight density of the parcel of air it’s in, does indeed lead to the rising of said parcel, leading to thunderstorms, etc. (Though to be fair, the main thing that powers the system is the condensation of the water at altitude, releasing huge amounts of energy above the bulk of the atmosphere.)
The tub of dry ice sublimates and is quickly filled almost completely with CO2 in gaseous form.
Also, just because a gas is heated doesn’t mean it rises, unless that gas when heated is lighter than air (defined as 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen)
And, water vapor is lighter than air and rises rapidly, a fact you can observe with active clouds. CO2 is heavier than air, and likes to hang around a low levels before being pushed any higher by air currents.
You cool your beer with dry ice? Now that’s a cold one.
Yes it does. That is why when you put your tongue on dry ice, it burns your tongue. Bow down before the Gore, for he is almighty.
Yes, and they should also address the other role of water vapor which acts to cool the planet. Indeed, water vapor is simply a step in the cooling of the oceans and of the atmosphere as well. I would argue that the ultimate effect of water vapor is to moderate temperature extremes. Compare the diurnal temp. variation of the Sahara (some 85* F) with the humid tropics (some 25*F). The notion that water vapor acts as a positive feedback is insupportable, in my view for a number of cogent reasons.
Normally Veritasium does good science based videos, but this one had so much bad science in it it deserved to be highlighted and debunked.
I wasn’t impressed by his Laithwaite pendulum video. Didn’t answer any questions.
I asked a physicist whether the Higgs field finally explains inertia. He said, no.
We still don’t know why there’s inertia.
Ah, not Laithwaite pendulum, I mean Laithwaite gyroscope experiment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Laithwaite
Lazy angels, obviously.
I know, I watch the Veritasium videos often. I get my kids to watch them. I am deeply disappointed that the host Derek Muller decided to go all political propaganda like this. I’ll bet doesn’t even know that climate alarmism is politics, I’ll bet he thinks its science. Live and learn pal.
From the look of things, he probably thinks “Star Trek” is science…
[noted -mod]
“We add 30 GTe CO2 each year, but Nature adds 780 GTe: however, Nature also takes away 780 GTe, so our net effect is to increase CO2 in the air.”
I might just add to your point our exhalted moral better, also assumes that the CO2 Balance is static, that the biosphere sinks exactly 780GT per annum regardless of the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is patently untrue and grossly unscientific. The equilibrium between emission and uptake is dynamic. In fact as you point out 1/2 the Human component is taken up within a year (Uptake in the fist year is 795 GT) , in the next year 1/2 of the remaining half will also be absorbed rasing uptake to 802.5GT and so on. If in fact we maintained a fixed emission of 30GT then after a short time the CO2 would achieve a new equilibrium balance with nature adapting to absorb all human emissions (at a slightly higher atmospheric partial pressure – has to – the chemistry says so).
If you look at the papers of photosynthetic productivity increases due to CO2, you can calculate that the increase in CO2 sinking over Australia since 2000 has already exceeded the totality of all Australia’s anthropogenic emissions through Increased vegetative uptake alone. Having dealt with our own, we are now busily sinking China’s CO2, can’t wait for those Chinese CO2 transfer payments to start rolling in
I ended up having an hour discussion with my brother this evening, during which time he spewed virtually the SAME load of crap at me as this smug twit. Between the outright lies, the misinformation, and the fact that my brother can’t understand WHY I would believe all of the Koch brothers disinformation…. I have to say that watching this video filled me with the urge to poke that smug self-important incorrect idiot right in the nose.
When I pointed out that my brother is making a quarter million per year designing “eco-friendly” houses that probably rape the environment twice what a normal house would, he still failed to understand why I was arguing. He can’t figure out where I think the money is going. He seems to firmly believe that doing something is better than doing nothing. And just like the self-important twit in the video, he has a massive inability to use logic or determine the credibility of information sources.
This generation is single-handedly ruining our entire civilization, and they’re too stupid to even understand how.
Yup. The tragedy of these times is that everyone now has a brother like that.
Or sister.
Me too. And mine is a PhD in biophysics (retired). Must have called me an idiot several times in the last week. It started this week with an email to let him know of the record Antarctic sea ice extent.
I tell him his logic and facts are fallacious. I provide facts and data and peer reviewed papers. He just tells me I’m an idiot. I tell him him I save his emails calling me an idiot for posterity.
He hates Watts. Hates Monckton.
Years ago, my dad, (PhD in biochemistry) before he died, told me he thought the CO2 global warming theory was way too complicated and difficult to ever prove (too many variables).
+1 a sister…..sigh….
He assumes you “believe” the Koch brothers — who are, of course, people, not data, nor yet a line of reasoning — because he bases his views on the personality contest of which people, which authorities, he likes best. I like to tell folks like your brother that I am bad at reading people and I know I am bad at reading people — so I went and studied the data and the reasoning directly.
I remind them that the authorities in AD 1600 believed that the Earth was the motionless center of the universe, and that the authorities of 1850 believed that a doctor who washed his hands between patients should be barred from medical practice.
I suggest that if they do not feel personally competent to judge the data, if they think it is too complicated for their pedestrian brains, they should step up and study, get themselves educated. If they will abdicate understanding to the high priests in white lab coats, they must also give up the right to any opinion at all.
The Koch brothers are Libertarians. Socially liberal, fiscal conservative. Like myself. They want to legalize marijuana, legalize gay marriage, tax increases, and get us out of overseas wars.
Anyone arguing that the Koch brothers are running the GOP, or ruining the country (etc) hasn’t done their homework. They are reciting propaganda.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/david-koch-supports-gay-marriage-pot-legalization-and-ending-wars-and-you-shouldnt-be-surprised/
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/80483.html
The MythBusters TV show already did a and experiment to test increasing CO2 consentration CAUSES temperatures to rise, so it has to be true.
/sarc off
Yes I recall that Myth Busters episode of measuring the rate of ice melting in a set volume of surrounding gas, and the CO2 container made the ice melt quickest. However, recall that today the CO2 molecule is about 1 in 10,000 atmospheric molecules, and MythBusters raised that ratio to 10,000 CO2 in 10,000 atmospheric molecules. That 100% CO2 ratio is never going happen.
A recent WUWT post shows the wrong assumption of their experiment :
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/10/bill-nye-thescienceguy-and-al-gore-not-even-wrong-on-co2-climate-101-experiment-accoding-to-paper-published-in-aip-journal/
Viscount Monckton, good effort, but…
It’s that pesky “255 Kelvin” assumption. Remember that? You lost, I won, and that will occur any time you challenge.
It’s no good running around shooting soft targets like this. Truly there is no way forward unless you admit the “basic physics” of the “setted science” was in grave error. The oceans are not a near blackbody, not even close.
I may not need one man more with me, but numbers may help in timing. Coins in your purse and passport made is it? Or, how’s your stomach? Weak, me thinks…
Easy Konrad, our man is coming around.
Read again, carefully, the paragraph about Prof. Douglas where he asks for empirical studies of CO2 cs. Richard responded above.
The Civicly Correct Clowns Created the catastrophic Caucasian-caused climate change Con.
Concisely creative,
Always avoid alliteration.
Edit a bit, remove the ‘thes’ and it still works: “Civically-Correct Clowns Create Catastrophic Caucasian-Caused Climate Change Con”.
“Are you copperbottoming ’em, my man?”
“No mam’, I’m aluminiuming ’em, mam’.
Say this four times while you pat your head and rub your tummy simultaneously.
Catastrophic claims can capaciously catapult climatologists careers.
Not all Caucasians have white skin…..If that is what is being implied.
Just one look at the hipster dude in the video says it all. The on-trend beard, the sunglasses, the hair, the t-shirt: what a plonker. Sadly, this guy is the spirit of these selfie tweeting times. There is no doubt in his mind that global warming is real, but he’s never been to climateaudit.org. or WUWT, because, obviously, they are only for Koch-funded denialists. Another double decaf chai latte with soy milk anyone?
Token straw-man.
Good rebuttal.
But it is interesting that the strongest case made is that for man being the cause of the rise in CO2.
I’m not saying that’s a problem ( the temperatures stopped rising).
But it isn’t easy to argue that we aren’t, probably, the cause of the rise in atmospheric CO2.
Sure, we might be. But when I grew up, I learned that when it comes to Science you need a proof, or at least some sort of evidence trail to follow. Perhaps some correlation. And since we know that CO2 levels have risen and fallen in the past, surely there are other mechanisms besides “burning fossil fuels” to cause said change.
“But it isn’t easy to argue that we aren’t, probably, the cause of the rise in atmospheric CO2.”
In fact, it is monumentally obvious that we aren’t.
This Is a ‘Second Take’ Video. In the first one he wears a “Mitre”.
(sarc)
Solar radiation has fallen but temperature changes will not be immediate but wqill take time for the thermal inertia of the atmosphere and surface is overcome. Oceans have actually cooled, as expected with reduced solar input.
CO2 still has no impact on temperatures apart from a cooling effect due to increased heat adsorbed and radiated to space.
Thanks, Christopher. Always a pleasure.
Lloyds of London have made big profits from the first half of this year. Lloyd’s CEO, Inga Beale says this is due to the reduced number of ‘incidents’ this year. Less flood damage less, less sea damage, less tornado damage, less hurricane damage…
And perhaps a large increase in premia predicated on fear mongering?
Christopher, another fine piece of writing. Another one to add to the list is that weather forecasting, the Met Office are by far the worst; so much so, that their predictions of mild winters, BBQ summers have made them look ridiculous. Why don’t they take the AGW factor out of their computer program? Because they are frightened to, doing a proper job which they are paid to do is obviously not as important as perpetuating a scare story.
Last month, water vapor was 1.9% above the long-term mean according to RSS and 1.6% above the mean at NCEP Reanalysis. Climate science predicts it to be about 5.5% right now.
Water vapor seems to lag 2 or 3 months behind the ENSO cycles more than anything else (and there is no long-term trend up or down in the ENSO cycles).
http://data.remss.com/Vapor/monthly_1deg/tpw_v07r00_198801_201408.time_series.txt
http://nomad2.ncep.noaa.gov/ncep_data/index.html
.
I tried to tell one of the puppets that water vapor was the most potent GHG. He denied it. Kind of like apple and his denial of CO2 as a trace gas.
The thing that nobody seems to pick up on is the claim that CO2 is the driver during Milankovich cycles because “90% of the warming takes place after CO2 has begun to rise”.
Has anyone actually analysed the logic behind this claim?
The time in which “CO2 has begun to rise” seems to be related to the time lag which I imagine is a property of oceans and atmosphere etc. The other factor is the period of the Milankovich cycle which is determined by planetary motion.
So the fact that one of these time scales is nine times larger than the other gives the 90% factor. ie this is NOTHING at all to do with the feedback properties of CO2 acting as an amplifier!!
The claim is false. Ice core analysis shows that warming at the start of the Holocene was sudden with a dramatic rise in temperatures over a few decades. CO2 is shown to lag warming by centuries. An interesting aspect of the Pleistocene is that all warming (interglacial, interstadial) yields a sudden and precipitous curve on ice core data plots. The cooling invariably plots as a stepdown.
Despite how much I love being lectured by lazy minded bleating fifteen year old bearded hipsters – high on their own grandeur – on subjects I am far more knowledgeable about, I couldn’t bring myself to watch it.. £100 says he invoked the precautionary principle..
Nice shot!
I’ll bet a further $100 that he has lots of bumper stickers on his Prius.
Come on. He’s at least in his later twenties.
HA HA! I also enjoy that particular pastime!
The ‘truth’ in climate change – as rare as a Victoria Beckham smile.
14 of my tallest years have occurred this century. Does this mean I am still growing? That’s great news!
Well played sir.
Great Analogy!
You are way more tolerant than me. After suffering through his hiding the GW pea I only made it halfway through his 2nd point. After he flashed the graph (from Steve Goddard?) that wasn’t attempting to show a trend and claiming it was thus proving the pause doesn’t exist.
I also unsubscribed from his channel (the quality was going downhill anyway).
“Konrad” continues to pick nits while struggling with basic atmospheric physics. The 255 K effective radiative temperature of the Earth (an approximation that leaves latitudinal flux differences out of account) is simply the fourth root of {the mean radiative flux [S(1 – a) / 4] divided by the Stefan-Boltzmann constant}, where S is total solar irradiance of 1362 W/m2 and a is the bond or spherical albedo of about 0.3.
The emissivity with respect to long-wave radiation of the Earth’s radiating surface (which is a mean 10 km above the surface, so that the emissivity of the oceans is scarcely relevant) is close enough to unity to make little difference. So 255 K is near enough as an approximation of the effective radiating temperature. If one wanted a more accurate mean value, one would worry less about the insignificant difference between the long-wave emissivity of the Earth’s radiating surface and unity and more about the latitudinal differences in radiative flux, which, owing to the Hoelder inequality, have a rather larger effect on the result.
Konrad…………….
What do you say??
I do not know why the producer of this video would have someone with large dark glass who looks like of cocaine dealer for college kids, be a good look for exposing the truth. I wouldn’t buy a candy from the guy for charity, since I would assume he stole the candy.
Comments deriding that hipster dufus kid’s appearance are somewhatad hom… just another paradox in the debate. The greatest paradox of all is the entire claim that mankind’s re- insertion of CO2 into the atmosphere is harmful to the planet, when in fact, the added CO2 is a great boon to life. Kiln that limestone! Turn on the lights.
Yes, agreed. My previous comment was a bit of gratuitus flaming. But also implied a valid question as to the wisdom and motivations of the producer.
Guilty as charged. The fact that he looks smug is strictly irrelevant to the smugness of his arguments. I guess.
The appearance of Mr. Smug here is an indication as to who the target audience is.
I’m not part of that target audience. Every kid I’ve ever dealt with that adopts that look has proven to be an ignorant, self-centered twit with very little grounding in Science, or reality of any sort.
In that sense, it’s not an “ad hom”, since my life experience has taught me that people who look like that are NOT to be listened to on anything other than the merit of having or not having fries with my meal.
Monckton of Brenchley: “Absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation.”
My preference would be that Lord M. avoid such statements, since they require too much interpretation to be considered true. I am told that it is trivial to design a second-order linear system whose response to a cosine stimulus is a sine: the response would be orthogonal to the stimulus despite the causation.
I should nonetheless note that my (admittedly casual) observations suggest that Lord M. has recently exercised greater effort to make his commentary more bullet-proof, and, if so, he is to be commended.
But, the stimulus here is a monotonic rise in CO2, while the output is varying up and down. Not entirely dispositive, but very nearly so.
I agree.
My point was merely that Lord M. had again over-egged the pudding. His influence, although significant, would be much greater if he didn’t so often compromise valid contentions by advancing invalid arguments in their support. It is frustrating to some of us not so blessed to see him thus squander his talent.
Absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation. The fact that the sign of the correlation may be negative as well as positive does not alter that fact. And Mr Born should not be so smugly self-congratulatory: he is prone to make numerous errors himself.
I confess that I am indeed prone to errors, and I would be grateful if Lord Monckton could point any specific one out that I can remedy. In particular, it’s been about half a century since I studied calculus, so I suppose it’s possible that I’ve gotten my sums wrong here:
If not, though, it would appear that the correlation of sine with cosine is zero, not negative. Yet I am told that it is possible to design a linear system whose response to a sine is a cosine. If that is true (and some pretty smart guys have assured me it is) then it is incorrect to state categorically that absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation.
Yes but, in finite time, you can never be sure the correlation is not merely delayed. The question is, how long do you have to wait? Perhaps if you just said the likelihood of causation is becoming vanishingly small given the lack of correlation, Joe would be happy.
Joe – you need to do an autocorrelation over the full distribution of lag times. This is where the finite time constraint enters in. You can only compare data over lag intervals less than the duration of the record.
Bart:
I’m sorry I can’t respond appropriately to your comment, but I was unable come up with a sense in which autocorrelation is relevant to the issue of whether absence of correlation (i.e., of cross-correlation) necessarily implies absence of causation.
Sorry, yes, I am so used to doing autocorrelations that the correct term failed to transmit. Please substitute “cross-correlation”.
Bart:
I take your meaning. But you have actually demonstrated my point. As you can see, my criticism regarding Lord M’s categorical statements such as the one in question was that “since they require too much interpretation to be considered true.” Yes, there would be cross correlation between the stimulus and a quarter-wave-advanced version of the response. But that’s the kind of interpretation one has to add.
Furthermore, note that my hypothetical was precisely the simplest case for a linear system: a sinusoid. In the case at issue, you would indeed find a correlation between the seasonal temperature and CO2 concentration changes.
But we’re beating a dead horse. I remain of the opinion that Lord Monckton–and, ultimately, human welfare–would benefit if he would resist the temptation to overstate his case. He has a good case. Why compromise it with questionable statements?
I agree M’s statement was too categorical.It’s more than a quibble, but less than a deadly sin, IMHO.
Joe Born September 25, 2014 at 5:44 am
Monckton of Brenchley: “Absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation.”
My preference would be that Lord M. avoid such statements, since they require too much interpretation to be considered true. I am told that it is trivial to design a second-order linear system whose response to a cosine stimulus is a sine: the response would be orthogonal to the stimulus despite the causation.
Joe:
first — 2nd order is not a linear system by fundamental definition
2nd — take a sin wave differentiate it you get a cosine wave — however while 90 degrees different in phase the frequency is the same — it would show strong correlation
Rather than nit picking over definitions however we have an annual experiment which disproves the CAGW proffered linkage of CO2 and T — specifically as we look at the detailed Mauna Loa CO2 data we see a well defined annual oscillation superimposed on the secular rise — The CO2 rises from October until April/May then declines rapidly until September and then the cycle repeats Meanwhile there is no such evidence in the Global Average Temperature [irrespective of which data set]
Hypothesis:
1) Mauna Loa CO2 is not global but local to the Northern Hemisphere
2) Annual fluctuation is driven by the rapid growth of Northern Hemisphere temperate plant life from April / May until September / October absorbing atmospheric CO2 and yielding cellulose followed by the cessation of growth in September and then the decay and return of much of the carbon to the atmosphere during the Autumn / Winter
3) Implication is that there is very short residence time in the atmosphere as the annual cycle suggests
4) there is minimal coupling between the Northern Hemisphere dominated by Temperate Vegetation and the Southern Hemisphere dominated by oceanic plankton and Tropical Rain Forests
By the way those who claim that the lack of C-14 implies a fossil fuel origin are missing an obvious fact. C-14’s half life of 5700 years implies that the process of plate technonic burial of C in sediments at Continental edges and its re-emission through a volcano occurs on the 1000s of C-14 half lives. Hence
any CO2 emitted from a terrestrial or submarine volcano will be just as deficient in C-14 as any CO2 from burning fossil fuels. The CO2 emitted from the African and other CO2 Lakes will similarly be old as well.
“Meanwhile there is no such evidence in the Global Average Temperature [irrespective of which data set]”
These are global average temperature anomalies, though. They’ve already had any yearly cycles subtracted out.
” 2nd order is not a linear system by fundamental definition”
I would be grateful for a reference to set me straight on that point. Experts have told me that a linear system is one that can be described by linear differential equations of any order, including second. They are distinguished, I am told, by the fact that the response to a stimulus that equals the sum of constituents is the sum of the responses to those individual constituents. The buzz word they seem to use for this is “superposition.” A system described by second-degree equations would not ordinarily exhibit that property, as I understand it, but one described by a second-order system would if the equations are are first-degree only.
Again, if I have this wrong, I would appreciate a reference that would show me my error.
“take a sin wave differentiate it you get a cosine wave — however while 90 degrees different in phase the frequency is the same — it would show strong correlation”
Just so.
Note that what you’ve essentially done, though, is take a model and correlate the observed response with the model response. The stimulus and response have no correlation, only the modeled response and the observed response. So Lord M’s categorical statement remains untrue.
“We add 30 GTe CO2 each year, but Nature adds 780 GTe: however, Nature also takes away 780 GTe, so our net effect is to increase CO2 in the air.”
This type of statement is baffling to me. Since nature has the awesome ability to take away 780 GTe, somehow it is not able to manage an additional 30 GTe. Is there a contract that forces Nature to say, “780 GTe, I hit my quota, I’m done, time to quit.” Obviously CO2 processsing in the atmosphere is more complex and dynamic than that.
What especially irks me is the notion that Nature and man are seperate entities, we eat, we excrement, we are born, we die, we rot, and yes we exhale CO2 like all mammals do. We affect Nature and Nature affects us like every other living organism. The thought must be that because we have the ability to own iPhones we somehow have control and mastery of Nature itself. This to me is called having a God-complex, which is more unhealthy than 30 GTe of CO2.
I am not saying we should not be wise and responsible about our waste and how we live, but that is a far cry from believing we have control and mastery of Nature itself.
The amount of CO2 in the environment determines the amount of life that can be supported. When CO2 is added it takes awhile (a lag) for the current life to utilize the increase, expand and participate in the carbon cycle. However, over time the added CO2 will drive a larger biosphere and the flow will reach equilibrium. At the present time we have continued to increase the total CO2 faster than life can expand to utilize it. That won’t happen forever.
Equilibrium of CO2 in the atmosphere is illusory, when viewed in a human- scale time frame. Yesteryear’s CO2 looks a lot like today’s limestone- graveled road.
My plants increase their growth on an HOURLY time scale. Not years, not decades. The jiggles in the CO2 record are the yearly vegetation cycle. The belief that the biosphere can’t immediately and rapidly adapt stretches credibility.
Indeed, the static, non-reactive nature of the sinks they have assumed drives their conclusion. Yet, we know just from the fact that the rise is less than the input that this assumption is false.
great comment! We don’t control the earth, more likely it controls “us”. Perhaps, this is all a clever trick by mother nature to re-saturate a CO2 deprived atmosphere with plant food.
RED ALERT; watch out for Shellshock, everybody who runs an internet connected server; security hole in bash (since 20 years); published yesterday, first attacks in the wild. First patches out as well, but still incomplete protection.
Test code:
x=”() { :;}; echo HACKED” bash -c “”
Thanks for the heads up but better test code:
env X=”() { :;} ; echo busted” /bin/sh -c “echo completed”
See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/24/bash_shell_vuln/
#ClimateJusticeWarriors
#ClimateCommunists
From watching the video, he *knows* it’s a scam. When he cites Cowtan & Way’s Frankenstein global average temperature, as if their use of satellite data to up-adjust ground station smearing our over the Arctic represents “satellite data” of actual temperature, well, he can’t *not* know it’s a scam.
“The Sun is indeed becoming less active, but global mean surface temperature is not rising. It is not falling either. Perhaps the modest decline in solar activity is being offset by a modest forcing from the additional CO2 we are adding to the atmosphere: if so, then the CO2 forcing is substantially less than the IPCC imagines.”
– Perhaps the ocean is giving up it’s heat to make up the difference, with CO2 not providing any measurable forcing whatsoever, modest or otherwise.
I think you have missed a ‘C’: Catastrophic Caucasian Capitalist Caused Climate Change’ – CCCCCC 🙂
I think you meant ‘catastrophic conservative-capalisit-caucasian-caused climate change.’
I’m thinking about starting a website called Citizens Concerned For Catastrophic Conservative Caucasian Capitalist Caused Climate Change, it would be http://www.ccccccccc.org
Also for us up north we could have the Canadian Chapter of Citizens Concerned For Catastrophic Conservative Caucasian Capitalist Carbon Caused Climate Change,
I wish I could like a comment.
Good one Alberta!
elmer, you would love Alberta, assuming you’ve never been,….
Probably would, I like Gordon Lightfoots Alberta Bound.
“The concentration of water vapor, the most potent greenhouse gas, is increasing, causing a positive feedback”
But everyone tells me the awesome thing about hydrogen cars is that their only emission is clean, clean water vapor; none of that messy carbon stuff!
richardscourtney
September 25, 2014 at 12:31 am
Another thing re the excellent Idso paper you link on natural earth (Venus and Mars, too) experiments to determine T effect of doubling CO2 (0.46C/Wm^ -2). He also draws from papers on plankton increase with temp and their emissions of sulphur compounds that nucleate clouds. He neglected to mention that growth in the biosphere is endothermic so it cools, too.
Gary Pearse
True, Idso does not mention several possible mechanisms. His “eight natural experiments” each observes a response of a forcing change. He postulates many mechanisms for these changes but that is secondary to his finding in each of the eight cases. However, Idso’s paper does support your argument
Tha Abstract of Idso’s paper summarises these points in the body of the paper when it says
Richard
Well done. Not inflammatory, well documented, to the point, and most of all factual. The climate obsessed are out of control, out of ideas and long past offering honest arguments. Skeptics have been shown to be correct time after time. This is a great summary of that fact.
Good job
I prefer Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Anomalies.
Ok great aarticle but you left out the most important aspect. “Feelings” feelings trump any and all imperical data. For example if you were to make a YouTube version of this article you would be guilty of “hate speech”. Because it would cause hurt feelings. You would be showing no respect for the “feelings” of those who do not share your view (as fact and reality based as it is) even though those same people would be happy if you were jailed for what you have written.
That’s tolerance in our brave new culture.
+1
I love it that he knows exactly how much “naturally” occurring CO2 the planet needs to be in “balance” I think the earth’s carbon cycle is a little more complex than that. If the earth was in perfect balance before man arrived then why do plants double in size when they are provided with more CO2?
You really need to fight videos WITH videos. Most people will go to a video link to hear the other side while only a small fraction will bother to read something these days.
Is that so?
Surely reading something takes very little time compared to watching a video.
isn’t time precious?
Just my opinion. I have no data.
You have to be able to read (or willing to if you can). Then it helps if you can read at a decent speed.
Lord, you still haven’t grasped the CO2 cycle, have you?
Paging Ferdinand…
Nice ad hominem attack, Hans Erren. If you have some knowledge of the CO2 cycle, then why not share it?
it’s the difference between turnover and profit that the lord does not grasp.Read Dietze on CO2. The cumulative contribution of natural sources to the global co2 level is NEGATIVE.
fossil fuel CO2 + natural CO2 source = natural CO2 sink + surplus in atmosphere
surplus in atmosphere = half fossil fuel CO2, ergo natural co2 sink is greater than natural co2 source
QED
Mr Erren has difficulty in understanding the head posting, and in understanding the atmospheric CO2 budget. The reason why only half of the CO2 we emit to air remains there is that there is an additional sink no accounted for by the models (which cannot explain the missing sink). The missing sink is rain.
Monckton of Brenchley
I write to make a nit-pick that I think is important. And I am writing with intention of being supportive although I am disputing one of your (minor) points.
In reply to Hans Erren who supports the views of Ferdinand Engelbeeen you write
I disagree with both of you because the carbon cycle is a dynamic system and not the static system assumed by each of you.
You may well be right that accounting for rain is inadequate because the circular ‘mass balance argument’ fails to adequately account for almost everything and – instead – assumes atmospheric CO2 concentration would not change were it not for the CO2 emissions from human activities (as Alx implies in this thread here).
I don’t know if the observed continuing rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration has a natural cause, or an anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) cause, or some combination of natural and anthropogenic cause(s) but I want to know.
What seems to be happening is that the carbon cycle is moving towards an equilibrium state that it never reaches because that state is constantly changing. The ‘seasonal’ variation in atmospheric CO2 is a response to mechanisms of CO2 emission and sequestration with short (i.e. hours, days, weeks and months). The annual rise in atmospheric CO2 in any year is the residual of the seasonal variation in that year. And there is rise each year because some mechanisms of the carbon cycle have long (i.e. years, decades, centuries) rate constants. Ice core data suggest that time to achieve a change to equilibrium would be ~800 years.
One of our 2005 papers used this assumption of the dynamic system to model the change in atmospheric CO2 concentration using each of six different models: three assumed a natural cause and the other three each assumed an anthropogenic cause. And each of our models matched the Mauna Loa data to within the stated inherent errors without need for any data processing such as the 5-year smoothing used to obtain agreement of the Mauna Loa data with the (ridiculous) Bern Model used by the IPCC.
(ref. Rorsch A, Courtney RS & Thoenes D, ‘The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle’ E&E v16no2 (2005) )
The most likely explanation for the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is the probable rise induced by warming from the Little Ice Age in past decades. Other explanations for alteration to the equilibrium state exist and the anthropogenic CO2 emission is one possible explanation.
Please note that this post is intended to be supportive of your essay although it disputes the significance of one of your statements. Your essay debunks claims of certainty that significant global warming will be caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration, and I am stating that the available data does not indicate if the anthropogenic emissions are having any discernible effect on atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Richard
Like similar articles, this one defines the “global warming” as the change along a straight line of the global temperature when this line is fit by a specified procedure (e.g. least squares regression analysis) to a specified global temperature time series. The position in the time-temperature space of this line varies dependent upon the chosen time period. If we chose the period from 1950 we get a slope for the line of 1.37 C per century. If we chose the period from 1996 we get a slope of 0. The amount of the “global warming” varies dependent upon the chosen period.
In legitimate science one forms hypotheses about the future values of variables which, unlike this one, have the property of observability. When observed an observable variable has one value and not many of them.
Assuming you are talking about the “hiatus/pause/interruption” duration, it is actually calculated by carefully choosing a “today” and going back in time until you reach a non-zero value for change, ie, when a trend is present. “Today” is actually rounded to the nearest month because the data are released monthly. Depending on the month chosen for the end date, a start date will bob around a rather broad range, and the specific temperature at the zero change line will bob around a bit, too. It would be interesting to see that variability plotted.
dp:
Thank you for giving the opportunity to clarify. My post addresses the meaning of the phrase “global warming” in the article under review and in the numerous similarly argued articles that have been published in the literature of global warming climatology. In these articles the meaning varies with the interval in time that is selected for linear regression analysis. Let’s suppose this interval extends from 1950 to 2014. According to the article, the slope of the straight line resulting from linear regression analysis is 1.37 C per century. Now let’s suppose this interval is Oct. 1996 to Aug. 2014. According to the article, the slope is 0.
Now let’s compute the amount of the global warming in the 1 thousandth of a century that ends on Jan. 1, 2012. If the slope is 1.37 C per century, the global warming was 0.00137 C. If the slope is 0, the global warming was 0.
On Jan. 1, 2012, the amount of global warming in the previous 1 thousandth of a centurey was 0.00137 C and it was 0. In logic, a variable takes on values one at a time. Here, a variable takes on more than one.
This is one of several logical errors in the structure of modern climatology. Strangely enough, while professional climatologists have raised an alarm about the amount of the “global warming”, they have not yet told us what this term means in a manner that allows scientific research to be conducted. Though allegedly “scientific,” research conducted to date was not.
Terry, you have omitted a significant part of the logic.
..
IF interval start 1950, THEN warming = 1.37C/century.
..
IF interval start 1996, THEN warming = 0.0C/century.
…
There is no “error” the variable in question is conditioned, and in fact only takes on one value at a time.
beckleybud:
Contrary to your claim I’ve not omitted that part of the logic. Instead, I’ve shown that this part of the logic results in the logical inconsistency that the “global warming” takes on more than one value at a single point in time.
No Terry, the actual value does not take on two different values at the same time. The value it takes DEPENDS on which interval you use as a condition for the calculation of the value.
The logical problem is that you want to have both intervals active at the same time, which is your mistake. You only can use one at a time.
beckleybud:
You are correct in stating that “The value it [the “global warming”] takes DEPENDS on which interval you use as a condition for the calculation of the value. The reason for the rule that “you can only use one at a time” is not stated. Please state it.
definitions…
A: interval start 1950
B: interval start 1996
————————-
.
A implies ~B
Meaning if the interval starts in 1950, it does not start in 1996
B implies ~A
Meaning if the interval starts in 1996, it does not start in 1950
———————————
In symbolic logic this can be stated as….
[ (A->~B) & (B->~A) ] -> ~(A&B)
beckleybud:
Thanks for the stimulating discussion. In your argument “A implies ~B” and “B implies ~A” play the role of premises. These premises are consequences of the law of the excluded middle and the law of non-contradiction. Each law is one of the classical laws of thought.
That they are called “laws” can be a misnomer for in the practice of scientific research situations arise that violate both laws; for examples see R. Christensen and Reichert, T: “Unit Measure Violations in Pattern Recognition: Ambiguity and Irrelevancy” in Pattern Recognition, Vol. 8 1976 pp239-245. Thus, in proving a conclusion one cannot assume either law but must prove it to be true. These proofs have not yet come from you. Hint: to prove satisfaction of the excluded middle and non-contradiction one proves satisfaction of unit measure. Unit measure is an axiom of probability theory..
Terry Oldberg,
I always enjoy your comments. So I have a question for you.
I have been asking this question here for a couple of years now:
Can anyone please post testable measurements, quantifying the specific fraction of a degree of global warming [out of the total 0.7ºC of global warming over the past ≈150 years], which is directly attributable to human emissions?
That question goes to the heart of the entire debate. Because up to now, the Narrative has been that human activity is responsible for “half” or “most” of the warming, or some such vague, unquantified opinion. But there are no empirical measurements showing how many tenths, or hundreths of a degree of global warming, out of the 0.7º total, that measure the warming caused by human emissions.
Science is all about measurement. If no one can produce verifiable measurements showing the specific rise in global warming caused by human emissions, then the default position of science, based on the Null Hypothesis, must be ‘zero’. If it is more than that, then produce testable measurements showing just how much global warming humans are responsible for causing.
As of now, there are no such measurements. There are only opinions. It is time for real world measurements, no? Anything else is nothing but evidence-free conjecture.
You still are in error when you state
“On Jan. 1, 2012, the amount of global warming in the previous 1 thousandth of a centurey was 0.00137 C and it was 0. ”
The correct way to state it is….
“On Jan. 1, 2012, the amount of global warming in the previous 1 thousandth of a centurey was 0.00137 C when using 1950 to 2014 as a basis and it was 0 when using 1996 to 2014 as a basis. “.
…
The error you made was using the word AND
It would have been correct to say OR alleviating your mistaken logic
…
So in effect the variable does not take on more than one value.
[1/1000 of one century = 36.5 days. The measured global warming over the past century = 2014_avg – 1914_avg. .mod]
beckleybud:
That the global warming was 0.000137 C AND 0 violates non-contradiction. That the value was 0.000137 C OR 0 satisfies the excluded middle. Your argument amounts to the unsubstantiated claim that non-contradiction is not violated and the excluded middle is satisfied. Can you prove your claim? I don’t think so.
The most recent available monthly data are chosen as the end date for the temperature trend graphs. If “dp” wishes to plot the data in some different way, it should feel free to do so.
Terry, the value is calculated using one, or the other interval. You cannot use both intervals simultaneously.
beckleybud:
Both intervals are used simultaneously when “global warming” has several meanings, one for example being 0 C and the other being 0.00137 C. That the term has several meanings violates non-contradiction and creates the potential for applications of the equivocation fallacy. The solution to both pathologies is disambiguation of “global warming” under which the term references a single numerical value. In promoting disambiguation I find that warmists and skeptics are alike in opposing disambiguation. Warmists like the ability to argue that the climate sensitivity is high. Skeptics like the ability to argue that the climate sensitivity is low. The members of neither group like disambiguation.
Once the genie (the lies) are out there, it’s hard to put them back into the bottle.
Most people aren’t intellectually flexible enough to change their views when the facts change, especially when they are emotionally invested in AGC/Climate Change/Climate Disruption/Whatever.
What will preoccupy their time and energy if they look objectively at the facts and discover they are wrong? These people need something to make them feel bad.
You guys need to subscribe to NOAA’s page on Facebook. They are posting some really misleading information about climate change, global temperatures, etc.
https://www.facebook.com/NOAAClimateGov
My niece loves to get me going on global warming and posted this video to my facebook page yesterday. I knew what she was up to so I said nothing. Now I have posted this on her page. Thanks.
Today I learned the word debouch. I will have to use it in a sentence at some point soon.
We are hammering the alarmists in the comments over there.
And likely increasing their pageviews, unfortunately.
“We know the CO2 remaining in the air is substantially manmade because fossil-fuel CO2 has less carbon-13 than the air, and the carbon-13 fraction in the air is falling”. The difference between fossil-fuel carbon-13 content and general atmospheric CO2 content is not as great as was once thought, and the carbon-13 content in the air is falling very slowly. This method of attribution is fraught with measurement and coverage uncertainties.”
the official stance that falling c13 highlights the fact more co2 from fossil fuels may indeed be true I have no idea. However I have yet to see anyone try to quantify what impact on this c4 plants might be having!!!! C4 plants unlike most plants make no distinction between types when they use it, AND we have planted VAST seas of them (corn, amaranth,millet, sorghum, sugar cane) so c4 plants USED to make up a much smaller portion of total plants then they do today. Thy WILL be using up some amount more of the c13, is it enough to measurably change the global balance? pffft I have no idea, but apparently no one else does either. I have looked and I havent found anyone even attempting to measure this.
Catastrophically Changing Climate Protectors?
Well done. Thanks.
~~~
I often point out to those expecting imminent demise of ice on land that the easily melted ice has long since melted. However, I would reword the statement under the graphic of Topex—Jason2; namely
“. . .there has been no global warming for almost 18 years, there is no particular reason why it should be rising at all.”
If it is so that temperatures reached an elevated level 215 months ago and remain there – then high altitude and high latitude ice may continue to melt. Slow as it may be, it could still occur. There is no need for a rising temperature to be invoked. A steady temperature will do.
Another odd thing (to me) is the r-sq = 0.000 in the temperature graphic of RSS. Dependence is usually thought of as a statistical relationship between two random variables or two sets of data, with correlation and the coefficient of determination used to describe the degree of dependence. The only data set used here is the temperature for 215 months. The flat trend line is derived. That the data has a zero slope should be enough to make the point. The addition of r-sq seems more of a default artifact of the computational procedure and, thus, a distraction.
In answer to Mr Hultqvist, temperature did not reach a significantly “elevated” level 215 months ago, so there is no reason why sea level should be rising. And the correlation coefficient appears automatically on all the graphs, because some of them do show positive or negative trends, whereupon the correlation coefficient begins to have meaning.
The CO2 in the atmosphere is enriched in carbon-13 due to the action of plants that prefer carbon-12. All available sources outside of the atmosphere have a smaller carbon-13/carbon-12 ratio than the atmosphere. Claiming the carbon-13 /carbon-12 ratio in the atmosphere is decreasing is the same as saying the CO2 content in the atmosphere is increasing. The change in the ratio is not large enough to attribute to particular sources. Deep ocean CO2 (the largest fluid source available) exhibits carbon isotopic ratios in the same sense as does coal, and for much the same reasons.
Nature adds 780 GTe: however, Nature also takes away 780 GTe, so our net effect is to increase CO2 in the air
Does anyone know how likely it is that the planet sinks exactly the same amount of co² that it generates ??
Yes: 0.0
Using the socratic method: Does the evidence show changes in the atmospheric CO2 levels before human contributions were measurable?
Yes.
Juice
September 25, 2014 at 9:26 am
Today I learned the word debouch
It is french from the verb déboucher. We use it for unblocking almost everything including, trafic, drains, etc. The opposite “boucher” means to block, bien sur. A trafic jam is bouchée from the past tense but the extra “e” on the end changes it to a noun. Voilà.
A traffic-jam in the South of France, where they are more serious about wine than in the frivolous north, is described as a “bouchon”, or cork.
Sans blague?
So, when traffic is flowing in the south of France and the bottleneck is un-corked, do they use the term “bouchoff”?
This is one of your better posts, Monckton. Thank you. You do excel, my friend.
I’ve looked at the data available in http://data.remss.com/Vapor/monthly_1deg/tpw_v07r00_198801_201408.time_series.txt , referenced by Bill Illis (Sept 25, 3.57am).
Although the ultra-simple “analysis” given there, specifically decadal increases in Water Vapour Anomaly of .331 and .441 for the +-60 degree and +-20 degree are correct for the period beginning at 1988 and ending at the end of 2013, the notion of fitting a single straight line to the data is, to put it bluntly, ridiculous. When examined rather more carefully it is blatantly obvious that the data fall into two segments or regimes. The boundary is at July 1997, when a profound and enduring step change occurred. The size of the steps is approximated by the differences between the overall means for the two periods, which are 0.8 for the +-20 and 0.6 for the +-60 data. On either side of this date the trends in WVA are small or non-existent. I have all the details – too many to provide here but they are available and could be posted, tho’ not the diagrams. I would urge anyone who is able to do some simple statistics to repeat this analysis.
You will appreciate that the step took place exactly at the time of the exceptional El Nino. Could they be related?
The ENSO runs the planet’s water vapor levels. It is only the biggest weather phenomenon on the planet but it has an even larger influence on overall water vapor levels than it does temperatures.
(Water vapor might have increased slightly but there is massive cherrypicking of the timelines by the IPCC just based on the influence from the ENSO cycle). This data says it has increased about one-third of that predicted.
http://s28.postimg.org/te6wz6m1p/PCWV_IPCC_AR5_1948_Aug14.png
From Lord M’s article:
Absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation. The rising CO2 concentration cannot be causing the lack of warming evident over the past couple of decades.
All the consternation over the “pause” [or “hiatus”] is just verbal tapdancing. Global warming stopped many years ago. As a result, the “carbon” scare has taken four or five torpedoes; that ship of fools is going down. It may take some time. But unless global warming resumes with a vengeance, the promoters of the carbon narrative have decisively lost the debate.
Next:
And should not Ban Ki-Moon, having relentlessly ignored facts such as those briefly set out here, resign forthwith and for aye? He abandoned the impartiality that his office demands and took sides with communists and kooks by participating in the fatuous New York useful idiots’ climate march. He must go – and the U.N. with him. What little use it had has gone.
Well said. Moon is a hand puppet for the shadowy forces pushing for world government. He is merely a parrot, who never has an original thought. I well recall the dog and pony show leading up to his UN anointment. The whole thing was as staged as a Michael Mann question and answer session.
The UN not only is of ‘little use’; it is actively hostile to the West, and to all of our institutions and culture; a subsidized nest of anti-American, anti-West criminals who have morphed into modern day neo-Nazis. And those are the UN’s good points. Ask me what I really think of that tax-sucking rats’ nest…
Finally, Lord M writes:
…has anyone attempted empirical measurements, rather than modeling, to determine the CO2 forcing? Please let us know in comments if you are aware of any atmospheric measurements on the basis of which the CO2 forcing has been quantified.
I have been asking that question here for a couple of years now. I routinely ask:
Can anyone please post testable measurements, quantifying the specific fraction of a degree of global warming [out of the agreed 0.7ºC of total global warming over the past ≈150 years], which is directly attributable to human emissions?
That question goes to the heart of the entire debate. Because up to now, the narrative has been that human activity is responsible for “half” or “most” of the warming, or some such vague, unquantified opinion. But there are no empirical measurements showing how many tenths, or hundreths of a degree of global warming, out of the 0.7º total, that are attributable to human emissions.
Science is all about measurement. If no one can produce measurements of the specific rise in global warming caused by human emissions, then the default position of scientific skeptics must be ‘zero’. If it is more than that, then produce testable measurements showing just how much global warming humans are responsible for.
But as of now, there are no such measurements. There are only opinions. And you know what they say about opinions…
The argument that adding the CO2 cannot have caused the global warming is weakened by the ill definition of “global warming.”
It is elementary logic that that which has not occurred cannot have been the cause of that which has occurred. By the same token, that which has occurred cannot have been the cause of that which has not occurred. Mr Oldberg, as usual, does his best to befog the issue with pseudo-academic nonsense.
Monckton of Brenchley:
By the definition of “cause,” it is an event that preceeds in time that other event which is the corresponding “effect.” If there is no effect there is no cause. Thus, if the the effect is a change in the global warming and there is no change there can be no cause. On the other hand, if the change in the global warming is not-nil, the change in the CO2 concentration can have been the cause. Under the Monckton definition of “global warming” the change in the global warming is nil and not-nil. Thus Whether the global warming can or cannot have been caused by the change in the CO2 concentration is ambiguous. This ambiguity can be eliminated through disambiguation of the term “global warming” which however you vigorously reject.
Also, your closing statement that “Mr Oldberg, as usual, does his best to befog the issue with pseudo-academic nonsense” is an example of the ad hominem arguments with which you lard your arguments in the absense of intellectual content. There is not a logical way in which one may refute the conclusion to an argument of one’s opponent through a disparaging characterization of this opponent. If you feel that there is such a way, let us see your argument.
dbstealy:
That’s a good question. I agree with you that there are no such measurements. I’ll go further by claiming that no such measurements are possible.
In reaching the opposite conclusion, climatologists have fallen into a trap that I once observed in a field of research lying outside global warming climatology. The trap is to draw a parallel between telecommunications and control. Telecommunications features a “signal” and “noise” each of which has the property of power. This property of telecommunications gives rise to the notion of a “signal-to-noise ratio” and the related notion of the signal rising about the noise.
Climatologists have appropriated these ideas in arriving at a picture of the climate featuring an anthropogenic “signal” and non-anthropogenic “noise.” Supposedly a statistical portrait of the noise may be gained through observation of global temperatures in the period before the power of the anthropogenic signal rose appreciably above nil. As the power of the anthropogenic signal increases it emerges from the noise.
In painting this picture climatologists have overlooked a time assymetry between telecommunications and control. It is control (of the climate) and not telecommunications that is the aim of global warming research.
The signal and associated noise of telecommunications can have powers greater than nil because the associated energy travels at or below the speed of light. The “signal” and associated “noise” of control cannot have power greater than nil because the associated energy would have to travel at a speed exceeding the speed of light in order for the information that is carried by this energy to reach the present from the future but for it to do so would violate relativity theory.
In order for a system to be controlled information must reach the present from the future. However, this information cannot be carried by a signal. The anthropogenic “signal” of global warming climatology does not exist. Thus, it cannot be observed.
Terry Oldberg
Please be so kind as to return to debating with buckleybud. Such argument between two trolls is rare, but it was very easy to scroll past your comments when the two of you were consuming the time of each other .
Richard
richardscourtney:
I see that you’ve added another ad hominem argument to your already appalling record.
Terry Oldberg
I made no ad hom. I made a serious request for a stated factual reason.
Richard
Friends
In the unlikely event that somebody has sympathy for the accusation that I provided an ad hom. then I refer them to this quote from Terry Oldberg
People who own a thermostatically controlled heating system may be interested in the time machine that Oldberg claims it contains.
Richard
richardscourtney:
Where’s the time machine?
Terry Oldberg
Please do as I requested and discuss with the other troll your assertion of a time machine that enables “information must reach the present from the future”. I have no intention of engaging in discussion of such lunacy.
Richard
richardscourtney:
You’ve just added one more evasion and ad hominem argument to your record.
Oldberg
Enough! You are becoming tiresome.
I have evaded nothing and I have made no ad hom.
I have twice given you a serious request.
I shall ignore any more of your trolling.
Richard
richardscourtney:
You know as well as I do that like many of your posts in the past your recent ones are sheer bunkum.
“Global warming stopped…”
It’s doing more than that. It’s reversing.
Take a look at the plot NikFromNYC pointed out here. I think the peak many have been expecting is finally becoming visible.
This response is unscientific because there is no single temperature for the Earth. There isn’t even a single temperature for a region.
The rest is moot.
……. and similarly there is no single CO2 concentration either
the entire boondoggle has wasted billions of man hours on absurd effort
and trillions of dollars/pounds/euros or whatever on pointless “research”.
what an utter crock this all has been, and future
historians will dub this truly as the age of madness
In response to Jeff Alberts, it is not unscientific to state that temperature was higher in earlier periods than today, because it was. And if Mr Alberts does not like the notion of a global or hemispheric mean surface temperature, then he should address his concerns not to me but to the IPCC.
And two wrongs make a right. Got it.
I think the ice core data shows the overall global temperature (T) trends. Ice cores show that in both Poles, plus Greenland, T rose and fell simultaneously. It is hard to argue with that evidence.
It shows general trends, not specific temperatures, which are regional in the ice cores. But the fact that all three areas show concurrent rises and declines in T is pretty strong evidence that global T was rising and falling at the same time.
It is true that there is not a single temperature for a region, or for the entire planet. But at times the planet was warmer than it is now, and at other times it was colder. There were great Ice Ages that are recorded all over the globe. Just as we can’t say that there was a specific global T, we also cannot say that global T always remained constant.
The current very *mild* global T has been extremely beneficial to mankind and to the biosphere in general. All the wild eyed arm-waving over a tiny 0.7ºC fluctuation, over the past century and a half, is crazy IMHO. The global ‘climate’ could hardly be more benign. But leave it to rent-seeking scientists to sound a false alarm over these good times…
@dbstealey I agree with what you’re saying for the most part. But presenting a graph with a single line, whether it’s an anomaly, trend, whatever, is grossly misleading.
Monckton of Brenchley
September 25, 2014 at 9:12 pm
I feel the only credible reply (or even concern!) about the “there is no single “average” temperature for the earth” discussion is to mathematically address the effect of changing this assumed “global average surface temperature” by 1.0 degree C.
After all, the “simplified flat-plate radiated in space by a constant sun” is the climo-catrastro-physicists most-used argument. It is from their simplified flat-plate model, that they derive the “scientific” conclusion that a doubling of CO2 over the entire flat plate produces a change temperature equal to a change in radiated energy of 3.7 watts on that flat-plate.
If the total energy exchanged into space does not change from today’s “averaged” emissivity levels and surface areas, heat loss into space from the whole sphere must be equal to the CAGW-argument for a flat plate, and must be is proportional to surface area, the surface emmissivity, and that surface’s temperature^4.
To make it simple, assume a spherical “water world” of uniform emissivity = 0.98 for water, 0.97 for ice.
Radius earth = 6371 km
Area sphere = 510.1 Mkm^2
Area hemisphere = 255.0 Mkm^2
Area tropics = lat 00 – 23.5 = 203.4 Mkm^2
Area temperate = lat 23.5 – 66.5 = 264.4 Mkm^2
Area polar ice = lat 66.5 – 90 = 42.4 Mkm^2
Conventional CAGW theory claims that the earth would be at -19 C without greenhouse gasses, and 33 deg C warmer with greenhouse gasses.
Thus theoretical CAGW whole earth Tavg = 14 degree C = 287 K.
Energy_emitted_Zone = S-B x e x Area x (Tsurf^4 – Tspace^4)
So, from a uniform water world (no land) emitting into space at 14 C =>
energy emitted = S-B * emissivity * area * T^4 =
S-B * 0.98 * 510.1 * (273 + 14)^4 = 192,292 “units”
Energy_emitted_earth = (energy_emitted_poles) + (energy_emitted_temperate) + (energy_emitted_tropics)
So,
(energy_emitted_tropics @ 20 C) = S-B * e* Area * T^4 = S-B * 0.98 * 203.4 * (20 + 273)^4 = 83,297
(energy_emitted_temperate @ 11 C) = S-B * e* Area * T^4 = S-B * 0.98 * 264.4 * (11 + 273)^4 = 95,575
(energy_emitted_polar ice @ 2 C) = S-B * e* Area * T^4 = S-B * 0.97 * 42.4 * (2 + 273)^4 = 13,337
Total energy emitted = 192,000 “units” – just like above.
Area is much, much more larger as we approach the equator, and original surface temperature is much higher. Net? The poles don’t really matter.
Thus, a rise in average temperature of 1 degree between 23.5 north and 23.5 south latitude will cool the planet about the same as a 1 degree change in surface temperature between 23.5 and 67.5, but 83,297/13,337 or 6.38 TIMES as much as a 1 degree change near the poles.
Going from 20 deg C in the tropics to 21 deg C = 1,143 more energy lost to space
Going from 2 deg C to 3 deg C at the poles = 195 change
So, make the assumption that both poles equally increase by 3, 4, or even 5 degrees for some reason (the ice-covered areas), the result is near-trivial. Increase both poles by 30 degrees C, and you STILL do not get an effect even 1/4 as much as a ONE degree change in near the equator!
Increase the tropics by 1 degree? Major impact on the total planet heat balance!
SO, have the tropics sea surface temperatures increased by 1/4 of one degree? By 1/10 of one degree?
How much of an increase in ocean temperatures = that 3 watts/m^2 (out of 1362 at top of atmosphere) to account for Trenberth’s missing heat?
RACookPE1978
Your calculations are wrong because your model is wrong.
You say
No!
The Earth is a sphere and NOT a “flat plate” and climate models are of the spherical Earth and NOT a “flat plate”.
Richard
True.
Which is why I used the “spherical” areas above, but broken into six bands: south polar, south temperate, south tropical, north tropical, north temperate, north polar.
True, I did use the typical CAGW “flat plate” global average temperature” of 14.0 degrees to figure out the total energy radiated.
Mr Alberts says that representing a dataset with a single line is meaningless. While I agree with Professor Feynman that if one has to resort to statistics to reach a result one should look for another approach, the representation of stochastic data by least-squares linear-regression trend-lines is commonplace in climatology – it occurs in several IPCC documents, for instance. As I have said before, if Mr Alberts objects to the use of statistics in climatology, he should address his concerns not to me but to the IPCC. I use the IPCC’s own methods to demonstrate that its predictions have proven false to date. One could use other methods, but the IPCC might argue with that.
I’m interested in his claim that sea level is not rising. I was excited to see that claim cited. However, when I sought more information from the Cazenave 2009 article that he cited as saying that sea level is actually falling, I found that the paper says nothing about sea level falling. In fact, it explains a physical mechanism for whey recent sea levels are indeed rising. Is this guy actually reading the papers he cites? I’m all for honest discussion, but please cite papers honestly. Every paper he cites to support the claim that sea level is not rising actually say that sea level IS rising. When claims put forth in media such as this or the sunglass guy vid seem odd, go to the original science papers.
In response to “J”, the graph of the raw data from the GRACE satellites plainly shows sea level falling somewhat. The glacial isostatic adjustment that makes it appear that sea level is rising does not in fact show anything of the kind. It shows an estimate (and much exaggerated at that) of what sea level would be doing were it not for the fact that the Earth is still recovering from the last Ice Age. The best estimate of the GRACE satellites over the period 2003-2009 is that sea level actually fell.
The Cazenave article that I quoted in the head posting shows very clearly that sea level was falling between 2003 and 2009. I also explained that the bogus curve showing sea-level rising was based on an glacial isostatic adjustment that did not in any way affect the fact that the GRACE satellites showed sea-level as falling. Other papers have also referred to and discussed this fall in sea level. Perhaps “J”, whoever it is, would be better off doing a little more reading in the literature before sneering on an inadequate basis.
Hey, there’s alot of money to made in convincing Americans of climate change or any other democratic agenda item. We’re fighting alot of people with alot of money and alot of power to enact their agenda. Facts no longer matter to the average American idiot who voted for the people in charge right now…twice. They hear it, they believe it, but we will all be consumed by it.
In this video he shows a graph “IPCC Far prediction” and “observed temperature” which “are remarkably consistent”. Does anyone know where this graph may have come from, or how true it is?
Louise Nicholas
I don’t know about that graph but Bob Tisdale has provided this article “No Matter How the CMIP5 (IPCC AR5) Models Are Presented They Still Look Bad” and I think you may want to read it.
I hope this helps.
Richard
Thanks Richard! Bob Tisdale always does a GREAT job explaining the numbers. The graph just does not agree with everything here (they show the “prediction” and “observation”being “almost” the same in 2010- so was wondering how I could explain their trickery to my warmists friends. Maybe I should ask the film makers directly! 🙂 (HA, I know I’d just be attacked for asking on any kind of warmist site! )
Lord Monckton — The linear trend for GISS LOTI between 1996.83 and 2014.67 is 0.014 Fahrenheit per annum. Since you report your trend as naught, the LOTI / Monckton ratio exceeds 1,000,000,000. You know the saying, a billion-fold here, a billion-fold there, soon folks will recognize that in this assessment: “the RSS satellite dataset, whose output is not significantly different from that of any other dataset,” you are taking the meaning of the term “significantly” for a rather long ride.
As for drought, I am sure California’s eighth of our national populace will be greatly soothed by the Hao findings and graphic evidence. Since our last encounter at Engineering.com last month, by the way…
http://www.engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticles/ArticleID/8241/One-Engineers-Perspective-on-Global-Warming.aspx#disqus_thread
…I have racked up yet my fifth personal encounter with The Warming. Your Latin for my reasoning went something like “the fallacy of the ignoramus,” as I recall, but the root of that term is “ignore.” As in, how many times is it smart to not take note of the kick of a mule? Of course, I can’t prove that California’s drought is tied to elevated CO2 and or reduced boreal ocean ice—but you can’t reasonably assert it is not. My report to Real Climate last week, illustrating my latest “argumentum ad ignorantiam,“ ran thus:
“Again, Fire.
Last summer, I commented here upon the tragedy of the group of fire-fighters who perished in New Mexico–highly trained, and betting their lives upon their capacity to assess conditions humans have never confronted before. Dr. Lindzen seems quite glib, at times, with his pat assurances about the minimal consequences of living with minor increments of surface heating. Never mind the extrapolations to an eventual recreation of the Pliocene, if not the Cretaceous, forest dwellers already know of that realm of the hitherto unknowns, in their daily lives. Today.
Two summers back, here within view of Colorado Springs’ Waldo Canyon conflagration, I vividly recall some details: a) a hoisted ember astonishingly re-igniting things across a mile wide mountain lake, breaching the NE perimeter; b) our relative humidity, the day of the blaze, was so low the am weatherman uttering “you night as well say we have none;” c) the flown-in Commander, on camera and perhaps the best mind in all the world on matters such, describing never before witnessed probabilities for live ember re-ignitions, as “perhaps two out of three;” & d) that sad day’s all-time record setting mark of 101 F., here @ 6,500 feet + elevations, in that astonishing summer where lower-48 averages jumped by more than a single degree Fahrenheit in one realm-altering excursion.
Now this report from my niece’s evacuation zone, in California’s King Fire. Dr. Schmidt’s quip about “five standard deviations” being good enough for the Higg’s boson tumbles through the mind as one ponders how many standard deviations does it take to create a “one-in-five-hundred-year drought?” A gob of em, no doubt.
More coverage: Thick smoke from King Fire makes way into Valley
Nearly 5,000 firefighters are battling the blaze.
“There are a lot of firefighters saying that this fire is producing fire conditions unlike anything that they have ever seen,” Cal Fire Battalion Chief Joe Tyler said at a community meeting Thursday night. “It’s creating its own weather overhead. Just the tinder-dry fuel conditions are igniting fuels every time – brush or timber – every time an ember drops on the ground.”
Lord Monckton’s works in climatology remind me of an event that occured early in my career. My academic degrees were in engineering but my first job was with a scientific laboratory. While working there, I heard a critique of the thinking of the laboratory’s engineers on the part of its scientists. This was that an engineer’s solution to the problem of how to generalize from specific instances was to plot the data, draw a curve through these data and extrapolate the curve.
Gradually my responsibilities shifted from engineering to scientific research. As they shifted, I came to understand and agree with the critique of the scientists. In studying the matter I found there to be no basis in science or in logic for extrapolating a curve.
Terry Oldberg
With your usual degree of perspicacity you write
Well, that explains your inability to catch a ball when trying to engage in ball games.
Richard
richardscourtney:
I’ll overlook the arrogant tone of your remark and address the implicit question in it. If a person tried to catch a ball by extrapolating a curve he or she would run up against the barrier that curves extending into the future would be of infinite number. Thus, that one can catch a ball cannot be a result of extrapolating a curve. It must be a result of having a degree of knowledge of where the ball will be in the future.
Contrary to your claim one can acquire this knowledge without time travel. One can acquire it through possession of a model that predicts the outcomes of events.
By established procedure one trains such a model on a sampling of observed events that is randomly drawn from the underlying population and tests it on a different sample. Experience suggests that the minimum number of events for construction of a statistically validated model of a system which like the climate is complex is about 150. Until recently, the number available for construction of a global warming model was nil. After the expenditure of several hundred billion US$ climatologists had failed to construct a single model that was suitable for controlling the climate.
Terry Oldberg
You write
A perfect example of Oldberg ‘logic’. According to you every ball-player is Mystic Meg and ballistics is impossible!
And earlier you wrote
No! Just no.
You need to buy a clue.
Richard
As usual, you’ve initiated your argument by a disparaging characterization of your opponent. As the character of one’s opponent is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of the conclusion of one’s argument, the use of this tactic amounts to a tacit admission of weakness in one’s own argument.
I’m unfamiliar with Mystic Meg. According to Wikipedia ballistics is “…the science of mechanics that deals with the launching, flight, behavior, and effects of projectiles, especially bullets, gravity bombs, rockets, or the like …” This science provides us with information about outcomes in the future of various events, including the event in which a a projectile misses or hits its target. That it provides this information provides the basis for control over the outcomes of these events. If a controller lacked this information it would be unable to control these outcomes.
That this is so would be obvious to a person who comprehended control theory and information theory; Together they form cybernetics. Are you unfamiliar with cybernetics?
In reference to my claim that “In order for a system to be controlled information must reach the present from the future” for you to state “No! Just no” is non-responsive. To be responsive you would have to state the principle of reasoning, observed state or natural law that is violated by this assertion.
I do not know what you mean by “You need to buy a clue.” As it is addressed to me rather than to the issue under debate it is an example of an ad hominem argument. As it is widely known that an ad hominem argument is illogical, resort to one suggests your inability to present a cogent counter-argument.
But Terry Olberg (to catch your “search phrase” … 8<)
Using a "best fit curve" IS the correct answer.
Sometimes.
When your data (the plot) DOES line "between the endpoints" of the data.
When the situation IS comparable to the researched data points.
When the point you are trying to extrapolate to (interpolate between actually!) LINES BETWEEN earlier (good and valid!) data points.
Then, and ONLY THEN, you MUST use a "plot".
Theoretical extrapolations past the data points?
Might be right.
Might not be right.
RACook78:
I don’t entirely understand the position that you wish to convey. When you state that theoretical extrapolations behind the data points might be right and might not be right I agree with you. There is no logical justification of which I am aware for the position that such an extrapolation is right.
Terry Oldberg
You begin your latest piece of astonishingly bizarre idiocy by saying to me
Please stop flattering yourself. You are NOT “my opponent”.
You are a person whose daft assertions I am trying to curtail because they lower the tone. Your comments are an irritant but fail to elevate you to the status of “opponent”.
And you say to me
Sanity is the violated “principle of reasoning, observed state or natural law”.
Richard
richardscourtney:
Your latest post will stand as evidence of your power of ratiocination or lack of same.
Terry, stop wasting your time with Courtney, he never adds anything of value to any discussion.
beckleybud:
That’s my view also. Thanks for sharing.
Oldberg and beckleybud@gmail.com
At last! The two of you are again engaging. Thankyou.
Please spend your time discussing with each other about “information obtained from the future” and why “curves cannot be extrapolated” so you stop interfering in rational discussion.
Richard
Terry Oldberg,
Neither of you have answered my question, so I’ll repeat it:
That question goes to the heart of the entire debate. Because up to now, the alarmist narrative has been that human activity is responsible for “half” or “most” of the warming, or some similar vague, unquantified assertions. [Some crazy folks say that all of the 0.7º warming fluctuation is due to human activity, but that can be dismissed as nonsense.]
The fact is that there are no empirical, testable measurements showing how many tenths, or hundreths of a degree of global warming — out of the 0.7º total global warming of the past ≈150 years — is caused by human emissions.
If no one can produce verifiable measurements showing the specific rise in global warming caused by human emissions, then the default position of scientific skeptics [the only honest kind of scientists], must be ‘zero’ based on the Null Hypothesis. If it is more than that, then you need to produce testable measurements quantifying what part of the 0.7º of total global warming human emissions are causing.
By consistently avoiding that question, it is clear that you don’t have any such measurements. Don’t feel bad about that; no one else does, either.
But it means that up to now, the alarmist crowd has been winging it. They have been riding on their measurement-free assertions for too long. Just because someone states that human activity causes global warming is not enough. Without measurements showing the degree of warming caused by human emissions, all that amounts to is an opinion.
In science, an opinion is a conjecture. To move up to being a hypothesis, we need verifiable, testable measurements. Those measurements are then used to predict. Without accurate, repeated predictions, a hypothesis fails. It is falsified. AGW has never been capable of making accurate, repeated predictions. So it is merely a conjecture.
Is it your position that we should completely alter Western civilization, and waste $trillions, on a failed conjecture?
dbstealy:
Sounds as though you missed the post in which I answered your question. I posted it Sept. 25 at 6:48 pm.
Terry
Mr Oldberg, who continues to waffle in a pseudo-academic vein, appears to be suggesting that I have been extrapolating a curve. On the contrary, I have been calculating least-squares linear-regression trends (i.e. straight lines, not curves) on stochastic data (which, by definition, cannot be reliably extrapolated.
A true man of science would understand a point that I have frequently made when plotting these graphs: that linear trends represent what has occurred, but have no predictive value at all. These graphs merely serve to demonstrate the ever-widening gulf between the predictions of the models and the observed global temperature. I agree with Mr Courtney that Mr Oldberg’s interventions here are largely meaningless and appear intended to be vexatious.
It will, of course, be useful to future generations to study the various species of feeble-mindedness adopted by those who seem reluctant to accept that the predictions of the billion-dollar brains were, and continue to be, egregiously and embarrassingly wrong.
Monckton Of Brenchley
You’ve managed to evade the technical issues that surround regression analysis by the extraordinary performance of making three personal attacks in the space of three paragraphs. Those of us who possess actual competency in the performance of scientific research don’t need to attack the characters of our opponents in attempts at creating the appearance of winning arguments. We know that such attempts are an admission of weakness and not of strength in one’s arguments.
Why are you including yourself in such a group? You demonstrate no such talent or proficiency.
philjourdan:
I see that you are one of the smear artists who have wrecked this blog.
TO – please stop projecting your deficits onto others. I do not care about your smears because I have no respect for you, so you might as well save your pettiness.
philjourdan:
There is not a way in which a characterization of one’s opponent, whether favorable or unfavorable to him, can result in a logically valid conclusion from an argument. There are, however, ways in which such a characterization can result in a logically invalid conclusion. For this reason, people who know logic and wish to reach logically valid conclusions do not build characterizations of their opponents into their arguments. As you unashamedly do so one would have to conclude that: a) you don’t know logic or b) you wisj to reach logically invalid conclusions from your arguments. In either case having you here is a burden.
For the slow reader – refer to the previous post.
@Monckton
..
Bear in mind that an eloquent ad-hominem is still an ad-hominem.
..
If that’s the best you can do in this discussion forum, you do need to learn manners.
@Courtney…
1) ” pseudo-academic vein”
2) ” intended to be vexatious. ”
3) ” various species of feeble-mindedness”
..
…
I will say that Monckton’s ad-homs are much better than yours.
beckleybud@gmail.com
Clearly, you don’t know what ad hominem is.
Literally translated it means “against the man” and is often said to be ‘playing the man and not the ball’. Simply, it is the fallacy of attempting to defeat the arguments of a person by attacking the person instead of his arguments.
You list these as ad hominem from Lord Monckton
Each of those – including #3 in context – is an assertion concerning the verbose and illogical diatribes from Oldberg. None of them is an ad hominem.
And you add to your proclamation of your ignorance by saying to me
Well, that is a daft assertion when you cannot cite an example of either Lord Monckton or me having made an ad hominem.
I again ask you and Oldberg to constrain your discussions to each other so it is easier to scroll past them.
Richard
@Courtney
..
Each of those three examples are directed AT Mr Oldberg, not to the discussion at hand. That in effect is the essence of an “ad-hom
beckleybud@gmail.com
I see that we can add ‘inadequate ability at reading comprehension to your growing list of faults.
In reply to my having written
you have replied
YOU ARE WRONG. Try to read what I wrote.
I again request that you constrain your discussions to engagement with Oldberg so it is easier to scroll past them.
Richard
@Courtney
..
I read what you wrote.
Nothing you write can change the fact that Monckton threw three ad-homs out against Oldberg.
beckleybud@gmail.com
The list of your demonstrated faults continues to grow.
You have now added inability to admit when you are wrong.
Please, please. please only engage with Oldberg so scrolling past your comments is easier.
Richard
@Courtney
…
I would like to express my appreciation for you saying “you are wrong”
…
Coming from you, it only bolster’s my confidence in being correct.
For those of us who prefer ratiocination over emotional appeal in addressing climatological issues this may be the time to move the discussion to a blog that is operated under more stringent rules of decorum.
Terry Oldberg
You write
Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help you and beckleybud@gmail.com in making the move.
Richard
Dave Peters
Please explain what – if any – relevance your diatribe on forest fires has to the above essay by Lord Monckton.
Richard
Mr Oldberg says I have evaded the technical issues that surround regression analysis. I have done no such thing. I have correctly performed the regression analysis; correctly displayed the results; correctly pointed out that least-squares trends are used by the IPCC and recommended by Prof. Jones of the University of East Anglia; and correctly pointed out that Mr Oldberg, who bizarrely claims “actual competency in the performance of scientific research”, displays little competency and much pseudo-academic waffle in a troll-like attempt to disrupt these threads. I do not know whether Mr Oldberg has ever published a reviewed paper in any learned journal: but, on the evidence of his relentlessly unconstructive and largely off-topic ramblings here, I beg leave to doubt it.
Dave Peters,
After reading your long post, I still don’t understand what you’re trying to say.
Mr Peters reports the linear trend on the GISS land and ocean temperature index as being positive. Yes, but it has been repeatedly adjusted to ensure a positive trend – see the recent piece at WUWT on this very subject. The linear trend on the RSS satellite dataset over the same period is, as I have shown it to be, vanishingly different from zero. So the difference is not between GISS and Monckton, as Mr Peters suggests, but between GISS and RSS (or, given the constant tampering that pushes the GISS trend upward for no good reason) GISS and GISS.
I prefer RSS because it correctly represents the magnitude of the Great el Nino of 1998, which caused widespread bleaching of corals worldwide, as its two predecessors in the past 300 years did. Subsequent el Ninos, shown as greater than the 1998 event, did not cause worldwide bleaching.
It is inappropriate to blame recent individual extreme-weather events on global warming, for two reasons. First, such attribution is unscientific, as IPCC has repeatedly asserted. Secondly, there has been no global warming for approaching two decades. That which has not occurred cannot have caused that which has.
beckleybud@gmail.com
You write
You have made an unsubstantiated smear.
Please state any ad hom. you think the noble Lord has made.
If that’s the best you can do in this discussion forum, you do need to ask the noble Lord to teach you some manners.
Richard
Please keep your use of “noble Lord” on your side of the pond. Here the only things we consider noble are gasses and Swedish/Norwegian prizes. We also don’t have “Lords” either.
Stop being rude. He did not demand you use the title of “lord”. Do not now be so petty as to complain about his use of the term.
beckleybud@gmail.com
In reply to my writing to you
you have replied
Clearly. you really do need lessons on manners from the noble Lord.
Over here on the best side of the pond we don’t have Senators and Presidents but we would we not be so rude as to refuse to address your Senators and Presidents appropriately for their own culture.
Richard
You may address them as you wish, but I really wish you would just take them.
Our Senators and Presidents earned their titles, they were not born into them.
…
Big difference.
Ignorance. You “earn” a living. You “earn” respect. They do neither. They merely “won” them. Pretty much how the lords of antiquity “won” their titles that are now handed down.
The only difference is that the titles here are not hereditary. But there is no “earning” them. Stop presenting the US is such a bad light.
beckleybud@gmail.com
You say
I will correct that for you.
Your Senators and Presidents were given their titles by your electoral system, they did not earn them by birth-right.
…
No difference in terms of properly addressing them according to their status and titles.
Richard
Unless I missed it, I thought the video presented both sides.
I didn’t notice any bias, and I’m looking for it.
u.k.(us)
You write
A bias is displayed when an opponents view is misrepresented and one’s own view is supported by falsehoods.
Oh! Sorry, I should have recognised why you say you didn’t notice any bias.
Richard
The bias is he only presents the warmist side of things, should be obvious. Plus, why is the skeptic in this video wearing a YouTube T-Shirt? I’s he saying don’t believe anything you see on YouTube? THIS IS A YOUTUBE VIDEO!
Why is the skeptic in this video wearing a YouTube T-Shirt? I’s he saying don’t believe anything you see on YouTube? THIS IS A YOUTUBE VIDEO!
All I can see here is lots of data saying opposing things with the same arguments. Both sides say bad science, both sides in the video and the debunking have pretty trend lines to say whatever they want? Who should be believed? Whose science is best? Where did these graphs even come from? Oxford? Harvard? Harvard says this: http://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2014/confronting-climate-change. Oxford agrees. I think I’ll listen to those Nobel prize winning Einstein super brain type people.
To me common sense alone says that it has got to be the stupidest thing imaginable to think that you can take all the natural resources out of the ground, burn them into the atmosphere which is a finite space, and at the same time quadruple the number of people in that space from say 2 billion to 7 billion (and counting) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15391515, cut down all the trees and expect that nothing bad will happen. Not a period or an era but my life time. Once it’s all burnt it’s burnt. That’s it. Game over. We don’t get another planet or second chance. Sit in a locked garage with the engine on and what happens, or do I need to draw a trend line?
David Hansen
You write
No.
Sit outside a locked garage with the engine on and what happens, or do I need to draw a trend line?
Obviously, people who think like you should live in the open with no heating or cooling. Until you provide that example there is no reason for anybody to take notice of your assertions.
Richard
David Hansen says:
Who should be believed? Whose science is best?
To state the obvious: read all sides, look at what is actually happening vs the predictions, always ask: cui bono? and try to decide for yourself with the proviso that new information may alter your thinking.
You must do that, because there are experts on both sides of the debate, and they come to different conclusions. For every Harvard, I can give you a Prof. Lindzen [author of twenty dozen peer reviewed publications, and head of M.I.T.’s atmospheric sciences]. If you place your faith in putative authorities, you will go wrong sooner or later. No one understands nearly enough to accurately predict the climate.
One of the most insidious fallacies is the Appeal to Authority, which one side of the debate uses constantly. It always gets them in trouble. And in particular, take newspaper articles with a big grain of salt. They are almost all heavily biased, and they sell papers based on the alarm they generate. That’s why they always show charts with tenth, or hundreth of a degree scales, instead of normal temperature charts like this.
Propaganda is not science, and the most successful prpaganda causes people to start nodding their heads without even realizing it. I detect that in your last paragraph. The other side of that particular debate is the fact that the entire population of the planet could easily fit inside a one-kilometre sphere, with room to spare. Yes, people emit CO2. But when all the spin is removed, we see that CO2 has risen from 3 parts in 10,000, to only 4 parts in 10,000, over a century and a half.
CO2 is still a very tiny trace gas, and it would be completely undetectable without very sensitive instruments. On net balance CO2 is beneficial, and it causes no global harm. It is measurably greening the planet. More, in fact, is better for the biosphere, which is starved of CO2. That beneficial and necessary trace gas has been more than sixteen times higher in the past, with no ill effects — and no runaway global warming.
Decide for yourself. But be aware how your emotions are being manipulated — and they are. The media is expert at that, and most decisions that are made on the basis of emotion turn out to be the wrong ones. Anyone with the least bit of maturity knows that from experience.
Finally, read WUWT. This site is one of the few that encourages all points of view. It does not censor either alarmist or skeptics’ comments, so you can read both sides. Most alarmist blogs heavily censor. For comments no more inflammatory than this one, I have been banned from Scientific American, SkepticalScience, and others. They do not like the public to view charts like the ones linked in this comment.
When opinions are censored, that is anti-science. It is propaganda; and yes, SciAm publishes climate alarmist propaganda. You wouldn’t think so based on their past reputation, but too many folks here have had the same experience that I have. It is a different world now. Moneyed special interests now control most media.
You have to dig up information, and decide for yourself. If you let others decide, whether they are Harvard or the BBC, you will be led down the wrong path as if you had a ring in your nose. So don’t trust any one source. Make up your own mind. And read, read, read.
richardscourtney September 29, 2014 at 10:12 am
beckleybud@gmail.com
In reply to my writing to you
If that’s the best you can do in this discussion forum, you do need to ask the noble Lord to teach you some manners.
you have replied
“Please keep your use of “noble Lord” on your side of the pond. Here the only things we consider noble are gasses and Swedish/Norwegian prizes. We also don’t have “Lords” either.”
Clearly. you really do need lessons on manners from the noble Lord.
The form of address ‘the noble Lord’ is properly only used in parliament.
The origin of much of the remaining debate surrounding climate change is often due to confusing the deterministic long-term effects with the stochastic short-term effects.
It’s the difference between day-trading and dollar cost averaging. It’s the difference between weighing yourself hourly vs weighing yourself weekly or monthly to tease out the effect of diet & exercise from random variation.
Respectfully, I’d like to point out the errors in the WUWT article that is related to the difference between short term regional variations that comprise the weather and longer term (>30 yr) global variations that govern climate changes.
“Overall, temperatures are increasing”.
The WUWT article cites a IPCC discrepancy between 1990 and more recent linear trend projections. It cites a short-term temperature plateau where the latter years were governed by La Nina weather patterns (air to ocean heat transfer). The WUWT article further cites past warming periods governed by non-GHG forcing (i.e. greater solar insolation or reduced volcanic activity) to demonstrate that our current GHG forced warming is natural.
The essential WUWT argument is similar to the following:
‘The Black Death in the middle ages is estimated to have killed more of Europe’s population than World War 2. This means that deaths during World War 2 were not unusual, and hence must be due to natural causes, not man-made’
But, despite all of the above, the mean global temperature increased by 0.8 deg C in just one century. That’s undisputed. This is an unprecedented level of heat flux compared to naturally occurring warnings in the past. That means 4.17 ×10^18 J of energy entered the atmospheric part of a climate system comprised of air, ocean and cryosphere. The atmosphere is obviously the most sensitive to temperature variations due to air’s low heat capacity. The rest of the heat went into the oceans.
The PETM extinction event represents a “case study” for global warming and massive carbon input to Earth’s surface. In this event, the global mean temp rose 6 deg C within 20,000 years.
That’s 0.8 deg C over 2666 years or > 20-fold SLOWER than contemporary GHG forcing.
Sources: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PETM#Evidence_for_global_warming
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PETM#Comparison_with_today.27s_climate_change
IF THERE WERE NO GLOBAL WARMING then I would have expected that the WUWT article would have disputed the positive trend due to the entire 165-year instrumental record. Or dispute evidence of ocean heat content rise. Or dispute observations of diminishing global ice mass. Or dispute any sea level rise despite tide gauges and satellite data.
“Storms, droughts, floods, ocean acidification, sea-level rise”:
WUWT article cites the IPCC report perhaps implying that AGW impact is diminished.
“As for floods, the same report, confirmed by the Fifth Assessment Report, says there is no evidence of any global increase in the frequency, intensity, or duration of floods.”
But the IPCC AR5 identifies INCREASED risk due to effects of global warming:
https://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/IPCC_WG2AR5_SPM_Approved.pdf
“The key risks that follow, all of which are identified with high confidence, span sectors and regions.”
i. Risk of death, injury, ill-health, or disrupted livelihoods in low-lying coastal zones and small island developing states and other small islands, due to storm surges, coastal flooding, and sea-level rise.
ii. Risk of severe ill-health and disrupted livelihoods for large urban populations due to inland flooding in some regions.
iii. Systemic risks due to extreme weather events leading to breakdown of infrastructure networks and critical services such as electricity, water supply, and health and emergency services.
iv. Risk of mortality and morbidity during periods of extreme heat, particularly for vulnerable urban populations and those working outdoors in urban or rural areas.
v. Risk of food insecurity and the breakdown of food systems linked to warming, drought, flooding, and precipitation variability and extremes, particularly for poorer populations in urban and rural settings.
vi. Risk of loss of rural livelihoods and income due to insufficient access to drinking and irrigation water and reduced agricultural productivity, particularly for farmers and pastoralists with minimal capital in semi-arid regions.
vii. Risk of loss of marine and coastal ecosystems, biodiversity, and the ecosystem goods, functions, and services they provide for coastal livelihoods, especially for fishing communities in the tropics and the Arctic.
viii. Risk of loss of terrestrial and inland water ecosystems, biodiversity, and the ecosystem goods, functions, and services they provide for livelihoods.
WUWT article “As for sea-level rise, the GRACE gravitational-recovery satellites showed sea-level falling from 2003-2009 (Cazenave et al., 2009).”
This is an example how short term data (6-years?), GOVERNED BY NATURAL VARIATION (WEATHER), was interpreted misleadingly. I would be careful about cherry picking a 6-year timeframe during La Nina conditions.
Source: scroll to time point 20:35 in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hin_rt3KqSI&feature=youtube_gdata_player
SUMMARY: According to Cazenave, satellite altimetry shows a 21-year sea level rise trend of +3.2 +/- 0.4 mm / yr (1993-2014), but when she compares the two decadal trends within the 21-year trend, two rates emerge: 1994-2002 (3.7 mm/yr) and 2003-2011 (2.4 mm/yr). She then goes on to unambiguously show that the 2003-2011 timeframe was governed by La Nina conditions, which are characterized by relatively low levels of precipitation. The work was confirmed by GRACE satellite data.
WUWT article said “The Envisat satellite showed sea-level rising by a dizzying one-eighth of an inch during its eight-year lifetime from 2004-2012.”
The following two rates of change are equivalent:
SIGNIFICANT: My fat uncle gained 100 lbs (45.4 Kg) during the week (605000 seconds).
SEEMS NEGLIGIBLE: This is equivalent to a ‘dizzying’ 0.075 g per second. Don’t be deceived by manipulated magnitudes.
WUWT article: “Sea level is probably not rising any faster in this century than it did in the last: and, since there has been no global warming for almost 18 years,”
The above statement is inconsistent with the following:
WIKIPEDIA: “Sea level acceleration up to the present has been about 0.01 mm/yr² and appears to have started at the end of the 18th century. Sea level rose by 6 cm during the 19th century and 19 cm in the 20th century.”
WIKIPEDIA: “Evidence for this includes geological observations, the longest instrumental records and the observed rate of 20th century sea level rise. For example, geological observations indicate that during the last 2,000 years, sea level change was small, with an average rate of only 0.0–0.2 mm per year.”
Source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise#Short-term_and_periodic_changes
WUWT: “there is no particular reason why it should be rising at all.”
Rising ocean heat content:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/index.html
and diminishing land ice mass:
“In Greenland, the ice mass loss increased from 137 Gt/yr in 2002–2003 to 286 Gt/yr in 2007–2009, i.e., an acceleration of −30 ± 11 Gt/yr2 in 2002–2009.
In Antarctica the ice mass loss increased from 104 Gt/yr in 2002–2006 to 246 Gt/yr in 2006–2009, i.e., an acceleration of −26 ± 14 Gt/yr2 in 2002–2009.”
All this ice mass loss was happening during the so called ‘global warming hiatus’. Note ice MASS decrease in Gigatons. Not inches, not variable sea ice extent in Sq Km.
Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009GL040222/abstract;jsessionid=5CC63C213C94CF82C29D3519069FF8C7.f03t03
“Not only Arctic but also Antarctic sea ice volume is declining”:
WUWT article: “Not a good moment to run this argument, given that satellites do not do a very good job of estimating ice thickness, but are at present showing a record high sea-ice extent in the Antarctic, a substantial recovery of Arctic ice even in the summer, and no appreciable change in global sea-ice extent throughout the 35-year satellite record.”
But global ice MASS is declining at an accelerated rate.
You Tube: “We add 30 GTe CO2 each year, but Nature adds 780 GTe: …however, Nature also takes away 780 GTe, so our net effect is to increase CO2 in the air.”
WUWT article: “Not quite right. We emit 35 GTe CO2 each year at present, but only half of this remains in the air: the rest is scrubbed out by rain or taken up by the ocean, trees and plants. Nor is it wise to assume a pre-existing balance of CO2 sources and sinks. Close examination shows considerable annual variations in the net CO2 increase in the air, suggesting that our monotonic influence is a rather small part of the picture.”
Roundly Debunked? Humans emit 30-35 Gt CO2 per year and the ocean is gaining most of it so that the current rate of increase in the atmosphere is 2 Gt/year….which is unprecedented for at least 800,000 years. Not sure what’s being ‘debunked’.
You Tube Video “CO2 lagged temperature change in the paleoclimate, but it acted as a reinforcing or positive feedback once the Milankovich cycles had triggered temperature change, amplifying it 9-fold”.
WUWT article claimed: “Yet today, to the nearest tenth of one percent, there is no CO2 in the atmosphere at all.”
Yet photosynthesis still exists despite that arbitrary round off and without CO2 water on earth would be frozen solid at -18 C.
Let me better illustrate WUWT’s logic flaw: Fish respiration depends on oxygen whose solubility in water is 8 ppm. That’s 0.0008%. Using WUWT logic: ‘To the nearest thousandth of one percent, there is no oxygen in the oceans’. Do you see the flaw in that construction?
Hanzo
I’d like to point out the errors in the response from Katatetori Hanzo (KH) to my posting pointing out specific errors in a climate propaganda video.
KH maladroitly and inaptly restates my argument that over 25 years the world has warmed at half the central rate predicted with “substantial confidence” by the IPCC and by the models on which it imprudently relies. The modelers’ “substantial confidence” was substantially misplaced. In fact, the warming since 1990 has fallen below the entire interval of IPCC warming projections made in the First Assessment Report that year. No amount of wriggling will alter that fact. The models predicted double the warming that has occurred. That is no small error, and no amount of excuses will make it go away.
KH mistakenly says that the warming of 0.8 K over the past century is “an unprecedented level of heat flux compared to naturally-occurring warmings in the past”. Here, KH makes two mistakes: first, the elementary mistake of confusing heat flux with temperature change; secondly, the further elementary mistake of overlooking the actual data. The rate of warming in the century from 1663-1762 in Central England (and – subject to the usual cautions – probably globally, since the CET record tracks well with the global record where they coincide) was as great that for the past 100 years. And, at the end of the Younger Dryas 11,400 years ago, temperature in Antarctica rose by 5 K in just 3 years. 20th-century warming is far from unprecedented: indeed, according to the temperature reconstruction in Ljungqvist (2010), it has two precedents in the past 1200 years.
KH says “The rest of the heat went into the oceans.” We are unable to measure changes in ocean temperature accurately enough to establish whether any such thing has occurred, and, given that there has been no global warming for getting on for 2 decades, it is unlikely, to say the least.
KH makes the mistake of citing CreepyMedia as though it were an authority. Its bias in the matter of climate change makes it even more unreliable on this subject than on everything else.
KH says there is “evidence of ocean heat content rise”. Yet, insofar as we can measure it, the rate of increase since the ARGO bathythermographs came onstream is about one-sixth of that which the IPCC had predicted. It is well within natural variability.
And, contrary to KH’s implication, sea level in the past decade or so has barely risen, if at all.
KH also makes the elementary mistake of confusing past measurements with future predictions. I had written: “As for floods, the [special] report [on extreme weather], confirmed by the Fifth Assessment Report, says there is no evidence of any global increase in the frequency, intensity, or duration of floods.” KH disputed this on the ground that the IPCC predicts future sea-level rise. But its predictions are questionable because they tend to be exaggerated and because it has a self-evident vested interest in making more of the influence of Man on the climate than is scientifically appropriate.
KH says the IPCC thinks small islands in the Pacific will be harmed by sea-level rise. In fact, the last places on Earth to suffer from sea-level rise will be small islands, because corals grow to meet the light, so that as sea level rises they grow with it.
KH says there is a risk from inland flooding in some reasons. IPCC, however, says there is no evidence that flooding is actually getting worse, notwithstanding a century of global warming.
KH worries about extreme weather, but IPCC’s report on extreme-weather events says there is little evidence that recent extreme weather is exceptional, and still less evidence that it was caused by Man.
KH predicts more people will suffer from extreme heat. But one must also allow for the fact that far fewer people will suffer from extreme cold, which is worse.
KH predicts disruption to food supplies by warming (not happening), drought (the area under drought has been falling for 30 years), floods (not happening any more than they used to) and rainfall (ditto).
KH says drinking and irrigation water will become scarce. They always have been, and there is no evidence of increased drought. Indeed, elementary science would lead us to expect that a warmer atmosphere will also be wetter.
KH says marine and coastal ecosystems will be lost, but provides no evidence of why they should be lost when the rate of global warming is half what was predicted, and when the rate of ocean warming is one-sixth of what was predicted.
KH says inland water ecosystems will suffer because of global warming, when the reverse is more likely to be true.
KH challenges my contention that the GRACE gravitational-recovery satellites showed sea-level falling from 2003-2009 (Cazenave et al., 2009). He says this was “cherry-picking” (a favorite excuse of those who notice that their extremist predictions have not come to pass). But he omits to mention my reference to the confirming evidence from the ENVISAT satellite over nearly all the same period, showing practically no sea-level rise.
KH does not like my statement that “Sea level is probably not rising any faster in this century than it did in the last.” However, his only “authorities” for challenging it are two quotes from CreepyMedia. Why should sea level be rising at present, when the world is not warming?
KH says ice mass loss from Greenland is accelerating: but that is at odds with papers such as Johannessen et al., 2005, which showed ice mass as accumulating in the center of the land mass, and declining only at the margins.
KH also tries to maintain there has been ice-mass loss from Antarctica. But why would that be, given that Antarctica has cooled – or at least not warmed – over the past 30 years?
KH does not like my saying that “Satellites do not do a very good job of estimating ice thickness, but are at present showing a record high sea-ice extent in the Antarctic, a substantial recovery of Arctic ice even in the summer, and no appreciable change in global sea-ice extent throughout the 35-year satellite record.” His reference in purported refutation of this statement (which was evidenced by the University of Illinois global ice-extent record): YouTube.
And oh, how KH was upset at my (correct) statement that “Today, to the nearest tenth of one percent, there is no CO2 in the atmosphere at all.” Well, the concentration is 0.04%. Do the math. KH appears to believe that without CO2 the world would be at a mean surface temperature of –18 K. This is a common error, omitting the fact that water vapor is the chief contributor to the greenhouse effect.
The sources I cited were nearly all reviewed sources. Those cited by KH were nearly all CreepyMedia or YouTube – both largely controlled by the political Left. KH makes the mistake of assuming that predictions by such sources are to be treated as Gospel, when the truth is that even the predictions of the IPCC have proven to be extravagant exaggerations, and the predictions of CreepyMedia and YouTube tend to be still more extravagant.
Whether KH likes it or not, the predictions of IPCC have proven wildly exaggerated. That is a fact, and no amount of diversionary tactics will alter that fact. Of course determined and well-funded efforts will now be made to challenge those of us who have pointed out the errors of the IPCC’s ways. But the facts speak for themselves, and muddying the waters by saying that predictions are to be preferred to the facts will not convince anyone.
Monckton of Brenchley September 25, 2014 at 9:30 pm
Mr Erren has difficulty in understanding the head posting, and in understanding the atmospheric CO2 budget. The reason why only half of the CO2 we emit to air remains there is that there is an additional sink no accounted for by the models (which cannot explain the missing sink). The missing sink is rain.
Hardly, rain in contact with pristine air is limited by Henry’s Law to the amount it can take up, at 350ppm it’s in equilibrium at pH 5.6 (1X10^5 mol/l CO2) so it’s a self limiting process.
Annual global rainfall is about 400×10^12 m^3/yr
So the maximum removal of CO2 by precipitation is 400×10^12 x 1.0×10^5 x 12 gmC/yr
i.e. 4.8 GtC/yr most of which ends up in the ocean where it is balanced via Henry’s Law so rain does not constitute a mystery ‘missing sink’.
Sadly, I actually enjoy that channel but his last big video about global warming was sponsored by Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project. Funny enough, he actually blasted sites, like this, for being funded by vested special interests. Hilarious.
[snip – waaaaayyyyyyyy too long, longer than some of the longest essays on WUWT it dominates the entire page, and that’s not cool. Break it up into smaller digestible parts. Or not, I don’t care. But do see the new post on trolls – Anthony]
1) It is misleading to exaggerate the significance of a 22-year surface temperature data set (1990-2012) within an unambiguous >130-year data containing other short-term temp plateaux. It is the nadir of absent mindedness to climb stairs and then forget that one has gained altitude at each step.
2) It is misleading to criticize one IPCC assessment out of four when in actuality, the IPCC projections are accurate within the uncertainty ranges cited below:
“The IPCC FAR ‘Best’ BAU projected rate of warming from 1990 to 2012 was 0.25°C per decade. However, that was based on a scenario with higher emissions than actually occurred. When accounting for actual GHG emissions, the IPCC average ‘Best’ model projection of 0.2°C per decade is within the uncertainty range of the observed rate of warming (0.15 ± 0.08°C) per decade since 1990.”
“The IPCC SAR Projection (1990-2012): 0.14°C per decade. Observed: 0.15 ± 0.08°C (within uncertainty range).
“The IPCC TAR Projection (1990-2012): 0.16°C per decade. Observed: 0.15 ± 0.08°C (within uncertainty range).
“The IPCC AR4 Projection (2000-2012): 0.18°C per decade. Observed: 0.06 ± 0.16°C (within uncertainty range).
Source: http://www.skepticalscience.com/ipcc-overestimate-global-warming.htm
3) It is misleading to cite Central England as a proxy for global mean temperature variations, since it represents less than 0.05% of Earth’s total surface area, and its regional climate is sensitively impacted by the Gulf stream.
Surface area of Earth: 196,900,000 sq miles
Surface area of United Kingdom: 94,058 sq miles
100 * (94058 / 196900000 ) = 0.05 %
4) It is misleading to assume an abrupt temperature change of 5K in 3 years as anything other than a regional anomaly as the associated heat flux is enough to melt ALL of the ice in Antarctica.
5) It is misleading to assume that maxima & minima in the Ljungqvist reconstruction represents global mean temperature variation.
That the maxima and minima were regional and not global was shown in IPCC TAR: “The IPCC Third Assessment Report from 2001 summarized research at that time, saying “…current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this time frame, and the conventional terms of ‘Little Ice Age’ and ‘Medieval Warm Period’ appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries”.
Source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period#Globally
Source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Description_of_the_Medieval_Warm_Period_and_Little_Ice_Age_in_IPCC_reports#2007_report_.28AR4.29
Here is a comparison of heat fluxes assuming the following warmings were global in scope:
0.8K over 100 years (AGW Heat Flux-Global GHG Forcing):
= 41.7 x 10^18 J / year
0.6 K over 500 years (Ljungqvist MWP Heat Flux-Regional Solar forcing)
= 6.25 x 10^18 J / year
6K over 20,000 years (PETM extinction Heat Flux-Global GHG Forcing):
= 1.5 x 10^18 J / year
5K over 3 years (YD Heat Flux-Unknown Forcing):
= 8683 x 10^18 J / year = 8.68 x 10^21 J / year
6) It is misleading to assert unspecified uncertainty while ignoring the actual statistical error analysis and have taken into account the power of >3000 globally positioned Argo buoys (each having a measurement precision of ± 0.002 K) with multiple sampling. Von Schuckmann & Le Traon (2011) calculated an an uncertainty of ± 0.1 W/m^2 for an positive ocean heat trend of +0.55 W/m^2 for just a 5-year data set.
7) It is as misleading to exaggerate the significance of a 6-year sea-level trend (2003-2009) that was influenced by low rates of precipitation (La nina) as it is misleading to exaggerate the 8-year sea-level trend (1994-2002: 3.7 mm/yr) that was influenced by high rates of precipitation (1998 El Niño).
Source: Source: scroll to time point 20:35 in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hin_rt3KqSI&feature=youtube_gdata_player
8) It is misleading to portray any interannual climate variation as a recovery.
9) It is misleading to selectively use thickness or area extent as proxies for ice mass when the ice mass data is available and is diminishing globally.
10) It is misleading to assume that 0.04% carbon dioxide is trivial when the total atmospheric GHG loading is a mere ~1% (including water vapor), yet that’s enough to keep us +33 K warmer than otherwise.
Hanzo