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.
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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 @ur momisugly 20 C) = S-B * e* Area * T^4 = S-B * 0.98 * 203.4 * (20 + 273)^4 = 83,297
(energy_emitted_temperate @ur momisugly 11 C) = S-B * e* Area * T^4 = S-B * 0.98 * 264.4 * (11 + 273)^4 = 95,575
(energy_emitted_polar ice @ur momisugly 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 @ur momisugly 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.