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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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