We recently presented and discussed modeled and observed global surface temperatures in absolute terms. See the post On the Elusive Absolute Global Mean Surface Temperature – A Model-Data Comparison. The WattsUpWithThat cross post is here. Yesterday, Willis Eschenbach at WUWT furnished EXCEL spreadsheets that included the outputs of climate model simulations of global surface temperatures in absolute terms. See Willis’s post CMIP5 Model Temperature Results in Excel.
Hot on the heels of those two posts comes a discussion at RealClimate of modeled absolute global surface temperatures, authored by Gavin Schmidt, the head of the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS). Gavin’s post is Absolute temperatures and relative anomalies. Please read it in its entirety. I believe you’ll find it interesting. (Thanks, Gavin.)
Here are two quotes from it to get the discussion here rolling. First, Gavin Schmidt wrote (my boldface):
Second, the absolute value of the global mean temperature in a free-running coupled climate model is an emergent property of the simulation. It therefore has a spread of values across the multi-model ensemble. Showing the models’ anomalies then makes the coherence of the transient responses clearer. However, the variations in the averages of the model GMT values are quite wide, and indeed, are larger than the changes seen over the last century, and so whether this matters needs to be assessed.
Second quote (my boldface):
Most scientific discussions implicitly assume that these differences aren’t important i.e. the changes in temperature are robust to errors in the base GMT value, which is true, and perhaps more importantly, are focussed on the change of temperature anyway, since that is what impacts will be tied to. To be clear, no particular absolute global temperature provides a risk to society, it is the change in temperature compared to what we’ve been used to that matters.
See, I told you you’d find Gavin’s post interesting.
Enjoy your holidays.
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“the change in temperature compared to what we’ve been used to”… is what matters . . Dead on . . this is the crux of the problem, and every winter, without fail, it hits home . . . And the older I get the harder it hits . . . Up to 80 degrees fahrenheit on summer days and down to less than 30 degrees in January and February . . . but, still, most of us cope . . . Warmer winters? Bring them on . .
He seems to return us to where we were when I first started taking more notice of the topic in the 1990s. I recall hearing/reading many times that what mattered was not really the absolute temperature but the rate of increase.
And here we are a quarter of a century later, and the temperatures are not increasing rapidly. Goodnight Vienna.
It’s constantly a moving target with these guys. Once one of their explanations fails they come up with another.
Did you mean “you’ll find it interesting” as an example of scientists fine-tuning their ideas about climate and acknowledging the limits of a particular model’s applicability? Or did you mean to suggest that because the model can’t be applied as a universal blanket it’s completely invalid and the “bad guys” were finally admitting this?
In your second cherry-picked quote, the author says “no particular absolute global temperature provides a risk to society, it is the change in temperature compared to what we’ve been used to that matters.” This seems like common sense, if a global number is an average. It is easy to imagine that plus 5C, for example, might not be as devastating to human society in the Sahara as it would be on the Himalayan glaciers.
Anyone who expects “the temperature we’ve been used to” to never change, has no common sense. The question is, are changes we’re seeing due primarily, or even measurably, to human industrial activity. We simply don’t know. CO2 went up, but temps went up and down, and even remained static in many places. Therefore we have no evidence of any even minor impact due to CO2. We have no evidence as to whether today’s temps are unprecedented in any way, none.
But IS that really the question? Or is arguing about the cases of change a way to justify doing nothing? If glacial ice is melting at the headwaters of river systems billions of people depend on for water, for example, does it matter whether it’s AGW or natural variation? Shouldn’t we, in either case, think about the possible effects and prepare?
No one ‘gets used to’ an average temperature. If the high for the day is ‘comfortable’ then it is too cold at night and vise versa.
I travel around and the max temps I deal with are over 40 C and the minima well below -30 C. I am not ‘used to’ any of them. I just deal with it.
The idea that ‘rapid change’ is a threat is simple unjustifiable. The changes from summer to winter and back are far more rapid. Mosquitoes and elephants and polar bears survive. Temperatures change and it is just not very alarming. Deal with it.
danallosso,
RE: If glacial ice is melting at the headwaters of river systems billions of people depend on for water, for example, does it matter whether it’s AGW or natural variation?
First point is that yes it does matter whether it is AGW or natural variation, if the proposed solutions are focused on AGW. It matters where you decide to spend your resources. Do you address the water issue or do you address a “suspected” root cause that may or may not exist? If you go the first route, it doesn’t matter the cause. If you go the second, you have screwed billions of people if you are wrong.
Second point is that you need to be careful in using the glacial headwater example, since knowledgable people know that for some of the most heavily populated basins below glaciers, it is seasonal rainfall, not glacial melt which supplies the majority of fresh water.
Danallosso, those glaciers have receded and advanced thousands if not millions of times. We simply have no evidence that now is any different than the countless times before. If we can’t adapt to an ever changing world, then we’re doomed. Purposefully crippling our ability to adapt by crippling economies will doom us faster than a speeding glacier. We should prepare, by adapting, becoming more resilient, not less, by reducing our access to dependable energy.
Note “cherry-picked quote” in above comment. This fellow has to reach way down to fetch a sneer at the poster Tisdale.
danallosso
When glacial ice melts, it becomes water. Under the influence of gravity, it flows downhill to a convenient spot where thirsty humans can scoop it up and drink it. If glacial ice does not melt, the people have to hike up the hill and break off bits of ice to chew on. Most people find this exciting the first few times, but it becomes tedious.
Each year, it snows (to varying degree) on the glacier. Some of that snow becomes water the following summer and some of it doesn’t melt for 400 years, but eventually it melts and makes its way to the ocean, carrying giga-buckets of calcium and magnesium that rush to to the rescue of the beleaguered molluscs.
Glaciers do not irrigate fields. Glacial melt does.
I’m really curious to know what a non-cherry-picked quote would be. Would it be some random selection or the entire text?
Or, is the term “cherry-pick” such a reflex utterance that it doesn’t actually have an actual meaning?
Yes, mebbe, as long as not too much melts.
Re: cherry picking, since you asked. Generally when we quote, we try to accurately represent what the author said. Then if we disagree, we make our own counterargument. In the case of this article, the author seemed to be saying that although flawed, the model was useful in some circumstances. The cherry picking involved grabbing a couple of lines out of context and suggesting that the author’s words somehow inadvertently prove your point, which was clearly not his intent.
If you think an author is inconsistent and actually does argue against his own point, you need to demonstrate that, not just throw up a couple of quotes and yell “gotcha!”
danalloso,
If, as you say, “too much melts”, the timing of the arrival of the water in the valley below might change but, without an alteration of the precipitation volume, the same amount of water flows down the hill.
Initially, of course, as the old ice is melting there is an abundance of water beyond annual precipitation, but this is precisely the melting that you deplore.
Dearth of water can only arise through a reduction of rainfall/snowfall or an inability to store the inconveniently delivered water.
As for quotes; they are what the author said, by definition. These were paragraphs, not partial sentences preceded and followed by ellipses.
Haven’t we had eighteen years to get used to the current temperature?
Thanks, Bob. Very interesting Schmidt talk.
I found Aaron Lewis comment very interesting too:
“Ok, the models have done a pretty good job of estimating global temperature anomalies. And, it is nice to be able to give the modelers kudos for a win. (We were not so sure, running card decks in the basement of NCAR in 1964.) However, are GLOBAL temperature anomalies useful in the real world? Did they warn us of the 2007 Arctic sea ice retreat? Did it warn us of the ongoing Antarctic glacier (PIG) bottom melt? All of the real impacts and effects of AGW are local events – weather as it were. People have died in heat waves affected by AGW. However, those people died from the local temperature, and not the average global temperature.”
All climate, weather, is local in its effects. This I’m learning from Jim Steele (Landscapes & Cycles. 2013).
Steele attacks papers on local populations that base their findings on global temperatures and shows how the local temperatures for those studies had in fact been dropping.
Merry Christmas for all!
A few points to combat climate alarm and any futile de-carbonisation policies
The last millennium 1000 – 2000 AD was the coldest of the whole of our currently benign Holocene epoch. The Holocene epoch is now about 10,000 years long and coming towards its end. Then there will be an inevitable slide into the next real ice age, whether in this millennium or the next.
According to ice core records, the Holocene “optimum” some 8000 years ago was about 3degC warmer than at present. Prior to that the previous Eemian interglacial epoch peaked at a much higher temperature than has ever occurred in our current epoch. Hippopotami thrived in the Rhine Delta.
The world survived these overheating “disasters”.
see
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/2014/09/12/the-temperature-context/
Richard Tol confirms that any modest negative effects of warming could only ever begin at ~+2degC.
And anyway +2degC can never be attained with added CO2 because of the diminishing effectiveness of CO2 as a greenhouse gas with its increasing concentration.
see:
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/2014/09/13/the-diminishing-influence-of-increasing-carbon-dioxide-co2-on-temperature/
The UK is currently producing ~1.6% of world CO2 emissions, so any UK efforts at de-carbonisation could never have any discernible impact on global temperature. The annual growth of emissions from China outstrips UK emissions regularly.
see:
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/2014/09/13/the-record-of-recent-man-made-co2-emissions-1965-2013/
And take note of what sensible academics have said in formal testimony:
Professor Judith Curry’s of Georgia Institute of Technology Congressional testimony 14/1/2014:
“Motivated by the precautionary principle to avoid dangerous anthropogenic climate change, attempts to modify the climate through reducing CO2 emissions may turn out to be futile. The stagnation in greenhouse warming observed over the past 15+ years demonstrates that CO2 is not a control knob on climate variability on decadal time scales.”
Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT UK parliament committee testimony 28/1/2014 on IPCC AR5:
“Whatever the UK decides to do will have no impact on your climate, but will have a profound impact on your economy. (You are) Trying to solve a problem that may not be a problem by taking actions that you know will hurt your economy.”
Thanks, Ed. Judith Curry’s and Richard Lindzen’s testimonies are important.
Merry Christmas!
Gee I wonder how the people in Calgary have managed their Chinook’s over the years .Do they have a life expediency lower then the rest of the country ? They never seemed to have ever worried about them . Maybe Lew and Cook should do a paper on the subject ,just so we can have a consensus . A make work projects of sorts .
Merry Christmas everyone .
Terry, I agree with you there. How have the poor birds managed to deal with. 30 deg C change in 12 hrs?
I think there is no day of the calendar that it NEVER snowed in Edmonton. Yet the trees, forest life and farming carry on decade after decade. Whether anomaly, absolute temp, peaks high or low – it just isn’t supporting an alarming narrative.
Terry,
You may have a point, but you’ll note the total absence of pachyderms and marsupials.
In fact, most of the many species of fauna around the world are not to be seen in Calgary. This is probably due to the extreme fluctuations in air temperature on all scales. I barely survive the visits that I occasionally make.
a most interesting reply on RealScience- #6 Aaron Lewis a few quotes:
“However, are GLOBAL temperature anomalies useful in the real world? Did they warn us of the 2007 Arctic sea ice retreat? Did it warn us of the ongoing Antarctic glacier (PIG) bottom melt? All of the real impacts and effects of AGW are local events – weather as it were. People have died in heat waves affected by AGW. However, those people died from the local temperature, and not the average global temperature.”
“In my culture, the most learned men debated, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” for centuries. I have come to see modeling global temperature anomalies as a similar pastime. Modeling global temperature anomalies is just a way of delaying answering the real questions of how local conditions will affect the people and infrastructure at that location.”
This hits the nail on the head. Small changes in local temperatures can have big effects on local results- 2in. of rain vs. 2 ft. of snow, or in the summer no rain at all vs. a gulley-washer thunderstorm. Local effects don’t necessarily average out year to year or over distance. Phoenix and Savannah are at the same latitude and won’t respond the same way to small changes in temperature.
The problem, though, is that we have no idea how local weather works and how it interacts not only within the region, but how regions interact with each other, negating or amplifying events. On top of that, we don’t know how much of the change is a product of natural variation versus man-made influence. We also don’t know WHAT influences man has had or will have. We have observable effects, like the UHI, which we can’t usefully link to weather in most places and we have effects that are mathematically possible, like the CO2 link to temperature but we can’t usefully link to weather or temperature.
The time scales that we have useful specific data on is extremely short – upto 150 years or thereabouts at the best sites. The California drought, for instance, is occurring in a region that swings between lush and arid. Some historical droughts are estimated to have lasted up to 800 years. So how do we relate this current drought incident back to CO2 that _may_ have slightly accelerated a warm oscillating (warming, cooling, warming, cooling) temperature trend found in the last 150 years?
We can’t. We simply do not have enough data for a comprehensive statistical analysis of natural cyclic weather patterns that could extend for 300 (MWP) to 500 (LIA) years in length. We only have upto 2 complete 60 year cycles for the short term oscillations we’ve identified. Our world-wide data sets are even more temporally constrained – only since the 60s for the longest data sets and as you get more comprehensive/extensive data sets, the time we’ve had them goes down. The ARGO buoy system, for instance, has only been online since 2003/2004.
Metaphorically, we are looking at the headlamp on a vehicle and declaring with certainty that the entire car is made from Aluminum – when the data indicates that the filament is Tungsten.
Ehhh. Too strong. Not “No idea” just not enough of an idea to plan more than 7-10 days in advance of. 🙂
To extend your metaphor, we’re looking at the headlamp of an oncoming vehicle and arguing over what it’s made of rather than getting put of the way.
…we’re looking at the headlamp of an oncoming vehicle and arguing over what it’s made of rather than getting put of the way.
I am getting SO tired of these wild-eyed scare statements. They are nonsense.
The fact is that there is nothing either unusual or unprecedented happening. Nothing. What we oberve today has happened in the past, repeatedly, and to a much greater degree — and before human emissions were a factor.
This constant crying of “WOLF!!” is the reason the public is starting to point and laugh at the climate alarmist crowd. They believe it’s the end of the world — but as Chicken Little found out, it is nothing but a tiny acorn.
Not even that, really. There is simply NO scientific evidence showing that we need to be alarmed about anything. So please stop emitting the preposterous scare statements. They only prove that you are a foolish person.
Looso is loosing $ on his blog. His reaction will be to ratchet up his alarmism out of desperation. Then one day he will disappear, like the rest.
Looso, look around. All of the alarmist blogs are winking out, one by one. It’s the pause, looso, and now it is fixing to get colder. Cold and hungry?
danallosso,
You have it wrong.
We are looking at the on-coming light and arguing whether it is a train or some guy on a bicycle. Or that yes it is the train, but it’s the 7:30 Express which comes through on a regular schedule.
Or there are those like me who argue that in either case, the solution is pretty simple – just step a couple of feet off the track. Those who are sure it is a train and want us to rip up the tracks and build a parallel track for a yet to be developed renewable light weight train that won’t hurt anyone if hit by it are the ones who need to provide hard proof.
danallosso December 24, 2014 at 10:55 am
That’s your crack headache you’re looking at !
danallosso,
Prove that the oncoming headlamp is a vehicle and not a firefly without having any data on what a “vehicle” or “firefly” is.
It’s a shame that scientific papers are written in fancy gobbledygook. Translated to simple English, Gavin makes a couple of good points. We can’t say that one particular global mean absolute temperature is better than another one. However, if the global anomaly is rising at some very fast rate, e.g., 6 degrees C per century, then we have a big problem.
Not necessarily. A great deal depends on the period you use to establish your trend. 6°C per century extrapolated from 10 years of actual data does not impress me. But even if we grant a true century-long rise at that rate it does not follow that we have a “big problem”; we have rather a climate shift for which we have no previous historical experience to serve as a guide. Which means models based strictly on theory (i.e., not validated against any actual experience) probably are not worth much, and really just amount to taking counsel of your fears.
In the history of climate, 100 years is a very short time. In human civilization it is a rather long time. Unless we have a general collapse, it’s a very safe bet in 100 years our ability to adapt will have increased considerably more than the challenges caused by a 6° C rise.
This “adaptation” question bothers me a lot. If I see 6 deg warming, or cooling….in most of the US I can drive 600 miles north, or south. Presto – Adaptation. If you live in a temperate climate, there is a slightly warmer or cooler temperate climate that the local population is fully adapted to. Whats the big deal? Farmers will have to plant different seeds, or change their calendars a week or so. we spend a little more, or a little less on Heat and AC? We are a little more or less comfortable on Friday nite at the football game?, or need to play most hockey on indoor rinks?. More storms? So i have a ,02% greater (or less) chance of being hit by a hurricane.
My preparations are identical, my insurance may vary a few dollars. A little less rain in Kansas? I’m already irrigating. A little more in Louisana. The pumps still run the same way. The river is up a down a few inches.
10 % of normal seasonal variation….big deal. And so on.
The only truly rigid and brittle institutions we have to worry about are governments.
Richard says we can drive north. True. Forests can’t though. And losing an agricultural region like California’s Central Valley will not wipe out human civilization in North America. But it will change it.
There’s a belief I see shared by many of my “Free-market” friends that echoes Richard’s conclusion: “the only truly rigid and brittle institutions we have to worry about are governments.” I think recent experience in the US suggests that “big corporate” is as maladaptive and out-of-touch as “big government.”
And incidentally, there are already some people living “up north.” We’re not exactly prepared, I don’t think, for Texas to collectively jump in its car and move up here.
danallosso Where I grew up in northern Minnesota I live twenty miles from where the Northern forest started, from their it runs fairly uninterrupted to the Arctic circle the funny part about your statement that forest cannot move it in the last glacial period that forest was covered with a mile of ice. There was no Northern forest in North America, The northern part of the North American content was covered with ice. It looked like Greenland does to day, yet today most of what was covered with ice is now forest. I would have to say with that knowledge yes forest can move. Oh by the way I now live in Arizona, back when the glaciers were up north, this desert was a pine forest, it certainly is not now. Like all AGW proponent I really have to question you knowledge on climate and it effects on the environment over the history of earth. Somehow you seem to thing things should not change when the evidence show it changing all the time. I don’t deny climate change, I just find it had to believe we have much affect since we only occupy 3% of the earth surface! top that off on the long view it has always change sometime slower and sometime faster than now. When you can prove we are making the climate change check back to me I will have another question is it going to be better of worst or just different.
Since there is no physically meaningful GMT, Gavin’s and this post are pretty much moot.
yet another person who doesnt understand the meaning of GMT. read more comment less.
Are you communing with yourself?
If so good luck.
Also merry Christmas.
I understand it perfectly. Maybe you don’t. I also understand how to capitalize and punctuate. You obviously don’t.
Jeff is absolutely correct. GMT is thermodynamically meaningless. I invite others to prove otherwise. Merry Christmas.
Would you mind putting forward an argument why and a context in which you do not consider a global mean temperature to be physical meaningful? It is not easy to respond to your assertion.
According to theory, AGW will be manifested mostly as milder winters in the higher latitudes. The truth is that residents of those areas would benefit greatly. Unfortunately for those folks, AGW has come a bust.
Gavin’s assertion that the “it is the change in temperature compared to what we’ve been used to that matters” is very weak, considering that from summer highs to winter lows people will experience as much as 80°F difference in temperature, and that is the way it’s always been. So we are “used to it”.
In NE Oregon I}ve experienced 150 degree F swing, from -35 to 115.
I blame the last ice age. It’s been getting warmer ever since.
However, the variations in the averages of the model GMT values are quite wide, and indeed, are larger than the changes seen over the last century, and so whether this matters needs to be assessed.
==============
that was the point of my quick min/max analysis of the models. the min/max range in values in the models allows that we could get warming or cooling, regardless of CO2 policy.
We could spend hundreds or trillions of dollars to get rid of CO2, and not have the slightest effect. Money that could have been spent to cure poverty and disease, instead going to tilt at windmills.
it would appear that Gavin reads WUWT.
I’m confused. don’t they set the models with initial values that include the current GMT? Then any change in absolute GMT across different models will all be relative to the same base GMT.
you dont initialize a model that way. google GCM spin up.
I just googled GCM spin up, and just realized that climate models really don’t seem to have any basis in reality at all; before I assumed the GCMs at least started with some representation of reality.
Climate models are non-linear initial/boundary value problems. To solve them correctly you must have a proper initial condition. However, that is very difficult in practice to do, so you start the model at an earlier time with fake initial conditions and hope that the “spun up” solution actually represents something physically plausible. Given that the equations, bcs, and source terms are non-linear, and the numerical schemes vary, it’s not surprising that the reported solutions are all over the place, in terms of absolute quantities like temperature and precipitation. Hope this helps.
Of course Gavin reads WUWT.
They all do. As sure as they read comments on their own stories.
Just as most MSM journalists read various blogs despite their lofty positions.
They can’t resist, it’s a quick way to see what’s going on and often nets good leads and useful information.
Gavin is now Captain Obvious who has essentially advised us that if we come in the from the cold and don’t remove our coat we’ll soon get uncomfortable.
Or something like that there. 🙂
tell that to Ice.
getting the absolute temperature correct is important
Which Ice, Steven? Ice-T or Vanilla Ice?
Enjoy your holidays.
well I’m glad somebody is finally talking about the absolute temperature issue. I got pretty tired of raising this
issue before.
I see too many skeptics raising silly issues about models and missing the elephant in the room.
well I’m glad somebody is finally talking about the absolute temperature issue.
=================
to be fair William Briggs has most definitely mentioned the problem. He has said in no uncertain terms that you do not average first and then analysing the data. I believe Steve Goddard at Real Science has also prointed out the problems with averages and annomalies.
I saw the problem today when I used the 42 models to try and calculate a trend. When I averaged the models there was most definitely a trend. However, the trend went away when I used the underlying raw data without averages. It was actually rather surprising.
This showed me immediately that Briggs is right. Do not use averages to do your analysis, unless of course spurious trends are what you are seeking. If what you need to find is a trend when there is none, then by all means work with averages and annomalies. But what you are practicing isn’t science.
“silly issues about models and missing the elephant in the room.”
Yep, If there was an elephant in the room.. the models would miss it ! 🙂
Steven,
So, all those hundreds of comments declaring that molecules are models, that everything is a model, were not analphabetic expressions of indignation? They weren’t instances of compulsive response to banal denigration of your fetish?
You were actually exhorting the people to face the truth about absolute temperature. And not a soul rose to the challenge. No discussion ensued. The skeptics obdurately persisted with their silly vituperation of climate models.
So, here in this thread that was provoked by Gavin’s words about absolute temperature, where people are making comments about anomalies and absolutes, where you “finally” have the attention of silly skeptics, you produce a handful of model replies, a vague response about Berkeley method, and a tribute to yourself.
Why do you not take advantage of this opportunity to clarify the absolute/anomaly issue for the misguided folk that you normally respond to?
Why are you content to be the snide sniper, picking off naive non-combatants from the cover of haughty disdain?
ferd,
Surely you meant …instead of building windmills at which to tilt?
This has relevance to a little trick that warmists use to negate the so called “hiatus” of the past 16 years or so. You can draw a trendline that starts in 1980 or even better, 1900 and ends today and you will get an impressive upslope that washes out the flat lined shorter term trend over the most recent period(most important period by several orders of magnitude).
If the trend remains steady or even with a slight upslope the next 15 years, you can go back and turn it upwards by using older data from years that have less and less importance.
Even if we cooled slightly in the next 15 years(not my projection) the longer term uptrend can still be maintained by using this method of trend analysis.
In order to completely neutralize this tactic/method of misleading trend drawing from being an effective way to “mask” the lack of recent warming, we would need to have temperatures fall far enough so that compared to several decades ago, they are no longer warmer.
any trend that depends on the choice of endpoints is not a trend.
How could anyone who has been a participant in a multi trillion dollar worldwide fraud ever admit that they were wrong/guilty?
In comment 6 to the RC post, Aaron Lewis wrote: “People have died in heat waves affected by AGW.” I replied:
In discussions of climate change, reports of deaths caused by temperature extremes are highly misleading if only deaths caused by excessively warm temperatures are cited. In a 2014 CDC paper, J. Berko, et al, reported that of deaths attributed to weather, 31 percent resulted from excessive heat and related effects while 63 percent resulted from excessive cold and related effects. (Deaths Attributed to Heat, Cold, and Other Weather Events in the United States, 2006–2010, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr076.pdf)
As others have noted humans are used to up to 80°F difference in temperature over the year, or even 80°F difference in temperature over one day/night cycle in high Deserts and he thinks a degree or two could be dangerous?
They just don’t live in the same world as the rest of us.
unprotected humans die of exposure at temps below those of the tropical jungles. there is almost nowhere on earth we can survive without clothing and shelter, the cliamte is just too cold.
humans have no problem cooling so long as their is a source of water. perspiration requires almost zero energy and therefore zero expense, because water is by and large inexpensive, falling as it does from the sky.
however, heating is a huge problem because it requires energy, which is an expense. insulation helps slow cooling, but this requires capital. and ultimately the cost of capital is a further expense.
Thus, cold temperatures represents a threat to the poor, because they involve an expense. While on the other hand, hot temperatures are not a threat to the poor, because they involve little expense.
Thus, Gavin is wrong to suggest the problem with temperature is relative to what you are used to. The true problem with temperature is absolute, in that cold involves and expense while hot does not. Thus, cold will always remain a threat to the poor, while hot does not so long as there is water.
Thus the strategy in trying to take advantage of hot, by trying to take over the world’s fresh water supplies. This is the equivalent of trying to take advantage of cold, by taking over the world’s energy supplies.
hmmmm so he is now saying that because “the temperature we are used to” is changing that creates the problem?? I guess no one ever on the planet has ever traveled from winter time New York to the tropics because of all the problems that would arise from the change from the temperature they are used to. Quick alert all airlines to stop flights especially all the flights carrying the IPCC conference attendees that come from places with different temperatures. What a load of road apples, seems more like Gavin is trying to back away from the “we are all doomed” meme that he has been supporting. Seriously with the temperature change that has been touted to be so damaging to the planet etc. because that is “what we are used to” how does any living thing make it from sunrise to sunset or visa versa each day? Heck how do people make it from indoors to outdoors and back again? Uhhgg!! Makes me wonder if he even reads what he writes, definitely no reality or logic to it in any case.
Mele Kalikimaka!
Joe
exactly. it is not what you are used to, it is what you can afford. poor people live in the tropics because the cost of cooling is a supply of water, which is cheap. Rich people live outside the tropics becuase the cost of heating is energy, which is expensive. we can argue about the chicken and egg, and why poor and rich are segregated by lattitude, but the fact remains that they are.
So all along then it’s actually been Catastrophically uncomfortable Anthropogenic Global Warming? I did not know that.
Stevens, B., & Schwartz, S. E. (2012). Observing and modeling Earth’s energy flows. Surveys in geophysics, 33(3-4), 779-816.
http://www.bnl.gov/envsci/pubs/pdf/2012/BNL-96154-2012-JA.pdf
Figure 11.
This is what the authors have to say:
Given a globally and annually averaged flow of energy into the Earth system, models would ideally also produce a model state that is consistent with what is observed. In this respect, there is also room for improvement. The pre-industrial control climate can differ substantially among models, even if the flow of energy into the system is prescribed, or tuned to match the best estimate of the observations. This is evident in Fig. 11, which shows simulated global mean temperature over the twentieth century taken from all of the relevant simulations, 58 in total, in the CMIP3 archive. Simulated temperatures at the end of the twentieth century exhibit a range of nearly 3 _C (from 12.8 to 15.5 _C). Most models are biased cold, despite being forced with a total solar irradiance that is now thought to be too large. The multi-model mean temperature is more than 0.5 _C lower than measured, an offset that is comparable to the temperature change observed over the twentieth century. From a certain perspective, the agreement is excellent; errors in temperature of 1 K out of 288 K corresponds to an error of only 0.35 %, albeit somewhat larger (5.5 W m-2 or nearly 1.4 % when translated into an energy flux). However, even such a small temperature error can alter the modeled climate in ways that are as great as the climate change that has occurred over the twentieth century or are projected for the twenty-first century. Such an error would seem to have implications for model projections of climate change; so it is surprising that, despite these differences the models, individually and collectively, still represent the trend in twentieth century temperatures as accurately as they do. This surprise is tempered by a realization that the agreement in the twentieth century temperature trend may also be a reflection of the model development process and the considerable latitude that uncertainty in the aerosol forcing gives model developers in matching the observed temperature trend (Kiehl 2007).