Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
The 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “Hockey Stick” graph produced solutions for three facts challenging the claims of key IPCC climate scientists at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU). The problems appeared in Figure 7c in the 1990 First Assessment Report (FAR) (Figure 1).
The three problems it created were
- The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) contradicted their claim that the 20th century was the warmest ever.
- The Little Ice Age (LIA) showed that the present warming trend began prior to the major impact of the Industrial Revolution. Significant production of CO2 by humans began only after World War II.
- The trend of the warming since circa 1650 A.D., the nadir of the LIA, was well within natural variability.
The hockey stick graph dealt with all those by eliminating the MWP and the LIA. It inappropriately tacked on, as the blade of the stick, an upturn in temperature in the 20th century. Phil Jones produced the upturn that claimed a 0.6°C ±0.2°C increase in 120 years. They claimed this rate of increase was beyond any natural increase, conveniently ignoring the ±33% error factor.
A second part of their problem involved a paper by Soon and Baliunas titled “Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1,000 years” (Climate Research, 23, 89–110) that detailed worldwide evidence of existence of the MWP. The personal attacks on Soon and Baliunas are now exposed, particularly the role of John Holdren when at Harvard.
A third part involved the claim that Figure 7c was the temperature for the Northern Hemisphere and neither the LIA nor the MWP was a global event. The argument that a climatic period was regional or for a given portion of a record, was used to counter the problem that the Holocene Optimum was warmer than the 20th century. Steve McIntyre examined the response of AGW supporters, including a quotation from NOAA that says,
In summary, the mid-Holocene, roughly 6,000 years ago, was generally warmer than today, but only in summer and only in the northern hemisphere.
Timing of Events
The issue involved here is classic and essential to proper understanding of climate. It involved a standard practice in climatology called Relative Homogeneity. If you are going to establish a pattern of climate change, you must determine if it is local, regional, hemispheric or global. It addresses the very definition of climatology, which is the study of climate in a region or the change over time.
I dealt with the issue while preparing for my doctoral thesis that involved reconstructing climate change at Churchill, Manitoba, on Hudson Bay for the period from 1714 – 1850. My supervisor, Dr. Bruce Atkinson, directed me to reconstruct climate changes at York Factory, also on Hudson Bay, but 200 km away. The comparison identified local changes at Churchill while examination of regional, hemispheric and global changes provided a wider context.
Two major assumptions complicate determination of the length and extent of the change. First is that an event, such as the MWP, begins and ends at the same time. Second is that changes created by an external forcing is evident in all records. I discussed both issues at length with Hubert Lamb because my thesis period covered the transition from the LIA to the modern warm period. Lamb did not use the term Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Jean Grove attributes the Little Ice Age (LIA) name to Mathes (1939), but Lamb gave much thought to the dates of onset and termination of both. In Volume 2 of his Climatic History and the Future: Climate Present, Past and Future he used the transitional terms of “the medieval warm epoch or Little Climatic Optimum.” This was the distinction between epochs and events, like that used with magnetic reversals. At that time the Holocene Optimum was called the Climatic Optimum, so the MWP was the Little Climatic Optimum.
Lamb pointed out that, even though an event was global, the dates of onset, peak, and termination varied considerably depending on different conditions at all levels from local to regional to hemispheric. He also indicated that the difference in dates could vary by decades. You can look at a single station or even a few in a region for a particular time and not find evidence of a trend like the MWP or the LIA. As Lamb wrote
“Evidence already cited at various places in this volume suggests that for a few centuries in the Middle Ages the climate in most parts of the world regained something approaching the warmth of the warmest postglacial times. The climax of the warm epoch was not quite contemporaneous everywhere …” “in the heartland of North America, as in European Russia and Greenland, the warmest times may be placed between A.D. 950 and 1200. In most of Europe, the warmest period seems to have been between 1150 and about 1300 though with notable warmth also in the later 900s.”
The original IPCC FAR Figure 7c (Figure 1) indicates in the legend that
“The dotted line nominally represents conditions near the beginning of the twentieth century.”
Presumably somebody added the line and in doing so provided a general range for the MWP and the LIA. By eyeball the MWP covers A.D. 950 to 1350, and the LIA from A.D. 1350 to 1900. This does not match with the numbers in the text, particularly for the LIA with numbers attributed to Grove of 150 to 450 years ago or A.D. 1540 to 1840. There are a few interesting comments that needed correction for the politically motivated 2001 IPCC Report. In referring to the MWP, they note,
This period of widespread warmth is notable in that there is no evidence that it was accompanied by an increase of greenhouse gases.
Discussing the various explanations for the LIA cooling they wrote;
Some have argued that an increase in explosive volcanism was responsible for the coolness (for example Hammer, 1977, Porter, 1986), others claim a connection between glacier advances and reductions in solar activity (Wigley and Kelly, 1989) such as the Maunder and Sporer solar activity minima (Eddy, 1976), but see also Pittock (1983).
Note that these are the same arguments made for the current “hiatus” in temperatures. Also, notice the name of Tom Wigley, former Director of the CRU and a central figure in the 2001 IPCC, attributing the cooling to solar activity. The actual reference given is:
Wigley, T M L , and PM Kelly, 1989 Holocene climatic change, 14C wiggles and variations in solar irradiance Phil. Trans. Royal Society London, (in press).
Apparently, the article listed as “(in press)” never appeared because Wigley’s publication list at the CRU doesn’t list it.
On page 203 of the IPCC Report they observe,
Thus some of the global warming since 1850 could be a recovery from the Little Ice Age rather than a direct result of human activities So it is important to recognise that natural variations of climate are appreciable and will modulate any future changes induced by man.
All these points confronted and contradicted the political agenda of blaming human CO2 for global warming and latterly climate change. Refutation began in the 1995 Second Assessment Report (SAR) and hit full stride with the 2001 Third Assessment Report (TAR) and its central feature, the “Hockey Stick”. Accurate determination of the onset and termination dates for the MWP and LIA, the relative homogeneity, was essential to identifying the underlying mechanisms. The Hockey Stick ‘solved’ the problem by eliminating the events completely and tacking on a modern blade with an error factor that made the numbers meaningless.
Welcome to IPCC climate science.
Here is just one study that looks at how changes in chlorophyll concentration changes visible and ultraviolet penetration depth, with echoes throughout the oceans using a model to simulate possible changes. Now imagine anything that might allow in or reflect away more solar irradiance, even though that event itself may be short-term. Add Solar Angle of Incidence and it becomes evident that the processes of keeping our Earth at steady state warmth are rather fickle.
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/cos0501.pdf
In our country there is a saying, when something is wrong and says: “Where is the much-midwife midwife, children are suffering from hernia” .This can be applied to “toil” theory of the causes of climate change. It is really so far all hernial, if we consider so claims, evidence and predictions, of which there are no real nor the results or certificates.
Milankovic was on his way to find out the true causes and gave the receipts of the theory related to the long-term laws of motion of our planet and its behavior under the influence of the greatest causes of all the phenomena in our solar system, and that is the sun. Science has no sense to realize that all changes to the planets and the sun, the consequences of mutual influence on each other. This what some scientists, who are on the right track evidence of true causes of climate change, related to the appearance of the sun, these are only indicators of something much more subtle and more powerful what causes these changes, and we do not want to analyze. The simplest is to blame CO2, because it can not prove or disprove any of its properties that can cause these changes. Place the probe into the ground to the depth of several tens of meters and measuring the magnetic field of the earth and temperature and find their mutual relationship and will be more clearly which direction and who act on these changes. I claim that four influential planets, their positions around the sun, forming cycles of about 11.2 years, which determines the behavior of sunspot. These spots do not cause climate change but are pointers of some bigger and stronger changes in the planets. It is pictured as when someone gets redness and increased body temperature. This is an indication that something big going on in the organism, and the organism to which there are sunspots are planet and only sun, only we still do not have “competent doctor” who knows when it causes. I’m trying to publish this, but everyone wants and they are used to pay for them to learn something new. While this relationship does not change, can not be defined not true causes of climate change.
You can’t publish because your hypothesis cannot be supported. Not with observations, not with physics, and not with plausible mechanisms. That you persist speaks of a dullness, not a brilliance, of thought.
The IPCC forecast future climate trends using GCMs . This method is simply not fit for purpose. We cannot forecast the future unless we know where the earth is with regard to the obvious 60 and, most importantly ,the millennial periodicity in the temperature record.( as seen in the Lambert Figure.)
For the latter see Figs 5-9 at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-forecasting-methods-and-cooling.html
The shape of the curve of Fig 9 ( Fig 5 Christiansen et al 2012) from 1000 – the present should replace the Mann-IPCC – Al Gore hockey stick in the public consciousness as the icon for climate change and a guide to the future.
Fig 14 shows that the solar activity driver of the 960 year cycle peaked in about 1991.
There is a variable lag both in time and by region between this solar driver peak and its appearance in the various climate metrics. (Satellite data ,SST, OHC etc)
The correlative RSS temperature peak was in about 2003 (12 year lag) and the earth has been in a cooling trend by this metric since then.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980.1/plot/rss/from:1980.1/to:2003.6/trend/plot/rss/from:2003.6/trend
The sharp decline in the Ap index in Fig 13 in 2005/6 should show up as a steeper cooling trend in 2017–2018
The linked post concludes:
“As to the future, the object of forecasting is to provide practical guidance for policy makers. The rate, amplitude and timing of climate change varies substantially from region to region so that, after accounting for the long term quasi-millennial periodicity, I would then estimate the modulation of this trend by providing multi-decadal climate forecasts for specific regions. This would be accomplished with particular reference to the phase relationships of the major oceanic and atmospheric systems PDO AMO, NAO, ENSO etc, a la Aleo and Easterbrook linked to in section 2.4 above. The earth has been subdivided into tectonic plates. It would be useful to have, as a guide to adaptation to climate change, multi-decadal regional forecasts for the following suggested climate plates, which are in reality closely linked to global geography.
1 North America and Western Europe.
2 Russia
3 China
4 India and SE Asia
5 Australasia and Indonesia
6 South America
7 N Africa
8 Sub Saharan Africa
9 The Arctic
10 The Antarctic
11 The intra tropical Pacific Ocean.- Detailed analysis of the energy exchanges and processes at the ocean /atmosphere interface in this area is especially vital because its energy budget provides the key to the earth’s thermostat.
Your 1000 year thing is wriggle matching. Earth’s systems have so many intrinsic variables that anyone (much like the bible code whackos) can find whatever secret “code” you want and say, “A Match! I found A Match!
Statisticians warn of this major research error: A false positive. It is the essence of wriggling an Elephant’s trunk.
Your comment shows a lack of understanding of how to deal with systems of variable oscillators which produce emergent periodicities as they resonate in and out of phase. You need to start with the Milankovic cycles and know where we are in regard to them. Obviously; we are past the warmest part of the current interglacial. See Fig 5 at the link
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-forecasting-methods-and-cooling.html
The same Figure shows clearly that there are quasi millennial peaks that come and go.
Fig 9 clearly indicates the general trends of the last 1000 years and that we have been climbing towards a millennial peak since the LIA. This is surely not controversial? How do we decide whether we are at the peak or past it? Simply look at the solar activity data as indicated in the neutron count. and Ap index data Figs 14 and 13. The temperatures will change accordingly with a variable lag according to the climate metric used and the areas under consideration.
The decline in solar magnetic field strength since 1991 is very clear. As I suggest- a near term test of this working hypothesis might be seen by a steepening of the cooling trend in 2017 /18 which would correlate with the Ap index drop in 2005/6. (Fig 13)
I’m not producing any magic match or mathematical formula ( such as e.g.the climate sensitivity magical formula ) Simply looking at the Holocene pattern and making the very reasonable proposition that it looks like we are just past a quasi-millennial peak and will probably generally cool until about 2650 with the general trend modulated along the way with shorter term cycles – notably the 60 year cycle.
As they say – its not rocket science- mainly common sense which is sadly lacking in the establishment academic modeling community.
“…systems of variable oscillators which produce emergent periodicities as they resonate in and out of phase.” Give that phrase to a statistician and he would laugh him/herself to death at your belief that you can find a significant solar cause. Have you a pet “cause of everything” entity for the recent 20th century warming? Many skeptics do. I am a skeptic and I am not into any theory outside natural intrinsic short and long term weather pattern variations being the result of short and long term intrinsic oceanic/atmospheric teleconnected interactions.
Pamela your statement ” natural intrinsic short and long term weather pattern variations being the result of short and long term intrinsic oceanic/atmospheric teleconnected interactions.” is simply a tautologous redescription of the problem and contains no clarification of what drives climate.
To see the connection between solar activity as measured by the 10Be data and cosmic ray flux and climate (temperature ) see Figs
10,11,and 12 and accompanying text at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-forecasting-methods-and-cooling.html
It is really very obvious – look e.g. at the 10Be flux in the Ice Core data and compare the LIA (1650- 1700)with the 20th century.(Fig 11).What’s not to like?
What’s not to like is that you are in error. The solar parameter you hold on to does not hold water. We have gone over this multiple times yet you persist. Amazing. You don’t get that you have again proved my point. Each time you respond you prove my point.
You said, “It is really very obvious – look e.g. at the 10Be flux in the Ice Core data and compare the LIA (1650- 1700)with the 20th century.(Fig 11).What’s not to like?”
Your discovery is this: You have discovered that if you look carefully within complicated systems, you will find a match between this, that, and the other thing. In fact, if you did not find spurious matches, you would have something worth putting in a journal.
Pamela you provide no evidence whatever but simply assert that the correlation between Cosmic ray flux and temperature is spurious , For another example look at Fig 10 panels C and D ( From Fig 3 CD in Steinhilber
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/03/30/1118965109.full.pdf)
Why do you not credit Steinhilbers correlation between cosmic ray intensity and the various temperature minima of the Little Ice Age? Please be specific.
Because Steinhilber relies on reconstructions that are much weaker in validity and reliability than temperature reconstructions. A good armchair scientist would equate the two together. You therefore must admit that cosmic ray reconstructions are in a state of active investigation with nothing nailed down. No?
http://www.leif.org/research/Long-term-Variation-Solar-Activity.pdf
If you continue your strident support of still under construction cosmic ray reconstructions yet chastise warmists for their temperature reconstructions, you uncover your bias. There is no place for bias in research.
The Christiansen 2012 (Fig 9) NH temperature construction looks very acceptable to me as a basis for discussion of NH temperatures in the last Millennium – do you have a problem with it?
If you compare the temperature minima shown there with the Steinhilber cosmic ray intensity maxima ( Temp Minima) in Fig 10 at my bloglink they fit remarkably well. We all know Leif’s strange reluctance to accept the sun – climate connection yet Fig 10 in the Leif link you quote shows the Sporer Maunder and Dalton Minima cosmic ray connection quite nicely. It is not showing bias when one makes judgments – simply stating ones evaluation of the interpretation of the data as presented as one sees it. There is no logical problem with accepting the Steinhilber sun – climate connection as useful and at the same time criticizing some alarmist temperature reconstructions.
The only way to evaluatue any forecast is to check it against future empirical data. The IPCC forecasts have already failed miserably in this regard. I have made some predictions for 2017-18. We will see what happens.
For some time I have been reading and absorbing articles and comments on this website. Around last May I decided to get off the couch and apply some of my own efforts.
I knew that only 160 years’ worth of data would be limiting with an FFT. I tried a brute force method with some awareness of the solar cycles. Almost from inspection you could see a 60 year cycle in the data.
Since I wasn’t confined by the FFT with as few as four sinusoids I was able to match the data reasonably well. I had one cycle of around 1000 years and another at 350 years plus two additional cycles I was able to do this. Those long year periods also allowed me to approximately place the MWP and the LIA.
With additional effort I was able to add more cycles and make further improvements. What I am simply trying to communicate the kind of efforts I was going through.
I remember a while ago reading one of Dr. Page’s comments about a lag. It came to mind again after being acquainted with Dr. Evans notch delay theory.
Only recently Dr. Page posted this.
“The correlative RSS temperature peak was in about 2003 (12 year lag) and the earth has been in a cooling trend by this metric since then.
The sharp decline in the Ap index in Fig 13 in 2005/6 should show up as a steeper cooling trend in 2017–2018”
Dr. Evans came up with a new method of analysis called OFT.
I applied it to the data and came up with this.
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=A14244340288E543!9672&authkey=!
ACTC5j9V6gqqq40&v=3&ithint=photo%2cjpg
The correlation coefficient came out to be 0.91.
It is limited to 28 cycles since my crude technique I had built to include up to 28 cycles. I used the output from the OFT as inputs into my crude technique. The numbers changed by very small amounts.
I think the OFT did a remarkable job of capturing ENSO. I noticed that when I looked at 1997.
Now here is where it might get amusing. I extended the cycles out to 2020 just to see if there was predictive power.
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=A14244340288E543!9673&authkey=!ANpNyS55KUqX-j0&v=3&ithint=photo%2cjpg
Coincidence?
Charplum. Coincidence? Unlikely. Does Evans know about your last graph and how it ties with my forecast?
Any comments from him?
The data which is what one has to go by is showing the solar/climate connections when all other variables are superimposed upon this trend. It is quite apparent.
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c01a3fcdd7298970b-pi
More data supporting the solar/climate connection. It is endless.
I’ll have another beer and see if by double vision I can see a robust cause correlation.
Because the figure I often see tossed around is 0.30 and the only measurement that I have seen is 0.328; which is about 10% different. Moreover, the person who made that measurement has told me that it was made from a sample of a large portion of the earth (satellite data) over a period of about 14 days, but did not cover the entire earth; and that he thinks “the” albedo might not be measurable. Imagine the arctic in spring, still largely covered in snow and ice. My CAGW enthusiastic friends tell me the arctic is “greening”; and I have no doubt that it is becoming more snow free earlier in the spring. Replace snow with stone and greenery in springtime in a secular trend and the changing albedo will enhance the trend? I think so.
Wigley, T M L , and PM Kelly, 1989 ‘Holocene climatic change, 14C wiggles and variations in solar irradiance’ was published, available here: http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org//content/330/1615/547.abstract The pdf is free.
Peter! Really? What planet have you been on while the rest of us have been talking about the solar sunspot count reconciliation project?
http://ssnworkshop.wikia.com/wiki/Home
However, let’s leave that aside. Cuz this is really COOL!!!!!! Leif??? Tell us more!
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=http%3A%2F%2Farxiv.org%2Fpdf%2F1412.1765&hl=en&sa=T&oi=gga&ct=gga&cd=9&ei=jr0QVZbWIYeqrQGeo4DIBg&scisig=AAGBfm2LpLs57vnmI6_5DKisNcEnDfiy0w&nossl=1&ws=1600×747
Pamela I think Peter’s point was that this was the paper that Ball said wasn’t published.
Wigley, T M L , and PM Kelly, 1989 Holocene climatic change, 14C wiggles and variations in solar irradiance Phil. Trans. Royal Society London, (in press).
Apparently, the article listed as “(in press)” never appeared because Wigley’s publication list at the CRU doesn’t list it.
Ooops. My bad. Mea Culpa. Jumped before looking. Spoke before thinking. Typed before reasoning.
Pamela Gray
Life happens. But – did you ever get that “Maybe I should not do this” thought right before hitting the carriage return button? 8<)
When the comment section is filled with fragile pie crust theories based on outdated or poor research, easily broken, I get on a roll which sometimes puts my brain in overdrive. So point taken Phil.
No problem Pamela, it was only mentioned in the original post and no-one addressed it until now.
I’ve always felt that uncertainties in proxy dating contributed to this being a genuine problem when dealing with multi-proxy reconstructions. Get two different proxies 50 years out of cycle from each other due to uncertainties in the dating of each of them, and you can flatten out a lot of signal that way.
Pamela, you’re on my discussion said that I deal with nonsense and that I have no evidence with which to give something true regarding the causes of climate change. I gave an explanation of why they can not disclose my evidence which imm at about 150-200 pages. From thy conglomerates fired bursts sentence on anyone’s discussion, it is obvious that you are not absolutely familiar with the laws of nature, and especially on the data regarding the behavior of our planetary system, which, it seems, did not know, nor do you have an interest in it. I again assert that four influential planets indicators of many changes in the sun, such as sunspot cycles, butterfly diagram etc .But need to invest more of the resources to decipher the true causes of climate change. Let’s pay a magazine that I announce my proof, so we’ll see if this nonsense about where I want it to be published.
Here you a simpler task, not only you, but the whole scientific world: therefore describe the reward of a million dollars when the first proof of the cause SPIN THE PLANET. I have it prepared and I’ll get back to this contest .But you must participate in it, and do not use your rhetoric, without scientific knowledge to others above self “act wise.” It’s not fair to humiliate someone in the area where there is no basic knowledge of it. You’re alone confirmed this.
Actually, you do a pretty good job of that by yourself. So I will not comment further. Carry on.
Thank you Tim – a good read.
Best, Allan
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/27/midgets-try-to-bite-dr-willie-soons-ankles/#comment-1846819
I published the following article in E&E in early 2005, in defence of legitimate climate scientists Baliunas & Soon and Veizer & Shaviv.
The thuggish conduct of the global warming alarmist gang has been demonstrated again and again, and was fully proved by the ClimateGate emails.
Warmist thugs have caused several principled and competent scientists to be dismissed from their positions, and have incited their lunatic fringe to death threats and actual acts of violence against skeptical scientists. In a rational world, some of these warmist thugs would be in jail – and that may yet happen.
Hypothesis:
1. The next act of this farce will be characterized by global cooling starting by about 2020 or sooner, cooling that may be mild or severe. Global cooling will demonstrate that climate sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 is so small as to be insignificant. The scientific credibility of the warmist gang will be shattered and some may face lawsuits and/or go to jail.
2. The scientific community will gradually accept the fact that CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales, and that temperature (among other factors) drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature.
3. The foolish green energy schemes to “stop global warming” will be shelved and dismantled, but not before they contribute to a significant increase in Excess Winter Mortality, especially in Europe and to a lesser extent in North America, where energy costs are much lower (thanks to shale fracking).
4. The warmist thugs will still be bleating about a warmer world, wilder weather, etc., all caused by the sins of mankind, but nobody will listen.
Regards to all, Allan
Drive-by shootings in Kyotoville
The global warming debate heats up
Energy & Environment 2005
Allan M.R. MacRae
Full article at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/28/the-team-trying-to-get-direct-action-on-soon-and-baliunas-at-harvard/#comment-811913
[Excerpt]
But such bullying is not unique, as other researchers who challenged the scientific basis of Kyoto have learned.
Of particular sensitivity to the pro-Kyoto gang is the “hockey stick” temperature curve of 1000 to 2000 AD, as proposed by Michael Mann of University of Virginia and co-authors in Nature.
Mann’s hockey stick indicates that temperatures fell only slightly from 1000 to 1900 AD, after which temperatures increased sharply as a result of humanmade increases in atmospheric CO2. Mann concluded: “Our results suggest that the latter 20th century is anomalous in the context of at least the past millennium. The 1990s was the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, at moderately high levels of confidence.”
Mann’s conclusion is the cornerstone of the scientific case supporting Kyoto. However, Mann is incorrect. Mann eliminated from the climate record both the Medieval Warm Period, a period from about 900 to 1500 AD when global temperatures were generally warmer than today, and also the Little Ice Age from about 1500 to 1800 AD, when temperatures were colder. Mann’s conclusion contradicted hundreds of previous studies on this subject, but was adopted without question by Kyoto advocates.
In the April 2003 issue of Energy and Environment, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and co-authors wrote a review of over 250 research papers that concluded that the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were true climatic anomalies with world-wide imprints – contradicting Mann’s hockey stick and undermining the basis of Kyoto. Soon et al were then attacked in EOS, the journal of the American Geophysical Union.
In the July 2003 issue of GSA Today, University of Ottawa geology professor Jan Veizer and Israeli astrophysicist Nir Shaviv concluded that temperatures over the past 500 million years correlate with changes in cosmic ray intensity as Earth moves in and out of the spiral arms of the Milky Way. The geologic record showed no correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentrations and temperatures, even though prehistoric CO2 levels were often many times today’s levels. Veizer and Shaviv also received “special attention” from EOS.
In both cases, the attacks were unprofessional – first, these critiques should have been launched in the journals that published the original papers, not in EOS. Also, the victims of these attacks were not given advanced notice, nor were they were given the opportunity to respond in the same issue. In both cases the victims had to wait months for their rebuttals to be published, while the specious attacks were circulated by the pro-Kyoto camp.
*************
1. The next act of this farce will be characterized by global cooling starting by about 2020 or sooner, cooling that may be mild or severe. Global cooling will demonstrate that climate sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 is so small as to be insignificant.
For what reason do you suppose that global cooling will take place?
2. The scientific community will gradually accept the fact that CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales, and that temperature (among other factors) drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature.
And yet CO2 continues to rise despite the well publicized ‘pause’ in the temperature?
To Phil
Your Q1 – For what reason do you suppose that global cooling will take place?
I published this cooling prediction in 2002, so it MUST BE true 🙂
Global cooling will probably occur by 2020+/- 5 years because we can expect two consecutive weak solar cycles, SC24 and SC25, and because we are about due, based on the approximate cyclical nature of naturally-caused climate change.
Your Q2 – And yet CO2 continues to rise despite the well publicized ‘pause’ in the temperature?
Temperature may not be the only driver of increasing atmospheric CO2 – fossil fuel combustion and land use changes may also contribute. CO2 lags temperature by about 9 months in the modern data record. There is also the ~800-year lag of CO2 after temperature on a longer time scale, as evidenced by the ice core record.
CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.
I suggest that the future cannot cause the past. 🙂
When a random walk process, such as Earth’s mercurial atmospheric/oceanic teleconnections that result in temperature swings, occurs with a fairly regular pendulum-like process, such as solar cycles, there are supposed to be instances where things line up. In fact if they never did, something significant is going on. And in fact if they occasionally do, nothing significant is going on.
Too cryptic Pamela. Please explain your comments as they relate to mine..
“Hoisted by his own petard.”
A line from Shakespeare meaning he was brought down by his own evil plans. I think this phrase applies well to AGW supporters who attempt to argue that the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period were not global. They then argue the present warming trends are unprecedented aside from orbital variations that take place on timescales of thousands of years.
The problem then though is they acknowledge those earlier changes applied to the Northern Hemisphere and were naturally occurring. However, since they claim such changes were not global that would mean the Southern Hemisphere would have had to undergo the opposite trend since they say global temperatures were the same. But the kicker is we are now experience a cooling trend for the Northern Hemisphere with the Southern Hemisphere undergoing a warming trend, which top AGW theorists acknowledge in published papers. See for example the discussion in the comments to the WUWT post:
The Geography of USCRN Average Air Temperature Trends during the 2004-2014 Decade over the Contiguous United States
Guest Blogger / 5 days ago March 20, 2015
Guest essay by Samuel I Outcalt
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/20/the-geography-of-uscrn-average-air-temperature-trends-during-the-2004-2014-decade-over-the-contiguous-united-states/
See the GISS temperature map here:
GISS Surface Temperature Analysis.
Global Maps.
Sources and parameters: GHCN_GISS_250km_Trnd1203_1988_2015
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/tmp/gistemp/NMAPS/tmp_GHCN_GISS_250km_Trnd1203_1988_2015/nmaps.gif
Then could this not also be naturally occurring since this already happened with the MWP and LIA? I don’t see anyway out of this conundrum for AGW supporters. If they say the LIA and MWP were only in the NH, then we see a cooling trend in the NH now which could also be natural. If they attempt to go back and say the LIA and MWP were in fact global then the overall global warming trend we see now could also be natural.
Bob Clark
That GISS temperature link should be:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?sat=4&sst=0&type=trends&mean_gen=1203&year1=1988&year2=2014&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=rob
Bob Clark
Brandon Gates,
Your claim that the AGW theory is based on sound physical principles of radiative energy transfer is incorrect.
The use of Planck’s (1901) radiation law as a source function in the radiative transfer equation is based on Einstein’s paper “Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung” (it means “On the quantum theory of radiation”) from 1917. It is only valid if the condition of local thermal equilibrium is fulfilled. It was eventually strengthened by the notion “local thermodynamic equilibrium” (LTE). In his paper “The effect of collisions on monochromatic radiative equilibrium” Milne (1928) deduced under which air density the LTE is established. As pointed out in several textbooks on radiation, the LTE condition is acceptable up to a height of about 60 km or so above sea level.
Einsein’s (1917) method to derive Planck’s radiation law by considering absorption as well as spontaneous and stimulated emission of light quanta by molecules was denoted by Fowler & Milne (1925) as “principle of detailed balancing” (see PNAS 1925, 11, 400-402). Tolman (1925) called it the “principle of microscopic reversibility” (PNAS 1925, 11, 436–439). To assess the importance of Einstein’s paper from 1917, it is indispensable to read Dirac’s (1927) paper “The quantum theory of the emission and absorption of radiation” (Proc. Roy. Soc. 1927, A114, 243-267) because the field of quantum mechanics was not known in 1917.
To understand the interferograms of Hanel et al. (1972), “The Nimbus4 infrared spectroscopy experiment
1. Calibrated thermal emission spectra”, it is necessary to read that paper. In their paper, Hanel et al. for instance, pointed out:
“The spectra of the polar regions are quite different from the spectra of the tropical desert areas.The brightness temperature of the Greenland ice cap (Figure 12a) follows the 240 K blackbody temperature curve except for the 667 cm^(-1) CO2 band. The lower brightness temperature in that range is an indication of lower atmospheric temperatures, except for the Q branch at 667 cm^(-1), which signals a reversals of the temperature profile toward a warmer stratosphere. The strong water vapor lines between
400 and 550 cm^(-1) appear in absorption. The ozoneb and near 1040 cm^(-1) registers very weakly, not because of a lack of ozone but because the weighted mean temperature of the layer is almost the same as the temperature of the surface. An Antarctic spectrum (Figure 12b) indicates a surface temperature of about 223 K and only small amounts of water vapor. In another Antarctic spectrum (Figure 12c), some atmospheric layers seem to be warmer than the surface, which is very cold (about 205 K). Water vapor lines appear in emission but ozone is not detectable, owing to a lack of temperature contrast between the ozone layer and the ground. In the coldest spectrum recorded on this orbit (Figure 12d), the whole atmosphere is warmer than the surface; carbon dioxide, water vapor, and ozone can be recognized as emission features.”
This means that the ambient temperature plays an important role. This is understandable because under the condition of LTE the emission of monochromatic radiation only depends on temperature. This emission is considered as isotropic. Thus, the down-welling radiation can be related to that emission.
If the air density is very low light quanta are absorbed and isotropically emitted. In contrast to the LTE, this case is called the radiative equilibrium (see Milne, 1928, for details).