From Dr. Roy Spencer
The Version 6.0 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for April, 2016 is +0.71 deg. C, down slightly from the March value of +0.73 deg. C (click for full size version):
The global, hemispheric, and tropical LT anomalies from the 30-year (1981-2010) average for the last 16 months are:
YEAR MO GLOBE NHEM. SHEM. TROPICS
2015 01 +0.30 +0.44 +0.15 +0.13
2015 02 +0.19 +0.34 +0.04 -0.07
2015 03 +0.18 +0.28 +0.07 +0.04
2015 04 +0.09 +0.19 -0.01 +0.08
2015 05 +0.27 +0.34 +0.20 +0.27
2015 06 +0.31 +0.38 +0.25 +0.46
2015 07 +0.16 +0.29 +0.03 +0.48
2015 08 +0.25 +0.20 +0.30 +0.53
2015 09 +0.23 +0.30 +0.16 +0.55
2015 10 +0.41 +0.63 +0.20 +0.53
2015 11 +0.33 +0.44 +0.22 +0.52
2015 12 +0.45 +0.53 +0.37 +0.61
2016 01 +0.54 +0.69 +0.39 +0.84
2016 02 +0.83 +1.17 +0.50 +0.99
2016 03 +0.73 +0.94 +0.52 +1.09
2016 04 +0.71 +0.85 +0.58 +0.94
I expect average cooling to continue throughout the year as El Nino weakens and is replaced with La Nina, now expected by mid-summer or early fall. Nevertheless, 2016 could still end up as a record warm year in the satellite record…it all depends upon how fast the warmth from the El Nino dissipates and La Nina sets in.
The “official” UAH global image for April, 2016 should be available in the next several days here.
The new Version 6 files (use the ones labeled “beta5”) should be updated soon, and are located here:
Lower Troposphere:http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0beta5.txt
Mid-Troposphere:http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tmt/uahncdc_mt_6.0beta5.txt
Tropopause:http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/ttp/uahncdc_tp_6.0beta5.txt
Lower Stratosphere:http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tls/uahncdc_ls_6.0beta5.txt
Comments section of WUWT used to be fun. All there seems to be these days is trolls whining.
“No theory can match the wiggles.”
Beautifully stated. This is why Climate Science isn’t really science.
Andrew
@Andrew:
so, as I said, you’ve ruled out not just AGW, but every other candidate theory. So there’s no point claiming that the current warming is caused by sunspots or anything else, is there?
“so, as I said, you’ve ruled out not just AGW, but every other candidate theory”
No, you just did. The wiggles are what happens. You just stated no theory can match them. I agree.
Andrew
So you agree that no theory can match the wiggles? So no theory can be good enough? I genuinely don’t understand what you’re saying now.
alvahillbilly,
Tiny wiggles are irrelevant. The trend is what matters. For most of the past 20 years, the trend has been flat, while CO2 has steadily risen — thus debunking the CO2=cAGW conjecture.
In fact, over the past century, almost half of the decades show global cooling. How do you explain that, from the standpoint of the CO2=AGW conjecture? Do we discard the inconvenient cooling decades? Do we create a deus ex machina ad-hoc explanation?
Or do we finally acknowledge that CO2 lacks nearly all the warming effect claimed by the alarmist contingent?
And:
So no theory can be good enough? I genuinely don’t understand what you’re saying now.
You have a hard time understanding anything that doesn’t fit your preconceived beliefs. And skeptics do not claim to have a “theory”. That’s what the alarmist crowd claims.
For the umpteenth time: skeptics have nothing to prove. The onus is entirely on those putting forth a conjecture, hypothesis, or theory. The alarmist crowd’s conjecture claims that rising CO2 will cause runaway global warming, leading to climate catastrophe (that is now hidden behind Orwell-style “climate change” word-morphing).
But the alarmist contingent is incapable of supporting their conjecture with credible evidence, measurements, or observations. All they do is hand-wave.
In any of the hard science disciplines, that failure would cause the conjecture to be defenestrated. It has been falsified by Planet Earth — the ultimate Authority.
The question is: why do you reject what Planet Earth is telling us?
@db:
this is confusing, because I was talking to Andrew in that comment. He thinks that theory should match all the wiggles in the data, including the noise.
However, you said:
“For most of the past 20 years, the trend has been flat, while CO2 has steadily risen — thus debunking the CO2=cAGW conjecture.”
whereas I’m saying, for the past 220 years, the trend has clearly been up, whilst CO2 has steadily risen. The way I explain the high frequency variations is that they are noise.
Question for you: how do you explain the upwards trend in global T over the past 220 years? Do you have any explanation?
You said:
“You have a hard time understanding anything that doesn’t fit your preconceived beliefs. And skeptics do not claim to have a “theory”. That’s what the alarmist crowd claims.”
You are confused. I did not say skeptics have a theory, Currently it looks to me as though they have no plausible explanation whatsoever for the data. I was making a point to Andrew, in my conversation thread with Andrew, that if you expect a theory to match the noise you will reject all theories. How many more times do I have to explain this very basic point?
alvahillbilly,
The upward trend in global T is the result of the planet’s natural recovery from the LIA. In other words, reversion to the mean. And it may well overshoot. But there is no credible evidence that global warming is due to human CO2 emissions.
Next, there is no “theory” of AGW. Like a conjecture or an hypothesis, a theory must be capable of making repeated, accurate predictions.
But the AGW “theory” (actually, AGW is only a measurement-free conjecture) has never been able to make any accurate predictions regarding global T. In fact, AGW “theory” was unable to predict the most significant event of the past century: the fact that global warming stopped for almost twenty years. That monumental failure falsifies the CO2=AGW conjecture — for reasons already detailed.
You’re looking for something that would rescue your belief in man-made global warming. If you find credible evidence (preferably verifiable, testable measurements of AGW), you can change my mind. But so far, skeptics have demolished the “dangerous AGW” narrative. It is no more than vague hand-waving, and it lacks the basic requirement of data (measurements).
@db:
and by the way, please stop posting this kind of crap:
““You have a hard time understanding anything that doesn’t fit your preconceived beliefs.”
I could easily just say the same about you. I’m willing to admit that current theories of climate change could be wrong. Are you open to the possibility that they might be right? No, of course not. So you are more closed-minded than me.
@db
“The upward trend in global T is the result of the planet’s natural recovery from the LIA. In other words, reversion to the mean. And it may well overshoot. But there is no credible evidence that global warming is due to human CO2 emissions.”
That’s not an explanation, it’s a description of the data. It makes no predictions. It may overshoot, It may undershoot. It may do just about anything.
@db
” If you find credible evidence (preferably verifiable, testable measurements of AGW), you can change my mind. ”
What evidence would change your mind? What would it look like?
alvahillbilly, according to the ipcc, as little as half of recent warming could be due to agw. The ipcc lays no claim on prior warming as warming from anthropogenic CO2 (and it’s forcings) would have been negligible. If the warming from the LIA has been about 1C and half of recent warming is .2C, then most all of the warming of the last couple centuries has been natural. This according to the ipcc… Now, the thinking on the origin of the rise (and this is mainstream science) is a reduction in volcanic activity, solar forcings, and CO2, a large chunk of which would be due to a natural rise in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans…
alvahillbilly says:
What evidence would change your mind? What would it look like?
As I’ve stated repeatedly, if you can produce testable, empirical measurements quantifying the fraction of AGW out of all global warming, that would convince me. If you could make repeated, accurate predictions of future global warming (or cooling, etc.), that would convince me.
Or, if global temperatures tracked the rise in CO2, that would be convincing. But they don’t.
Next, you say:
That’s not an explanation, it’s a description of the data.
You’re pretty clueless, but then you’re a hillbilly. Data is used to describe reality. Sorry you can’t understand that simple concept.
Next, you complain that I pointed out:
(Global T) makes no predictions. It may overshoot, It may undershoot. It may do just about anything.
You don’t like the fact that skeptics won’t make predictions. That’s because every alarming prediction made by your side has been flat wrong. No exceptions. I pointed out that we don’t know the future.
Your lame attempts to try and corner me are amusing. You have a long way to go before you even understand this subject, but already you’re looking for “gotchas”. Pretty pathetic. But then, your whole belief system is pathetic.
“So no theory can be good enough?”
In your words, no theory can match the wiggles. Thay means no theory has been offered to explain the wiggly line, because it’s all wiggles.
Andrew
What I clearly said earlier on was that it was ridiculous to expect a theory to match the wiggles. So ruling out theories that don’t match the wiggles was daft, because it rules out all possible theories.
So: would you agree that sunspots can’t possibly explain the data? There’s no way that sunspot data can reproduce those wiggles.
“So: would you agree that sunspots can’t possibly explain the data?”
As you beautifully stated earlier:
“No theory can match the wiggles.”
Andrew
Let me put it another way:
If Climate Science is going to put forth a squiggly line they can’t explain, they should just say so.
Andrew
Many many areas of science put forward squiggly lines that they can’t explain. It’s called noise. Nobody expects a theory to be able to reproduce the noise. I think climate scientists probably assume that people understand this.
“I think climate scientists probably assume that people understand this.”
Why would climate scientists assume anything? They should just state what it is they are presenting. Not only do they not explain what they present, they don’t understand it to explain it.
If you are correct and it is ‘noise’, the squiggly line should be labeled as ‘noise’.
Andrew
Normally papers are written for other scientists, and they tend to assume that the reader knows how research works. Otherwise every paper would have to have a huge introduction explaining every little thing.
When you have experimental data, generally there is some underlying pattern (well hopefully there is), but the pattern has got noise added on top of it. The noise can come from any number of sources. The challenge of theory is to capture the patterns, not the noise. The reason is that the noise is going to be different every time you run the experiment. But hopefully the pattern will remain. That’s why no one expects theory to match each precise wiggle of the data. It’s also why people fit curves to data.
“Normally papers are written for other scientists”
If John Q. Public is suppsed to accept a scientific idea, the science needs to be presented to them straightforwardly, however in Climate Science, it isn’t, as our discussion has illustrated (again). That’s a problem. Anyone who scrutinizes Climate Science for more than 10 minutes, sees that.
Andrew
You have a very good point, but the same would apply to just about any other area of science. How publicly accessible is genetics research? Or neuroscience? Or physics?
The truth is that it’s incredibly hard to communicate complex ideas in a simple way. From the little I’ve read, the earth’s climate is a pretty complex nonlinear dynamic system, and I think it’s far from obvious how to explain to the public. I do agree that far more effort needs to go into this though.
Ok, I finally understand what you were saying. And I agree: much better explanations are needed. Good point.
“And I agree: much better explanations are needed. Good point.”
The easiest thing to do is when you present inexplicable squiggly line that no theory can match, state that it’s an inexplicable squiggly line that no theory can match.
Andrew
@Andrew:
” state that it’s an inexplicable squiggly line that no theory can match.”
Or more correctly, theory can (and does) match the trend, but not the noise.
alvahillbilly says:
Or more correctly, theory can (and does) match the trend, but not the noise.
In reality, the ‘theory’ does not match the trend.
The ‘theory’, as you call it, stated that rising CO2 will cause global temperature to rise. But for most of the past twenty years, global T was flat, while CO2 substantially increased year over year.
Thus, the ‘theory’ is wrong. The real world falsified it.
Formulate a new hypothesis, taking into account the failure of rising CO2 to cause merasurable global warming. That’s the Scientific Method — which does not tell you to dig in your heels and incessantly argue about something that has been repeatedly falsified.
alvahillbilly, this is in respose to your comment:
…the problem is around how to do falsification when the area is noisy and probabilistic. There’s been a lot of criticism of Popper because of exactly that.
No, the problem is that the onus is on those making a conjecture or hypothesis. You are trying to put the onus on skeptics of the “dangerous AGW” scare. That’s wrong. Skeptics have nothing to prove.
Falsification (testability) is necessary to rule out various assumptions. The basis for the debate comes down to the climate Null Hypothesis: whether we can measure changes in various parameters (most importantly, in global T) that cannot be attributed to natural variability.
So far, the climate Null Hypothesis has never been falsified. Everything observed now has also been observed in the past, repeatedly, and to a much greater degree — and before human CO2 emissions were a factor.
In fact, for the past century+ the planet has been in a true “Goldilocks” temperature range:
http://i1.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2015/10/Global-2-copy.jpg
Every scary and alarming prediction made by the alarmist crowd has turned out to be flat wrong. When someone makes numerous alarming predictions, and they all turn out to be wrong — contradicted by observations — then that side has lost the science debate.
One requirement in common with every step in the hierarchy: ‘Conjecture, Hypothesis, Theory, Law’, is that they all must be capable of making repeated, accurate predictions. If they fail to do that, the conjecture, hypothesis, etc., has been falsified.
At that point, those who produced the falsified hypothesis must discard it, and try to figure out why it failed. Then they should produce a new hypothesis, taking into account all new evidence and observations, including the fact that their old and busted hypothesis repeatedly failed to make accurate predictions.
But the alarmist crowd drops the ball at this point, and veers off into anti-science; rather than admit they were wrong, they double down and insist that, despite the failure of their conjecture, their ‘dangerous AGW’ conjecture must be accepted anyway.
They do this now by lying outright: for almost twenty years scientists on all sides of the ‘global warming’ debate were in agreement that global warming had ‘paused’; that global warming had stopped. That global warming was in a long term ‘hiatus’. As recently as last year, scientists on all sides of the debate were still looking for credible reasons for the long term pause in global warming. At last count, there were 60+ possible reasons suggested, explaining why global warming had stopped.
But this year, the talking points changed. Now the new talking point is: ‘global warmig never stopped!’ And like eco-lemmings going over a cliff, some in the alarmist contingent here are repeating that bogus new talking point. They are still trying to convince skeptics — who know better — that ‘global warming never stopped’.
They have now given up on science becauase the real world is busy debunking their beleif system. So now it’s politcs and propaganda all day, every day. They lost the science debate. Their talking point misinformation is all they have left.
So the question is this: which side are you on? Are you a scientific skeptic (the only honest kind of scientist, or student of science)? Or, are you happy to promote the new alarmist propaganda talking points?
The choice to be a skeptic or not is yours, and there is no middle ground.
alvahillbilly says:
When you have experimental data, generally there is some underlying pattern (well hopefully there is), but the pattern has got noise added on top of it.
Correct. Noise swamps the AGW signal. The problem with the AGW conjecture is that AGW has never been quantified with measurements. That’s because the signal is so small; it is down in the noise.
AGW may well exist. I think it does. But since it’s too small to measure with current instruments, we don’t know how much global warming is caused by human CO2 emissions.
Is it 5%? We don’t know.
Is it 0.07%? We don’t know.
Is it 0.003% We don’t know!
Whenever AGW is discussed, people give their opinions. That’s all they have, since AGW has never been empirically measured. But if we had a definitive measurement of AGW, the question of the climate sensitivity number to 2xCO2 would finally be answered.
As it stands, the guesstimates of the sensitivity number are all over the map, from 3º – 6ºC (IPCC), to 3ºC (many alarmists), to <1ºC (Lindzen, et. al), to <0.5ºC (Idso), to 0.00ºC) (Dr. Ferenc Miscolczi). Some scientists even argue that CO2 has a cooling effect.
So there is no agreement whatever. The reason is because AGW has never been quantified with a measurement. If we had a verifiable, testable, agreed-upon measurment quantifying AGW, then we would know the climate sensitivity number — and we could then accurately predict how much global warming X amount of human CO2 emissions would cause.
But as we know, no predictions of AGW are accurate. They are only opinions. No one was even able to predict the most significant global temperature event of the past century: the fact that global warming stopped for almost twenty years, while CO2 continued to steadily rise.
Conclusion: while AGW probably exists, it is simply too minuscule to measure. Thus, the rise of CO2 is a complete non-problem. QED
In an article (I don’t think there was a link to the actual study) on livescience(dot)com, they claimed to have measured the affect of humans on temperatures and watts/meter. The additional claimed w/m2 was .2 and the temperature increase due to this was 10% of manmade warming. My back of the envelope calculations (using IPPC’s numbers stating that humans are responsible for 50% of the observed warming) show the total amount of warming due to human release of CO2 to be .322c since 1970. Not per decade, not per year….total.
Thanks – don’t suppose you remember the title, or something? livescience looks like a huuuge site..
@db
you said:
“Correct. Noise swamps the AGW signal”
which is a complete misrepresentation of what I said. What I said was:
“When you have experimental data, generally there is some underlying pattern (well hopefully there is), but the pattern has got noise added on top of it.”
If you don’t understand the difference between a signal with noise, and a signal that has been swamped by noise, that’s really rather your problem. I do understand the difference.
After a 30+ year carreer working in one of the largest Metrology labs in the country, I think I understand S/N ratios, and what happens when the noise is greater than the signal. Fom your comments, you don’t understand.
This chart shows what is happening here:
Adding more CO2 has no measurable effect. It is just a tiny, 3rd-order forcing that is swamped by 2nd- and 1st-order forcings. At current concentrations, the warming effect CO2 is down in the noise. You’re looking for something that can’t be measured with current instruments.
Now, either you buy into the narrative that more CO2 will cause rapid global warming, or you accept radiative physics, which shows that there’s nothing to be concerned about. The choice is yours. Take your pick.
@db
“After a 30+ year carreer working in one of the largest Metrology labs in the country, I think I understand S/N ratios, and what happens when the noise is greater than the signal.”
Great. Then you will understand that the following two statements are completely different:
“Correct. Noise swamps the AGW signal”
and
“When you have experimental data, generally there is some underlying pattern (well hopefully there is), but the pattern has got noise added on top of it.”
Yes? You agree that a signal + noise (where I haven’t even said anything about the properties of that noise), is different to signal swamped by noise? Agree?
alvahillbilly,
The noise is not riding “on top” of the signal. That implies something completely different. The signal is buried under the noise. When the noise is much greater than any minuscule signal, the signal cannot be measured — at least using current instruments.
You’re arguing with everyone here. But you have no measurements or other convincing evidence showing that human CO2 emissions cause any measurable global warming.
If you find something, great. But arguing without verifiable facts that corroborate your beliefs means you are arguing from emotion.
I sympathize, because after being bombarded 24/7/365 with the media’s “carbon” scare, and everything related, it takes some mental discipline to reject any claims that cannot be supported by the Scientific Method, and Occam’s Razor, and the climate Null Hypothesis.
They alwyays try to get the public head-nodding in agreement. There is no critical thinking taught in government .edu factories any more. If they can get you to buy in without any evidence, they’ve won.
But you and the public have lost. Because they’re not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. There’s an Agenda in play, supported by the alarmist Narrative. But none of it withstands even mild scientific scrutiny.
Either you question the media’s ‘authority’ and think for yourself, or they’ve got you.
@dbstealey
And a graph, which is a fake again: It presents ~0,3 Celcius degree per doubling of CO2 concentration.
desmond,
Look at the graph. Where does it say ‘~0,3C’?
@db
Your entire comment is just another repetition of the same points you keep making over and over. My comment was a very simple one, that you had misrepresented what I said. Instead of addressing that you just go on another rant about politics and the media etc etc. You’re wasting your breath. I have no interest in any of that. Try to resist using every post as another opportunity to repeat yourself.
Where does it say ‘~0,3C’?
I still don’t see it.
alvahillbilly says:
Your entire comment is just another repetition of the same points you keep making over and over.
But facts wash off you like a rainstorm washes off a duck. Facts have no effect on you. No matter how many times I explain verifiable facts you refuse to accept them, simply because they don’t support your belief.
You’re arguing from a position of emotion-based belief. You’re just certain that humans are causing runaway global warming, and all the facts in the world that contradict your belief can’t change your mind.
Like many alarmists, you’ve made up your mind, so now all your energy is directed toward cherry-picking any factoids that support your confirmation bias. But that’s not science. That’s religion; your eco-religion.
dbstealey May 10, 2016 at 11:23 am
desmond,
Look at the graph. Where does it say ‘~0,3C’?
Well I did explain but my posts were apparently deleted! Perhaps the mods can restore them?
@db
you said
“AGW may well exist. I think it does. But since it’s too small to measure with current instruments, we don’t know how much global warming is caused by human CO2 emissions.
Is it 5%? We don’t know.
Is it 0.07%? We don’t know.
Is it 0.003% We don’t know!”
which isn’t great, because it means that we cannot rule out the possibility that human CO2 emissions have a large effect. The uncertainty does not work in your favour. If there is uncertainty, how can be so certain that human CO2 is responsible for almost none of the current warming? The two statements contradict each other.
alvahillbilly, Dr Spencer has a blog that you also might be interested in. He’s a pretty reasonable guy and does his best to bend over backwards to make AGW work (and to help people understand things). He’s of the opinion that agw accounts for about 50% of recent warming. He also says we have no real way of knowing. It could be as low as 10% or as high as 90%. His famous (at least in my mind) quote is that we can flip a coin as to whether or not we see any warming. So, just because we see warming, it does not necessarily mean that agw is real…
@afonzarelli
This guy?
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
I shall take a look, thank you 🙂
In other words, you want skeptics to try and prove a negative.
Sorry, but the onus is on you, since the CO2=cAGW conjecture is being promoted by your side of the debate. Skeptics have nothing to prove.
You could produce a conjecture that says a Heffalump infestation will soon occur, and list all the bad things that go along with Heffalump infestations. Fine, go ahead. But it is not the duty of skeptics to “rule out that possibility”, as you put it.
Demanding that skeptics must prove a negative is a typical alarmist tactic. It is often associated with Noble Cause Corruption: bad things might happen, so for the good of humanity we must spend $billions every year to make sure we avoid that calamity. Because we’re just such good people, see? We care…
Just replace “Heffalumps” with “dangerous AGW”. Same-same.
@db
see my comment above?
“Your entire comment is just another repetition of the same points you keep making over and over”
As above. All I did was say ‘thank you’ to afonzarelli, and you’re off again.
alvahillbnilly,
I made specific points. Try to answer them. If not, ‘silence is concurrence’.
@db
Can I really not thank someone without you going on at me? Do you find this strategy successful with other people?
@db
“In other words, you want skeptics to try and prove a negative.”
you’ve claimed that before, and I asked you to copy-paste my words where I did that. I ask you again: where did I do that?
Yes, Dr Spencer is the author of this particular post (here at wuwt). He would be what they call in the biz a “luke warmist” as is Dr Curry. I like his blog a bit more than say Dr Curry’s. He’s not quite as “heady” and he’s very good at boiling things down so that they can be easily understood…
alvahillbilly says:
…we cannot rule out the possibility that human CO2 emissions have a large effect.
By that you’re implying that humans may have a large effect on global T. You compound that by saying:
…how can be so certain that human CO2 is responsible for almost none of the current warming?
The default position is the climate Null Hypothesis, which has never been falsified. If you reject that, you are trying to make skeptics prove a negative — when the onus is on your side to falsify th Null Hypothesis.
Kevin Trenberth tried the same tactic, when he wrote that the Scientific Method must be changed, by forcing skeptics to prove that man-made global warming doesn’t exist.
That shows the desperation of the climate alarmist crowd.
What you should have said was:
We cannot rule out the possibility that human CO2 emissions have no effect.
Then you would be on the right track.
dbstealey said: “The default position is the climate Null Hypothesis, which has never been falsified. If you reject that, you are trying to make skeptics prove a negative — when the onus is on your side to falsify th Null Hypothesis.”
No, untrue. The world’s scientific bodies and the vast majority of climate researchers have agreed that AGW is real. So it is skeptics that have to prove their case, not the other way around.
Chris,
Oh, please, stop it with your incessant ‘appeal to corrupted authorities’ logical fallacy.
I understand that’s all you’ve got, so you feel you have to use it. But it’s a fallacy.
See? A fallacious argument loses the debate.
And Dr. Roy Spencer, the referenced author of this article and an internationally recognized Climatologist, has written that ‘the Null Hpothesis has never been falsified’ (paraphrased). And your qualifications are what, exactly?
As an anonymous commenter with no CV, I think I’ll do just what you love to do, and play the ‘appeal to authority’ card. Dr. Spencer has forgotten more than you will ever learn about the subject. So who are you to say he’s wrong?
Chris says:
So it is skeptics that have to prove their case, not the other way around.
Chris, you are either deluded or mendacious. Either way, you don’t belong here. You don’t get to turn the Scientific Method on its head, just because you can’t win the argument any other way.
What is it about skeptics have nothing to prove that you can’t understand?
@db
high uncertainty in the forcing effect of CO2 means the following:
We cannot rule out a large effect of CO2 – it may explain all the observed warming.
We cannot rule out an insignificant effect of CO” – it may explain almost none of the warming.
However, you are saying (I think, and you’ll probably bite my head off for saying this, but hey, what’s new):
There is high uncertainty in the forcing effect of CO2
We are certain that it only has insignificant effect on warming.
It’s contraction. Uncertainty means being open to the possibility that it may have a large effect. Or a tiny one.
alavhillbilly,
Maybe this will put it in perspective. You say:
We cannot rule out a large effect of CO2 – it may explain all the observed warming.
Look at it this way:
We cannot rule out a large effect of Heffalumps – they may explain all the observed warming.
That’s how a scientific skeptic would look at it. Without at least some convincing evidence to support the hypothesis, it’s no more than a conjecture; an opinion.
By convincing evidence, I mean either verifiable measurements quantifying AGW, or observations that would falsify the climate Null Hypothesis.
Do you know what the ‘Null Hypothesis’ means? That should be your starting point in determining if human CO2 emissions have the claimed effect.
Chris says:
“No, untrue. The world’s scientific bodies and the vast majority of climate researchers have agreed that AGW is real. So it is skeptics that have to prove their case, not the other way around.”
So skeptics have to prove their case, but agw proponents do not?
@db
and yet again, you ignore the point I just made. Let’s make it crystal clear. The following two statements:
There is high uncertainty in the forcing effect of CO2
We are certain that it only has insignificant effect on warming.
are a contradiction. And yes, I know what a null hypothesis is, thank you.
Could you stop talking about Heffalumps for a moment and tell me whether you agree that this is a contradiction. Just a yes or no would do.
alvahillbilly says:
There is high uncertainty in the forcing effect of CO2
We are certain that it only has insignificant effect on warming.
are a contradiction.
Wrong again. There can be a high uncertainty in the forcing effect of CO2, and CO2 can still cause only an insignificant effect on global T. Where’s the contradiction? It’s simply not in that example.
Next, I note once again that the alarmist crowd always wants questions answered — but they try their best to avoid answering questions.
The real world has shown conclusively that the rise in CO2 has at best a minimal effect; an effect that is too small to even measure.
So what do we do? Accept what Planet Earth is clearly telling us?
Or play word games?
The fact is that the alarmist crowd was 100.0% wrong. When no predictions made by those proposing an hypothesis have ever come true, the only honest course of action is to admit that your hypothesis was wrong.
You refuse to do that. Instead, you’re desperately trying to keep that dead horse moving, by flogging it with incessant but irrelevant comments.
The alarmist crowd lost the science debate a long time ago. Now it’s all politics, propaganda, and word games.
dbstealey & afonzarelli;
db, you need to work on your comprehension skills – you know, the skills you should’ve learned 50 years ago. Talking about scientific bodies and climatologists is not an appeal to authority. There is a process by which research on climate has taken place, and a process under which the results of the research are then combined and conclusions drawn. That process has taken place, and the conclusions drawn with 95% certainty that AGW is real, and is causing substantial warming. It’s fine if you disagree with the conclusions of individual researchers, or the way the conclusions have been drawn. You can call the process flawed and corrupted. But that doesn’t change the outcome of the process or the conclusions.
You keep saying the AGW believers need to prove their cases to skeptics such as yourself. Or what? We won’t get a gold star here on WUWT? As I have said to you multiple times, the world’s scientific bodies agree on AGW, as do the vast majority of practicing climatologists, as do governments, the Fortune 1000 and the oil companies. Commitments and action on AGW is taking place. If skeptics want that to change, it’s YOU that need to do the convincing.
Chris says:
AGW is real…
Which is what I’ve said consistently for many years. I’ve never said anything differently. And you say my reading comprehension is weak?? Your reading comprehension is clearly non-existent.
Then you say:
AGW … is causing substantial warming.
As I’ve also pointed out for many years, that is a baseless assertion. It is clearly, obviously, provably wrong. You have never produced any credible evidence showing that the rise in CO2 has caused ‘substantial warming’. You cannot show that, for the simple reason that there has been no ‘substantial warming’. Your belief that “substantial warming” is occurring is flatly contradicted by reality: the past century’s temperatures have been flatter than anything found in the entire temperature record.
Over the past century and a half, global temperatures have fluctuated by a minuscule 0.7ºC. Nearly half the decades during the past century have been cooling, thus falsifying your absurd belief.
And as usual you fall back on your incessant logical fallacy; your endless ‘appeal to corrupted authorities’, as if that wins you any debate points. It doesn’t. It just shows that you’ve got nothing in the way of verifiable, measurable evidence.
Believers in catastrophic AGW need to prove their case to skeptics. They have abjectly failed, as your post demonstrates. You’ve lost the science debate because your argument is based entirely on baseless assertions, not on measureable data. You cannot produce any measurable evidence quantifying AGW out of all global warming. The planet warms and cools, while CO2 continues its steady rise — thus falsifying your belief.
You are no different from a Jehovah’s Witness who has been told his beliefs are nonsense. There is nothing that can change your mind, certainly not the complete lack of any supporting measurements. Catastrophic AGW is your eco-religion, and from your comments there is no hope of your ever coming down to earth, and realizing that your belief is tantamount to believing there’s a black cat lurking under your bed. But when you turn on the light… there is no cat. And there never was.
Chris, it seems that you are conflating the science of agw with the politics of agw. I agree with you whole heartedly on the political point that you’ve made here. Unless agw is DISPROVEN, the climate change juggernaut will continue on into the future. The only way i think that is likely to happen is if we see sustained cooling or a continued lack of warming. Obviously, if temps don’t start rising soon, there will be defections in the ranks of both scientists and politicians. (i’ll leave a link to the hans von storch interview which will give you some insight as to where things are going on this point within the ipcc) My biggest interest is in watching how carbon growth continues to react in the face of no warming or future cooling. The atmoshperic carbon dioxide growth rate has been tracking with temperature since the inception of the mauna loa observatory over half a century ago. Should we see carbon growth continue at just 2ppm per year (or less with the onset of cooling) for an extended period of time, that would be enough to pop the climate change bubble politically without actually falsifying agw theory…
http://m.spiegel.de/international/world/a-906721.html#spRedirectedFrom=www&referrrer=
@db
Let’s call the forcing effect F. We use use F to mean ‘how much of the observed global warming is caused by human CO2 emission’.
statement 1: the value of F is highly uncertain. It could be anywhere between 0% and 100%
statement 2: we are certain that the value of F is very low.
These statements are contradictory. If you disagree, please explain. It’s like saying
P(x) is uniform in [0,1]
x is guaranteed to be <<1.
A bare contradiction.
Alvahillbilly:
Earlier you stated “it was ridiculous to expect a theory to match the wiggles”
Actually, there IS a model, based solely upon the amount of reduction in anthropogenic sulfur dioxide emissions, which will match all of the NASA land/ocean temp. index “wiggles” circa 1975 to the present (the era of global warming) with an accuracy of a tenth of a degree C or (usually) less, for any year for which the amount of sulfur dioxide emissions is known, when occasional temporary excursions due to El Nino’s, La Nina’s, and large volcanic eruptions are accounted for.
The match is so close that there can never have been any additional warming due to greenhouse gasses!
The science is far from settled!.
Google: ” It’s SO2, not CO2″ for more information
So this is your model?
Ok, so I understand how aerosols can affect temperature – increase aerosols, and you’ll get a cooling effect. Remove them, and you remove that cooling effect.
But how does SO2 produce the clear warming that we’ve seen since 1880 ish? It seems to me that all they’ve done is to counterbalance an underlying warming, and when they were reduced, the underlying warming carried on. But what’s causing the underlying warming?
the Clean Air Act should put us in a similar situation now, to that to around 1880, in terms of aerosols. Or perhaps a bit cooler. But it’s significantly warmer!
Surely your model would predict that we should have had cooling from 1880 ish as SO2 emissions increased, and then warming when they were removed. But the temperature at the end should be similar to that at the start. Or have I misunderstood?
Alvahillbilly:
As I stated, the model applies specifically to the period circa 1975 – present and is essentially a perfect match to NASA’s Jan-Dec average global temperature values. The fact that it can explain what has happened to the climate over the past 40 years is of paramount importance–it is not necessary for it to explain anything that happened in the past–although it will help to explain parts of it, such as the warming that occurred during the depression years, which was also due to the reduction in SO2 aerosol emissions.(about 29 Megatonnes) due to reduced industrial activity
The climate sensitivity factor to the removal of dimming anthropogenic SO2 aerosol emissions is approx. .02 deg. C. of temp. change for each net Megatonne of decrease (or increase) in global SO2 aerosol emissions..
You wondered how SO2 caused the clear warming we’ve seen since 1880 . SO2 will cause warming ONLY when it is removed from the atmosphere. Anthropogenic SO2 aerosol emissions peaked around 1972 (at about 131 Megatonnes), and caused so much cooling that there were fears of a returning ice age at that time..
You do pose a good question as to what has caused the underlying warming. It is certainly not CO2. Probably solar in origin–perhaps our solar system passed through a diffuse interstellar cloud??.
Going forward, we can expect temperatures to continually increase at the rate given by the Climate Sensitivity factor, unless an El Nno fades away, or a large volcanic eruption occurs..
(Incidentally, global SO2 emissions from the start of the industrial age to 2015 are slated to be available this quarter).
“It is certainly not CO2”.
Given the amount of debate around the possible role of CO2 in warming, it’s strange to have you flatly claim that. On what basis do you say that?
The data I’ve seen on sun activity does not look like it can explain warming at all. If anything, it’s going in the wrong direction. So then you’re left with some completely unnoticed cause. How can you rule out CO2? It’s been increasing, and it’s a known greenhouse gas.
If you combine your model (which is interesting BTW) with one based on CO2, you might get pretty close to the actual data, and over the larger time period of 1880-now. Although of course that still leaves the lack of warming during the past 15 years or so, but I’ve not seen anyone have an explanation for that yet.
Alvahillbilly::
You state “How can you rule out CO2? It’s been increasing, and it’s a known greenhouse gas?”
You have not really paid close attention to what I have stated regarding: my model..
Based solely upon the amount of reduction in anthropogenic SO2 aerosol emissions, and the .02 deg. C climate sensitivity factor for their removal, it is possible to project the anomalous temperature rise for any year between 1975 and the present (for which SO2 emissions are known) with an accuracy of a tenth of a degree C, or , usually, less. This is with respect to NASA’s land-ocean temperature index values of average global temperatures, Jan-Dec.
With this precise agreement, there is simply NO room for any warming from alleged “greenhouse gasses’–which are all theoretical, never having been empirically proven.
Here is an example of the agreement:
Global anthropogenic SO2 aerosol emissions in 1975 totaled approx. 131..4 Megatonnes. By 2011, due to global Clean Air efforts, they had dropped to 101 Megatonnes, a decrease of 30.4 Megatonnes.. 30.4 x .02 =0.608 deg. C. of expected anomalous global warming. For 2011, NASA reported an anomalous temperature rise of 0.60 deg.C. This projection was accurate to within .008 deg. C., over a 36 year period!
With respect to the lack of warming over the past 15 years, this is simply not correct.
Warming has continued, but at a much slower rate than between 1975 and 2000., due to the rise in Eastern SO2 emissions offsetting continued reductions in Western SO2 emissions. With lesser net amounts of SO2 being removed globally, temperature increases slowed down.
Which is why 2014-2016 has been warmer–the off-setting is no longer as exact–the temp. rise is largely NOT due to the El Nino..
What caused the rise in global temperature over the past century? It was not primarily CO2. In fact, CO2 was not even a secondary forcing.
As anyone can see, there has been no acceleration in global warming. The trend line from the LIA shows that clearly; no acceleration. At all. In fact, global warming “paused” for 18+ years.
And the long term natural rise in global temperatures shows no “fingerprint of AGW”. Temperature fluctuations have remained within well defined parameters:
That flatly contradicts the predictions of the alarmist crowd, who said the rise in CO2 would cause accelerated warming, and disappearing polar ice caps, and decimated polar bear populations, and accelerating sea level rise, and hundreds of other calamities.
None of them ever happened! The alarmist crowd could hardly look more foolish, could they? They were wrong, no two ways about it.
But they would just look like scientists who made a mistake — no big deal, happens all the time — if they had just admitted what most folks here know: their hypothesis was wrong.
But instead, they dig in their heels, and keep insisting that CO2 is causing runaway global warming. But readers here know the truth:
What’s amusing are the eco-lemmings posting here who haven’t got a shred of credible evidence to support their belief, but they insist they’re right anyway. Religion will do that. Try to tell a Jehovah’s Witness they’re on the wrong track. Same-same.
@Burl Henry
Hmm, well I did kinda skim read it. Let me think about it properly…
“the theory can (and does) match the trend”
Something is making it warmer and cooler. Great theory.
Andrew
My point being, depending on how you like your cherries, you can draw warming and/or cooling trend lines if you like.
Andrew
No matter how you look at it, if you add the up bits and the down bits, you land up with a net up trend. It’s blindingly obvious from the fact that the graph is higher at one end than the other. If you really can’t see that the graph is going up, I suggest we just drop the subject as I’ve no other way of explaining it.
alvahillbilly:
The trend? The trend doesn’t show the cause of global warming. You’re making a big and unwarranted assumption, with no supporting evidence. You seem to believe that just because the planet is in one of its periodic warming episodes, that human CO2 must be the cause. But you have nothing more than your belief as suppport.
In fact, the trend totally supports the position of skeptics, and debunks the alarmist claims.
Even arch-Warmist Dr. Phil Jones shows that the current warming trend is exactly the same as previous, natural step rises in global warming — which occurred before human CO2 emissions were a factor:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/hadley/Hadley-global-temps-1850-2010-web.jpg
That is pretty conclusive evidence that CO2 simply doesn’t have the claimed warming effect. Go argue with Jones if you don’t like it. Without measurements quantifying AGW you’re wasting your time here, arguing incessantly over what amounts to nothing more than your belief system.
Five days later, and ‘alvahillbilly’ responded…
…NOT.
Silence is concurrence.
alvahillbilly,
No one is arguing that there has been no global warming. That’s the biggest strawman in the alarmist arsenal.
Here is a graph showing natural global warming since the 1880’s. Notice that there has been no acceleration — a central tenet and prediction of the alarmist crowd.
The warming trend is the same whether human CO2 emissions were large, or almost non-existent. That pretty much debunks the claim that human emissions cause any measurable global warming.
No, the slope is clearly higher in more recent years than from the period of the 1880s to the 1950s.
Chris,
You need to see an optometrist. Everyone else can see that the natural rise is not accelerating.
As usual, I post verifiable links, while chris emits his obvioulsy wrong opinion.
Wrong, the rate of warming has gone from .055C/decade in the 1880-1950 period to .114C/decade in the 1950-2016. My eyesight is perfectly fine, I can’t say the same for yours.
“As usual, I posted verifiable links.” No, not as usual. Look at all the charts you posted in your thread with Alvahillbilly. They were not verifiable, and you went after him for not trusting the data.
Chris,
Post the charts you’re referring to. So far, you’ve only complained that one (B.E.S.T.) had no source. So I posted a WoodForTrees chart of the B.E.S.T. database, showing the same thing. Therefore, your complaint is just baseless nitpicking.
Post “all the charts” you’re asserting are “not verifiable”, by which I assume you mean you simply disagree with what they’re telling you.
As usual, I asked Chris to respond. But since he’s got nothin’, his response is…
*crickets*
It’s been three days now since my challenge, and Chris still hasn’t responded.
Chris is wrong, but he can’t admit it. Here is plenty of evidence that recent global temperatures have been declining.
Here is the B.E.S.T. dataset showing the decline in global T.
and here is the satellite record showing declining temperatures:
I have plenty more data-based charts showing that global T is not accelerating as Chris falsely assumes. Just ask, and I’ll post them.
[Snip. Impostor. -mod]
quite a good quote from the woodfortrees website:
“Please read the notes on things to beware of – and in particular on the problems with short, cherry-picked trends. Remember that the signals we are dealing with are very, very noisy, and it’s easy to get misled – or worse, still to mislead others.”
The longer the time window, the worse it looks:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1975/mean:12/plot/rss/from:1975/trend
Another good quote:
“Depending on your preconceptions, by picking your start and end times carefully, you can now ‘prove’ that:
Temperature is falling!
Temperature is static!
Temperature is rising!
Temperature is rising really fast!”
“Personally, I prefer the long view…If you look at the trend data, you can see the current trends in °C, between 0.14-0.16°C/decade, or, if it continues at the same rate, between 1.4 and 1.6°C per century.”
Alva and Miso, I’m sure it was COMPLETELY accidental that dbstealey plotted a chart that ends in 2015, when we are almost midway through 2016. He will likely respond “it’s not my chart, take it up with Steven Goddard.” But since he knows how to use WFT to plot data, that statement will ring hollow.
Chris, does stealey really have to wait until nina replaces nino to prove his point? It isn’t as though Dr Spencer’s data is not at the top of the page where we can see the last couple months have taken off. It’s seems that you’re “borderline trolling” as opposed to adding constructive debate here. Stealey is merely repeating what the whole climate change world has known about for quite some time. I posted a link to the Hans von Storch interview in a comments above for you. Take some time and read it. He’s a bonafide ipcc contributor who has some pretty damning things to say about the current affairs in climate change. Things that the ipcc are going to have no choice but to address if temps resume the trajectory that stealey has laid out once nina has come and gone…
Afonzarelli, look at what Alva and Miso wrote, especially the WFT point that longer intervals are better. Why is it trolling to call dbstealey out on that? There are lots of other examples of that – looking at rates of growth of trees, annual snowpack, glacier size, Arctic ice extent. A longer interval is better as it shows long term trends, and prevents short term phenomena such as volcanoes, El Nino/La Nina from skewing the results. I could look at RSS data and find a period of time when the rate of temperature increase was very high, likely above 2C/century. But that would be cherry picking, it’s better to look at long term intervals.
Chris,
alvahillbilly is new to this subject, so I wouldn’t refer to him as any kind of authority. And Miso was a sockpuppet, as the moderator pointed out.
So all you have is your own misinformed opinion, as usual.
Carry on.
Chris says:
I’m sure it was COMPLETELY accidental that dbstealey plotted a chart that ends in 2015
Chris is incapable of finding the source of the chart, as he’s shown before. He just can’t seem to do it. Furthermore, Chris complains about any chart I post. This particular one uses whole years, and 2015 was the last whole year. When 2016 is concluded I’ll post an updated chart. In the mean time, Chris can continue his incessant complaining.
Next, I have no obligation to dance to the tune of an anonymous complainer, who couldn’t find something educational in a chart I posted if his life depended on it. All Chris does is complain. I don’t blame him, because the real world is busy debunking everything he believes in. Complaining about the real world is going beyond “borderline trolling”.
I constantly call out Chris, and hillbilly, and any other alarmist that refuses to admit they have no measurable evidence quantifying their belief that AGW is causing any measurable global warming. But they always deflect, by changing the subject, or answering questions with other questions, and never answering questions, and their endless strawman arguments, and their constant appeals to corrupted authorities — those are what the alarmist crowd uses for their arguments. That’s all they’ve got.
They don’t have any credible measuements, or verifiable evidence, or observations that will convince rational readers that CO2 is the control knob of global temperatures; which is their central argument.
Finally, alvahillbilly keeps asking for a long term view. So here is a chart just like the one he/she posted, but going back another hundred years. That long term chart trumps hillbilly’s, no?
Notice that from ≈1900 to ≈1940’s, the rising global temperature trend was the same as the current rising trend. But human CO2 emissions began to ramp up beginning in the late ’40’s – early ’50’s.
Since the rise in global T was the same, whether CO2 was low or high, the conjecture that human CO2 emissions are the cause of measureable global warming is falsified. QED
@db
“Since the rise in global T was the same, whether CO2 was low or high, the conjecture that human CO2 emissions are the cause of measureable global warming is falsified”
No.
What would be falsified would be a claim such as:
“CO2 emissions are the only thing acting on the climate”. But no climate scientist would make such ridiculous claim. Clearly we still have El Nino, El Nina, volcanoes, variations in sun output etc. These add additional variance on top of the overall warming trend. And then there’s plain old noise.
But none of them can explain that warming trend, only rising CO2 can do that. That’s because CO2 is the only thing that’s been consistently rising over that time period.
hillbilly,
If it weren’t for strawman arguments, you wouldn’t have much to say. No one from the skeptic side has ever said that. But I’ve read alarmist comments that claim CO2 explains 100% of global warming.
And:
…none of them can explain that warming trend, only rising CO2 can do that.
If ignorance is bliss, you must be the happiest commenter here. Certainly logic isn’t your strong point.
You’re saying that since your limited intelligence cannot comprehend any other thing that could cause global warming except rising CO2, then you believe that must be the only possible answer. You assume that the universe simply cannot have a different reason.
You’re amusing. Like a dog trying to understand trigonometry.
Alva, i like making the analogy to the game of chess at these blogs… First one learns how the pieces move and then one developes strategy. One of those “pieces” is the realization that most all of the warming over the last century and a half is natural. This, even by ipcc standards. (the ipcc only lays claim to as little as half of the recent warming being caused by anthro emissions y no mas) Warming prior to the last half of a century is impacted too little by emissions to make a difference. Few dispute this. There is a pro agw scientist who weighs in every now and again at spencer’s blog with a tepid claim to pryor warming without being too definitive about it. (but other than “dr jan” not a one disputes this) What stealey is saying here implies this. He knows how this particular “chess piece” moves and assumes others know as well. Now, where he goes from there would be the legitimate point of contention (in other words, the “chess strategy”)…
@db
“You’re amusing. Like a dog trying to understand trigonometry.”
Do you find that your insulting attitude is successful? I mean, has anyone ever been persuaded by your arguments?
Consider the function y = sin x + 0.3*x
ie a sin wave added to a linear trend. If I plot this, I will see that the peaks always look the same, regardless of how far along the curve I am. But the peaks towards the right hand side will be higher up than those on the left, due to the linear trend. The fact that the peaks all look the same does not mean there is no linear trend.
When you say
“Notice that from ≈1900 to ≈1940’s, the rising global temperature trend was the same as the current rising trend. But human CO2 emissions began to ramp up beginning in the late ’40’s – early ’50’s.”
what you neglect to mention is that the current rising trend is shifted up w.r. t. that from 1900ish to 1940ish.
“You’re saying that since your limitwed intelligence cannot comprehend anything that could cause global warming except rising CO2, then that must be the only possible answer. The universe simply cannot contain a different reason.”
Please enlighten me of what else could be causing that overall warming trend.
a. hillbilly says:
…what you neglect to mention is that the current rising trend is shifted up w.r. t. that from 1900ish to 1940ish.
Neglect to mention?? I’ve repeatedly posted über-Warmist Dr. Phil Jones’ data, which shows the exact same global warming step changes going back to the mid-1800’s:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/hadley/Hadley-global-temps-1850-2010-web.jpg
Anyone with the least bit of common sense can see that whether CO2 is low, or high, global warming is unaffected by its concentration. The rise in CO2 has caused no measurable change in global warming. There has been no acceleration in global T — which was predicted, and which would be expected if CO2 had the claimed effect. But it never happened.
In fact, the current temperature rise is small compared with prior fluctuations during the Holocene. You can count at least twenty rises greater than the current rise here:
What does that mean? It means that your conjecture that CO2 is the primary cause of global warming has been falsified by the only Authority that matters: Planet Earth.
When a conjecture (or hypothesis, or theory) has been falsified, then according to the Scientific Method those who proposed the conjecture are obligated to reject it. They are then expected to formulate a new conjecture or hypothesis, which includes the new information, and evidence, and observations that falsified their original hypothesis. That new hypothesis should more accurately explain what’s happening. The old one has failed. With new information, a new hypothesis should hopefully reflect reality better.
But the climate alarmists refuse to follow the Scientific Method. Instead, they dig in their heels and insist that they are still right: that the rise in CO2 will cause accelerating global warming. Against all contrary evidence, they still insist that CO2 is the basic ‘control knob’ of global temperature. The real world shows that is nonsense, but alarmists are too invested in their narrative. They refuse to give it up, even though it’s been falsified.
Why would people reject what the real world is telling us? Obviously, the CO2=cAGW conjecture was flat wrong. It has been as thoroughly debunked as the theory of epicycles. So why are climate alarmists so intent on believing something that is clearly wrong?
Some reasons are: politics, and/or eco-religion, and/or money, fame, and fortune. Some scientists have found that easy grant money is available if they parrot the “dangerous man-made global warming” propaganda. And some folks will believe anything in the name of their eco-beliefs. They are eco-lemmings, who refuse to admit that the hated skeptics were right all along.
There are as many reasons as there are alarmists. But they all have one thing in common: the truth is not in them.
dbstealey May 13, 2016 at 5:34 pm
In fact, the current temperature rise is small compared with prior fluctuations during the Holocene. You can count at least twenty rises greater than the current rise here:
Since that graph doesn’t show the last 160 years I’m not sure how you can see that.
‘Phil’, so what?
I suppose this is your kind of chart:
http://www.realclimate.org/images//Marcott.png
The past 160 years are here. That supports my previous comment.
Alvahkillbilly:
Among your comments to @db, you stated “But none of them can explain that warming trend, only rising CO2 can do that”
You are indeed a slow learner. As I pointed out earlier, decreasing amounts of anthropogenic SO2 aerosol emissions will ALSO cause warming, and in fact is the actual cause of all of the anomalous warming that has occurred..
The B.E.S.T dataset graph posted by DBSstealey shows a large peak in the warming for 2010. This cannot be explained by gently rising CO2 levels, or the moderate 2009-10 El Nino, but is easily explained by the 9.28 Megatonnes of reduction in SO2 emissions that occurred between 2005 and 2010.
Also, the larger peak that occurred in 1998 was caused by an even larger reduction in SO2 levels, 11 Megatonnes, along with some small contribution from the 1997-1998 El Nino.
@Burl Henry:
I thought we’d already agreed that aerosols cannot account for the *net* warming that has happened between 1880 and now? You start off with a climate with low manmade aerosol levels. You add aerosols over a time period – you should get cooling effect. You start reducing aerosols – you should get a warming effect. So at the end of that, you should be back to roughly the same temperature that you started with. We are not. We are at a significantly higher temperature. You cannot get net warming by adding aerosols and then removing them.
Yes, I can see that aerosols may explain the high-frequency details. But they cannot explain the larger-scale warming between 1880 ish and now. You admitted this yourself earlier on, when you were saying that maybe it’s the sun, or us going through an interstellar cloud. So we agree? That the aerosol model does not explain the larger-scale warming between 1880 and now? Because it is that large-scale warming that I’m referring to.
One other interesting thing I discovered:
If the warming trend was caused by the sun, you would expect all layers of the atmosphere to have warmed. However, if it was caused by a greenhouse effect, you would expect the upper layers to actually get cooler. Guess which has happened?
Alvahillbilly:
As I have pointed out before, my model is SPECIFIC to the period circa 1975 -present, the “Era of Global warming”. It is completely divorced from anything that has happened before, although the same.mechanism (the reduction in anthkropogenic SO2 emissions) has operated at discrete intervals in the past, such as in the warming of the 1930’s.
We live in a unique period in the history of the planet in that action is being taken to deliberately reduce air pollution. Unfortunately, these actions, with respect to reductions in SO2 aerosols, have the serious side effect of warming the planet.
What is also unfortunate is that this is not recognized, but instead is being blamed upon CO2, a harmless gas with no adverse climatic effect. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted in the useless effort to control CO2 emissions, along with untold misery from higher energy costs, worsening weather conditions. etc.
And the EPA (and similar agencies abroad), which in the final analysis have CAUSED the global warming, want to reduce SO2 emissions even further!
@Burl Henry:
here’s an analogy:
It’s winter, and I have the heating on in my flat. It’s 20 degrees inside. I want it to be cooler. So I turn the heating off. After a while, it has cooled. Has my heating made it cooler? How could a heating system ever make it cooler?
Your aerosol system is a cooling system – it can only ever make it colder. When you turn it off (or reduce it), the temperature goes up. That doesn’t stop it being a cooling system. How could a cooling system ever make it warmer?
alvahillbilly:
Your analogy is incorrect.
Let’s look at the real world.
When strongly dimming SO2 aerosols are present in the atmosphere, they will reflect incoming solar radiation, cooling the earth.because of the reduced insolation.
This is correctly shown in the IPCC diagram of radiative forcings as a negative forcing. .
When the dimming aerosols are removed from the atmosphere, they will allow sunshine tp strike the earth’s surface with greater intensity, thus causing greater insolation
(This was the observed result after the 1991 Mount Pinatubo..eruption, where the 23 Megatonnes of SO2 emissions first cooled the earth by about 0.55 deg. C., followed by 0.55 deg. C. of warming as the SO2 aerosols settled out of the atmosphere after about 2 years).
Here, the IPCC diagram is seriously incorrect, since it has no component for the large posiitive forcing caused by the reduction in SO2 aerosol emissions.
To be correct, the forcing now attributed to CO2 should instead be attributed to SO2!
@db
“You can count at least twenty rises greater than the current rise here:…. what does it mean?”
Possibly it means that Greenland temperatures (from your plot) are not a perfect proxy for global temperatures. If we average all the proxies we have, we get something like this:
which shows that we are above historic norms.
from my earlier post:
Please enlighten me of what else could be causing that overall warming trend.
Phil. May 13, 2016 at 7:35 pm
dbstealey May 13, 2016 at 5:34 pm
In fact, the current temperature rise is small compared with prior fluctuations during the Holocene. You can count at least twenty rises greater than the current rise here:
Since that graph doesn’t show the last 160 years I’m not sure how you can see that.
dbstealey May 13, 2016 at 7:51 pm
So, ‘Phil’? so what?
I suppose this is your kind of chart:
“So what?” Well when you claim that a graph shows that “the current temperature rise is small compared with prior fluctuations”, you can’t use one that omits the current period! Pretending that the little rise at the end from over 160 years ago is current, especially when you’ve been told about it on previous occasions is bogus.
Phil:
…you can’t use one that omits the current period!
Sure I can. I just did. I can link to any charts I like.
Here’s a chart that fills in the gap you’re whining about. It goes to 2016.
I note that out of the many hundreds of charts I’ve posted, and from numerous differnt, credible sources, you’ve never said you agreed with any of them.
If you don’t like them, post your own. I’m sure I’ll have some charts to counter any you can find.
And Chris says:
You posted a chart from Steven Goddard…
Ah. So you can find the source, if you want to.
Is there anything keeping from you from asking Goddard your question? Or do you like assigning homework to others? I hope not, because you’re certain to be disappointed.
Burl Henry:
Could you link me to the IPCC diagram you’re talking about? Just so that we’re on the same page.
Do you agree with the following statement:
Increasing aerosols and then decreasing them will result in a net temperature change of near-zero, I.e. no net warming effect. The net temp change from 1880 until now (ie +1.something degrees) is not due to aerosols, but rather due to some underlying warming mechanism.
I just want to be clear about what you are saying.
Check the Wikipedia article on “Radiative Forcings”. The IPCC diagram is included in the article.
No, I cannot entirely agree with your statement. If the amounts of SO2 increases and decreases are identical, then there would be no net change in average global temperatures . Any excess of one or the other would result in a temperature change, fall this in the absence of any natural variations due to El Nino’s, etc.). ..
With respect to the 1880’s, between 1850 and roughly 1915, there were no reductions in SO2 emissions that might have caused any warming.
@Burl Henry:
and to clarify my view, I am saying that aerosols are only ever a negative forcing effect, and never positive, as they can only ever cause cooling, and not warming. When we see aerosol-related warming, it’s because something is causing the warming, and we’ve removed the cooling effect of the aerosols. If you’re claiming that aerosols can have a genuine warming effect, please say so.
alvahilllbilly: “But none of them can explain that warming trend, only rising CO2 can do that. That’s because CO2 is the only thing that’s been consistently rising over that time period.”
Utter unsubstantiated drivel.
Write out 1000 times “correlation does not imply causation”.
Then try to learn some science.
@Catweazle:
Write out 1000 times: an uncorrelated signal cannot be a cause.
What signal do you consider to be a more plausible cause for the net warming over the past 120 years? Presumably it must at least be correlated with temperature? More correlated than CO2?
dbstealey May 13, 2016 at 7:51 pm
‘Phil’, so what?
The past 160 years are here. That supports my previous comment.
That is not the last 160 years of the Greenland Summit Temperature date.
Who cares? You’re just nitpicking. Global warming is going nowhere, so your belief system was wrong.
db:
Could you re-post your graph of the B.E.S.T. dataset? I seem to have deleted it. Thanks
Burl Henry:
And here is one from the WoodForTrees database.
dbstealey May 14, 2016 at 2:00 pm
Phil:
“…you can’t use one that omits the current period!”
Sure I can. I just did. I can link to any charts I like.
But claiming that that graph shows “at least twenty rises greater than the current rise here” is clearly nonsense when the ‘current rise’ isn’t included on the graph! Perhaps you should have included a source of such data for central Greenland, e.g.
Box, J. E., Yang, L., Bromwich, D. H., & Bai, L. S. (2009). Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Air Temperature Variability: 1840-2007*. Journal of Climate, 22(14), 4029-4049.
I note that out of the many hundreds of charts I’ve posted, and from numerous differnt, credible sources, you’ve never said you agreed with any of them.
When you post graphs with errors on them I comment on those errors. The variants of the Greenland Ice graph that you have posted show numerous dating errors and annotating errors which have been the subject of their own post here. Ally, whose data was used, has confirmed the error.
Concerning the plot of ‘The Heating Effect of CO2’ which you frequently post here, the comments that point out the fact that you appear to be plotting a doubling rate of 0.3ºC and responding to your questions above, have been deleted (censored) for no reason.
So when you link to bogus charts and have those errors pointed out apparently you get the comments erased!
@”Phil.”:
Tell it to someone who cares. You’re just an anonymous collection of pixels. If you don’t like the charts I link to, post your own.
alvahillbilly believes that CO2 is the control knob of global temperatures. Really, he actually believes that! Never mind that Planet Earth is clearly debunking that nonsense. The hillbilly still insists it’s true:
Please enlighten me of what else could be causing that overall warming trend.
As catweazel says: Utterly unsubstantiated drivel. If it was possible to enlighten the hillbilly, by now he would understand. But he’s fixated on the scientifically falsified belief that CO2 is the primary cause of global warming.
For new readers: if CO2 caused any measurable global warming, then the large rise in CO2 over the past century would have caused runaway global warming. But it didn’t.
As we see, there has been no acceleration in the natural temperature rise since the LIA. That absence of any ‘fingerprint of AGW’ falsifies the conjecture that CO2 causes any measurable global warming.
That is a rational conclusion. But alvahillbilly doesn’t believe it.
That’s the hillbilly’s problem, but it isn’t a problem for skeptics. Skeptics know that the rise in CO2 has been completely harmless, and very beneficial to the biosphere.
@db
so the question was:
“Please enlighten me of what else could be causing that overall warming trend”
I notice you didn’t attempt an answer. Will any of you ever attempt an answer?
dbstealey May 16, 2016 at 8:43 am
@”Phil.”:
Tell it to someone who cares. You’re just an anonymous collection of pixels. If you don’t like the charts I link to, post your own.
I frequently do, here’s one which shows what happened on the Greenland summit during the ~160 years since the end of the GISP2 data which you posted.
“This particular one uses whole years, and 2015 was the last whole year.”
We are commenting on a post about monthly data, including obviously individual months in 2016. So it is preposterous to post a chart that ends at yearly boundaries. But logic and dbstealey are rarely found in the same place, so I’m not surprised in the slightest.
And yet, Chris only posts his assertions. No verifiable facts. No charts of his own. Just like Phil.
Chris and Phil have one thing in common: no matter how many charts I link to from numerous different sources, they will find something they don’t like about them. That’s just their anal-retentive nitpicking.
If you don’t like the charts I link to, post your own.
Chris says:
Your chart above leaves off nearly a year of data
Wrong. As always. I explained so even commenters of below average intelligence could understand. But you still don’t get it. This year has only 4 months of data available. So you’re wrong about “nearly a year”.
I post the charts I want to post, and as I stated I’m posting charts that go up to the last whole year. You can post whatever you want. Instead, you whine and complain. That’s all you do. The reason is simple: you lost the science debate.
But you won’t man up and admit that the real world has debunked your belief system. That would require at least minimal character, which you lack. Instead, you complain because Planet Earth isn’t doing as predicted.
So who should we believe? Always-wrong Chris?
Or Planet Earth?
One of them is right, and the other one is wrong. Which is which? Take a guess.
dbstealey said: “Chris is incapable of finding the source of the chart, as he’s shown before. He just can’t seem to do it. Furthermore, Chris complains about any chart I post. This particular one uses whole years, and 2015 was the last whole year. When 2016 is concluded I’ll post an updated chart.”
You posted a chart from Steven Goddard without any reference to when that was posted. You could’ve indicated that, but did not. So I went and found it myself. It was posted on 9 June 2015 – so obviously could not have data through year end 2015. Therefore, it is not a chart that ends on yearly boundaries. Tsk, tsk, db, you really shouldn’t do things like that. In fact, the chart you posted was up to date for when it was posted, as it data through May 2015 and was posted in June 2015. Your chart above leaves off nearly a year of data – and of course data you don’t want to show, since it completely undermines your point.
Burl, fascinating stuff, here, and very interesting. Have you got any references?
Alva, again, if the ipcc only claims that as little as half of recent warming is anthropogenic, then warming pryor to this is natural…
Phil, the 0 degree (anomaly) is for the current temperature. Also, in the saturation graph the “doubling of CO2” refers to 560 ppm (agreed that the graph appears a bit scant, though). I assume this is the same phil who harps on bart’s graph for using the mauna loa derivative with southern hemisphere data (?). WFT has no other such derivative plot and bart uses southern hemishpere data because it’s a very good match with the satellite data (which doesn’t cover the entirety of MLO). I see a pattern here… you need to get your head out of your (sand) and stop baselessly nitpicking graphs.
Chris, you’re just flat out “trolling” here !!!
See y’all at the next UAH temperature update… fonzie
Fonzie, thanks for clarifying the definition of trolling. I was not aware that it included pointing out the someone’s statement was inaccurate.
Chris is never right. He says:
…I was not aware that it included pointing out the someone’s statement was inaccurate.
As I stated, I linked to a chart that showed 2015, not 2016. This is only May; there are seven more months to go. As I said, when 2016 ends I’ll post that year, too.
If it wasn’t for Chris’s incessant nitpicking, all he would have left is his silly logical fallacy of appealing to corrupted authorities. I suppose if they told him to jump off a bridge, he wouldn’t question it.
But for readers who aren’t that mentally challenged, I’ll point out once again that global T change over the past century+ is neither unusual nor unprecedented. It has all happened before, repeatedly, and to a much greater degree — and when CO2 was much lower.
That fact is always ignored by the alarmist cult. They don’t like it when someone points out that the planet has just been through the most benign “Goldilocks” temperature regime of the entire temperature record:
http://i1.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2015/10/Global-2-copy.jpg
As recently as just before the present Holocene, temperatures changed by ±TENS of whole degrees — within only a decade or two:
http://oi43.tinypic.com/1zoanbc.jpg
The alarmist crowd’s belief that CO2 is the ‘control knob’ of global T has been falsified by the real world. They just cannot admit it.
Afronzelli:
Re references: Google “It’s SO2, not CO2”
afonzarelli May 14, 2016 at 7:59 am
Phil, the 0 degree (anomaly) is for the current temperature.
If you’re referring to the Greenland ice core data from Ally, you’re wrong, the current temperature at that site is about 1.5ºC on that scale.
Also, in the saturation graph the “doubling of CO2” refers to 560 ppm (agreed that the graph appears a bit scant, though).
If you’re referring to the CO2 graph from steely, since it’s a log graph all doublings in pCO2 will result in the same temperature increase. stealey’s graph appears to be for a log coefficient of ~0.3ºC/doubling, of course it’s not explicitly stated on the graph. stealey didn’t appear to realize this based on our discussion, which has since been erased for some reason!
I assume this is the same phil who harps on bart’s graph for using the mauna loa derivative with southern hemisphere data (?). WFT has no other such derivative plot and bart uses southern hemishpere data because it’s a very good match with the satellite data (which doesn’t cover the entirety of MLO).
I don’t recall that, perhaps a while ago?
I see a pattern here… you need to get your head out of your (sand) and stop baselessly nitpicking graphs.
Or perhaps stealey should stop posting flawed graphs?
Chris says:
You posted a chart from Steven Goddard…
So you can click on a chart and get info.
And:
…without any reference to when that was posted. You could’ve indicated that, but did not. So I went and found it myself.
Yes, I could have done your homework for you. But you’re such a whiny little pest that you can just go do it yourself. Just like you can find any number of charts that show current temperature rises.
You do your endless nitpicking because you have no credible science to back up your alarmist beliefs. If you had verifiable facts showing that human emissions were causing runaway global warming, you would post them.
But you have no facts. You have nothing. So you endlessly nitpick, and deflect, and argue with your own strawmen, and constantly commit logical fallacies. No wonder you’ve lost the science debate.
Alvahillbilly:
You wrote “And to clarify my view, k am saying aerosols are only ever a negative forcing effect, and never positive”
You need to think of them as an umbrella. When the umbrella is open (aerosols present), cooling results. When the umbrellas is closed (aerosols diminished or gone) the sunshine is less hindered and surface warming occurs-a positive forcing.
Surely you can understand this. It is a very simple concept.
The positive forcing is the sunshine.
To be correct, a diagram would have aerosols as a moderating effect on the positive forcing of sunshine. Question: can that moderating effect ever INCREASE the forcing of sunshine? Of course not.
If I remove a negative forcing, global T goes up. That’s practically a definition of a negative forcing.
According to you every positive forcing is also a negative one, because if you remove it T goes down. So you are completely removing the entire concept of positive and negative forcing. It’s almost like saying that there can’t be positive or negative numbers. I think you have a fundamental misconception.
In your example, you are starting with a large cooling effect (umbrella open), and finishing with a small cooling effect (umbrella closed). And the temperature goes up, because the other warming effects now outbalance the cooling effects. But the umbrella can never itself cause warming, only cooling.
It should be obvious by its nature – it can only ever reduce, or attenuate incoming sunlight. It cannot amplify it!
It’s like saying that a negative number can be large (and negative), or small (and still negative). No matter how much is varies between large and small, it’s always less than zero.
How could the umbrella ever produce a long-term warming trend? It cannot. It can produce a long-term cooling trend, by getting bigger and bigger. But warming requires it to get smaller and smaller. But it cannot go smaller than zero!
Alvahillbilly:
Let me point out (again) that the climatic response to the 1991 Mount Pinatubo and Mount Hudson eruptions proves that my contention is correct.
The eruptions injected approx. 23 Megatonnes of SO2 aerosols into the stratosphere, which circled the globe for about 2 years (the open umbrella), cooling the earth by about 0.55 deg. C. before finally settling out. Cooling due to the presence of SO2 aerosols is a negative forcing in the IPPC diagram of radiative forcings..
As the aerosols settled out, temperatures recovered to pre-eruption levels (the closed umbrella), strictly due to the removal of the dimming SO2 aerosols from the atmosphere, This allowed the incoming solar radiation to strike the earth’s surface with greater intensity. Thus, the removal of dimming SO2 aerosols is a positive forcing, in that
it results in more surface warming. This forcing, however, is not a component of the IPCC diagram, a serious error because the climate sensitivity to their removal is so large..
Back in 1975, annual anthroogenic SO2 aerosol emissions totaled about 131 Megatonnes. The bulk of these emissions came from relatively constant sources, such as power plants, foundries, vehicle exhausts, and the like. Since they were constantly being renewed, the atmosphere was never free of their dimming effects, until they were either shut down or modified to reduce emissions. The projected temperature rise due to reductions in the amount of .these SO2 aeroosol emissions is essentially a perfect match to the actual rise in anomalous global temperatures over the years..
You seem to have difficulty understanding that “closing an open umbrella ” will cause warming to occur underneath.. But you do have a lot of company.
@Burl henry
“You seem to have difficulty understanding that “closing an open umbrella ” will cause warming to occur underneath.. But you do have a lot of company.”
no, I understand it perfectly. Removing a negative forcing will make it warmer. I said that in my comment above if you read it carefully. What you seem to not be able to understand is that removing a negative forcing, is not the same as adding a positive forcing. Just as making a large negative number less negative does not mean the same as making it positive.
If my car is parked on a hill, and I release the brake, it will accelerate downhill. My brake’s are not causing an acceleration, something else is. Brakes can never cause the car to speed up, only slow down. According to your logic, I’ve just ‘proved’ that brakes have a positive effect on speed.
This is really basic stuff. The umbrella can only ever reduce the amount of sunlight hitting the earth. They cannot INCREASE it. So there is no possible way for it to warm the earth. When you close the umbrella, it is something else that’s causing the warming.
Imagine the following scenario: we have an earth in equilibrium at a temperature T. There are no aerosols. If we add aerosols, the temperature drops. If we remove them, it goes back up to T. I give you the ability to add and remove aerosols as you wish. By changing aerosols only, can you ever get the temperature to stabilise above T?
The answer is no. It’s because aerosols only cause cooling, not warming. If you add cooling and the remove it, you haven’t created a net warming effect. Can you really not see that adding cooling and removing is not the same as adding warming? If I instead allowed you to control an actual warming effect – like greenhouse gases – then you can definitely get the temperature above T.
alvahillbilly:
You wrote “Imagine the following scenario: we have an earth in equilibrium at a temperature T.There are no aerosols. If we add aerosols, the temperature drops. If we remolve them, it goes back up to T I give you the ability to add and remove aerosols as you wish. By changing aerosols only, can you ever get the temperature to stabilise above T?
For your example, the answer is, of course, No.
However, as of 2011, worldwide anthropogenic SO2 emissions totaled 101 Megatonnes.
It is the reduction in the amount of these emissions (and not the accumulation of CO2) that is .causing the rise in global temperatures, at the rate of approx. .02 deg. C. of temp. rise for each net Megatonne of reduction in the emissions (in the absence of any temporary natural change due to El Nino’s, La Nina’s, or large volcanic eruptions).
Whether removing a negative forcing can be considered a positive forcing is a moot question–the climatic response is the same.
“For your example, the answer is, of course, No.”
then aerosols are a negative forcing – that is a definition of what a negative forcing is. If they pushed the temperature above T, they would be a positive forcing. So the IPCC diagram is entirely correct.
“Whether removing a negative forcing can be considered a positive forcing is a moot question–the climatic response is the same.”
It’s not a moot point at all, it’s an important one. It means, for example, that aerosols can never explain the net warming between 1880 and now – not even in principle. They may explain the variations – the slowing down of warming – but not the net warming effect. So we are always left with an unexplained net warming effect. There are only so many things that can produce net warming, and CO2 is one of them. There really aren’t many others.
If I’m going downhill and dab my brakes on and off, and at the end find I’m going faster, it’s pretty obvious that something is making me accelerate, and it’s not the brakes.
I made another point earlier, but it got lost, so I’ll repeat it. It seems clear that whatever is causing the net warming does not lie outside the earth, i.e. cannot be the sun or interstellar dust or whatever. How do we know this? Because the upper layers of the atmosphere are actually cooling. Why would they be cooling? The same reason that your loft gets colder if you put loft insulation in. You have reduced how much heat is getting transmitted to the air in the loft. This finding suggests very strongly that this is a greenhouse effect. How else would you explain it?
Alvahillbilly:
Again: You wrote “imagine the following scenario: we have an earth in equilibrium at a temperature T. There are no aerosols. If we add aerosols, the temperature drops. If we remove them, it goes back up to T. I give you the ability to add and remove aerosols as you wish. By changing aerosols only, can you ever get the temperature to stabilize above T?
And I replied “For your example, the answer is, of course, No.”
However, consider the real world, also stabilized at temperature T, but with 103 Megatonnes of SO2 emissions present, as in 2010. If I remove 2 Megatonnes of aerosols (as happened between 2010 and 2011), the temperature will stabilize at a higher temperature, in this case T + .04 deg. C (as also happened).
In this example, the removal of aerosols did have a positive forcing–they caused the temperature to increase.
Can you finally understand this?.
It is unfortunate, but ANY reduction in SO2 emissions will cause the “background” temperature to rise at the rate of .02 deg. C. for each net Megatonne of reduction in global SO2 emissions.
And nothing can be done to reduce temperatures short of re-polluting the air.. .
ahillbilly says:
There are only so many things that can produce net warming, and CO2 is one of them. There really aren’t many others.
How would you know that?
@db
then name some of them. And let’s see if they can explain the warming. You start.
@Burl Henry
Either you were not reading what I wrote, or you’re not understanding it. I repeatedly said that removing aerosols would make the temp increase. I get that.
What youre missing is that this increase can never push the temperature above what it was before the aerosols were added. And yet in the real world, this is what happened. We increased aerosols, and then decreased then. And the temperature was higher at the end than at the start. This cannot be due to the aerosols as they only produce cooling, not warming. SO WHAT CAUSED THE NET WARMING??
It cannot be something outside the earth, otherwise the upper atmosphere would have got warmer. It got colder. How can we explain this?
Please don’t tell me again that reducing aerosols made it warmer. I know that. That doesn’t make them a positive forcing. Again, you are saying that my brakes have a positive effect on my cars speed. Doesn’t it bother you that that is clearly complete nonsense? Are you happy to have an understanding that lead to completely nonsensical conclusions? Serious question: what’s your level of science education?
alvahillbilly:
You wrote: “I repeatedly said that removing aerosols would make the temperature increase”
Then you wrote . “This cannot be due to aerosols as they only produce cooling, not warming .SO WHAT CAUSED THE NET WARMING”.
Obviously, it is due to the removal of those cooling aerosols.
If SO2 aerosols are present, there is a cooling effect.
If these aerosols are removed, there is a warming effect (as proven by the climatic response to the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption).
There is a reservoir of around 100 Megatonnes of SO2 aerosol emissions in our atmosphere. As they are removed, temperatures will naturally rise, driving temperatures ever higher until the reservoir is exhausted.
This is what has caused the net warming since circa 1975.
I leave it to your brilliance to explain the earlier warming trend, in the complete absence of any significant greenhouse gas emissions, and with no decrease in SO2 aerosols.. Perhaps black carbon, as an earthly source?
@Burl
“If SO2 aerosols are present, there is a cooling effect.
If these aerosols are removed, there is a warming effect (as proven by the climatic response to the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption).”
Yes, but how much warming?? Can it produce enough warming to push the temperature ABOVE what it was before you added the aerosols??
The answer is no!! We already established that. So no matter how many times you add and remove aerosols, you can’t land up with a temperature that is higher than when you started! Come on for god’s sake, you must see this!
Yes, if you add a cooing effect it gets colder.
Yes, if you remove it, it gets warmer.
But it does not get so much warmer that it’s warmer than when you started!!
Otherwise you have found a magical free way to heat things up. That’s like saying I can make my flat hotter by opening the window to the cold, and then closing it again. Wow, free heating!
The earlier warming was probably caused by CO2, which did not have zero emission rates prior to 1975.
“This is what has caused the net warming since circa 1975.”
But that must be offset against the cooling that must have happened when we introduced the SO2!
I ask your brilliance: why wasn’t the earth getting progressively colder as our SO2 emission increased?
Alvahillbilly:
You wrote “Yes, but how much warming? Can it produce enough warming to push the temperature ABOVE what it was before you added (you meant “removed”) the aerosols.? The answer in no!!”
No, the answer is YES!
To repeat the example that I had given you earlier:
In 1975, Global anthropogenic SO2 emissions totaled approx. 131.4 Megatonnes. By 2010, due to Global Clean Air efforts, they had dropped to 101 Megatonnes, a decrease of 30.4 Megatonnes.
Using the .02 deg. C. Climate Sensitivity factor derived from the 1991 volcanic eruptions, 30.4 x .02 = 0.608 deg. C. of expected anomalous warming over the period 1975 – 2011. NASA reported a value of 0.60 deg. C. .This was accurate to within
.008 deg. C. over a 36 year period (leaving NO room for any additional warming due to greenhouse gasses).
.
Now, according to NASA, the average Land-Ocean Global Temperature (Jan-Dec), with respect to the average of the 1951-1980 base period, was ..(-).02 deg. C.in 1975
By 2011, after the removal of 30.4 Megatonnes of SO2 aerosol emissions, temperatures had RISEN by 0.62 deg. C, well above the starting value. This was because the cleaner air allowed the sunshine to strike the earth’s surface with greater intensity…
A bit technical, but it proves the point that I have been making, that the reduction in SO2 aerosol emissions is the cause of all of the anomalous warming that has occurred..
You also asked “why wasn’t the earth getting progressively cooler as our SO2 emissions increased?”.
Actually, it did, in the run-up in emissions from roughly the mid 1950’s to the peak of 131.2 Megatonnes in 1972. The cooling was mostly a northern hemisphere phenomenon, and there were worries that we might be heading into another ice age at that time,
@Burl
And again you fail to understand.
If you add cooling, and then remove it, you cannot land up warmer than before you started.
The fact that the experimental data shows that we DID land up warmer, shows something very clearly: that there is another factor causing underlying warming!
If aerosols were the only thing going on, we would expect the magnitude of the cooling period to match pretty much with the magnitude of the warming period. They did not match. The cooling was smaller, and the warming bigger. So therefore there is an underlying warming effect, which is NOT the aerosols.
Again, if I open my window to the cold, and close it again, and find that my flat it hotter than when I started, there is only one explanation. Something else is adding heat. When I say NET warming, the word ‘net’ means comparing the end of a process with its beginning. The end is when aerosols are low again. The beginning is when they were originally at the low point. ‘Net’ means what’s the effect of adding cooling and then removing it. It should be roughly zero. The fact that we get a ‘net’ warming, shows that there is another process happening, one that is adding heat. Aerosols cannot add heat.
I have no other way of explaining this, so I’m going to have to give up now. Either you understand it or you don’t.
Alvahillbilly:
You said “If you add cooling, and then remove it, you cannot land up warmer than before you started”
and “So therefore there is an underlying warming effect, which is NOT the aerosols”
What you are failing to understand is that aerosols, per se, do not cause any warming or cooling.. All that they do is attenuate the sun’s rays, causing cooling when they are present, and increase the surface warming of the earth, when they are reduced or removed.
Their behavior is exactly as happens on a sunny day which drifting clouds. When there is a cloud overhead, the temperature underneath is cooler than when it passes by and allows full sunshine to strike the earth..
As aerosols are removed, there is less attenuation and temperatures trend higher, as the data clearly shows.
I hope that this helps your understanding..
@Burl.
I’ve given up. You are immune to logic.
Try posting this on Judith Curry’s site, maybe someone there can get you to understand the massive hole in your reasoning.
Alvahillbilly:
You said “maybe someone there can explain the massive hole in your reasoning”
I am clueless as to what hole you are talking about!
The model which I have proposed will project the average global temperature for any year, 1975-present (where SO2 emissions are known) with an accuracy of less than a tenth percent of actuality
There is no other model which can .even come close to such accuracy.over a 36 year period.
As Karl Popper wrote, “scientific theories must be falsifiable (that is,empirically testable), and that prediction is the gold standard for their validation”.
This model meets both criteria.
I am frankly amazed at your inability to understand what I have written.
Burl Henry says:
I am frankly amazed at your inability to understand what I have written.
It’s pretty clear, because even I could understand it. ☺
@Burl
clue: try working out the precise predictions your model makes for 1880-1975. I mean actual numbers. Do they also match the data?
Alvahillbilly:
I have REPEATEDLY pointed out that my model is SPECIFIC to the period circa 1975 to the present, which is the period of most urgent interest, considering that .CO2 is wrongly being blamed for the current warming, and that the EPA is bent upon shutting down more power plants and further reducing SO2 emissions.
Nothing in the past has any real bearing upon the current situation, which is caused by efforts to clean the air. To fault my model for not explaining the past is sheer idiocy.
@Burl
And yes I realise they’re weren’t accurate records. But we know that SO2 would have been far lower in 1880 ish compared to 1975. So just pick any reasonable figure, and see what your model predicts. And use the same climate sensitivity value. Does your model predict that 1975 is warmer or cooler than 1880?
@Burl
to propose a model that makes completely nonsensical predictions OUTSIDE a narrow time period is idiocy. The laws of physics did not change in 1975. Aerosols did not magically change their behaviour in 1975. So whether you like it or not, your model DOES make predictions about the previous time period. And those predictions are wrong. And that is why we can reject your model.
What you are doing is cherry-picking, the thing you are told explicitly not to do. The reason is that you can land up with completely stupid results. I could cherry-pick some other period of data and find that temperature is completely predicted by any random variable. But a glance at the wider dataset would show that to be false.
Instead of arguing against me, why not actually try it, and see for yourself what your model would predict? It might help you learn why the model was never going to work in the first place.
@Burl
The bottom line remains the same: if reducing aerosols now is causing warming, there must be an equal amount of cooling when they were increased. The NET effect is zero, as I have repeatedly said. The data shows very clearly a NET warming
The data shows very clearly a NET warming
I agree.
But you overstep when you say that most, or all of that global warming is caused by human CO2 emissions.
The evidence is lacking, and there are other, more credible reasons. In fact, there isn’t much evidence at all that the rise in CO2 is the primary cause of global warming. That’s just a measurement-free belief.
Beliefs like that are more akin to religion than to science. Here, we need data. Measurements are data. But there are no measurements quantifying AGW. Your belief is not sufficiently convincing. And since belief is all you’ve got, it convinces skeptics that they’re on the right track when they question your CO2=cAGW supposition.
db, even when I point out your falsehood, you still double down. Incredible. Here is what you said: This particular one uses whole years, and 2015 was the last whole year. When 2016 is concluded I’ll post an updated chart.”
You said whole years. What you posted was through May, 2015. That is not a whole year. So what you said was false.
Chris,
You have never pointed out a falsehood by me, because I haven’t written any. No doubt that’s psychological projection on your part.
When I said whole years, I was pointing out that 2016 isn’t even half over. Your failure to understand that isn’t my fault. As I wrote, when 2016 is over I’ll post that chart.
In the mean time, you’re just nitpicking as usual. That’s because you’ve got nothin’ but your debunked beliefs, and they get more ridiculous all the time.
No, you said “this particular one uses whole years”, in reference to your chart from 2015. Except that your chart was not for full years. This is not nitpicking, it demonstrates that your reason for not posting 2016 YTD data was completely groundless.
Keep nitpicking, chris. It’s all you’ve got. Because Planet Earth is making a fool of you. The chart I posted ended with the last whole year; 2015.
Your reading ability fails. I said I was posting a chart of the available whole years. You are the only one who couldn’t understand that 2016 isn’t a whole year yet.
You’re in no position to read things into what I wrote that are clearly not there, which means your lack of understanding is your problem, not mine.
I am confused too. Here is RSS from 1997 to 2015.99 with a mean of 12:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/to:2015.99/mean:12/plot/rss/from:1997/to:2015.99/trend
It looks different from the one here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/05/05/uah-v6-global-temperature-update-for-april-2016-0-71-deg-c/comment-page-1/#comment-2213157
So exactly what was plotted above?
Werner, you will have to ask where WFT gets its database.
Stealey, this here is the reason why i’ve “checked out”… it’s at the point where everybody is just going round in circles. (not you though, burl !) You’ve been very enlightening; thanks much and see you next UAH update… fonz
afonzarelli,
Smart move. Trying to teach anything to Horne is harder than trying to teach a dog trigonometry.
Werner, the plot that db posted was from Steven Goddard, and was posted on 9 June 2015. It has data only through May, which is what it looks different from you chart which goes through year end 2015.
Thank you! Did Steven Goddard ever claim it went to the end of 2015?
You’re very welcome, Werner. No, the accompanying text reads: “There is no hiatus. Temperatures are dropping and Earth is entering a cooling period.” That’s the only text associated with the graph, which is one of several graphs posted in an entry on 9 June 2015. If you’d like to look at it, go to page 187 on his wordpress site.
Temperatures are dropping and Earth is entering a cooling period.
I wouldn’t know; I don’t predict the future. What I do know is that global warming paused for many years. That’s a verifiable fact, despite the new talking points.