Guest fiction by Sheldon Walker
Imagine that scientists have developed a cure for global warming. But there is a catch. The cure can only be used one time, and it will only last for 10 years.
Warning: the following story is not real. It is fiction, science fiction. However, most of the “facts” that are presented here are completely true. See if you can identify fact from fiction.
There are many questions. Should we use the cure now? Should we delay using the cure until global warming gets worse? Is the cure dangerous? Does the cure have side-effects?
Scientists present the facts to the citizens of Earth.
- The average global warming rate from 1970 to 2017 was about 1.80 degrees Celsius per century.
- The 95% confidence interval for the average global warming rate was about 1.50 to 2.10 degrees Celsius per century (calculated using a linear regression with a correction for autocorrelation).
- The 95% confidence interval does not include zero, so the average global warming rate is statistically significant.
- As well as being statistically significant, the average global warming rate is significant in other ways. We can see the effects of global warming in the real world. It is changing the environment in a number of ways.
- The cure will make the average global warming rate equal to about zero degrees Celsius per century, for 10 years.
- The citizens of Earth are warned that to reduce the average global warming rate from 1.80 to 0.00 degrees Celsius per century, will not be easy. They must be prepared for some hardships. Scientists will be dealing with a new technology, which must be powerful to overcome the significant effects of global warming. But scientists are generally optimistic that the cure can be implemented.
Is this cure a waste of time? Some people believe that the cure is just putting off the inevitable. Others believe that it will give us a 10 year window to develop a different cure.
A citizen in the crowd shouts out a question, “Can you give us any idea what we are going to face, when the cure is implemented?”.
A scientist from the back of the stage steps forward, and says “As a matter of fact, we can”.
The crowd goes completely quiet, and waits for the scientist to speak.
The scientist starts speaking, “from about 2002 to 2012, there was a phenomenon on the Earth known as ‘The Slowdown’. It resulted in an average global warming rate of about zero degrees Celsius per century for 10 years. Almost exactly the same as the cure. Many of the people here will have lived through ‘The Slowdown’. Most people probably didn’t even realise that it was happening. Some people deliberately ignored ‘The Slowdown’. Several groups of people, known as ‘Warmists’ and ‘Alarmists’, tried to pretend that there was no ‘Slowdown’. I guess that the people in those groups must be feeling pretty stupid now.
____________________
As I said at the start of this story, most of the “facts” that are presented in this story are completely true. The existance of the global warming cure is the only fiction in the story. All of the information about ‘The Slowdown’ is true.
If you look at Graph 1 (at the top of this story), then you will see ‘The Slowdown’. The blue line is the GISTEMP global monthly temperature series. The red line is a LOESS Smooth of the GISTEMP data. It uses a local regression size of 10 years to do the smoothing.
The red line looks flat from about 2004 to 2011. Flat means a warming rate of close to zero degrees Celsius per century. I usually claim that the slowdown went from 2002 to 2012. The reason that the LOESS Smooth is not flat for that entire date interval, is that it uses a local regression which includes data to the left and right of the point being plotted. So that when the point for 2002 is plotted, it is calculating a regression over 1998 to 2007.
If you plot a linear regression just over the date interval from 2002 to 2012, then you will get a warming rate of close to zero degrees Celsius per century, for the 10 year period. I wish that we had a “cure” that powerful.
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We don’t need a “cure” for a non-problem.
It ain´t broke.
Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke lest one fix until broke or broke.
Firstly I would not base any claims on “a smooth”. What is that supposed to mean? It is not scientific. Smoothing is a visual effect. Scientists and engineers apply filters and then specify what the filter is supposed to do, eg. remove high frequencies and keep lower frequency changes.
If you look at what the LOESS filter does it treats the end sections differently to the bulk of the data in order to get results which go to the end of the data. With lengthy windows 10 years on such short data that means that middle is getting a different treatment to the rest. And this is just the bit which is showing a different result. Is that part of the reason, I don’t know, but it is very poor data processing.
Really ? How does it do that for the last year of the data : where it still produces a result?
You can not even define the frequency response of this “filter” since it is not consistent across the span of the data. How can you be sure that what you see is not due to artefacts of the varying performance of the filter? You can’t.
Well at least you say it is just a “claim”. When I look at the graph you are clearly stretching it bolster your claim. It is clearly not flat in either 2002 or 2012. Why does the analysis start in 1995, the dataset goes back way further? What is that about?
Any rigorous filter with a ten year window will not produce a result for the first and last 5 years. If you remove that you really don’t have must left to comment on.
I agree that there was a pause , probably considerably longer than 5 or 6 years shown by this analysis, if presented honestly.
I would suggest you learn a little about filters instead of applying arbitrary “smoothers”.
Its fitting that GISS Temp is used in fiction posting.
Greg called GISS Temp data, lol. Nope, with the stations they use in analysis at GISS Temp, the result is output not data.
GISS is clearly an estimation, there is no data in GISS final product.
Yup. William M Briggs tried to explain it more forcefully:
http://wmbriggs.com/post/195/
Words that stick in the memory:
Yes, the premise is somewhat ridiculous.
Agree!
Global Warming is occurring, naturally.
The Global Warming Pause from 2002 to 2012 occurred, naturally.
When the Holocene Interglacial ends, Global Cooling will occur, with brutal frigid consequences….. naturally!
Victor Borge had an uncle who invented a cure for which there was no disease. Sadly, he later caught the cure and died.
He is greatly missed.
Victor Borge, that is. Not the uncle.
The only cure is to get the science right and the misperceived problem goes away all by itself.
…as opposed to never getting one single prediction right
Has there ever been a “science” that’s persisted like this…when it’s never been right in almost 100 years?
And using GISTAMP for the chart …..
what fun !
why are you wasting your time worrying about noise? Suppose that the temperature is given by a
function
f(t) = alpha * t +noise
then the trend over any sufficiently short period can be almost arbitrarily large or small (plus both
positive and negative). All that means is that the noise fluctuates faster than your time period. Given
random fluctuations you would expect to find ten year slowdowns in temperature fairly regularly. It doesn’t
mean anything except that we are dealing with a noise system.
A system that does not respond to rapid increases in CO2 concentrations. Theory trumped by reality, anyone?
the response time is thousands of years due to the thermohaline currents in the deep ocean. There is no reason to expect a rapid response from a system with a 5000 year memory.
Then I’ll get right on it over the next thousand years or so, Germonio.
Geronimo,
You are arm waving, and looking pretty silly.
Hansen declared the climate catastrophe had started in 1988.
We are bombarded by daily claims that the climate catastrophe is happening now.
So now, after 30 years of failed climate predictions you claim the catastrophe is hiding in the oceans.
Please continue this great comedy bit.
Thanks.
“There is no reason to expect a rapid response from a system with a 5000 year memory.”
What happened to the argument of what else could it be? Wasn’t the late 20th C warming due to an event 5000 years ago?
Germonio, what if the cause is the thermohaline circulation itself? Then what we are seeing now is perfectly natural and will change as the currents change.
IMO this guy is not funny at all, but his shifty eyes, sly grin and “yeah, yeah… that’s it” remind me of climate explainers.
Geronimo, ditto on the warming too! Steve McIntyre (a statistician) showed that the procedure used by Mann was such that noise ALWAYS came out a hockey stick! Fancy that.
The solution, not for global warming, but rather catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, is the progressive normalization of selective-child (a.k.a. Pro-Choice), as well as other orientations and behaviors that debase human life and are antithetical to human fitness. The Choice is a wicked solution, to albeit a hard problem.
I have no idea what you are babbling about.
CAGW is a fairy tale backed up by
absolutely NO SCIENCE.
Our planet has had more CO2 in the air than today
for almost all of it’s 4.5 billion years, and there was
never any runaway warming (CAGW), or else we would
not be here debating the fairy tale !
Please tell us what language you write in so we can translate
your comment. I would guess it is Confusedglish.
Well, nn, if we chose YOUR solution, you might not be alive now.
Try thinking about that for a moment.
Maxine Waters protested because her mother couldn’t have an abortion.
so a win win really?
I was thinking about the small temperature differences alleged to be from global warming the other day when I drove my daughter the short distance to her school and the air temperature was 2 degrees F different at the school. Yes, we adjusted easily.
stronginva:
You are confused:
+ 2 degree F. is no big deal
+2 degrees C. is the beginning of the end
of life on our planet as we know it.
Your +2F = (safe)
Your +2C = (catastrophe).
Many people make the same mistake.
Prove that +2C is catastrophic?
Richard, that was good.
Catastrophic of course, but only for the world. If she stays between home and school she should be ok.
We already have a cure for the next three years, and hopefully more. And we saved money on the cure, versus spending more, to get get a bigger problem. The “problem” is not a real problem, it is a theoretical one. No one notices a tenth or two per decade, one way or another. It is a global measurement, and we live in one spot at a time. It is not only insignificant, it is undetectable by a single individual.
oh please……
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
Latitude, your temperature graph stops in 1895. And it’s only from a single spot in Greenland.
oh dang, I meant to post the one from Miami
Regardless of the actual time used, it certainly appears to indicate that temperature has DECLINED over the same time period that CO2 concentration in the air has INCREASED. Where’s your Greenhouse Theory (sorry, should be more properly called Conjecture) now?
Red you are talking about a few years? You appear to be with Sheldon (and icisil below it seems) – there is no such thing as noise – unless the two lines are straight that disproves everything, including Arrhenius (1896).
Seems like it actually flat-lined to 2014 until the 2014-16 El Nino.
Meanwhile CO2 did this during the same period
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/images/largesize/PIA14435_hires.jpg
To Add El Nino caused a spike in geometric CO2 growth as measured at mauna loa.
NOAA noted this.
To cause a spike of a well mixed gas in the atmosphere, the CO2 release by the oceans during El Nino dwarfed human emissions over a decade combined at least.
Plus human emissions have stalled since 2014.
A cure like the slaughter of 40,000 elephants?
Stop warmer nights ?
Stop the greening of the Earth ?
No one in their right mind
would want to stop the good news
from adding Co2 to the air.
Based on real science, of course,
not wild guess computer games.
Climate blog:
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
Using the GISTemp data for the explanatory chart is a real Show-Stopper for me. After I saw that the rest was fiction writ large.
It still comes down fo the scientific facts about the prroperties of the gas co2.
We need two things, the red blue team in the usa, with lots of govt properganda, the good stuff, plus a epa court case to prove that co2 is a good gas & essential for all life on earth.
Trumps govt must buy advertasing space in the mainly left wing papers to get the message out.
The green industry is big business. Only big govt. Can effectly fight it.
Mje
Could all of the people who don’t like GISTEMP please tell me what I should use as an alternative.
As far as I can see, most of the Land-Ocean temperature series are very similar.
I have a choice, use GISTEMP and have skeptics not believe me, or use UAH or RSS and have warmists not believe me.
I cannot make everybody happy. So tell me a temperature series to use.
The only temperature record on Earth that is mostly consistent over its entire lifetime and goes back centuries is CET ( Central England Temperatures) kept as ‘hard copy’ record by the MET office.
Given all the fiddling, statistical manipulation of every other series of ‘numbers’ that advertise themselves as temperature records it can justifiably be used as the only global record.
No anomalous anomalies required.
Because GISS temp has no data in its final product.
Are you aware of the coverage of stations used on their analysis Sheldon? The smearing? C’mon.
Take all data sets and average them, balloon sat & surface at least.
GISS also consistently adjust the monthlies from 1880 onwards every year, hundreds of adjustments are made every year
and lets not forget the “data” GISS uses has been raped and pillaged before they even get it.
Any problems highlighted on the DATA, Schmidt at GISS promptly and consistently points people to NOAA for any raised issues. More than once I read a tweet from Schmidt that was more or less a tacit admission he thinks NOAA’s adjustments are bollocks
The only reasonable data is UAH 6.0. It is the only data that covers 95% of the planet and also avoids UHI and extremely poor areal coverage from the oceans. It’s true that warmists don’t like it. So what.
The only other possibility is hadsst3 but like I said the areal coverage of the oceans is poor.
Much as I love the CET, the idea that it is more reliable and less “manipulated” than every global series is questionable to say the least. But if you insist on using it as a proxy for global temperatures, note that from 1975 to present it shows warming at the rate of 2.28C / century, somewhat faster than GISTEMP.
Over the last 10 years the rate has shot up to 8.86C / century, but of course that’s just noise.
Sorry, I messed up the blockquote in that previous comment. The first paragraph is quoting jim, the rest is my response.
[Fixed. -mod]
Sheldon Walker writes,
“I have a choice, use GISTEMP and have skeptics not believe me, or use UAH or RSS and have warmists not believe me.”
The difference is that GISS has been adjusted so many times, that the cooling from the 1940’s to the 1970’s have changed from a .50 cooling trend to zero trend. Their adjustments are not properly validated.
Meanwhile UAH changes from one version to another are documented and presented in a science publication. Aside from any possible small corrections, it is accepted.
As are GISS and RSS changes.
Bellman, did you bother to notice how GISS/NOAA adjust OVER and OVER…….., While UAH and RSS doesn’t?
No they don’t publish their reasons in a paper or you would have pointed it out. Satellite data are not adjusted over and over.
That is the crucial difference you miss.
Sunsettommy wrote: “Satellite data are not adjusted over and over.”
UAH is on version 6.0. That qualifies as over and over.
Martin,
Now you are being dishonest since the “adjustments” for UAH have little to do the data themselves but on other factors that effect the data which they explained in the paper for Version 6.0
GISS adjust the adjusted data over and over, not even close to the original raw data anymore.
It is clear you didn’t look at the link I gave you, since GISS clearly has no credible justification to eliminate the well known cooling trend of about .5C from the 1940’s to the 1970’s, which is now about zero today. They DOUBLED the warming trend from 1880 in their latest changes.
The obvious eludes you apparently.
Sunsettommy wrote: “Now you are being dishonest since the “adjustments” for UAH have little to do the data themselves but on other factors that effect the data which they explained in the paper for Version 6.0”
Now you are accusing me of being dishonest, but did you inform your readers that satellites don’t even measure temperature? They don’t. The temperature data is computed from the data recorded by the satellites using models, and those models have been adjusted many times, which means the temperature data they compute has been adjusted many times. So if one of us is being dishonest, it’s not me.
See how Martin tries to mislead by suggesting that I am talking about temperature data when I simply said DATA only.
Meanwhile I made the point that their adjustments are not on the data themselves (which Martin never shows to be wrong) as Dr. Spenser over the years publish what the adjustments are and why they made them: Here is a simple list from Wikipedia showing the adjustments:
UAH version Main adjustment Trend correction Year
A Simple bias correction 1992
B Linear diurnal drift correction -0.03 1994
the rest of the listed changes are in the link,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAH_satellite_temperature_dataset
For the most part they are corrections of Satellites situation they are in, the changes of their orbits, the aging status of their sensors and so on.
” The satellite series is not fully homogeneous – it is constructed from a series of satellites with similar but not identical instrumentation. The sensors deteriorate over time, and corrections are necessary for satellite drift and orbital decay.”
Martin stated,
“Now you are accusing me of being dishonest, but did you inform your readers that satellites don’t even measure temperature? They don’t. The temperature data is computed from the data recorded by the satellites using models, and those models have been adjusted many times, which means the temperature data they compute has been adjusted many times. So if one of us is being dishonest, it’s not me.”
He has responded to what I wrote about UAH satellite:
“Now you are being dishonest since the “adjustments” for UAH have little to do the data themselves but on other factors that effect the data which they explained in the paper for Version 6.0″
Here is the published paper on Version 6.0 by Dr. Spencer:
Abstract 3
Version 6 of the UAH MSU/AMSU global satellite temperature dataset represents an
extensive revision of the procedures employed in previous versions of the UAH datasets. The
two most significant results from an end-user perspective are (1) a decrease in the global-average
lower tropospheric temperature (LT) trend from +0.14 C/decade to +0.11 C/decade (Jan. 1979
through Dec. 2015); and (2) the geographic distribution of the LT trends, including higher spatial
resolution, owing to a new method for computing LT. We describe the major changes in
processing strategy, including a new method for monthly gridpoint averaging which uses all of
the footprint data yet eliminates the need for limb correction; a new multi-channel (rather than
multi-angle) method for computing the lower tropospheric (LT) temperature product which
requires an additional tropopause (TP) channel to be used; and a new empirical method for
diurnal drift correction. We show results for LT, the mid-troposphere (MT, from
MSU2/AMSU5), and lower stratosphere (LS, from MSU4/AMSU9). A 0.03 C/decade reduction
in the global LT trend from the Version 5.6 product is partly due to lesser sensitivity of the new
LT to land surface skin temperature (est. 0.01 C/decade), with the remainder of the reduction
(0.02 C/decade) due to the new diurnal drift adjustment, the more robust method of LT
calculation, and other changes in processing procedures.”
and,
“The global coverage by polar-orbiting satellites provides an attractive vantage point from
which to monitor climate variability and change. Average air temperature over relatively deep
atmospheric layers can be monitored, with minimum cloud contamination, using passive
microwave radiometers operating in the 50-60 GHz range which measure thermal microwave
emission from molecular oxygen that is proportional to temperature. The temperature of such
bulk atmospheric layers relate directly to heat content and thus to the rate at which heat may be
accumulating in the atmosphere due to enhanced greenhouse gas forcing and other climate
changes
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/APJAS-2016-UAH-Version-6-Global-Satellite-Temperature-Products-for-blog-post.pdf
You are quickly being exposed as a troll here since once again you fail to answer honestly. You never showed where I was wrong either, just a word game is what you are now playing.
Meanwhile notice that Martin suddenly drop the GISS TEMPERATURE adjustments that are shown to be inappropriate manipulations to create a huge false warming trend, that the RAW data never shows. I think I know why……………….
Sunsettomy wrote: “Meanwhile notice that Martin suddenly drop the GISS TEMPERATURE adjustments that are shown to be inappropriate manipulations to create a huge false warming trend, that the RAW data never shows. I think I know why…”
I’ll ask you again: If you have any evidence that any adjustment to any dataset is fraudulent or incorrect, just post the evidence. So far, you are doing everything you can to avoid providing any evidence. It’s easy for you to do another Gish Gallup like the one you did above, but the facts remains: Satellites don’t measure temperature. The computer models that compute temperature from the satellite radiance data have been adjusted many times, because they were wrong. That means the temperature data inferred from the satellite data have been adjusted many times. In fact, more times than the actual surface thermometer data. And I think nobody gets to review Spencer’s computer models. Yes?
If you have any evidence that any adjustment to any dataset is fraudulent or incorrect, just post the evidence.
Sunsettommy wrote: “Meanwhile I made the point that their adjustments are not on the data themselves (which Martin never shows to be wrong) .
You are doing a Gish Gallup, tommy. First, the satellite data are adjusted. They have to be adjusted for orbital changes, instrument degradation, and so on. Second, the satellite data are not used directly, because they are not temperatures. Temperature data can only be inferred from the satellite data using a complicated computer model, which you don’t trust when it is a peer-reviewed climate model but you do trust when it is Spencer’s black box temperature computation model. Third, the UAH dataset, which you accept, and the RSS dataset, which you reject, both begin with the same satellite dataset. They then use different, proprietary computer models to compute their respective temperature datasets. Their datasets disagree with each other, by quite a lot. However, the RSS dataset agrees with all the surface temperature datasets, and the UAH dataset does not. Yet you demand that climate science be based on the UAH dataset and only the UAH dataset. You demand that all the other datasets be rejected, and that only your cherrypicked UAH dataset is the one true dataset. And you hold this position despite all the scientific evidence being against you. This is the current summary of all the physics and chemistry you are rejecting so that you can hold on to your belief that UAH TLT version 6.0 is the one true temperature dataset: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/
Don’t use the Gish Gallup.
Nah. You have all got it all wrong. You have no VISION. You must follow the trail of Elon Musk! Look to the Future!! Get on the rocket ship and GO!
Why do you think NASA is spending so much effort to find a twin to Earth, not just in the Goldilocks zone, but with the same compounds signature in its atmosphere?
You poor souls have no vision! Space is the solution! Once humans have left the planet, warming will become a non-issue!
/snrc
OK, it is a story. You tell us about it.
Then you say:
How can you see the effects of global warming in the real world? How is the environment changing?
Can anybody tell me what is changing in the real world due to warming.
More hurricanes?
More floods?
More droughts?
Sea level rising to flood our coastal cities?
Dead polar bears?
Anything?
Sheldon Walker writes fiction. GISSTEMP indeed!
…but but I read it in the news…and there was a movie
TonyL,
I think that my comment “We can see the effects of global warming in the real world. It is changing the environment in a number of ways.” can be justified.
How about
– temperature changes
– seasons starting at different times
– birds migrating at different times
– changes to the Great Barrier Reef
– etc
– I personally don’t believe that there has been any significant change in hurricanes,
– There may be small changes in flooding and droughts (I am not an expert, so I am not sure).
– Sea level has been rising for a long, long time. Long before AGW. AGW may have increased it a bit, but we are still talking millimetres per year.
– Polar bears are doing much better than warmists claim. With possibly 50,000 polar bears, you have to expect one to die occasionally.
So when you say “Sheldon Walker writes fiction”, is that a compliment?
Sheldon Walker also writes facts.
If not GISTEMP, then what?
If I use GISTEMP, then skeptics won’t believe me.
If I use UAH or RSS, then warmists won’t believe me.
In general, I am trying to convince warmists, since skeptics already know what is right (you didn’t see me write that, ok).
…bread don’t rise……it’s .8 degrees
A reasonable response deserved a reply.
– temperature changes
Here in the US, the warmest time was the mid 1930s. After that, it cooled for over three decades until the 1970s, to levels seen ~1900-1920. Then it warmed again. The warm 1930s and the cooling to the 1970s have been conveniently removed from GISSTEMP. The progressive changes to the historical record By GISS are well known. Australia has similar issues with their record as amply shown here and at Jo Nova’s site.
– seasons starting at different times
Planting times have not changed. USDA (US Department of Agriculture) hardiness zones have changed +5.0 deg F. across the US since 1990! Not even remotely plausible. USDA is fully in the tank with CAGW. Heaven help any gardener who relies on the new USDA zone charts. More broadly, the US wheat belt and corn belt in the midwest are right where they always have been. If the new USDA chart was right, planting times would have changed, but they have not.
– birds migrating at different times
Much ink has been spilled about CAGW affecting bird migration. Always from the usual alarmist sources. Like hurricanes and tornadoes, the claims hold up right until you examine the data.
– changes to the Great Barrier Reefs
The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies has been called out for their alarmism. The CAGW party is not all fun and games. A lot of people make their living off the reef. The alarmist message apparently cut deeply into tourism in some areas and caused some real hardship. These games have consequences.
“If I use GISTEMP, then skeptics won’t believe me.”
“If I use UAH or RSS, then warmists won’t believe me.”
I see your point. This is a problem and the debate is polarized.
More broadly, I see where you are coming from. There is *so much* alarmist stuff out there, it is almost impossible not to accept that at least some of it must be real. Sorting out all the claims as fact or fiction is more than a full time job, and most of us have better things to do.
All in all, you take a fair enough position, although the alarmists and skeptics can and will argue the details forever.
As I have said above, use CET, its the only reliable, consistent and generally unabused temperature record out there.
Sheldon, I agree with you, conditionally… Much of this is apocryphal, but (forgive me for taking these out of order, I’m stream-of-consciousness responding as they occur to me)… I recall reading in the Little House On The Prairie books, that in upstate New York (the series became popular with the book on living in Ohio, but prior to that the Ingalls family lived in upstate New York, I read all of the books, not just the popular ones) it was time to cut ice for the icehouse when a bucket of water thrown into the air hit the ground as ice. At that time, such a condition occurred virtually every year. Today, not so much. So this addresses the “-temperature changes…” though you can’t tell it from the tortured data.
Birds migrating earlier, or birds altering migration or even ranges at all – I’ll give you that one, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120223142642.htm, though the sample size, both number of species and years in the study, may be too small.
-Changes in growing season… the EPA seems to agree with you, though I have not taken a dive in the data, so it could be bollocks https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-length-growing-season
-Great Barrier Reef: It has taken quite a hit https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/world/australia/great-barrier-reef-coral-bleaching.html but is it dead yet? Probably not: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/05/08/the-great-barrier-reef-is-it-dead-yet/ and in any event, this proves it has happened before and the reef has recovered.
And as for the rest of that, I agree, hurricanes “Accumulated cyclone energy globally has experienced a large and significant downward trend…” https://fabiusmaximus.com/2017/09/14/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-science-of-hurricanes/ floods, droughts, (I’ll leave those last 2 for others to research) … no increase found in the data (though the Warmunist crowd has shown, with the torturing of temperature records, that all data is malleable), polar bears are doing quite nicely thank you very much, and while sea level has been rising for at least 300 years, the rate of the rise may actually be in decline https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/02/04/the-fantasy-of-accelerating-sea-level-rise-just-got-hosed/
So in summary, Sheldon knows whereof he speaks, don’t cut him short too quick. The thing is, and has been my point ever since I first heard of it, how much is attributable to human activity? And how much of it can we correct? Emissions (if they have anything at all to do with climate anyway) once emitted can hardly be vacuumed up and pretend they never existed, can they? So IF there is climate change, all we can do is figure out how to adapt. And based on the last 20 years, not much of that is necessary, is it?
TonyL said: “– birds migrating at different times
Much ink has been spilled about CAGW affecting bird migration. Always from the usual alarmist sources. Like hurricanes and tornadoes, the claims hold up right until you examine the data.”
Can you provide a link with that refutation?
Sheldon: Rising GHGs slow down the rate at which the atmosphere radiatively cools to space. Conservation of energy demands that must cause warming somewhere on the planet. And that will produce other changes in the net flux at the TOA. The planet will warm until the net imbalance is zero and a new steady state GMST exists.
The slowdown in warming could have been caused by a temporary increase in the chaotic ocean currents that exchange heat between the deep ocean and surface. In chaotic systems, this is called internal variability or unforced variability or NOISE. Or, it could have been caused by a change in the radiative flux across the TOA – say by a less active sun, volcanic aerosols (or possibly more clouds). That would be forced variability, naturally forced not anthropogenically forced. We have no evidence that the slowdown can be accounted for by natural variability, but our data on clouds is highly dubious.
El Nino is associated with a slowing of heat exchange with the deep ocean: a slowing of upwelling off equatorial South American and a slowing of downwelling in the Western Pacific Warm Pool. El Ninos typically rise in roughly a half year (and fall in another half year), but their size and rate (0.4 K in your graph, 0.8 K/yr rise) shows that slow downs in upwelling and downwelling could easily have negated the roughly 0.02 K/yr of warming expected during the slowdown.
ARGO came online during the slowdown and showed that the ocean as a whole warmed during the slowdown, but the top layer of ocean experienced less warming. So the slowdown appears to have been caused by a change in heat flux in the ocean, not across the TOA.
We don’t know how to speed up the exchange of heat between the deep ocean and the surface, so we can’t use that as a permanent cure for rising GHGs. Perhaps such a change will occur for most of this century and reduce warming. Perhaps such a change can last for centuries and was responsible for the LIA. (So far, solar and volcanic explanation have been proposed, but don’t appear to be adequate.) We can’t count on unforced variability to cure GW.
We can (and probably will) cure global warming by placing aerosols in the upper atmosphere to reflect incoming SWR.
Hi Frank,
your comment was well written, and I agree with almost everything that you said.
I am happy to accept that “The Slowdown” was caused by ocean cycles.
You guys are promoting a religion The religion of global warming. There are no valid stats nor any valid theory to support that CO2 absorbs infrared(IR) at the frequencies that the IR is emitted by the surface of the earth. IT DOES NOT. CO2 only absorbs the IR emitted frequencies at temperatures of -80C The only possible place the CO2 could do this is in the Antarctic. All studies have shown that the Antarctic is not warming. Also Before NASA stopped measuring water vapour in 2009, all measurements did not show any increase in water vapour in the atmosphere. Global warming is a flawed concept and can be shown to be false on any level you want to talk about. Skeptics like me relish the debate but warmists never will debate the science cause the science is not there.
Sheldon wrote: “I am happy to accept that “The Slowdown” was caused by ocean cycles.”
Great. What does this tell us about climate change caused by rising GHGs? ie, What is the significant of this slowdown if we have identified the right cause.
I got a story . .
Imagine if you will, that (roughly) 97% of scientists were convinced that human CO2 emissions were going to cause catastrophic warming effects, and all the nations of the world agreed it was a grave threat. And there were promising “cures” in the way of aerosols to be sprayed high in the atmosphere, and the threat was declared the number one threat to American national security . . but the promising “cures” were not used . . not so much as tested.
Lots’ of people in America swore they saw stuff being sprayed up there, but it was just a strange coincidence . . that this warming was the number one national security threat, and the promising “cures” involved spraying things up there, and many people sorta hallucinated that very thing going on . . but it wasn’t, because all the people in positions of authority sort of spaced out, and just didn’t.
Actually, it is likely the strong warming in the late 20th century was caused by ocean cycles (+PDO and +AMO). The slowdown happened when they went neutral (-PDO and +AMO). Expert cooling to start in a few years when the AMO goes negative too. This is all on top of the millennial cycle which is also related to the oceans (THC speed). When this will change is difficult to assess.
The net is it leaves very little room for GHGs to have much effect. This is probably due to negative water vapor feedback at high altitudes. This was seen in the data as described by Miskolczi’s work and Gero/Turner 2011.
Alan Tomalty: “You guys are promoting a religion The religion of global warming. There are no valid stats …”
On a planet where an El Nino event can warm temperature 0.4 K in one half a year (0.8 K/yr) because of the unforced variability that exists in our weather and climate, it is simple-minded to look for proof of the effects of rising CO2 in short term temperature records that are have been warming at a rate of 0.015-0.020 K/yr for nearly the last 50 years. It is idiotic to look at much shorter periods due to chaotic fluctuations
Alan continued: “[Nor] any valid theory to support that CO2 absorbs infrared(IR) at the frequencies that the IR is emitted by the surface of the earth. IT DOES NOT.”
Quantum mechanics is a carefully validated theory that describes the interaction between CO2 (and other GHGs) and the thermal IR emitted by the surface of the Earth.
You can see an infrared spectrum of the Earth taken from space below. The effect of CO2 is obviously. Now there is no need to mislead others
http://www.xylenepower.com/Mars_EarthM.gif
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1029/97JE00637/asset/jgre741.pdf;jsessionid=5E6B13EE58FD7757D58B0A73E3D407FC.f02t01?v=1&t=jdk2xm2l&s=d515043802042548fc2f4a137075f233ea5c3b17
Alan continued: CO2 only absorbs the IR emitted frequencies at temperatures of -80C The only possible place the CO2 could do this is in the Antarctic.
You can take an infrared spectrum of CO2 in the laboratory at room temperature with an ordinary spectrometer. There are plenty of spectra on the internet.
Alan wrote: “Global warming is a flawed concept and can be shown to be false on any level you want to talk about. Skeptics like me relish the debate but warmists never will debate the science cause the science is not there.”
People like you hurt the skeptical cause because you are the source of such nonsense. No warmist would debate because you spout a bunch of nonsense. It is a natural reaction for humans to reject things that conflict with deeply held belief and to persist in believing any evidence that supports you position. However, the Internet is full of wrong information and you can find “evidence” to support anything – even the existence of Podestra’s child sex ring at the Cosmic Ping Pong Pizzeria in DC. However, the is a science blog. Readers are supposed to know how to tell science from pseudo-science and fake news. Since you don’t, consider asking questions about what evidence exists.
Frank is right. Sheldon, here is what the temperature change looks like when you remove the variations (noise) from ENSO, volcanoes, and solar variation: https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/01/20/2017-temperature-summary/ And here is a summary of the trends: https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/02/06/global-warming-rates-by-request/
And here is the umpteenth explanation that global warming is the relentless trend, not the noise: https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/01/31/global-warming-the-relentless-trend/
Hi Tom,
we posted at about the same time, and you can see from my reply to Frank that I agree with almost everything that he said.
I respect Tamino’s statistical expertise, but I have to take him in small doses.
When you adjust a temperature series for ENSO, volcanoes, and solar radiation, are you removing their effects, or adding your own prejudices. You need to have God like powers to be able to do this correctly. What if the volcanic eruption wasn’t a normal one?
You may have missed my comment about Tamino’s relentless trend, in my article called “A possible compromise on global warming slowdowns and pauses”. Here is a quote:
<<>>
Tamino writes some poetic nonsense about the recent warm temperatures. In case you don’t know what “a highest high born” is, it is referring to the record high temperature in 2016.
[…, a highest high born of the unholy marriage of extreme fluctuation and relentless trend.]
What Tamino fails to mention, is that the “unholy” marriage is between a human and a mouse. The mouse’s name is “relentless trend”, and the human’s name is “extreme fluctuation”. Tamino would like you to think that the mouse and the human are equal partners in the marriage. But reality proves that they are not.
<<>>
Sheldon, it is obvious you have not bothered to read the paper linked from that post by Tamino—the paper that describes the method by which those effects were removed. No god-like powers required. Just math. Not even slightly contentious math. Your accusations from ignorance would get you an F if you were one of my graduate statistics students. Or one of my undergrads. Or even a high school student. Read the assignment. Do the homework. Argue from knowledge, not profound ignorance.
Hi Tom,
it is the weekend, and I just handed in my science fiction story. No homework until next week.
I admit that I didn’t study the first 2 Tamino articles that you mentioned. I glanced at them, and realised that I had read them when they first came out. I wrote an article for WattsUpWithThat about the 3rd Tamino article, so I think that I understand that one quite well.
From your reaction, I assume that you are a Tamino fan. Am I right?
I looked back at the first 2 Tamino articles, and even looked at the link to Foster & Rahmstorf.
“Global Warming Rates (by request)” sounds too much like you can request the Global Warming Rate that you want, and Tamino will produce it for you. I know that it doesn’t really mean that (or does it? :).
Describing the method used to adjust the temperature series for ENSO, volcanoes, and solar radiation, does not give the full picture. They rely on various indexes (the multivariate el Niño index or MEI, the aerosol optical thickness data from Sato et al, and total solar irradiance (TSI) data from Fröhlich). Are these indexes accurate? I don’t know. Many people question the accuracy of the various temperature series. Are we adjusting garbage temperature anomalies with garbage indexes?
I like my temperature series to be as unadulterated as possible. I can feel more confident about them that way
You may be interested in some extra-curricular study that I am doing. I am studying the “Multiple Tamino Problem” (this can apply to Time and Space). Imagine that Tamino does a study correcting a temperature series for ENSO, volcanoes, and solar radiation. He finds a result which supports warmists, and publishes his results. Six months later Tamino does another study correcting a temperature series for ENSO, volcanoes, and solar radiation. This time he finds a result which supports skeptics. Does he publish his result? If he doesn’t publish these results, nobody will know. So he doesn’t risk being exposed.
Because of the “Multiple Tamino Problem”, all of Tamino’s results must be divided by 2. It is the only fair way of solving this problem.
.
Sheldon, many people in comments to your posts on WUWT and at Open Mind have explained this to you, but I’ll try again. When people say “there is inadequate evidence to support the existence of a slowdown in global warming,” what they mean, and what they endlessly explain, is that the long-term warming trend has been very (not perfectly) consistent, where “long-term trend” means the trend “averaged” across the short-term variations, which are called “noise” in contrast to the “trend.”
Any mathematical smoothing, including the LOESS smoothing you did for this post, is a reduction of the noise–“averaging” out the noise–to reveal the trend. There is an infinite number of ways to reduce the noise to reveal the trend. Your LOESS procedure reduces all sources of noise both known and unknown, but due to its lack of any external information about any of the sources of the noise, it is a blunt instrument. In contrast, Tamino’s approach that I linked for you, smooths out specifically, only, and intentionally only the three particular types of noise from ENSO, volcanoes, and sun. Tamino’s approach uses external sources of information about those types of noise, so it is more powerful in reducing those three particular types of noise. Tamino’s approach leaves untouched all the other sources of noise. But then applying smoothing (e.g., LOESS) to Tamino’s results, reduces all other sources of noise, just as your LOESS smooth did.
No, Sheldon, I am not a “Tamino fan.” I am a PhD-trained scientific research methodologist with heavy emphasis on quantitative methods. Versus you, who is proud that you have not even bothered to try to understand the method of Foster and Rahmstorf. Revel in your ignorance.
Mr Dayton Phd etc etc, what a crock of sh*t.
Use real temperature data, not ‘tamino’ anomalous anomalies’ . Use a proper temperature series ( CET).
Now find the ‘relentless trend’.
Hi Tom,
I sense that you are slightly annoyed with me. That’s fine, I can be an annoying person (I have an odd sense of humour, a bit like Monty Python – hence the Multiple Tamino Problem). But I am a genuine person, and my attempt to find out what is happening with AGW is sincere.
You say that many people tell me that there is inadequate evidence to support the existence of a slowdown in global warming. Yes, they do. Many people also tell me to believe in God. And some of them are priests, who are the “experts” in religion. Do I listen to them? Yes, I do. But then I make up my own mind.
Notice that many of the people who tell me that there is inadequate evidence to support the existence of a slowdown in global warming, are warmists. They have a prejudice, which I take into account. They are supporting their favourite soccer club, and they refuse to believe that their goalie isn’t the best in the world. So the issue of trust comes into who I believe.
Do you honestly expect me to believe that noise (randomness) caused a 10 year interval with a warming rate of zero degrees Celsius per century. And of course, it did this while fighting an average warming rate if 1.8 degrees Celsius per century. I must get me some of that noise, it is magical stuff.
You may have read elsewhere, how I believe in AGW. I accept all of the basic science. I am not so sure about CAGW, or what we should do about AGW. I have been attacked, often in a nasty way, by warmists, since before 2009. Even though I believe in AGW. It is partly that nastiness that makes me wary of warmists, and question their motives.
I do not have all of the answers. I am working hard to try and find the answers. I have some skills, but lack other skills. I am not a statistics expert, and have never claimed to be one. I don’t like ignorance. I looked in Foster and Rahmstorf and gave you the names of the indexes that they used (the multivariate el Niño index or MEI, the aerosol optical thickness data from Sato et al, and total solar irradiance (TSI) data from Fröhlich). You have a funny definition of ignorance.
“Do you honestly expect me to believe that noise (randomness) caused a 10 year interval with a warming rate of zero degrees Celsius per century. And of course, it did this while fighting an average warming rate if 1.8 degrees Celsius per century.”
Despite the fact the premise of your question has been torn to shreds, burnt to cinders and then flushed down the toilet by several individuals much smarter than us – if it was not noise what was it?
Tom: I’m not a big fan of what Tamino is doing in the posts you link. The temperature perturbation associated with a particular ENSO index is purely a curve fitting exercise. It assumes that the temperature perturbation associated with a particular ENSO state can be predicted by multiplying an ENSO index by a factor determined by linear regression from a modest number of events. That factor contains uncertainty that Tamino ignores. Different ENSO indices provide different factors with different uncertainties. Most involve SSTs in certain regions and perturbation in GMST is what Tamino is trying to project. The whole process has a element of circularity. GMST is rising. There is an ENSO index that involves only atmospheric pressure (Darwin and Tahiti?). That index would be more independent than the one Tamino uses and atmospheric pressure globally is conserved, unlike rising like GMST.
If Tamino did his analysis of volcanic and solar effects using W/m2, that would be great. An imbalance of 1 W/m2 can produce an initial warming rate of 0.2 K/yr assuming all of the heat goes into a mixed layer of 50 m and the atmosphere. But that analysis quickly gets tricky as warming develops and the planet begins to radiate more energy to space due to rising temperature. That process is controlled by the climate feedback parameter, the reciprocal of climate sensitivity (expressed in K/(W/m2) rather K/doubling). And a significant amount of heat is convected below the mixed layer. So Tamino is treating changes at the TOA due to solar and volcanos as arbitrary indices (like an ENSO), not as power fluxes. He does regressions here too and the coefficients have uncertainty. He doesn’t justify the magnitude of those coefficient in terms of physics.
If Tamino showed us the sum of all of the uncertainties introduced when removing the influence of these phenomena, the result would still be a trend with significant ambiguity that would admit the possibility of a slowdown. There are now dozens of papers providing possible explanations for a slowdown, so many climate scientists appear to disagree with Tamino’s simplistic analysis. However, the need for an explanation diminished with the adoption of ERSST4. Our ability to accurately measure temperature change over a single decade is limited. Unlike Sheldon, I find decadal change fairly meaningless.
It might be that the recent state of the PDO or AMO is amplifying or suppressing the effects of ENSO, making Tamino’s corrections too large or too small. I personally prefer to focus on the unadjusted trend and confidence interval for the longest period possible and only draw conclusions from that. CO2 has been rising about 1.5 to 2.0 ppm/yr for the last 40 years (and aerosols have remained stable) producing warming at a rate of 1.5-2.0 K/century.
In previous comments to earlier posts, I have encouraged Sheldon to pay more attention to noise and the confidence interval around trends. ENSO is noise. The slowdown is “real” (whether caused by noise, ENSO, solar activity or volcanos), but doesn’t require an explanation if it could be due to noise – any of these sources of noise.
Tom,
I have an interesting question for you. It is about noise.
If you get cooled to zero degrees Celsius, does it matter (in terms of how cold you are), whether you were cooled by a random process or a deterministic process?
Does the answer to this question have any relevance to the slowdown?
In other words, if we know that you got cold, do we say that you didn’t get cold, if it was caused by randomness.
zazove,
you said:
“Despite the fact the premise of your question has been torn to shreds, burnt to cinders and then flushed down the toilet by several individuals much smarter than us – if it was not noise what was it?”
You have just declared yourself to be “not very smart” (you said “several individuals much smarter than us).
So how do you know that the people smarter than you, are telling the truth?
Stupid people tend to believe stupid things, call other intelligent people stupid, and believe stupid experts. And you have declared yourself stupid
No Sheldon it is called humility. I am quite adequately intelligent to follow their arguments as well as yours. It seems it is you who cannot follow theirs.
Let me correct that. I think you are able to understand their arguments but you are choosing not to due to a fixated bias.
Hi zazove,
You say: “Despite the fact the premise of your question has been torn to shreds, burnt to cinders and then flushed down the toilet by several individuals much smarter than us”
Telling me that my premise has been torn to threads, does not indicate what was wrong with my premise”.
Can you tell me in your own words what you think is wrong with my premise? That would at least give me the chance to correct your mistake.
My mistake is entering onto a discussion about this with you, I am not worthy.
zazove,
you tell me that I am wrong. But you won’t tell me why I am wrong.
How can I argue against that?
It is not a matter of being worthy, it is a matter of providing adequate information.
@Tom Dayton February 10, 2018 at 7:08 pm “…Tamino’s approach…smooths out specifically, only, and intentionally only the three particular types of noise from ENSO, volcanoes, and sun…” And what about all those forcings (call them “noise” if you like, whatever floats your boat) Tamino (nor you) ever even considered? What about AMO? What about orbital obliquity? What about heat from the combustion of fossil fuels? What about solar wind? What about GCRs? (Svensmark says solar wind and GCRs are directly related, but what if they’re not?) What about solar UV? What about things I haven’t even thought of? i.e., what about not only the known unknowns, but also the unknown unknowns? So, from a high school physics perspective, FAIL!!! Tamino hasn’t proven anything.
Jim
Here you go.
Trend since 1975 is 2.28 C / century.
I think you could argue that there has been a slowdown or even a drop in temperatures in CET, but only if you acknowledge that temperatures were increasing much more than global temperatures up to the end of the century. Of course it’s difficult to be sure give the much greater noise in CET than global temperatures.
Tamino ignores medium and long term ocean cycles. His analysis is therefore worthless. This is the typical bias I’ve seen from global warming activists. They deny the oceans and their 1000x stronger heat capacity are the real determining factor in climate.
@Bellmand.
“Trend since 1975 is 2.28 C / century.”
This swarm rather looks like to me that you can rule out, at 95% confidence, that a trend exist at all.
The global warming cure — take two doses of reality, and call me in the morning.
Take four decades of warming at a rate of 0.15-0.20 (95% confidence interval) and say something intelligent.
You say this as though it is reality, but that’s not reality, Frank. That’s a sugar-coated pill at best, and bad medicine, at worst.
Four decades ! — at 0.80 degrees total ! That’s a pretty small pill. How about four million years, with cycles within a range far greater than this, multiple times over. I know that’s a pretty big pill to swallow, by comparison, but I am confident that you can do it.
You need at least 6 decades (preferably more) to account for identified cyclical fluctuations in numerous climatic metrics, Frank.
Frank, I guess I couldn’t tell if you were being sarcastic or not. I read it as serious. But I’m thinking now, maybe not. Typing does not convey the subtleties of spoken verbal play sometimes.
Robert: I was quite serious when I suggested taking four plus decade of 0.15-0.20 K/decade, and you replied with something intelligent:
Robert replied: “Four decades ! — at 0.80 degrees total ! That’s a pretty small pill. How about four million years, with cycles within a range far greater than this, multiple times over. I know that’s a pretty big pill to swallow, by comparison, but I am confident that you can do it.”
Why 4 million years? Why not 400 million years? Or 40,000 years? We think orbital mechanics and continental drift and changing GHGs could have been responsible of change over these long period. I look to the Holocene, the last 10,000 years for guidance. There probably hasn’t been an 0.8 K warming in a half century in the whole Holocene – if you consider that polar amplification means that the change in GMST is probably only half the change in ice cores.
Furthermore we know that our planet’s hasn’t fully equilibrated in response to the change in GHGs. The current forcing is around 2.5 W/m2, but the current imbalance is only 0.7 W/m2 according to ARGO. So we are about 70% of the way to an new equilibrium of +1.2 degC
Yes. 0.8 degC isn’t a particularly big quantity and it is somewhat uncertain. But we appear to have the potential to double or triple the total radiative forcing from aGHGs in the next century. That would be a big pill to shallow. Possibly not as big as the pill of doing without fossil fuels sooner than necessary. Which pill should we take?
The answer may depend on how much richer we expect our descendants to be a century from now. Certainly it would have been idiocy for people in 1918 to spend a lot of taxpayer money back then trying to make our current world a better place.
David Fair said: “You need at least 6 decades (preferably more) to account for identified cyclical fluctuations in numerous climatic metrics, Frank.”
When dealing with chaotic phenomena (not periodic phenomena) like weather and climate, the is no period long enough to ensure that the average behavior you have experienced so far represents the long term average. Even the 100 centuries of stable Holocene climate does not guarantee this.
Just a partial response, Frank: Historical fluctuations may give one guidance as to the significance of recent fluctuations.
Yet the rate of warming since 1970 increased from 1.69C /century to 1.72C / century. Or in other words no statistical difference. How exactly is this evidence of a cure?
The Alarmists already have offered a “cure” for Global Warming, it is called Socialism. And along with socialism, group identity will prevail and individual freedoms will be limited.
And then when socialism doesn’t work (because it’s an illusory problem), the next cure won’t be offered, it’ll be forced on population.as they’ll have given up the means to resist in the first step. And it’s be called Marxist-Communism, or maybe with a few modifications, just neo-Marxism.
I know the cure for a hangover, and yes, there is a catch.
Still trying to perfect the work-around.
I know a cure for aging, but there’s a catch.
Good one 🙂
http://jvarekamp.web.wesleyan.edu/CO2/FP-1.pdf
I came upon the above Absorption study to see what scientists say about the magic of CO2 absorption of infrared rays. Well in the introduction you will see the global warming PR so as to placate the peer review censors. At 1st I thought that this study would refute the concept that CO2 is a poor absorber of IR but the farther you read the more you realize they say no such thing. The last 2 graphs say it all. They indicate that CO2 is a worse absorber than I thought.
Great Stuff.
They built a Near-IR spectrometer out of junk they scrounged up. The first attempt did not work, so they scrounged up some more junk and got things working. Near IR spectra tend to be high-order harmonics of primary absorption bands in the traditional IR range.
It is an interesting idea they had, though.
Alan: The first two sentences of the abstract you cite:
“This experiment explored the absorptivity of four peaks, 1437, 1955, 2013, and 2060 nanometers, in the near-IR (NIR) absorption spectrum of CO2. The NIR absorption bands in CO2 can contribute up to 30% of the total solar heating in the MESOSPHERE.
Our climate depends mostly on the troposphere. The mesosphere is irrelevant!. So say something intelligent about the troposphere, one needs to recognize the fact that GHGs both absorb and emit thermal IR. Thermal IR emitted by the surface is modified by absorption and emission of radiation by GHGs. That situation is handled by the Schwarzschild equation.
It is human nature to latch onto stray facts that confirm our deeply held beliefs: The Earth is flat. The sun goes around the Earth. God is perfect so the orbits of the planets must involve the most perfect geometric shape, circular. The rate of evaporation of oceans is depends on surface temperature. When you encounter evidence that contradicts these beliefs, you reject it and can find somewhere on the Internet that agrees with your belief. This is called confirmation bias. Why else would you pay attention to the above website with a single unpublished paper?
One answer is that we do live in a highly polarized society that makes far too many of us act like used car salesmen, including the media.
If you want to know something about how radiation interacts with the atmosphere, I suggest Grant Petty’s textbook for meteorology students (ca $40), A First Course in Atmospheric Radiation. There is not a word about climate change in this book.
In 1990, the IPCC predicted 5.0 degrees Celsius of warming per/century for their “business as usual” scenario for CO2 emissions…where is the predicted warming? The “prediction” was real, but the “reality” of said prediction is a “fairy tale”. And don’t go trying to move the goalpost now…you said “+5.0 deg C”.
Obviously you have never read what the IPCC actually said in 1990. Its is trivial to look up, so why not do so before shooting your mouth off and confusing others.
https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf
“under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A) emissions of greenhouse gases, a rate of increase of
global mean temperature during the next century of about 0 3°C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2°C to 0 5°C per decade), this is greater than that seen over the past 10,000 years This will result in a likely increase in global mean temperature of about 1°C above the present value by 2025 and 3 °C before the end of the next century. The rise will not be steady because of the influence of other factors.”
The warming rate since 1990 has been 0.17 to 0.20 K/decade with an uncertain of about +/-0.03 K/decade. As this post shows, the rise was not steady. Reality is that observations have been at the optimist end of the IPCC’s projections and about 70% of their central estimate for warming.
No one has moved the goalposts. The field goal attempt glanced off right post. Do it go through? What we can say is that the IPCCs central estimates have been too high, and their worst case scenarios absurd.
I don’t deny that the average global warming rate from 1970 to 2017 was about 1.80 degrees Celsius per century.
But I don’t deny that less than 25,000 years ago northern Illinois was covered by more than mile of glacial ice. I don’t deny that less than 12,000 years ago mammoths were flash frozen in Siberia with fresh grasses still in their stomachs. I don’t deny that 1,000 years ago Vikings in Greenland were cropping barley so they could use the grain to make beer. I don’t deny that the Thames River froze solid to such an extent that during 26 separate winters from 1408 until 1814, Londoners were able to hold a Frost Fair on the ice.
The issue of climate is directed towards an end goal that is not an honest nor a useful one. The future of humanity does NOT depend upon the sea being at a certain level. It does not depend upon the average temperature being a certain number of degrees . It does not depend upon the level of CO2 falling. It does however depend upon the health of the biosphere in which we live and through which we depend to be able to grow our food.
Not a single one of the concerns being expressed by the advocates of “climate changed” is focused on the health of the overall biosphere iby itself. Where their research report also expresses a policy recommendation, it is always to the end effect of far bigger government, far higher taxes, far less personal freedom, far fewer choices, far more restrictions. It is always a means to an ideological end. That tells me the “social construct” of the research environment. It is always interventionistic, if not socialistic. Their “science” is just as compromised as any ever sponsored by tobacco companies.
…and somehow they convinced a lot of people that a tiny little bitty bit warmer is a bad thing
… a bad thing all over the world, including countries like Canada, Finland or Norway.
So riddle me this, Batman… this whole Anthropogenic Greenhouse effect, are these deep thinkers claiming that human emissions are adding CO2 to the atmosphere, so that the total molar mass of our atmosphere is increasing? In which case, one would/should expect an increase in temperature of the air at sea level because the pressure has increased while the total heat in the air has remained constant (thermodynamics, you know), and there is nothing we could do about that anyway (because thermodynamics, you know), nor should we worry about it since the resulting increase of temperature will produce an increase in the ΔT of the Earth-black body relation, and thus increase heat loss to space and thereby maintaining equilibrium; QED, problem solved. Or is this AGW wetdream claiming that the the total molar mass of the atmosphere remains constant but the CO2 spewings of industrial activity is shifting the percentages of the atmosphere? I want a scientific answer to this, the Ideal Gas Law and comparing that result to that natural-log equation with the unknown-and-unknowable (and possibly mythical) sensitivity constant, even if the actual numbers only support millionths of a degree because those same numbers only produce a thousandth of a millimeter Hg Δair pressure. And then do another column comparing total heat of atmospheric air, which will require data on the amount of moisture in the air at each temperature reading. Where does one find that data? (Could it be that even if the temperature increase is real, it has been accompanied by a decrease in moisture in the air, which produces a Δheat = 0 ?) Don’t tell me it’s a difference that makes no difference, we already know that because we can see from the data (“homogenized” though it may be) that natural variations prior to any anthropogenic atmospheric contribution were just the same, if not more variable, as anything occurring now. Does anyone have time to play around with that? Cuz I sure don’t.
Wow, such data exists… where/how do I get that as a table of numbers? I can do the psychrometrics, so I could take the table of global temperature, lay it alongside the table of relative humidity, and produce a time series of global total heat… What do you suppose that graph would look like? Does anyone have time to do that? Willis? Bueller? Bueller? (some of you will get the reference)?
Nice chart and it specifically shows the negative feedback from increasing CO2.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010JD014192/abstract;jsessionid=6CC471BF5E0E3A8F605EF06C895B9E87.f04t01
“Here we consider whether this result holds in other reanalyses and what time scale of climate fluctuation is associated with the negative specific humidity trends. The five reanalyses analyzed here (the older NCEP/NCAR and ERA40 reanalyses and the more modern Japanese Reanalysis (JRA), Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA), and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)-interim reanalyses) unanimously agree that specific humidity generally increases in response to short-term climate variations (e.g., El Niño). In response to decadal climate fluctuations, the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis is unique in showing decreases in tropical mid and upper tropospheric specific humidity as the climate warms. All of the other reanalyses show that decadal warming is accompanied by increases in mid and upper tropospheric specific humidity. We conclude from this that it is doubtful that these negative long-term specific humidity trends in the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis are realistic for several reasons. First, the newer reanalyses include improvements specifically designed to increase the fidelity of long-term trends in their parameters, so the positive trends found there should be more reliable than in the older reanalyses. Second, all of the reanalyses except the NCEP/NCAR assimilate satellite radiances rather than being solely dependent on radiosonde humidity measurements to constrain upper tropospheric humidity. Third, the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis exhibits a large bias in tropical upper tropospheric specific humidity. And finally, we point out that there exists no theoretical support for having a positive short-term water vapor feedback and a negative long-term one.”
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5U9bMHMfUIM/VBHpoKCe2MI/AAAAAAAAAq8/zh0p9ii1GjI/s1600/Dessler2010.jpg
Toneb, nice example of bias. The establishment climate cartel simply cannot accept reality and once again twist in knots trying to ignore reality. There is theoretical support. They simply deny it.
Any increase in warming of the surface will lead to enhanced convection which in turn leads to more condensation at higher altitudes. That will lower the amount of water vapor. Denying this kind of basic physics is why climate science is obviously anti-science.
This is a fantastic set of graphs! For relative humidity to fall to this extent on a worldwide basis is absolutely incredible. I cannot believe that the tiny observed temperature changes can explain this. Can someone provide a mechanism to explain this? The reduction in humidity contrasted to the tiny increase in temperatures represents a significant reduction in enthalpy. This is not global warming. This is global cooling.
“Toneb, nice example of bias. The establishment climate cartel simply cannot accept reality and once again twist in knots trying to ignore reality. There is theoretical support. They simply deny it.”
Nope the opposite of “bias” as it was a meta-study.
The one it counters as being an outlier is but one.
But again that is just bau for “contrarians”.
There is no “theoretical support”.
Link to it if there is (other than much further on in warming when surface winds have diminished, and hence evap – not the case now).
“simply cannot accept reality and once again twist in knots trying to ignore reality”
You really don’t get the irony of that do you?
That you think the majority and the knowledgeable (experts) are all wrong and the ideologically motivated know better.
“they simply deny it” … and it gets even more ironically contrary.
And of course it is not *you* that “ignores reality”
You see why it is impossible to communicate with mind-sets such as yours.
To say that the consensus is science denies anything is bizarre …. it is a ‘consensus’ because no one has found fault, while all the while studying the subject. Like any science.
It hasn’t been arrived at via a vote.
The study I linked to involved 5 data sets.
The ones that you “ignore” number 4.
The ones I don’t ignore number 4.
Your ‘reality’ numbers 1.
my ‘reality’ numbers 4.
If nothing else just basic common sense.
Again:
“We conclude from this that it is doubtful that these negative long-term specific humidity trends in the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis are realistic for several reasons. First, the newer reanalyses include improvements specifically designed to increase the fidelity of long-term trends in their parameters, so the positive trends found there should be more reliable than in the older reanalyses. Second, all of the reanalyses except the NCEP/NCAR assimilate satellite radiances rather than being solely dependent on radiosonde humidity measurements to constrain upper tropospheric humidity. Third, the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis exhibits a large bias in tropical upper tropospheric specific humidity. And finally, we point out that THERE EXISTS NO THEORETICAL SUPPORT for having a positive short-term water vapor feedback and a negative long-term one.” (my caps)
Toneb can’t understand how people whose jobs would be in jeopardy might end up being biased in the direction of saving their jobs. Quite hilarious really.
Then “Link to it if there is ” …. no problem.
http://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Includes/Documents/Publications/gray2010_heartland.pdf
No problem … I’ll draw the line
Now for fact..
– Global warming, such as it may be, is way below natural ‘noise’
– Humanity depends on fossil fuel for its very existence
– The measures proposed to combat ‘climate change’ are enormously expensive, and will threaten human lives by making energy enormously expensive.
– The measures proposed to combat ‘climate change’ are almost completely ineffective at reducing CO2.
– The evidence that global warming is a problem at all is almost non existent.
– the evidence that CO2 is the driver of such climate change as there is, is flawed.
The overwhelming outcome of cost benefit analysis is to do nothing – business as usual.
The overwhelming consensus amongst governments, ‘green energy’ companies and academics is to divert huge quantities of taxpayers money into the pockets of governments, ‘green energy’ companies and academics to produce virtue signalling solutions to faux problems created by scaremongering research studies.
Quelle surprise.
You just expressed your opinions, quite a different thing from stating “facts” which surely require a little supporting evidence. Not that there anything at all wrong with that expressing your opinions. Be aware though that facts don’t change wheras opinions do.
Past temperatures also change. See GISTEMP, HadCRUT and other datasets.
Of course your position is typical for New Socialist, raised on the concept that the Truth is a Cultural Construct.
I hope you never fly in an airliner: Having to trust to the mere opinion of an engineer, that it will, in fact, fly.
The underlying truth of the world does not, one assumes, change.
In that you are correct.
Where your arrogance blinds you, is that you think that you are in possession of it already.
The evidence is all there. You only have to be able to think for yourself and view it objectively.
Its a shame that you will never achieve that simple feat. But will always have to rely on someone you hope is an authority, to think for you.
It is not necessary that most human beings ever grow up beyond looking up to authority figures.
It is however dangerous when they look up to false ones.
“It is not necessary that most human beings ever grow up beyond looking up to authority figures.”
A splendidly missed point and avoidance of common sense.
Some authority figures are there merely due to said authority. Others, as in science are not a ‘who’ but an ‘it’.
To question the ‘who’ or ‘it’ is fine and indeed necessary, but when you decide that the ‘it’ is wrong on the basis of judging the thing it knows better than you as being wrong, whether because (as it must be via that logic) it is incompetent and or fraudulent. Then we have to bring in motivations that must be over-riding common sense.
I suggest that most, as evidenced here, do not look at the real science but just that viewable on Blogs, (or even that published here, FI, in regard to the deceptive Alley graph) which self evidently have an ‘axe’ to grind. Err, any one/thing coming to it with that attitude are not being ‘scientific’.
facts do NOT require supporting evidence, unless hidden or contested.
Most facts are just self-evident.
Now YOU, zazove, may claim that such and such are not “facts” but mere opinions, but you must then … just do it! since you didn’t, what you wrote is useless.
“you think that you are in possession of it already”
There: our opinions have differed again. Attacking me personally is not going to persuade me, finding out what my opinions are then refuting them, if you can bothered, may.
You expressed your obviously closely-held opinion that:
“the evidence that CO2 is the driver of such climate change as there is, is flawed”,
but then neglect to substantiate it. By doing so you are asking all of us to accept that the theory is “flawed” on your authority – because of your expressed opinion. Sorry, but when it comes to overturning a theory…what’s your evidence? Is there any evidence out there that is not already in your possession?
Btw, who claims CO2 is “the” only driver? If you cannot name them, then my opinion sir is that your opinion is not even wrong.
Rudi.
@zazove
“Btw, who claims CO2 is “the” only driver? If you cannot name them, then my opinion sir is that your opinion is not even wrong.”
IPCC mission was to assess
Human-induced climate change,
The impacts of human-induced climate change,
Options for adaptation and mitigation.
This obviously do NOT preclude that CO2 is the only driver, and indeed in IPCC work many other drivers are mentioned … and discarded as being of lesser to no importance. The conclusion of IPCC are just about CO2, or CO2 equivalent. Nothing about land usage change, water usage, urban heat, or whatever. In this respect, methink it is fair to say that CO2 is “the” only driver for the IPCC, “the” one that rules them all.
But I guess you will easily discard this as mere opinion.