Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Despite my asking over and over in a host of forums, including in my previous post, to date, nobody has been able to tell me just what this supposed “CLIMATE EMERGENCY!!” actually is and where I might find evidence that it exists. Here are some facts for the folks that think that the climate is a real danger to humanity.
Let me begin with the fact that the IPCC itself doesn’t think that there is a “climate crisis” or a “climate emergency”. In the IPCC AR6 WG1, the single mention of a “climate emergency” is a far-too-gentle chiding of the media for using the term, viz:
Some media outlets have recently adopted and promoted terms and phrases stronger than the more neutral ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’, including ‘climate crisis’, ‘global heating’, and ‘climate emergency’.
SOURCE
And it’s no surprise that the IPCC doesn’t think there’s an emergency. To start with, deaths from climate-related phenomena are at an all-time low. If you think deaths from climate-related catastrophes are an emergency, please point in the graph below to the start of the “emergency”.
And it’s not just deaths. Global total infrastructure damages have been decreasing as well …
… as well as US damages from floods.
Someone said they didn’t believe UN data, so here’s a separate analysis of flood damage costs.
Storminess has not gone up, and there’s been no increase in hurricane strength or frequency … no “emergency” there.
And there is much longer evidence to back that up. Here are the records of all hurricanes (left) and major hurricanes (right) that came ashore in the US in the last 150 years … NO increase. SOURCE: Nature magazine.
And here are the numbers of Pacific typhoons (hurricanes) from the Japanese Meteorological Agency.
Here are all the records of landfalling hurricanes worldwide. This shows Global, North Atlantic (NATL), Western Pacific (WPAC), Eastern Pacific (EPAC), Northern Indian Ocean (NIO), and Southern Hemisphere (SH) landfalls for both major and all hurricanes.
The source study says (emphasis mine):
The collective global frequency of all global hurricane landfalls and the minor and major subsets shows considerable interannual variability but no significant linear trend (Fig. 2). Furthermore, when considering each basin individually during the entire time periods analyzed, it is not possible to ascertain a positive or negative trend in minor, major, or overall hurricane landfall frequency in all basins except the SH. In the SH a significant positive trend in major hurricane landfalls was detected; yet, the sample size is still small (Table 2). This result is not unexpected considering the known multidecadal signals in TC activity, which cannot be adequately resolved by our comparatively short historical record.
Moving on to droughts, even the IPCC says there’s only one chance in five (“low confidence”) that global droughts are increasing (see the end notes). No flood or drought emergency. Nor have the “wet areas been getting wetter and the dry areas getting drier”. Here’s evidence from rainfall data.
As has happened throughout the existence of the earth some areas have been getting wetter and some drier, but the pattern expected from CO2 warming has not appeared. Here’s more evidence of the same thing, this time from the Palmer Drought Severity Index.
As with the rain, some areas are getting more droughts and some getting fewer droughts … but without any discernible pattern.
Droughts in the US have been decreasing, not increasing.
There are a lot of claims that the current drought in the US west is a result of “global warming” … but that point of view is shortsighted with regard to the history of the west.
And here is the latest study from Nature Magazine showing, guess what? Globally, droughts are decreasing, not increasing.
Global weather disaster losses as a percentage of assets at risk (global GDP) are decreasing, not increasing.
Alarmists keep posting scary-looking graphs of the loss of polar ice, like this one of Antarctica.
Or this one, from Greenland.
Those look totally frightening and emergency-like … until you realize that they ignore the reality of just how much ice there is in those locations. Here are the corresponding changes in total ice mass for the two locations.
In fact, a recent study in Nature Magazine says “The Antarctic continent has not warmed in the last seven decades, despite a monotonic increase in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases.”
Despite all the hype and all the alarmism about how a melting Antarctica was going to raise sea levels by 20 feet (6 metres) and flood the world, Antarctica Has. Not. Warmed. In. The. Last. Seven. Decades.
What about the widely-hyped reduction in Arctic sea ice? Turns out that it’s been matched by a widely-unhyped increase in Antarctic sea ice, so the total global sea ice area is currently right at the long-term average of 18 million square kilometers. No change in the 43 years of records, we’re back where we started. See here for more details.
Let’s move on to snow. Remember all the hysteria about how “our children just won’t know what snow is”? Turns out the rumors of the death of snow are greatly exaggerated. Here’s the 2021-2022 snow record to date …
Tide gauges show no increase in the rate of sea-level rise, merely the up-and-down that’s been going on for a century and more …
… and the claimed acceleration in satellite-measured sea level is merely an artifact of changing satellites.
Polar bears, once considered to be the “canary in the coal mine” for the “climate emergency”, are doing very well, thanks. More here: https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-that-the-polar-bear-population-is-declining/
Yields of all major food crops continue to rise, and humans are better fed, clothed, and housed against the vagaries of weather than at any time in the past.
And it’s not just yields that are going up. Despite the gradual warming since 1965, humans are better fed than ever. And this is a very valuable measure. Measures of income and wealth can get distorted because one person can make fifty times the income as another, or own fifty houses to the other’s one house.
But nobody can eat 50 breakfasts, so average food consumption measures the nutrition of the whole population, rich and poor alike. Here is the consumption of protein, calories, and fat for all the regions of the world.
Land temperatures have already risen more than the dreaded 2°C, with no cataclysmic consequences … there has been no historical “climate emergency” despite temperature increases.
Paleo data shows that over the Holocene temperatures have varied widely with little change in CO2, and the current warming started in 1700, long before the modern CO2 increase.
None of the endless serial doomcasts from the climate alarmists have come true …
There has been no global increase in the number of wildfires … here’s the NASA satellite data.
Here’s Australia …
And here’s the data from Canada …
And some more real-world global wildfire data …
And here’s a quote from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):
A recent analysis using the Global Fire Emissions Database v.4 (GFED4s) that includes small fires concluded that the net reduction in land area burnt globally during 1998–2015 was –24.3 ± 8.8% (–1.35 ± 0.49% yr–1) (Andela et al. 2017)
In fact, foresters have been predicting the increase in California wildfires for some years now due to the insane “green” regulations preventing logging.
And here’s a tragically accurate view of the issue …
Meanwhile, increasing CO2 is causing increased plant growth all around the globe, which is increasing the food supplies of humans and animals alike. Here’s the data from NASA.
The value of annual farm production is on the order of five trillion dollars. The 10% increase in plant growth is giving us $500 billion dollars per year of increased food and fiber for the world population … how come people who hate CO2 never seem to mention that?
Perhaps it’s because honest people, including IPCC officials, have admitted that the “climate emergency” is just an excuse to redistribute global wealth.
Regarding heat, very hot days in the US (over 100°F, or 38°C) were much higher in the 1930s than at any other time in the last 125 years.
There’s no sign of the “50 million climate refugees by 2010” confidently predicted by the United Nations in 2005.
Coral atolls are not sinking below the seas, in fact many are increasing in size.
And the Great Barrier Reef, which has been claimed over and over to be a victim of coral bleaching, actually has more coral cover than at any time since records have been kept in 1985.
Strong tornadoes in the US are decreasing.
There’s no sign of the fabled “Sixth Wave Of Extinctions”.
Climate models have routinely predicted far greater warming than has actually occurred.
This should not surprise anyone—the intractability of climate predictions has long been recognized even by the IPCC, viz:
“In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible”
IPCC Third Assessment Report, The Scientific Basis 14 2 2 2, p.774
Next, all of the weather risks dramatically foretold by climate alarmists have been with us forever—flood, fire, famine, drought, heat waves, hurricanes, tornadoes, all are as ancient as the hills. We are protected from the vagaries of weather by one thing—wealth. It is the poorest of the world who are most at risk from flood, fire, and famine. When I was born, about three-quarters of the world lived on less than $1.90 per day. Now, it is less than 10% of the world living in those conditions.
This increase in wealth has been driven and fueled by one thing … energy, mostly in the form of fossil fuels.
So if we wish to keep insulating people from the age-old destructive effects of weather, we need to maintain and increase the amount of cheap energy available, especially to the poor. If you insist on fighting the imaginary climate menace, at least have the kindness and the human decency not to do it on the backs of the poor by increasing energy costs, whether by “carbon taxes” or in any other way. I discuss this most important issue in my post “We Have Met The 1%, And He Is Us.”
How about the dreaded heat waves that are supposed to be an inevitable result of “global warming”? If you need something to worry about, that’s not it … the real danger is not heat, it’s cold.
And here’s the UK Government’s assessment of the effect of more warmer days and fewer cold days … in twenty years, the warming has saved over half a million lives.
Here’s another analysis of heat vs. cold … it says that global warming is saving 160,000 lives per year through fewer cold deaths.
But if you want to worry about heat waves, please get back to me when the heat waves are worse than those of the 1930s, well before the large increase in CO2 …
Next, here is the radical change in downwelling radiation at the surface from the increase in CO2 that is supposed to be driving the “CLIMATE EMERGENCY!!!” What I’ve shown is the change that in theory would have occurred from the changes in CO2 from 1750 to the present, and the change that in theory will occur in the future when CO2 increases from its present value to twice the 1750 value. This is using the generally accepted (although not rigorously derived) claim that the downwelling radiation change from a doubling of CO2 is 3.5 watts per square metre (W/m2). The purpose is to show how small these CO2-caused changes are compared to total downwelling radiation.
The changes in downwelling radiation from the increase in CO2 are trivially small, lost in the noise …
Finally, an “emergency” is defined in the dictionary as “a serious, unexpected, and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action.” Alarmists have been warning us over and over about the purported impending “emergency” for 50 years, so it is hardly “unexpected”. None of their endless predictions of imminent tragedy have come true, and despite decades of warning, no significant “immediate action” has been taken … so by definition, it can’t be an emergency.
Let me close with this most excellent overview of deaths from every kind of natural disasters, from Our World In Data. We are indeed living in the best of times.
For five decades, we’ve been told every year that we only have five, ten, or twenty years before disaster … I mean, seriously, how can people still believe these serially failed doomcasters?
So before we spend trillions of dollars on an unachievable plan to totally redo the entire global energy supply, how about we wait until someone can actually let us in on the big secret—just where is this mysterious “CLIMATE EMERGENCY!!!”, and when did it start?
My very best wishes to all, and take a deep breath—there’s no impending Thermageddon™ just around the corner …
w.
FURTHER IMAGES: If you have other images showing that the world is not experiencing a “climate emergency”, please link to them and I may add them to the head post. No guarantees.
MY REQUEST: When you comment, please quote the exact words you are discussing. This will avoid much of the misunderstanding that plagues the intarwebs.
THE IPCC VIEW: Here are some representative quotes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) regarding what the scientists have “low confidence” in (emphasis mine). Be aware that in IPCCSpeak, “low confidence” means that there is only one chance in five that a statement is correct … not odds you’d want to bet your entire economy on.
DIRECT QUOTES FROM VARIOUS IPCC REPORTS
The impacts of changes in flood characteristics are also highly dependent on how climate changes in the future, and as noted in Section 3.5.2, there is low confidence in projected changes in flood magnitude or frequency.
There are inconsistent patterns of change in heavy precipitation in Africa and partial lack of data; hence there is low confidence in observed precipitation trends
There is medium confidence in projected poleward shifts of mid-latitude storm tracks but low confidence in detailed regional projections
There is thus low confidence in the level at which global warming could lead to very high risks associated with extreme weather events in the context of this report.
Low confidence in an observed global-scale trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the 1950s, due to lack of direct observations, methodological uncertainties and choice and geographical inconsistencies in the trends
Low confidence in attributing changes in drought over global land areas since the mid20th century to human influence owing to observational uncertainties and difficulties in distinguishing decadal-scale variability in drought from long-term trends.
The IPCC AR5 (2013) stressed low confidence in a global-scale observed trend in drought, owing to lack of direct observations, dependencies of inferred trends on the index choice, as well as difficulties in distinguishing long-term climate change from decadal-scale drought variability
Tropical cyclones are projected to decrease in frequency but with an increase in the number of very intense cyclones (limited evidence, low confidence).
There is thus low confidence in the level at which global warming could lead to very high risks associated with extreme weather events in the context of this report.
Observed global changes in the water cycle, including precipitation, are more uncertain than observed changes in temperature (Hartmann et al., 2013; Stocker et al., 2013). There is high confidence that mean precipitation over the mid-latitude land areas of the Northern Hemisphere has increased since 1951 (Hartmann et al., 2013). For other latitudinal zones, area-averaged long-term positive or negative trends have low confidence because of poor data quality, incomplete data or disagreement amongst available estimates (Hartmann et al., 2013). There is, in particular, low confidence regarding observed trends in precipitation in monsoon regions, according to the SREX report (Seneviratne et al., 2012) and AR5 (Hartmann et al., 2013), as well as more recent publications (Singh et al., 2014; Taylor et al., 2017; Bichet and Diedhiou, 2018; see Supplementary Material 3.SM.2).
Consequently, the current assessment is that there is low confidence regarding changes in monsoons at these lower global warming levels, as well as regarding differences in monsoon responses at 1.5°C versus 2°C.
The IPCC AR5 assessed that there was low confidence in the sign of drought trends since 1950 at the global scale,
AR5 assessed that there was low confidence in the attribution of global changes in droughts and did not provide assessments for the attribution of regional changes in droughts (Bindoff et al., 2013a)
Such contradictions, in combination with the fact that the almost four-decade-long period of remotely sensed observations remains relatively short to distinguish anthropogenically induced trends from decadal and multi-decadal variability, implies that there is only low confidence regarding changes in global tropical cyclone numbers under global warming over the last four decades.
Likewise, CMIP5 model simulations of the historical period have not produced anthropogenically induced trends in very intense tropical cyclones (Bender et al., 2010; Knutson et al., 2010, 2013; Camargo, 2013; Christensen et al., 2013), consistent with the findings of Klotzbach and Landsea (2015). There is consequently low confidence in the conclusion that the number of very intense cyclones is increasing globally.
AR5 assessed that under high greenhouse gas forcing (3°C or 4°C of global warming) there is low confidence in projections of poleward shifts of the Northern Hemisphere storm tracks, while there is high confidence that there would be a small poleward shift of the Southern Hemisphere storm tracks (Stocker et al., 2013). In the context of this report, the assessment is that there is limited evidence and low confidence in whether any projected signal for higher levels of warming would be clearly manifested under 2°C of global warming.
Collins et al. (2013) assessed low confidence in Antarctic sea ice projections because of the wide range of model projections and an inability of almost all models to reproduce observations such as the seasonal cycle, interannual variability and the long-term slow increase.
There was low confidence due to limited evidence, however, that anthropogenic climate change has affected the frequency and magnitude of floods. WGII AR5 also concluded that there is no evidence that surface water and groundwater drought frequency has changed over the last few decades, although impacts of drought have increased mostly owing to increased water demand (Jiménez Cisneros et al., 2014)
Reduced ocean upwelling has implications for millions of people and industries that depend on fisheries for food and livelihoods (Bakun et al., 2015; FAO, 2016; Kämpf and Chapman, 2016), although there is low confidence in the projection of the size of the consequences at 1.5°C
Evidence of a slowdown of AMOC has increased since AR5 (Smeed et al., 2014; Rahmstorf et al., 2015a, b; Kelly et al., 2016), yet a strong causal connection to climate change is missing (low confidence)
The magnitude of global sea level rise that could occur over the next two centuries under 1.5°C–2°C of global warming is estimated to be in the order of several tenths of a metre according to most studies (low confidence)
That is, although restraining the global temperature increase to 2°C is projected to reduce crop losses under climate change relative to higher levels of warming, the associated mitigation costs may increase the risk of hunger in low-income countries (low confidence)
Overall, no statistically significant changes in GDP are projected to occur over most of the developed world under 1.5°C of global warming in comparison to present-day conditions, but under 2°C of global warming impacts on GDP are projected to be generally negative (low confidence)
Moreover, daily rainfall intensity and runoff is expected to increase (low confidence) towards 2°C and higher levels of global warming
A collapse in permafrost may occur (low confidence); a drastic biome shift from tundra to boreal forest is possible (low confidence)
The number of investigations into how the tree fraction may respond in the Arctic to different degrees of global warming is limited, and studies generally indicate that substantial increases will likely occur gradually (e.g., Lenton et al., 2008). Abrupt changes are only plausible at levels of warming significantly higher than 2°C (low confidence) and would occur in conjunction with a collapse in permafrost
A single model projection (Drijfhout et al., 2015) suggested that higher temperatures may induce a smaller ice fraction in soils in the tundra, leading to more rapidly warming soils and a positive feedback mechanism that results in permafrost collapse (low confidence).
Given that scenarios of 1.5°C or 2°C of global warming would include a substantially smaller radiative forcing than those assessed in the study by Jiang and Tian (2013), there is low confidence regarding changes in monsoons at these low global warming levels, as well as regarding the differences between responses at 1.5°C versus 2°C of warming.
A tipping point for significant dieback of the boreal forests is thought to exist, where increased tree mortality would result in the creation of large regions of open woodlands and grasslands, which would favour further regional warming and increased fire frequencies, thus inducing a powerful positive feedback mechanism (Lenton et al., 2008; Lenton, 2012). This tipping point has been estimated to exist between 3°C and 4°C of global warming (low confidence) (Lucht et al., 2006; Kriegler et al., 2009), but given the complexities of the various forcing mechanisms and feedback processes involved, this is thought to be an uncertain estimate.
These changes may be classified as incremental rather than representing a tipping point. Large-scale reductions in maize crop yield, including the potential collapse of this crop in some regions, may exist under 3°C or more of global warming (low confidence)
Under 3°C of global warming, significant reductions in the areas suitable for livestock production could occur (low confidence)
Tropical cyclones are projected to decrease in frequency but with an increase in the number of very intense cyclones (limited evidence, low confidence).
Climate models now include more cloud and aerosol processes, and their interactions, than at the time of the AR4, but there remains low confidence in the representation and quantification of these processes in models.
The release of CO2 or CH4 to the atmosphere from thawing permafrost carbon stocks over the 21st century is assessed to be in the range of 50 to 250 GtC for RCP8.5 (low confidence).
Thank you, Willis! Excellent summary. Once all of the actual environmental problems were solved by the 90s, the climate crusaders have been left with this stupidity to promote.
Amazingly, they’ve been largely successful in developed countries. Western children who have never even seen someone close to them suffering in poverty and feeling no sense of purpose with their riches.
An Obama admin climate scientist has just released an op-ed saying he agrees with you:
“(Steven Koonin) said he discovered that “humans exert a growing, but physically small, warming influence on the climate. The results from many different climate models disagree with, or even contradict, each other and many kinds of observations. In short, the science is insufficient to make useful predictions about how the climate will change over the coming decades, much less what effect our actions will have on it.”
Obama administration scientist slams claims of climate ‘emergency’: Heat waves are ‘no more common than they were in 1900’ (msn.com)
“Since that discovery seven years ago, Koonin explained that the public narrative about the climate has shifted away from any actual scientific data and is, instead, being driven by alarmist phrases, such as “climate emergency,” “climate crisis,” and “climate disaster.”
The scientist said that President Joe Biden has added to this alarmist language by appointing climate envoy John Kerry and announcing that the administration will spend almost $2 trillion to combat the “existential threat to humanity.”
Yes! 5 stars. *****
Yes it is, and the few replies prove that warmist/alarmists can’t address Willis post at all:
I posted your wonderful guest post HERE and the few replies makes clear they are unable to answer your simple question.
Example: “This is a link to a blogger whose main if not only purpose is to debunk anthropomorphic climate change. Not quite a reliable source for fact based science. I know this because I did not stop at the link, I went quite a bit farther. Sometimes the danger of relying on one unchecked,, un fact checked link leaves you open to unwisely relying on some ones deranged notion as defensible facts. Sorry you fell for this one.”
======
LOL
Well done Sunsettommy! I followed your link, and most edifying it is. You have found the most effective way of dealing with CAGW trolls and nutters, which is to post real, empirical data which refute the alarmist narrative, and then, when the trolls object, ask them to explain why it is false.
Cool I just invented a new word: Climatesturbation – inductive reasoned causes for climate crisis that make greens feel good, but are at best useless and at worst destructive.
Per normal ….. well done Willis
It’s mostly performed by climatards
Yep, libtards, trolls and calculator dodgers, but there I go repeating myself.
It’s the politically congruent (“=”) sibling of race baiting.
It’s not a problem when they do it in the privacy of their own homes. It’s when they start doing it in public, then at schools in front of children. That is unacceptable.
I vote for eco-onanism
Modern flagellants. They are our social pandemic.
May I add emotional masturbation
A brilliant summary, one that should be compulsory reading for politicians around the globe. Sadly none of the current crop of politicians are listening to the science .. at the moment that is.
As their crackpot measures to achieve ‘zero carbon’ start to impact on everyone’s lives the penny will drop with the little people (aka the voters) that all the pain and cost is spent in fighting a non-existent problem and will have zero effect on the climate. Trillions of dollars, pounds and whatever thrown away to achieve nothing. Then there will hopefully be a reckoning.
Tommy Wils described this scenario in the Climategate emails.
I’m thinking his prediction will come true
It has not been all for nothing – those trillions of dollars have been spent keeping unemployable graduates in the manner to which they have become accustomed.
True indeed, and that’s what it’s primarily all about. The world has graduated to employing elitists who speak with plums in their mouths (BBC accents) to dig ditches and fill them in. Aren’t we lucky ??
That appears to equate to nothing, more than anything.
What justifies the World wasting $150 Trillion fighting the most beneficial trace gas of life that is CO2?
Save nature from the Greens and Massively unsustainable RE: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/05/monumental-unsustainable-environmental-impacts/
Renewables aren’t: https://www.manhattan-institute.org/mines-minerals-and-green-energy-reality-check
Willis, don’t confuse climate alarmists with facts.
I too rated 5*, but BEST is not to be believed. It has Manngled the interwar warming and postwar cooling. I don’t know its UHI algorithm, but must resemble HadCRU’s nonsensical numerology.
Willis, the real issue is not the facts, but the burden of proof. The alarmists were very clever; back in 2002 they perverted the precautionary principle (“Look before you leap”) into “the precautionary principle carries a general presumption that the burden of proof shifts away from the regulator having to demonstrate potential for harm towards the hazard creator having to demonstrate an acceptable level of safety.” It’s in my article here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/01/22/on-the-precautionary-principle/.
The global warming claptrap goes back to the 80’s. Every decade it gets rebranded to sound scarier.
It really started in the late 1970s. I ran into school kids who were convinced that it was going to happen or already happening and that summer was a sign of disastrous warming at work. Not a joke.
The first ramblings of “climate change” began in the 1880s mainly in some US news papers and nature magazines. But it wasn’t until the 1970s, ninety years later, with the spread of vastly improved communication technology that climate change became fashionable, especially to “snowflakes” and socialists.
It’s interesting when you go back to the articles in periodicals like the NYTimes and Newsweek predicting global cooling back in the ’50s-70s. The graphs of world temperature coincided with the observed cooling, shorter harvest seasons, etc. If you compare now to Hadcrut5, e.g., the graphs are all flat or up during that period.
Yet, the reporting happened. https://realclimatescience.Com/1970s-global-cooling-scare/
Was it not real?
How do they get away with this?
Tony Heller has a primer on the subject.
Several in fact.
Here is a particularly striking example:
Hansen – The Climate Chiropractor | Real Science (wordpress.com)
The only large area in the world with very good long term data going back over 100 years, is the continental US.
This represents an area with huge geographical extent, from north to south, and east to west. It includes every type of terrain imaginable, from large mountain ranges to coastal lowlands, from rainforests to deserts, from tropical savannah to cold continental uplands. We have thousands of miles of coastal areas on two major oceans and the Gulf of Mexico. The US sees every type of weather there is, outside of an actual continental ice sheet.
And what does the record from this huge area tell us about how things have or have not changed?
Going strictly by what was measured at the place and time of the measurements by the people whose job it was to collect meteorological data, there have been fluctuations up and down, some very cold periods, some very hot ones, and some wet ones and some dry periods.
The most recent decades have seen nothing to match the most extreme conditions recorded since the late 1800s.
It may be the case that we are about fair to middling compared to the historical records going back to the time just after the end of the Little Ice Age.
The official records have been adjusted and readjusted so many times it is impossible to use them for any legitimate purpose of comparison.
One thing we can say for certain is, there is no place in the entire US where the weather is hotter in recent years than it was at any time in the past 100 years.
In fact, it seems to be if anything a particularly clement and mild period in recent decades.
I have yet to see anyone offer any explanation, even a bad one, for how exactly an entire continent, the only one we have good records for, can show a trend over an entire century-plus-long period of time, that is counter to what is occurring in the rest of the world.
Thanks for your responses. The continental US covers only about 5% of the Earth’s land surface and ~1.5% of the total, so I’m ok with the idea that it may not represent all of the planet’s climates.
OTOH, when trees that lived for 100s of years are found under receding glaciers, and are dated from within the last 10 millennia, Ppl still act like the glaciers have been there forever, and it’s the industrial revolution that caused the climate to warm as never before. They just can’t synthesize facts.
Even so, the US represents a large area that is in every way typical of the land surfaces of the world as a whole, and it borders two separate oceans that are very efficient carriers of the heat that makes it’s way across and around the globe.
Additionally, the jet streams carry air masses around the planet very quickly, and the northern hemisphere jet stream passes directly over the US for most of the year. And the southern US is heavily influenced by the subtropical jet.
I maintain it is impossible for such a large area to have a trend that is not representative of the planet as a whole, when considered over a sufficiently long period of time to smooth out seasonal and multiyear fluctuations caused by various weather and climatic patterns.
To back up this contention, I point to the fact that individual station data from many isolated locations that also have good long term records (when the original data is used, and not the highly dubious adjusted data sets), which are entirely consistent with the records from the US as a whole.
Additionally, the records from the US matched the globe as a whole when considering what was widely reported by all sources in the era prior to the advent of global warming alarmism.
And on top of that, the unadjusted records from the US match very closely the results from the UHA satellite data set, over the period of time for which that data has been collected.
In fact, going back to the point regarding the era prior to the advent of global warming alarmism, it can be readily demonstrated that over many decades, all data sets from all over the world were entirely consistent with each other, and with what can be gleaned from a gigantic assemblage of historical observations, news reports, research papers, and most any other sources of information on topics related to the state of the global weather and climate patterns.
This applies to reports tracking changes in polar and alpine ice, changes in sea level, changes in agricultural production over time, reports from various explorers, mariners, and scientists, and contemporary news reports.
It used to be the case that all such data was entirely consistent with recorded fluctuations in temperature patterns.
There were no glaring inconsistencies, such as we have now that alterations of data sets have been several decades in vogue amongst so-called climate scientists.
And, of the warming we have had, how much of that is due to CO2?
This Willis post is a superb summary of the C being completely MIA in CAGW.
And yet one part bothered me a bit to at least question it. Willis said…
“The changes in downwelling radiation from the increase in CO2 are trivially small, lost in the noise …”
and shows a chart depicting about a 2 WSqM increase in DW radiation. Well several questions occurred.
How do we know the change was from CO2?
What percentage of the change is from CO2?
Did not cloud cover slightly diminish over this period, and could that account for the change?
What are the error bars for the two numbers shown?
David, good questions, and my apologies for the lack of clarity. What I’ve shown is the change that in theory would be from the changes in CO2. This is using the generally accepted (although not rigorously derived) claim that the forcing change from a doubling of CO2 is 3.5 W/m2.
I’ll add something to the head post to clarify that.
w.
Thanks, Neil, interesting article. I also have a post on the subject, “Climate, Caution, and Precaution“.
w.
Thank you Neil. I’ve been looking for that reference for ages
The precautionary principle is a logical fallacy because no one can predict the future.
When people tell me otherwise, I tell them this.
“I run a church. Our church guarantees eternal salvation, but only to members. Membership in our church requires a donation of $100. Since you believe in the precautionary principle, I’ll be expecting your check soon.”
A guarantee no one can verify.
Doonman, you misunderstand the PP. See my post here for what it really says.
w.
The precautionary principle is used by people who cannot evaluate risk when making decisions i.e.people who are not qualified to make the decisions e.g. politicians and activists
precautionary-principle
The alarmists keep all those who disagree focused On CO2 and that diverts them from proper understanding of natural causes or internal responses of climate change to allow them to use the precautionary principle to win the CO2 fight.
Emergency: someone is not making enough money in their area so they need som FUD campaign from the government and MSM to improve profits.
“…someone is not making enough money…”
Shades of “We have to protect our phony baloney jobs.”
Governor Le Pétomane in “Blazing Saddles”.
(If you don’ know where that name comes from, do a ‘search’ – a perfect name for a politian.)
“…. just what this supposed “CLIMATE EMERGENCY!!” actually is and where I might find evidence that it exists…”
The climate emergency is a new fundamentalist religion with priests, prophets, saints, missionaries and hucksters. It lives in the minds of all politically correct people- who have initiated a crusade to, as Ottmar Edenhoffer says above, to redistribute the wealth of the planet. The wealth will go from those who produce it to the “clean energy industrial complex” and all its flunkies in politics, academia and the media who’ll feast off this wealth until the economies of the West collapse and they find out they’ll need to learn Chinese ASAP.
Learning Mandarin would be quite a challenge…..I made a start at it before other priorities intervened. But if I were forced to listen to Chinese opera! That can be painful to my ears, even to the point of becoming a form of torture.
Worse than Vogon poetry?
Well done.
As predicted by Patrick Moore, the green alarmists are switching to screaming about vague and insubstantial threats from microplastics.
Ants all over the world have plastic traces…even in the remote Amazon…plastics found in deep ocean trenches….it’s out there.
Well, you know, plastic is made from all-natural ingredients. Just like cars, cell-phones, and nuclear weapons.
Peak Oil…
I dint think we’ve seen peak anything yet…
Not even peak stupidity from hardcore leftists
My official prediction is that Peak Stupidity will be reached if AOC is re-elected to any position
I don’t think that has any upper boundary
I state that with high confidence
We elected Trudeau twice and all signs point to a triple, for the poster boy for white privilege.
So much stupid, so little time to mock it all
I go with Einstein on the stupidity question.
Occasional cortex is here to stay. I think there are a lot of emotional people who vote with feelings not logic. One only has to look at solo drivers who wear masks. Scare em early and scare em often.
Wait…what?
“AOC praises Biden’s ‘impressive’ agenda: It has ‘exceeded expectations’ of the left wing”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/aoc-praises-biden-s-impressive-agenda-it-has-exceeded-expectations-of-the-left-wing/ar-BB1g2dZA
“Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez praised President Joe Biden for adopting a much more liberal agenda than even those on the progressive wing of his party could have expected.”
The most interesting woman in the world, she aint.
I believe it was Einstein who once said “I believe there are two things that are infinite, the universe and human stupidity and I am not sure about the universe.”
At least she’s somewhat honest. There aren’t enough jobs any more, given that robots do a lot of them now. I can understand her more than I can understand the physical incarnation of Satan, Pelosi, who thanked George Floyd for laying down his life for the demo-rat cause.
I live in the East Bay, but I can smell the fetid semi-corpse from here.
I have boxes of rocks that are smarter than AOC:
Thanks Willis, this is exactly what I was asking for.
Question, should there be a point about adjustments of the measured temps, GISS sleight of hand? Recent Graph showing 98% correlation of temperature adjustments tracking co2 increase, impossible to be random?
And to counter arguments that USA is not the world when it comes to temps, rain, etc, maybe add some from OZ to show same on opposite side of the planet, Fred 250 seems to have lots of those.
This post should also be featured prominently on the Everything Climate webpage
Thanks, Willis, for this absolutely outstanding post. This should be required viewing in all schools and universities.
Agreed, well done Willis. And, OT but, Mr. Mims, nice to see you posting here. I still have one of your electronics books from Radio Shack (1983), still holds up well.
My god man, open your eyes. The climate crisis is all around us. Every morning when the sun comes up it gets warmer. You can see CO² floating around every where. There are dead and dieing polar bears littering the streets. Ice melts when I take it out of the freezer. Tesla batteries burst into flames from the heat. Greta is sad.
The climate emergency is where it has always been–at the war rooms of the the Sierra Club and NRDC and their extensions at EPA and CARB. The ultra biased media are mouthpieces for the propaganda.
When driving- I used to listen to only NPR – now it’s 1. covid 2. climate emergency
all day, non stop- makes me puke. It’s the big NPR station in Albany, NY- about as Bolshevik as anywhere on the planet. When Trump was president it was nothing but hatred for him- all day- non stop.
CBC lightens it up with moaning ethnics – this morning the few words I heard while putting in a CD seemed to be something about how tragic it was that Africans in some country were putting christian words to their traditional music.
…. but yet they want a one world government where diverse leaders tell those brown and black people what to to do. Let’s list these diverse non-white, non-supremacists shall we:
Joe Biden
Nancy Pelosi
Chuck Schumer
Mitch McConnell
Boris Johnson
Angela Merkel
Whatsisname Macron
Putin
…..and the Chinese dude who wears lipstick.
Oooops, a bit melanin-challenged wouldn’t you say …. ?
..
Pretty persuasive evidence. Has anyone engaged in a specific scientific debate over any of these particular datasets, or the cumulative trends they represent? My guess is a passive/aggressive failure to engage in that level of debate. So much for settled science.
Excellent article, Willis. I’ll save this one and use it as ammunition against the climate change hysteria.
I like the Edenhofer quote. How about adding Christina Figueras : even if we are wrong about CO2, it won’t matter, we’ll be “doing the right thing”. ie wealth redistribution.
A quick search seem to indicate this quote has been removed from the internet.
Isn’t there a web site that has everything ever on the net? It must be there but I can’t recall the URL.
Here are some
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/quotations-of-the-day-from-friends-of-science/
I think it was someone else who said that.
This guy:
“Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing – in terms of economic policy and environmental policy” – Senator Timothy Wirth 1993″
10 times ‘experts’ predicted the world would end by now | Fox News
Figueres is known to have said the real agenda is to do away with capitalism.
In fact she did a whole tour around the world saying such things:
“Ottmar Edenhofer, lead author of the IPCC’s fourth summary report released in 2007 candidly expressed the priority. Speaking in 2010, he advised, “One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth.”
Or, as U.N. climate chief Christina Figueres pointedly remarked, the true aim of the U.N.’s 2014 Paris climate conference was “to change the [capitalist] economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”
‘Global warming’ is not about the science – UN Admits: ‘Climate change policy is about how we redistribute the world’s wealth’ | Climate Depot
Great summary.
Here are some other honest statements about the real aims of AGCC.
Washington, DC, May 2019
Saikat Chakrabarti, At that time, Chief of Staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)
“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal, is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all. Do you guys think of it as a climate thing? Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, August 2015, Simon & Schuster, 2014
Naomi Klein, Climate Change activist
“What if global warming isn’t only a crisis? What if it’s the best chance we’re ever going to get to build a better world?”
Brussels, February, 2015
Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change
“This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history. …
This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution. That will not happen overnight and it will not happen at a single conference on climate change, be it COP 15, 21, 40 – you choose the number. It just does not occur like that. It is a process, because of the depth of the transformation.”
Calgary Herald, December 1998
Christine Stewart, former Minister of the Environment of Canada
“No matter if the science is all phony; there are collateral environmental benefits. …
Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
You can’t reason with unreasonable people…
There is no immediate, imminent, or even probable risk. I say we deny the science, abort the economy, and call it socially justified: environmental justice or some other em-pathetic euphemism.
It’s as though the MSM pore over the IPCC statements, find all the things they have ‘low confidence’ in, and use them as the subject matter for their ‘climate change is upon us!’ articles.
Oh, I didn’t see any mention of ocean acidification. Is that because the IPCC don’t talk about it, or do they have higher levels of confidence that we’re dissolving all the crab shells?
A good article, one that can only upset the climate fanatics who will condemn poor Willis as an apostate.
They want walled cities. Okay, sure: let’s give them what they want, as in all those sci-fi stories centered in that idea, and make sure they can’t get out, so that the rest of us can go on about our business.
Hi Sara
Snowing in calgary
Estimate I can safely put out my tomato’s in 5 weeks.
Maybe
Thank you, Pat! I have photos on my front steps of a light but very real snow (in the forecast) from this past Tuesday. I am 8 miles south of the IL-WI state line, 7 miles west of Lake Michigan. The snow was in the forecast. No wonder the birds are still coming for food!
Even in Philadelphia PA. a relatively mild place, the official date of last frost is after Mother’s Day.
April has always been way to soon to plant tender stuff.
Tomatoes should not be planted until nighttime temps are consistently above 50°F, or 10°C.
For example, the earliest date to plant tomatoes in Birmingham Alabama is April 19th.
Denver: May 13th.
Coeur d’Alene: May 22nd
Bangor Maine: May 23rd.
Kellog, Idaho: May 27th.
Duluth and International Falls, Minnesota: June 8th!
Marquette, Michigan: May 26th
So yeah, 5 weeks for Canada seems about right, if you are in a warm part of the Great White North
Of course, the best thing to do is get a head start in a greenhouse type environment and set them in the ground outside after once conditions are appropriate.
When to Plant Tomatoes, Last Frost Date, When Should I Plant Tomatoes (growgardentomatoes.com)
Note those dates are only the 90% probability you will not get frosted out and have to replant.
I actually thought it was more like 50%. Either way, it’s only an “average”, not a guarantee – there’s always a chance of a killing frost after that date for at least a couple more weeks.
Well, either it is okay and one will be safe to plant then, or there will be a late frost and stuff will be damaged or killed.
So, I suppose it is 50/50.
🙂
We need a city full of padded cells to house all the AGW nutters. !
The construction costs alone would be outlandish. How about just walls around those cities, and they have to have passes to leave, go outside the walls, and not allowed to touch anything, period.
That was last week. The dear leaders have moved on after checking the box. Next up are tax increases not to pay for stimulus but to spend on more programs. Kerry can return to his boats now.
Add chart from nasa re: global greening?
Never mind, that is there, missed it
Minor comment – Chart “Global (60N-60S) Sea Surface Temperatures, 1979-2021 CMIP6 models vs Observations”, word “observations” in title is spelled incorrectly.
And 60N-60S is hardly global, and the modelled quantity being plotted is air temperatures not sea temperatures. Apart from that …. LOL.
First, the ocean 60N-60S covers all but 7% of the ocean, and that 7% is mostly frozen. And since it is frozen, the temperature is hard to detect. As a result, in analyses of the changes in ocean temperature, the polar areas are often omitted because they have little to do with what the liquid ocean is doing.
Second, the modeled air temperature over the sea during the 42-year period only diverged from the modeled sea temperature by seven-hundredths of a degree, and that has you claiming victory???
Seriously?
Get real! Take a look at the graphic you posted. That’s a difference that makes no difference. The thrust of Dr. Roy’s argument is unchanged—the models wildly overstated the SST, just as he said. And all of your tap-dancing and your fake “LOL” won’t change that fact in the slightest.
At least Nick Lewis made an honest mistake. You, you were foolish enough to believe Nick without checking. Now, because I did the homework that you didn’t do, it has come back to bite you in the differential, and so you’re doing your best to convince us to ignore your error …
Bad news on that front.
w.
Second, the modeled air temperature over the sea during the 42-year period only diverged from the modeled sea temperature by seven-hundredths of a degree, and that has you claiming victory???
That is not what Nick Stokes reported.
He found for the whole ocean, ‘TAS increases by about 1.1°C, TOS by about 0.8°C’ .He also reports a whole ocean apples-apples plot of HADSST against TOS using CMIP5 shows ‘The trend of HADSST3 was 0.139C/dec, and the corresponding TOS was 0.15C/dec. ‘.
But that wouldn’t make such a sexy graph, huh?
Nick Stokes has now written up the flaws in Dr Spencer’s graph in a blog post.
Here’s how it looks with the flaws removed.
Since at present (right-hand end of the green line in Nick’s graph) all but two of the models are higher than the reality, I’d say Dr. Spencer was right that the models overestimate warming badly, just not quite as badly as he thought …
w.
Are they saying that greenhouses with they high CO2 concentrations should be banned? It wouldn’t take much to get an ignorant comment from them.
Great recapping article, Willis! Thank you.
With due respect to the phrase “climate emergency”, please allow me go one step up and state that the AGW/CAGW alarmist have not even been able to define what they mean when they use the phrase “climate change”.
To wit, is “climate change”:
— the world getting hotter in summers, or colder in winters?
— the world suffering from flooding, or from droughts?
— the world suffering from too much CO2, or too little CO2 for optimum crop growth to feed humanity?
— the world suffering from too much cloud cover, or too little cloud cover?
— the world suffering from too much or too little atmospheric water vapor (the predominant greenhouse gas)?
— the world suffering from its oceans shifting very slightly in average pH (range of 8.2-8.1)?
— the world suffering from too many insects (pests), or too few insects (species extinction)?
— the world suffering from too many El Ninos, or too many La Ninas?
— the world suffering from too much wind (claimed increase in storms of all types) or too little wind (for windmill power farms to be reliable)?
— the world suffering from currently being in an interglacial period, as opposed to being in a glacial period?
— the world suffering from too many Greta Thunbergs, or too few?
— all of the above, or none of the above but something else?
I think the answer is ‘yes’. If something is happening (or not), it’s due to climate change, a tipping point is just over the horizon, and we need to scuttle the ship to prevent us getting there.
Fantastic! All the major charts in one easy to read place!
I’d like to see one thing added, which is the first time an official announced that we only have ten years left. From memory, I believe it was Noel Brown of the UNEP who predicted in 1989 that we have only until 2000 to keep catastrophe at bay. Which would make the prediction that we only have 10 years left 42 years old.
Uhhh . . . 1989 to 2021 would be an interval of 32 years, not 42 years.
Nonetheless, your point is well made. 🙂
Also, per your request, here are some close-enough-to-count predictions associated with “tens years left” predictions made earlier than 1989:
1) “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
2) In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
3) Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”
4) “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.
5) Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.
Source of above items 1-5: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/18-spectacularly-wrong-predictions-made-around-the-time-of-first-earth-day-in-1970-expect-more-this-year-3/
Undoubtedly, more such can be found.
B-b-but 42 is the answer to everything, isn’t it?
Good enough for the average warmista! I’ve been quoting this recently to alarmists and not one called me out on the math error (yet). I’m tempted to stick with it for no other reason than to see how long until one does!
Yes, David! Good catch! Tony Heller has been quoting the Noel Brown prediction frequently in his YouTube (or NewTube, if the fool moderators at Google and YouTube try to cancel him again) videos, along with a whole bunch of other failed predictions.
AOC’s prediction of the “end of the world” by 20:0 if we don’t do something about “climate change?” It provides me with a motive to keep on living long enough so I can laugh in her face when 2030 comes around.
As for Ottmar Edenhoffer’s quote, “… how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth.”
I would strongly suggest it is not wealth, but “political power” those pushing climate change policies want to redistribute into their hands.
After all does Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer, Judenrat Soros, or any of the other green-woke billionaires expect to get less rich from climate change policies they are trying to cram down the west’s throat?
No, this whole climate scam is about power, pure raw political power over the masses of affluent middle class in the constitutional republics of the western nations, a group of people that currently can give the middle finger to those named above and the rest of the Green Blob.
Incumbent billionaires are happy to limit competition and generate the most pernicious form of business the oligopoly.
Yes, “trust us we have everyone’s best interests in hand”, they say.
the regulator’s role as defined by the capitalist handbook is to break these groups up, not to divide all the spoils between them as is happening with the current ruling class.
great synopsis Willis thanks.
One suggestion that could be added is the RCP8.5 assumptions.
RCP8.5 is now 30years in and 25% through its prediction period and we are tracking below RCP2.5. why is it still used as the terrifying story before us when we on earth have a greater chance of dying from a meteor strike the RCP8.5 of becoming a reality
I think a link to Pielke
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/the-unstoppable-momentum-of-outdated
Agree that a good chart showing how unrealistic RCP8.5 is would be valuable. It’s the basis (combined with greatly oversensitive models) for most of the apocalyptic “existential threat” predictions we see. Pielke’s plot is the best I’ve seen.
Also on fires, there are many plots showing a huge decrease in the early part of the 20th century.
This, Joel, is an essential point you make. And it must be stressed by all of us skeptics every chance we get when the Big “climate emergency” Lie is mentioned in our presence. It is ALL about power and control. It has been a long, slow march back into the past into absolute autocracy. Only now, it has a dangerous totalitarian twist to it, with modern technology as the tool.
In reality, the Paris “agreements” have nothing to do with CO2, but rather are for transferring huge sums to “poorer” countries.
Joel O’Brien, why do you bring your pernicious racism into a discussion on climate change. In doing so you undermine the credibility of the whole platform.
Facts don’t matter to propagandists, it’s all just a means to an end. The general populace has been so dumbed down and indoctrinated to believe anything now anyway. You would think 30 years of business as usual would have convinced people, but sadly no. It is a lost cause.
Data to add. Here is a recent paper from Germany.
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020IJMPB..3450293S/abstract
Download the paper…
In short, co2 effect mostly saturated at 300 ppm.
Co2 band path length up, hell of a lot longer up, then path length down
Also looking for cooling quantization of co2. At what point does radiative cooling for co2 show up.
To much to discuss here, read paper. Somewhere there is a direct link to pdf…
Another link, careful with format
https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.00708
Willis draws blood:
InfinitoZero • 17 minutes ago
Where Is The “Climate Emergency”?
https://wattsupwiththat.com…
Note: Please don’t reply unless you have read the linked article!
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Nice compilation. Your last post inspired me to do something different but closely related, big failed past predictions. Charles has a draft revised at his suggestion to add a bunch of hyperlinks to supporting detailed sources.
Thanks, Rud, for your efforts. I look forward to reading and saving the result when it comes out.
Nice writeup, Willis! In the chart for downwelling radiation, “solar” and “infrared” are transposed. Keep up the good work.
Oh no, not back radiation again? Talk about giving warmists a stick to beat you with.
“Back radiation”, AKA downwelling longwave infrared (thermal) radiation from the atmosphere, is a reality which has been measured by hundreds of different scientists all around the planet. It’s discussed in detail in my climate bible, the 1960s textbook “Climate Near The Ground”. Not sure what your comment means.
w.
Would not be the first or last textbook to get it wrong. If there was downwelling longwave radiation of the order you suggest then no-one would ever need to use fossil fuel for heating – just redirect all that warming downwelling long wave radiation.
E-M radiation only goes from a high energy source to a lower energy sink. The E-M field equilibrates at the speed of light; just like the gravity field.
Sure CO2 can absorb and re-emit radiation but it has no consequence on Earth’s energy balance or the surface temperature.
After 40 years of claimed global warming the Nino34 region is trendless. Contrast that with the absurd models and myriad of textbooks that claim there is a “Greenhouse Effect”. The silliness has to be nipped in the bud with real physics not nonsense.
RickWill April 25, 2021 10:05 pm
If you think Geiger “got it wrong”, I fear you have much to understand. As I pointed out, downwelling IR has been MEASURED, not speculated about but MEASURED, on a regular basis for decades by dozens and dozens of scientists all over the planet.
You misunderstand both the amount of DLWR (downwelling longwave radiation) and what it does.
On a 24/7 global average, the DLWR at the surface is about 340 W/m2. This is convertible by the Stefan-Boltzmann equation to 5°C (41°C). This includes larger amounts in the daytime and the tropics, and smaller amounts in the nighttime and the temperate and polar regions.
In all cases, however, it is coming from a region of the atmosphere that is COOLER than the surface. As a result, you can’t heat your house with it.
Now, does it “warm the surface”? Well, yes and no. What it does is it leaves the surface warmer than the surface would be if instead it were exposed to the infinite heat sink of outer space. That in part is why the earth is much warmer than the moon—it gets some of its upwelling radiation back from the atmosphere, where on the moon the upwelling radiation goes unimpeded into space.
Next, you say:
That’s not quite true. The NET E-M radiation only goes from a high to a low energy source. However, that is the net of two separate and independent flows—a flow from the warmer to the cooler object, and a SMALLER flow from the cooler to the warmer object.
Want a crazy fact? If you light a candle in the daytime, the sun ends up warmer than it would be without the candle. Yes, the NET flow is always and ever from the warmer object to the cooler … but the candle still leaves the sun warmer. Once a photon leaves its source, the temperature of what it hits is immaterial—it gets absorbed whether the object it hits is warmer or cooler than the object that emitted it.
Let me suggest that you get a thermodynamics textbook, read every chapter, and do all of the exercises at the end of each chapter, before you start trying your ideas out in the world of science.
w.
RickWill,
In case previous explanations and thought experiments have left you cold on the topic, consider my thought experiment on the subject, and be honest with yourself.
Consider two stars, each in it’s own isolated region of space, light years from any other planet or star.
Star A has a surface temperature of 6000°C
Star B has a surface temperature of 7000°C
Both are stable, main sequence stars, about halfway through their time on the Main Sequence of the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram.
Now bring these two stars into close orbit around each other.
Now Star A has a large part of it’s sky filled with a star shining directly on it, where before it had only dark empty space, with no appreciable incoming radiation incident upon it.
Obviously it will warm substantially above it’s starting temperature of 6000°C, right? After all, it has a star shining on it now.
And now Star B has a large part of it’s sky filled with a star shining directly on it, where before it had only cold dark space all around it, with no appreciable incoming radiation incident upon it.
The star that is now in orbit around the hotter star is hotter than the Sun.
So, does the 7000° Star B stay the same temperature as it was when it was in isolation, or does it get colder than it was when it was in isolation, or does it get warmer than it was when it was in isolation, now that it has another star shining it’s EM radiation upon it?
What will happen is that each star will find a new equilibrium temperature, warmer than the previous temperature.
And the colder star will have warmed the warmer star.
And that is a fact.
I suggest you read about how and when the laws governing the flow of energy were formulated and formalized.
You will find that the one in question refers only to net heat flow.
The concept that heat flows from a warmer body to a colder one is known as the Clausius Statement. He enunciated this idea in 1855.
How would anyone suppose anything he said precludes processes he had no concept of, from occurring? It was several decades away from the first inkling of a notion of a photon.
In any case, what he actually said was that it was impossible to construct a device whose sole effect is the transfer of heat from a cool reservoir to a hot reservoir.
He was speaking of heat, not photons of EM radiation, of which he had no possible conception of. He was describing a formal way of saying that a perpetual motion machine was impossible to build.
And what he said was that heat cannot flow from a colder to a warmer place, without some other change occurring.
Note that everyone has air conditioners and refrigerators that send heat from a cold place to a warm place.
The more formal statement of the 2nd Law would not come for many more years.
No where does any physical law say that photons from a cold place cannot impinge upon a warmer object.
We routinely capture photons from cold gas clouds in space in our telescopes and spectrographs.
Thanks, Nicholas, a good example well explained.
w.
”Talk about giving warmists a stick to beat you with.”
No, just tell them it (2Wm2) doesn’t do anything. If they insist that it does, ask them to quantify it.
Thanks, fixed. I added the post just before publication, much appreciated.
w.
I’m replying to my own comment here to suggest the term “radiative coupling” to talk about how the atmosphere and the surface interact in the infrared spectrum. Willis notes correctly that both upwelling and downwelling longwave radiation flows are real and measurable. The net flow is into the atmosphere from the surface. And noting also that the atmosphere is the working fluid of a heat engine, the strength of the radiative coupling to the surface helps assure that heat cannot end up being forced to accumulate at the surface to harmful effect on the planet by adding a bit to the non-condensible GHG’s. This just incrementally strengthens the radiative coupling which puts the right amount of energy into the hot end of the heat engine to move it to the cold end at high altitude to be more easily emitted to space.
I read a lot of marine biological papers accepting the narrative, only quoting the IPCC, have doubts if many have ever read it, don’t even have to get into a library, maybe they should.
https://www.hathitrust.org/ETAS-User-Information
“I’m not affiliated with a university that has turned on the Emergency Temporary Access Service. I am also doing research. Can I have access? Unfortunately, at this time, we are able to provide this access only to students, staff and faculty who are associated with our member libraries.” This is an online Digital Library joined by lots of universities.
I am told that there is a lot of concern about the education system on Facebook. Seems that they are discriminating, inclusive for themselves? I haven’t been able as normal to get into the University of Texas system for 13 months because??, well they are not making alumni happy. I am in the susceptible group, but most faculty and students aren’t, still limiting access, except for athletics apparently.
It seems like the first time that the unsick have been quarantined. I have a lot of sympathy for the current library situation, not so much for the administrators that now control them.
Good post Willis.
The “Climate Emergency” is not to be found,in the things you list.
The “Climate of Emergency” is entirely in the minds of our “helpers”.
The Parasitic Overload,has been on a spending frenzy for the last 6 decades.
Our nations are bankrupt.
Now if you live by feasting from other peoples work,this is a real emergency.
Hence the Cult of Calamitous Climate and its complement The Dread Covid 19.
For the number of parasites is unsustainable,as every nations fiscal reports prove,productive persons willing to pay taxes are vanishing from “official roles” so wealth must be found to feed the overload.
What better than another Doomsday religion ,founded by our bureaus and imposed worldwide.
Gullible people ,promises of salvation from an imaginary doom..This is a winning formulae..Until it falls.
The “Climate Emergency” is rather a Climate of Emergency” as the Other Peoples Money (OPM) dries up.
This “Catastrophe of the Commons” is a glorious way to steal from the gullible.
Climatology is politics,science ,as in the use of the scientific method,was shown the door decades ago.
A creation of the bureaus of government,Policy based evidence manufacturing has brought us “The Science”.
A creation having no use for data,measurement or falsification.
The formerly cautionary tales from our childhood appear to have been used a instruction manuals for the creation of this mass hysteria.
For “The Sky is Falling” and all who see the Emperor’s of Climatology as ugly and naked,why we are “Unfit to hold any position in the Emperor’s Court.”
I perceive a real fear of Climate Change in our effete elites,not of planetary weather but of human moods,the Kleptocracy has taken off their masks too soon.
They are being to fear,that their host shall see them clearly.
Well stated.
I am not quite as pessimistic about the climate stuff – eventually fossil fuels will climb in price and the current dabbling with alternatives at least extends the time horizon. It will not be easy to wean the globe off fossil fuels. Covid is almost behind us in Australia – it remains good sense not to travel internationally though, as that still entails real or imagined inconveniences.
My eye is on Taiwan. I expect China will claim it sooner rather than later and that could have global consequences that are not favourable. Personally I think it is a lost cause because there are only 14 countries that recognise Taiwan as a sovereign state and none is regarded as a powerhouse. There could be blood in the streets of Taipei and the UN will just watch it unfold.
This page needs to be added to everythingclimate.
From a rather cynical point of view:
The “climate emergency” is a political tool, just like a “consensus”. Don’t ever attempt to define it precisely, or some opponent would show that it does not exist.
The problem with this excellent article is that it preaches to the choir. The climate alarmists had effectively demonized this site to the extent that merely mentioning that you read something here is enough for the person you are discussing an issue with to condescendingly inform you that you have been duped by fake news. But no worries, they will be happy to inform you of the truth.
I second that. Commenting on The Hill verifies that…
Willis produces evidence
What else can the AGW cultist do but yabber mindlessly !
They KNOW they have NOTHING .. so they run and hide.
True,
But if you mention the links instead of WUWT and make the case yourself then they have to disparage their own ideology or actually think for themselves.
…. or neither.
Cognitive dissonance is a powerful weapon for religious zealots.
Preaching to the choir? Mr. Eschenbach’s essay is fact-based, not preachy. Just the facts, ma’am.
As to getting die-hard climate alarmists to agree, what do you propose? Torture them? Shoot them? Riot on their doorsteps?
The “debate” was cancelled by Al Gore in 2006. Remember? Yet for the last 15 years the debate has gone forward anyway, the torch carried by climate realists like Watts, Eschenbach, Spencer, Bastardi, and numerous others. Against incredible odds, the Realists have won every argument with the truth as presented above.
The truth is our best weapon. We don’t need autistic teenagers or braying politicians. We don’t need brickbats or ballot stuffers. We don’t need academic pimps or media whores. All we need is the truth. The truth will be victorious in the end. It always is.
Thank you, Willis. 42^42 stars. KUTGW.
I made a list of all (20 or 21) of the presented graphs, their start/stop dates, and whether they applied to global or just to specific-area conditions. They vary a lot, and as this article is likely to get a lot of travel on internet it might be wise to add a statement explaining why they are chosen as they are–such as, that’s the time period for which data is available/published.
The reason is that I’ve often been faced with the off-the-cuff response from catastrophers that if the data do not show a reason for being as alarmed as the rhetoric is saying one should be–the data is cherry-picked. Once that declaration is made, the obviousness that not one metric shows reason for alarm just vanishes from cognizance.
Just as with Covid-19, the rhetoric seems to completely trump the data.
Perhaps it is time for a T-shirt:
Ask me why I ♥ CO2
Outstanding article. One great article on the non climate “emergency” as it stands. Will refer this to other sites. Very well done Wills E.
Thank you so much! Outstanding.
Thanks Willis.
Forwarding this type of analysis to local or national political people is fruitless. On this subject they are not answerable to the people of their country, but to a higher political body.
Regards
Thanks, Willis, for this outstanding piece! We can only do what you do tirelessly: repeat, repeat, repeat the failed predictions, the simple facts, and the real reasons for the bogus nonsense: it is all about power and control, a massive power grab in disguise. A return to absolute autocracy with a modern totalitarian twist.
Willis writes:
“nobody has been able to tell me just what this supposed “CLIMATE EMERGENCY!!” actually is”
The EMERGENCY is here.
This is the only proper response:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGgJPmOUmDU
Glad I could help.
What a brilliant film.
I do not share the pessimism of some here about the utility of this sort of post. Here, it may be preaching to the choir. But In Madness of Crowds, Macaulay concluded the madness ends only when men come back to their senses one by one. This sort of post can be used by all here to accomplish that one by one thing. Same utility as EverythingClimate.
i also think the recent Texas near crash, the madness in California (zero emission electricity by 2040) and the the growing grid risks in UK and Germany, will eventually result in major crashes that will sober up a whole lot of people in a hurry. It won’t get rid of the climate change ‘industry’ right away. Too much money and momentum. But will cause it to fade.
Exactly. The die is cast on how this will end. It’s just a matter of how long can they keep this dead horse twitching.
Thank you Willis.
Macaulay in the 17th century could not have imagined the tools available to a Totalitarian Technocracy of the 21st century.
If things continue on the current trajectory, within 10 yrs, as men come to their senses, if they admit it, one by one their social credit score will be reduced for wrongthink.
An excellent compendium, well presented. I’ll share this article, even though there will be plenty of flak from the true believers. 😉
Just this last week the MSM have been bombarding us with climate crisis nonsense and, as CNN recently confirmed to a Project Veritas hidden recorder, they intend to ramp it up for a long time to come, actual science be damned.
Thanks Willis, but you are just preaching to the choir again.
The 99.9% who don’t/won’t consider real science, have bought into green hysteria out of fear. “I don’t want to leave an environment in ruin to my grand kids” is a common rationalization. What they don’t seem to understand is the enormous down-side to things they are blindly accepting such as draconian emission regulations, the farce of renewables, and the hypocrisy of electric vehicles.
Climate change fear is the greatest marketing success of all time. To even have a remote chance of countering this, the skeptical side need to fight fire with fire and create its own fear campaign. Call it something like ‘Apocalypse Prosperity’ and zero in on negative green-driven outcomes like: energy poverty, multi-generational debt, restrictions to individual freedoms, onerous taxation, runaway bureaucracy, blackouts and grid instability, etc.
An interdisciplinary team could be put together jointly through organizations like Heartland, Breakthrough, Prager, Copenhagen Consensus and the like. It would require Madison Ave. quality of production and multi-media roll-out; even TV might be interested if the message was alarming enough. It would cost a lot and, of course, the greens would attack any corporate sponsorship. However, if it was honest, scientific and rational, the public would filter out the eco-shrill and allow the underlying message of fear to sink in.
WUWT and it’s ilk are great, but the battle is being lost while a small cohort of subscribers nod their heads and offer witty comments. Only fear will get the message out to the masses.
It is only preaching to the choir if it stops here
We all have acquaintances who would benefit from, or even change their mind about the media drivel they have absorbed, as a result of reading Willis’s rant-a-thon in this article. I’m going to send it to most of them. I liked it so much I donated $100 to WUWT right after I read it.
”Only fear will get the message out to the masses.”
There will be plenty of fear when the electricity prices go up and the reliability goes down and when China starts overtaking the rest of the world due to cheap reliable power – which leads to….power.
Pseudo-realities.
A lovely coincidence I found this morning:
https://newdiscourses.com/2020/12/psychopathy-origins-totalitarianism/
This essay lays out a fairly thorough basis for all the nonsense we have been subjected to. All the climate stuff lays right alongside every other scam we have to endure.
Nice find. The thesis in a nutshell: Big Lies like climate alarmism are an existential threat to civilization. Those who accept the lies become psychopaths. False realities and utopian dreams are the tools of cults and the breeding ground of totalitarianism. This is the way civilizations self-destruct.
Once again, since climate is defined as 30 years of weather in a given area, there can be no climate emergency without a previous 30 year period of weather emergencies.
Any other definition is BS. Those that claim otherwise are lying to you.
As usual a terrific contribution! Willis, you ask ‘what is the emergency?’. As you demonstrate, it’s down to none of the usual suspects. However climate skeptics are disingenuous about what I call the elephant in the room and its effect on human psychology. Whatever anyone reports about any aspect of the climate, people responding to the climate alarmists are aware that month by month, year by year, the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are rising relentlessly, unperturbed even by the massive lock down.
The issue which I believe trumps every single statistic showing ‘no emergency’ is the graph from Mauna Loa. You can forget rebutting the scare stories about sea levels, hurricanes, arctic melts and polar bears. John and Jane Doe say “OK, no problem there but what about the ever-increasing CO2? You have nothing to say about that. We accept there are no bad effects so far and Earth is going green but what of the future? Are we expecting the level to rise for ever? What happens when it’s 800 ppm for instance?. What’s our physiology and biochemistry at that level? What about the other life forms on this planet? Maybe nothing deleterious but let’s face it, we simply don’t know what happens to us when we breathe those much higher levels of CO2 over a life time”.
There is zero discussion relating to this fundamental issue and that must change. Skeptics should get on the bus.
Well, we know that 800ppm is still low for optimum plant growth, double that to 1600 seems the sweet spot.
800-1000-1600 has no negative or poisonous effects on humans, they spend long hours in greenhouses and submarines at higher levels.
All the debate is what it might do with temps, I’m in “violent agreement’ that it will be some but small.
In my opinion
Miha, there are two completely different answers to your ‘ignored elephant’ that Mauna Loa shows CO2 is continuously rising while 12C/13C ratios show the rise is anthropogenic.
First answer is, we know anything up to about 1000 ppm is beneficial to plants, while anything less than about 4000 ppm is harmless to humans. And with true ECS about 1.6-1.7, nothing temperature wise to worry about in this century presuming a doubling.
Second answer is, all the supposed future harms are based either on provably faulty models or provably faulty ‘science’. In the first category are, for example, the non-existant modeled tropical troposphere hotspot and (not) accelerating future sea level rise. In the second category are, for example, polar bears and corals.
CO2 regularly climbs to over 1500ppm in a normal bedroom situation.
People experience 800ppm or more for a significant part of their life, especially if working indoors.
Hold your breath for a minute to experience very high levels of CO2
We need to get to at least 1200ppm before this interglacial ends. Feeding 10B+ people with compromised central Asian and North American breadbaskets will be difficult and we will need every advantage. That should be the sense of urgency – the one thing about climate that we know is that this interglacial cradle will end.
Willis, there are lots of charts in the AMS state of the climate report here:
10.1175_2020BAMSStateoftheClimate.2.pdf. Many variables are covered; you’ll probably have some fun with it.
So I took this and picked a fight on Linked in.
Will take my lumps.
My basic premise in this is overreach, that is what is at the base.
The religious don’t truly have faith otherwise they could just rely on data to prove their hypothesis.
Because they don’t have faith they have to change the facts with adjustments and hockey sticks to try and prove this really is something new, and then create models to inflate the worst case scenarios into the future.
All the ludicrous crap we see here constantly devolves to lack of faith.
Well, the big Science Channel special on Climate Change, “Action Planet, Meeting the Climate Challenge” was pure political propaganda. I think they managed to get every leftwing social narrative included in the show. Even Kamala Harris made an appearance without wearing a mask.
All our Societal Institutions have been corrupted by the Left.
They need to read this article by Willis, and then maybe they would calm down. I won’t hold my breath waiting for them to do either one, though.
Willis, but you really have to avoid using the propaganda driven terms in this otherwise excellent summary. There are no “Climate related” deaths at all; what you’re talking about here is “WEATHER related” deaths. Using “climate related” just lends credence to the stupid notion that “bad” weather is a “result” of “climate change,” which is utter nonsense – as, ironically, your “summary” shows.
PLEASE – weather related catastrophes, NOT “climate related;” there is NO such thing.
A chart showing the strong downward trend in Canadian forest fires since 1980, even though our Prime Minister claims our forests are burning because of climate change.
Canadian Wildland Fire Information System | Canadian National Fire Database (CNFDB) (nrcan.gc.ca)
<i>Climate models have routinely predicted far greater warming than has actually occurred.</i>
With graph from Roy Spencer. Did you think to check what he is actually plotting? I will help you out. While the model’ series is labelled sea surface temperatures, it is not. It is actually TAS, which is the 2m air temperature. Roy is comparing observed SST with modelled air temperatures. He was called out on this by Nick Stokes here at WUWT and responded
‘ 2m air temperature changes are extremely tightly coupled to SST changes. Their variations can be considered to be quantitatively the same for trends over the global average oceans’
(So why not label your graph honestly?) But Stokes went and dug out the data and found they are not the same Over the period TAS increases by about 1.1°C, SST by about 0.8°C. Just a 37% difference there.
So a dishonestly labelled graph comparing two disparate quantities used to ‘prove’ models are inaccurate. Situation Normal for WUWT.
Simple mistake, pulling a graph from a recent post, should instead reference the one McKittrick provided last year?
Here is a question for you.
Can you tell the difference between 1.1 and 0.8 deg C?
37% is simply what CAGW adherents want to use to make it seem like the globe is on fire. Anomalies are part of the propaganda machine. If the process was done correctly, you would be able to convert those numbers directly to an absolute temperature at any given temporal period, like a day, a month, etc.
Thanks, John. First, please dial back on the aggro. Calling a graph “dishonestly labeled” rather than “incorrectly labeled” makes YOU look dishonest, not Dr. Roy. Like me, he tells the truth as best he knows it at the time.
Second, I just added this response to Nick’s comment on that post, which I had not followed at the time:
===
Nick, I just went to KNMI and got the data. You find a much greater difference than actually exists. This is because you are using data from 90°N to 90°S, and Dr. Roy is using data from 60°N to 60°S.
The actual divergence between air and sea temperature over the period is only 0.09°C, not 0.3°C as you claim … in other words, it’s a difference that makes very little difference.
Best regards, and thanks for going to the source and running the numbers yourself. That’s doing the homework, and it is how science progresses.
w.
===
Net result? Nick did his homework, and he made an honest mistake. You didn’t bother to do your homework, and YOU ended up pushing fake news.
Next time you think you’ve found a mistake, how about you just report it as a mistake that you haven’t bothered to check, and leave your nasty snark out of it? Or is this “Situation Normal for John Phillips”?
w.
Sorry, but that just makes it worse. Dr Spencer has cherry-picked an area that suits his thesis, and labelled it global when it is not and labelled air temperatures as sea temperatures. The global data has the flaw identified, the graph is misleading and should be updated, if one cares about accuracy.
Also, read Nick’s reply, if you compare the modelled global sea temperatures, rather than pretending air temperature is sea temperature, the models are doing a good job, contrary to your assertion. Homework? IPCC AR5 Figure 11.25a is their model/observation comparison and Ed Hawkins periodically updates it at <a href=”http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/files/2021/01/fig-nearterm_all_UPDATE_2020-panela.png”>Climate Lab</a>. Bottom line: the models are doing an OK job.
The rest of the post is similarly carefully cherry-picked metrics, life is too short to provide counter-examples to all, but here are a few:
Hurricane activity has increased, even though the data is too noisy to be sure of a significant trend.
• “According to the total annual ACE Index, cyclone intensity has risen noticeably over the past 20 years, and six of the 10 most active years since 1950 have occurred since the mid-1990s (see Figure 2). Relatively high levels of cyclone activity were also seen during the 1950s and 1960s.
• The PDI (see Figure 3) shows fluctuating cyclone intensity for most of the mid- to late 20th century, followed by a noticeable increase since 1995 (similar to the ACE Index). These trends are shown with associated variations in sea surface temperature in the tropical North Atlantic for comparison
EPA.
The Active Fires Index is a truly bizarre metric to plot, globally the trend in burning season length is strongly positive as is the trend in the US total area burned.
“According to data from the NIFC, there has been a clear trend in increased area burned by wildfires in the US since the 1980s, when reliable US-wide estimates based on fire situation reports from federal and state agencies became available.
Today, wildfires are burning more than twice the area than in the 1980s and 1990s. These figures include all wildland fires in both forested and non-forested areas. Most of the area burned today is in the western US, where dryer conditions tend to allow for large, quickly-spreading wildfires.”
Homework: A 30 second Google was sufficient to discover that the claim about sea level rise being an artifact of a change in satellite has been debunked at Climate Feedback.
“Factually Inaccurate: Quantitative analysis of global data clearly demonstrates that sea level rise has accelerated.
Misrepresents a complex reality: This claim focuses primarily on individual tide gauge stations rather than a global compilation while failing to account for causes of regional variation.”
Oh, and global hunger has been increasing since 2014, the causes are complex and many, but climate change is surely in there.
TTFN
Sources:
https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/global-data-contradict-claim-of-no-acceleration-in-sea-level-rise/
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-tropical-cyclone-activity#3
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-global-warming-has-increased-us-wildfires
https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/statistics/wildfires
I notice after reading all the comments posted up to this time that not a single believer that normally posts here has attempted to refute the main body of evidence to answer the question you and so many other have asked. Where Is The “Climate Emergency”?Crickets! But Phillip thought he could nibble on the edge a bit to perhaps discredit you.
If the major part of the media were anything but propogandists and cheerleaders for the left, that question would have been posed many times over in many forms to those in positions of authority or who declare to have special knowledge that declare there is such a crisis or emergency.
Oh, I also took the time to point out that hurricane activity IS increasing, that wildfires ARE getting more damaging, and the sea level aceleration claim has been debunked. Seems to have been disappeared or stuck in moderation.
Pretty sure one could find similar counter-examples for most or all of the points, given a little time.
Provide links then, and debate.
Well, firstly personally I steer clear of loaded phrases such as Emergency or Catastrophic as they require a value judgement.
However The EPA says there is a trend in ACE and PDI, although the variance is high and significance low…
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-tropical-cyclone-activity#3
Last year a paper in PNAS found that storms are getting stronger in general, and major tropical cyclones are coming more often, as predicted by the models.
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/22/11975
You were saying?
Data up to 2015, North Atlantic only. Follow the EPA link shown and you will find they are saying globally ACE is increasing.
Thanks, John. I looked at your site. There is NO statistically significant increase in the North Atlantic data shown. And although they say something about the “total annual ACE index”, it’s not clear if this is a global index or just a total index for all of the Atlantic … and there’s no link to the data. I can’t find any global ACE data.
However, I found individual datasets for the Atlantic, NE Pacific, and NW Pacific. So I downloaded them, added them, took a look, and guess what?
Still NO statistically significant increase … yes, there’s an increase, but it is not statistically significant.
And even with a slight but not significant increase in hurricane frequency, so what? Like all natural phenomena, it goes up and down.
Sorry … still not seeing the “climate emergency”.
w.
As I think I wrote upthread I have never used the phrase ‘Climate Emergency’. Addressing it is, in my view, a pretty lame Straw Man argument. Similar to the Catastrophic AGW meme. As William Connolley pointed out
There is, right now, no global climate emergency, however the wildfires in California, Australia and Siberia surely count as local emergencies and were made more likely by raised temperatures and prolonged dry spells, in turn attributable to climate change.
Heat waves would be another example, Atlantic hurricanes another and there are many more. It is entirely possible that we have no global emergency now, but we are heading towards one if we do not act. The sea level acceleration, denied in the post, is real and unchecked will likely lead to a sea level rise of at least 65cm by 2100. 50cm would be enough for the Maldives to lose 80% of its land area, to quote another example from this thread.
Specifically on the ACE data, it is only one metric, arguably flawed, it has high variance and so significant trends take time to emerge. There are also issues with changing observation methods. This paper looked at 4 decades of satellite observations, addressed the methological issues and found the severity and frequency of tropical cyclones is increasing in line with model projections. The 2020 Atlantic Hurricane season had a record-breaking 30 named and 12 landfalling storms in the continental US. Hard to reconcile with ‘no increase in storminess’.
If you wanted to convince outside of the safe space of WUWT, you would need to lose the debunked SLR acceleration nonsense, update or better still drop the doubly-misleading Roy Spencer graph, refrain from cherry-picking and remove unsupported blog science claims. Until then …..
”There is, right now, no global climate emergency, however the wildfires in……….. Australia ……… surely count as local emergencies and were made more likely by raised temperatures and prolonged dry spells, in turn attributable to climate change.”
Nonsense. The very slight long term drying in SOME of the fire areas over the last hundred years – if you want to attribute them to ”climate change” – has been calculated as having about 3% (if that!) of the overall factors governing the fire intensities. The remainder being a huge build up of fuel, local drought (which has not and cannot be attributed to ”climate change” and a strongly positive IOD which again has not been attributed to ”climate change. What caused the fires was a combination of natural weather extremes and fuel.
My post, with sources, has now magically escaped moderation.
Regarding your moderation complaint, keep in mind that there are “trigger words” that automatically put things into moderation. Nothing nefarious going on.
John, ALL comments on WUWT are moderated. And because it has worldwide reach, WUWT has moderators all over the planet. They are all volunteers, and they have their own lives. So sometimes, comments take a while to get approved.
In addition, posts with lots of links get extra attention to make sure someone isn’t trying to slip in some link to ugliness.
Look, you got fooled badly by Nick Stokes and used that as a bogus reason to get all snarky about WUWT. Now you’re all butthurt because your post took a little time and then got published.
If it were up to me, I’d ban you for being such an arrogant, unpleasant jerkwagon … but it’s not up to me, I’m just a guest author. And truth be known, I probably wouldn’t ban you for that … but I’d be sorely tempted.
However, let me invite you to get a grip and stop ruining your reputation. You seem like a smart guy, but you are destroying your own credibility at a rate of knots via your ugliness …
w.
Look, you got fooled badly by Nick Stokes
No, I did not. You, on the other hand have yet to address his central point :
The trend of HADSST3 was 0.139C/dec, and the corresponding TOS was 0.15C/dec. Pretty close. Maybe CMIP6 is radically different, but that would be surprising.
In short, Dr Roy posted a graph labelled as comparing global observed SST with SST as modelled in CMIP6. However it was actually observed SST against modelled air temperatures (TAS) and 60N-60S rather than global. The modelled sea surface temperatures (TOS) are not yet available in KNMI for CMIP6. Dr Roy attempted the defence that SST and air temperatures are ‘closely coupled’, which is not the case for the global dataset. Nick points out that in CMIP5, which does has TOS, an apples-to-apples to comparison shows no significant discrepency.
In other words the claim ‘Climate models have routinely predicted far greater warming than has actually occurred.’ is unsupported and
0
All you have to do is point to ONE single “climate emergency” with the scientific proof it exists and the effects on the planet or humans that make it an emergency! Where and what is the “climate emergency?”
This is supposed to be global and though Atlantic Hurricane ACE was up last year the global ACE was well below average and the NW Pacific basin ACE where historically the strongest storms form was the 2nd lowest on record!
As for wild fires Willis provided global NOAA data. What was your source and was it global?
Willis linked to a plot of NASA Active Fire Index. A bizarre choice, one which he got from a blog and without the basic information needed to reproduce it. He also showed us a graph of Canada, while faling to mention that area burned in the US has doubled since the 1980s.
My sources are all stated.
I got it from a blog, and contrary to your BS, the blog provides both the source and the code to reproduce it.
I’ll await your apology.
w.
The code is meaningless without comments or documentation. It seems to be extracting the 8-day data. Why? What would change if you used alternate time periods? What is the data actually showing? Pixels?, Fires? Area Burned ? What?
Y’know. Science.
Well, quite. The code tells me the data is from https://neo.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/view.php?datasetId=MOD14A1_E_FIRE Which seems to be NASA active fire data over an 8 day interval. You seem keen on the graph so help me out. What exactly is being plotted? Number of fires? Area Burned? Pixels? Gridcells? What happens if I plot other periods?
I think you just lazily reproduced the graph because it has a negative slope without doing a scrap of due diligence.
Prove me wrong.
As for SLR every single one of the 1000+ Maldive islands are still above water and the 200,000+ residents have drinking water while China and India compete to see who can invest more there. NONE of the disasters predicted for those islands predicted have come to pass and they are ALL now well beyond their expiration dates.
Who predicted they would be submerged by now and when?
The point about SLR is that the claim posted above that the acceleration is an artifact of switching satellites has been analysed and found to be ‘disastrously wrong’.
You’d kinda think that would be worth a mention?
The SLR change is identical to Mann’s hockey stick, splicing information from different sources and pretending they represent contiguous data.
Everything i have read, the tide gages that have been in existence for centuries show no acceleration, just steady as it goes.
Another posted on here put up a link to canadian government fire data, decreasing here too?
Is that wrong as well?
The bigger point is that if there is such a crisis/emergency, why is there such ambiguity in the actual data?
If you or others want to claim future “emergency” based on model outputs, you can defend that.
But that is not what is happening. All the rhetoric is EMERGENCY HAPPENING NOW OMG OMG OMG, everyone light your hair on fire and stampede into bad decisions.
There is no emergency today, nor can you show one
That is what this is all about.
Everything i have read, the tide gages that have been in existence for centuries show no acceleration, just steady as it goes.
Try reading this.
https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/global-data-contradict-claim-of-no-acceleration-in-sea-level-rise/
John, if you are unaware of the endless drumbeat about “submerged atolls”, you’re not paying attention.
And as to their “analysis” of my claim, it’s a Facebook “fact check” that is a joke. For example, they do a lot of handwaving like this:
In the trade, that’s called “handwaving”, making flat claims without a single scrap of evidence to back them up. I showed clearly the problem with the satellite data, and there’s no amount of unspecified “rigorous analysis” that can put enough lipstick on that pig.
As my article shows, they didn’t do any “rigorous analysis”. Their data is the same as my data, but they just spliced them together and omitted the inconvenient overlaps to hide the problem. But because some Really Pompous Scientist™ claimed it was fixed … John believed it. Just like John believed Nick Stokes’ mistake regarding Dr. Roy Spencer’s work. Because John doesn’t actually do the hard yards and run the numbers himself. He just believes what fits his worldview.
It also says:
Here, they not only don’t provide any evidence. They don’t even bother to claim that it exists. Instead, they say a “proper analysis” that “measures acceleration with an actual calculation” WOULD show acceleration … OK, here’s a “proper analysis” with actual calculations that I did a while ago but haven’t published. It shows the actual calculation of the acceleration in the Church and White sea level record, the accepted global data. Note that everything below the zero line is deceleration.
You tell me a) is there overall acceleration, and b) if you think there is, does it constitute an “emergency”?
I probably should write this up as an actual post to keep the childishly credulous from thinking that the Reall Pompous Scientist™ is doing anything but handwaving to protect his cherished beliefs … but hey, so many drummers, so little time …
w.
PS—For further detail on this see my posts “Munging the Sea Level Data“, “Inside the Acceleration Factory” and “Accelerating the Acceleration“
You can prove just about anything if you are willing to discard data that you don’t like. You’re unlikely to convince anyone outside your bubble, though.
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/9/2022