A Sense Of Proportion

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach [See update at the end]

Let me start with a simple fact. The earth has been warming for about 300 years, since the depth of the Little Ice Age in 1700AD.

Figure 1. Ljungqvist et al. estimation of Northern Hemisphere temperature from AD 1 to 1999, overlaid with ice core and modern observational CO2 data.

But is this warming significant? We’re usually treated to graphs like the following, showing various estimates of modern warming.

Figure 2. Three modern estimates of warming since 1850.

Setting aside the question of whether these estimates are hopelessly contaminated by urban warming (most probably they are), the question remains—how big is this warming in the real world?

One way to look at this is to look at the normal range of average temperatures for a country. Here, for example, are the monthly maximum and minimum temperatures for the USA. Contrary to my usual practice, I’ve put them in degrees Fahrenheit, for no reason other than that’s what the US uses …

Figure 3. Maximum (red) and minimum (blue) monthly average temperatures for the US, along with the LOWESS smooths for each one (red/black and blue/black lines).

You can still see the slight rise since 1840 … and you can see that it is small compared to the range of maximum and minimum temperatures.

But nobody experiences average temperatures. So to put the modest temperature rise in an even more accurate context, here are daily temperature maximums and minimums since 1945 in Chicago …

Figure 4. Maximum (red) and minimum (blue) daily actual temperatures for Chicago, along with the LOWESS smooths for each one (red/black and blue/black lines).

Because these are not averages, there is more variation in the LOWESS smooths of the temperatures. And yes, the maximum and minimum temperatures in Chicago have indeed warmed over that period of record … but as you can see, if we’d never invented thermometers, nobody would be aware of the change because it is so small compared to the average daily temperature swing. The daily temperature swing from minimum to maximum in Chicago has a median value of 55°F (a swing of 31°C), but it often is as much as 70°F (a swing of 39°C).

Figure 5. Violin plot of the daily temperature swings in Chicago. The black box in the center shows the “interquartile range”, the range that contains half of the values. The white bar shows the median. The width of the “violin” at any point shows the relative number of temperature swings of that size.

This is a fairly typical range for a temperate location … and with that large a daily swing, a temperature increase of a degree or so in a hundred years will not be noticeable without careful attention to a thermometer.

Finally, the earth’s climate is a giant heat engine. A heat engine converts energy into motion. The climate converts solar energy into the ceaseless movement of the oceans and the atmosphere. We are interested in things like the energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere.

And to analyze a heat engine, we cannot use either Fahrenheit or Celsius temperature scales. The only temperature scale which gives answers to questions about heat engines is the Kelvin scale, which starts at absolute zero (-273.15°C, or -459.67°F). Here’s the Chicago data from above, only this time in Kelvins.

Figure 6. As in Figure 4, except in Kelvins

I hold that:

• The warming of five-hundredths of a percent per decade shown in Figure 6 is further evidence that, as I’ve detailed here, here, here, and in no less than 60 other posts linked here, the earth has a thermoregulatory system that keeps temperatures very stable.

• As a study in the British medical journal Lancet showed, the slight warming has saved far more lives than it has cost.

Figure 7. Lancet listing of deaths from heat and cold.

• In the most recent IPCC Assessment Report (AR6), the only time the IPCC used the terms “climate crisis” or “climate emergency” was to diss the media and others for spreading alarmism.

• As I detail here with dozens and dozens of graphs from scientific studies, there is no climate emergency. You’ve been lied to by climate alarmists who are getting more and more desperate to keep the river of taxpayer carbodollars flowing into their pockets. Will they change their ways? Unlikely. As Upton Sinclair noted a while ago,

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

• A half-century of efforts to affect the climate through CO2 emission reductions and carbon taxes and carbon offsets and endless doomcasts about “TEN YEARS TO THERMAGEDDON™! EVERYONE PANIC!” and arcane incantations about “Net-Zero” and “personal carbon footprints” have done exactly nothing to change the temperature. Zero. Zip. Nada. Nihil. Rien. Nichts. Trillions of dollars were wasted that could have provided a better life for millions of people around the planet.

• Finally, if you still really think that the insane war against carbon dioxide is worth fighting, I beg you, I implore you, do NOT do it by increasing the cost of energy. That is the most regressive tax you can imagine, hitting the poor harder and the poorest the hardest. I discuss this in detail in my post “We Have Met The 1% And He Is Us“.

[UPDATE] A commenter asked for a view of the global temperature in kelvins … here you go.

Figure 8. As in Figure 6, but showing the global temperature swings instead of the data for Chicago.

And that, dear friends, is me providing some badly needed perspective on the question of the insane war against carbon dioxide.


And here on our hillside in the redwoods, I’ve just finished replacing the last five pickets on the deck guardrail.

Life is good.

My best regards and wishes to all,

w.

4.9 74 votes
Article Rating

Discover more from Watts Up With That?

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

175 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Tom Halla
May 3, 2022 10:09 am

Good post. The increase is less than the thermometer to thermometer variance between homeowner grade thermometers. BFD!

viejecita
May 3, 2022 10:11 am

¡ Un abrazo Willis !

May 3, 2022 10:13 am

Few know how lucky we are to live during a Mild Thaw up out of the coldest era of the past 8,000 years called the Little Ice Agehttps://businessdevelopmentinternational.biz/climate-change/

Reply to  Walter Horsting
May 3, 2022 12:29 pm

We most likely live in the best climate for humans and animals, and certainly for plants, since the Holocene Climate Optimum, from 5,000 to 9,000 years ago. I say most likely only because climate reconstructions using proxies are rough estimates.

Of course leftists are never happy — if they were not howling about an imaginary future climate crisis, they’d be howling about something else ! Leftists need boogeymen they fear to be happy. Like children who like to hear scary fairy tales. In fact, I’d guess most leftists loved hearing scary fairy tales as children. Now they like to tell scary fairy tales about CO2, that satanic, evil gas, that will destroy the world in 12 years, or is that 9 years — I forget. .A boogeyman that no one can see, taste or smell, is coming to get YOU !

Kemaris
May 3, 2022 10:14 am

Very important to look at the real data over and appropriate time frame. Cherry picking the start to the depths of the Little Ice Age makes it clear that the Warmunists don’t actually have anything to back up their claims.

Reply to  Kemaris
May 3, 2022 12:33 pm

Warmunists do not base their scary predictions on any past climate trends.
They predict warming 2x to 3x faster than the cherry-picked 1975 to 2020 period.
I say cherry-picked because man made CO2 emissions did not start in 1975.

There are no data for the future !

Predictions are based on unpoven theories and speculation
They are data free, and even ignore past temperature data,
which I consider unreliable before 1979’s use of weather satellites.

Stu
Reply to  Richard Greene
May 3, 2022 3:09 pm

In the culture we are currently living in, good science involves adjusting inconvenient data from the past and establishing a Ministry of Truth.

NeedleFactory
Reply to  Richard Greene
May 3, 2022 7:43 pm

I’m in your camp, but I don’t agree with your allegation that man made CO2 emissions did not start in 1975. Could you clarify?

NeedleFactory
Reply to  NeedleFactory
May 3, 2022 10:05 pm

ignore my comment; I misread.

Alan
May 3, 2022 10:15 am

Waiting on Griff the Enlightened One.

Old Man Winter
Reply to  Alan
May 3, 2022 11:00 am

Does that make you HRH Alan the Ready versus Unready? 😉

Reply to  Alan
May 3, 2022 11:26 am

Griffter, Simple Simon, LoyD’oh, BadWaxJob, Bellend, ToeFungalNail, DuhWayne, BigOilyBoob, Phishlips, Ghoulfront, or Schroeder with his toy piano. You’ll be waiting a long time for any of these alarmists before they can come up with something, anything to challenge this – except they might make false proclamations about weird weather, albatross getting divorces, polar bears starving, all the coral dying, or cats laying down with dogs.

Reply to  Alan
May 3, 2022 12:34 pm

Get your hip boots on.
When the Grifter shows up,
you’ll need them.

Richard Page
Reply to  Alan
May 3, 2022 1:33 pm

Haven’t seen bonbon the ranter for a while either.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Alan
May 3, 2022 6:51 pm

Why??

Ebor
Reply to  Alan
May 3, 2022 9:09 pm

I miss the wee Grifter…

Harry Passfield
Reply to  Ebor
May 4, 2022 2:48 am

Don’t worry. If you work on it your aim will get better!

Reply to  Alan
May 4, 2022 8:45 am

Why do you want to feed the troll?

drh
May 3, 2022 10:16 am

Absolutely love these posts that put proper perspective on the climate change issue. This makes it easy to show someone who may be negatively impacted by the din of all the alarmists’ cries that there is a calm, realistic view of climate.

Tom Graham
May 3, 2022 10:37 am

Willis,

What actually drives Earth’s climate change? 

Unfortunately, “Climate Change” debate is heavily dominated by politicized pseudo-scientists who consistently discover and “prove” what they are paid to prove. 
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/

CO2 is a trace gas in earth’s atmosphere constituting only 400 parts per million. Nonetheless, CO2 is food for plant life which uses sun’s photons to convert CO2 and H20 to glucose and oxygen. Glucose is food for animal life. 

Ice core borings in Antarctic and Siberia have enabled earth scientists to determine that CO2 concentration has varied over several 100 thousand years in step with atmospheric temperature. I understand temperature change has preceded CO2 concentration change by about 500 years. As far as I know, this relationship has not been disproven. It seems clear to me that something is driving temperature change on earth and has been for many thousands of years. CO2 change does not appear to have significant impact on global temperature. Water will absorb substantially more CO2 when cold than when warm. When oceans chill, CO2 from the air is absorbed into the oceans; when oceans warm CO2 is outgassed into the atmosphere. 

I suspect that the major driver of climate change on earth is fission reaction of Uranium, Thorium and other fissile elements within the Earth’s core. Heat from Earth’s core and mantle boils volcanic activity, drives plate tectonics, and is primary driver of Earth’s climate change. I suspect the mechanism and periodicity of these activities can be substantiated. I’ve read some assertions but have yet to see clear substantiated evidence able to withstand rigorous testing. 

Can you help resolve this question?

Richard Page
Reply to  Tom Graham
May 3, 2022 1:34 pm

Or the sun, perhaps? I see that the huge fission reactor in the sky is noticeably missing from your post.

Scissor
Reply to  Richard Page
May 3, 2022 3:00 pm

Fusion.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Scissor
May 3, 2022 6:21 pm

He was on a fission expedition for striped pedants.

Richard Page
Reply to  Scissor
May 4, 2022 11:41 am

Ugh autocorrect. Why it changed fusion to fission I’ll never know – anyway, apologies for that.

commieBob
Reply to  Tom Graham
May 3, 2022 1:51 pm

If you have enough big big volcanoes, it will cause a lot of cooling. WUWT

When powerful enough, volcanic eruptions can affect global climate, where there is typically a 5-10- year period of cooling.

We used to have way more big volcanoes. So there’s that.

Plate tectonics can have a significant effect by reorganizing land masses and changing ocean currents. link

Apparently, we’re in our current ice age because the formation of the Isthmus of Panama closed off a channel that water used to flow through.

Take this link with a grain of salt, but it does point to mind numbing quantities of CO2 buried deep within the Earth. I wonder if any previous mass extinctions were caused by CO2 belching up from the depths and suffocating everything.

Dave Fair
Reply to  commieBob
May 3, 2022 4:19 pm

I’m not going to research this, Bob, because it really doesn’t mean much, but it appears from the graphs of temperature that the significant effects of large eruptions lasts about 3+ years.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Dave Fair
May 3, 2022 6:53 pm

Still haven’t seen any evidence of that.

commieBob
Reply to  Dave Fair
May 3, 2022 7:43 pm

As far as I can tell, the linked story is talking about eruptions the size of which haven’t been seen in recorded history.

Stuart Hamish
Reply to  commieBob
May 4, 2022 5:26 am

Tambora was one of the three biggest VEI upper scale eruptions of the past 10 000 years and witnessed in ‘recorded history ” ……….” ……….” Apparently we’re in our current ice age because the formation of the Isthmus of Panama closed off a channel that water used to flow through……We are stationed in a warming interstadial – not an ice age

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Dave Fair
May 4, 2022 4:16 am

The large eruption of Mount Pinatubo lowered the temperatures by about one degree for around two years. Then the temperatues went back to what they were before the eruption.

Reply to  Tom Graham
May 3, 2022 4:13 pm

What actually drives Earth’s climate change? 

The precession cycle dominates the climate on millennial time frames.

In the present era, perihelion in Earth’s orbit occurs about 12 days after the austral summer solstice. Perihelion occurs approximately 15 days later every 1,000 years.

In the present era the Southern Hemisphere is pointing to the sun when it is closest to the sun. The South Pole has the highest solar intensity on Earth in the middle of the austral summer averaging 565W/sq.m for December. All the oceans in the southern hemisphere are absorbing heat resulting in higher evaporation causing high rainfall in December and January across the rainforests like the Amazon, Congo, Malaysia and PNG as latent heat from oceans get released over land.

In the present era, aphelion occurs just after the boreal summer solstice. For comparison, the North Pole averages 530W/sq.m in June, substantially lower than the South Pole because Earth is further from the sun when the Northern Hemisphere is pointing to the sun.

Perihelion last occurred BEFORE the boreal summer solstice about 500 years ago. Since then there has been a very slight reduction in solar intensity in the SH and a very small increase in the NH. Since 1500, April has seen the largest increase with solar intensity over the NH land increasing by 2.2W/sq.m while September is down by 1.9W/sq.m.

Obviously precession works in conjunction with the orbit eccentricity and the distribution of land and water. The location of land surface on the globe is the main driver of longer term trends.

Reply to  Tom Graham
May 4, 2022 9:32 am

“Can you help resolve this question?”

Despite what other may post, do not look to changes in the Sun itself (pardon the pun) as the predominate “driver” of Earth’s forever-changing climate. The Sun’s radiation output has been relatively stable for hundreds of millions of years.

“The Sun is becoming increasingly hotter (or more luminous) with time. However, the rate of change is so slight we won’t notice anything even over many millennia, let alone a single human lifetime. . . . Astronomers estimate that the Sun’s luminosity will increase by about 6% every billion years.”
(ref: https://usm.maine.edu/planet/sun-getting-hotter-if-so-why-will-earth-eventually-become-too-hot-life )

For comparison, the Sun’s luminosity varies by about 0.1% over a typical 11-year sunspot cycle.

Instead, look to factors that cause TOA insolation to vary by greater amounts than just Sol’s inherent-but-minor output variability on hundreds-to-tens of thousands of years timescales . . . the most predominate of these being the five Milankovitch cycles.

Two parallel, contributing causes below TOA are very likely to be (a) plate tectonic movements as they have affected ocean circulation patterns over tens-of-millions of years or greater timescales, and (b) Svensmark’s theory coupling long-term cloud coverage on Earth (seen as long-term changes in Earth’s albedo) to long-term variations of cosmic rays penetrating the planet’s variable magnetosphere and its atmosphere, probably relevant over hundreds-to-millions of years timescales.

Finally, as to your speculation that “the major driver of climate change on earth is fission reaction of Uranium, Thorium and other fissile elements within the Earth’s core . . . and is primary driver of Earth’s climate change”, there is this:

“The flow of heat from Earth’s interior to the surface is estimated at 47±2 terawatts (TW) and comes from two main sources in roughly equal amounts: the radiogenic heat produced by the radioactive decay of isotopes in the mantle and crust, and the primordial heat left over from the formation of Earth.
“Earth’s internal heat travels along geothermal gradients and powers most geological processes. It drives mantle convection, plate tectonics, mountain building, rock metamorphism, and volcanism. Convective heat transfer within the planet’s high-temperature metallic core is also theorized to sustain a geodynamo which generates Earth’s magnetic field.
“Despite its geological significance, Earth’s interior heat contributes only 0.03% of Earth’s total energy budget at the surface, which is dominated by 173,000 TW of incoming solar radiation.”
— source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_internal_heat_budget#:~:text=Estimates%20of%20the%20total%20heat,on%20more%20than%2038%2C000%20measurements. with my underlining emphasis added

Reply to  Tom Graham
May 4, 2022 10:41 am

May I offer my pre pub paper, still being rewritten to be as conservative as possible, and also get past the Thought Troopers who edit and peer censor papers,

“These are not the facts you’re looking for”.

The much larger than presumed submarine volcanoes drive the long term ice age cycles and the solar winds the short term, other effects are contributory, such as melting ocean ice providing positive feed back to warming, and vice versa, or small GHE perturbations that the dominant control rebalances using the dominant negative feedback control of the the oceans.

The oceanic negative feedback control is of evaporation and consequential cloud control of solar insolation that maintains the equilibrium. The details are very complex, the macro level reality we observe is not so hard to follow.

In short I suggest the primary warming of the interglacial events will be from submarine volcanoes heating the ocean, that will have variable effects due to the variable solid gravitational tidal effect on the planet’s structure, which we know must peak at MIlankovitch cyclic peaks, all substantiated by observations in terms of both magma output and variability, with average growth rate determined from size and age.

The problem is that I can’t make it large enough at the 100Ka driven peak to really heat up the oceans from sea mount outputs alone. Average heating is 6×10^20 Joules pa, from 140 cubic kilometres pa, with a range of a few hundred per cent plus and minus

BUT note that my crude estimate is FAR more than comes through the divergent tectonic ridges, very variable on MIlankovitch CYCLIC time scales, and IS completely ignored by “experts”. But not me, putting numbers on what George Darwin sussed over 100 years ago, and Wahr and House both suggested qualitatively towards the end of the last Century.

Again, an obvious natural reality denied by modellers and other 21st Century “experts”, who simply ignore the effect without attempting to quantify it from available observations. Which is all I did..

http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3259379

As regards shorter term effects of solid tides on submarine volcanoes it has recently occured to me that the Moon will also have an effect on solid tides as well, not just a daily planetary massage, but also this will vary in scale through the known eccentricities of the lunar orbit. I am now wondering if this effect can create El Ninos, when cold water rising from the deep above the Galapagos hot spot gets warmer. Same question as regards the ocean warmingof interglacials, where does that “heat from the deep” originate? The eccentricity frequencies are many. the maintidal oceanic effects are 18.6 years and, I recall, 8 years, but this area of of volcanic activity of my work to name a submarine volcanism cause of El NIno is WIP.

If you want a good test of my theory, that the interglacial warming event comes from a submarine volcanic emissions maximum within, not without, look at the rate of ice cap thaw seen in the global sea level rise during the interglacial warming event, a continuous rise for 7Ka, ….

comment image?dl=0

Uet is is clear that the surface temperatures returned to glacial in the middle of this warming event, for 1,500 years, with no evidence of the ice cap thawing reducing in quantity. Square that circle. Perhaps CO2 caused it? (not)

comment image?dl=0

How does that happen if the heat to create the warm precipitation that melts the ice on land is not coming from beneath the ocean? Answers on a postcard please. Also note the atmospheric temperature drop could well have been due to the same cause of maximum rates of tectonic and hot spot volcanicity on the sub aerial volcanoes, hence cooling through reduced solar insolation, while the ocean warming below was at a maximum from the same but much more powerful cause of direct water heating.

Finally I am convinced, from the published physical explanation and supporting evidence of observations, that the cause of the short term cycles, well seen as the 2 degree range every thousand years, is the varying solar wind regulating cosmic ray flux entering Earth’s atmosphere, hence varying rates of nucleation for cloud formation, albeit a compound period effect, that is superimposed on the ice age cycles, for the last 4 interglacial cycles at least.

Well seen in the overlay of 4 interglacials, thanks to James Covington, somewhere above the Marcellus shale in Ohio, I recall

comment image?dl=0

S’obvious, isn’t it?

Reply to  Brian R Catt
May 4, 2022 5:55 pm

No.

fretslider
May 3, 2022 10:38 am

Without models and voodoo adjustments they haven’t anything alarming to claim.

It’s been a chilly Easter, no different to the 1960s. Which gives rise to recent headlines like this

“ UK weather forecast – 18C SCORCHER this week as ‘African plume’ sends temperatures soaring”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8709304/uk-weather-forecast-18c-scorcher/

Desperate stuff

Clyde Spencer
May 3, 2022 10:43 am

Trillions of dollars were wasted that could have provided a better life for millions of people around the planet.

But then those trillions of dollars have provided much better lives for thousands of people. /s

May 3, 2022 10:45 am

What exactly are we looking at in Figure 4.?

The spacing between the “teeth” of the red comb and the blue comb look FAR too regular.

The periodicity of weather fronts can’t possibly be that regular in Chicago.

Is there some “day of the week” signal that is being reflected in the data?

richardw
Reply to  Pillage Idiot
May 3, 2022 11:32 am

Winter and summer – or is yours a sarcastic question?

Reply to  richardw
May 3, 2022 3:26 pm

Sorry everyone, that was a brain freeze.

I frequently ask sarcastic questions, but that was an honest one. I read Willis’ title at the top of the graph and thought I was looking at actual daily data points.

I inexplicably failed to look at the units on the x-axis. D’oh!

Yes, I now clearly see the obvious periodicity of the data at roughly 365.25 days!

May 3, 2022 10:50 am

I always enjoy reading posts like this one. It’s nice to see things put into perspective.

Here in NZ at least though, one of the big problems seems to be that pesky facts like what we see here don’t seem to be all that important any more. Our politicians have moved beyond convincing us that there is a crisis (if they ever tried), and now it’s all about ‘fixing’ it. Billions of taxpayers dollars are being spent (wasted) on it. Even the most ‘reasonable’ of them says we need to go along with the nonsense to avoid having sanctions imposed upon us by other countries. Businesses are on board, talkback hosts who point out pesky facts are removed from the airwaves, asset managers are moving away from investing in ‘dirty’ fossil fuel-based companies. We get ads on the TV urging us to lower our standard of living. MSM are fully on board. Problems with green energy (e.g. what to do with old batteries) are ignored. The list goes on.

I can understand why politicians don’t want to talk about facts – they show us there isn’t a problem, but isn’t that what’s going to have to happen for all this nonsense to stop?

Mike Lowe
Reply to  Chris Nisbet
May 3, 2022 12:57 pm

Of course, the alarmists have been assisted here in NZ by the elevation of a Marxist to the seat of power. Things may change next year – meanwhile I am suggesting that EVs should be banned from occupied buildings due to fire risk. That might force somebody to at least consider the place of Carbon Dioxide in our atmosphere!

Reply to  Chris Nisbet
May 3, 2022 1:38 pm

Sadly, I fear that the level of corruption than has infected virtually all academic/government and beyond institutions is impossible to overstate. As a complete digression from climate alarmism nonsense, just look at Covid. Covid is a complete 100% scam – the scamdemic could have been stopped cold in mid 2020 had our “health” agencies embraced the repurposing of safe and effective therapeutics like IVM and HCQ. Doctors were using one or both to actually treat patients as early as March 2020 and were achieving very positive results, yet their letters to the NIH, FDA, etc. were ignored. Why? Because if there is an effective treatment available, there is no need for vaccines and Big Pharma, which provides big funding to the FDA, misses out on big profits. And, if the scamdemic is controlled under Trump, then he may be re-elected. Better to have millions around the globe die than allow that to happen. Sorry for the digression and rant, but a serious crime against humanity has been done and like many leftist crimes that have been committed will likely go unpunished.

Dave Fair
Reply to  Chris Nisbet
May 3, 2022 4:26 pm

We get ads on the TV urging us to lower our standard of living.” When that actually happens and becomes apparent to middle class voters the nonsense will stop, Chris.

Old Man Winter
May 3, 2022 10:56 am

Thank you for another common sense post that shows the importance of perspective. I thought you had done a graph of global temperature in °K & can’t find it. If it’s not too hard, would you be able to add this to your post (with or without CO2)? A graph like that would put Figure 1 into even more perspective. Thanks!

Old Man Winter
Reply to  Willis Eschenbach
May 3, 2022 12:03 pm

Grazie! Danks! Thank you! Perfectomudo as always! Just a “yawn, boring” flat
line as I expected. Nothing to get excited about! 🙂 🙂 🙂

Mr.
May 3, 2022 10:57 am

Wouldn’t it be great if today’s youth generations disowned their parents’ and establishment policies just as all previous youth generations have done.

Then we’d see protestors marking with signs saying –

“F#%K YOUR NET ZERO AND THE EV YOU RODE IN ON”

Dave Fair
Reply to  Mr.
May 3, 2022 4:34 pm

They don’t because of the effectiveness of decades of Leftist governmental propaganda is being demonstrated today. Watch the caterwauling as the SCOTUS begins to classify issues (e.g. abortion) in accordance with the clearly written U.S. Constitution. Read the parts about Federal power and its limitations. Individual States determine moral issues.

J Mac
May 3, 2022 11:06 am

It’s truly baffling how someone could choose to immolate himself over this modest degree of warming.

Pete Bonk
Reply to  J Mac
May 3, 2022 1:03 pm

Mental health, the lack thereof. Brought about, in whole or in part, by those that encourage delusion. Very sad.

Stuart Hamish
Reply to  Pete Bonk
May 4, 2022 5:41 am

The self immolator was a practicing Buddhist who was probably attempting to impersonate the Vietnamese monk who incinerated himself in a Vietnam War era protest You could almost interpret his death as a postmodernist suicide The true villains are those who brainwashed him .There are numerous mental health professionals as indoctrinated and delusional as the man who killed himself… Look at Dr Allen Frances and Claire Zilber .Read the hysterical position statements and declarations of psychiatrists and psychologists and their membership associations .. Yes – very sad

Mr.
Reply to  J Mac
May 3, 2022 1:18 pm

Sad as always, but I suspect that if AGW wasn’t the reason given, it would have still happened, but attributed to something else just as nebulous.

Richard Page
Reply to  J Mac
May 3, 2022 1:36 pm

He was a Buddhist looking for a cause to make a final point.

Rud Istvan
May 3, 2022 11:16 am

Nice post, WE.
Years ago Lindzen of MIT made the same point differently, using the April temperatures of Boston compared to the absolute global temp anomaly for the past 100 years. I used his graphic in the climate chapter of The Arts of Truth, which he kindly reviewed and then spent a day critiquing for me in his office just weeks before he retired. Resulted in a number of edits and additional footnotes.

May 3, 2022 11:22 am

But is this warming significant?
___________________________________

Significant requires a reasonable definition to garner a reasonable answer.

The implication from the climate crowd is that warming is a problem. Well they’ve been screaming about it for over 40 years and everything they’ve claimed has either happened before, or has been happening right along. See Kip Hansen’s Sea Level post this morning. Besides that, here’s a bumper sticker:

 CO2 IS NOT a Problem and
The Polar Bears are still here

Reply to  Steve Case
May 3, 2022 11:43 am

comment image

Mr.
Reply to  Steve Case
May 3, 2022 1:20 pm

THE POLAR BEARS ARE A PROBLEM
THEY BREATHE OUT CO2

Richard Page
Reply to  Mr.
May 3, 2022 1:37 pm

OMG the poley bears are stealing our oxygen!

Reply to  Mr.
May 3, 2022 3:38 pm

THE POLAR BEARS ARE A PROBLEM
THEY BREATHE OUT CO2
___________________________________

HA Ha ha!

May 3, 2022 11:25 am

Willis,

This is an excellent, readable and concise rendering of the facts that every sentient citizen should be aware of. Speaking of ‘rendering’, I find it ironic that many of us who are skeptical of climate alarmism often quote Upton Sinclair, of ‘The Jungle’ fame, to explain why the CAGW narrative is so difficult to dislodge. In fact, the man was a confirmed socialist who was himself paid to fabricate large parts of this story in order to support unionization and government regulation that effectively benefitted large meat packing companies.

Reply to  Frank from NoVA
May 3, 2022 1:49 pm

I learned something new from the covid scamdemic called Mass Formation Psychosis. A brief, oversimplified explanation is that a large percentage of the population have been so thoroughly brainwashed that no amount of rational, fact based explanation will persuade them that they have been fooled. An example is the narrative that vaccines are safe and effective while drugs like IVM and HcQ with safety profiles proven over decades of use are somehow now dangerous due to covid while VAERS data signals real concern over the “safe and effective” narrative. I bring this up because I see what I think are real correlations between the climate scare tactics and the covid scare tactics

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Barnes Moore
May 3, 2022 6:29 pm

You make me wonder just who has been brainwashed!

Old Man Winter
Reply to  Clyde Spencer
May 3, 2022 7:30 pm

I know he isn’t cuz I can name at least several things wrong with
the groups with whom I most identify. That’s at least a good start
in seeing things for what they are not what you may brainwash
yourself into thinking they are. He’s shooting straighter than
2/3 of society.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Old Man Winter
May 3, 2022 7:39 pm

So, you advocate truth be determined by the number of people who vote for a proposition?

Reply to  Frank from NoVA
May 3, 2022 2:05 pm

A great quote from Thomas Sowell sums it up nicely: ““It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.”

Old Man Winter
Reply to  Barnes Moore
May 3, 2022 4:15 pm

I have a longer post I typed before I saw your two posts. It touches on your two responses to
Frank from Nova. It goes into the orchestration of the establishment “Ministry of Truth”.
Big Brother needs it.

Frank from Nova hit upon the sad part of climate science that the Climategate emails
revealed- it’s no longer science but political science- where arrogant power hungry
people are willing to lie, cheat & steal to win. They’ll repeatedly keep telling
lies often enough until people are willing to believe them- the Asch Conformity
Experiment- cuz that’s all they’ve got.

Solzhenitsyn- “To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing
is good. The Team™ are “legends in their own minds” as are their philosophical
forefathers.

Orwell said, “Those who control the present, control the past and those who control
the past control the future.” That’s why Karl Marx said, “The first battlefield is to
rewrite history.” Their goal is to get more power using lies as the means.

John Dewey, a Socialist & the “Father of modern American education” said, “You can’t
make socialists out of individualists. Children who know how to think for themselves
spoil the harmony of the collective society, which is coming, where everyone is
interdependent.” Brainwash them with lies & fear, then pretend you’re their defender
& savior.

Thomas Sowell summed it up- “It is usually futile to talk facts and analysis to people who
are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.” & “There’s usually only a
limited amount of damage that can be done by dull or stupid people. For creating a truly
monumental disaster, you need people with high IQs.” (h/t David Elstrom)

People, especially Hispanics who may be listening to conservative Spanish language radio
like in S Florida, are pushing back against the lies. Big Brother had to establish the
“Ministry of Truth” otherwise they’d lose a big part of a major constituency & be
finished. Nobama got the ball rolling by claiming a need to fight disinformation.
Mayorkas revealed this board had been set up after a minority House member asked him what
he would do about reports of minorities being targeted with disinformation- possibly
sourced from Youtube who was focusing on that very thing. The Youtube CEO met with the
 Congressional Hispanic Caucus the very next day. WoW! What fortuitous timing that this
got done like clockwork! Perfect timing!

Solzhenitsyn may foretell what they’re willing to if the lies stop working: Violence can
only be concealed by a lie, & the lie can only be maintained by violence.

Since they had no problem allowing 10s of millions of pregnant African moms & their
children die because DDT was banned for internal use, how far will they go with this?

Stay tuned!

Old Man Winter
Reply to  Frank from NoVA
May 3, 2022 4:04 pm

I had a longer post which Barnes Moore touched upon in his two posts. He nailed it-
grand slam home run! I’m posting my longer post in response to his which goes into the
orchestration of the “Ministry of Truth”. Big Brother’s fighting for his life & may eventually
become desperate!

Bob
May 3, 2022 11:48 am

This is the most useful and informative post yet at WUWT. Exactly what I’ve been asking for.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Bob
May 3, 2022 6:32 pm

Readers here seem to have a short memory. David Middleton has previously produced similar graphs showing that the vertical scale used significantly affects the conclusions that one might reach.

Old Man Winter
Reply to  Clyde Spencer
May 3, 2022 10:07 pm

Thanks for the heads-up! I had thought someone WUWT had done a similar article a
long time ago which I may have mis-attributed to WE. I ran out of time looking for it but I
ran across a couple of articles David wrote & saved some graphs from them. He does
have a knack for clear common sensical articles along with a great sense of humor!
Thanks again. 🙂

Bob
Reply to  Clyde Spencer
May 3, 2022 10:53 pm

Yes Clyde that may be true, never the less it needs to be repeated over and over in a clear and simple manner. Hats off to Willis and let’s see David’s work again and again until everyday people start to see the light. You know, the every day people that the mainstream media and reckless self serving climate alarmists lie to day in and day out ad nauseam.

JCM
May 3, 2022 12:04 pm

I have been told that landuse change is irrelevant, with surface energetics only relating to a feedback response to CO2. I suppose the hockey stick shapes of the plots of landuse are merely a coincidence, with arable area having peaked in 2016. They say the only correlation that works to force their models is CO2 concentration with some fiddling with aerosols. And because they claim their models only work with the shape of CO2 forcing curve, this provides proof of their concepts.

LandUse1.png
Reply to  JCM
May 3, 2022 4:18 pm

I have been thinking about land use and the atmospheric moisture associated with greening. The most significant greeing has occurred in China. One day, I plan to look at how atmospheric moisture has changed over the greening areas in China.

JCM
Reply to  RickWill
May 3, 2022 6:45 pm

Greening indices are a risky data. Though, perhaps a suitable proxy.

But, keep in mind that soil moisture continues to decline, despite reported greening. Vegetation must have adequate soil moisture to transpire, else it may have an opposite effect compared to an undisturbed ecosystem.

The real crux is the average soil moisture and soil moisture variability. This is tied to soil health.

I see the kids planting trees into 100 year old parkland lawns. These trees will have little effect. There will be no cycling of organics down into the soil. They think the trees are sticks of carbon based on what they are taught in school.

What they don’t teach – the soils will remain dry there, solid, dense, and hard despite the nice new trees. Native plants and raingardens surrounding the new trees, to attract wildlife to some degree, and to drive roots and water into the soil, would be a helpful lesson. Tossing some dog schite in there too occasionally to help get things going, for composting.

This starts to build the climate benefitting effects. Real observable temperature stability, and real streams starting to recharge and stabilize. Biodiversity, resilience, stability. This, by the soils. A beautiful thing to teach to children.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  JCM
May 3, 2022 6:42 pm

Stacked-line graphs such as you show can be used to manipulate what viewers take away. Done properly, the lines with the least change should be placed at the bottom. Doing that, it would be obvious that the amount of land used by China has changed less than most, about comparable to Europe. On the other hand, the US has had a huge expansion in cropland, with Africa and India being intermediate.

JCM
Reply to  Clyde Spencer
May 3, 2022 7:45 pm
Clyde Spencer
Reply to  JCM
May 4, 2022 3:15 pm

I suppose the question that should be asked is whether the original source was just being lazy, or had an agenda.

Matthew Schilling
May 3, 2022 12:04 pm

That insane war against carbon dioxide is about to make use of something employed by hard-left sociopaths last century to awful effect – famine. Globaloney warmunism must be repudiated. It has to be tossed on the ash heap of history.

May 3, 2022 12:21 pm

Willis “too many charts” E.

Charts of Chicago are not useful to discuss global climate change.
Kelvin is not necessary — People are used to F. and C. degrees.
Just show the absolute global average temperature for each year ,
like a row of household thermometers, not anomalies.
Anomalies create mountains out of mole hills !

Global averages before 1979 satellites (UAH) are suspect.
Prior to 1900 they are worthless, with only sparse coverage
of the Northern Hemisphere — mainly US and Europe +
the east coast of Australia. That’s no global average.
.
Not that past temperature data can be used
to predict future climate change.
The imaginary coming climate crisis
is not based om any actual past temperature trends.
Just a fairy tale from the over active imaginations
of leftist climate scaremongers (aka Climate Howlers).

Keep reminding people they have lived with ACTUAL global warming
for up to the past 47 years. And if they are old timers,
they would have lived with at least some of the global cooling
from 1940 to 1975 — cooling as CO2 levels rose.

Then point out that predictions of a coming global warming crisis
imagine warming much faster than in the past, completely unrelated
to actual climate history. Not that climate predictions have ever
been accurate in the past. Might as well flip a coin.

And please bring back your great chart
of global warming by latitude,
which shows where the most warming
happened since 1975 —
in the higher latitudes
of the Northern Hemisphere.
Another great chart would show
when the most warming happened since 1975 —
mainly in the coldest six months of the year,
and mainly at night.
Such as warmer winter nights in Siberia !
The global average temperature
hides important details.

But even with no data on the global average temperature,
that not one person lives in — we know the truth
about the climate here in Michigan since the mid-1970’s
— we’ve lived with global warming, and we love it.
Give us more of that !.

Old Man Winter
Reply to  Richard Greene
May 3, 2022 1:32 pm

Kelvin adds perspective for techie types who understand thermodynamics. It shows that the actual
change in energy is small relative to’ the average total energy in the system- only +0.4%. Over the past
600M yrs, it’s < ±3.5% (~50°F to ~80°F). Using °Ra would be comparable to converting speed into
furlongs/fortnight!

May 3, 2022 12:25 pm

7 billion small furnaces operating at 98 degrees F 24/7, trillions of miles driven per year with ICEs operating at maybe 30% thermal efficiency, ten of thousands of square miles of earth replaced by dark highways and roofs, countless cities/heat islands, industries using heat to process steel, and the earth has only warmed by less than a single percentage point.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Willis Eschenbach
May 3, 2022 7:03 pm

About 100 watts is what I have read previously for the heat output of a human. However, an adult has a surface area of about 2 m^2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_surface_area

That gives about 100W/2m^2 or 5×10 W/m^2 per person

How did you arrive at your estimate of 1.5×10^-6 W/m^2 ?

May 3, 2022 1:22 pm

Yet another excellent post by Willis. Many thanks. I think there is one typo: “You can still see the slight rise since 1840 … and you can see that it is small compared to the range of maximum and temperature”. I think should read “You can still see the slight rise since 1840 … and you can see that it is small compared to the range of maximum and minimum temperatures.

May 3, 2022 1:37 pm

Crazy, is it not. All these people running scared because of CO2. And that whilst the oceans have a never ending capacity to absorb it. The increase we see in CO2 in the atmosphere has probably more to do with the warming in the arctic and the lower pH due to all our waste water then anything else.
People don’t want to understand basic chemistry. They want to believe that there must be something we are doing wrong.
BTW.
Were there never any wet chemical results for CO2 starting from the beginning of the 19 th century? That first graph is looking unnatural to me.

DaveR
Reply to  HenryP
May 4, 2022 4:49 pm

Yes HenryP its amazing.

Here you have an earth with massive H2O oceans, an atmosphere with an average 4% H20 gas, significant frozen H2O at both poles, and all in equilibrium and moving between phases to offset external forces.

And H2O gas has a greater greenhouse effect than CO2.

So lets all focus on the 400ppm of atmospheric CO2, with no liquid or solid phase at the earth’s surface.

Robert B
May 3, 2022 2:15 pm

Only a third of a degree is consistent with warming since 1950 due to increased. CO2. You can compare that with what feels chilly in autumn to what feels chilly in late winter. I’m rugged up this morning in Aus to walk the dog in freezing 14 °C weather, or 57 F. About as uncomfortable as in late winter when the last few days of frost hit.

Dave Fair
Reply to  Robert B
May 3, 2022 4:47 pm

Robert, are you sure that the third of a degree since 1950 is entirely due to CO2? If so, explain the mechanism.

Robert B
Reply to  Dave Fair
May 3, 2022 5:20 pm

No. I’m saying that you could only argue up to a third, not that I’m sure it’s that much.

Dave Fair
Reply to  Robert B
May 3, 2022 5:47 pm

Robert, how would one argue up to a third, then?

Robert B
Reply to  Dave Fair
May 3, 2022 8:13 pm

What are you asking? Explain the GHE?

Reply to  Robert B
May 3, 2022 10:02 pm

I am assuming that lange scale drilling for oil only started in the 1930’s
By my reasoning the global warming of earth cannot be more than 0.5 K since then.
https://breadonthewater.co.za/2022/03/08/who-or-what-turned-up-the-heat/

Robert B
Reply to  HenryP
May 4, 2022 1:30 pm

I fitted a a function to the rate of warming shown by HadCRUT3 with a constant warming throughout the record, a 60 year sin and an exp. The last part came out as contributing 0.3.

This was 7 years ago and, interestingly, only the past decade fitted poorly being significantly lower warming rate than the best fit.

Verified by MonsterInsights