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.
Good post. The increase is less than the thermometer to thermometer variance between homeowner grade thermometers. BFD!
¡ Un abrazo Willis !
Gracias, mi’jita …
w.
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/
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 !
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.
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.
In the culture we are currently living in, good science involves adjusting inconvenient data from the past and establishing a Ministry of Truth.
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?
ignore my comment; I misread.
Waiting on Griff the Enlightened One.
Does that make you HRH Alan the Ready versus Unready? 😉
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.
Get your hip boots on.
When the Grifter shows up,
you’ll need them.
Haven’t seen bonbon the ranter for a while either.
Why??
I miss the wee Grifter…
Don’t worry. If you work on it your aim will get better!
Why do you want to feed the troll?
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.
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?
Or the sun, perhaps? I see that the huge fission reactor in the sky is noticeably missing from your post.
Fusion.
He was on a fission expedition for striped pedants.
Ugh autocorrect. Why it changed fusion to fission I’ll never know – anyway, apologies for that.
If you have enough big big volcanoes, it will cause a lot of cooling. WUWT
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.
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.
Still haven’t seen any evidence of that.
As far as I can tell, the linked story is talking about eruptions the size of which haven’t been seen in recorded history.
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
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.
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.
“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
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, ….
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)
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
S’obvious, isn’t it?
No.
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
But then those trillions of dollars have provided much better lives for thousands of people. /s
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?
Pillage, these are daily maximums (red) and daily minimums (blue). They have a very strong annual signal, which is what you are seeing.
Regards,
w.
Winter and summer – or is yours a sarcastic question?
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!
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?
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!
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.
“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.
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!
Not clear which one you are referring to, so I made up a new one. I’ll add it to the head post.
w.
Grazie! Danks! Thank you! Perfectomudo as always! Just a “yawn, boring” flat
line as I expected. Nothing to get excited about! 🙂 🙂 🙂
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”
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.
It’s truly baffling how someone could choose to immolate himself over this modest degree of warming.
Mental health, the lack thereof. Brought about, in whole or in part, by those that encourage delusion. Very sad.
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
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.
He was a Buddhist looking for a cause to make a final point.
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.
Thanks, Rud, your voice is always welcome. I had the honor of meeting Dick Linzen once, a very sharp mind.
w.
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
THE POLAR BEARS ARE A PROBLEM
THEY BREATHE OUT CO2
OMG the poley bears are stealing our oxygen!
THE POLAR BEARS ARE A PROBLEM
THEY BREATHE OUT CO2
___________________________________
HA Ha ha!
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.
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
You make me wonder just who has been brainwashed!
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.
So, you advocate truth be determined by the number of people who vote for a proposition?
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.”
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!
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!
This is the most useful and informative post yet at WUWT. Exactly what I’ve been asking for.
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.
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. 🙂
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That’s fair, but I just grabbed it straight off the page. lazy https://ourworldindata.org/land-use#:~:text=The%20extensive%20land%20use%20has,the%20impact%20on%20the%20environment.
I suppose the question that should be asked is whether the original source was just being lazy, or had an agenda.
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.
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 !.
Richard, I find it hilarious that people want to tell me how to write, how to illustrate my points with charts, and what to write about.
You want that post?
Then by all means, write it. Sounds like it could be interesting, but it’s your ideas, your shaping, your graph selection, not mine.
Best regards,
w.
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!
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.
Downwelling radiation at the surface is ~ half a kilowatt per square meter (500W/m2).
Humans typically radiate about a hundred watts. That’s about 0.0000015 W/m2.
Roads and parking lots cover about 0.2% of the planet. They might decrease the albedo by 20% or so compared to bare earth. That is a reduction in surface albedo of 20% * 0.2% = 4%, and a reduction in reflected energy of 0.25 W/m2.
Total fossil fuel use is ~ 219 exajoules. This is equal to a constant energy flux of 6.9 terawatts, which is 0.01 W/m2.
All of that together adds up to about 0.3 W/m2, or about 0.05% of the total energy at the surface. Five hundredths of one percent.
Like I said … you have to maintain a sense of proportion.
HOWEVER … since much of this is concentrated in the cities, it can make a difference to the temperature there …
w.
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 ?
Clyde, in theory I took 7.9e9 humans * 100 W/human / 5.11e14 sq. meters surface of earth. But it looks like I must have incorrectly used 7.9 million instead of 7.9 billion, because the real number is 0.0015 W/m2. My bad. Still trivially small.
w.
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.
Fixed, thanks.
w.
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.
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.
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.
Robert, are you sure that the third of a degree since 1950 is entirely due to CO2? If so, explain the mechanism.
No. I’m saying that you could only argue up to a third, not that I’m sure it’s that much.
Robert, how would one argue up to a third, then?
What are you asking? Explain the GHE?
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/
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.
In the same spirit, here’s Central England Temperatures in Kelvin. I don’t know why everyone is so worried about returning to the little ice age.
I do.
Bellman, your graph doesn’t cover the Little Ice Age. Contemporary accounts indicate it was pretty nasty and cold on average, with significant crop failures. That’s enough for me to appreciate today’s warmth.
When do you think the Little Ice Age was? Normally it’s claimed it ended in the 19th century, and the coldest part was in the 1690s. All covered in the graph.
Bellman, according to Environmental History Resources: “The Little Ice Age was a period of regionally cold conditions between roughly AD 1300 and 1850.” and “There were two phases of the Little Ice Age, the first beginning around 1290 and continuing until the late 1400s. There was a slightly warmer period in the 1500s, after which the climate deteriorated substantially, with the coldest period between 1645 and 1715.” Although recent studies indicate it was global in coverage.
The CET misses the portion of the LIA from 1290 to 1658, almost 370 years of the approximately 560 year LIA, about 66%. So, not all covered in the graph. Do you want to continue the dick-dance or just drop the whole thing?
yet Willis states in the article that 1700 was “the depth of the Little Ice Age”. Wonder why you didn’t pull up on that one?
Because he wasn’t equating it to the CET. It appears you want to continue the dick-dance. I don’t, however. Goodbye.
Missing the point. CET doesn’t cover all of the LIA, but about half of it is in the LIA and it does cover the coldest part, the 1690s. This is clearly shown in the first graph in this article.
The point is, this article is drawing graphs in proportion to make it difficult to say any temperature change, then implying that if you can;t see the change it can’t be a problem. But by the same logic, if you can’t see the Maunder Minimum on the same graph, it couldn’t have been a problem.
Except cold kills. From a human perspective, your graph shows the temperature was probably not the whole killer. The real problem comes from shorter growing seasons, frosts killing newly planted crops, and lack of fodder for animals. It doesn’t take much of a temp change to hurt agricultural production. Starvation makes life harder.
Your making my point. This article and others I’ve seen try to imply that a 1 or 2 degree change in global average temperatures are meaningless by comparing this with the different between night and day, winter and summer, or compared with absolute zero.
But changes in long term averages are not the same as seasonal changes, and it doesn’t take much of a change in the average to cause bigger changes that affect humans.
Speaking of the depth of the Little Ice Age, Vail just experienced its longest sky season on record, with plenty of snow still on the slopes.
https://www.vaildaily.com/news/vail-mountain-completes-longest-season-on-record-with-snow-to-spare/
Ah, the memories of spring skiing and the snow bunnies. Alternating slushy and icy snow is a bitch, though: Beware shady spots!
What might the likelihood be that – given the historical lag between CO2 and temperature and the solubility of CO2 – the atmospheric CO2 level is being determined by the rising temperature and not the other way around? In short, that we have nothing to do with it at all?
Man produces significant amounts of CO2. Mixing it with Mother Nature’s carbon cycle has an impact on atmospheric CO2 levels.
Yes, there is no ‘climate catastrophe’. But beg and implore all you want, the crazy green left will not listen. The only way out of this nightmare is voting the crazies out of office, then reverse their crazy policies.
Steve, you assume that future voting will not be based on the practises used in the 2020 election. Otherwise….
It’s May 3 here in nw Ontario. Lakes are still ice covered. Snow is patchy, but more than 50% of the ground still has snow on it, often a foot or more. Last year people were already gardening….
Weather.
Yes.
As it also would be weather if conditions were warm & sunny now, and gardening had been going on since the beginning of April.
Hang on, I see a pattern in the ineffectiveness of the fight graph! Temperatures rise after every meeting…must be all that hot air, perhaps the solution to global warming is to stop these get-togethers from pushing up the temperature!!
Great post. It gives the folks concentrating on anomalies heartburn I’ll bet!
Willis,
Fig 2 may be scaled incorrectly. The Berkeley line goes -.8 to 1.2 for a total 2 C warming. I don’t think they are claiming that much warming…about 1.2 total IIRC
D., that’s not my graph. I’d say it is land-only, since it has CRUTEM which is just the land.
w.
I was just at my sister’s and got to watch a bunch of Xcel Energy commercials promising “a carbon-free future.”
Considering that we humans are a carbon-based life-form, as is every life-form on this planet, I’d say that the Xcel Energy media agency Literally Knows Nothing.
Your mileage may vary.
One thing really puzzles me – how do they know what the earth’s temperature was (to 2 decimal places no less) in the mid 1800’s
They can not with any certainty. To do so indicates they have mathematicians who have no training in handling physical measurements. Mathematicians have been trained that the intervals between numbers can be divided into an infinite number of additional smaller intervals. In other words mathematicians are never trained in Significant Digits rules and why they are used.
Do you ever wonder why some of the folks here who profess some mathematical expertise in determining measurement uncertainty never address these questions about Sig Figs?
Plymouth, in England, has 25% more rain and is 0.7 C colder than Bournemouth, 100 miles up the south coast. There is as much climate change in 100 miles as in 100 years.
Big deal.
“Trillions of dollars were wasted that could have provided a better life for millions of people around the planet.”
From the point of view of the carpet-baggers who have made millions from AGW (looking at you, Gore!), they would say, money well spent.
As for “The warming of five-hundredths of a percent per decade…” – there’s a kind of synchronicity in that, if the warming is caused by CO2, CO2 is only four-hundredths of a percent of atmosphere.
Not so. BEST and HadCRUT both start their global average temperature record in 1850. Neither show any warming trend over the first ~80 years of their respective records (1850-1930).
On the question of proportion; on the absolute temperature scale (kelvin), if your body temperature is 310k you’re fit and healthy. If it’s 314k you’ll probably die. Even tiny changes can make big differences.
Try looking at Figure 1.
The temperature line is heavily smoothed and the data series used isn’t cited. Look at the monthly data from HadCRUT starting 1850. No warming trend over the period 1850 to 1930. If you use NH only data there’s actually a cooling trend.
Here’s the Central England Temperature set, showing a 10 year moving average. Obviously not global, but often used as if it was. There’s more like a 200 year pause.
It’s strange how some feel that a 7 year “pause” proves that there is no continuous warming, yet are happy to claim continuous warming over 300 years despite an 80 year pause.
You are conflating two different things. The pauses show that CO2 is not the control knob for temperature. There are natural variations that exceed whatever effects CO2 might have.
One thing – Temperatures are increasing in line with CO2, this was predicted. Over a decade or two known variations such as ENSO can swamp this warming, but do nothing to suggest the correlation does not exist.
A different thing – it is claimed that something has been causing warming over the last 300 or so years. No explanation is made as to what this “something” is, that makes it impossible to test the hypothesis. An 80 year pause exists within this 300 year warming trend. This pause is put down to natural variation, but what causes these variations is also not explained.
Well, it certainly isn’t CO2, Bellman, in either the warming or cooling. And the approximately 30-year warming during the early 20th Century wasn’t CO2 or ENSO-driven. Additionally, the UN IPCC CliSciFi models, which assume CO2 is the control knob, show significantly more warming from the late 20th Century to the present than that showing up in the measurements, especially atmospheric temperatures.
It is fascinating that CliSciFi practitioners that make heroic claims of future disaster caused by Man’s CO2 emissions can’t explain that 300 years of warming and cooling either. Where have all the billions of dollars gone?
I’m not the one claiming there has been over 300 years of continuous warming. If you are claiming the same thing that caused warming 300 years ago also caused the warming in the 20th century, you need to explain what it is and why it didn’t continue throughout the 19th century..
How would I be able to explain it, Bellman, if the entirety of CliSciFi can’t?
Why should whatever you think “CliSciFi” is explain something that doesn’t exist? If people claiming they know that the same thing that caused warming in the early part of the 18th century also caused the warming in the later part of the 20th century, they need to give some evidence for it.
Clarification –
In the real world, temperatures are all over the place, as has always been the case, and as should be expected.
Much of the temperature increases in the graphs are from cooling the past so the present looks warmer. None of the homgenization, infilling, and just plain changing the past temperatures can be justified scientifically. This, coupled with illegitimate averaging of global temperatures while ignoring the propagated uncertainties and the fact that global temperatures are a multi-nodal distribution, give a “global average temperature” that is truly meaningless.
Willis,
Many thanks for another great post.
” 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.”
I was intrigued by this. A quote from the IPCC dissing the media on this would be a nice piece of ammunition against the madness. Could you give the quotes/references for this? Many thanks.
Chris
[ Enter “pedant” mode … ]
Actually there is also “the Rankine scale”, which also “starts at absolute zero” (0°R = 0K) but has a temperature difference of “1 Rankine degree = 1 Fahrenheit degree”.
[ Exit “pedant” mode … ]
I’m not aware of anyone who actually uses the Rankine scale, but it does exist.
Yes, it is warmer now than during the Little Ice Age. Noone disputes this claim.
The problem I have with people putting the picture like this is it distorts our current reality. The implication is this warming out of the Little Ice Age is continuous and is getting warmer and warmer as time goes along. This is wrong.
The facts are that the warming out of the Little Ice Age did occur but it is not continuously warming from that point, rather, it is warming and then cooling in a cyclical pattern so that the temperatures warm for a few decades, and then they cool for a few decades, and the temperatures stay within certain limits both warm and cold. The U.S. surface temperature chart shows this pattern quite clearly.
So when you say it is warming out of the Little Ice Age, that is true, but you should also say we only got so warm from that point, and then the weather stared to cool and it cooled about 2.0C from the heighth of the Little Ice Age warming, and the United States, for one, is not in a warming trend, it is in a cooling trend and has been since the 1930’s.
So it’s really a distortion of reality to say we have been warming since the Little Ice Age but not include how the temperature profile has behaved since the Little Ice Age ended. I suppose one might make that mistake if they thought the bogus instrument-era Hockey Stick “temperature” chart was legitimate. It’s not. The U.S. unmodified surface temperature chart represents the real global temperature profile, not the bogus Hockey Stick chart.
The Bogus Hockey Stick on the right, and the legitimate global temperature profile is on the left.
We cycle up 2.0C and then down 2.0C, and then we repeat the process, according to the written record.
Those charts stop in 2000. The US chart bears little resemblance to that published by NOAA today. According to NOAA, the cont. US has warmed at a rate of 1.8F per decade since the 1930s and 6 of the most recent 10 years were warmer than any year during the 1930s. This is the old one where we pretend time of observation bias is a myth, isn’t it?.
You want a REAL global temperature? Pick two times GMT and everyone reads at those times. One would be at noon on one side and again at night on the same side.
This is the only way to get a true snapshot of the global temperature. Treat each time separately, don’t combine the two times to get a “global” average. Just graph them separately as they exist and analyze them that way.
Its plausible, Jim. [Like: It’s dead, Jim.] How would one weight the results of each site to get an average?
I missed replying on this. Why weight anything. If they are read at the same time, just get the average. Any differences like altitude, humidity, etc. will be common in any trend drawn. If a change is all one is looking for on a “global basis” it need not be so involved.
Why give mathematicians work trying to find a correct average for each and every grid square on the globe. Put a thermometer on each continent and a few in different oceans. If CO2 is well mixed and is the bug-a-boo for making the global temperature rise till Armageddon arrives, you don’t need much to derive rising temps.
It’s one reason satellites have an advantage.
“Why weight anything. If they are read at the same time, just get the average.”
It depends on how random your sample is.
Why does random make any difference? An average is an average, right? If you want to discuss true value or uncertainty, then feel free!
Just one Jim: Polar amplification.
If temps rise globally what is the difference. Polar amplification should raise the average if it is a “thing”.
Compare the areas of the poles vs the tropical regions. I could go on; oceans vs land, anyone?
I agree that radiosondes and satellites are the only semi-accurate accounting of global atmospheric temperatures. Those and ARGO are the only measurements close to meeting scientific standards of accuracy.
If CO2 is well mixed, then the temps should rise equally everywhere, right? Remember, the radiation diagrams used by climate scientists spread the insolation equally over the earth by using averages, so CO2 back radiation should be equal everywhere, right?
Remember, this is what I said.
It appears the U.S. temperature trend basically flatlined from the end of the 20th Century to today. That, and other historical and paleo data, pretty much falsifies the CO2 control knob theory.
Why weight it? If you are just looking for a metric just take each set of data as it stands. That’s basically what the satellite data is, just a snapshot in time. There’s no real “global average” that actually exists for any data set. It’s just a metric.
When asked why he played dice in an obviously crooked game, the gambler said: “Its the only game in town.”
Excellent article, Willis. But isn’t the Rankin scale the one that gives temperature increments in Fahrenheit values starting at absolute zero?
Both Rankine and Kelvin scales start at absolute zero. The difference is that I’ve never seen one single calculation done in Rankine units …
w.
Willis,
I do believe that you misspoke in your above article’s text when you stated, leading into your Figure 6:
“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).”
Many engineering students and professional mechanical engineers—even quite a few physicists—do perform heat engine analyses using the Rankine scale, which also “starts” at absolute zero. I’ve been there, done that.
It is not limiting, over even difficult, to use the Rankine scale in calculations and in displaying data. For example, the vertical scale for your Figure 6 (given in K) is easily converted to °R by simply multiplying the given numerical axis values of 1.8.
My last line should have been “. . . multiplying the given numerical axis values by 1.8.”
Willis, thank you for yet another science-backed, well-reasoned article!
I take particular note of your article’s title “A Sense of Proportion” with relevance to the third-to-last graphic in your article: so many international conventions, accords, protocols, and agreements . . . so little results from such.
How do you know he’s the King?
Because he’s not covered in sh!t like the rest of us!
Worried about warming just do away with all catalytic converters.
Thanks also Willis great work.
The question I would love answered relates to the hypothesis that we will all burn up as CAGW progresses. My work in geology suggests that the tropics will remain warm but not stupid hot during both glacial and hot periods as happened before the last 2.6M years.
Could we break the world into bands say +/-25 degrees the poles and the temperate regions over time to see if the signature of warming is isolated.
I don’t know if there are 10 million year data sets for this and potentially the more recent derived from ice cores both polar and temperate and then the recent satellite you work so well.
If it can be shown that your emergent phenomena is not only active during the satellite era but also the more distant past its really over, that is CAGW, as an existential threat.
Try telling your wife that the next holiday needs to be in a cold part of the world, good luck with that. (not skiing holiday clearly)
I appreciate the thrust of the post and the perspective it provides. However, it is a cousin to the notion that just because something is small or relatively small, then it is not important. This is fallacy. Small things can be very important and should not be dismissed out of hand because of their perceived smallness.
Willis:
Plaudits for presenting Kelvin temperature data without a suppressed zero. However, for perspective, you might want to plot the mean temperature during the last ice age (with a different horizontal scale). The ice-age temperature drop won’t look too large either.
What I’m saying is that you need to be careful in talking about proportion. But I couldn’t agree with you more strongly that the so-called climate emergency is nonsense.
I need some help understanding the violin plot. If this is a distribution of the difference between the high and low temp by day, there is no way it is accurate for Chicago. As an example, I’d find it very hard to believe there’s any day where the low is 0F and the high is 70F in Chicago. Also, the dataset should look more like a diamond where the majority of the data points are from 5 to 30 degrees.
If it is monthly max and min temp differences, the plot makes more sense, but then it is very poorly labeled. However, I’m guessing I’m just not understanding what the data represents. Thanks!
A violin plot shows the relative number of instances of something. In this case, it shows the relative number of days when the temperature range (high minus low) is 0°, 10°, 20°, and the like up to the maximum (and very infrequent) range of about 85°.
You can see that it’s a “bi-modal” distribution, with more days with a temperature range around 65° than around 50°, and also more days with a temperature range around 40° than around 50°. These represent the different common ranges of summertime and wintertime.
Best regards,
w.
Thank you for the response, and I do understand violin plots. I believe there is something incorrect in your data because I pulled daily highs and lows for Chicago Midway Airport from 1928 to current, and the median daily temp range was 17 degrees, which is far more reasonable for Chicago than 55 degrees. In fact, the maximum daily temperature range in the entire data set was 48 degrees.
Are you sure you are comparing C to C or F to F?
Yes, all in Fahrenheit.
I ran the same plot using monthly highs and lows instead of daily, and I get a similar distribution and median as yours in Figure 5. I believe the data for Figure 5 is monthly data that is just labeled as daily.