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.
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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.