By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The New Pause has lengthened to 8 years 9 months. The least-squares linear-regression trend on the UAH monthly satellite global-temperature dataset shows no global warming from July 2015 to March 2023. As usual, this site is just about the only place where this continuing failure of global temperatures to do as they are told is reported.
The start and end dates of the New Pause are not cherry-picked. The end date is the present; the start date is the farthest back one can reach and still find a zero trend. It is what it is.
For comparison, here is the entire dataset for 44 years 4 months since December 1978. It shows a less than terrifying long-run warming rate equivalent to 1.3 degrees/century, of which 0.3 K has already occurred since January 2021, leaving just 1 K to go (on the current trend) until 2100, by which time reserves of coal, oil and gas will be largely exhausted.
The fact that, over the third of a century since IPCC (1990), global warming is proving to be so slower than the 0.3 degrees/decade that IPCC had then confidently predicted (and still predicts today) is relevant to a question posed to two hapless representatives of the current U.S. maladministration by Senator John Kennedy when he skewered them at a recent hearing.
The Senator began by asking Dr Robert Litterman, the chairman of the climate-related market risk subcommittee of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, how long he had been studying the climate question. Answer: 15 years. Next, Dr Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum. Answer: about 25 years.
Senator Kennedy: “Dr Litterman, how much will it cost to make the United States of America carbon-neutral by 2050?”
Litterman: “I don’t know, sir.”
Senator Kennedy: “So you’re advocating that we do these things but you don’t know the ultimate cost?”
Litterman: “Yes, absolutely, I certainly don’t know the ultimate cost and it’s very uncertain. It depends on innovations, it depends on …”
Senator Kennedy: “I’m just trying to lay a foundation here to understand your expert testimony. Dr Holtz-Eakin, do you know how much it will cost to make the United States of America carbon-neutral by 2050?”
Holtz-Eakin: “Depends how you do it. If we do it all with the Federal budget …”
Senator Kennedy: “Public and private dollars. It’s ultimately private dollars anyway.”
Holtz-Eakin: “I agree.”
Senator Kennedy: “So, how much?”
Holtz-Eakin: “You’re going to look at $50 trillion.”
Senator Kennedy: “$50 trillion?”
Holtz-Eakin: “Yes.”
Senator Kennedy: “OK, thank you. If we make the United States of America carbon-neutral by 2050, by spending $50 trillion, which you’re advocating, I gather …”
Holtz-Eakin: “No.”
Senator Kennedy: “OK, strike that last part. I’m wrong. You’re not advocating it. You’re advocating something.”
Holtz-Eakin: “If you’re going to do something, do something smart: that’s what I’m advocating.”
Senator Kennedy: “If we spend $50 trillion to make the United States of America carbon-neutral by 2050, how much will that lower world temperatures?” [1]
Holtz-Eakin: “I can’t say, because I don’t know what China and India and the rest of the world has done.”
Senator Kennedy: “Have you heard anybody from the Biden administration say how much it would lower world temperatures?” [2]
Holtz-Eakin: “No.”
Senator Kennedy: “Does anybody know how much it will lower world temperatures? [Pause] No?” [3]
Holtz-Eakin: “No one can know for sure.”
Senator Kennedy: “OK. Dr Litterman, if we spend $50 trillion, or however much it takes, to make the United States of America carbon-neutral by 2050, how much will it lower world temperatures?” [4]
Litterman: “Senator, that depends on the rest of the world. We have to work with the rest of the world. We’re in this together. It’s one world. We can’t put a wall around the United States and say …”
Senator Kennedy: “What if we spend $50 trillion, Europe co-operates, most Western democracies co-operate, but India and China don’t? How much will our $50 trillion lower world temperature?” [5]
Litterman: “We’re in this together, Senator. We have to get the world to work together.”
Senator Kennedy: “I understand. I get that. How much will it lower world temperatures?”[6]
Litterman: “If China and India do not help? I don’t know.”
Let us answer Senator Kennedy’s six-times-posed and six-times-unanswered question. It is one of the central questions in the climate debate, but no one in Parliament on this side of the pond would have had the wit, the courage or the persistence to ask it and go on asking it. I continue to be impressed with the calibre of your statesmen compared with our politicians.
To answer this question, we shall use only mainstream, midrange data from scientific sources that the “Democrats” would regard as suitable.
First, the near-straight-line rate at which global anthropogenic CO2-equivalent emissions have grown since the First Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990 is shown above. That business-as-usual rate will be likely to continue, since most nations continue to expand their combustion of coal, oil and gas.
The global Annual Greenhouse-Gas Index, compiled by the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, shows that, despite costly measures taken chiefly by Western nations to abate their emissions, the radiative forcing driven by global greenhouse-gas emissions has continued to increase since 1990 at a near-straight-line rate of 1/30th unit per year. Thus, no effect of existing global emissions-abatement measures, estimated by McKinsey Consulting last year as costing $5.6 trillion a year, is yet discernible.
Secondly, the near-linear uptrend in anthropogenic forcing will continue, given the expansion of coal-fired power in nations such as India, China (now building 43 new coal-fired stations and planning to build still more) and Pakistan (which in early 2023 announced that it would quadruple its coal-fired generating capacity).
In the 27 years 2023-2049, a further 27/30ths of a unit (0.9 units) will arise on business as usual. But if all nations were to move in a straight line towards net zero by 2050, half of those 0.9 units – or 0.45 units – would be abated.
Thirdly, the medium-term rate of global warming per unit of anthropogenic forcing is the ratio of the 1.8 C midrange medium-term 2xCO2 transient climate response, (TCR, above), and the 3.93 W m–2 effective 2xCO2 forcing (ERF, below): i.e., 0.458 K W–1 m2.
Fourthly, adjustment is made for the fact that global warming since 1990 has proven to be less than half the midrange decadal rate that was then predicted – and continues to be predicted today. The observed decadal global-warming rate since 1990, using the satellite global-temperature dataset maintained by the University of Alabama in Huntsville, has been only 0.136 C decade–1:
IPCC (1990) made predictions of global warming based on four emissions scenarios A-D, in descending order of predicted anthropogenic emissions. The scenario B trend-line in CO2-equivalent forcing from 1990-2025 (ibid., fig. 2.4B) was identical to the trend-line assuming constant annual emissions after 1990 (ibid., fig. A.15). In reality, however, by 2023 emissions had increased by some 53% compared with 1990.
Thus, in the 33 years since 1990, Scenario A has proven very much closer to outturn than B-D. Under Scenario A (the business-as-usual scenario), IPCC predicted midrange global warming of 0.3 C decade–1, or 3 C to 2100, and also 3 C final doubled-CO2 warming.
Accordingly, multiplying by 0.136 / 0.3, or 0.453, reduces the predicted warming per unit of anthropogenic influence to match observation.
The above calculations, based on mainstream data, are then combined in a simple equation. The 27/30ths degree uptrend in anthropogenic influence over the next 27 years is halved to allow all nations to move in a straight line from here to net zero by 2050 rather than attaining net zero immediately. That anthropogenic forcing is then converted to global temperature change prevented, which is in turn reduced in line with the shortfall of real-world medium-term warming per decade since 1990 against then-predicted midrange medium-term global warming. Global warming prevented, even if all nations succeeded in attaining net zero emissions by 2050, which they will not, would be less than one-tenth of a Celsius degree:
Even if the US, responsible for 15% of global emissions, were able to attain net zero by 2050, its contribution would reduce global temperature by less than one-seventieth of a degree. That is the answer to Senator Kennedy’s question – the answer that “Democrat” climate “experts” with 15 and 25 years’ experience were altogether unable (or unwilling) to answer.
Does this infinitesimal reduction in global temperature represent value for money? Let us use Mr Holtz-Eakin’s $60 trillion cost of U.S. net zero as a starting-point. For it implies that the cost of global net zero would be $400 trillion. Given that McKinsey Consulting puts the capex cost alone at $275 trillion, and that opex is 2-3 times capex, the total cost could well be $900 trillion, more than twice Mr Holtz-Eakin’s plucked-out-of-the-air guesstimate.
In that event, each $1 billion spent on the futile attempt to attain net zero emissions would prevent approximately one ten-millionth of a degree of global warming – the worst value for money in history.
I have set out these new calculations in some detail because once it is more widely known it will help to bring the climate nonsense to an end.
In making the calculation you assume a connection between CO2 and surface temperature. There is none.
In fact the net radiation energy uptake in any region of the atmosphere is uncorrelated with the surface temperature. Sixteen years of CERES net radiation uptake plotted against the surface temperature change over the same period confirm this fact.
No matter how much atmospheric CO2 is reduced, it will not alter the medium term trend in temperature rise. It will only have an impact when reduced far enough to negatively impact the biosphere.
Earth’s surface temperature is primarily a function of heat advection from where energy is taken in to where it is released. The only way temperature change can be determined is to understand how advection works.
I am certain Lord Moncton knows there is no correlation between CO2 and atmospheric temperature, other than temperature of the atmosphere determines the level of CO2, present in the atmosphere.
The exercise above is simply a demonstration of that. It is an exercise in, ‘give them enough rope and they will hang themselves’.
if we take the supposed ‘beliefs’ of the Climate Alarmists as factual inputs. Even when that is done, the outcome they demand i.e. a total ban on CO2 emissions to ‘control’ temperature doesn’t happen.
The position being promoted by the witnesses at the committee hearing is shown to be ludicrous. Litterman’s constant statement the world has to work together for things to happen is nothing other than the advancement of one world governance. Climate concern is simply being used to advance that UN driven utopia, that is the climate alarm’s only function.
Clearly what we are witnessing is Western state enforced energy sacrifices. We do this, while non Western countries increase their energy consumption (and CO2 of course for what its worth), in their attempt to mimic the Western standard of living.
Climate alarm is just the chosen vehicle Western Politicians have picked to downgrade the West for their own undeclared/bizarre reasons. It would be good if those promoting Western sacrifice would step forward and tell us why that is a good thing?
I don’t think its climate concern being used as a means of advancing one world government, or anything else for that matter. I think its part of a wave of irrationality and conformity which has occurred and is occurring in Australia, UK, New Zealand, Canada and the US.
The vector of transmission appears to be a common native language and shared Internet and social media. The causes are complex. The main symptom is the power of vocal minorities to get attention disproportionate attention and leverage this into a grip on policy making.
“Disproportionate” means that the scale of the problem is far smaller than and does not come close to justifying the scale of the measures advocated with it given as a reason. Back in the day the early precursors of psychoanalysis, Charcot and so on similarly defined hysteria as emotion whose strength is out of proportion to its object. We are well justified in regarding the current wave of emotion about climate, about gender and about race as being hysterical by this standard.
Its characteristic when hysteria is not purely individual, but is mass, that is, where its directed to an object which is the same for all the sufferers, that this leads to exaggerated and fabricated accounts of the object.
So we get the wild claims about climate. But we also get similar wild claims about race and gender. As for instance, the claim that not making puberty blockers and sex-change surgery freely available to teenagers will lead to high risk of suicide. Or the claim that there are anywhere between 2 and 100+ genders in humans. Or the claim that the famous Scottish convicted double rapist is ‘really’ a woman.
Readers will be able to supply their own examples on race. Its just worth pointing out another very common phenomenon that occurs there: the oddity of the choice of object. In the UK in progressive circles it is now commonplace to be very exercised about UK particpation in the slave trade. But there is no excitement about the Islamic slave trade which lasted 1,000 years longer, and tranported 4 or more times as many slaves. Or of the West India Squadron which the UK deployed to eliminate the trade after 1807.
The way to look at climate hysteria is that its one of three or more very similar social phenomena, and has to do with hysterical contagion. It has also some aspects in common with stock market or real estate manias. Perfectly reasonable people seeing the influential among them buying in to a common storyline will buy in too, and there will be immense social pressure to conform, at least outwardly. Hence ‘denialism’, ‘fascism’ etc.
Its very difficult, maybe impossible, to reverse these mass hysterias once they are under way. They can cause not just bubbles and crazed destructive policies, but also persecutions, genocides, disastrous wars. All you can do is try to bring rationality to bear on the subject and wait for them to burn out. Don’t attribute to conspiracy what is due to mass hysteria. And they will burn out in the end, but by the time they do you may have cities in ruins and the population starving.
Read ‘When Prophecy Fails’ for an excellent analysus of the phenomenon, the aftermath, the reaction of believers to the failure.
Bertrand Russell, when reproached with having left Britain for America during WWII is said to have remarked that when two lunatics insist on fighting with knives in a pitch dark room, the sensible observer makes sure he is in some other place. Its a terribly sad and discouraging thought but in the present state of the culture of the English speaking countries, its one that has some plausibility.
“I don’t think its climate concern being used as a means of advancing one world government, or anything else for that matter. I think its part of a wave of irrationality and conformity”
I completely disagree. The march toward totalitarianism, in progress mainly since 2020, is very rational if your goal is much more political power and control.
{olitcal power and control is increased, based on history, by creating fear of some boogeyman, from climate change to Covid to MAGA Republicans.
With Trump appearing in court tomorrow, it is more obvious than ever before that we are morphing toward totalitarianism in the US. Trump is claimed to have committed misdemeanors many years ago (similar to Bill Clinton paying off Paula Jones — not prosecuted) that the Federal Election Commission investigated and decided were legal.
Now a corrupt NYC DA combined a batch of misdemeanor changes, long after their statute of limitations, and claimed multiple misdemeanors are now a new crime he just invented — a felony. And a NYC jury and judge could throw Trump in prison during the 2024 election and slap a gag order on him until then. This is totalitarianism in action — persecuting, prosecuting and censoring political opponents, using a two-tier justice system.
Leftists have wanted strong governments with rule by government experts for the past century. Some want a one world government, but most leftist leaders are too selfish to want that — they want to rule their own leftist nations, which will tend to morph toward totalitarianism, because most people do not like the rule by experts.
Trump has had about $10 million donated to his campaign chest over the last four days since he was indicted, and his poll numbers have increased substantially. This political hit job by the radical Democrats may backfire on them.
The radical Democrats are definitely trying to take us down the totalitarian road. They have weaponized the federal government since the Obama-Biden administration and have been using the various agencies to attack their political opponents, just like every other dictator in world history.
The U.S. government needs a Big Purge. Trump is just the guy to do it. That’s why the “U.S. government/Biden administration” is doing all they can, legal and illegal, to try to get rid of Trump.
Trump is going to blow them up if he gets the chance and they know it.
The radical Democrats are the Enemies of the People.
They will take away your freedoms if given the opportunity. They are in the process of doing that now, starting with Trump. But he won’t be the last, if they succeed in taking him down. I don’t think they will succeed. They haven’t laid a glove on him yet.
The radical Democrats have a tough job: They have tried to smear the most innocent man in U.S. political history. After all their trying, they have nothing on Trump.
Next question: Was the Biden administration coordinating with the New York DA’s office to get Trump indicted. Apparently, there are federal officials in the New York DA’s office. What are they doing there? The Republican Congress wants to know.
Of course this is all coordinated. And they will coordinate with the Georgia DA on the timing and nature of whatever charges he makes also if they can’t make the crap in NYC stick.
He’s on tape for that one so if I was a betting man I’d say that is the glove that is going to floor him.
One sentence out of a whole long phone conversation that was pulled out of context, and misinterpreted. Many lawyers on the phone call heard nothing illegal. No crime was committed.
But juries can nullify any real evidence, or misinterpret any fake evidence, if they want to.
“ Many lawyers on the phone call heard nothing illegal. No crime was committed.”
Well those lawyers better get lawyering then because I have listened to the whole phone call and I can’t see how anyone could say it was legal. Trump can be heard laying huge pressure on Raffensburger. The “sentence” (where he asks him to find 11k votes) very much fits with the tone of the whole thing. But who are you and I to judge, that is why there is a legal system. That’s how justice works.
“very much fits with the tone of the whole thing.”
That sounds a little bit subjective.
Many times, people hear what they want to hear. I think that is the case with you here.
Simon is pretty stupid
A-yup.
So Simon is declaring himself a better legal expert than people who are paid to do it for a living.
Then again, he still believes he’s a qualified scientist.
Trump is on tape sayig Georgia officials need to find 1,000 more votes for him for the win. Trump wanted them to look harder. He didn’t tell them to cheat, which is what the Democrat DA is claiming.
Trump did not tell anyone to create votes out of thin air for him. That’s what he’s accused of, and the “tape” you refer to plainly shows that.
You and the DA choose to cherry-pick the tape.
This is just one more politically motivated persecution of Trump.
The way it looks, Trump is going to be the Republican nominee despite everything the radical Democrats are trying to do to prevent it. Trump is just getting stronger.
The Trafficer-in-Chief, Joe Biden, is trying to destroy the United States. Everything he does harms the nation and the U.S. Constitution. Joe Biden is a dispicable human being who has no business being president.
DA Bragg of New York ought to be prosecuted for judicial misconduct and removed from office.
The latest poll shows 76 percent think these prosecutions of Trump are politically motivated. And that was before people saw that the New York DA has nothing on Trump yesterday.
“Trump is on tape saying Georgia officials need to find 1,000 more votes for him for the win. Trump wanted them to look harder. He didn’t tell them to cheat, which is what the Democrat DA is claiming.”
It’s not my interpretation Tom, this is what he said…
“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,”
The word “find” might be loose enough to get him off, but I think we all know what he was asking him to do, particularly in the light of the next bit, because then he threatened Raffensburger…
“You know what they did and you’re not reporting it,” the president said during the call. “You know, that’s a criminal — that’s a criminal offense. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”
Then he said this, offering advice on how Raffensburger could bend the law.
“The people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”
“Recalculated” is not “finding votes,” it’s Trump speak for cheating.
I’ve read there is another recording that will endorse the tone of this one.
I do admit that anyone who just read this and didn’t know Trump could possibly see there is a slight chance he was not looking to cheat, but that’s the thing, we all do know Trump.
“It’s not my interpretation Tom, this is what he said…
“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,”
The word “find” might be loose enough to get him off, but I think we all know what he was asking him to do”
It’s loose enough for me to conclude that he was not asking for anyone to cheat.
Your opinion is your opinion. I don’t share it.
Did you see the crazy jury foreperson on this Georgia grand jury? This case against Trump ought to be thrown out of court just based on this person’s behavior. She was practically giddy about indicting Trump during an interview she gave recently. She didn’t look like her elevator went all the way to the top, to me. I wouldn’t want a person like that on my jury.
These lawsuits against Trump are one big political hit job, that might be the end of the personal freedoms of all of us, including the smug Democrats, if Biden and the other underminers of the U.S. Constituion are successful.
I see where Elon Musk has labeled National Public Radic (NPR) as “State-affiliated Media”.
Now, Musk needs to name just about all the rest of the News Media as State-affiliated, or more properly, Radical Democrat Affiliated.
I don’t want my tax money going to a propaganda outfit like NPR. I think I’ll write my representative about it.
The judge assigned to this case was the one who bent over backwards to give every possible break to the prosecution in last year’s trial of a Trump associate. He also gave the maximum penalty, 5 months for a charge that usually results in a small fine.
With this judge and a NYC jury, not matter how weak the charges or non-existent the evidence, conviction is always a real possibility.
Of course it would get reversed on appeal, but by then the election would be over.
“ They haven’t laid a glove on him yet.”
Ummm didn’t he just have 34 charges against him today. I’d call that 34 gloves.
Anyway Tom I want to know. If he is guilty for the charges do you think he should face the same consequences as anyone else? It’s a simple question.
If he were anyone else, the statute of limitations would be respected and nothing would have come of it, unless he owed taxes.
The question is…. if he is guilty, should he be convicted and there be consequences? And clearly the SOL is not a factor here or it would be used.
“And clearly the SOL is not a factor here or it would be used.”
Well, we haven’t heard from the judge on this matter yet.
No doubt, Trump’s attorneys will file several motions to dismiss this case, and from what I have heard, any one of these motions should cause the judge to dismiss the case.
Of course, the judge in this case seems to have it out for Trump, so maybe Trump will need to file a motion to have this judge recuse himself from the case.
It’s not even close to being over, Simon. If it goes to trial, Trump will be president by the time that works itself out.
More comes out this morning:
Links from Bragg to Soros:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/04/coup-da-alvin-bragg-da-chief-assistant-meg-reiss-and-others-work-with-the-john-jay-institute-for-innovation-in-prosecution-funded-by-soros-and-more/
At his press conference, Bragg can’t even explain what “crime” was committed:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/04/the-dumbest-da-with-the-dumbest-case-says-the-dumbest-things-in-his-press-conference/
These geniuses don’t understand accounting and finance:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/04/theres-more-the-dumbest-case-by-the-dumbest-da-ever-just-got-dumber/
The judge is highly biased and should recuse himself PDQ:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/04/conflict-of-interest-leftist-judge-juan-merchan-who-oversees-trumps-sham-case-made-political-contributions-against-republican-and-trump/
You need to widen your reading mateirial.
Like CNN, Simon?
Take your modern Marxist slavery and shove it where nothing shines.
I see where CNN is starting a new feature of their news program where they say on Sunday nights they are going to spend a whole hour focusing on one subject so they can go indepth on it.
I’m betting that Joe Biden’s corruption and criminality are never going to be a subject of this special hour. There will be no indepth look into the Joe Biden Crime Family by CNN.
That’s an easy bet.
This is NYC, he’ll be convicted even if he is innocent as a jaybird.
The DA was elected on a promise of convicting Trump, whatever it took.
So I’ll ask you Mark… should Trump be convicted if he is in fact guilty of the crimes he is charged with and if he is, should he get what any other person would get?
Hypocrite.
Well explain….
What an irony, you the king of hypocrisy, calling me a hypocrite. I’m the one who bleats about leftists wasting tax payers money and then supports an x-president who hides his hush money so the tax payer can subsidising his dirty secrets. Not that is hypocrisy.
This Bragg clown cannot release real criminals off the hook fast enough, and all Simon the TDS addict cares about is seeing DJT go down.
Same old Simon clown show.
I love it when you talk dirty.
We love making fun of your stupidity
batterycarboi only shows up in WUWT while waiting around for his battery car to charge up with his free electrons.
There are a few Republicans in New York. Maybe one of them will slip onto the jury.
Someone like me. I’m a registered Democrat. Have been all my life (it’s a long story), but I wouldn’t vote for a Democrat because I think their view of the world is completely delusional.
If I were on Trump’s jury, he would walk free.
‘If I were on Trump’s jury, he would walk free.”
Which is why you are not on the Trump jury. Tom…. it’s just a small point,,,, but you are meant to listen to the evidence from both side before making your decision. it’s how justice should and does work.
“Ummm didn’t he just have 34 charges against him today. I’d call that 34 gloves.”
Yeah, 34 trumped up charges.
Trump is still a free man, and his poll numbers are climbing. They haven’t laid a glove on him yet. Unsubstatiated accusations are not “gloves”.
Well you may be right, but I guess we will now wait and see. But let’s not forget. His Lawyer Cohen was sentenced to three year in jail for his part in all this. He is one man who will be keen to see that justice is fair.
And re the Statue of Limitations, I found this…
“The statute of limitations is unlikely to be an issue, as it does not count time a defendant spends living outside New York state. Trump lived in Washington, D.C., while he was president and has lived in Florida since leaving office in 2021.”
But you didn’t answer my question. “If” he has committed these crimes should he be treated like everyone else and be held accountable?
“But let’s not forget. His Lawyer Cohen was sentenced to three year in jail for his part in all this. He is one man who will be keen to see that justice is fair.”
Cohen was jailed for lying, Simon.
The lawyer who formerly repesented Cohen said Cohen was a serial liar.
And you are putting your faith in Cohen? Why?
“Cohen was jailed for lying, Simon.”
No Tom it wasn’t just lying….
Cohen pleaded guilty to eight criminal[165] charges: five counts of tax evasion, one count of making false statements to a financial institution, one count of willfully causing an unlawful corporate contribution, and one count of making an excessive campaign contribution at the request of a candidate (Trump) for the “principal purpose of influencing [the] election”.
The last part of the last sentence is the killer for Trump.
The thing you have to account for is, for instance, the UK Climate Change Act of 2008. This set the 2050 Net Zero targets for the UK, and was voted for by the House of Commons with only five votes against it. Virtual unanimity.
There are two possible explanations of this. One would be that this was part of some global authoritarian totalitarian conspiracy.
The other would be my own, that it was an example of contagious mass hysteria in the political class of the UK.
For those who adhere to the view of climate as stepping stone to global totalitarianism, perhaps communist in nature, the conspiracy or at least the shared intent to get there is assumed.
For me, its a kind of contagion. It can be on any subject, though lately the subjects seem to have clustered around race, climate and gender. But in principle I see it as not much different from the satanic child abuse hysteria late in the last century, the dot.com bubble, the furious excesses of the housing and credit market leading up to 2008… Or the mad fury that seems to possess nations from time to time to declare war on everyone near them.
No conspiracy needed.
I’d also say: how to account for the fact that the climate mania is almost exclusively in the English speaking countries? If there is an international globalist conspiracy, why aren’t the other countries equally excited about climate?
No, contagion through established cultural vectors is the most likely explanation.
I tend to agree with you Michel
Many past presidents have had dalliances outside their marriage, and the MSM just looked the other way. Thus, there was no need for hush money. I don’t condone breaking the vows of marriage, and it gives me pause about how trustworthy such an individual is. However, it has been so common in the past that I’m reminded of Lord Acton’s observation about how power corrupts.
“I don’t condone breaking the vows of marriage, and it gives me pause about how trustworthy such an individual is.”
Trump said there was no affair with Stormy Daniels, and Stormy Daniels has signed a letter in which she denies having an affair with Trump.
So who you gonna believe, the people directly involved, or the biased government?
Well Stormy was paid to say there was no affair, but obviously now has come clean. But even if you don’t believe her, she is not the only one.
Trump’s sex life is of no interest to me. I like him because of his political positions and his willingness to slap the hell out of the radical Democrats.
There’s nothing illegal about hush money.
Bragg claims that the biggest crime was that these things were done to influence the 2016 election. However all of the things in his indictments occurred during 2017.
“There’s nothing illegal about hush money.”
For once you are right Mark. But it is illegal to get your finance guy to hide it as an expense. And if he did this to hide this information from the voting public, then that is a bigger problem for Donald.
I should declare that I don’t think this will be the straw that cripples Trump. But I do think if what he has done is illegal, like all people, he should be held to account, even if that only means the public get to see what sort of man he is.
I think the big two are Georgia and his keeping the docs.
The vote was the year before this occurred. How then could it be for hiding it from the VOTING public.
“The vote was the year before this occurred. How then could it be for hiding it from the VOTING public.”
Not sure what you mean here. The affair was 2006 and the payment was before the 2016 election. Trump was courting the Christian right. Many on that group may have had second thoughts about voting for a man who screws porn stars while his wife is at home having has just had a baby. And then maybe not….
But the crimes he is charged with occurred AFTER the election. Trying to charge him with trying to hide them from the voting public is what makes the charges felonies upgraded from misdemeanors. The payment was made prior to the election and the public knowledge of the affair and payment came out before the election. No motive for “hiding” it in 2017.
That Simon can’t see this wee little problem is not a surprise.
Exactly what would you have him hide it as? Capital investment maybe?
Lastly, unless you are extremely religious and want to stone adulterers, what difference does it make? Maybe because Trump is a Republican? Not a great reason. How many Democrat politicians running for President have done the same thing? You probably don’t even know because the liberal media ghosted the story!
Think John Edwards. He was acquitted on the one charge that went to trial. The other five were dropped afterwards.
But being a Democrat he is considered differently. Perhaps because they expect such from Democrats and not Republicans?
Just like dropping the 60 vote requirement to approve judges this is going to come back to haunt them.
“Perhaps because they expect such from Democrats and not Republicans?”
That is just a silly comment.
Simon is a hard-core marxist.
“Exactly what would you have him hide it as? Capital investment maybe?”
He’s free to pay off a porn star to stop her talking. He could have paid it with his own private funds… but he chose to put it through the business and hide it as an expense. That is illegal.
“Lastly, unless you are extremely religious and want to stone adulterers, what difference does it make?”
I agree, but that is not what this is about. It’s about the illegal use of his business to hide the payment, not who he has sex with.
That is a misdemeanor paid for with a fine I believe. The criminal felony is based upon trying to hide the expense during a campaign making it a campaign finance violation. Having never been charged, tried, or convicted of a campaign finance crime there is no underlying crime. Bragg is simply betting that he can convince a jury, just like he did the grand jury, that IF TRUMP HAD BEEN CHARGED WITH A CAMPAIGNE FINANCE CRIMINAL CHARGE, HE WOULD HAVE BEEN CONVICTED and therefore a crime does exist. It’s the prelude to creating a thought crime. Wouldn’t the Democrat liberals love that!
The chairman of the Federal Elections Commission has stated there was no campaign donation, ergo there is no crime to “cover up”.
Like all good little marxists, all Simon has are lies.
NCSWIC
This is one of the biggest reasons that a request for dismissal is likely to succeed.
If the judge isn’t totally corrupted and conflicted…
Well certainly the one-world crowd, really a bunch of warmed over nazis without the pretty costumes, have taken advantage of the green insanity, the green mass hysteria to further their own ends. The rich get richer and the poor poorer with even less control than before, as politicians don’t even pretend to care about the voters anymore, the climate and the related special interests are their declared main concern.
What conspiracy has to explain is how Jeremy Corbyn and David Cameron, in the UK, ended up voting for the same idiotic measure. Which had a completely different effect on the interests they were trying to represent.
You can either say they were part of the great conspiracy, despite the fact that they disliked and despised each other.
Or you can say contagion was the cause. This is much more likely.
It’s mass hysteria in the political class.
This climate change hysteria has no basis in fact.
The question is, what is it that makes people susceptible to mass hysterias? In Pirsig’s Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the protagonist splits thought into two modes: Classical and Romantic. Here is his description of the two:
“A romantic understanding sees it primarily in terms of immediate appearance.” Classical thought is often associated with the following: science, objectivity, rationality, reason, analysis, and matter. The other primary mode of thought is romantic in nature: art, subjectivity, emotion, and experience.”
A mixture of the two is good to have. Too much of one or the other can be problematic. But Western thought has been led astray, emphasizing the Romantic and downplaying or even denigrating the Classical mode. I can’t speak to how or why this has happened. Needless to say, there may be bad actors taking advantage and/or pushing this situation. I do know that education is the key.
“I can’t speak to how or why this has happened. Needless to say, there may be bad actors taking advantage and/or pushing this situation. I do know that education is the key.”
Education of the young is the key, and the bad actors have figured this out and are in the process of undermining Western society starting in the schools.
The Bad Actors are raising the next generation of radical Democrats/Communists in our schools right this minute.
“I am certain Lord Moncton knows there is no correlation between CO2 and atmospheric temperature,
WRONG
The point of the article is no correlation from 2015 to 2023, but there was strong positive correlation of CO2 and temperature from 1975 to 2015, and Monckton has never denied that fact, as far as I know.
” … other than temperature of the atmosphere determines the level of CO2, present in the atmosphere.”
WRONG
The level of CO2 in the troposphere is changed by manmade CO2 emissions, not by the temperature of the atmosphere. the amount of water vapor in the troposphere is determined by the average temperature of the troposphere.
Richard,
Thank you for your considered response to my brief comment. I was not intending to provide a detailed breakdown of all the interacting mechanisms that control CO2 in the atmosphere. I am sure your well rounded understanding of atmosphere changes and the multiple inputs/control systems in play ensure you understand that.
As for the correlation of temp and CO2 curves 1975-2015 and the change in that from 2015 -2023 goes, that is a subject I can best leave to others to speak to.
10 yard penalty for being too polite on the internet
Never mind that that the SSTs have been climbing.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FsuCOs-WwAAqW55?format=jpg&name=small
Nah! That has NOTHING to do with it. Right Richard? BTW, the increase in SSTs correlates nicely with the recorded increase in abyssal geothermal activity.
The Correlation of Seismic Activity and Recent Global Warming | OMICS International (omicsonline.org)
And so you must explain to us how the increase of atmospheric CO2 has resulted in the oceans warming!
More:
Abyssal ocean warming around Antarctica strengthens the Atlantic overturning circulation – Patara – 2014 – Geophysical Research Letters – Wiley Online Library
A very good point by Rah, and one that is also made by Professor Art Viterito.
Richard claims out of hand that it is physically impossible for geothermal activity to be responsible or even partially responsible for the warming of the oceans. But it seems that there are a number of real scientists that claim it is.
My opinion, for what it is worth, is that this aspect needs far more attention and research than it is getting.
But anyway it goes Richard needs to explain the physical mechanism by which the oceans are warming because it is a huge factor, in fact the elephant in the room when it comes to climate.
The oceans warming decreases the ability of the water to retain CO2 and increases WV, the #1 “green house gas”.
Richard claims out of hand that it is physically impossible for geothermal activity to be responsible or even partially responsible for the warming of the oceans. But it seems that there are a number of real scientists that claim it is.
There are no long term data to make such a claim.
Anyone who makes such a claim is merely speculating.
Knowledge required would be the total heat output of all underseas volcanoes over at least the past 50 years.
No such data exist.
Therefore no conclusions are possible.
And that assumes it would be possible to measure the average ocean temperature with enough precision to capture the effect of underseas volcanoes.
The current state of knowledge is we do not know the ocean heating effect of underseas volcanoes. T
The ocean is a huge mass of water with high thermal inertia.
Any warming could be too small to measure. or at least a change in ocean warming over several decades may be too small measure.
And how could you separate volcano ocean warming from CO2 ocean warming?
I am smart enough to know that “We don’t know” is the current right answer for underseas volcanoes, so anyone who claims to know is lying.
Volcanoes aren’t the only source of heat. The mid-ocean spreading centers provide a relatively low-grade, linear source of heat. Hydrothermal vents, such as Black Smokers, are small, localized sources. Further, the geothermal gradient can be high over magma chambers that haven’t made it to the surface. Lastly, pumice rafts in the open ocean are direct evidence of a volcanic eruption, even though it didn’t apparently emerge above the surface of the water, or get recorded on a seismograph.
The point being, while we don’t have detailed information on the abundance of subsurface thermal sources, we know enough about them to be certain that they exist and they, therefore, shouldn’t be ignored as though they didn’t exist. They help explain the anomalous melting in Western Antarctica, and the ‘heat waves’ I linked to above.
NOAA recently published about ‘heat waves’ at the bottom of the oceans. It passed over how less-dense, warm water gets through the thermocline, unless it originates at the bottom.
https://scitechdaily.com/deep-impact-heat-waves-happen-at-the-bottom-of-the-ocean-too/
I had to look up abyssal because I thought your comment was abysmal
Sea surface temperatures rose from 1975 to 2015 just like land surface temperatures, and had a flat trend since 2015 just like land temperatures. So you are wrong.
Your claim that the increase in SSTs correlates nicely with the recorded increase in abyssal geothermal activity is pure claptrap:
Underseas volcano counts are inaccurate and have a relatively short period of estimates. There is no way any underseas volcanoes trend could be determined, no way their tiny effect on the ocean temperature could be measured, and no way they could affect the atmosphere’s average temperature.
Volcanic eruptions on the ocean floor have a minimal effect on water temperature and are unlikely to contribute to global warming.
Although the temperature of water immediately adjacent to the submarine lava reaches 88 degrees C (190 degrees F), it degrades quickly to 27 degrees C (81 degrees F), only slightly above the ambient ocean temperature, within a few inches of the contact. This is not to say that the water isn’t hot.
Actual volcanoes may, during eruptions, melt quite large portions of the ice sheet around them. In Iceland, volcanic eruptions beneath the ice sheet regularly cause local catastrophic floods, called jokulhlaups.
“And so you must explain to us how the increase of atmospheric CO2 has resulted in the oceans warming!”
Okay
Greenhouse gases impede Earth’s ability to cool itself
The rate of flow of heat out of the ocean is determined by the temperature gradient in the ‘cool skin layer’, which resides within the thin viscous surface layer of ocean that is in contact with the atmosphere. It’s so named because it is the interface where ocean heat is lost to the atmosphere, and therefore becomes cooler than the water immediately below. Despite being only 0.1 to 1mm thick on average, this skin layer is the major player in the long-term warming of the oceans.
Curious behavior in the cool skin layer
The cool skin behaves quite differently to the water below, because it is the boundary where the ocean and air meet, and therefore turbulence (the transfer of energy/heat via large-scale motion) falls away as it approaches this boundary. No longer free to jiggle around and transfer heat via this large scale motion, water molecules in the layer are forced together and heat is only able to travel through the skin layer by way of conduction. With conduction the steepness of the temperature gradient is critical to the rate of heat transfer.
Greenhouse gas-induced warming of the ocean
Greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, trap heat in the atmosphere and direct part of this back toward the surface. This heat cannot penetrate into the ocean itself, but it does warm the cool skin layer, and the level of this warming ultimately controls the temperature gradient in the layer.
Increased warming of the cool skin layer (via increased greenhouse gases) lowers its temperature gradient (that is the temperature difference between the top and bottom of the layer), and this reduces the rate at which heat flows out of the ocean to the atmosphere. One way to think about this is to compare the gradient (steepness) of a flowing river – water flows faster the steeper the river becomes, but slows as the steepness decreases.
The same concept applies to the cool skin layer – warm the top of the layer and the gradient across it decreases, therefore reducing heat flowing out of the ocean.
You are repeating pseudo-science. There is no warming of the ocean surface by CO2 generated IR. As it turns out, the CO2 generated IR cools the surface. This is where climate science goes wrong. The warming you think should happen disappears due to boundary layer effects.
You need to open your mind to new ideas (based on very standard physics).
As it turns out, the CO2 generated IR cools the surface.
A tall pile of baloney
Why should I open my mind to your junk science?
CO2 reflects or deflects energy.
CO2 does not generate energy
Carbon dioxide absorbs energy at a variety of wavelengths between 2,000 and 15,000 nanometers — a range that overlaps with that of infrared energy. As CO2 soaks up this infrared energy, it vibrates and re-emits the infrared energy back in all directions.
If that were true the amount of water vapor should follow temperature. Water vapor observations have consistently failed to show that this is the case. You are the one being WRONG.
Javier,
Agreed. Just because higher temperatures CAN support more water vapour, is not the same as WILL support more water vapour.
Geoff S
It would also set up a continuous feedback loop where by the CO2 causes the oceans to warm, thus decrease their ability to retain CO2 so that atmospheric CO2 would continue to increase thus warming the oceans even more. etc, etc. etc.
The is of course until the CO2 concentration is such that it’s effect becomes negligible.
In a world of two climate variables — CO2 and a water vapor positive feedback — that might be true. But climate change has more than two variables, so that example is claptrap.
There is OBVIOUSLY some limit to the water vapor positive feedback that prevents runaway warming.
The first “limit” is that CO2 is already a weak greenhouse gas above 400ppm
The second limit is probably a negative feedback of more clouds, in response to the positive water vapor feedback. That is the simple explanation. The truth may be more complex, assuming anyone knows. But we DO know for sure that CO2 levels up to 10x higher than today did NOT cause runaway global warming.
“But we DO know for sure that CO2 levels up to 10x higher than today did NOT cause runaway global warming.”
Good point.
Now, does CO2 lead or follow ocean warming?
The global average water vapor estimates are not accurate and often do not agree with each other. Combining some local water vapor measurements and claiming that is an accurate global average water vapor statistic is claptrap.
Water vapor is literally individual molecules of H2O that are part of the collection of gases in the atmosphere. Varies greatly from place to place, and from time to time. It averages only about 0.4% of the atmosphere, but varies from as much as 4% in the humid tropics to near 0% in cold polar regions. 0.4% is a rough estimate. Any claimed trend over time is a rougher estimate.
For ‘heat advection’ refer to the Dynamic Atmosphere Energy Transport model described by me and Philip Mulholland.
It demonstrates that the surface temperature enhancement beneath atmospheres is a product of convective overturning and not radiative gases.
Any effect from radiative gases is neutralised by convective adjustments.
“Any effect from radiative gases is neutralised by convective adjustments”.
WRONG
Convective adjustments are part of the overall process that eliminates any warming from increases in CO2. It’s more complex though.
Only in your imagination.
A lot of experiments and research are done to disprove/prove something. Michelson-Morley and the luminiferous aether Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and phlogiston are two that come to mind. As we know it only takes one correct experiment to disprove something. As Monkton has demonstrated two pauses, the first of which did cause a stir in Climate Science after about a decade it would appear CO2 and climate is not as simple as some would have us believe
“it would appear CO2 and climate is not as simple as some would have us believe”
The CO2 and climate relationship is very simple
More CO2 impedes Earth’s ability to cool itself
The effect is large up to 50ppm, and small above 400ppm
This is easily determined with a lab spectroscopy experiment, and has been determined since the late 1800s.
There is no logical reason to assume the effect of CO2 in the atmosphere is completely different than the effect of CO2 measured in a laboratory. The evidence available strongly supports that CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas in the atmosphere above 400ppm and it doesn’t matter that a precise effect of CO2 can’t be measured (because there are so many other climate change variables0.
Some conservatives claim that without a precise measurement of what CO2 does in the atmosphere, that proves CO2 does nothing. They are science deniers and common sense deniers.
So the conclusion is obvious:
CO2 above 400ppm is a weak greenhouse gas in a lab and also a weak greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. But CO2 is just one of many climate change variables and as a result, CO2 does not control the climate (as was obvious in 1940 to 1975 and from 2015 to 2023)
The global warming from 1975 to 2015 mainly affected colder nations, in the coldest half of the year, and at night (TMIN). So assuming CO2 caused some of that global warming, which is logical, the warming was actually good news.
And more CO2 in the air is very good news for C3 plants (85% of all plants)
The bottom line is that adding manmade CO2 to the atmosphere with manmade CO2 emissions was good news in the past and should be good news in the future.
C3 plants would prefer at least double the present 420ppm CO2 level. Another +420ppm of CO2, at +2.5ppm per year, would take 168 years. So do more driving now, and use more electricity now, and you will improve the climate of our planet. Our C3 plants will thank you.
And tell this to any leftist you know, if the subject or climate or energy ever comes up — it will make them go berserk. like monkeys in a cage at the zoo go berserk, when you stroll by clanging your metal water cup on the bars of their cage. It’s very entertaining to watch a leftist go berserk.
Dick says”There is no logical reason to assume the effect of CO2 in the atmosphere is completely different than the effect of CO2 measured in a laboratory.”
Attached is a specific heat table from a thermodynamics book. It only shows one energy value for each temperature. If CO2 had an effect of raising the temperature due to IR there should be two columns for energy required one with IR and one with out.
Thermodynamics indicates that CO2 causes no warming.
Nonsense. There is absolutely no need for there to be two columns.
I took a thermodynamics course in college and passed it, although did not enjoy it
CO2 impeding Earth’s ability to cool itself does not violate any laws of thermodynamics. You must have been sleeping during your thermodynamics class, and I don’t blame you.
CO2 does not directly raise the temperature — it inhibits cooling, just like all the other greenhouse gases.
You are confused about the fact that the average temperature of the atmosphere is lower than the average surface temperature, then the answer is that the atmosphere isn’t warming the ground, but rather is preventing the ground from cooling down as much as it otherwise would.
A good analogy is the insulation in the walls of a building.
The average temperature of the insulation material during cold weather is lower than the interior temperature of the building, because the outer face of the insulation is in good thermal contact with the outside environment.
And yet this cooler insulation does a good job of keeping the inside of the building warmer than it otherwise would be.
The greenhouse gases in the atmosphere play a similar role, though they act through different mechanisms: Both systems are in full accord with the laws of thermodynamics.
“And yet this cooler insulation does a good job of keeping the inside of the building warmer than it otherwise would be.”
It only does so if there is continuous heat generation inside the building.
It doesn’t matter how much insulation I put in my work shed walls if I don’t turn the heater on. The building will still assume equilibrium with the outside. It may do so more slowly than if the insulation wasn’t there but it still does it.
The Earth’s heater is an on-off thing as the earth rotates. CO2 may slow the heat loss during the period of “off” but that will only raise the temperature point at which time the “on” period starts.
The Earth still continues to radiate heat away at the same rate at the point the “on” button clicks on, since that temperature point is higher than without CO2 it radiates at a higher level than it would if CO2 didn’t exist, i.e. it radiates more heat away than it would at a lower temperature (no CO2). As the heater (sun) raises the temperature the Earth radiates even more. The heater (sun) will determine the maximum temperature the Earth reaches.
The “average” used in most radiation budget pictures is probably as misleading as the “average” global temperature. I would love to see an integration of the Earth’s radiation on a 24 hour period and then be able to compare those values on a day to day basis.
Wrong. The overall effect from more CO2 is more precipitation. In order to provide this beneficial result, there is a complex cascade of processes. Understanding this requires tossing away all your current beliefs. Are you ready?
What laboratory experiment places the CO2 above a large quantity of water? It turns out water is instrumental in how CO2 works in our atmosphere. I think you need a lesson in logic.
More CO2 in the troposphere causes a warmer troposphere which holds more water vapor and warmer oceans increase the amount of water that evaporates into the air.
So it would seem that more CO2 eventually causes more precipitation, But long term data are questionable.
What is precipitation trend?
Since 1901, global precipitation is claimed to have increased at an average rate of +0.04 inches per decade, while precipitation in the contiguous 48 US states has increased at a rate of +0.20
+0.04 inches per decade in the 12 decades since 1901 is about +0.48 inches more precipitation over 12 decades
The global average precipitation is about 39 inches per year now.
In 1901 it would have been about 38.5 inches. about 1.2% less
Was there an accurate global average precipitation measurement in the early 1900s? I doubt it.
There were Very few weather stations in the Southern Hemisphere
Not many NH weather stations outside US and Europe
And who was measuring precipitation on the oceans?.
False. You continue to ignore the combined effect of energy absorption and evaporative cooling. When you consider all of the effects, there is no warming or cooling just more precipitation.
Rightly so and most things are relative.
Science is not so emphatic as so many people act it out to be.
I’m heading eastward shortly and am looking forward to pondering the past heights of water in the Great Basin. There are many places where high water marks are still visible.
I shall also examine slip coefficients and gravity effects on several slopes along the way. Wanted to hit Mammoth Mountain but the most direct major highway to it from here is blocked by snow.
Advection is one out of five processes.
You get an “F”
What are the 5 processes of atmospheric heating?
The process of heating and cooling of the atmosphere takes place in four stages and these stages are radiation, conduction, convection, and advection. Radiation is the cycle by which sun-based energy arrives at the earth, and the earth loses energy to space.
What affects the Earth’s surface temperature?
Air and water temperatures are primarily determined by the amount of sunlight that is absorbed by the surface of the Earth, and the amount of heat that is re-radiated in the atmosphere by the greenhouse gases.
Richard Greene:
Correction:
Air and water temperatures are primarily determined by the amount of sunlight that is absorbed by the surface of the Earth. PERIOD.
Temperature is determined by both energy in and energy out.
When those two are balanced, temperature stays the same.
If energy in decreases but energy out stays the same, the object cools.
If energy out decreases, but energy in stays the same, the object warms.
Doing anything that affects either energy in or energy out, and you are going to change the temperature of the object.
Mark W,
Fine in theory, eminently arguable in practise.
Here is a 2011 graph showing how far apart the returns from different satellites were. Like about a spread of 13 W/m2, when researchers see significance in 0.1W/m2……………
The TOA radiative balance number is entirely dependent on adjustments to bring different satellites into line.
Now, where have we seen adjustments causing disbelief? Geoff S
GS said: “The TOA radiative balance number is entirely dependent on adjustments to bring different satellites into line.
Now, where have we seen adjustments causing disbelief?”
That’s how UAH does it too.
And that’s why the measurement uncertainty of even UAH is larger than the differences they are trying to identify. It’s like reaching into a black hole with your hand and trying to grab a 1mm bead. You have no idea where in that hole it is.
Building and operating cavity radiometers (technical name: absolute cavity radiometer, ACR) in orbit is not easy—there have been improvements since the 1970s but they are not perfect. On the ground they can achieve uncertainties of ±0.3-0.4% through the World Radiometric Reference (part of the WMO). The link between the WRR and basic SI units is still controversial, and could-might double this number (or not).
I’m not familiar with the differences between the ACRIM, VIRGO, and SORCE instruments, but they are fairly large (and difficult to track down). The graph shows a potential uncertainty of 13/1350 W/m2 or about 1%. For radiometric measurements this is still much better than thermopile-style radiometers.
The NOAA satellites apparently use tuned horn antennas to convert O2 microwave radiation to voltage. Assuming a similar total uncertainty for the end-to-end conversion to temperature in K, a ±1% uncertainty becomes about ±2.5K (at ~250K for the LT) — two orders of magnitude larger than what is usually claimed.
Wow! That is a large uncertainty interval and is another indication of the variance/Standard Deviation that the anomalies should be carrying.
It is what I am beginning to see in land measurements using the NIST Ex. 2 for calculating the variance surrounding a monthly mean temperature. Climate alarmists also forget that a monthly mean and a baseline mean are both random variables. When subtracting random variables, you should ADD the variances and not claim that the SEM of the anomaly average is the uncertainty in the temperature.
“ Like about a spread of 13 W/m2, when researchers see significance in 0.1W/m2……………”
<grin> You aren’t supposed to notice that!
And the amount of cooling too
Incoming energy and outgoing energy
You can’t have one without the other.
At least it’s something…
It is doubtful that Nut Zero will stop the rise of the atmospheric CO2 level, with over seven billion people, of eight billion on Earth, living in nations that could not care less about Nut Zero.
More CO2 in the atmosphere is likely in the future and more CO2 always causes a warmer temperature. But above 400ppm, CO2 is such a weak greenhouse gas that other climate change variables could easily offset the small warming effect of CO2.
The effect of CO2 from 2015 to 2023, despite the largest eight-year period of manmade CO2 emissions, was more than offset by other climate change variables. And that was long before much of Nut Zero was accomplished.
Here’s my wild guess:
Without Nut Zero:
More CO2 causes small harmless warming that could be offset by other climate change variables
With Nut Zero:
More CO2 causes smaller harmless warming that could be offset by other climate change variables
Bottom Line:
Nut Zero is a total waste of money, unless for some odd reason one prefers a less reliable electric grid with more blackouts. The unprecedented increase of mining and manufacturing required for Nut Zero will significantly INCREASE CO2 emissions, and that increase might never be offset by lower future CO2 emissions from the few nations that participate in Nut Zero: (Currently, the Nut Zero nations include less than one billion people out of eight billion people in the world, and they have low birth rates compared with non-Nut Zero nations).
My suspicion is that politicians are unacquainted with the concept of ‘the point of diminishing returns.’ They missed out on it by not taking Engineering 101. A business man who has to decide on how to spend capital is at risk of going out of business if he/she/it doesn’t understand the concept.
https://www.britannica.com/money/diminishing-returns
This would be an excellent article if it simply focused on the pause, which for reasons I will never understand, does not get very much coverage at conservative websites. It should be the top article of every month. The lack of coverage at leftist websites is expected.
The best ammunition to refute CAGW scaremongering is the pause, despite the largest amount of CO2 emissions in any eight-year period in history, and a century of 100% wrong scary climate predictions (as the actual climate improved — but no one ever predicts good news for the climate).
That very important pause message gets diluted by including two other subjects here: Climate confuser games and Nut Zero. Both additional subjects are not covered well.
The climate confuser games are just wild guesses. But those guesses are usually biased by an unlikely RCP 8.5 CO2 growth rate scenario. And further biased by claiming the process will take 200 to 400 years. Such a long warming process means one can not refute the models by claiming they have been inaccurate for the past few decades.
It would make a lot more sense to present the climate confuser games with a reasonable RCP 4.5 CO2 growth rate scenario, and only for 70 years in the future, which would be the TCS wild guess. The TCS with RCP 4.5 is for about half the warming rate of the ECS with RCP 8.5. A climate howler named Zeke H. did an infamous analysis using TCS with RCP 4.5 to “prove” climate models were accurate. They did appear to be accurate from 1975 to 2015. But Zeke got sideswiped by the 2015 to 2023 pause, showing TCS with RCP4.5 was NOT as accurate as he claimed it was.
A good argument could be made that only eight years of UAH numbers is data mining and also a short trend that has no ability to predict the future climate. Both claims are true.
A stronger argument, in my opinion, can be made that this pause is solid evidence that CO2 is not the temperature control knob. We already knew that from the 1940 to 1975 period, but that era is generally ignored by Climate Howlers — they are too busy spinning scary fairy tales about the future climate, as if they could actually predict the future climate.
It was a mistake, in my opinion, for the article to morph from non-Fiction average temperature data, into the fictional world of climate confuser games … which are just leftist propaganda tools used to create climate fear, which is used to control people. And then we have an unnecessary wild guess prediction for Nut Zero.
As of today, over seven billion people live in nations that could not care less about CO2 emissions, including China and India. The most likely result of Nut Zero (my wild guess) is a modest slowdown in the growth of CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Since more CO2 in the atmosphere will cause more global warming, although not much warming with CO2 already above 400ppm, it is possible that global warming will continue.
The average temperature is affected by many climate variables, so CO2 can rise at a rapid rate, as it did from 2015 to 2023, and the average temperature can decline. Rising CO2 and declining temperatures also happened in 1940 to 1975.
.
1940 to 1975 was later arbitrarily “revised” to be a nearly flat temperature trend: Solid evidence of government bureaucrat science fraud.
Surface average temperature numbers for 2015 to 2023 will eventually be revised to show a rising temperature trend. Not UAH — UAH is arbitrarily rejected by governments, because they can not control the data.
The surface global average temperature is whatever government bureaucrats want to tell us it is. Their numbers do not have to represent reality, and they don’t represent reality from 1940 to 1975. And their numbers will be “revised” at will. long after the original measurements, if “revisions” better support the climate change narrative. That has already happened. Proving that climate change is mainly politics, not mainly science.
Mr Greene is, as usual, either inadvertently confused or deliberately confusing.
First, he complains that the head posting mentions two subjects: the new Pause and the infinitesimal global warming that would be prevented even if per impossibile the whole world were to attain net zero emissions by 2050. If all he had wished to read about was the Pause he could simply have stopped reading at the appropriate point.
Secondly, he wonders why other skeptical websites do not mention the Pause. One reason is that they do not have, as I do, a program that takes the data and automatically plots any desired period, automatically calculates the least-squares linear-regression trend and then plots that in its correct position on the graph.
This particular Pause is in any event probably nearing its end, since el Nino conditions are reasserting themselves. However, the existence of so many long Pauses in the recent temperature record is a useful method of demonstrating that global warming is not occurring at anything like the originally-predicted rate.
Thirdly, Mr Greene has overlooked the beauty of Socratic elenchus, the method in formal logic by which the head posting demonstrates that, if one accepts ad argumentum that the mainstream, midrange estimates of key climate quantities published by official climatology are correct, it follows that the answer to Senator Kennedy’s pertinent question is that if the U.S. actually achieved net zero emissions by 2050 global temperature would be only one-seventieth of a degree less than on business as usual, and that if the whole world achieved net zero less than a tenth of a degree of future warming would be prevented.
Fourthly, Mr Greene allows the usual suspects to get away with presenting multiple emissions scenarios as the bases for their predictions, so that regardless of outturn they can claim that on one scenario or another their predictions have been validated. The head posting takes a far more rigorous approach. It looks at the four original emissions scenarios in IPCC (1990) and then applies a straightforward test to establish that Scenario A, the business-as-usual prediction, is closest to reality and is, therefore, the scenario against which the predictive skill of official climatology should be judged. It is the Scenario-A-based midrange warming prediction of 0.3 K/decade, or 3 K/century, or 3 K equilibrium doubled-CO2 sensitivity, that continues to be the midrange prediction today. Yet in reality, as the UAH trend shows, the true decadal warming rate in the third of a century since 1990 is 0.136 K/decade.
Fifthly, Mr Greene says that taking only eight years’ temperature data (actually nearly nine years) is “data mining” or cherry-picking. No: as the head posting states, the end date is the present and the start date is the earliest date that gives a zero trend up to the present. It is what it is.
Sixthly, Mr Greene says one cannot extrapolate from the current zero trend and assume that trend will continue. Yet the head posting makes no assertion that the current zero trend will continue, and no assertion that the lengthening Pause has any predictive value.
Seventhly, Mr Greene says the head posting makes a “wild guess” about nut zero. Yet it makes no guesses at all. It takes mainstream, midrange data and simply calculates how much – or, rather, how very, very little – global warming would be prevented even if the whole world (or the United States on its own) actually went to net zero by 2050. And then it is shown, by a simple calculation, that every $1 billion spent on attempting to get to net zero would prevent only one ten-millionth of a degree of global warming by that year. Even if one fudged the numbers by as much as an order of to favor official climatology, it would not be at all worthwhile to do anything whatsoever about global warming, except to let it happen and enjoy the sunshine.
Eighthly, Mr Greene fails to realize how powerful is the demonstration that warming prevented even by global net zero would be infinitesimal as a way of drawing politicians’ attention to the absurdity of squandering hundreds of trillions on achieving practically nothing. I tried out this argument in Parliament the other day, compelling a true-believing MP to change his position on the basis that spending trillions to achieve a barely measurable change in global temperature was pointless, particularly at a time when the national debt is so absurdly out of control. The economic arguments are much easier for politicians to understand than the scientific arguments.
I didn’t have time to read this response but a short simple article on the pause would have been the best climate article in the world published today.
The other subjects included here dilute the very important pause. You say I should have stopped reading. I never stop reading an article if the beginning is good enough to recommend on my climate science blog. So I finished reading and I did recommend this article on my blog. You should have stopped writing and started a second article on the climate confuser games and Nut Zero.
Honest Climate Science and Energy Blog
I agree with almost everything you write but I don’t like too many subjects covered in one article. And I completely reject all climate predictions — humans can not predict the climate, and you are a human, so there is no logical reason to believe your predictions (even though they are more reasonable than most predictions), or for you to make predictions of the long term future climate.
The following statement is your speculation — nothing is “shown” or proven. No one knows how many trillions of dollars will be wasted on Nut Zero and no one knows how much Nut Zero will affect the climate.
To claim the answer is ‘SHOWN” by a “SIMPLE CALCULATION” is claptrap.
Not one person knows how much will be spent on Nut Zero, what it will accomplish, if anything, besides wasting money, or even whether the climate will be warmer or cooler in 100 years.
“And then it is shown, by a simple calculation, that every $1 billion spent on attempting to get to net zero would prevent only one ten-millionth of a degree of global warming by that year.”
The primary problem with climate change is wrong climate predictions stated with great confidence
The last thing we need is more climate predictions stated with great confidence, except my own 1997 prediction:
“The climate will get warmer, unless it gets colder”.
Nobel Prize pending
Mr Greene continues to miss the point. He should perhaps read an elementary textbook of logic. The head posting makes no predictions: however, it calculates and states, correctly, that if the relevant mainstream, midrange quantities supplied by official climatology and reproduced in facsimile in the head posting are correct the warming prevented by global net zero will be less than 0.1 K, the warming prevented by U.S. net zero will be less than 1/70th K, and the warming prevented by each $1 billion spent on attempts to attain net zero emissions will be less than one ten-millionth of a degree.
Even if one altered that result by an order of magnitude in the direction of what official climatology wants us to believe, it would still be pointless and cripplingly costly to attempt to get to net zero emissions.
If Mr Greene would prefer to substitute other values for those shown in the head posting, he is free to do so. But, like it or not, those are the midrange, mainstream values, from which the calculation in the head posting follows.
“The head posting makes no predictions: however, it calculates and states, correctly, that if the relevant mainstream, midrange quantities supplied by official climatology”
The average temperature numbers are non-fiction and important
The Nut Zero wild guess numbers are data free fictional predictions. and could be the subject of another article.
Mixing multiple non-fiction and fiction subjects in the same article is a writing error.
Nevertheless, I included your article on my list of 24 recommended climate and energy articles I read today in spite of my criticisms. It was the best article on the pause I could find. Also the only article on the pause I could find, and that disturbs me. The eight years and nine months without global warming, as the Climate Howler Global Whiners are more hysterical than ever, should be the headline on every conservative climate and energy website. This pause news should be in the mass media too — at least on the Tucker Carlson show. Honest Climate Science and Energy Blog: The best climate science and energy articles I read today, April 4, 2023
PS: I was really disappointed that you didn’t call me
a climate communis t
You are not understanding the post
If I did not understand the article, then it was poorly written
There is the pause subject
(non fiction, with data)
There is the Nut Zero subject
based on wild guess speculation
(fiction — no data)
The fiction and non-fiction should not have been combined in the same article.
if you think I didn’t understand the article, explain it to me in one or two sentences.
Foot, meet shotgun blast.
Please cite the peer-reviewed scientific paper that concluded that out of the 8 billion people on Earth, the criterion for deciding whether an article was “well” or “poorly” written is :
“Does Richard Greene understand it ?”
NB : I am aware that it wasn’t your intention, but with your lofty and condescending bald assertion that is exactly how you are coming across.
I wrote articles for 43 years as editor of the ECONOMIC LOGIC newsletter. I currently find and read 48 articles every morning to recommend on my blog. There are other articles I start reading and don’t finish. That’s four hours of reading articles every morning. That’s over 17,000 articles a year. I know the difference between a well written article and a poorly written article from my vast experience. Your experience is half vast.
I complement the good authors here and recommend their articles on my blog. I criticize those articles that could have been better. Monckton used to write a short article on the pause. It was perfect. Now he throws in everything but the kitchen sink.
I did not know that.
We are both, like the vast majority of posters here, (fully- or semi- …) anonymous.
How can you possibly “know” what my level of “experience” is … in any domain ?
This is exactly what linear regression does. Unless the underlying factors are known, all a regression tells you is what has already happened but never tells you what might happen. Any other conclusion is simply one’s mind fooling one into believing that the regression is an accurate predictor.
What one can take away from a pause is that CO2 is not the biggest nor the only factor determining temperature. Period. There are an unknown number of factors, all interacting that will determine what occurs in the future. Think chaos.
When leftists see the pause chart, they claim it is just a short term trend and a short term trend can’t be used to predict the future climate. Both claims are true. When I see the chart I note that CO2 is not the climate control knob, as already demonstrated in the 1940 to 1975 period. although with smaller CO2 emissions back then.
In fact, if you look back at the period since 1910, even a PRIOR 30 to 50 year climate trend was worthless for predicting (extrapolating) the climate in the NEXT 30 to 50 years. In fact, after 30 to 50 years of warming, you would be better off guessing the NEXT 30 to 50 years would NOT be a warming trend, and vice versa. Sort of a regression to the mean effect.
Please show the evidence suggesting this is a short term ”trend”
Climate is a 30 year or longer trend (average)
This chart is 8 years and 9 months
8 years and 9 months is a short term trend
If you are forecasting the inventory in your hardware store would you use a 30 year linear regression trend or a linear regression over the past 2-5 years?
Or even the last 12 months. Who cares what the store sold even a decade ago?
Ever since ASOS has been implemented land temps have been available on a sub-hour basis. Why has climate science not started doing actual integration on these curves to obtain a real 24 hour average? That could then be used to obtain a better recent depiction of what is happening.
There is no scientific excuse for retaining traditional methods while ignoring better and more accurate methods.
I raise all the prices by 25% and then announce a 25% off sale.
A ”term” is a fixed period. When the temps go up again the term will have ended.
When temperatures are in pause or even falling, it’s always because of short term climate cycles.
When temperatures are going up, it’s 100% because of CO2.
Amazing how climate cycles only cool for a short period, then go away until the next time when they cool for a short period.
“ I tried out this argument in Parliament the other day, compelling a true-believing MP to change his position on the basis that spending trillions to achieve a barely measurable change in global temperature was pointless,”
How were you able to do this since you are not a member of Parliament? In fact this statement would appear to breach the ‘cease and desist’ order by the Clerk of Parliaments telling you to stop implying that you are a member of the House of Lords.
“Phil.”, who posts here furtively so that he, she or it cannot be identified, here breaches the rules of this site by making an off-topic, personal attack.
The Clerk of the Parliaments who wrote that silly letter to me about a decade ago is no longer Clerk of the Parliaments. The current Clerk’s office has now tacitly accepted that I am indeed a Peer of the Realm and, thereby, a member of the House of Lords (albeit without the right to sit or vote).
My letters patent make it clear that I am entitled to “a seat, a vote and a voice”, and they have not been repealed. They can only be repealed by a special Act of Parliament. There has been no such special Act. They cannot be repealed by a general Act, such as the 1999 House of Lords Act. However, the courts will generally not intervene in the processes of Parliament, so, although the 1999 Act is illegal, there is no mechanism by which the illegality can be redressed.
I did indeed speak to an MP in Parliament some weeks ago, and he has now realized that his former position on the climate change question is untenable. Get over it.
However, the courts will generally not intervene in the processes of Parliament…
Yes, that is in the Bill of Rights, if I remember rightly, 1688, which has a clause excluding that. This was also the reason why the Supreme Court’s ruling on Johnson’s Prorogation struck many, including me, as being as legally improper as it was politically motivated.
““Phil.”, who posts here furtively so that he, she or it cannot be identified, here breaches the rules of this site by making an off-topic, personal attack.”
Actually you appear to be making the personal attack here.
I made no such attack, you claimed to have been asking questions in Parliament, I asked how you had done so since you have no status to be able to do so. Your letters patent does not entitle you to “a seat, a vote and a voice”, that would require a Monarch’s writ of summons, something you have never received. You are not a member of the House of Lords and you were told to stop claiming to be one over ten years ago, get over it yourself.
Butthurt
“Secondly, he wonders why other skeptical websites do not mention the Pause. One reason is that they do not have, as I do, a program that takes the data and automatically plots any desired period, automatically calculates the least-squares linear-regression trend and then plots that in its correct position on the graph.”
I’m sure most people who read this blog have such a program. It’s called Excel
However, it demonstrates clearly the poor correlation between the monotonic increase in CO2, and global temperatures short-term, suggesting that it is a spurious correlation. Who can explain why there isn’t better short-term correlation between the two? Do a little reading on spurious correlations. The best test for actual cause and effect relationships is differencing, or taking the first derivative, to see if the apparent correlation continues. Calling it “natural variability” is a cop out that doesn’t explain anything.
Mathematical mass turbation
Your comment is spurious
CO2 always inhibits cooling
That means the planet gets warmer than it would have been if more CO2 is added to the atmosphere. the effect may be small and harmless, but it exists.
But CO2 is NOT the only climate change variable.
My own list has nine.
Climate change is the NET result of EVERY climate change variable: Global regional and local variables.
There is no reason that any ONE climate change variable should be expected to “control the climate”, and no evidence that any ONE variable does that.
The following variables are likely to influence Earth’s climate:
1) Earth’s orbital and orientation variations
(aka planetary geometry)
2) Changes in ocean circulation
Including ENSO and others
3) Solar energy and irradiance,
including clouds, albedo, volcanic and manmade aerosols, plus possible effects of cosmic rays and extraterrestrial dust
4) Greenhouse gas emissions
5) Land use changes
(cities growing, logging, crop irrigation, etc.)
6) Unknown causes of variations of a
complex, non-linear system
7) Unpredictable natural and
manmade catastrophes
8) Climate measurement errors
(unintentional errors or deliberate science fraud)
9) Interactions and feedbacks,
involving two or more variables.
“That means the planet gets warmer than it would have been if more CO2 is added to the atmosphere. the effect may be small and harmless, but it exists.”
The warmer the planet gets the higher the rate of radiation becomes. That means it cools *more*. If the temperature at sunrise is 10C the rate of heat loss will be higher than if the temperature were 9C. It’s going to continue radiating at a higher level.
It’s not obvious how CO2 raising the minimum temperature will make the planet “warmer” other than raising the averages used by the climate alarmists.
A warmer TMIN results in a warmer average temperature
Seems like good news to me.
Senator Kennedy is no country bumpkin, even though I’m sure many of the East Coast Elite sniffily think so. He always comes through in these hearings by asking the most pertinent questions, those questions that the leftwing extremists either don’t have the cognitive ability to ask or the chops to ask. It might be that no one wants to know the answer about how much temperatures will be cut because it’s a pittance. Ask Lomborg.
We could do worse than having 534 others in Congress to sort out the issues like Kennedy does.
It takes a special person to fairly follow logic to its conclusion and act on it at the risk to his and his family’s social and economic wellbeing in the face of a mob that can and will cancel him. This Constitutional Republic has degenerated into mob rule by allowing special interests to subvert government actions in regards to longstanding Constitutional and legal interpretations.
My God! The various levels of government are now forcing presumably free citizens with Constitutionally protected rights to call men women and vice versa by the use of force under tyrannical laws. Supposedly free people are now being forced to sign “loyalty oaths” relating to race and sex in both government and private employment venues, describing how they have and will continue to overtly fight for Marxist DEI causes.
Regarding the costs, much as I think you are in the ballpark, we should avoid the same gigantic error/lie made by the warmistas and look at the cost compared to what we would otherwise do.
Going down the net zero path (which I regard as ludicrous based on the availability of raw materials to do so) we would save the cost of building alternative energy generation at the very least.
The tallying up of just one case costs then claiming it is the actual cost of going down that path is deceptive, dishonest and a habit to be damned.
An honest assessment of the costs would build the alternative, then reduce the cost of net zero by that amount.
We have a great case already, we don’t have to fall into the same deceptions the warmistas love to do.
In response to Dean S, the cost of net zero as given in the head posting is understated by at least half. The UK grid authority has estimated that just re-engineering the grid to get to net zero would cost $3.6 trillion, and the grid represents only a fifth of UK emissions, implying an $18 trillion total cost of UK net zero. Since the UK represents only 1% of global emissions, the global cost of net zero would be $1800 trillion. I have written that down to $900 trillion for the sake of caution. That is why each $1 billion spent on net zero would reduce global temperature by no more than – and probably a lot less than – one ten-millionth of a degree.
Dean, you miss the central point of Nut Zero: We must destroy existing, operating infrastructure with 40+ years of life remaining to replace it with infrastructure having lives of at least half that. The human, social (freedom-related) and economic costs are incalculably tremendous. Not all costs are monetary.
When we recognize that the effect of the present mild warming is net beneficial for at least a few degrees more than we have seen, it should be understood as the most expensive counterproductive boondoggle ever proposed in all of human history.
Holocene Climate Optimum
from 5000 to 9000 years ago
= at least +1 degree warmer than today,
claims the IPCC
But +1 degree warmer than today in the future
will be a climate emergency,
claims the IPCC
The IPCC contradicts itself.
The human race died out during the Holocene Climate Optimum, din’cha know?
And we will die out at +2.0 degrees C. too
At +1.5 degrees C., shoe soles will melt on asphalt roads,
so I am investing in asbestos sole shoes.
Monckton of Brenchley, thank you for this update and for highlighting the clarity with which Senator Kennedy posed his questions.
And yes, your computations show the insanity of “net zero” plainly, if only the message can get through the thick fog of confusion.
Mr Dibbell is right: Senator Kennedy is an ornament to the legislative process.
“The end date is the present; the start date is the farthest back one can reach and still find a zero trend. It is what it is.”
Always good to have the direction of time confirmed. I’ll have to bookmark this against the next person who insists that Lord Monckton’s pauses start at the present and end at the start point.
“The start and end dates of the New Pause are not cherry-picked.”
The start point is chosen as the furthest back one can go in order to find a zero trend. Choose a different start point and you can find a much faster rate of warming. Which one do you pick to illustrate your point?
Which one do you pick to illustrate your point?
Well, I guess if you ”picked” a different start point you would not have a zero trend. As the topic of this story is looking for a zero trend, then the start point that shows that, is the one you are looking for.
I don’t even know why I am even trying to answer your inane question.
Bellman, like the rest of the warmunists can’t find a reason to criticize starting with the most recent data and counting backwards in time. So they have to pretend that everything is cherry picking so that they can criticize it.
“As the topic of this story is looking for a zero trend, then the start point that shows that, is the one you are looking for.”
Exactly. You want to find a trend that supports your headline, so look for the starting point that will give you it.
Obtuseness profound…. Except going backwards from the present to find the point where a zero trend stops, is not a cherry pick as you infer.
Exactly. It is not a cherry ”pick” if there is only one cherry. I am beginning to think Bellman is blinded by his own obstinance. Very telling..
I was implying it. And he’s not finding where it stops, he’s finding where it starts.
No, he is finding how long it has lasted. He is not finding when it started or when it stops. He is just asking, if there is one, and its in effect now, how long has it been in effect for?
Perfectly reasonable question. Eg, accident rates seem to have levelled off. Really? Fr how long have they been flat. then?
“No, he is finding how long it has lasted. He is not finding when it started or when it stops.”
How on earth do you know how long has lasted if you don’t know when it started?
“Perfectly reasonable question. Eg, accident rates seem to have levelled off. Really? Fr how long have they been flat. then?”
A perfectly reasonable question and one you need to answer in a reasonable and skeptical way. First, are you sure accident rates have leveled off, or is it just the result on natural fluctuations in the data? Can you identify a consistent start point for this leveling off, or are you just going to look for the month that gives you the longest zero trend? Does your start point change each month? Does it produce an unexplained jump compared with the previous trend? Did anything happen around the time of your start point that could explain the leveling off?
“he’s finding where it starts.”
Yes, you poor mental midget..
By calculating backwards from NOW.
I keep asking, but what do you think “calculating backwards” actually means? Describe the algorithm and point out where the backwards part comes in. Then explain why this makes it any different to the process calculating forwards.
I can do it in either direction and I will always get the same result. If you want to find the start month which produces the longest non positive trend you have to test every month. If you start at the first month and work forwards you can stop as soon as you find a non-positive trend. If you start at the end and work backwards you have to keep going until you find a positive trend, but you then have to keep going back further in case that positive trend isnt a blip.
Bellman,
What does counting backward really mean? A lot actually.
Recent data should be weighed much more than data from 100 years ago when determining what will happen tomorrow. Where do you think the phrase, “What have you done for me lately” comes from?
Look, I’m not saying upcoming months will remain at exactly the trend line CMB shows. However, it will take a large change to end the pause in one month. It will take several more months.
I keep seeing “wait for El Nino”. That very well may raise global temps. But, you then have to ask what is the mechanism that raises ocean temps to an El Nino level. Is it CO2? Highly unlikely. Then why the rejoicing when it comes and raises global temps? It proves nothing by itself and only shows that the global temp is unsatisfactory for predicting why there is CAGW.
“Recent data should be weighed much more than data from 100 years ago when determining what will happen tomorrow.”
As I keep asking Tim, what weighting function do you think Monckton is using?
Nobody is trying to predict tomorrow’s temperature. Nobody claims the pause trend is something that will predict the future, Monckton certainly doesn’t claim that. The only prediction being made by Monckton is based on the unweighted trend since 1978.
If you weigh the data so that more recent data is weighed higher, then you are likely to get a slightly faster warming rate.
“However, it will take a large change to end the pause in one month. It will take several more months.”
Agreed. It could last for years. If it goes on long enough it might actually mean something, and that’s when you can start to ask questions about it. So far the only question I have about the period is why it’s so much warmer than would have been expected given the previous trend.
“I keep seeing “wait for El Nino”. That very well may raise global temps. But, you then have to ask what is the mechanism that raises ocean temps to an El Nino level. Is it CO2?”
No. As far as I’m concerned it’s just a semi-random fluctuation in the long term trend. Global warming doesn’t cause El Niños, but it may mean that the peak of an equivalent El Niño will be higher, and La Niñas will not be so cold.
“Then why the rejoicing when it comes and raises global temps?”
Why would anyone rejoice. Most people don;lt want higher temperatures.
“It proves nothing by itself…”
Exactly But you can;t have it both ways. You cannot say we should ignore an increased warming rate caused by a trend ending just after a spike, whilst at the same time saying a trend that is lower because it starts with spike is proving something.
It would be interesting to see if the long term trend, or the pause was a better predictor of the following month or months. At present though their forecasts are nearly identical. Probably other the cause of the pause, the pause trend would have been more successful, but only because it would have predicting warmer temperatures.
You are approaching the point of being laughable. Why are you so concerned with start and end points? The article demonstrates the ongoing absence of global warming over consecutive years. How else should it be done?
“Why are you so concerned with start and end points?”
Because when looking at such a short period the choice of start point can mean the difference between zero trend, accelerated warming or dramatic cooling, even though you are using practically the same data. Any inference you draw from a carefully selected start date is likely to be meaningless unless you can back it up with a good reason for selecting that point. “It gives me the trend I was looking for” is not a good reason.
“The article demonstrates the ongoing absence of global warming over consecutive years.”
Except it doesn’t. As I’ve pointed out before, the overall trend has actually increased since the start of the pause. The zero trend is just a consequence of starting just before a large rise in temperature.
“How else should it be done?”
With a degree of skepticism. First state your hypothesis and then see if there is sufficient evidence in the data to reject the null-hypothesis. For example, if you are claiming that the warming rate after 2014 has declined, let alone stopped, you need to show that the trend over that period is significantly different to the previous trend.
Or you can use statistical techniques to discover the best candidate for a change in the trend, but that still requires showing that the change is significant.
Because when looking at such a short period the choice of start point can mean the difference between zero trend, accelerated warming or dramatic cooling
LOL…. BUT THERE IS NO CHOICE… How thick do you have to be to not see that a zero trend from the present has to stop at a single point of time in the past!!!
The choice is to believe that this one starting point is the one that matters. That it is telling you something important and worth writing a length blog post about, every month.
Bellman thinks that if you backtrack a dead deer’s path to find where he was shot that you are cherry picking the point at which he was shot. I’m *not* kidding. He actually stated this on an earlier thread on the same topic.
A clue to the usefulness of Monckton’s dead deer strategy is that he comes up with a different answer every month.
“Time marches on!”
But dead deer don’t.
Either Bellman doesn’t understand simple logic, or he’s hoping everyone else doesn’t.
Bellman is a believer. No amount of logic can penetrate.
Either that, or I understand simple statistics.
“Figures don’t lie, but liars can figure.” From somebody calling himself Mark Twain.
That might be your opinion of Monckton, but I couldn’t possibly comment.
It’s our opinion of you. Monckton is using your math…you don’t like the results.
That’s libelous. Monckton is quite capable of using his own maths without my help.
Your climate math indeed 🙂
The same maths Monckton purports to use.
There was a time when he understood the dangers of selecting the start point of a graph to make it go in the direction you wanted. But as so often he only sees this as a problem when others do it.
You just refuse to understand that backtracking to find a start date is *NOT* choosing a start date.
Do you have a mental block of some kind? Or is it just a lack of real world experience?
If you want me to understand what you are claiming, you need to exp,lain yourself better, rather than repeating the same insults. Your distinction between “finding” and “choosing” is just philosophical nit-picking.
If I want to choose the best cherry I first have top find it. If I find the best cherry I have to choose to pick it.
No nit-picking.
You find a dead deer. You can choose different spots to see if you can find where the blood trail starts or you can backtrack from the deer to find out where the blood trail starts.
One is “choosing” and one is “finding”. And your fevered mind can’t seem to distinguish between them!
“You find a dead deer.”
Which is your first problem. You haven’t found a deer. That’s what you are trying to establish. It’s your hypothesis that there exists a dead deer, and the purpose of the statistical analysis is to see if it is probable that such a deer exists.
“One is “choosing” and one is “finding”.”
Your distinction is that “choosing” means only looking at few spots, where as “finding” means looking at every spot and choosing the best one. Hence, finding is just a more careful way of choosing the best point.
If you are tracking a blood trail that’s a good thing. Cherry-picking is often what you want to do – find an optimal point. But if you are trying to find a trend in fluctuating data, it’s bad thing. It will always give you the trend you want whether it’s meaningful or not.
If you want to find an optimal spot for a change in trend, you need to do it objectively. (Remember that kink stuff you were so keen on a little while ago.) But even then, just because you’ve found an optimal spot doesn’t mean it’s significant.
But if you don’t like calling it a cherry-pick, let’s call it the start-point fallacy. As a well-known mathematician puts it
“If you choose your start point and your endpoints carefully “
So what? Who is *choosing the start point? If you use the last data point as the beginning then you haven’t “chosen” anything. You are just using the last data point. And then you FIND the start point.
Go away troll. You are just making a jackass out of yourself pretending you can’t tell the difference between the two scenario’s.
“Who is *choosing the start point?”
Lord Monckton. “the start date is the farthest back one can reach and still find a zero trend.” You can’t get much more careful than looking at every point until you get the one you want.
“If you use the last data point as the beginning then you haven’t “chosen” anything.”
You are not using the last point as the beginning. The trend starts at the beginning, the very point you have carefully chosen.
Here’s what Monckton says of it
In that case he’s talking of his own set of graphs – keeping the end point at the present, but selecting shorter starting points, 4 or 8 years.
If a linear regression is valid for going in a forward direction in time. What is wrong with doing a linear regression backward in time to find a pause.
You’ve already stated you don’t expect a forward regression to be a set in stone prediction. Okay. Why would finding a flat regression going backwards in time from NOW be invalid? It is using data that HAS ALREADY OCCURRED.
There is no prediction or guessing involved.
A regression toward the past can be used to assess how factors might be interacting. Your whole argument is specious and without merit.
“If a linear regression is valid for going in a forward direction in time. What is wrong with doing a linear regression backward in time to find a pause.”
Nothing whatsoever. There is no time in a linear regression, just a correlation between a dependent and an independent variable. In a time series the independent variable is time, but it has no direction. You can enter the data in any order you want, the regression will be the same.
Maybe you mean that you could work out the regression one point at a time, going backwards? Yopu could do that, and maybe it would be slightly more efficient than simply calculating the regression form a different starting point each time, but given the time it takes to just repeat the function for each possible starting point is less than a second, it doesn’t seem worth the effort.
In any case the problem still remains. If you calculate each possible start point going backwards, how do you know when you have found the best starting point.
All your trends may be negative. Then you find a start date that is positive. But you can’t stop there, because going back a few more years might result in the trend turning negative again, and the object is to find the earliest starting point.
“It is using data that HAS ALREADY OCCURRED.”
All the data is data that has already occurred. It doesn’t matter what direction you are thinking time is running.
I was just going to sit here and watch you blokes go at it hammer and tongs again, but…
You might like to reconsider or at leas rephrase that. The order is critical in a time series. It would be something else otherwise.
Yep. Isn’t iteration wonderful? Just iteratively work back through the data set with your OLS regression, and successively flag the earliest point which gives a non-positive trend until the data set is exhausted.
It’s all just fun with regression.
Given that the data set is quite noisy, there are any number of time series which can be played with. I particularly enjoy the trough-to-trough and trough-to-peak examples to “prove” that the slope is increasing, the “longest pause”, and “longest decline” which can be “teased out”.
There is probably much mirth and merriment to be gleaned from playing with comparing variance for various equal time periods as well.
“The order is critical in a time series.”
Could you explain why. I keep hearing about the magical properties of time running backwards, but nobody explains exactly what they mean by it.
In this cas Jim Gorman seems to be talking about the calculation of the trend line, but there is no order in that. It’s a simple calculation comparing individual time stamps to their specific data.
Obviously, if you reverse the order you will invert the slope, but that’s not what you wrote. Entering the data “in any order you want” implies it can be randomly ordered.
“Entering the data “in any order you want” implies it can be randomly ordered.”
Which is what I intended to say. By the data I mean pairs of time and temperature. Look at the equation for a least square linear regression
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinary_least_squares
There is no order. Just the sums and products of the variables.
Maybe what you and Jim have in mind is the circumstance where you just look at the sequence of temperatures as a time series, and the x values are just derived from the order of the values. In that case, yes you need to enter the values in the correct order. And in that case you could enter them in reverse order and get a reversed slope. I’ve really no idea why you would do this or what point it would make. All it would mean is that any positive trend becomes negative and any negative one becomes positive.
It certainly isn’t what Monckton is doing.
Cheez, all I meant was start at the present and put entries in from the past until the regression line was no longer flat.
You don’t even need to use a date, a simple series starting at 1 will suffice. It is the order that counts. The dates tell you nothing except the order that the y-values occured. As I have said, the “time” doesn’t determine the dependent value. It is worthless except as a method to order the data.
It is a time series, not a linear regression of a functional relationship for god’s sake.
Almost, but not quite. There is also an assumption of equal time steps.
Equal increments on the x-axis, such as integers will suffice as long as the data on the y-axis is collected in equal time increments.
You also need to check the scale. You don’t want to be treating the rate of change per day as rate of change per year.
“””””as long as the data on the y-axis is collected in equal time increments.”””””
This is all that is required to obtain an equation for a linear regression.
You can label the x-axis anything you want. Integers, days, centuries, muffins, frogs, etc. The slope of the line will be (y units)/x units.
Why do you think we say it is not a way to define a causal relationship. The x axis is basically meaningless. The values are only useful to indicate how many intervals of data there are.
Yes, provided those x-axis increments represent equal time steps. One example might be daily data where no obs were made on the Sabbath or public holidays. You have to handle the missing data somehow.
“Cheez, all I meant was start at the present and put entries in from the past until the regression line was no longer flat.”
Good. That’s what I was guessing when I said “Maybe you mean that you could work out the regression one point at a time, going backwards?”
But I still don’t see why you would do that when it takes no time to just work out the trend to the present starting at each point. And if you did do that you would not be getting the correct start date, if the trend goes positive at some point but returns back to negative at an earlier point.
And I still don’t see why you think this makes any difference to the idea that the start point is carefully chosen. If you get the same answer searching forward as backwards, how is one legitimate and the other a statistical lie?
“You don’t even need to use a date, a simple series starting at 1 will suffice.”
Yes, that’s what I wondered in my comment to Old Cockney. It’s just that if you do that backwards you will get the reverse trend, warming becomes cooling, cooling becomes warming. Again, no idea why this is regarded as a sensible alternative to just running the lm function for each point.
“It is a time series, not a linear regression of a functional relationship for god’s sake.”
Nobody is claiming it’s a functional relationship. If it were, then the claim of a pause would be easy to test. It’s the fact that the time series goes up and down that makes it more difficult to know when and if it has sped up or slowed down.
‘ang on there me old china. I weren’t born within earshot of the Bow bells.
Sorry, cock.
That’s even worse.
I can’t stop laughing now, bugger you.
It’s down to a wry smile now.
Well done, sir.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_series:
But, yes, in this case it is essentially OLS regression and pairwise data could be entered randomly. Computationally, that is extremely inefficient, but it could be done.
What CMoB is doing, and it is correct, is starting at the current date/temp par and incrementally prepending 1 earlier pair of data points, then holding the lowest dated pair which has a non-positive slope.
Oh, and I should have noted that it is essentially a subsetting exercise, where the contiguous subset is expanded by 1 element until it reaches the full set.
OLS regression is exactly what Monckton uses. I don’t really care about efficiency given my laptop can give me the trend for every starting month in UAH in about 0.3 seconds.
“What CMoB is doing, and it is correct, is starting at the current date/temp par and incrementally prepending 1 earlier pair of data points, then holding the lowest dated pair which has a non-positive slope.”
Has he ever said that’s what he’s doing?
Bloody Java programmers 🙁
Not if I can help it.
That’s a point in your favour.
Gosling’s concept was good, but it hasn’t quite worked out.
We’re already way off topic, so why not a bit more?
What are your preferred languages , and do you actually get to use them professionally? A lot of places mandate a particular language set and coding style.
Professionally I was mainly working in C/C++. For fun and personal use my favorite at the moment is Kotlin. But for most of the stuff I do here I’m using R, which certainly isn’t my favorite language but is the most useful for testing ideas out on the fly and generating graphs.
I gravitated into system-level work (system admin, systems integration, network programming, systems architecture) so tended to work on remote management of distributed server networks rather than userland programming.
Working with puppet was interesting, because that’s a functional language and a nice change from the usual procedural languages.
I really should take a look at R – that seems to be quite good for statistical work.
I am not a fan of Java. I had to learn it in college, but that’s as far as I went. In my early days I actually had to maintain a custom analog-to-digital converter written in Pascal. Those days are long gone. Good times 🙂
Java as a language is a close relative of C++ (may Stroustrup rot in the 6th circle). It tends to be the VM implementations which cause problems.
Pascal is nice, but a bit limited. It’s a good learning language to introduce CS students to the Algol family of languages before being dropped into the mysteries of C. Wirth did some nice work – Modula-2 is interesting, but I haven’t paid much attention to his more recent work.
Despite ribbing bellman about efficiency, I’ve done a lot of Perl for smaller tasks, especially those involving regex handling.
Perl can do a lot. I used it in the 80’s to create and analyze a database consisting of all the interconnecting trunk groups among central offices is a state so usage forecasters could use to validate their forecast. It isn’t the fastest at doing many tasks but it will do the tasks.
Perl is great. It was our mainstay for analysis work and a lot of the init scripts and cron jobs. Python seems to have largely taken over from Perl now. If only Guido hadn’t set technology back 40 years by making indentation levels count.
The in-built regex handling is just the shot for many tasks, and associative arrays/hashes are indispensible for a lot of tasks.
Some things are so obvious that they don’t need to be explicitly stated.
Still, it’s a fair cop. It’s the obvious approach, but non-CS people can write some horribly convoluted code – just look at the “Harry README” code.
Now that’s not even cute. Play again some other time, Bellman.