by Judith Curry
But since at least 1988, climate scientists have warned that climate change would bring, in general, increased heat waves, more droughts, more sudden downpours, more widespread wildfires and worsening storms. In the United States, those extremes are happening here and now. – Seth Borenstein (AP)
Seth Borenstein has an (AP) article entitled: This U.S. summer is ‘what global warming looks like.‘ He interviewed more than 15 scientists in preparing this article (including me). Here is what some of the scientists had to say:
“This is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level,” said Jonathan Overpeck, professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona. “The extra heat increases the odds of worse heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfire. This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about.”
Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in fire-charred Colorado, said these are the very record-breaking conditions he has said would happen, but many people wouldn’t listen. So it’s I told-you-so time, he said.
As recently as March, a special report an extreme events and disasters by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of “unprecedented extreme weather and climate events.” Its lead author, Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University, said Monday, “It’s really dramatic how many of the patterns that we’ve talked about as the expression of the extremes are hitting the U.S. right now.”
“What we’re seeing really is a window into what global warming really looks like,” said Princeton University geosciences and international affairs professor Michael Oppenheimer. “It looks like heat. It looks like fires. It looks like this kind of environmental disasters.”
Oppenheimer said that on Thursday. That was before the East Coast was hit with triple-digit temperatures and before a derecho – an unusually strong, long-lived and large straight-line wind storm – blew through Chicago to Washington. The storm and its aftermath killed more than 20 people and left millions without electricity. Experts say it had energy readings five times that of normal thunderstorms.
Fueled by the record high heat, this was one of the most powerful of this type of storm in the region in recent history, said research meteorologist Harold Brooks of the National Severe Storm Laboratory in Norman, Okla. Scientists expect “non-tornadic wind events” like this one and other thunderstorms to increase with climate change because of the heat and instability, he said.
Such patterns haven’t happened only in the past week or two. The spring and winter in the U.S. were the warmest on record and among the least snowy, setting the stage for the weather extremes to come, scientists say.
Since Jan. 1, the United States has set more than 40,000 hot temperature records, but fewer than 6,000 cold temperature records, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Through most of last century, the U.S. used to set cold and hot records evenly, but in the first decade of this century America set two hot records for every cold one, said Jerry Meehl, a climate extreme expert at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. This year the ratio is about 7 hot to 1 cold. Some computer models say that ratio will hit 20-to-1 by midcentury, Meehl said.
“In the future you would expect larger, longer more intense heat waves and we’ve seen that in the last few summers,” NOAA Climate Monitoring chief Derek Arndt said.
The 100-degree heat, drought, early snowpack melt and beetles waking from hibernation early to strip trees all combined to set the stage for the current unusual spread of wildfires in the West, said University of Montana ecosystems professor Steven Running, an expert on wildfires.
While at least 15 climate scientists told The Associated Press that this long hot U.S. summer is consistent with what is to be expected in global warming, history is full of such extremes, said John Christy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He’s a global warming skeptic who says, “The guilty party in my view is Mother Nature.”
But the vast majority of mainstream climate scientists, such as Meehl, disagree: “This is what global warming is like, and we’ll see more of this as we go into the future.”
SB: So might call this an I told you so moment? What do you think?
JC: Extreme events definitely focus people’s attention on climate change, and a local heat wave can certainly do this. By the same token, the cold snow winter of 2010/2011 made people question greenhouse warming. Also, think Hurricane Katrina, which was another focusing event in the US for global warming
SB: What about natural variability? Are other scientists just making too much of what is normal weather variability?
JC: We saw these kinds of heat waves in the 1930’s, and those were definitely not caused by greenhouse gases. Weather variability changes on multidecadal time scales, associated with the large ocean oscillations. I don’t think that what we are seeing this summer is outside the range of natural variability for the past century. In terms of heat waves, particularly in cities, urbanization can also contribute to the warming (the so-called urban heat island effect).
Attribution?
Well, the good news on this one is that no one(?) is trying to attribute this heat wave to global warming. Here is what the recent IPCC Special Report on Extreme Events (discussed previously on this thread) has this to say about heat waves:
In many (but not all) regions over the globe with sufficient data, there is medium confidence that the length or number of warm spells or heat waves has increased.
News bulletin: heat waves happen, when meteorological blocking patterns are set up. There is no linkage between blocking patterns and AGW that I am aware of. I suspect that there may be blocking pattern linkages with the multidecadal climate regimes (e.g. PDO, AMO); I wrote a proposal a few years ago on this but it didn’t get funded.
CFAN Forecast Synopsis – Heat Waves
Here is a freebie, CFAN‘s latest monthly outlook for the U.S.:
Synopsis – The big story during the month of July will be the persistence of temperatures well-above (4-8F) normal stretching from the Midwest through the lower Mississippi River valley. Although temperatures are forecast to moderate for the period 7/9 – 7/11, a second heat wave is forecast to build into the Midwest by the end of Week 2 and last through at least Week 3.
Coastal populated regions of the Northeast are forecast to reach near the triple digits by this weekend but should see more seasonal temperatures by the end of Week 1. During Week 2, warmer than normal temperatures (2-4F) are forecast to build into the Northeast, and these above normal conditions may last through Week 3. In the Northwest, warmer than normal temperatures are forecast to develop by the end of Week 1 and should reach their peak value of 4-8F above normal during the period 7/12 – 7/16.
Weak tropical climate patterns remain in place, suggesting lower than normal forecast confidence beyond Week 2 for most regions of the U.S. However, forecast confidence continues to be higher than normal in the Midwest and Southeast due to the expected persistence of large-scale blocking patterns across the Central U.S.
JC summary: So is this what global warming looks like? Well, this is what the 1930’s and 1950’s looked like. I have stated many times before that I think the 1950’s (warm AMO, cool PDO) are a good analogue for current weather patterns and extreme events. The good news in this latest episode is that no one seems to be trying to attribute extreme events to AGW; merely saying ‘this is what global warming looks like.
“Well, the good news on this one is that no one(?) is trying to attribute this heat wave to global warming. ” — Dr. Trenberth is, apparently.
whoa, did I ever speak too soon about no one attributing this to agw, see:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/06/30/509246/nbc-meteorologist-on-record-heat-wave-if-we-didnt-have-global-warming-we-wouldnt-see-this/
Dr. C,
YOu had to know it was only a matter of time. And watch out for later this summer. You and Joe Bastardi and others have already pointed out that the “1950′s (warm AMO, cool PDO) are a good analogue for current weather patterns and extreme events.” This, conditions are ripe for an economically catastrophic east coast hurricane. Another Hurricane Carol with all the sea coast development we’ve seen in the decades since would be big trouble to say the least.
As I’ve done many times in the past (no doubt to your great annoyance), I urge you to think about making a public statement. The NYT’s would likely print an op-ed from you, one of the few moderate scientists they’d even consider publishing…
1. Joe Romm’s scary headlines,‘If We Did Not Have Global Warming, We Wouldn’t See This,’ was falsified by my own experiences in 1956-59 as an undergraduate student in Pittsburg, KS (SE Kansas).
We had summer temperatures of 115-118 F for 3-4 successive days.
2. Totalitarian governments use propaganda and other techniques to promote misleading information in order to control and manipulate others. If you cannot see that in everyday AGW propaganda like Joe’s headlines, read about Stalin’s rise to power in the old USSR or the story of Napoleon’s rise to power in George Orwell’s book, “Animal Farm.”
http://www.gradesaver.com/animal-farm/
3. After the Second World War ended, the United Nations was established on 24 Oct 1945, to:
_ a.) “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and ”
_ b.) “reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, . . .” [First sentence in Preamble to the UN Charter, 1945].
_c.) by-pass the fundamental human rights, dignity and worth of the human person, guaranteed by national constitutions and other documents like the US Declaration of Independence?
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/
4. George Orwell wrote another novel in 1948, suggesting how a different form of totalitarianism might be established in the aftermath of WWII, “1984,” manipulating information in the manner of Climategate emails and documents and using electronic surveillance of people in the manner used today.
http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/
5. On the eve of the 236th celebration of the Declaration of Independence (1776-2012), I urge Seth Borenstein to read about abrupt changes in scientific dogma on the cores of stars and atoms [1-2] after WWII to see for himself if science was compromised in the manner described in George Orwell’s book, “1984”
Oliver K. Manuel
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-418
1. Fred Hoyle, Home Is Where the Wind Blows, [University Science Books, 1994, 441 pages], pages 153-154
2. Hideki Yukawa, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (1946); Introduction to the Theory of Elementary Particles (1948) http://www.nndb.com/people/759/000099462/
Today’s science news reports about:
1. Observations of the Sun [1], and
2. Theoretical models of the cosmos [2] confirm loss of
3. Basic principles of science after 1945 and our
4. Constitutional rights after 1945, for reasons documented here:
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-418
References:
1. Anthony Watts, “Another regime change – this time in solar data” (4 July 2012) http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/04/another-regime-change-indication-this-time-in-solar-data/
2. CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Announcement, “Its A Boson! ” (4 July 2012) http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-unveil-milestone-higgs-boson-hunt-044513533.html
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
http://www.omatumr.com
1. The problem: Collusion between politicians and:
a.) China in the US http://tinyurl.com/6ml4qzt
b.) Bankers in Europe http://tinyurl.com/cjx26ym
c.) Nuclear reactor owners in Japan http://tinyurl.com/799629k
d.) Former dictators in the Middle East http://tinyurl.com/6t553rj
e.) Postmodern scientists in the United States http://tinyurl.com/7k7vzdu
2. The solution: US Declarations of Independence
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/
“. . . whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and
To institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
re; 1950’s AMDO weather patterns
Exatamundo! I obsess over drought and flood because I live on the shore of large reservior with a variable level that routinely goes up and down 30 feet per season. My shoreline has a slope of about 10% and I have a floating dock and boats in the water that must be regularly adjusted according to lake level. When the water is low I also tend to leave stuff near the waterline, which advances and retreats by as much as a few hundred feet in one season, that has to be moved in a hurry in case of flooding rains. I’ve seen the lake rise a foot an hour for 36 hours straight after a heavy rain which means the shoreline is advancing inward 10 feet per hour. It can get hectic. As droughts move the waterline out farther than any time in the past I’ve owned the place there are surprises popping up out of the water like big rocks and stumps which I must make sure don’t damage my floating stuff, interfere with where the boarding ramp meets the shore, get in the way of getting passengers cars to the shoreline, and so forth. So I’m keenly aware of lake level patterns in history because history tends to repeat itself. I noticed several years ago that the lake level is repeating the pattern from 60 years ago. So the 1950’s observation is spot on as far as I’m concerned.
Cheer up, Judith.
Some even attributed the “increased propensity” of cold winter storms to (you guessed it) anthropogenic global warming:
http://www.livescience.com/11703-climate-change-expect-monster-winter-storms.html
(Break out the hockey sticks…)
Max
I think I have what they are saying. This isn’t caused by global warming but if it were this is what it would look like.
Kind of like a lawyer asking a improper question and then withdrawing it, because all s/he really wanted was to put the idea in the jury’s mind.
+1
Yeah, and then there’s the ‘told you so’ meme. When somewhat extreme events occur a tame PA journalist is there to ask:
Well, is it a told you so moment or not? Everyone apart from Judith Curry had, very reluctantly, to our great surprise, to agree with the questioner that it was. Not that they pointed to specific warnings they had made about the US weather in 2012 – and all the failed warnings, come to that – no no. But they told us so and we didn’t listen.
Let’s have a recap of that. What did they tell us? That we would regret it if we didn’t listen to them. And here we are – even me in the UK – and what are we experiencing but that regret?
Not about anyhing very specific … and that’s the great thing about a told you so moment in climate science.
I’ve told you the whole thing now but I bet you don’t listen.
Yes, it does snow more when earth is warm and that is why earth does cool. It does snow less when earth is cool and that is why earth does warm.
Last Winter was fierce in much of the northern hemisphere. Winter before last was fierce in much of the northern hemisphere. The coming winter will be fierce in the much of the northern hemisphere. When the oceans are warm and the Arctic is open the snow monster is turned on and the snows fall that do cause earth to cool. Look at the DATA!
Completely incorrect. The long-term warming and cooling of the Earth is related to Milankovitch cycles, which (for several million years at least) have been the initial forcing agent of the planet’s entry into or exit from glacial periods. Though glacial periods are cooler (and hence we get less snowfall accumulation during the winters) they also have cooler summers and we get less melting, and so, in general, glaciers grow. So, during warmer periods, when the oceans are warmer and the air is warmer, more water can evaporate from the ocean and the warmer air can carry that moisture to be deposited as snow (in the winter months).
For example, during a warmer period, you might get 100 inches of snow that falls in the winter in an area that could see glacial growth, but all 100 inches melt in the ensuing warmer summer. During a cooler period, you might get only 50 inches of snow that falls during the winter, but the summer is cooler and maybe only 40 inches melt before the winter comes again– thus you get glacial growth.
@@ The Skeptical Warmist (aka R. Gates) | July 3, 2012 at 7:27 pm needs correcting
Dear Warmist, by Milankovich’ wobbling of the planet misinterpretation; the WHOLE planet doesn’t get warmer or colder – some places get warmer / other colder. Imagine if the north poll is in Montreal – the whole set-up changes. Imagine you are facing a big campfire on a very cold night – then turn your side, or your back to face the fire -> you will be receiving the same amount of heat – just different parts of your body will be warmer – the previous warmer parts will become cooler. Wobbling of the planet confused many shonky ”researchers” for the past 150years; every time they find imprint of warmer than today on some place = they declared warmer the WHOLE planet. Then they find some place imprint of glaciers; where is warm climate now – they declared, ice age on the WHOLE planet. It’s the opportunistic profession. Overall GLOBAL temperature is always the same
Yes, your rolling snake eyes five times in a row had nothing to do with the loaded dice.
Eli
Would you translate that into English?
Thanks.
Max
I think he was saying that this heat wave is a sign of global warming. Of course to warmists everything is a sign or compatible with global warming.
And to deniers nothing is a sign or is compatible with AGW.
True skeptics allow for the possibility that it could be.
Nah, RG, a true skeptic knows that the likelihood of any warming being from a gas increasing by .0001 parts of the atmosphere vs all the other possible reasons for variations in the climate is very small.
Your analogy is flawed. The appropriate analogy is thousands of people rolling dice simultaneously……….how many times will snake eyes appear per day……..per month…….per year?
That’s only a one in sixty million chance or thereabouts, so assuming enough of the world’s population are rolling dice quite frequently, it must happen quite a lot. There’s nothing particularly unusual about a pattern of 1,1 1,1 1,1 1,1 1,1 on a pair of dice – it’s as likely as the unremarkable 2,3 2,5 1,4 4,3 6,6 pattern for example – basically, any combination of five dice throws is equally unlikely (assuming you are tracking the individual numbers, not the total).
So you need to show the current weather patterns are actually more than equally unlikely – you can’t just assume a particular pattern shows anything without showing that the pattern is not just random.
And remember, an accusation of fixed dice is very serious – depending on your environs it is a challenge to someone’s honour or an accusation of criminal behaviour. Either ways, not a sane comparison to a disagreement over how to interpret the significance of weather events.
In the week of March 8-14 2012 more than 1200 record highs were observed in the United States. That, is a bit tougher.
And if you had double the number of weather stations you probably would have had over 2000 record highs.
Basically the entire country except the SW, and even there. Now, of course, you can point to an equal number of boxcars in the same period. Point is highs have been clobbering lows in this century.
It’s gotten warmer. Of course the highs have clobbered the lows. Why would you expect any different?
Or one location setting 13 high records this year, not counting ties which go to the first record, without setting a low record this year. At least one record high each month except for Febuary.
13 records in 187 days is not a heat wave, that’s a 7% chance of setting a record high each day. That’s what loaded dice look like.
And it looks like one or two more days of plus 100 F heat to go, so we have the third longest string (8) of 100 plus days and a chance to tie tomorrow for second (9)(1936). Won’t break 1936 for first (13).
what, that extreme weather is more likely with higher temps? Suggest you look at two things if you believe that: 1) historical data for earth, which shows the opposite and 2) nasa data on gas giants, which shows colder = more extreme. Go on – take a look.
Yes, and there are other examples out there. Judy, how do you get around the copyright issue when you republish the entire NYT article? I was told once by the NYT in no uncertain terms that was a no-no, and I limit now to links and excerpts.
The argument for fair use is that you are posting a criticism. But wholesale reposting for the purpose of criticism is a grey area. Your thoughts?
Say, Anthony – can you think if any examples where bloggers post stories about cold snaps as if to imply that they disprove theories about AGW?
Or perhaps stories about Canadian harp seals in New England as if that refutes data about changes in animal behavior that’s consistent with a warming climate?
Can you think of any?
Looking for ideas to steal to start a new blog??
The copyright police have a big job. You don’t get caught mostly for once, but serial offenders get noticed sooner or later.
Taa
After checking out the link all that came to mind is
“Oh my God we’re all gonna die!”
But then I remembered that’s happening no matter what. (Unless of course the rapture ahappens and you happen to be one of the lucky ones. Not clear if that’s considered dying. Don’t think so.)
sooner
When did the topic change to obamacare?
CBS news will answer this question for us tonight, or in about 5 minutes.
Hey, do I get brownie points for posting a link to that article a couple days ago on the 6/29 Week in Review thread? And is there a Climate Etc. store where I can redeem the points? Like for a “We Are Doomed” t-shirt?
Here’s another weather = climate piece. This one an editorial in the LA Times.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-adv-global-warming-20120702,0,4512793.story
curryja | July 3, 2012 at 3:32 pm |
While attribution is difficult, and the data improvised, by the standards of meteorology it’s certainly possible for the claim made in the article to be acceptable.
What’s the confidence level associated with most meteorological claims? 50%? Less?
I’ll wait for the peer-reviewed literature and some well-audited Bayesian methodology before I pass judgement on this claim one way or the other.
Dr. Tim Ball counters the alarms by observing: Current Global Weather Patterns Normal Despite Government and Media Distortions June 28, 2012
Ball provides figures showing the change in Rosby waves.
At IceCap.us, Joe D’Aleo examines Is there a derecho in here? (Jul 01, 2012)
Anthony Watts reviewed derecho’s and graphed their frequency.
PS Steve Goddard observes: The Four Hottest US Junes Occurred With CO2 Below 350 PPM
R Pielke Sr. observes: Kevin Trenberth Was Correct – “We Do Not Have Reliable Or Regional Predictions Of Climate”
I find Trenberth’s alarms “Not Proven” and to be “taken with a grain of salt”!
Re: “The dome of cold air over polar regions is expanding as the world has cooled since 1998.”
Uhh, what is the evidence for this cooling, and what is the statistical significance of the downward trend?
“to omission of the Milankovitch Effect”
Well, let’s see, our current phase of the Milankovitch cycle would predict a cooling over tens of thousands of years, and there has been marked warming over the past century. What Milankovitch effect are you looking for?
“and the role of cosmic rays in the formation of low cloud”
This role remains highly hypothetical, and any relation has yet to be demonstrated; you are saying it should be included?
Why do you put so much faith in Dr Ball when it can so easily be demonstrated that he bases his arguments on things which have no basis?
Chris G.
Re “cooling” – From Phil Jones himself: Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995 1998 was warmer than 1995. Cogito ergo sum.
The impact of cosmic rays on clouds is shown by Forbush events.
Effects of cosmic ray decreases on cloud microphysics J. Svensmark, M. B. Enghoff, and H. Svensmark Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., 12, 3595–3617, 2012
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/12/3595/2012/
doi:10.5194/acpd-12-3595-2012
Re: “on things which have no basis?”
Science requires those claiming a hypothesis to prove it over the null hypothesis. See RPielke Sr. for quantitative evidence for no decadal prediction skill by available models. For further details see Singer on NIPCC versus IPCC.
You provided no evidence at all, let alone sufficient to overcome these systemic failures. Thus your assertions are “Not proven”!
David
Try to get your quotes right. He said, at the time, that there had been no statistically significant warming since 1995. This is very different to saying there has been no warming – which would clearly have been wrong.
It is also true that there has been no statistically significant change in the rate of temperature increase since 1998.
skepticalWombat
Re: “there has been no statistically significant change in the rate of temperature increase since 1998.”
You have the burden of proof to support that. Hurst rescaling (integration) shows a major regime change in 1997. See:
Detecting regime shifts in climate data – the modern warming regime ended in 1997
For more evidence & tutorial see: “cointegration”
scepticalWombat
Rd: “no statistically significant change in the rate of temperature increase since 1998.”
See:
GISTemp Anomaly: January lower than December.
14 February, 2012 (12:50)
and graph Jan 2001 to Jan 2012
To support your assertion, you must how Lucia’s trend is NOT the same as the previous trend. Otherwise I consider your assertion to be falsified.
David
Firstly I see you have not disputed the fact that you misquoted Jones. Was it deliberate or just carelessness?
Secondly I leave the job of debunking Outcalt to someone better equipped than myself
David,
You really don’t understand statistics. Phil Jones was asked if the warming was significant since 1995. The standard test for significance is a 95% chance to not find the results through random noise. At the time that he was asked the question, the significance was between 90 and 95%; it has since passed beyond 95%. A 90% chance of warming does not imply a cooling; ergo, you don’t know of what you write.
Forbush events, great. As soon as you can show a relationship between cosmic rays and climate, let us know. Svensmark’s beguiling correlation has broken down in the years since he first published it.
I haven’t made any assertions you can’t find in a textbook; so, I’m not sure what assertions you are claiming are not proven.
Models. Well, when you prove that CO2 does not inhibit the outflow of radiative energy, let us know. When you produce a model with better hindcasting ability than the ones which exist, let us know. Until then, you sound like someone desperate to believe anything except what basic physics and past observances tell us.
Chris, I would say it’s you who doesn’t understand statistics.
The 95% level just signifies that there’s a 1 in 20 probability that the reported results are spurious. Making the level, say, 96% just reduces that probability to less that 1 in 20 – it doesn’t magically confer any measure of ‘correctness’ or otherwise to the results.
Besides, there was a time – not too long ago – when serious research shunned significance levels of less than 99%, or even 99.9%
Chris G.
So you understand statistics? I gave a quick popular source, and then detailed quantitative trends.
See UAH lower trospheric temperature from 1998 to 2012. at WoodForTrees
Mae culpa – I overstated the trend as “cooling” when the simple trend is 0.0055C/decade.
That is only 2.8% of the IPCC’s predicted 0.2C/decade. Does that validate the IPCC’s prediction?
For quantitative exhaustive analysis of global warming trends and the respective uncertainties, see statistician Lucia Lindjegren at The BlackBoard especially on “Data Comparisons”
e.g. GISTemp Anomaly: January lower than December. expecially her Figure.
While the trend from 2001 to 2012 is 0.006C/decade, Lucia reports the 2 sigma trend bounds from 2001-2012 as [-0.103, 0.116]!
Can you show that the trend is significantly warming or cooling?
I understand those uncertainties to indicate that we cannot say within 95% probability whether the trend from 2001 to 2012 is cooling or warming.
On what evidence do you claim that the lower 0.055 C/decade trend from 1998 to 2012 now has a 95% probability for warming? If you can prove that, I am sure Lucia and those discussing at the Blackboard would be most interested.
The uncertainty is about +/- 0.055/sigma. This indicates that IPCC’s 0.2C/decade is about 3.5 sigma hotter than the 0.006 C/decade from 2001-2012 (or (3.5 sigma hotter than the 0.055C/decade since 1998). i.e. IPCC’s trend is >> 95% of temperature trends since 2011.
On Svensmark’s Forbush event evidence, please read the paper. They show CAUSATION, not just “correlation”.
Climate involves multivariate coupled nonlinear chaotic tempo-spatial coupled systems. Perhaps you might expound on each of the terms in mathematical physicist Prof. Robert G. Brown’s characterization:
Chaotic means a butterfly can change a hurricane.
An eagle riding a thermal over a field evidences anthropogenic impact on climate. Svensmark shows that Forbush events have quantifiable impacts. Since climate is chaotic, how can you say they have no impact? The issue is the magnitude. Clouds cause the greatest uncertainty (97% of total climate uncertainty.)
Re “better hindcasting ability“.
See Scafetta N., 2012. Testing an astronomically based decadal-scale empirical harmonic climate model versus the IPCC (2007) general circulation climate models. (Science and Public Policy Institute).
Re: “CO2 does not inhibit the outflow of radiative energy“ – your misunderstanding, not mine. The critical issues are:
Do either CO2 or H2O variations change the global optical depth?
What causes those variations?
See Ferenc Miskolczi (2011)
CO2 trend is not discernable in the global optical trend, while H2O is.
No desperation. Just seeking objective scientific evidence. To date “majority anthropogenic global warming” remains “Not proven” – if you can understand the scientific method.
David L. Hagen | July 4, 2012 at 10:37 pm |
I’ll see your woodfortrees and raise you another woodfortrees.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/mean:23/mean:31/mean:37/mean:41/plot/gistemp/mean:43/mean:47/mean:53/mean:59/plot/gistemp/mean:61/mean:67/mean:71/mean:73/plot/gistemp/mean:79/mean:83/mean:89/mean:97/plot/gistemp/mean:101/mean:103/mean:107/mean:109/plot/gistemp/mean:111/mean:113/mean:123/mean:127/plot/gistemp/mean:131/mean:133/mean:137/mean:143
A simple, rough-and-ready test for when a climate regime (a period with at most one extremum) begins and ends, repeatedly smooth the subject curve until subsequent ‘regimes’ fail to ‘express the same opinion’; we can see this in Series 1, 2, 3.. from 1957, where each of the phases containing only one extremum represents a subsequent rise. Now, you can smooth any line, of course, until it becomes a meaningless nub. There’s an art to deciding when to stop this process. But no matter what you do with the smoothing, you can’t produce a new regime where there isn’t one. And there just isn’t one ending in or near 1998. (Maybe 2005, but unlikely.)
There’s one pair of regimes starting and ending in 1909 (or 1909 is the one extremum); another pair in 1943 and the bookend is 1957 — that is, 1909 to 1957 is one regime with its extreme point in 1943. Or, 1943 is the start of a regime with its extreme point in 1957 and no endpoint yet apparent in the data; for 1998 to be the endpoint, we’d need a very deep drop in global temperature very swiftly.
Outcalt’s speculation, while it’s nice to see someone finally try to elevate WUWT from mere trendology, simply isn’t very persuasive. If global climates are just single decades, Outcalt’s possibly right after some fashion. If we don’t think a period so short as a single decade — and the lapse between external forcing and diffusion of effect tends to suggest ten years is far too short a time — then Outcalt’s entertaining diversion is nice and all, but not climatology.
You would have to give better odds for biology saying something meaningful than any amount of trendology from Bart – http://www.mbari.org/news/news_releases/2003/nr01-chavez.html
Bart R
“With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk. “ John von Neuman
Marvelous fit. But does it mean anything?
See Scafetta where he finds natural causes, not just curve fits.
David L. Hagen | July 5, 2012 at 11:09 am |
Yet another person who doesn’t understand the difference between fitting and smoothing.
And Scafetta’s zodiacal claims remain just so much mere fiction. If his proposals were correct, then the experiments at CERN would produce just as much change in weather as the movement of the planets. Perhaps the recent weather extremes are explained by the hunt for the Higgs?
My point was that Outcalt’s claims don’t fit the actual observations, and can’t be made to fit them. It’d be nice if the methods were of much use, gave something worth reading and led somewhere; however, like much of what happens when people inappropriately slap methods around and blindly accept outcomes without critical appraisal or validation, it’s just so much candy floss on a stick.
It’s nice to see von Neumann cited, but it’d be nicer if his meaning were actually understood in the first place by the one offering the citation. Or at least if his name were spelled correctly.
David L. Hagen
Thanks for you excellent summary.
Girma
Thanks for the encouragement that there are some readers who understand the issues, the scientific method, and validation/rejection.
JC;
What is your response to the energy-flow observation that warming (concentrated at higher latitudes) reduces the heat gradients on the globe and should reduce extreme events?
Obviously could not be true since it decreases alarmism.
Brian H
Reducing temperature difference will reduce wind speeds which changes Earth’s rotary momentum – which in turn will increase Earth’s Length Of Day (LOD). (Also impacts ocean currents.)
See papers on (“Length of Day” and “global warming”)
e.g. see Mazzarella & Scafetta (2011) Evidences for a quasi 60-year North Atlantic Oscillation since 1700 and its meaning for global climate change
While winds decrease, latent heat transport may increase in the tropics – but may decline in the temperate regions. See Willis Eschenbach showing precipitation increases with temperature in the tropics, but decreases in the temperate regions. Natural Variability in the Widths of the Tropics
David
You have presumably worked out the percentage contribution of the atmosphere to the total angular momentum of planet earth. Can you let us know what it is?
scepticalWombat
Why presume when you can find? Try Google scholar., WUWT e.g.
Paul Vaughan @ WUWT
Simulation of historic and future atmospheric angular momentum effects on length-of-day variations with GCMs, Timo Winkelnkemper et al. 2012
Dill, R., Dobslaw, H. (2010): Short-term Polar Motion Forecasts from Earth System, Modeling Data. – Journal of Geodesy, 84, 9, 529-536
DOI: 10.1007/s00190-010-0391-5
Yan, H., and B. F. Chao (2012), Effect of global mass conservation among geophysical fluids on the seasonal length of day variation, J. Geophys. Res., 117, B02401, doi:10.1029/2011JB008788.
Effect of global mass conservation among geophysical fluids on the seasonal length of day variation
For the math, see Earth Rotation
There have been a number of dissertations on modeling the Length of Day
OK I looked at a couple of them. “Earth Rotation” is more concerned with the effect of a slowing down of the earth’s rotation on the relative angular momentum of the atmosphere whereas you are claiming a measurable reverse effect.
Mostly they look at “geophysical fluids” which include the oceans which are vastly more massive than the atmosphere.
I remain to be convinced that changes in wind speed by themselves are going to have any significant impact on length of day.
Less angular momentum and more Carnot efficiency. The absolute temperature is less important than the dT. Not sure why this is mostly ignored.
“Here is what some of the scientists had to say:
“This is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level,” said Jonathan Overpeck, professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona.”
=============================================
This statement above is absolutely absurd from the logical point of view.
“Global warming” has been calculated as a sort of statistical average thing (unfortunately using very unscientific methods, but let us put it aside for a while). Now, dear warmists, please understand that an average can not cause anything, it is exactly the other way round: regional changes influence the global average.
An increasing average with a static/regional variability leads to records in the direction of the increase. Simple enough even for the Pieman.
Any data to support what you fear?
Sure, generate a long random number sequence on Excel or your spreadsheet of choice. Impose that onto a linearly increasing trend and ask for record highs to date. It ain’t rocket science, that’s a two semester course.
Eli,
About those major hurricanes that where supposed to pound the US after Katrina?
Is not the record for days without major hurricane landfall increasing every day?
Nice theory, Eli, but let’s look at the (shudder!) real data.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704422204576130300992126630.html
Mother Nature: 1
Models: 0
Max
Compo’s funding was not extended to continue his research. The ‘Climate Change Ministry of Truth’ is not interested in science that doesn’t yield the desired result. :-)
So an increasing average heat in the system raises the number of outliner events? Possible.
However, it is a heat gradient that drives movement, be it the water cycle of wind movements. Classical ‘GHG’ models suggest that Tmin and Tmax are differentially affected, and on the seasonal level winter is more greatly affected than is summer. Increased CO2, if it has any effect, will cause Tmin to rise more than Tmax, so that the span from Tmax to Tmin is smaller, like wise for the temperature span of summer minus winter will drop.
So the paradox is that whilst the average heat in the system becomes greater, the heat distribution in the system become less heterogeneous and more homogeneous during the daily and annual cycles.
One could postulate that a more heterogeneous climate system will have less, and not more, grainy, unusual events; given that there are smaller heat gradients present that can drive work.
No. As the mean increases, sigma increases.
“Ross Cann
No. As the mean increases, sigma increases”
My, my, how you preach. Weather events are caused by an heterogeneous energy distribution, the present hot spots in the US are matched by cool spots elsewhere. Raising Tmin greater than Tmax will make the temperature gradients during the daily cycle smaller. Heat will be more homogeneous in one local and globally.
Ross is right. Find one natural phenomenon where that rule of thumb does not hold.
IS the static piece , like a mirror image of your brain evolutio?
Judith clearly knows that many periodicals and blog sites are trying to attribute the current heat wave to AGW. They are stating that if only the country had listened this could all have been avoided.
Perhaps I misunderstand. Is the survey of 15 selected climate scientists answering a biased list of questions a statistically representative response to anything?
See:
Main, Douglas. “What’s Behind the Record Heat?” Text.Article. LiveScience, July 7, 2012. http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/07/03/what-behind-record-heat/
Boils :-) down to this: Jet Stream + North Atlantic Oscillation + Blocking pattern = we get to keep the warm air.
Huh. And here I thought it was record low snowpack in the mountains.
Can’t meteorologists all just get along?
Judith Curry, a quick formatting issue. The third question you listed doesn’t start on a new line, or have SB at the start of it. Instead, the question follows immediately after your second answer.
The “JC” in the answer before it also isn’t bolded, but that doesn’t impact the readability anywhere near as much.
thx, will fix
“This is what global warming looks like.”
Evidence?
They don’t need evidence Manacker. Utterly without shame, since they must know better.
I thought Venus was what global warming looked like.
I thought it was called climate change, ehh climate disruption nowadays?
But we all know the earth is warming and has for hundreds of years. So gradually you will expect high temp. records to be broken and especially in increasingly large concrete cities. The question is how much is due to man and how much of that is due to CO2? And is the rate of temp. increase now larger than it was previously and how many more records have to be broken to be able to say conclusively that any increases in temp. records are due to AGW or CAGW as opposed to just GW?
The only scientifically valid thing to say is that we don’t know for sure yet. If this keeps happening and happens in many places of the world at some point it could be possible to say that yes, something critical is happening. We have not reached this point. Study it for 10-15 more years, then maybe we can ALL come to some kind of consensus.
“The only scientifically valid thing to say is that we don’t know for sure yet.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophi%C3%A6_Naturalis_Principia_Mathematica
Rule 4: In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, not withstanding any contrary hypothesis that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.
While one can take issue with your assertion that the earth has warmed for hundreds of years, we can’t take issue with the assertion that CO2 levels have been increasing due to human causes for hundreds of years. We can’t dismiss the Greenhouse Effect due greenhouse gases. We don’t really have to ask the question of how much is due to man, either.
Suppose six people organized a negligent and dangerous streetcar race, and you were injured, but only one of those six people could be identified for you to sue for damages. You could sue them for the whole amount, though attribution might go six ways. Suppose it were 36 organizers and participants, not six? You could still sue the one that got caught for the entirety of damages.
Maybe the odds any individual weather event might be due AGW is under 3%; maybe it’s over 17%: one in 36 to one in 6, you can still blame AGW fully and completely for its liability.
Sounds like a legal argument to me. :-)
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’
William Shakespeare, Henry VI, part II, act IV, scene ii, lines 83–84. Dick the butcher is speaking. /sarc
Pooh, Dixie | July 4, 2012 at 10:46 am |
Legal, illegal, you haven’t invalidated the argument. All you’ve done is killed the boys in the luggage.
Bart: You say legal, illegal; the rules differ for legal and scientific. Legal appears to be fine with omitted variables.
Let us compromise: Scotch verdict. Not Proven.
Pooh,
I concur the rules are different in the legal world vs how the scientific method is supposed to work. The role of the judge is HUGE in the legal profession- specifically as to what can be admitted into evidence and what can’t be. I recently enjoyed rereading a novel on the subject of experts called- “The Expert”- by Lee Guenfeld from a few years back http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/bib/980517.rv110828.html It was reviewed in the the NYT- By J. D. BIERSDORFER and I found his thoughts spot on in regards to the book and human nature.-
“Manipulation of others is a way of life for many of the people in Lee Gruenfeld’s latest legal thriller. As one might hope from a book called ”The Expert,” it’s an adroit performance, with plenty of double-crosses mixed in with the cross-examinations…… Best of all, Gruenfeld keeps the many detailed discussions of encryption issues balanced with the personal motivations of his cast. ”All this technology,” Rebecca sighs, ”and it still comes down to the human heart.” “
Pooh, Dixie | July 4, 2012 at 11:33 am |
Going back to 1728 Scots juries have a record of delivering, by ancient right, a finding of not guilty when the facts were certainly proven beyond reasonable question. While this leads to jury nullification, sure, you can irrationally claim it’s not proven.
The ancient right of humans to dismiss the truth in front of their eyes is yours. Cling to it if you wish. Thanks for making clear that’s your intention.
this sad episode of climate vulture-like behavior (going after every disaster in the hope of taking advantage of it) says a lot about the primitive nature of the climate change debate in the USA.
just wait for another igloo in DC after a snowstorm. Nostradamus followers don’t do any worse.
omnologos | July 3, 2012 at 3:53 pm |
At a ratio of 7:1 heatwaves to igloo domes in the 2% of the globe that is the USA, we’d be looking to wait for tens of thousands of cold records to balance the heat records. But then, that’d be tens of thousands of extreme weather records, too. Which also could be a climate change effect due more energy and disruption in the world climate system. So we’d need for a sudden drop in heat events (also an extreme change, but as a singleton hardly evidence of anything) and a gradual increase in cold events in the USA but not in the rest of the world.. and for about a hundred other types of far more reliable observations to also be invalidated independently.
Wishful thinking is not the same as skepticism. It’s just fantasy. Which has little place in a discussion of science.
Well here in Britain I have just put the heating on. In July. We are also having the wettest drought in history.
Is this a “what global warming looks like”?
If so it is either not global or not warming.
Psst, Richard: it’s neither.
It’s real if it happens in the US. To hell with Copernicus, US is the center of the universe.
Worse than that. :-) There is a District in the U.S. that thinks that it is the center of the universe.
@@ DEEBEE | July 4, 2012 at 10:15 am said: ”It’s real if it happens in the US. To hell with Copernicus, US is the center of the universe”
Please, don’t be too loud about your conclusion; Tony Brown & Vukcevic have already proven that: the center of the universe is in England. For them most of the southern hemisphere doesn’t exist; can you find it on your map? .
Dr. Curry,
The lack of any of your responses in the article speaks volumes. Seth obviously wasn’t looking for any ‘challenges’ to the alarmist viewpoint of ‘these fires/heatwaves/etc. are signs of global warming ( . .of course meaning that warming is caused by man and CO2 . . . ‘.
Steve Goddard at his blog (stevengoddard.wordpress.com – though his ‘bluntness’ might not go overwell with some readers . . ) posts a lot of historical newspaper articles from ‘past’ events, of fires, heatwaves, etc. showing that they ARENT UNPRECEDENTED.
With the ‘quiet sun’ and PDO/AMO conditions, let’s just see what happens in the next 5 to 10 years . . .
15 out of 16 has given good answers.
“What global warming looks like”
More like what Global Warming Fear Mongering and Hysteria looks like.
The source explains it all . . . Borenstein is a hardcore Warmonger and to expect him to produce a balanced story is really expecting too much.
Not to worry, one day even people like him will probably figure it out.
ever hear of the dog days of summer,what is a dog day?july 10-aug 10 hottest days of summer?jan 10-feb 10 coldest dayys of winter?long range forcast fot summer hot at times, winter cold at times. coldest ever south pole right now ,parts of us hottest ever right now , hot here ,cold there, what does it all mean?climate varieshere and there.
The ‘I told you so’ tactic will not win over anyone. To me this is what global warming looks like when some use their confirmation bias as a message for others to show how smart they really are.
This is a golden opportunity for US climate alarmists to “make hay while the sun shines.” The climate journalists and green activists are even worse opportunists than the attention-hungry “climate scientists” if you can believe it.
But watch out! If next summer, the US experiences unseasonably cool temperatures, we will be reminded once again that “the US is not the entire globe.”
If you are a green alarmist, these are the days when anything goes.
Alex Trebek says you lose Judy
There are two questions. The first asks whether similar heat waves can be found in the meteorological records. The answer, is that similar, although perhaps slightly cooler heat waves can be found in the meteorological records of all these areas, and that the slightly increased temperatures might be a sign of climate change or simply natural variability. Therefore the heat waves are not convincing markers of climate change. Dole, et al “Was there a basis for anticipating the 2010 Russian heat wave?”, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L06702, doi:10.1029/2010GL046582 have been pushing this answer, and, of course, any number of Eli’s friends.
The second asks how frequent such heat waves were in the past and are now. Here one finds a significantly higher percentage of extreme (three sigma) events and assigns the recurrence of such events and the events themselves as markers of climate change. Hansen, Ruedy and Sato and Rahmstorf and Coumou (2011), “Increase of extreme events in a warming world”, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A., 108(44), 17905–17909. are two of those holding this view. On the bloggish side Michael Tobis has been the strongest voice.
Myles Alan has something to say on this also (see link)
Eli, so you didn’t see my criticisms of Hansen’s paper in an earlier thread then?
You certainly didn’t challenge me on any of the points I raised.
linkies
Sorry, I think you all may have misread. When he says, “this is what global warming looks like”, he is meaning the article, not the weather. Ergo, he is correct.
Eli Rabett | July 3, 2012 at 4:27 pm said:
An increasing average with a static/regional variability leads to records in the direction of the increase. Simple enough even for the Pieman.
============================================
Just learn the difference between cause and effect for the start.
An average does not increases itself, it is always an effect of the increase of “records”, not the other way round.
That, as they say is somewhat besides the point. What Eli was pointing out is a general property of random variations on trends. Yes, the trend is the driver, but the old record can be well above the trend line at its time (3 sigma and all that), still, if the trend takes you above the old say 2 sigma value, you are very likely to hit a new record soon.
We are making hay out of comparing to a heat wave that occurred 80 years ago? The only question that comes to my mind is why did it take so long.
“(notably Australia and New Zealand) is having an unusually cold winter.”
I wouldn’t call this notably unusually cold.
Yep, your right Nick. I’m sure the sceptics are totally blind to that small yellow patch of +1 degrees in WA.
Nick.
Come on Nick, some of us do read your links. I would call it as being unusually cold. Perhaps you would have been more accurate if you had pointed out that it is weather not climate.
tonyb
Nick
Here is the UK anomaly.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
We are currently half a degree C down on the recent past with temperatures falling steadily for the last decade, as my outdoor tomatoes will testify.
In our lionger CET record you will note we are at the same anomaly as in the 1730’s. Not long enough for a trend but disastrous for our growers and tourist industry which are geared towards a warming world.
tonyb
@@ climatereason | July 4, 2012 at 3:42 am
Tony, weather is ”climate” Extreme / milder climate – wet / dry climate. Your confusing; climatic changes with the phony GLOBAL warmings is misleading; I have a post on my website about your phony GLOBAL ice Ages, and phony GLOBAL warmings. Exclusively for you, Vukcevic and Wagaton. .Please read it; if you can find it wrong, for me to apologize to you. Others are reading it; your right to reply is paramount. The phony ”Skeptics” are silencing more, people with different opinion, than the Warmist. Trying to silence, is admission that one doesn’t believe in his own crap. It doesn’t need any phony GLOBAL warming, for climatic changes. This is an official invitation / challenge; please don’t chicken out, like your friend, the tallblocke
stefanthedenier,
I offer you this feedback on your website.
You seem to make some reasonable observations and correctly grasp that water is the most essential variable when considering climate dynamics.
But it seems to be hiding amongst your own misconceptions, and use of too many more words than needed to express your points.
Hint, Argon.
@@ bwdave | July 6, 2012 at 3:28 am
Hi bwdave! thanks for the feedback. I’m proving on my website that: ”fusing climatic changes and the phony GLOBAL warming; is the mother of all crimes. ”REGULATION”of the temperature is done by oxygen and nitrogen —–”DISTRIBUTION” of that heat is controlled by water (if we ignore the latitude / altitude) But CLIMATE is controlled by water – water and NITROGEN are two very different substances.Same as the phony GLOBAL warmings AND climatic changes are COMPLETELY two different things.
If you read up to where differs with your opinion – than run away = will look as unnecessary words; but if you read the lot = will see that everything falls in its place. Put it this way: what I have there, is not much; it’s all that is needed, for the people on the street, to see the end of the misleading propaganda, in few months. Real / solid proofs – no: may happen, if it happens – but proofs what can happen and why – what CANNOT happen, and WHY not. If you started, but not finished reading, cannot be my fault. If you finished reading the lot – would have known that those words were necessary, because of my limited English – your English is not limited. Hansen, Gore don’t speak perfect Japanese or Russian; but people that doo, are presenting it to their people = you present to the English speaking people the REAL proofs. Have faith in your English. Remember: oxygen + nitrogen by expanding / shrinking in CHANGE of temp, are regulating to be overall, always same amount of heat in the atmosphere. 2] stored heat in the oceans, in the plutonium, in the magma; is not part of the official global temp; but is used for confusing the already confused. Talking about increasing sea temp, is same as talking about decreasing heat in the magma, in the center; but con artist are getting away wit it…remember: heat from one mm of the ground – to the beginning of the stratosphere = that is / should, and will be, the official GLOBAL temp. All the rest is a destructive crap
People that don’t like the truth – pretend that they don’t understand my English (but don’t point which part) – others can understand, why; are they better / more capable… or are less scared from real proofs. Cheers.
P.s. please tell Tony; to talk to his tomatoes; they may grow better. Prince Charles talks to his plants, tomatoes are a multilingual.
Stefan
I am afraid I am shouting at my tomatoes and also at the slugs that seem to want to climb 2 metres up the bean poles rather than nibble the plentiful green weeds at ground level.
Stefan, the best advice I can give to you is to stop insulting your natural allies-like me-and do something about fixing your convoluted web site so we can understand what it is you are saying and make a judgement as to whether you have any worthwhile points.
tonyb
Stefan
My dear friend, how are you?
Have you any tips on how to protect my outdoor tomatoes during this prolonged downturn in the British weather? Nature as well as the thermometer is telling us that something is going on, although of course it might be a short lived episode.
bwdave makes the same comments concerning your website as I did, it is I regret to say, confused and very difficult to read but appears to have some interesting material buried in there. When you severely edit the material and remove the hyperbole I will be pleased to provide specific answers to a question I can understand
tonyb
Well, Tony, it’s prettyy average where I am. Most of the country within 1 C of normal. More BoM numbers here. Ave max only 0.27C below normal; Ave min 0.94C below. Yes, I do now remember some chilly nights.
Ranking out of 63 years of record – max was 23rd coolest, min was 12th. Below average, but not notably unusually cold.
But the world is notably unusually warm? It’s been pretty average where I am…. (Australia BTW).
May 2012 UAH +.29 C
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
The only thing remarkable about that graph is it’s normally updated a couples days after the month is done, and it’s still May.
……Quote: “Since 1998….”….. this is outright AGW-SLEAZINESS: Prolonging the temp increase of the previous century (and prolonging extreme events) into the future…. whereas the temp plateau set in around year 2000, and with ocean slowness delay, all extreme events will start to cease from 2015 on….
….we have a clear/nice example how alarmists trick the public by a insisting on a LINEAR trend of 1980-2000 events….\
The LINEAR TREND LINE is the last lie which is left to the AGW-villains…
But there is no linear AGW-trend line….not in global warming [the end has been reached with the present plateau] and not in extreme events [will cease from 2015 on, due to ocean temp delay…]….Just stay on the sidelines, dont get hyped and you will see from 2015 on………
JS
<em“This is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level.” ~Jonathan Overpeck
But, no one denies that ‘This’ is exactly ‘what global warming looks like’ compared to, e.g., what another Little Ice Age would look like.
Eli is pretty much spot on. For one thing, even in a statistically stationary climate, there will always be record-setting events, for example after a synoptic-scale weather disturbance sets up favorable conditions.
In this scenario, one would expect that the new record highs would roughly equal the new record lows. In the last decade however, the new record highs have dramatically outpaced the new record lows. There is in fact now plenty of evidence for the climate acting like unfair climate dice…and warm events have the house edge. You’d lose your life gambling if you consistently bet against the warming signal in the Earth casino.
Individual event attribution is trickier, but the literature is more far more detailed and caveated than simply “we can’t do it” or “this must be AGW.” This is a young field with a lot of fruitful research on the horizon.
Chris
Nice words.
Evidence?
Thanks.
Max
Chris Colose
Re: “statistically stationary climate”.
Can you provide any evidence that we have ever had a “statistically stationary climate” in the last century? or the last millenium? or the last million years?
Seeing global temperatures are still steadily increasing since the Little Ice Age?
Seeing the Pacific Decadal Oscillation appears superimposed on the long term warming trend?
Or seeing that we are in most of the way through the Holocene, and are scheduled to descend into the next glaciation in about 1500 years?
For details See links
If the variability aroud “momentary average” stays the same and the “momentary average” rises it’s of course unavoidable that record lows are rare and record highs much more common. The loaded dice paper proposed that the distribution is getting broader as well making extreme events even more common. That part was, however, highly questionable, because the methodology mixed short term variability with the influence of different phases of longer term variability.
Cherry picking the reference period to start in 1950 was against all rules of objective science. Shame on the authors.
Pekka Pirilä, since we’ve had a number of disagreement and whatnot, I want to take a moment to say I agree with your comment completely!
If you are referring to Hansen’s loaded dice paper, that is one that defines 3-sigma events at each point on the globe relative to the 1950-1980 climate distributions of seasonal temperatures. In a normal distribution, these would be expected to cover a few tenths of a percent of the surface, but he showed that recent years have had the 3-sigma hot areas covering up to 10 percent of the surface. I would expect this summer in the US to be such an event over a large area unless a cold August cancels it. I find this a very useful and objective metric, and being purely based on statistics, not models, I don’t see how people can dispute it.
JimD, Let’s see 1950 to 1980 baseline, generally would appear to be a cool period, see climate shift 1976 Tsonis et al and others. The number of stations in more remote cold climates increased after 1950, war over, new economy, new technology. There would of course be more records set in new stations, if the base line is average, during a warming climate there would be more records. The “unforced natural variability” cycle is not perfectly nailed down, but 30 to 60 years is a common estimate. Statistically, you can get just what you look for.
Just to add a fuel, new stations in remote cold locations thanks to new technology and new prosperity might be more capable of improving their environment. That micro climate impact in highly sensitive areas can play hell on temperature records.
JimD, I don’t dispute that the climate is warming, just that the deck really seems to be stacked more than the dice are loaded.
The number of stations doesn’t figure into it. It is using the gridded GISTEMP areas. When it shows Texas in summer 2011 was a 3-sigma event, I would believe it because Texas had good obs back in 1950 too. I want to see a skeptic try to audit what Hansen did, but I suspect they already have and are keeping quiet.
JimD, I think the issue is not using pre 1950 data where it is available. Since 1950 would be using the lower baseline. I don’t audit temperature stuff, I did look at a few mid-west stations and it does look like some cherry picking is going on.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/findstation.py?datatype=gistemp&data_set=14&name=&world_map.x=181&world_map.y=133
Here, punch in a few that go back past 1950.
If you RTFR you will find that Hansen, Sato and Ruedy DID show what the effect of using (the less reliable) data back to 1900 would make. Not damn much, but the data is less reliable globally for that sort of analysis.
RTFR (TM ER)
Jim
The temperature time series appears to include at least the following contributors:
– short time variability including seasonal variability as well as variability that appears stochastic with autocorrelation over time intervals well less than one year
– variability over time scale of a few years like ENSO
– variability over longer time scales up to several decades
– longer term trends which may be difficult to separate of variability on centennial and longer scale
Extreme events result from the short term variability which builds on the state produced by the other factors. If the other factors provide a starting level of high temperature the resulting case may be exceptional in historical comparison. To decide, whether the short term variability is stronger or weaker than before we should be able to subtract all the other factors from the observed values.
The overall variability of the temperature over a decade is the sum of short term variability and longer term variability. Both should be expressed as deviation from the average of the decade. If the decade has no clear trend and little indication of effects of decadal variability, the total variability is bound to be less. The period 1950-1975 is the prime example of that and we know that in hindsight. We know that now and we know that it’s an exception in comparison with previous as well as later decades (except perhaps the years since 2000). Using that as an indication of normal variability is cherry picking. The authors must understand that.
Pekka, I don’t know if you have seen Hansen’s paper but he also uses a more recent decade (1981-2010) as a baseline and then detrends it and rederives the distribution to use as another baseline. This shows that the trending didn’t affect the statistics much. Remembering he is using seasonal average temperatures, these vary much more year to year than the decadal trend, so it is expected that the trend isn’t contributing much to the statistics of the distribution. For example, this year in the central US, the spring season was about 3-5 C higher than the 1951-1980 average (from the GISTEMP site) while decadal trends are nearer 0.15 C. He showed that the standard deviation for summer was near 1 C in the US region, so if this warming holds, it would be a multi-sigma event. Detrending is important to do for recent decades, because otherwise he would have a broader distribution, making 3-sigma events harder to achieve, but the 1951-1980 baseline had a small trend.
Jim,
I have spent some time looking at the paper with but I haven’t studied it in grat detail. I have looked most carefully at the figures 4 and 9 that show distributions of temperature anomalies for each decade. What we can see in these figures is that the broadening of the distributions is similar in magnitude to the shift in the peaks. During the warming trend the natural expectation is that the earlier part contributes more to the lower values and the upper part to the upper values. Based on the figures 4 and 9 this effect is likely to a be significant factor in the broadening and perhaps almost full explanation for the small changes of 1980’s and larger changes of 1990’s.
The latest decade is different, but one decade is too short a period to allow for strong conclusions, otherwise also the leveling of the temperature trend would be very significant.
There has been warming and with warming also the warmer edge has moved, but the evidence for a stronger effect on the extreme edge is still limited to very few data points.
Pekka, I agree that the trend is contributing to the broadening, and therefore think Hansen’s reasoning for using 1951-1980 is good because the trend in that period is minimized while still being recent enough for good data. By minimizing the trend, the sigma values are closer to the ‘natural’ ones representing interannual variability.
Pekka, how would one know, a prior, that the calibration/baseline period was ‘average’ ?
This is not a dry philosophical point, if 30 years the the minimum period deemed to consist of climate, which 30 year period do you pick, moreover, where do you pick it?
Worse than you think. Not only does the distribution broaden but it becomes asymmetric with a beyond Gaussian tail on the hot side.
You do what Hansen, Ruedy and Sato did, you try other combinations, including the one that you think will be the worst. If the qualitative result is the same you use that. Besides 50-81 was relatively constant, so it is a reasonable choice.
Eli
What you seem to view as virtue is the principal problem for me. We know a posterior that 1950-80 was relatively flat, more flat than almost any other period. Therefore it gives a biased reference and using that has aspects of cherry picking.
A posterior statistical analysis of a relatively limited data set is always problematic and introducing biases gives often misleading results.
Pekka, look up the definition of baseline.
Pekka et al.
D. Koutsoyiannis et al at ITIA find tthat natural variations as modeled by Hurst Kolmogorov phenomena (persistance) have twice the standard deviation as found by classical statistics.
While this is not on the Hurst Kolmogorov paper I wonder whether you have noticed this:
http://iopscience.iop.org/0143-0807/33/4/1021/pdf/0143-0807_33_4_1021.pdf
Chris,
Few dispute that the planet has been warming over the past century or two. What many dispute is that there is evidence that there is a significant component of AGW in it.
Do we have sound evidence of what the extreme events were like in the previous periods that were warmer than the present?
If not, how can we be so sure these events are caused by man’s GHG emissions?
Chris,
You seem like a nice young man. I’m sure that you are a responsible scientist and will admit in the future where you may have been misled or overstated your confidence in some cases. In 10-15 years I think a real consensus will come about naturally and I look forward to your more mature outlook at that time.
But for now, can you address 1. how difficult it would be to pick out this pattern, not in a stationary climate, but in one that is naturally warming already for several hundred years? and 2. how to account for the UHI effect on temperature records between 2012 and 1950 and 1905 and 1877 and 1755. With anomalies, you can try to correct for UHI but with temperature records, there could easily be 1-2 degrees of warming (if not more) due to thermometers at airports rather than in the countryside. How can you address this (with error bars for example) so that you are making a correct scientific appraisal?
If both of these have been well addressed in the paper(s) you have cited, please let me know and I will take a closer look at them as I really do want to know. I just get frustrated by the obvious gamesmanship on both sides. Scientists really should play fair since the truth comes out in the long run.
AGW hysterics depend on historical illiteracy- if not flat out suppressing the history. It is a huge self-idictment of the movement that allegedly leading scientists are all too often not only enabling these historic deceptions but are cynically promoting them.
Lacis, Hansen, Trenberth are leading deceivers in this.
You, of course, have good weather statistics globally for the past millenium and an excellent understanding of fluid dynamics.
Eli,
And you of course have evidence to support your thesis that weather events are signficantly different in the past ~30 years vs. the past ~150 years.
Why yes.
Judith,
I think you miss the point with, “However, there have been very few events say in the past 20 years or so that have been unprecedented say since 1900.”
The point has more to do with the frequency of said events, not necessarily with their uniqueness. Eli covers this well. Put another way, either you deny that there has been warming over the past century, or you make the dubious claim that a greater heat content of the planet has nothing to do with the occurrence of heat wave events with respect to frequency, duration, or area of coverage.
Peter317,
The paper referenced at Eli’s blog has a similar(draft) also referenced on this blog at http://judithcurry.com/2012/01/06/the-new-climate-dice/
However, I see no comments or points you may have made on this at this site’s discussion of the Hansen, et al, 2011. I’m unable to determine what points you think you have made.
Or, she acknowledges both points but counters by saying the effect the planet’s warming on heat waves has been too small to be discernible.
What do you know? A perfectly reasonable position exists, yet you didn’t mention it.
So, the increased heat content is discernable, but the effect on heat waves is not. Where would you expect the extra energy to be observed?
That’s a silly question. It could well be that heat waves are greatly impacted by the increased temperatures on this planet. That doesn’t mean we would be able to tell. Extreme events are, by their nature, rare. That means we have few observations of them. That means the uncertainties in our understanding of them are large. That means we don’t know enough to say some things.
Besides, I, like most people, would expect the extra energy to be observed in many different areas. The nature of global warming is we expect to see warming across the globe. It does not mean we expect to be able to observe “the extra energy” in any particular spot.
In reality, it is even possible global warming has mitigated some heat waves we’ve observed since global warming can affect weather patterns. There’d be no way of knowing it happened, but we can’t rule out the possibility.
Chris, here’s the link: http://judithcurry.com/2012/06/01/gamesmanship/#comment-205578
I’m having some trouble reconciling a couple of your assertions:
1) “Hansen shows temperature distributions…”
4) “Hansen isn’t looking at temperature distributions,…”
“In other words, a warmer climate does not automatically mean hotter extremes.”
True, but to achieve that you would have to change the shape of the distribution so that the mean was closer to the higher temp extremes without increasing the frequency of the higher extremes, which does not at all match observations.
2, 3) I think you misunderstand what Hansen was doing, or I have read a different paper. The changing distributions that Hansen presents are a mathematical result of the extreme weather events observed.
So, I think your assertions are confused to the extent that you have failed to make any points.
Chris G:
The first (1) is about his using temperature data as opposed to weather event data – the one doesn’t predict the other. In fact, a heatwave which is of long duration and/or has higher max or min temperatures and/or covers a wide area may have an effect on the temperature data, but not the other way around.
The second (4) points out that it’s not simply temperature data he’s using, but temperature anomaly data (seasonal average temperature anomalies) which is even further divorced from weather events
But the distributions are not of temperature data but of temperature anomaly data. It’s in effect doing a double abstraction of the data, which ends up telling you little of value about anything. It could be referred to as “torturing the data until it confesses”.
The paper I have is titled “Perceptions of Climate Change: The New Climate Dice” – Hansen, Sato, Ruedy
That’s not what the paper says. They’re referred to as Seasonal temperature anomaly distributions
Perhaps I could have worded it better, but I don’t think I’m confused on this
“..is about his using temperature data as opposed to weather event data…”
The weather event is the temperature; I think you are still confused.
Chris G,
That’s the old “all dogs are animals and all cats are animals, therefore all dogs are cats” type of argument.
Besides, the main point concerns the use of anomaly data.
For example, you may have a 42C average referenced to a 40C baseline at one location, and 12C average referenced to a 10C baseline at another location. The former could conceivably be associated with a heatwave event, but the the latter cannot by any stretch of the imagination. But both will have exactly the same impact on the shape of the anomaly distribution.
It’s funny how any abuse of statistics seems to be tolerated just as long as it gives the ‘right’ answers.
12C is a heatwave for Scotland in the winter.
Eli,
Don’t go ridiculous on us now – it’s not clever.
Opinions differ
There essentially has been no waming since 1940
This is one of the most absurd things you’ve posted here…and you’ve posted some pretty absurd things!
aka… you’re smarter than Singer and Easterbrook too, right?
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/EASTERBROOKPDO.JPG
Singer and Eastebrook are likely very smart men, but, like Joe Bastardi, they suffer from the illusion that studying the past repetition of weather cycles is a good predictor of future climate. This illusion is further complicated by the apparent misunderstanding of the difference between extreme events (i.e. black swans) that are within the bounds of relatively recent natural variabilty and extreme events that represent a regime change to a new climate.
Then even as you intentionally abandon the statistical method as being ill-suited in the modern age you, surely you will not simply ignore evidence of a ‘regime change’ with the data showing a ‘regime shift’ in 1997. And, if you do not simply abandon reason entirely when the facts do not support your preconceptions, surly you must concede that there has been another major ‘regime shift’ a few years into the 21st Century coinciding with solar data indicating that the Sun is taking a time out.
AGW fearmongers simply do not want to consider the possibility that humanity may experience decades of global cooling. The Climatists simply do not want to have to deal with anything that exposes their ulterior motives which are all political and have nothing to do with climate change.
Take a look at the frequency of heat waves in the U.S. in the 1930’s
What are the frequency and area, and absolute temperature means, _globally_, in the 1930s? There is more energy in the system now than there was then. It would be very interesting if the heat waves then were as measurably severe as they are now.
The issue here is with the US, not globally. Seth’s doing, not ours.
Hi David,
No, what is going on currently in the US is a symptom of what has been going on globally for at least a decade or two. You are trying to isolate the events going on in different places in different times in order to obfuscate the pattern that emerges when you look at the events in the context of the whole globe. Granted, in isolation, the current US heat wave means very little, but in context, it is another data point which supports the global trend.
Chris,
Because the greenhouse effect reduces the outgoing energy flux, while leaving the incoming flux unaffected, it could be argued that the net energy flux has reduced.
And most of the accumulated energy is stored in the oceans – the amount of extra energy ‘stored’ in the atmosphere is relatively insignificant.
GISS has a great tool on its site to investigate these things. For example, we can find out that the spring of 2012 (March-May) was 2-4 C warmer than the decadal average from 1930-1940, the dust-bowl era. The summer of the big heat wave in 1936 was 1-2 C above this baseline.
Is this before or after GISS adjustments to the raw data have been applied? Perhaps you are not aware that the raw GISS data shows no warming whatsoever in this century. It is not until “adjustments” called station homogeneity (SHAP) and time of observation bias (TOBS) that any warming trend emerges. These adjustments each account for about half of all twentieth century warming in the GISS record.
Twentieth century warming is manmade right enough. Made by pencil whipping the bejesus out of the the readings from the thermometers. It’s laughable on that account along to give it much credibility to say nothing of it only covering a small fraction of the earth’s surface.
I live about 10 miles outdside the Austin metro area. The temperature here is consistently several degrees cooler than in the city at night and in the winter. One might reasonably wonder if, in the 1930’s, when Austin still had mostly dirt roads, wooden buildings, and a tiny fraction of the population, if this temperature disparity were present. I don’t really think you can compare absolute temperatures in the modern record to absolute temperatures in the older record unless you take great pains to compare apples to apples, rural for rural, min/max thermometer for min/max thermometer. If that’s not possible that’s just how the cookie crumbles. You just can’t start manufacturing observations that were never made and call it science. That’s called cheating.
This is the usual meme that all the land temperatures have had the warming added. Do you think the skeptics’ own BEST land temperature is better to use? Because that has an even faster warming rate in recent decades. Perhaps a warmist got to it while they weren’t looking.
@@ Dave Springer | July 4, 2012 at 2:45 pm
Dave, they never have any ”raw” data, all their data is cooked; easier to digest it, without having to think. Lucky you, have in mind that: bullshine is addictive and fattening
Well you are wrong about GISS
GISS uses GHCN version 3. Giss makes no adjustments to GHCNV3
SHAP: makes adjustments for changes in station elevation.
If a station was on a mountain top at 1000meters and
moves to the valley ( warming ) then the difference in
lapse rate has to be accounted for. Roy spencer makes
the same kind of adjustment.
TOBS: the US and a a small number of other countries make this
adjustment. Its been empirically verified. even by skeptics.
And again, Roy spencer recently adjusted his surface series
because of TOBS. In the end, TOBS is applied to less than
2% of entire world.
If you dont like these adjustments you can just used GHCN daily data and gcos hourly data. No GISS data, no GHCNV3. the answer? its the same.
Or you can use the berkeley method. Instead of 7280 stations from
GHCNv3 ( that GISS use ) you can use 36000 stations with no adjustments. the answer? the same.
yes dave it is warmer now than in the LIA. stop kidding yourself
Actually Jimbo the modern record didn’t have temperature added. The older record had temperature subtracted. You see, you can’t really get away with adjusting the modern record because we have much better instruments today with automated recording and so forth. It’s real easy to fudge the old paper records which were taken manually once daily from quaint min/max thermometers of yesteryear.
You obviously don’t much about how the record is pencil whipped. You’re just a parrot of alarmist memes and not a very well informed parrot even so far as parrots go.
P.S. Jimbo
1) BEST was run by a Berkeley scientist. There’s no such thing as a skeptic at Berkely and Muller is no exception.
2) BEST did not abandon SHAP or TOB adjustments.
The BEST results were preordained. I’m on record at WUWT stating, before the project began, that the result would be no different than the current GISS record. I based that prediction on knowing it was being managed by a Berkeley scientist who was no skeptic in any meaningful definition of skeptic and that they would not be reinventing the critical adjustments that create the warming trend by reducing the temperatures in old paper records. BEST merely retabulated the data and found no errors in the prior tabulation. I didn’t expect they would and as usual I was right.
So did the BEST skeptics also cool the older temperatures? Are you sure you are not just talking about SST corrections as opposed to land stations? Why would they cool the older land stations, when removing urban effects should mean cooling the modern ones? You probably don’t know that Spencer tried his hardest to show urban bias in Jones’s CRUTEM, but could not eke out anything significant as he showed at Heartland a couple of meetings ago.
GHCN shows the warming too. It has nothing to do with adjustments.
If you don’t like BEST or HadCRUT or GISTEMP perhaps you could take the data yourself and show us what is shows?
Muller was joined by Watts and Curry. They were all skeptical of previous temperature record reconstructions, otherwise they wouldn’t have done their own.
Dave you have no idea what you are talking about
1) BEST was run by a Berkeley scientist. There’s no such thing as a skeptic at Berkely and Muller is no exception.
#########################
The method employed by Berkeley is grounded in the same math
that skeptics ( JeffId and RomanM) suggested and implemented before
Berkeley even started. The chief statistician is a friend of RomanM
as they are old colleagues and the methods of skeptics were a part
of the history in the project. Second, the team is comprised of people
who I regard as skeptical about CAGW and the accuracy of the record.
Prior to beginning work with the team, prior to any work being done
I asked Muller why he was interested. His answer was: “the questions
raised by Anythony” I pushed back and explained that all of those
issues had been addressed by myself and Zeke. Muller didnt care, he wanted to see for himself.
##################
2) BEST did not abandon SHAP or TOB adjustments.
You are wrong. SHAP applies ONLY to GHCN version 2 in the US
TOBS applies to GHCNv2 in the US and a few other countries
( canada, norway, and japan) also have to do TOBS adjustments.
BEST uses GHCNV3 which does not use TOBS or SHAP
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ghcnm/v3.php?show=homogeneity_adjustment
In any case
1. SHAP, when it was used, is REQUIRED. if a station
changes elevation you must adjust for lapse rate
2. TOBS, when it was used, is REQUIRED. it was only required
on a small percentage of stations ( US and others ), its
been empirically verified. and verified by skeptics. Changing
the time of observation changes the recorded tmin and tmax.
known verfiable FACT. see the climate audit threads on this.
What we showed with BEST is that you get the same answer whether you use GHCN Monthly or not. Pick a random subset of the 36000
stations. Guess what? the answer is the same. remove all GHCNV2
the answer is the same. Remove all GHCN Monthly data. the answer is the same. Why? because its getting warmer.
####################
The BEST results were preordained. I’m on record at WUWT stating, before the project began, that the result would be no different than the current GISS record. I based that prediction on knowing it was being managed by a Berkeley scientist who was no skeptic in any meaningful definition of skeptic and that they would not be reinventing the critical adjustments that create the warming trend by reducing the temperatures in old paper records. BEST merely retabulated the data and found no errors in the prior tabulation. I didn’t expect they would and as usual I was right.
##################
wrong again.
1. the data is not “retabulated” you dont know what you are talking about.
2. There are plenty of errors found in the prior data. That is what
the QA steps are for.
3. The answer is different from GISS in several regards. Of course
we found warming, because it has been warming. But we were able
to
A) show the answer did not depend on GISS data. we can
use an entirely DIFFERENT datasource with MORE STATIONS
and get the same answer ( 26K stations from GCOS– thats right
the same data Roy Spencer uses )
B) show the answer does not depend upon “extrapolating over
the pole. we dont.
C) show TIGHTER confidence intervals by using a method
suggested by skeptics
D) extend the record back in time.
Glad you asked. This pretty well answers the question, in the 30s you could get to sleep at night in the summer.
eli
this is a 404
tonyb
Read the link:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/03/what-global-warming-looks-like/www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/WashingtonPost/Content/Blogs/capital-weather-gang/201201/images/contiguous_us_extremes.jpg?uuid=JGVzXEabEeGGXo13RUU1VA
Omit needless words and add http for good measures:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/WashingtonPost/Content/Blogs/capital-weather-gang/201201/images/contiguous_us_extremes.jpg
There you go.
OK, the vikings have returned to the the cold island that they lived on during the Medieval Warm Period. Ops, that did not happen yet. Go Figure. We are not warmer than then!
Here’s an idea for a cartoon: Viking longboat approaches a seaside air force base in a barren landscape. One serviceman says to another, “I guess it really IS warming now!”
(Not that I think it’ll happen!)
It seems to me that heat wave have far more to do with UHI [urban heat islnd effect] than with CO2 levels.
Because of idiot terms. One can call UHI, AGW. Or if exclude the mythology of rising CO2 causing +60 C increase to global temperature, and you mean effects of humans upon regional urban areas, UHI is the only proven and easily demonstrated AGW.
So, next time idiot reporter asks about heat waves I think it should made clear that heat island effects can have significant [+10 C] effects upon local temperatures. And that heat island effect are unrelated to theory of the radiant properties of greenhouse gases.
Also it seems that neither UHI or greenhouse gases have significant affect
upon the temperature surfaces such as sidewalks or sand. And that when we measure and report temperature we talking about air temperature.
If one understands this one could understand that heat waves and UHI are largely about the wind or it’s lack- that convection of heat is inhibited or winds going over warmed areas can carry heat to other regions. In Los Angeles when we have Santa Ana winds:
“The Santa Ana winds are strong, extremely dry offshore winds that affect coastal Southern California and northern Baja California in autumn and winter. They can range from hot to cold, depending on the prevailing temperatures in the source regions, the Great Basin and upper Mojave Desert. The winds are known for the hot dry weather (often the hottest of the year) that they bring in the fall, and are infamous for fanning regional wildfires.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Ana_winds
But what normally called heatwaves are associated lack of wind over large areas. And it seems to me the UHI could greater effect on local regions during such heatwaves and color surface such as roofs or asphalt is the more important factor in the UHI effect.
Seems like you (and some others) just need a smaller disclaimer at the bottom of your posts: “Opinions herein are based on a firm determination to disregard all empirical measurements of the climate, regardless of what half-baked conspiracy theory or discredited scientific nonsense I have to believe in.”
Once deniers get to the “all the records are faked/disorted,” what more is there to say, really?
With “reporting” like this – and Pachauri running around telling “official observer” groups (that one may or may not have heard of before) that:
What useful purpose could AR5 possibly serve?! All we really need is a little army of Borensteins – with the “right” kind of bias – to compile the responses of those who answer his questions “the right way” whenever someone decides to dream/drum up the next best thing to a scary story (stories which, evidently, haven’t been working too well for them, lately).
Amazing. Simply amazing.
The “new activism” our AGW extremists are looking for is one where they do not have to bother with being honest, correct or even facing voters.
The “new activism” the AGW community wants is to simply be given power and the means to impose their power.
The “new activism” of the AGW community sounds a whole lot like some much older forms of activism, none of which have turned out so well.
I learned quite some time ago to not pay attention to the news. At first it went against the grain of wanting to be as well informed as possible in order to reach reasonably good conclusions about any topic. Then I realized that following the news as it gets reported today has very little connection to being informed.
We had a snow storm this February that left almost half of our customers without power. It took 9 days to get the last ones back in service and the average was something like 4 1/2 days. And we are pretty good at storm restoration. The networks look at big numbers – 2 million people – and say unprecedented. But I doubt you could find one reporter who can describe an electrical distribution and transmission system. I’m starting to wonder if we are headed towards the day when you won’t be able to find a meteorologist who can explain how weather systems work. Doug K at NBC seems to be in the forefront of that trend.
I’m waiting for the wikipedia entry for idiot alarmist advocating journalist.
While the competition will be stiff as to whose photo should be used, Seth Borenstein is certainly making a strong bid to be the winner of that contest.
Global warming? But I thought we were supposed to call it climate change?
Judith, you are truly a gentlewoman and a scholar. Your are also an asset and a rare exception to your profession. Thank you for your honesty.
Does anyone do any analysis on heat wave data where urban and near by rural stations are compared? Can any case be made that the record temperatures are being significantly affected by urbanization?
Funny you should mention that. That problem is being worked on.
To see how the “dice are loaded” for the record highs/lows study by Meehl et al. (2009): do the following:
1. Use data prior to 1950.
Thanks for playing. Pay the lady.
What’s up Doc! I thought every thing before 1950 didn’t count anymore :) You ever compared just the stations reporting in 1950 to the current weather map? Seems to me there would be a bunch more records since there are a bunch more stations. Then I am just a dumb Gator :)
Dr. Keen noticed the cherry-pickers loading the dice – it’s the pits.
http://www.icecap.us/images/uploads/More_Critique_Of_Ncar_Cherry_Picking_Tempeature_Record_Study.pdf
Evidence for JC’s summary=>http://bit.ly/M50X2p
I ask so what? What is the cost of the higher damages from warming compared with the advantages and the reduced costs of severe cold events?
Without proper balance these sorts of statements come at me like just more alarmism more advocacy, more pedalling an agenda (usually an ideologically Left agenda and an agenda for more research funding to support the interests of the individual research or research organisation doing the advocacy.)
Good for you, Dr. Curry. For my forthcoming book (sample previously provided on AGW/crop yields), I have researched all available climate extremes. None are statistically apparent yet. That does not mean they won’t appear in the future. It does mean they have not yet. There are several famous past derechos in the US, all caused by the same unusual frontal/jet stream coincidence. This one, by itself, means nothing.
Regards
Leukemia clusters found near powerlines PROVEN by Paul Brodeur.
The huge, deadly nvCJD epidemic claiming 10,000’s of lives every year as proven by John Collenge.
November 13, 2000 in the Times of London: “Half the surgical instruments used for tonsil operations could be contaminated by variant CJD, according to an expert.” (Tonsils are infected with CJD prions even before disease symptoms appear. Normal sterilization protocols do not inactivate CJD prions. Sterilized instruments remain infective.) The estimate for the surgical instruments was based on a conservative estimate of 10,000 people in the UK incubating the disease. John Collinge of Imperial College School of Medicine in London said the ear, nose and throat surgeons at St Mary’s Hospital, part of the medical school, “…calculated that half the tonsillectomy sets in the UK are contaminated….This is potentially a serious problem.” The doctor complained, “It’s a major problem to which the Department of Health (UK) has given a lot of thought and not much action.” The Department of Health is consulting with surgeons on whether to switch to disposable, single-use instruments, especially in tonsil, appendix, eye and brain surgeries.
(note that the use of disposable surgical instruments has cost the NHA more than 2 billion dollars a year: DocM)
•November 16, 2000 in New Scientist: “Disturbing new evidence suggests that nearly three times as many people may be at risk from BSE than previously thought. So far, all victims of vCJD, the human form of BSE, have been from a minority of the population (37%) with a particular genetic make-up. This raised hopes that most of the population was immune to the infection.” New evidence now indicates that this is not so. “The implication is that people with the ‘protective’ gene combinations are not immune from the disease. They’ll simply have to wait longer for the disease to strike.” (The demographics implications are mind-boggling. Thirty years from the date of infection, how many thousands or even millions of citizens will develop, nearly simultaneously, vCJD. How will the UK or any country handle the massive medical care issues? Many of these people may be parents of young children at that time. Others will be elderly. Will any family remain untouched by tragedy?)
•November 18, 2000 in PA News: “According to the BBC, the Government has previously predicted that the maximum number of people who could die was 136,000, and the so-called Central Figure–the best guess about how many actually would die–was 6000. But the initial figure has been upwardly revised to 250,000….Professor John Collinge of the BSE Advisory Committee told the programme: ‘We might be seeing an epidemic that involves hundreds of thousands of people. Let’s hope that’s not the case, but it’s still possible…We need to guard against false optimism and wishful thinking, which has bedevilled this field for too long.”
What are the actual numbers?
http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w318/DocMartyn/nvCJDall.jpg
Odd that the drop in sporadic (random) cases drops when the nvCJD rose. Then returned to normal background levels as the cases of nvCJD fell.
I am not persuaded these fires are attributable to mans CO2 emissions, nor that global warming is more bad than good. There is a distinct lack of balance and lack of objectivity in the pronouncements of the activist scientists. It comes across as Alarmism.
Show me objective cost-benefit analyses for 2C, 3C, 4C and 5C warming over a century (and 0.5m and 1 m sea level rise). Be sure to include the benefits of higher GDP growth and what they will do to reduce poverty and improve health and human wellbeing if we adapt rather than waste our money trying to control the climate within temperature tolerance dictated by the Left.
This is the height of scaremongering, IMO. The planet was much warmer in the past. And life thrived. We know warmer is better than colder by the trend from the ice age to now. We also know that man did well in warm times in the past and poorly in cold times. It strains credulity to believe we happen to be at the optimum temperature just because we are here now. It seem s naieve to me.
Where are the objective cost-benefit analyses for a warmer world at different temperatures?
“It strains credulity to believe we happen to be at the optimum temperature just because we are here now.”
Tch, tch. Pangloss assured us that we live in the best of all possible worlds. :-D
Dr Curry, you mentioned that the blocking pattern may be the result of the state of the PDO and AMO. Is it possible that the solar state or sudden changes in solar state may have an effect on blocking pattern or the polar oscillations?
It is also possible that ice melting in the Arctic has had the effect of moving the jet stream. There is much current interest in that idea
Eli
Reading hisroric observations from the 10th to 16th century the UK experienced many periods of blocking patterns and poor/good weather that seems due to moving jet streams (the jet stream is in ‘wrong’ position for us in the UK this summer.)
It seems to me that moving jet streams happened in warm AND cold decades so please send lots of money to research this in more detail
tonyb
Just got my electricity and Internet back. Many still out. Seth’s list of quotable scaremongers is notable for its sameness. He needs some fresh faces.
“So it’s I told-you-so time, he (Trenberth) said.”
Right. There’s a sober analysis from a sane and dispassionate seeker after truth..
I swear to God, these people are barking mad.
Pokerguy, did ya notice the two finger typing in the interview?
“Climate change no longer tops US environment worries”
http://news.yahoo.com/climate-change-no-longer-tops-us-environment-worries-134721404.html
In terms of the sentiment expressed by Trenberth, the “I told you so” attitude is condescending and a disservice to academia and the research community. AP’s Borenstein choosing that quote and discarding Dr. Curry’s concise answers tells you more than just liberal media bias which is entirely expected. It belittles the audience as rubes unable to heed warning of impending yet entirely unspecific doom.
How would people have reacted if President Obama showed up to the lectern and told Colorado fire or D.C. derecho victims that they should blame themselves and should’ve listened?
At least let the fires be put out and power restored before taking advantage of hardship or crisis for your own political agenda.
Ryan, Have you thought of submitting an opinion piece to one of the main stream papers? I’m always after Dr. Curry to so something like that, no doubt to her continued annoyance, as she doesn’t seem at all interested, which I understand. By not “taking sides” she’s remains one of the only moderate scientists the MSM will occasionally contact. So maybe she’s right.
But perhaps you’d consider it. You’ve got good credentials, and a strong point of view and they just might consider a moderately worded op-ed just to prove they’re “fair and balanced.” Sort of. Anyway you never know. SOmeone has to stand up and call Trenberth out on his home turf, yet no one seems to want to do it. Perhaps I’m being naive. But it seems worth trying anyway.
The best way to get one’s message/argument/hypothesis out is to bypass the mainstream media and use blogs, Twitter, and other outlets like Reddit, Digg, and Drudge. It is critical to interact with the readers afterwards to self-correct in real-time.
This specific article is so biased that it ends up polarizing the climate issue further with clear teams or sides being established just like the political parties. In reality, the expert opinion of the scientists are not (yet) firmly established in the literature as the IPCC SREX summary clearly demonstrates.
That’s why the IPCC SREX almost received zero publicity when released. It was akin to a White House Friday night document dump.
So these record heat events, are they urban based, or rural based? Is there a bias.?
urban based but it’s not a problem… we adjust for that. It’s all very scientific. We measure atomospheric CO2 levels at the site of an active volcano where the there are swings of 600 ppm on a daily basis but that’s not really a problem.
So the bottom line seems to be that we are at the hottest point in a thousand years – perhaps several thousand years – at the same time as a grand solar maximum. There are a couple of things to make of this. Firstly – what does anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have to do with recent warming. Very little perhaps if you compare the Earth Radiant Budget Satellite data to ocean heat content calculated from ocean rise – as Wong et al did in 2006 –
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=Wong2006figure7.gif.
How does this relate to climate variability? Climate is so intrinsically variable that you need long term – and I am talking millennia here – proxies that are specific to the variable under investigation. Hydrology in many parts of the world is determined by ENSO to a large degree. This 11,000 year ENSO – after Moy 2002 – shows droughts and floods the like of which appear only in legends of prehistory?
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=ENSO11000.gif
Complaining about drought? Drought in America has been predicted for years by hydrologists and oceanographers. Conditions are ripe for a return to dustbowl conditions over another decade or three more. Not apocryphal – but simply based on ocean regimes.
What of the immediate future for temperatures? There is not likely to be warming for a decade or three more. Has this been modelled? Well yes – initialised atmospheric and oceanic simulations are the new black. The AR5 has a whole section on it. – http://www.knmi.nl/samenw/easyinit/doug_Utrecht09.pdf – there seem to be hundreds if not thousands of people working on it. What – didn’t get the memo?
There are people who don’t get the memo if it is staring right at them – and they are predictably becoming more strident and aggressive as the anomalies accumulate. This is the nature of the disorder of the cult of AGW space cadets. It traverses the familiar paths that cults pursue.
Does this mean that we should not worry about the anthropogenic emissions of 3% of background flux? I don’t think so to do with reasons of ignorance. My own.
But I am of course arguing to dissociate science from policy – let’s simplify to the most pragmatic and effective responses possible and not really bother with the apocalyptic visions of the space cadets. That doesn’t include taxes or caps. It doesn’t include economic ‘degrowth’ or suspension of democracy.
We have dozens of solutions that are not merely ‘shovel ready’ but already up and running in a big way. Here is the best because not only does it sequester carbon but provides astonishing increases in food production.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/soilcarbon/
There are dozens of feasible technologies and one or more will provide the world with cheap and abundant energy. Really what would be so difficult about a $1 billion global energy prize as one of the means of encouraging and rewarding innovation?
Oh…forgot again… :cool: :cool: :cool: :cool:
Is this really what Global Warming looks like?
I don’t think so, personally. At least not very much.
For one thing, the oceans are about a meter too shallow, for another there’s summer ice in the Arctic and a substantial ice shelf surrounding Antarctica; there are about 100 species too many (at least) still alive outside zoos; the cost of food is too low by half (or more), and the Economy’s pretty solid for an AGW world. Oh, and we’re one to four hundred years too early.
Other than that, carry on..
Found this rather funny.
It is entirely possible that we may find ourselves not laughing 100 – 400 years from now – actually, it is not possible, as none of us currently present will be around at that time. So I’m going with Alfred E – “What, me worry?”
timg56 | July 4, 2012 at 5:01 pm |
See, that’s fine for you.
Live at the expense of others, leave the world worse off than it was when you came into it. Have no worries that last longer than your last breath, and no concerns beyond your own skin. If that’s your way, who am I to criticize?
Given the vast changes that humans have brought to the atmosphere, biosphere and hydrosphere, ushering in the Anthropocene, this is most certainly what the early Anthopocene looks like…else it would not be occurring! How much different would the world’s climate be right now sans all human influence (suppose a deadly virus had wiped us out 10,000 years ago?) Only GCM’s can even come close to telling us that. Certainly far less solar energy would be continually accumulating in Earth’s energy reservoirs- which are mainly the oceans.
A nice fact free comment as usual by our pseudoskeptical warmist, a.k.a. R.Gates.
Let us indeed, for example, look at the 1950s heat wave in the US when
there were 10% or 1.1 to 1.0 more record highs than lows. This year it is 10 to 1 more highs than lows. Decimal point moving makes a difference, a substantial difference.
OK, how about the last decade when the number of record highs to record lows has been 2 to 1. In other words there have been 100% more highs than lows in the US over the last decade, an increase of 90% over the 1950s.
Sooner or later Judy might notice the difference as the spaghetti falls off the wall.
The problem is the absence of ubiquity.In Trenberth’s home city (Christchurch), the June anomaly was -1.2c The Autumn excursion was -.8 below the 1971-2000 mean and -1.9c below the 1856-67 mean it is indeed record breaking, just the sign is problematic.Should we ask KT to phone home?
Eli
There is an analogy with other forms of weather patterns. For eample, in the UK, a persistency of westerly winds changes to easterlies over the decades, which themselves have an effect on temperatures.
These are well described by H Lamb in his book ‘Climate present past and Future’ with reference to Chapter 7 ‘Anomalous patterns of atmospheric circulation, weather and climate.’
Its worth rereading it to see how patterns change over the years (and change back again), whether its heat waves or winds.
tonyb
The question, of course, is whether they will change back again. There is much reason to believe that they will not, that, among other things, the increased ice melt in the Arctic is moving the jet stream. Now true, Eli assumes that you are realistic enough to think that the disappearing of multiyear ice is driven by the global warming we are experiencing, but YMMV. On the good news side, even though the Hadley cells in the Southern Hemisphere have been moved by the ozone hole, it appears that that may heal due to timely action.
Eli
Thank you for your time. Did you ever catch my article when I reconstructed temperatures back to 1538 after reading many thousands of contemporary weather references from such places as the Met Office archives?
http://judithcurry.com/2011/12/01/the-long-slow-thaw/
These are the actual references.
http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/long-slow-thaw-supplementary-information.pdf
I have several times referred to a note I made at the time;
“13) Due to its geographical location British weather is often quite mobile and periods of hot, cold, dry or wet weather tend to be relatively short lived. If such events are longer lasting than normal, or interrupted and resumed, that can easily shape the character of a month or a season. Reading the numerous references there is clear evidence of ‘blocking patterns,’ perhaps as the jet stream shifts, or a high pressure takes up residence, feeding in winds from a certain direction which generally shape British weather.”
There is no doubt as to the importance of the Jet Stream (in fact I don’t think it receives anywhere enough attention) There is no doubt that it shifts. It is clear that weather patterns recur and sometimes weather sticks’ (technical word!) The constant march of different climatic states is well described by Prof Fagan in ‘The Little Ice age’
“The little ice age of 1300 to about 1850 is part of a much longer sequence of short term changes from colder to warmer and back again which began millennia earlier. The harsh cold of the LIA winters live on in artistic masterpieces….(such as) Peter Breughel the elders ‘hunters in the snow’ (see Figure 9) painted during the first great winter of the LIA but there was much more to the LIA than freezing cold and it was framed by two distinctly warmer periods. A modern day European transported to the heights of the LIA would not find the climate very different even if winters were sometimes colder than today and summers very warm on occasion too. There was never a monolithic deep freeze rather a climatic see saw that swung constantly back and forwards in volatile and sometimes disastrous shifts. There were arctic winters, blazing summers, serious droughts, torrential rain years, often bountiful harvests and long periods of mild winters and warm summers. Cycles of excessive cold and unusual rainfall could last a decade a few years or just a single season. The pendulum of climate change rarely paused for more than a generation.”
There is nothing I have read in looking at 1000 years of weather observations that suggests that our period of time is highly unusual.
Tonyb
Tony,
What is your data threshold whereby you would begin to consider it as more likely than not that humans are altering the climate such that our current time period – say from the mid-20th century onward, is unusual? What events or weather patterns do you feel would qualify as likely candidates for indicating that anthropogenic climate change is happening?
Now there is an argument. Climate changes, until it doesn’t.
R Gates
Likely proof? Climatic circumstances that lie somewhat outside the parameters of anything I have personally seen in the records or read in the scientifc and other credible papers.
Arctic ice? Melts as frequently as ice in a cocktail on a hot beach-complete melting of summer ice would be highly unusual but would need to materially affect the Antarctic as well
Winds? Winds have scoured mountains. They would have to become much more frequent AND damaging
Heat? Drought? . Biblical reports of both. Extended periods of both that were highly unusual for our latitude would be thought provoking
Sea Levels? Up and down like a yo yo with today being nothing exceptional. A sudden surge towards the levels that Hansen forecasts would be more than thought provoking
To be honest I am much more concerned at the likely technological break down in the event of power cuts or a deliberate attack on our computer systems. However, that is not climate related, so keeping on that theme my concerns would be that we have a plan A for global warming but not a plan B for cooling.
Consequently this temperature data set worries me, as we are back to the anomalies of the 1730’s
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
Cooling in the UK for a decade when all our agriculture, tourism and retail is set up for a supposedly warming world? I’ve been joking on this blog about the failure of my outdoor tomatoes to grow this year, and for the last four. Perhaps it is indicative of the future climate state, perhaps not, its too early to tell and its only possible to discern trends in hindsight but such things have repercussions for my country if we don’t prepare for it.
I have become very interested in the jet stream because our past climate records obviously has lots of weather related to it, and its something theyre showing everyday on the TV weather at present to explain our crummy summer. It ‘sticks’ periodically for some reason throughout our history. If we could discover the reasons for that stickability AND what causes it to fluctuate in the first place, and I think we would be a lot further to understanding our climate than we are at present. It would be good to have an article on it here.
All the best
Tonyb
I have nice big bushy tomato plants, nice big juicy tomatos I have not.
It doesn’t get cool enough at night for the tomatos to set fruit.
And the vinca vine is taking on the ivy, it used to not last through the winter.
Bob
We used to have lots of exotic plants that lasted through the winter. Most of those have now died and even those plants that did well outside in the summer-such as tomatoes- have refused to cooperate the last few years.
tonyb
pokerguy | July 3, 2012 at 3:50 pm |
said:
Dr.C …As I’ve done many times in the past (no doubt to your great annoyance), I urge you to think about making a public statement.
What kind of statement are you thinking about?
Dr. Curry has already made a very strong statement about this matter, in her:
Testimony presented to the Climate Change Hearing,
House Committee on Government Reform
“This divergence of the public debate from the scientific debate has confused and misled the public and policy makers on this important issue.
After considerable reflection motivated by my personal experiences this past year with the media, the public, and policy makers as a result of publication of the Webster et al. paper, I have come to the following understanding of the complex interplay of issues that have contributed to this situation:
• The influence of global warming deniers, consisting of a small group of scientists plus others that are motivated to deny global warming owing to the implications associated with any policy to control greenhouse gas emissions
• The tendency of a large number of forecast meteorologists (including TV meteorologists)to deny global warming and in particular the possibility of a link between increasing hurricane intensity and global warming
• The public statements by NOAA administrators and National Weather Service scientists that neglect the published research and deny a link between hurricanes and global warming
• The role of certain elements of the media in promoting divisiveness among the scientists, polarizing the debate, and legitimizing disinformation”
http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/climate/pdf/testimony-curry.pdf
As you can see, she has already stated it all.
Girma July 3, 2012 at 8:26 pm; http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/03/what-gobal-warming-looks-like/#comment-215056 :
”JC summary: So is this what global warming looks like? Well, this is what the 1930′s and 1950′s looked like. I have stated many times before that I think the 1950′s (warm AMO, cool PDO) are a good analogue for current weather patterns and extreme events.
Evidence for JC’s summary=>http://bit.ly/M50X2p ”
In July 1976 I visited New Mexico. Beforehand I was warned of extremely heat and drought weather conditions. It was a real surprise when during my visit there was cool drizzle. That kind of weather conditions agree well with the link above of Girma.
When taking account of the lags by which both SST and change of CO2 content in the atmosphere follow the changes of atmospheric temperatures, Girma’s link http://bit.ly/M50X2p agrees well with what i have written in the link http://judithcurry.com/2011/08/04/carbon-cycle-questions/#comment-198992 .
Lauri
Thanks for your post and the links.
From the ‘weather is not climate’ department:
“Provisional Met Office figures for June show double the average amount of rain has fallen, making it the wettest June since records began in 1910.
This is the second record breaking month of rainfall this year, with April also topping the rankings. The period from April to June is also the wettest recorded for the UK.
It is also the second dullest June on record with just 119.2 hours of sunshine, narrowly missing out on the record of 115.4 hours set in 1987. To complete the disappointing picture, it has also been the coolest June since 1991 with a mean temperature of 12.3 °C…”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2012/wettest-June
And July hasn’t exactly got off to a cracking start either, as anyone who has watched Wimbledon will confirm.
Ian
The Met Office temperature records show their own story of cooling since the turn of the century.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
If you look at the longer records, we are currently recording the same sort of temperatures as in the 1730’s. This is a problem as we are growing crops suited to a much warmer climate as my outdoor tomatoes will testify. I swear they have actually shrunk in size since they were planted out two months ago
Now about my special offer on snails…
Tonyb
Yes who needs the IPCC when all we need so is measure the diameter of Tony’s tomatoes ? :-)
“when all we need DO”
Tempterrain
A flaw in your logic. We can’t measure the tomatoes because they havent formed due to the cool weather. However that needn’t stop the application of post modern climate science. Perhaps we can extrapolate how big they theoretically are by slicing through the stems and examining the growth rings?
tonyb
Or better yet, running models of how fast tomatoes grow.
Judith Curry 2012
“We saw these kinds of heat waves in the 1930′s, and those were definitely not caused by greenhouse gases……….. etc etc etc”
Judith Curry 2006
“No single weather event can be directly attributed to global warming; however, we can expect the frequency and severity of flooding, droughts and forest fires to increase in the coming decades owing to global climate change.”
http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/climate/pdf/atlanta_rev.pdf
tt,
When the frequencies of those things increase, let us know.
Judith,
I’ve noticed that any cold events are NOT reported by the media.
What’s up with that?
For the last two hundred years of our western civilisation, science and scientists were seen by the populace as the elite group who were tasked with taking mankind into an ever better and ever brighter future.
And that populace who experienced first hand the fruits of the scientist’s research in their daily lives held science and those who practiced it in the highest regard as they saw their hopes and dreams fullfilled by the changes for the better to their daily lives where scientists had led the way to new discoveries and new technologies.
Science and scientists with their almost endless discoveries were the harbingers and creators of the promised future and the bringers of hope and an optimism for the future of mankind.
Then came the late 20th century and first the Ozone Hole affair with it’s
[ spurious ] claims of dangers to life and now in the first decade of the 21st century, the global warming / climate change meme.
The future as now promised by climate change scientists is one of danger, despair, destruction of hope and confidence in the future and helplessness all accompanied with a constant subtle barrage that mankind is evil in that he is destroying the world he lives in.
And that we will have to accept lower living standards, less comfort, loss of hope, anguish at our claimed destruction of the planet, anguish over the claims of our own impotence to correct what we are perceived to have done.
And as promulgated by a whole coterie of climate warming scientists, our’s, as in the non science populace is ultimately responsible for everything that is claimed to be about to go wrong with the natural functioning of our planet.
Unlike that two hundred year long meme of hope and trust in the science of the past there is nothing uplifting to the human spirit or the human soul today or any semblance of the promise of a better future in any of the pronouncements of modern day climate warming / climate change science.
Science today in it’s most glaringly visible form, global warming / climate change [ and now “sustainability” ] science is just a continuous and endlessly repeated barrage of dangers ahead, the creation of despair and loss of hope for a better future and the creation of fear and hopelessness. And climate science and climate warming scientists and by implication most of science now stand as the accusers of mankind for all that they in their arrogance have predicted is about to go wrong with the planet some time in the always near distant future,
It is always going to be all “our” fault.
And scientists in their arrogance and perhaps ultimately, ignorance, stupidly wonder why the public is now losing it’s faith, trust and confidence in science.
ROM,
When you try to create science rather than looking at the evidence, you will create huge errors that are very slowly being exposed.
No one wants to admit they are wrong, so protectionism becomes the course of action to the bitter end and at the sacrifice of our knowledge base.
ROM
Excellent analysis!
You concluded:
Albert Einstein said it:
Here we have both.
Max
PS There may be a “bright light” in scientists, such as our host here.
ROM,
Your thoughts on what has happened to the pursuit of the application of the scientific method over the years seems to be showing up more and more in the public’s lack of trust- the latest example being-
Climate change no longer tops US environment worries
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/global-warming-no-longer-americans-top-environmental-concern-poll-finds/2012/07/02/gJQAs9IHJW_story_1.html
…”Trust in scientific opinion on global warming continues to be less than robust. About a quarter of the public trusts what scientists say about the issue “completely” or “a lot,” while 35 percent, trust scientists only a little or not at all. Thirty-eight percent trust scientific opinions a moderate amount. Part of this lack of trust could be due to how Americans see climate scientists’ motivations for their work. More than a third of them think that scientists who say climate change is real make their conclusions based on money and politics. Almost half say scientists who deny that climate change exists base their conclusions on their economic and political interests.”…………….
Could be, but here’s what I think is missing from your analysis:
1) Numbers to back up your statement of relative change. Where is the evidence as to the levels of trust that existed years ago?
2) Numbers to place trust in scientists in context of levels of trust for anyone else?
3) Exploration for the influence of partisanship. Climate change is a highly partisan issue, and that is reflected in the view of scientists involved in climate science. You are extrapolating from that field to make a general statement about trust in scientists more generally. Where is the evidence to support that extrapolation.
In fact, other polls show little change over time in trust in scientists, and even that scientists are the must trusted source for information on climate change.
You know there’s something wrong when you get a stamp of “excellent” from Max.
Sorry to say, this comment is full of all sorts of logical flaws and unsupported statements. To highlight just one:
Unless I’m mistaken, here you seem to be extrapolating from your own view of the science around the Ozone hole and projecting your views onto the general public to conclude that [spurious] science related to the Ozone hole has eroded trust in the public. What is your evidence that any significant segment of the public have a similar view as you over the [spurious] science? If you have no such evidence, then how can you say that the controversy over the Ozone hole had a significant impact?
And this:
Again, I see no evidence to support your statement. How are you quantifying this dreamy high regard that the public used to have for scientists? Can you not think of many examples where generally accepted scientific consensus had a difficult road in gaining public acceptance?
And you are also conflating the issue of trust in scientists, implicitly, and appreciation for the products of scientific research. If there has been some dramatic drop in appreciation for scientists, as you see to think, does that mean that there is some widespread increase in distrust in the products of scientific research? Have people suddenly started throwing their I-Phones out with the garbage?
Evidence?
Borenstein’s novella made an appearance on NPR. It can be read and commented upon at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=156172098
The loaded dice paper proposed that the distribution is getting broader as well making extreme events even more common. That part was, however, highly questionable, because the methodology mixed short term variability with the influence of different phases of longer term variability.
This.
Besides in Europe we are far from any record breaking events and certainly from heat waves.
June was particularly rotten. Temperatures of 19°C in Paris are quite unusually cold for this time of the year. But all this is not more relevant than the present warmth in the US.
Thought tree ring studies didn’t actually measure temperatureTony and now yer introducing Tomato stem ‘science’?
Beth
Its new and its cheap and chimes with these times of Austerity.
It also provides the opportunity to terminate the IPCC and transfer all climate change funding to me and my tomatoes. It seems the obvious solution and will provide me with the funds to organise armed guards against the slugs which, like the forces of anti science, are determined to destroy the valuable evidence that the stems contain.
tonyb
Hi Tomas – I have been looking for an honest man and here you are. It has been a little chilly in Oz. –
http://www.bom.gov.au/web03/ncc/www/awap/temperature/minanom/month/colour/history/nat/2012060120120630.gif
– it only reached 21.6 degrees C today in Central Queensland. Mid winter is hard.
I hope you are practicing conservation farming Tony.
Beth my luv – hope you are keeping your feet dry.
Cheers
Chief
I’m practsing conservation by allowing the snails to eat everything. Does that count?
Tonyb
You should try eating the snails – hmmm snails.
I once had a racing snail.
In order to make it faster, I figured that removing its shell would reduce the drag, but it just made it sluggish ;-)
Peter
As the winner of the ‘funniest snail joke’ competition I am pleased to confirm you have won 2500 snails. Please just send your name and address and they will be rushed to you by return.
Chief, your culinary suggestion has won you 1000 snails and a clove of garlic.
Ytonyb
Tony,
Sorry, I don’t believe in snail-mail
I am disgusted by the appalling quality of low-class snail jokes in this thread, and intend writing a full letter of complaint to our hostess.
Tony,
On a serious note. I suspect that you are just growing the wrong variety of tomato. From your description it sounds like it must be amish paste? They do say that if you only have an amish then everything looks like a snail.
Tony, well if it provides an opportunity to terminate the IPCC I say ‘the ends justify the means.’ I’ll send yer a donation.
RyaN M writes:
“The best way to get one’s message/argument/hypothesis out is to bypass the mainstream media and use blogs, Twitter, and other outlets like Reddit, Digg, and Drudge. It is critical to interact with the readers afterwards to self-correct in real-time.”
While that’s all useful of course, you make an error in judgment when you dismiss traditional outlets in my opinion. Why not crash the party and start speaking truth to ignorance? I simply do not understand the reluctance of credible, qualified people to stand up and say, “Enough. This is wrong, and here’s why.” Terribly frustrating to be honest.
An object lesson in selective coatings for Pekka.
Tin foil blocks thermal radiation quite well. I propose taking a baked potato that is about 200F, wrapping it in a cool piece of tinfoil, and giving it to you to hold in your hand. I want you to hold it tight for as long as you can and tell me how good of a job the tinfoil does in preventing your hand from getting burned.
This is the problem with your selective coating that admits shortwave and blocks longwave. It is conductively coupled to the substrate and you can’t stop it from getting as hot as the substrate and radiating from its exposed surface. All the selective substrate does is lower the albedo of the coated surface but in no case can it lower the albedo lower than 0. In fact it gets it down to about about 0.05 which is a modest improvement over black paint. The best selective coating in the world, which is not practical in most situations, is plain water like that employed in a solar pond over the bottom layer of brine. No solar pond in the world can get higher than about 90C at the bottom which is just shy of the theoretical maximum given 1000W/m2 at the surface of the pond.
You really need to give up this goofy notion that you can get more energy out of something at equilibrium than what goes into it. I’ll just keep finding more and more mocking ways to rub your nose in it. You’re piddling on the floor of the physics building in other words and need to be taught a lesson so people like me don’t have to constantly clean up after you.
Dave,
Do you know, what “selective” means in this connection?
It means that emissivity/absorptivity is high for short wave and relatively low for thermal IR It gets hot, but it does not radiate as much as other surfaces that are as hot.
Do you know anything about the issues you argue about?
Pekka Pirilä | July 4, 2012 at 8:23 am | Reply
“Do you know anything about the issues you argue about?”
More than you, evidently.
I’m still trying to determine if you that Kirchoff’s Law of radiation states that at equilibrium absorption and emission across all frequencies are equal. You can’t violate that with a selective material. In effect these materials do the same that greenhouse gases do and they increase the absorptivity of the material across all frequencies allowing it to thermalize a greater percentage of the insolation. But you cannot thermalize more insolation than what is arriving.
If you were correct there’d be passive solar popping up like weeds all over the place but there isn’t and you’re not.
This is the same thing that happens to glass in a greenhouse, Pekka. Glass is a selective coating. It is transparent to shortwave and opaque to longwave. But in the process of absorbing the longwave radiation the glass itself is thermalized and it passes energy through the barrier by conduction. You can run from the first law of thermodynamics but you can’t hide. Nature always finds a way to conserve energy.
Dave,
Some of the sentences of your 2:16 pm message are unintelligible to me. Thus I cannot understand all that you try to say. Anyway your statement that “they increase the absorptivity of the material across all frequencies” is wrong as one of the most important features of selective coatings is that they reduce the emissivity (and also absorptivity by Kirchoff’s law) of the surface at thermal IR frequencies, while they increase it at the frequencies of the solar radiation.
Unfortunately this is not sufficiently cost-efficient to lead to “passive solar popping up like weeds”.
Normal glazing does not act effectively as selective coating for the reason you describe in your next message. (Under some conditions it might have a stronger effect, but not in general.) Double glazing has, however, more commonly such an influence. In cold climate it’s quite common that the inner glass has a temperature close to the room temperature and outer glass one close to the outside temperature. The window lets the solar radiation pass almost unhindered, but LWIR leaving the window is reduced to the level that corresponds to the temperature of the outer glass.
A lot of stuff appears unintelligible to you beginning with the first and second laws of thermodynamics. I give up. If you you still think the greenhouse effect can produce temperatures up to the photosphere of the sun then you’re a fool or a liar.
Pekka, I think the biggest problem is that the green house analogy is actually a lot better than most think. Controlling convection is really where it is at. The ocean has its impact because of stratification and the different thermal properties of the layers. The atmosphere is also dependent on some degrees of stratification and the thermal properties of the layers.
By ignoring the fact that the layers exist and the geometry of the layers is not a cute stack of flat plates, the whole beauty of the system is lost in theoretical nonsense. So it’s non-linear, has to obey conservation of energy and the basic laws of thermo, welcome to the wonderful world of fluid dynamics.
Dave,
How many times I must answer to you telling that I don’t think that anything approaching even remotely the temperature of the solar photosphere may appear on the Earth without effective concentration.
The only reason to refer to that temperature is that’s what the second law gives directly as the limit for concentrating and non-concentrating systems on Earth. There are no other simple laws that would tell what is possible without concentration for a flat plate collector or for GHE. The only clear limit is so far that it’s not really useful.
One thing is, however, certain – higher temperatures are possible than that reached by a perfectly black surface facing the sun, insulated from behind and put into space at the distance of the Earth. There’s no theoretical reason why that would be the limit and it has also been observed in practice that higher temperatures are possible.
Capt. Dallas,
The properties of the troposphere are in many ways controlled by vertical convection. The circulation in cells (as the Hadley cell) is also important and determines some other important properties. Looking at the troposphere as formed from layers is not likely to be the most useful approach and may be totally misleading.
Pekka, I disagree, It is easier to differentiate between weather and climate with a solid reference. Having a static model, the layers based on ideal thermodynamics to compare with ideal radiant physics allows you to better determine the impact of imbalances. Lumping the troposphere, the weather region by definition, together as a reference just provides a chaotic reference with nothing to compare to but assumptions based on assumptions.
With the layers you are starting with a solid frame of reference which in thermo simplifies the problem. If the answer is correct in that frame it will carry over to all other frames.
By starting with water, the main thermal mass and green house gas, you can work outward. Forget the fancy derivations until you have the problem set up properly, then you progress.
As I have written before, they may be many ways of looking at the same system. What’s essential is that all important constraints are taken correctly into account.
One clear fact about troposphere is that there’s no stratification in most of it. I write “most” as the situation is somewhat different in the polar regions, where the lapse rate is often much less than the adiabatic for the actual moisture level.
Pekka,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PBLimage.jpg
That is an image of the planetary boundary layer. The base of the clouds start at a point where the condensation begins. That is a stratified layer in a static model that would vary dynamically. The -1.9C moisture boundary layer ensures that most condensation has occurred and that radiant heat transfer is beginning to become significant.
You could use potential temperature to define a layer it really is only a reference, but -1.9C makes more sense that just picking a number.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/Websterscartoon.png
Here I just defined my boundaries.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/climate%20stuff/MBLmodelversusAQUASSTandCh-6.png
Here I used those boundaries to estimate the energy imbalance, which is approaching zero.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/climate%20stuff/whatsnormal.png
Which you can compare to SST and see they are approaching a stable temperature for this conditional energy state.
The ocean layers are better stratified in the technical sense, the atmosphere though would be stratified under ideal conditions. I use the ideal to weed out the chaos. Simplification is much better than complication, though complicated is better for job security :)
Yes, there is a level where condensation begins, but that does not mean that there’s stratification as there is a continuous convection across that level. The air is moving vertically all the time, only the level stays more or less constant where the condensation begins in the rising air.
Pekka, I have to work on you conceptualization. If it was not for WEATHER, the layers would be STRATIFIED. The layers are references to be used to filter out the weather. This is the all models are wrong, but some useful, concept. The model is useful as a reference.
Without weather we would have stationary cells, but there would not be stratification.
As far as I can judge you are trying to create a model based on assumptions that you cannot justify and that are actually not accurate enough to provide useful insight. The GCM type models have been verified for weather forecasting. They contain certainly a lot of correct physics. That does not guarantee that they give correct predictions – or projections – for climate. That means, however, that building something as good or something that should be given equal weight is very demanding. How could you get anybody to believe that your model is of any value? Why should even you think that it has?
“Without weather we would have stationary cells, but there would not be stratification.” In the static model the energy would balance at conditional equilibrium. At that point the layers would be stationary and there would be stratification.
“As far as I can judge you are trying to create a model based on assumptions that you cannot justify and that are actually not accurate enough to provide useful insight.”
With the Earth more than conditional equilibrium is required, there is also a steady state. The energy at each boundary would have to equal the requirements of the conditional equilibrium and the steady state. The steady state would be defined by required balance of Entropy and potential energy needed for the conditional equilibrium. So this concept is a combination of a standard static model and maximum entropy model.
“The GCM type models have been verified for weather forecasting. They contain certainly a lot of correct physics.” This model would actually make a good basic weather model. With the ideal energy determined for layers and sectors of layers, the energy imbalance between adjacent sectors could be used to simulate energy regions and predict their path. Not finely enough to be particularly useful for weather, but then I am looking at climate which does not require the complexity of small cells, but speed to run more calculations for different scenarios..
“That does not guarantee that they give correct predictions – or projections – for climate. That means, however, that building something as good or something that should be given equal weight is very demanding.” A single model approach has the possibility of shared assumptions. This is a separate model using a separate approach with none of the same assumptions. By starting with the water cycle and working out it would tend to converge with other models with reasonable skill.
“How could you get anybody to believe that your model is of any value?” By kicking their ass projecting :) http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/climate%20stuff/whatsnormal.png My basic water model predicts that the oceans are near the maximum interglacial heat content. The GCM predict increased OHC uptake. Those curves in the noise are classic charging curves. I haven’t read about that on RealClimate.
“Why should even you think that it has?” It provides a good explanation of the differences in glacial periods and why there would be liquid water even under a faint sun. I think you said if a theory is right it explains a lot of things :)
In my vocbulary strafication means that the material does not mix, i.e. each molecule stays in its layer. That’s not true for anything that may be called troposphere or that has an adiabatic lapse rate.
Pekka, perfect stratification is rare in fluids. You have degrees of stratification.
The concept of the model is to determine the layers that have tendencies to stratify some portion of the energy spectrum. Latent would generally be limited to a moist region. Radiant long wave would generally be limited to regions where LWR has less competition with moist air. You use these to approximate stratification under ideal conditions. These would be your initial conditions for the system. If you want to put the model in motion fine or you can step the model, easier for me on a spreadsheet.
You can actually come up with some very good estimates as long as you balance three or more layers. Latent cooling for the ocean is 83Wm-2 for example. What area emits that average 83Wm-2 depends on the total energy and the open water area of the oceans.
he doesnt Pekka. Lost cause that one.
Europe and most of the N. hemisphere climate is controlled by the North Atlantic’s goings on.
About a year ago I was encouraged by a certain world prominent climate scientist to look into the AMO – NAO relationship. As a result strong non-stationary correlation is found, but with strange abnormalities:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AMOandNAO.htm
– How is it possible that that average SST could be responding or ‘mimicking’ with a delay of years average of the atmospheric pressure.
– The delay is apparently becoming longer and longer, but on one occasion retreats backwards.
After about a year of research, both of the above ambiguities are now ‘explainable’ by a single catalyst, based on the data held by 3 or 4 world leading data bases; the result is emergence of the fundamental variable ‘geo-solar oscillation’ shown here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GSC1.htm
Chief, funny you should ask, I haven’t been keeping my feet dry. Walking by the Yarra River today, where it broke its banks along the bike track, I met two schoolboys on bikes and we decided we’d risk it.. ‘Yeay!’
It wasa lot deeper in the middle than we thought, lol .
Such a wonderful adventure – they are the best kind.
But it only came up to here on the ducks.
At least it’s warm enough in the dead of winter where you are. The lake outside my door is 30 feet below pool level but it’s still 60 feet deep in the middle. The water temperature is 83 degrees on the surface. Almost perfect. Anything over 85 is too warm IMO and anything under 75 is too chilly. Six months from now it’ll be near 50 degrees on the surface which is bad news for brass monkeys.
Seth’s semantic trick (and he is very good) is to say this is what GW looks like, not what it might be like, or will be like. The implication is that adverse climate change is already here, a view that is held by many, especially in developing countries. The problem with this tactic, on the Green side, is that it points to adaptation rather than mitigation. That is, if it is here then it is too late to prevent it, so best get ready. Great fun this confusion.
David –
Hmmm.
Most people only read the headline.
Did Seth write the headline?
Does it matter who wrote it? Stupidity from an editor or stupidity a Climate Scientist is still stupidity.
Andrew
sorry forgot “from” :P
Andrew
Andrew –
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/03/what-global-warming-looks-like/#comment-215275
Seth is a top gun so he either wrote it or approved it. (I used to be a climate journalist.) Moreover, this theme is repeated throughout the article, nullifying the one sentence caveat at the beginning. He is trading on an ambiguity, something that occurs repeatedly in the scare. When someone says I warned that this would happen, or this is what it looks like, they are not talking about the future. The future tense is studiously lacking in this piece.
“I used to be a climate journalist.”
I doubt you were ever a climate journalist, any more than you are a scientist. Perhaps you are referring to the propaganda you have been know to write at the behest of the fossil fuel industry. That is not journalism.
I actually have been a journalist. Journalists rarely get to even see the headline before the story goes out.
Andrew –
It matters if what is in question is the accuracy of this statement by David –
And that statement is what I questioned him about.
If people believe that human emissions of CO2 are changing the climate, and that the excessive heat we’ve had recently is similar to what would be experienced more frequently with climate change, then it is entirely logical for them to say that this is what climate change would look like, although we cannot attribute this current weather pattern to climate change.
I see no problem with that.
Just simply saying that “This is what climate change looks like,” (without the caveat) would be problematic – just as problematic and trumpeting in headlines when there are cold snaps, unusually high levels of snowpack in the Sierras, or Canadian Harbor seals showing up in New England without saying that those phenomena were not evidence that climate change isn’t taking place.
It’s also problematic if someone selectively focuses on one part of what someone says without including the rest of what they said.
“people believe that human emissions of CO2 are changing the climate”
And this is the stupidity from which flows all the other stupid things that scientists and media communicate.
Andrew
From past interaction, I’m aware that’s what you think.
However, I was discussing David’s statement. Just for future reference, it really isn’t necessary for you to interject yourself into interaction between me and someone else to make your point that it is stupid to believe that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are likely to change the climate.
My guess is that you aren’t likely to change your view in that regard. Of course, if you do change your opinion, I’d be interested to read about it, even if it is with an interjection in my exchanges with someone else.
My apologies Joshua. It’s just that a wack Warmer like yourself presents an extremely easy target. ;)
Andrew
Andy, your ignorance of the greenhouse effect embarrasses you, not Joshua.
When you proclaim to all the world you don’t understand the greenhouse effect, and aren’t aware of how anthropogenic CO2 is warming the planet . . . sorry, that just makes you sound dumb.
I know you’re probably smart enough to understand the greenhouse effect, if you chose to; you’re simply ignorant, and your faith-based worldview leads you to believe that your “ignorance is strength.” It’s not, sorry.
Have we had “excessive” heat caused by newly arrived energy or is it because heat already here has been concentrated in a region, or ???
1980: 10,000 people died in the central and eastern U.S.
1988: up to 17,000 deaths across the U.S.
1999: heat wave and record drought in mid Atlantic states, 500 deaths
2006: widespread heat wave, 200 deaths
==========
Temps must be moderating in the US, given the large reduction in the number of heat related deaths over the past 30 years.
The simple statistics that puts the lie to global warming:
“U.S. mortality rates peak in December and January and are at their lowest points from mid-July to mid-August.”
http://www.econ.berkeley.edu/~moretti/weather_mortality
http://static8.businessinsider.com/image/4d9f02d0ccd1d5675a030000-610-432/chart.jpg
If global warming is a bad thing for the US, explain this graph. Why is the death rate highest in winter and lowest in summer? If warming is bad, it should be the reverse.
“If global warming is a bad thing for the US, explain this graph.”
Why should I spend my free time explaining graphs to you?
I suggest you study one of the many analysis of the costs of global warming to the united states, rather than wasting your time mathturbating with a graph you don’t understand.
U.S. Deaths by Month, 1995-2002 Avg. per Day
January 7,356.53
February 7,081.70
March 6,830.89
April 6,472.35
May 6,229.18
June 6,091.26
July 6,029.65
August 5,966.82
September 6,051.17
October 6,305.65
November 6,501.66
December 6,975.51
Calculated from National Center for Health Statistics data
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Science/story?id=990641
If global warming is a bad thing for the US, explain this graph. Why is the death rate highest in winter and lowest in summer? If warming is bad, it should be the reverse.
An argument that could only come from people who have never heard of microbes.
Warmer winters have generally higher death rates than colder winters; winters in warmer years too have generally higher death rates than winters in cooler years.
The ‘excess winter death’ phenomenon is most pronounced in the tropics and countries with warm winters.
Deaths due to temperature extremes are often much higher in summer than in winter.
Deaths due to high temperature extreme during extreme weather far outnumber cold deaths during extreme weather: people die in the cold when they’re drunk, stupid or unlucky; they die in the heat when they can’t escape it.
Certainly, the idiotic claim that some socialists make that heating fuel ought be subsidized to avoid excess winter deaths is baseless: across the socialist nations, removing other factors, availability of cheaper heating has no effect on death rates whatsoever, either comparing year over year or region by region.
You’re repeating a silly and specious argument that misattributes causes, and has no relevance to ‘benefits of global warming’.
Nonsense, you are simply rationalizing. People die when it is cold in far greater rates than when it is warm.
Without technology, human beings cannot survive temperatures below 82F. A naked human will die of exposure in summer outside of the tropics.
The reason is that human beings are warm weather adapted. We are designed to shed heat. There is no place on earth too hot for a naked human to survive so long as there is water. (volcanoes excluded).
ferdberple | July 4, 2012 at 10:47 am |
As irrelevant an answer and as unrelated to the ‘excess winter death’ phenomenon as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65zREY1ewL4&feature=related
People run barefoot in snow and on ice, even modern people raised in the lap of technology. The reason is that human beings aren’t what you think.. and yet, still you manage to make a completely false claim.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=77627
No amount of water will prevent mortality from long term exposure to the heat of the hottest environs on the planet.
But don’t be too hard on yourself. Many people are unaware of this, even athletes who think they know heat. http://www.springerlink.com/content/01r3r4785rh1h658/
Plants die back by the trillions in freezing weather and animal numbers are vastly culled too. The colder and longer the winter the worse the toll. Moron.
?
flu season – October to May.
Buy my swamp land in Florida and you’ll never die!
Dave Springer | July 4, 2012 at 1:46 pm |
Oh? Are the figures from National Center for Health Statistics about plants and animals?
Extremes take a toll both ways. Introducing irrelevant observations seeking to lend credibility to one’s preconceived notions while only being able to recognize half of the observations is a sign of bias. It’s like halving your IQ.. which would put one in the range of imbecile, on average.
The longer and hotter the summer, the worse the toll, too.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/weather/july-dec12/climate_07-02.html
Perhaps a better interview with Trenberth.
Across the developed world, death rates are highest in winter and lowest in summer. Contrary to what so called “scientists” would have us believe, warmth is obviously a good thing for people.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/goklany_winter_deaths_figure4.png
ferdberple | July 4, 2012 at 10:20 am |
And yet, everywhere in the world, when one looks into the causes of the mortality ‘bump’ (which is a very small change in rate, little higher than rounding error) one finds factors related to weather itself almost entirely absent from the population statistics.
Warmer winters kill, on the whole, more than colder winters. Even if we assume a homogenous distribution of warming across all seasons, there are still the greater probability of extreme weather events associated with global warming, so warmer winters can have deep cold spells. You’re making a case based on assumptions that do not match expectations or observations, and leaving out huge swaths of knowledge that patently contradicts your claim.
The biggest, most barefaced, lie trotted out continually from too many of the media hungry climate scientists is that models project more extreme weather events under global warming. The GCM’s are not even remotely capable of that. The only consistent model result, and not from a GCM either, is that we can expect fewer hurricanes. Don’t hear much about that in the media do we?
Political correctness and pessimistic guesswork rules the roost in this field. And no wonder because instead of the penalties and universal condemnation that they deserve, these liars gain prestigious prizes and endless funding. The only real positive feedback in this farrago is the huge incentive to lie.
JamesG
Actually I predicted less severe hurricanes. At least the NH variety. Hurricanes are heat engines. Big ones. Like any heat engine they rely on temperature differentials to accomplish work. Reduce the temperature differential and there’s less usable energy available for them. The mere fact that the higher latitudes in the northern hemisphere are warming more than the lower latitudes means the temperature differential across the track of these storms is smaller and hence less usable energy available to power them. James Joule and Nicholas Carnot will never steer you wrong. The former was a hobbyist and the latter an engineer. The key is they were experimentalists. Great men like these are spinning in their graves over Iowa-educated 1960’s rejects like Hansen and Lacis being taken seriously. God help us all.
The spin depends on the Coriolis force and the mass is supplied by evaporation of surface water which is at 26.5 degrees C plus.
Dave Springer | July 4, 2012 at 1:42 pm |
The extremes of temperature tend to increase, even with the Arctic warming faster than the equator. There’s still winter, and still night, and while the average winter temperature may rise, the record cold of winter nights will still be obtained regularly, merely tending more sharply toward some seasons and regions. The place and time of origin of hurricanes will shift, becoming wider and more multimodal, and they will have more energy at peak.
Judith,
If as you say the present events are associated with blocking events, a fairly simple idea to grasp, then anything else seems like avoiding the truth. The experts role should be to explain what’s going on not try to imagine some horrendous future for us all.
You’re being too generous in saying “The good news in this latest episode is that no one seems to be trying to attribute extreme events to AGW – merely saying ‘this is what global warming looks like.” The distinction is minor when such statements reach the interface with media/policy.
Must be no hurricanes to blame on Global Warming this year, huh? We do know what the Global Warming religion looks like.
One man’s fair weather is another man’s fearful climate.
What does global warming look like?
Ha. Nobel Prize winning physicist Ivar Gieavar this week, at the 62nd annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, said it looks like pseudo-science.
Ouch that’s gotta sting. Bring on the smears from the faithful. I would say to anyone here who shares Ivar’s view, you’re in the best of company with it. The science is not settled.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/07/02/lindau-nobel-laureate-meeting-from-the-big-bang-to-the-big-controversy-a-k-a-climate-change/
Happy 4th of July
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. ~Ronald Reagan
If this is what the believers claim global warming looks like, then it looks like nothing different than the past.
But it does make it clear AGW alarmists depend on deception and historical amnesia to peddle their claptrap.
Curry writes:
“News bulletin: heat waves happen, when meteorological blocking patterns are set up. There is no linkage between blocking patterns and AGW that I am aware of. I suspect that there may be blocking pattern linkages with the multidecadal climate regimes (e.g. PDO, AMO); I wrote a proposal a few years ago on this but it didn’t get funded.”
Of course it didn’t get funded. Your area of science stopped testing its dogma quite some time ago. The dogma states that the frequency of severe weather events is increasing due to anthropogenic global warming. That’s now the null hypothesis and no one is interested in testing it. The science is settled, doncha know, so it would just be a waste of time and money. Hard to believe, isn’t it?
As the world warms we’ll probably see more major heat waves like this becoming more frequent and it will become harder to deny. A substantial increase in global mean temperature has to impact somehow after-all.
http://qsr2010.ospar.org/en/media/content_img/ch03/Fig_3_1_EN.gif
Bearing on this is Hansen’s recent “climate dice” communications in which shows the distribution in local summer temperature anomalies in GISTEMP has increased (as you might expect in a warming world), but also that the distribution has slightly broadened, suggesting that extreme heat events are becoming more common than the shift alone would entail.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20111110_NewClimateDice.pdf
Very interesting if this is the case and potentially very worrying for those who live in areas susceptible to such events.
Care to comment on my criticism of Hansen’s paper up-thread?
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/03/what-global-warming-looks-like/#comment-215351
You say “For example, you may have a 42C average referenced to a 40C baseline at one location, and 12C average referenced to a 10C baseline at another location. The former could conceivably be associated with a heatwave event, but the the latter cannot by any stretch of the imagination.”
I think it can be called a heat wave. For example recently I have been describing record temperatures in Arctic locations as heatwaves, even though they are barely above zero, but many degrees above normal.
You simply have no idea do you!
Next think you’ll be calling a 4K temperature against the CBR a heatwave.
I am far from alone in using the term heatwave to refer to a period of warmer than seasonally normal temperatures. I have seen the term applied in winter when a spell of particularly mild weather has taken hold for example.
Of course Hansen’s paper deals specifically with summer temperatures, so in that sense the heatwaves will be pushing maximum annual temperatures for the local areas too.
And there’s the nub of the problem right there – if events don’t fit in with your theory, change the definition of the events.
I
It may be a moot point, but I think you’ll find he used Jun-Aug data – which includes the SH winter
He highlights 2003 through 2011, 1998 was the Tsonis et al “Climate Shift”
which appears to have followed the 1995 “regime change”.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/climate%20stuff/whatsnormal.png
That odd shift in the stratospheric cooling and the leveling off of the rate OHC gain that of course is shockingly unbelievable since is was not projected by GHE theory.
Some might say that this “regime” is the warm “strange attractor” that chaos math wackos talk about :)
In a warm “regime” the number of “warm” records would be more easily broken if the instrumental record does not extend back to the last warm “regime”. 1950 to 1981 does not even come close to the last warm “regime”.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/climate%20stuff/tasmaniassataymyrgreenlandhadsst1880-1991from-2000.png
If you don’t do a lot of fancy smoothing to reduce the signal, the paleo data even tends to show a range temperatures that might be expected. If you squint hard you can see that exect for a little goose around 1930 to 1940 it has been a while since the Earth has seen this “regime”. I believe there are even some new paleo records from a Russian lake that show a good bit of climate change.
I would think that is is more what regional temperature differences would produce. Of the globe warms uniformly I don’t see any reason for atmospheric energy movement – what would spawn it?
I actually expect to see a lot of regional warming and cooling. In fact it is happening right now and has been happening all my long life. As a kid in the early 1950s the snow in Oregon would often come up to my knees. That happens less often now. :) In fact the winters were far more harsh then no matter how far from my toes my knees are now.
The temperatures aren’t in for summer yet, but for March-May 2012 GISTEMP shows the following.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2012&month_last=5&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=0303&year1=2012&year2=2012&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
Mostly warm relative to 1951-1980, except for Australia. The US exceptionally so (4 degrees C in places). We’ll see if the summer matches up to this, but so far it is similarly warm, and given that sigma is near 1 degree for summer, this would be a 3-sigma season over a large area in Hansen’s terms (like Texas 2011 was ). We should keep track of this.
Some of you might find this presentation by Dr. Jennifer Francis from Rutgers rather interesting, especially in light of the once more very low Arctic sea ice for this day of the year, July 4. It relates both the low ice level and increased frequency and intensity of the blocking weather patterns and extreme weather in the mid-latitudes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtRvcXUIyZg
This is a rather long video, but well worth the watching. It certainly provides much food for thought as we continue to see how our Anthropocene climate is unfolding.
Dr. Curry said:
“There is no linkage between blocking patterns and AGW that I am aware of.”
____
Are you discounting the work of Dr. Francis et. al then?
There is nothing that is definitive – it is simply speculation on all sides. What do you want to do with this? It all seems very old and tired thinking. Science is one think but advocacy is another – and these people and you need to be up front about just what it is you are advocating rather than simply run campaigns of fear and loathing using emotive terms including athropocene and denier.
What exactly seems “old and tired” thinking? I think the data and concepts presented by Dr. Francis related to diminished sea ice and alterations in mid-latitude weather patterns is fairly new. Many on this blog have said: “So what?” when it comes to diminished Arctic Sea ice, and others have questioned any link between AGW and increasing probabilities of blocking weather patterns. Dr. Francis’ work provides some interesting potential answers.
BTW, such expressions as “these people and you need to be up front…” are quite insulting.
The people who are advocating unspecified stuff based on what amounts to speculation. These ‘blocking patterns’ are by no means something new.
Chief,
What people are advocating “unspecified stuff” and what exactly is this “unspecified stuff” they are advocating? You certainly can’t be talking about scientists like Dr. Hansen who are very clear about what they are advocating.
I don’t think he watched the video
There are elements of universal global carbon taxes – a tired and old idea that has already failed. Against free markets, suspension of democracy and centralised controls, economic ‘degrowth’, enforced limits to growth, etc
Just where is this spectrum of post modernist disorder do you stand?
:cool: :cool: :cool: :cool:
Are you interested in solutions at all or simply mouthing off with old and tired ideas? Are you interested in effective responses or simply have an agenda that can’t be named because it is simply too extreme for most people? Are you concerned for humanity or simply wish to impose some weird idea of order? Please – let me know because whenever I call for specifics rather than speculation on cliamte disasters there is a sudden and puzzling silence.
This was a curious statement, because just in March Judith presented the Liu, Curry et al. paper that said reduced Arctic sea ice in the Fall caused more blocking which caused more snowfall in areas. While reduced sea ice is not the same as AGW, it is a close relative, most would think.
I’d forgotten about that paper. This makes her comment even more curious. I would assume then that she is making the case that there is no proven link between AGW and reduced sea ice.
Yes, current reduced Arctic sea ice could be all down to natural cycles, though the preponderance of and growing evidence would indicate that the athropogenic influence is now dominating over natural variability.
“though the preponderance of and growing evidence would indicate that the athropogenic influence is now dominating over natural variability.”
CO2 though looks more like a trace than a cause.
Where is most of the warming? Where there have been the most land use changes.
You mentioned that 100 cm of snow may fall in a winter following a warm summer, but it all melts. It gets quite a bit of help melting these days. Winter wheat farmers want the right amount of snow, so they can control the snow melt by changing the snow albedo.
The thermal mass, albedo and insulating properties of snow and ice are an important part of the energy balance. There are more ways of changing that than CO2. If you have the wrong cause, the solution would be wrong as well :)
Thanks for that video very interesting, I am a big advocate of the idea that you can’t remove summer sea ice and expect northern hemisphere weather to remain the same.
And, it’s happened before, tra-la. And, with no one paid to think or write about possible consequences or what we might do about it other than to consider possible savings to be had with a shorter route from the UK to the Indies.
That’s because you have no understanding of feedbacks. You just parrot what you’ve been told by your handlers. Don’t try to think for yourself. It just makes you look even more dense. Stick with the script that’s been prepared for you.
Northern sea ice acts like a thermostat. It is a wonderful insulator for the water beneath it by preventing evaporative cooling. As more open water is exposed the rate that heat is lost to space increases. Most people know that a thermostat does precisely what you claim not to expect – maintain a constant temperature.
‘Changes in the planetary and tropical TOA radiative fluxes are consistent with independent global ocean heat-storage data, and are expected to be dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing. To the extent that they are real, they may simply reflect natural low-frequency variability of the climate system.’ AR4 s 3.4.4.1
Even recent warming seems equivocal. If it is true that most 20th cetury warming was quite natural – it stands to reason that there is cooling ‘in the pipeline’. Certainly for the next decades this seems odds on. Could the science on this be wrong? Hell yes. That’s why you have a plan B.
Here is quite a simple idea for scrubbing C2 from the atmosphere. This could be ideally combined with hydrogen generated with power from 4th gen nuclear to provide endless, cheap liquid fuels.
Of course the highest levels of CO2 are places people live or place like conferences or sports stadiums. Keeping CO2 low in a classroom could market particularly if in cold weather where ventilation to outside, cost heating energy.
You have as usual missed the point entirely.
This is a seriously good idea. Methods of capturing CO2 from the air have been complex and expensive. This relies on simple solubility.
Chief,
What would be the cost pr tonne CO2 removed?
There is nothing remarkable about recent heat waves. 1930s sure were remarkable tho’. Here is a heat wave index graph 1895-2008 for the US 48.
http://www.epa.gov/climate/climatechange/pdfs/print_heat-waves.pdf
While there is no universal definition of a heat wave, this indicator defines a heat wave as a four-day period with an average temperature that would only be expected to occur once every 10 years, based on the historical record.
That’s pretty funny – where’s Eli when you need him.
@Bob Koss
quoting EPA:
• Heat waves occurred with high frequency in the 1930s, and these remain the most severe heat waves in the U.S. historical record (see Figure 1). Many years of intense drought (the “Dust Bowl”) contributed to these heat waves by depleting soil moisture and reducing the moderating effects of evaporation.7
—————————————————————
WTF? I thought water vapor was supposed to amplify global warming?
Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!
Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, Canto vi. Stanza 17.
Scottish author & novelist (1771 – 1832)
I thought Global Warming looked like a squiggly line that heads mostly upwards on the far right.
Now you’re telling me it’s when it’s hot in the summer? :P
Andrew
Speaking as someone who is a native of Colorado, both my own experience and the records for our region will mark this year as quite unusual in many respects. Certainly we’ve had an epic fire season, far worse than anything in recorded historical records. It was all prompted by a low winter and spring snow pack, warm dry conditions in the spring, and plenty of fuel for the fires because of many years of warmer winters that have allowed the pine beetle to survive over the winter and destroy millions of acres of forest. Colorado has been a disaster waiting to happen. We’ve set so many record highs this year in the Denver area that I’ve lost track.
What does all this have to do with AGW? Perhaps nothing. I am open to that possibility. It could all just be cyclical, involving cycles going back long before any white settlers took this land from Native Americans. But it could also be a natural cycle intensified by anthropogenic climate change.
R Gates: Colorado weather has been measured and observed for what, maybe 200 years? And the “recorded historical records” of fires is how old? I can find them online from CSU all the way back to 1960!
So it should be clear why I think your statement: “What does all this have to do with AGW? Perhaps nothing.” to be patently absurd, naive, and even borderline arrogant / ignorant.
The question you should be asking, IMO, is “Given the incredibly short timeline of our observations of Colorado, especially with any reasonable expectation of accuracy, how could anyone link the recent weather and fires to AGW?”
Final thought: “If extreme weather and fires happened in Colorado and no one was there to observe them, do they count as evidence against attribution of extreme events to AGW?” Seems to me that many want to believe the answer is “no”. Bah.
ksd
ps: for bonus points, if this IS the worst fire season in Colorado history, and it happened during a period where man was “managing” the fire risk, what does it say of man’s ability to manage fire risk? And given the apparent horrible failure to manage fire risk, how effective do you believe man will be at managing climate?
In 2003 a major heat wave killed thousands of people in Europe, including in north/western countries such as France. At that time many climate scientist warned about the increasing probability of such extreme event, caused by so called manmade global warming, some of them claiming that 30% or even 50% of the summers would be affected by such heat waves…
Since that time European north/western countries have never experienced any new heat wave, and most summers have been rather cool and rainy…
That’s pretty much what climate scientists are doing now … just taking advantage of any catastrophe, no matter what.
What global warming looks like is just lots and lots of Wolves and headless chickens?
Pygmy scientists running around like headless chickens crying wolf.
Fortunately Jo public is just smiling at these sad junkett scientists.
“….like headless chickens crying wolf” ?
I’d say a headless chicken would find it just about impossible to squawk , never mind cry wolf. :-)
I suggest people read Corbyn’s analysis and prediction of more US heat waves as the result of the plunge of the World into a new LIA: weatheraction.com/docs/WANews12No32.pdf
As for the CO2-AGW hypothesis, it’s based on a major numerical error in the IPCC Energy Budget. It’s in the APS GHE web page: http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/hafemeister.cfm
Equation 17 shows that in order to balance the assumed UP and DOWN IR fluxes, you need to reduce the emissivity of the lower atmosphere from the [wrong] assumption of unity, to 0.76.
Thus the assumptions lead to exaggerated input energy of 333.[1=0.76] = 80 W/m^2.[94.5 if you assume an average Earth surface temperature of 16 deg C instead of 14 deg C]. In no other scientific discipline would you start with a mistake in the input 50 times higher than the claimed end result of 1.6 W/m^2 AGW! This proves gross incompetence or fraud.
I see you are using averaging…cool!
You’ve made your own planet of cylinder city which does NOT allow any parameters except temperature values alone.
I am simply reporting that the IPCC Energy Budget is based on exaggerating IR heating of the lower atmosphere by a factor of 5 from imaginary energy, a perpetual motion machine of the 2nd kind, to give it its thermodynamic description.
So the positive feedback and ~3 K CO2 climate sensitivity claims are baseless. Also the calculations are from the APS which apparently believes the IPCC AGW claims are valid! You couldn’t make it up!
you’re the one making the mistake pal. Both in taking corbyn’s pronouncements about climate seriously and on your take on that equation
Judith,
A drying planet would give the look of AGW.
But our scientists do not look at anything NOT averaged for mathematical purposes nor do they look at physical planetary changes such as atmospheric density changes and salinity changes. One would effect insulation value of our atmosphere and the other would effect our evaporation patterns.
I’m sure many here would appreciate it if Kevin Trenberth could give us a complete list of things he “told us so”.
MSM journalists would also find it saves them a lot of time if they could go straight to KT’s “I told you so list”. A website would be nice.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13227.pdf?new_window=1
Extreme Weather Events, Mortality and Migration
The study shows that 4%-15% of the increase in lifespan in the US is the result of people moving from the cold NE to the warm SW. That death rates peak 2 weeks after cold spells. That women are killed in greater proportion by cold.
Death rates peak in winter, not summer. It is the lag in the length of time that cold takes to kill that hides the cause and effect. One might as well argue that it is blood loss, not the gunshot that killed the victim.
The saying “catch your death of cold” has no warm weather equivalent. It could well be that the effects of cold on mortality are downplayed because it affects women more than men. Isn’t hysteria over global warming largely promoted by men?
ferd,
Thanks for the above. As is often the case, you’d think simple common sense should be enough for people to figure this stuff out, but it’s nice to see some substantiation…
I was a believer up until about 4 years ago, before it one day occurred to me that wait a minute, a warmer world has to be better for at least some people. Why wasn’t I seeing anything to the effect in the media? It’s at the point I began to smell the CAGW rat…
AGW started in the ~1960s and this is the consensus/official explanation.
http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/global-warming-is-only-part-human-caused/image
http://www.climatechangeconnection.org/science/Causesofglobaltemperaturechange-charts.htm
The 1930s are long before the alleged AGW, but we all agree on this. Other than that, this is another own-goal by the Team.
What global warming looks like (?)
Here is how GLOBAL warming looks like: Australian ABC just informed us this morning: ”this year is the COLDEST, for the last 14years” Therefore; 14 years ago, was COLDER than this year! Oops 14years ago, was 98… Oops 98 was the WARMEST year, for the Fake Skeptics… Lies have shallow roots, get exposed to the daylight, sooner than you think
Talking about localized temperature and refer it as GLOBAL; is a tactic referred as: ”scraping from the bottom of the septic tank”. Mr. Tony Brown wasted big part of his life, digging and scraping on the bottom of that proverbial septic tank, he deserves a gold watch and long service leave – to get out of his stench. To see what people on the street started noticing, that: the ”phony” GLOBAL warming was ”phony”
Stefan
I suggest you re read my last artricle and see how many top scientists see some sort of corollary between CET and global weather. It is by no means a perfect connection and I have never claimed it was. In this respect I follow Hubert Lamb’s dictum on any sort of reconstructed temperature that you can accept the tendancy but not the precision.
We know that in the past there have been periods of warming and cooling locally but we can’t know precisely to tenths of a degree.
You also labout under the misapprehension that I believe in Global warming. I have told you any number of times that I do NOT believe the warming is GLOBAL. It is localised and there are places that are cooling. There are also many places which dont seem to have any trend at all.
tonyb
“You also labour under the misapprehension that I believe in Global warming. I have told you any number of times that I do NOT believe the warming is GLOBAL. It is localised and there are places that are cooling. There are also many places which dont seem to have any trend at all.”
Well. you think it’s possible that at some point in future we could have global cooling, return to glacial period. And there was period prior to 10,000 years ago which was cooler- globally cooler.
And it seem we find periods within this glacial period which was cooler and warmer- globally warmer or cooler.
But there climate isn’t uniform changing temperature on a global scale, just because Europe has warm or cool summer, doesn’t mean the rest of world warm or cool similar or in accordance with Europe’s temperature.
Now, I would think the best and easier way to measure global warming or cooling is looking at the retreat and advance of treeline in North America and Europe and Asia. And we know these have changed significantly in last century. And indicate that there was warmer periods in the current interglacial period- around 3000 years go. So generally from the Holocene climatic optimum it’s cooling trend with many centuries long up and down, with generally the warmer of these period being longer in duration.
But all of this long term cooling and up and downs warming and cooling aren’t particularly noticeable in changing weather on daily basis. And one could have a very cold winter during the Holocene climatic optimum, and have very hot summer during the coolest periods since then.
So, one could be transported at random back into the past between now and 9000 years, you can know when you in warmer period or cooler period. This wouldn’t apply if when back to the time of last ice age, unless if in the tropical region.
And of course if transported into the future 100 years one also not noticed any change- you could not guess if global climate had warmed or cooled. You could guess, but have 50% chance being wrong.
@gbaikie | July 6, 2012 at 5:18 am
gbaike, stick around, cross swords with me few more timers; you will start saying, same like Tony: ”he never said that warmings are global” NEVER?
Gbaike, referring about the ”tree line” you are not proving of increasing GLOBAL temp, but are proving that; you don’t know anything about trees also. Listen and learn: 1] trees prosperity is better in MILDER climate. Trees have lots of water in them – hotter days / cooler nights, as extreme – water inside the trees expand / shrink in change of rapid temp -> the tree suffers ”decompression problems”
2] in Asia, for the last 3000 years, the areas of rice paddies kept increasing – rice paddies create milder climate. (Your criminal cult promotes the opposite)
3] when is more moisture in the air – trees absorb moisture from the air / keep the moisture in the ground for dry days. When no moisture in the air – trees pump water from the ground, to protect themselves from big / and many, many, many small heatwaves (you would only know the millions of small heatwaves, unless you leave on the open, as the trees.
gbaike, ax and chain-swords for the trees are same as ax and a bomb for human. Another thing to learn from Stefan is: invention of ”artificial fire” that created the big Ice Age indirectly, yes, human created the big ice age in Europe USA, by rubbing two sticks – striped the vegetation in the ”Savannah of Sahara -> that evaporated / drained the Mediterranean system – close to the bottom of the Mediterranean sea was dry desert.
During the ice age, was no ice covering Arctic’s water; but lots of ice in northern europe + usa – I have given it a name: ”The Ice Donut Effect”. All damages done by ignorant human. now is done by the criminal cult. proven all, on my website and in my book
climatereason | July 6, 2012 at 4:02 am said: “top scientists”
Tony, scientist confusing climatic changes with any phony GLOBAL warming, is not a scientist; but a criminal with scientific pretension. 2] GLOBAL weather is = ”CLIMATE”, nothing to do with overall GLOBAL temp! That is a big catastrophic difference. b] I never argue about variation in LOCALIZED temperatures. When somebody refer / insinuate localized temperature fluctuation as GLOBAL – they become a crime – I will expose it, any way I can. In the post I’v put now, on my home page, I’m exposing the localized warmings or coolings presented as GLOBAL, by Hubert, Plimer, you; and every other con artist. Because: ”if the warmings / coolings are not GLOBAL = Warmist don’t have a case!!! So, when you people present, LIA, Maunda Minima / Maunda stupida, Medieval ”PHONY” GLOBAL warming, as GLOBAL; you are committing bigger crime than the Warmist; by shielding them. Tony, localized warmings are not end never have being an issue for me, and NEVER will be. .
And you say: ”You also labout under the misapprehension that I believe in Global warming. I have told you any number of times that I do NOT believe the warming is GLOBAL” . Not ”warming” Tony, but ALL the phony GLOBAL warmings that you / Hubert, Ian promote; were localized. Those are the precursor to the Warmist GLOBAL warming in 100years. Me proving that the past GLOBAL warmings were opportunistic lies = Warmist foundation gone and collapses as a pack of cards.
Localized extra warmings / extra coolings; have real reasons; the laws of physics were exactly the SAME 600y ago, 2000y ago 15000 years ago, as they are today. Bottom line: person pretending to be skeptic, but talk about ”fluctuation in the WHOLE GLOBAL temperature”, is commuting bigger crime; than the opportunistic Warmist. Warmist castle is built on the Fake Skeptic’s lies = by ”Warmist starting to defend the Fakes” = I’m proving to the not regular visitors to the climatic websites, and to the people on the street that: Fakes are as: ”pretend policemen” braking personalty the bank’s door and safe, for the Warmist to help themselves.”
Fake Skeptics are literally holding the people for ransom; so that the Warmist can mug them. Just by using every dirty trick; to cover up that their gazillions of past GLOBAL warmings were NEVER GLOBAL. they were NEVER GLOBAL; is that English enough? When I say: they were never global; it means that all the proofs beyond any shadow of a doubt are all there Stefan.
gbaikie
I think we agree. I said this in my last article quoting Brian Fagan;
“The little ice age of 1300 to about 1850 is part of a much longer sequence of short term changes from colder to warmer and back again which began millennia earlier. The harsh cold of the LIA winters live on in artistic masterpieces….(such as) Peter Breughel the elders ‘hunters in the snow’ (see Figure 9) painted during the first great winter of the LIA but there was much more to the LIA than freezing cold and it was framed by two distinctly warmer periods. A modern day European transported to the heights of the LIA would not find the climate very different even if winters were sometimes colder than today and summers very warm on occasion too. There was never a monolithic deep freeze rather a climatic see saw that swung constantly back and forwards in volatile and sometimes disastrous shifts. There were arctic winters, blazing summers, serious droughts, torrential rain years, often bountiful harvests and long periods of mild winters and warm summers. Cycles of excessive cold and unusual rainfall could last a decade a few years or just a single season. The pendulum of climate change rarely paused for more than a generation.”
—– —–
Having examined tens of thousands of accounts of the weather from 1500-1750-for this article, through books, online and also during several days research in the Met office archives in Exeter, Fagan’s account resonated with me. Being so dependent on the land and the successful raising of crops made our ancestors acutely aware of the weather and of climatic trends, and their accounts are often highly detailed.
Reading their vivid testimony of the seasons – sometimes in books several hundred years old- was like viewing their lives in a speeded up film.
First, a disastrously cold winter threatened their existence- but brought the chance of riotous frost fairs- which might quickly thaw to a mixed and floody spring where crop planting was a struggle, to be rapidly supplanted by a hot bucolic summer bringing anxious periods of drought, saved by rain that enabled a bountiful harvest, after which violent winds would blow in a stormy autumn as first one weather system gained ascendancy, only to be supplanted by another as the wind direction changed. During the following year all may be reversed, with complaints that an excessively wet mild winter didn’t destroy diseases, whilst the previous year’s baking hot summer was supplanted by a series of dull cool months threatening the all-important harvest, touching our ancestors with the ever present specter of famine.
Clusters of wet or dry years were as notable as clusters of cold or warm years, and sometimes all conditions coincided within one year demonstrating the variability which the Met office discounted.
The overwhelming impression I formed from reading the accounts of the vagaries of the climate of yesteryear was that they sounded exactly like today, with perhaps greater variability, extreme events and colder bits thrown in, although after the last few bitter winters the striking similarities with the past have become even closer. It is difficult to determine any evidence of notable climate change in recent years leading to a dramatic change in our climate or a surge in temperatures.”
—— —–
Generally the temperature through the Holocene has fallen, but within it are notable periods of warmth. We are in one of them now. However, history suggests we shall eventually return to a cooling trend with all that implies
tonyb
tony b
Your account of life during the Little Ice Age is very descriptive.
To get an visceral appreciation of what life was like then, I can recommend seeing the Joseph Haydn Oratorium, “The Seasons” (“Die Jahreszeiten”).
A few years ago, I saw a brilliant presentation in German in the Lucerne concert hall by a local choral group with classical orchestra and four soloists.
One truly gets the “gut feeling” of helplessness of the peasants portrayed, and their complete reliance on and vulnerability to the weather and all its forces as they toil to extract a living from nature.
Winter is the most dismal of the “Seasons”: it is portrayed as the season of death.
We in the industrialized modern world can be ever so thankful that our ancestors managed to reduce the our complete vulnerability to the extremes of the weather (thanks in good part to inexpensive and readily available energy from fossil fuels).
We can also be very thankful that our planet appears to have warmed slightly since those days.
Max
Max
We live in a benign period of weather for which we should be grateful instead of spending tens of billions of pounds wondering how we can enginner a return to the good old days of the LIA. What a strange species we are
tonyb
Me, I grew up in the LIA in the Dakotas. We loved it. The people were robust, and they could farm the daylights out of the brief summers: corn, sorghum, milo, wheat, cattle, pigs, sheep, etc.. And when it was almost 40 below zero at night, we tossed some more buffalo chips on the fire and got out the handmade quilts and tossed in a hot rock and slept like babies, knowing full well our cattle outside were fat and gathered up to keep themselves warm and toasty. Oh how I long for those days during the LIA in the Dakotas before global warming made the place just as nasty as Nebraska.
JCH
Another one with a sense of humour. I hope Fan notices.
Tonyb
@@climatereason | July 6, 2012 at 6:03 am
Mythology #4: old European paintings with clouds; as proof of their warmer / wetter “the WHOLE planet” WOW! That one is my favored classic con.** Paintings are, paint on canvas; more of a wishful thinking than reality. I leave in the hot tropics – have background picture on my computer monitor; a picture of some hills covered by snow – when it gets too hot =it’s a feel good, looking at the snow (if any of those fake Skeptics traveled from 2500AD, back to now – looking at my monitor, would have declared: in 2012, the planet was COLDER by 36C to have so much snow in the equatorial regions…?).
B] instead of Congo, Libya has ”green” flag, as a desert country. C] the biggest white island on the planet is called Greenland. D] Mr. Homer Simpson can do better stunts, than Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Homer is doing his own stunts (he doesn’t need a double as Arnold). But for the Skeptic’s woo-doo science: when clouds on some European old paintings = “wetter” climate on the WHOLE planet…?! I tell you what: when is raining heavily, paint a picture with clear sky – see if the rain is going to stop. Some kind of Tony Brown’s ‘’rain dancing, science, in reverse’’ If it works = the leading ‘Skeptics’’ are correct; if it doesn’t, everybody has being conned by them.
Under the Fake’s woo-doo science; should be: Australia is the driest continent – because is no enough of Tony’s Picassos in Australia; marvelous woo-doo science, marvelous. Reason he doesn’t ”understand” what’s on my blog is: because I have solid proofs, beyond any reasonable doubt; I would be embarrassed to put any lies, as our chronic, compulsive liar Mr. Tony Brown
My mom in southwest NY state has been complaining for weeks about her furnace turning on at night which is rather unusual for June in that area. The media doesn’t mention that but the people living in those unseasonably cool areas do and take note of the biased reporting. Is it any wonder the AGW movement is losing more and more credibility as time goes on?
here is what global cooling liked on July 4, 1977:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/07/35-years-ago-today-global-cooling-caused-severe-wind-damage/
“News bulletin: heat waves happen, when meteorological blocking patterns are set up. There is no linkage between blocking patterns and AGW that I am aware of.”
Correction:
“In our 7/3 news bulletin, it was incorrectly implied that global warming could not be linked to more intense heat waves, because heat waves are caused by blocking patterns. While it is true that heat waves are caused by blocking patterns, global warming will make those heat waves more intense, and lead to milder blocking patterns being sufficient to trigger a heat wave. Hence global warming makes heat waves more intense and more frequent. We here at Sarcastic News Bulletins apologize for the error.”
@@ Robert | July 6, 2012 at 12:02 pm TRIED TO MUDDY THE WATER
Robert, heatwaves come from dry areas. Southern Europe gets them from Arabian peninsula and Sahara. Similar problem in USA; from desert; where is no WATER VAPOR. Remember the molecule that your Organized Crime presents as bad for the climate?! Heatwaves don’t come from Brazil. They don’t come from rice farming areas. That’s your smoking gun. (your own criminal cult has declared rice farming in Australia as the biggest evil – they prefer tro drain the storm-water, during storms, into Pacific… because Pacific doesn’t have enough water…?) Instead of increasing humidity inland, to fight the dry heatwaves; on the driest continent on the planet. (there is an ”chief climatologist” Australian deviate commenting regularly; presenting himself as a skeptic…? Maybe Captain Kangaroo is the same person; and we are getting two, for the price of one
Human can chop the forest and drain the lakes -> the place will start producing heatwaves. Therefore; human can build new dams, to save extra storm-water for dry days and decrease heatwaves. The Carbon Bashers are committing much bigger crimes, than they can comprehend.
Heatwaves are NOT GLOBAL warmings / GLOBAL warmings don’t exist, and I’ll tell you why: heatwave suggests ”hotter air” – — hot air expands = increases the volume of the troposphere. Where troposphere expands upwards, in that place is colder than on the ground by 105C – releases extra heat / intercepts EXTRA coldness – it takes minutes the O+N to bring that extra coldness to the ground – therefore: when is hotter than normal on some place – is colder than normal on other place / places. You Warmist don’t have a case -the only reason you are flourishing in the blogosphere is; because of the Fake Skeptics. On the street the normal people are realizing that it was all one big criminal act
Robert, however more energy will increase the nonlinear dynamics, which should make blocking occur less often and last less long. The atmosphere is turbulent at the scale of interest here, something the models do not capture.
Given the fact that the 30’s dustbowl was worse, I can only conclude that greenhouse warming ameliorates the effect and occurrence of heatwaves.
But that would be a positive thing and we can’t have that, can’t we?
If Global Warming supposedly can make cold weather and regional ice ages, then can Global Cooling make heat waves ?
Maybe that’s what is happening. This is what Global Cooling looks like !
There is no such thing as “regional ice ages”. AGW is related to Earth’s energy imbalance caused by continually increasing greenhouse gas concentrations on a long-term basis. That imbalance will be seen first and foremost at specifically the Arctic region. There are very good and well understood physical reasons for this. This Arctic warming is well modeled and is being observed. Part of the effects of the disruption to Arctic weather is that more cold air will be funneled from the ArctIc to mid- latitudes as generally higher pressure in the Arctic pushes this air south.
To be replaced by what?
And from where?
Rather than the normal closed circulation of air over the Arctic, we are seeing more intrusion of warm air masses in the region from the N. American continent and from Asia, with the net effect that there is definitely more mixing of ArctIc air with air from mid-latitudes. This mixing means that some regions in lower latitudes (such as Great Britain) are seeing more Arctic air pushed into their region. The low AO index is a good rule of thumb to tell you when Arctic air is being mixed more readily down to the mid-latitudes, and when you can therefore expect some regions of the Arctic to be warmer than normal.
Gates: Glad to hear there are no regional ice ages, as warmers often claim that the LIA was merely regional. However, your second sentence should be “AGW is the hypothesis that Earth’s energy imbalance is caused by continually increasing greenhouse gas concentrations on a long-term basis.” You have stated a questionable hypothesis as a known fact, which is far from true. The rest is of course just after the fact modeling. Much, perhaps most, Arctic warming appears to be due to ocean circulation changes, beginning with the late 70’s PDO shift. But you never use words like perhaps or appears do you? Your false certainty is amazing.
The LIA was of course not an ice age, but simply a period of cooler weather likely caused by volcanic activity and then reinforced by lower solar activity. Current warming of the oceans and decreasing Arctic sea ice appear to be something that is unique in at least 1400 to 2000 years. Could it be some natural, non-anthropogenic cycle? Sure. That’s why I’m truly a skeptic. Do I think it more likely that it is at least mostly anthopogenic, yes, and that’s why I’m a “warmist”.
Aye Captain Gates! The oceans be charged ‘n’ ready to fire sir.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/climate%20stuff/whatsnormal.png
R Gates,
So then regional cold weather for a long time can result from Global Warming ?
Can regional heat waves then result from Global Cooling ?
Isn’t this what Global Cooling looks like ?
The biggest non- tectonic heat reservoir of the planet is the ocean,which holds far more energy then the atmosphere. Our very best measurements of ocean heat contrnt down to the deepest levels we consistently measure would say that the planet continues to accumulate energy, just as expected with the continual accumulation of greenhouse gases that we’ve seen for many centuries now. The only thing consistently cooling in the full earth system over a long time frame is the stratosphere, which would be expected with energy be trapped in the ocean and lower atmosphere.
R Gates.
My question remains.
“is this what Global Cooling looks like ?
I did not ask you if the globe is warming or not cooling. I asked “Is this what it looks like.”
You know, some regional heat waves. Is this what Global Cooling looks like ?
..and some droughts…Is this what Global Cooling looks like ?
This is certainly what the early years of AGW look like, or more accurately, the early Anthropocene. We’ve got many centuries to go as we head back to something akin to a Pliocene or even Miocene climate. First major stop along the way will be when we exceed the warmest temperatures of the Holocene optimum, and though that’s the first major stop, the train has barely left the station.
OK, thank you R Gates, but you’re still not giving a response to the question.
“Through most of last century, the U.S. used to set cold and hot records evenly, but in the first decade of this century America set two hot records for every cold one, said Jerry Meehl, a climate extreme expert at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. This year the ratio is about 7 hot to 1 cold.” The explanation for the increase of hot/cold weather ratio in the twenty-first century is very simple: there was an actual step warming that started with the super El Nino of 1998, in four years raised global temperature by a third of a degree, and then stopped. Satellite records show that this is thew one and only warming during the entire satellite era that started in 1979. It is the second part of twentieth century warming and was caused by warm water carried across the ocean by the super El Nino. The first part of twentieth century warming started suddenly in 1910 and stopped equally suddenly in 1940. There was no parallel sudden increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide which rules out the greenhouse effect as its cause. I determined the existence of the step warming from satellite records and you will find a good description of it in figure 15 of my book “What Warming.” It has been ignored because of the alleged existence of a “late twentieth century warming” in the eighties and nineties. That is a phony warming but Hansen nevertheless stood up in 1988 and told us that global warming had arrived and that we were the cause. It is hard to find observations of the step warming of 1998 – 2002 because existing official temperature curves are misleading. Sometimes, however, entirely spontaneous descriptions surface. Such was the case, for example, when I chanced upon an article in Natural History about the melting permafrost in the Russian republic of Yakutiya in Northern Siberia. The author had a group together in 2008 and was told by elders that ten years ago there was no melting and rains that interfered with cattle grazing which was their chief complaint at the time. That of course was anecdotal but also unsolicited and the timing fits. There is no doubt that the step warming is responsible for the unusually warm first decade of this century. This warming is still attributed to greenhouse warming by Hansen & Co. but this is impossible for two reasons. First there was no corresponding jump in carbon dioxide concentration and second, greenhouse warming cannot be turned on and off as abruptly as the satellite record shows. Furthermore, only satellite temperature curves can be trusted for the twenty-first century because ground-based curves have a fake warming built in by the constant revisions of temperature values by the “guardians” of global temperature. They have also managed to disappear the step warming by manufacturing a fake twentieth century warming. In my opinion only satellite temperature measurements are valid from 1979 on. If you do not agree, get my book and study it with comprehension.
Indeed Arno, I have been pointing to that step function for over a year, including here. It appears to be a small abrupt event, likely due to the big ENSO. Thus there appears to be no GHG warming whatever over the last 30+ years. The community simply ignores this glaring problem. Science can be stubborn, as Kuhn pointed out. Entrenched paradigms are hard to dislodge.
I have pointed out the flaw in your reasoning.
You can’t just assume, as you are doing, that UAH record is incompatible with a linear trend + noise. You have to demonstrate that statistically.
For example take some random data with a ~0.2C/decade warming and ENSO-like variation. Take a 30 year period of such data and see what it looks like. If any of them resemble step jumps such as the UAH record then you can’t say for sure that such a step jump is incompatible with linear warming rate overlaid with ENSO variation.
I think FR11 take care of this anyway by removing the ENSO ups and downs and showing once you do that the records become more linear.
You are confusing statistical samples with satellite measurements. There is no noise in the climate system. It is clearly an oscillator, as it should be. By your argument no data means anything, because there is always a chance that any pattern occurs by chance, if it is random. Plus removing the ENSO means removing what appears to be the primary causal factor. That is just nuts scientifically. So I will stick with what is plainly there, thanks anyway.
If you want to save AGW go find a heat capacitor that stores global GHG warming for 20 years then suddenly releases it when triggered by an ENSO cycle. Lots of luck. In the meantime AGW is falsified by simple observation.
ENSO is a cycle. How can a cycle cause anything in any permanent sense?
JCH, I do not know, but abrupt events are thought to be caused by changes in ocean circulation, which includes ENSO. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrupt_climate_change) Of course ENSOs can become more or less frequent, or powerful, and this has been a major research area in itself. They are known to be chaotic.
The real problem is that the climate community is fixated on explaining the warming found in the surface statistical models, which may be a mere artifact, while ignoring the lack of warming found in the satellite measurements. To me, explaining the ENSO correlated step in temperature, the only atmospheric warming in the last 30+ years, is the number one climate question, but it is not even recognized by the climate community. What a mess!
Nose is always relative to the signal that you are looking for. If you are wanting to measure the diurnal temperature fluctuation on a summer day, then a cloud passing over the sun for 15 minutes becomes noise in the diurnal signal.
Compared to longer term signals, such as from the multi-century growth in anthropogenic CO2– ENSO, volcanoes, and solar variations become noise riding on top of that signal.
Excess warming is just radiated to space unless you have the increased GHGs to hold it in. You can see it only takes months to remove the El Nino warmth every time including 1998. Radiation is an effective process. This is known as the Planck response.
Gates: Your use of noise and signal are metaphors, not scientific concepts. No one is signalling us. Try stating your claims in scientific language and we can look at them. I am sure they are mere speculations.
For example, I take it you are claiming that solar variability has had no long term effect on temperature. That is certainly not known. In fact the sun-climate link is a major research area, because it is not yet understood. Same for ocean circulation.
David, the relationship between noise and signal and my “metaphorical” explanation of it is quite mathematical. The metaphor I used is actually quite scientifically based. What it signal and what is noise is always relative. If you are studying multi-year SST variations of the equatorial Pacific, ENSO is the signal. If you are looking a multi-decadal and century change in Earth’s energy balance, ENSO is noise. Noise is always relative to the signal you are looking for.
Also, I have a keen interest in short and long term solar influences on Earth’s climate, as all climate scientists do. But I fully understand that there are multiple factors that effect climate, operating on both short and long term cycles., one of which is the sun, and one of which is the alteration to the greenhouse composition of the atmosphere by one especially crafty species that really came into its own during this particular interglacial.
Gates: You have simply continued to use the metaphorical terms noise and signal. What is the mathematical concept you allude to, that explains them? Saying that what you are looking for is signal and everything else is noise is nonsensical, when we are trying to understand what is going on. It sounds like you are presupposing an explanation. But then that is what AGW proponents tend to do.
Both Girma and Chief Hydro love to cite Tsonis and Swanson. What did they do? Among other things, they removed ocean cycles (they drive the temp up and it goes right back down), presumably part of the noise, from the 20 Century, and what they found was a continuous warming signal – AGW. It’s there.
Swanson characterized it as the HADCRUT3 trend from 1979 through 1997. Do a slight alteration to UAH, to remove the El Nino bump at the beginning of the series, and what do you get? You get a trend that is almost identical to HADCRUT3, 1979 through 1997.
Lacis just explained it another way in his post.
The step you think you see in UAH is a mirage.
“There is no noise in the climate system.”
There’s noise at the surface and in the atmosphere. See the 0.6C jump and then fall in UAH in 1997/1998. You think that falsifies AGW because CO2 didn’t jump sharply up and back down? That’s essentially your argument, you are treating the UAH record as entirely AGW signal and claiming it’s shape doesn’t match the gradual signal expected. You are trying to claim that ENSO variation is part of the AGW signal. Good luck with that.
This is hopelessly muddled thinking. The simple accumulation of heat in ocean as measured over the past 40+ years shows that the step function as you describe for ENSO warming the planet does not exist. Your physics and description of Earth’s energy imbalance based on ENSO is fantasy at best. The steady accumulation of greenhouse gases offers the most consistent explanation. This is very inconvenient for AGW skeptics.
Gates: I have no idea what you are talking about. I am pointing out a simple fact about the satellite measurements, namely that the only atmospheric warming over the entire period occurs is a single step that is coincident with the big ENSO. Ocean heating does not make this fact “not exist.” Nor have I mentioned the Earth’s energy imbalance, or offered any physics for that matter. On the contrary, my point is that this fact need to be explained (and feel free to try). So the muddle appears to be yours.
Attribution studies that remove the effects of ENSO have repeatedly shown your conjecture to be false. You cannot eyeball a graph to see the underlying warming signal, but need to do the maths. FR 2011 and other studies show quite clearly that the underlying warming is unequivocally not related to ENSO step functions.
R. Gates – I agree. They had their little 0-to-700 meter recess. Douglass got in his little cheap-shot paper. Recess is over.
Arno Arrak writes:
“Furthermore, only satellite temperature curves can be trusted for the twenty-first century because ground-based curves have a fake warming built in by the constant revisions of temperature values by the “guardians” of global temperature. They have also managed to disappear the step warming by manufacturing a fake twentieth century warming. In my opinion only satellite temperature measurements are valid from 1979 on. If you do not agree, get my book and study it with comprehension.”
So you trust satellite record from 1979 onwards. But you are happy to cite surface records before 1979 when you think they make a good argument:
“The first part of twentieth century warming started suddenly in 1910 and stopped equally suddenly in 1940.”
Can you say hypocrite?
Seriously Arno, apply some consistency to your own position for christ sake. Either believe your own conspiracy theories about the surface records and don’t trust them, or accept them in whole. Don’t pick and chose which parts of records to believe based on convenience.
Science works with he best available data. Since 1978 that has been the satellite data. Prior to then it is the surface statistical models, despite their weaknesses. There is thus no inconsistency.
BS, Arno argued the surface records are compromised by fraud, he didn’t simply say they had “weaknesses”. To say what he did and then cite them anyway for the early 20th century is a revealing inconsistency that is all too common with the sophistry of climate denial.
Say Tony, thx for the awards fer Max and myself. Must say I always wanted a “Slug Award’ to add to my CV. (
Beth
Its a ‘gloden slug’ award so even more prestigious
tonyb
Beth
Ps The ‘gloden slug award is even better than the ‘golden slug’ award
tonyb
OMG! Posted on wrong thread … How flawed we humans are, well, some of us, ( Makes me think how can we presume to predict events a hundred years into the future?
Beth
Yes you can have both, but now you must strive for the greatest award of all, the ‘smug sliug’ award. This is a delightfully detailed depiction in faux silver of a grinning slug in a canoe which depicts the skilful way they avoid the floods to get to my tomatoes and beans.
tonyb
And I keep hearing that global agriculture will get easier and easier in a CO2 enhanced atmosphere. Dr. Curry says there will be losers. That must mean you!
JCH
The few tomatoe leaves left by the slugs and snails ARE very green!
This is what the UK climate has been doing since 1772
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
Our trend seems to be at variance with the ‘global’ temperature and is back to the values of the 1730’s
tonyb
that red line looks like a hockeystick to me
Iolwot
But not as good as the 1690’s hockey stick, especially as the modern version is fuelled by UHI according to the Met office who make a small allowance for it
See the very first graph
http://judithcurry.com/2011/12/01/the-long-slow-thaw/
tonyb
Tony, your reading of graphs seems a bit lacking. The late 20th century warming in the CET clearly stands out as extraordinary, and hardly a long slow thaw from the end of the LIA.
Also, you of course are aware of the coupling of cooler and wetter periods for Northern Europe and the high pressure, lower sea ice and warmer temperatures for areas further north such as the Barants sea. When that cooler air pushed out of the Arctic, where do you suppose to goes?
R Gates
As our temperatures have now reverted to those of the 1730’s-see the graphs later in the piece-we can perhaps do an analysis to try to deternine if the two periods are similar, or if the current anomaly is exaggerated by the UHI effect on the modern readings. In other words is the peak- which sadly we now seem to have passed- genuinely warmer than the 1730’s?
Mind you a fractional increase in temperature in several hundred years is hardly something to be surprised about-personally I’m glad-but not surprised- that its warmer than during the lIA
tonyb
Tony,
My point was that CET temperatures are partially coupled to what is going on in the Arctic, which is also of course reflected in the NAO. People often ask why it matters what is going on with Arctic sea ice, well those nice slimy critters in your garden enjoying your cool wet summer can thank the very low sea ice in the Barants and Kara seas. Those areas have been extraordinarily warm for about as long as you’ve been cool and wet. This is not a coincidence. That cool air has to be pushed somewhere by the higher pressure in that region.
THe CET page you linked to doesn’t go back to the 1730s, and that’s probably a hint….
Iolwot
We had been talking about the 1770’s. Previously I had made reference to other CET grahics (later in the article and that R gates had previouslyseen) which uses Met office CET data to 1660 and also my own reconstruction from 1660 to 1538. At this stage of a tread there are so many different conversations going on it is dificult to know who is referring to what! The anomaly for CET in 2012 is the same as in 1730.Interesting in itself but I am not claiming a long term trend but 10 years of declining temperatures is having an effect on what we can grow here
tonyb
What (?) global (?) warming (?) looks (?) like (?) :
tempterrain
Neat video clip on Northern Hemisphere sea ice.
But, hey, since you live pretty far away in the Southern Hemisphere, have you got a similar video clip on Southern Hemisphere sea ice?
Thanks.
Max
It should be labeled what regional change (not warming) looks like. But green hype is just that. It should also go back to the 1930’s.
manacker,
No video clip, but see GRACE data since 2002 (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/416685main_20100108_Climate_1.jpg) for antarctic ice sheet
Thanks, Owen.
But tempterrain was not talking about landed ice sheets, but rather floating sea ice.
This bounces up and down dramatically on a seasonal basis, but has shown a slight receding trend in the Arctic at the end of the summer melting season since satellite measurements started.
Similar readings show a somewhat smaller increasing trend in Antarctic sea ice (but NSIDC has not made a slick video clip of this trend).
So much for the floating sea ice.
The grounded ice sheets of both Greenland and Antarctica grew in mass over a 10+ year time period from 1993 to 2003, based on 24/7 satellite measurements (Johannessen 2005, Zwally 2006, Wingham 2006).
A more recent report (Shepherd/Wingham 2007) concludes that over the past few years the 1992-2003 trend in Antarctica has apparently reversed itself due to a greater increase in ice flow than the increase in snowfall, and if this should continue over the 21st century the net ice flow from ice streams and glaciers could counteract the predicted gains in snowfall. This study includes satellite and airborne altimetry results as well as results from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE). It states that the highest rates of mass loss are those derived from the GRACE studies, which started in 2003 but still have significant unresolved questions due to a higher sensitivity to errors in the estimates of postglacial rebound than the other methods. (Your graph shows results from these GRACE measurements.)
How this will actually play out over the next decades is difficult to predict today. Once we have 10+ years of new data (let’s say around 2014) and when we can be sure that the GRACE methodology has been sufficiently de-bugged to give consistent and reliable results, we may know more.
Max
Watching antarctica is like…
JCH
You’re right. It all is…
(But, hey, that’s “what global warming looks like”, right?)
Max
I think you are getting around to making the argument that the Antarctic is getting colder and consequently there is a greater area of ice there.
Is this true? What does the science say?
In the paper “Accelerated warming of the Southern Ocean and its impacts on the hydrological cycle and sea ice”
There seems to be a strong suggestion that there may be a counter-intuitive effect at work.
“The observed sea surface temperature in the Southern Ocean shows a substantial warming trend for the second half of the 20th century. Associated with the warming, there has been an enhanced atmospheric hydrological cycle in the Southern Ocean that results in an increase of the Antarctic sea ice for the past three decades through the reduced upward ocean heat transport and increased snowfall…”
In other words a warming has caused the sea ice to spread.
Now, I’m sure all you hardened skeptics/deniers are spluttering with disbelief. You’ll be saying something like. “Warming can cause the sea ice to shrink in the North but if it spreads, in the South, that’s caused by warming too? I don’t think so!”
However, maybe we should ask the co-author of the paper to let me know if I have misrepresented her meaning.
You might find it even harder to believe that this is none other than the host of Climate etc : Ms Judith Curry
Sorry. Should be Dr ( or Prof ? ) Judith Curry
Please don’t interrupt the AGW skeptic’s train of thought with inconvenient facts and data.
@@ The Skeptical Warmist (aka R. Gates) | July 7, 2012 at 10:36 am
said: ”Please don’t interrupt the AGW skeptic’s train of thought with inconvenient facts and data”
. R. Gates, all the data you have; has being harvested from thin air, and ”adjusted / muddied” in Hansen’s ass. Don’t touch it without rubber gloves
Perhaps we should consider the depletion rate of infrared radiation as it is absorbed by CO2. Since the amount of infrared radiation is proportional to the incoming radiation from the sun, making the amount more or less fixed, as CO2 increases, the amount left in the narrow absorption bands decreases. As this process continues, there is less and less infrared radiation available to be absorbed/intercepted and hence less warming.
At some point no more infrared is available and no further warming occurs.
This fits in with the doubling theory. As the time it takes to double the concentration of CO2 increases with each doubling, going from 400 to 800 ppm, then 800-1600 ppm, on and on, it will eventually take thousands, then millions of years to raise temperatures another 1-3 degrees , depending on whose numbers are used.
The theory that temperatures rise linearly as CO2 rises, ignores the fact
that the amount of infrared radiation available is limited.
I don’t think anyone is saying that the temperature rises linearly with CO2 content. Arrhenius reported a logarithmic relationship as long ago as the start of the 20th century so that’s nothing new.
However, CO2 emissions have risen exponentially so the overall effect will not be far off linear , in terms of temperature rise against time, at least for the foreseeable future.
We just had the 2nd strongest La Nina in the record. How much warmer was that La Nina year than the strongest La Nina year in the record?
Maybe it has all been rising monotonically.
You can take out the word “linearly” from that last sentence I threw in, but my main argument is that with depletion, at some point all the available infrared radiation, which is not unlimited, will be intercepted/absorbed and warming will cease.
The greatest amount of infrared radiation is absorbed with the first 50 ppm of CO2, with the residual decreasing logarithmically with each successive 50ppm. (Beers law). With the present concentration of CO2, there may be little infrared radiation left to absorb or interact with.
Jim Macdonald | July 8, 2012 at 5:26 pm said: ” The greatest amount of infrared radiation is absorbed with the first 50 ppm of CO2, with the residual decreasing logarithmically with each successive 50ppm”.
Jim, CO2 absorbs radiation DURING THE DAY; CO2 absorbs MORE coldness DURING THE NIGHT, than oxygen + nitrogen can. Are you another ”Flat-Earther” to believe that is sunshine 24h on every spot on the planet?! Mate, go to my website; learn that: CO2 absorbs the sunlight in the upper atmosphere – as a sun umbrella, where cooling is much more efficient, and many,, many, many other real proofs
You are wrong, the more CO2 = more radiation intercepts. If you have being in a big bushfires – would have known that thicker smog, blocks more sunlight. Don’t rely on what is in the books regarding the phony GLOBAL warming; it’s intended for brainwashing, nothing to do with the reality. CO2 is used for making ”dry ice’ because can ABSORB lots of coldness also. That will not be in the ”brainwashing books”. There isn’t such a thing as GLOBAL warming – therefore, they / you have to resort to ”logarithm, albedo, positive / negative forcing crap… Grow up. Cheers
tempterrain, when did CO2 emissions begin to rise exponentially ?
Human emissions of CO2, like the population, like industrial output, have risen exponentially over the past century or more. Exponential means that the growth rate of an amount, or parameter, is proportional to that amount’s current value. Expressing this growth, or decrease if the growth is negative, as a percentage is implicitly acknowledging an exponential nature of the chnage.
Tempterrain-
The point is–the faster that CO2 rises, the quicker it absorbs, interacts with, the available infrared radiation and depletes it. At this point there may be enough CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb almost all the radiation from the surface of the earth in the principal absorption bands and little more warming can occur.
Jim, You might want to read this:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect.htm
Tingtgo, if Kim was around I know what he’d say. ‘It’s cooling folks ,,,,,,’
If we go backwards in time about 6016 years to the point when people first realized that the Earth had been created, and if at that time Adam had had the wisdom, means, and motivation to record the daily temperature extremes in his garden at Eden, then by the end of that first year, there would have been a record high and a record low established for each day of the year. Just imagine, for every single day, a new record high and record low temperature being set!
Suppose further that the natural variability of weather (seasonal and day-to-day) was actually permitted within the parameters of Creation, but that any deviations from global annual-mean energy balance were strictly prohibited from happening. In this scenario, over time, there would have been built up a daily temperature climate record at Eden. And, this climate record would clearly show the climatological-mean temperature to be expected for each day of the year, warmer in the summer, and colder in the winter. There would also be that characteristic envelope about the daily mean temperature curve, delineating the daily record high and daily record low temperatures.
After thousands of years of collecting temperature data, it would become increasingly improbable that new temperature records would be set. So at present time, the expectation that a new temperature record would be set on any given day would have been no more than one in six thousand. Moreover, the statistical expectation would be that if any new temperature records were being set, the number of record highs should be equal to the number of record lows.
But then, somewhere along the line, whether inspired by the snake, or by Satan himself, humans discovered that there is stuff that will burn when set on fire. They soon discovered that fire could be used to make bear meat more palatable, that it would discourage other bears from seeking vengeance, and also that it was of great help to keep from freezing to death in the winter.
Before long, humans discovered that besides burning wood, they could also burn coal, gas, and oil to heat houses, power vehicles, and generate electricity to do all sorts of other nifty things. In the process, humans have discovered that burning of fossil fuel to the tune of about seven cubic km of coal per year also causes the level of atmospheric CO2 to increase by about 2 ppmv/year, and that this causes the global temperature to also increase, perhaps more than deemed desireable.
The global temperature record that we have accumulated, is not much longer than a hundred year, so we can expect a few new records of high and low temperature to be set. But as Jerry Meehl has pointed out, the number of record highs outnumber the record number of lows by seven to one. From this, it is very clear that things are far from being normal in climate land.
We also have acquired a very clear explanation from basic physics that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is increasing the strength of the terrestrial greenhouse effect, and that this in turn causes the global temperature to warm. For current climate, the global mean energy input to the Earth climate system is about 240 W/m2. This 240 W/m2 of solar heating induces an additional 150 W/m2 of LW greenhouse heating of the ground surface (50% by water vapor, 25% by clouds, and 25% by the non-condensing greenhouse gases which keep the atmospheric temperature high enough for the Clausius-Clapeyron relation to sustain the current water vapor and cloud amounts). This is the undeniable physics that drives global warming to ever higher temperatures as atmospheric CO2 increases.
Asking the question of whether current heat waves are being caused by global warming is a bit non-specific. It’s sort of like asking why a certain tree went down in a storm. Sure, it was the wind, but there may well have been other factors involved (perhaps it was ready to fall down on its own). It is the same with heat waves. But given two choices of “No, heat waves have nothing to do with global warming” versus “Yes, heat waves are the result of global warming”, it seems reasonable to opt for the heat wave and global warming connection.
Perhaps simply stating that global warming will tend to enhance or exacerbate damaging heat waves might be a more accurate and informative way to state the connection heat waves and global warming.
Given the temperature record that we have, one can make a temperature “topography” map out of the available data and calculate the year-to-year change in the space-time extent of temperature extremes above some temperature level. Jim Hansen has done just that, and finds a clear relationship between the increase in the extent and intensity of temperature extreme events and global warming.
So, if you have been inclined to view the recent heat waves as some unexpected aberrations that can happen from time to time within the climate system, you can be assured that you aint seen nothing yet.
A. Lacis
Duh! Don’t be obtuse.
No one questions that the overall long-term temperature trend since 1850 (HadCRUT3) has been one of warming. Admittedly this has occurred in fits and spurts, with statistically indistinguishable multi-decadal cycles of warming (around 30 years each) followed by similar cycles of slight cooling, but the whole record has been much like a sine curve on a tilted axis (see many posts by Girma, who has analyzed this cyclical record).
This means, purely statistically that there will undoubtedly be more “record highs” (days, months, years) than “record lows” as we progress.
If the long-term trend were one of slight cooling, the opposite would be true.
Big deal!
Max
Max, good reply to this funny, good reading Lacies piece….
One can add that the temp increasing slope has stopped by
about year 2000, now we are in the temp plateau for a decade,
which means that “high” records will slowly peeter out after year
2015 and once we get to 2040, the “low records” compared to
the 2000-2040 plateau will set in….
These are the real numbers…and not the Hansen/Meehl stats/forecasts…..
JS
A Lacis
I accept that AGW and will warm the planet – a little – compared with if we were not burning fossil fuels and emitting other GHGs. But let’s quantify the consequences in terms of costs and benefits. And let’s properly analyse the costs and benefits of the proposed mitigation policies. And let’s properly allow for the reduced risk of cooling, which is a far worse consequence than warming, if it were to happen).
My understanding at the moment is as follows:
Damage costs of AGW to 2050 or even 2100 are expected to be negligible.
However the damage costs that the proposed mitigation policies will cause are likely to be high.
Until those opposed to us getting cheap nuclear power (as distinct from the expensive nuclear power currently available) stop their opposition and become enthusiastic advocates, it seems very unlikely we will implement economically rational global mitigation policies.
Going back to 2003, at the height of the global warming hysteria in the media (in the UK at any rate), there were endless news reports about it, for example, having been “the hottest 8th of August afternoon in Upper Netherton since records began”. Do reports of records being broken surprise me any more? In a word, no.
As for the link between heat waves and global warming, it seems you believe that because you want to – there not being a shred of evidence, unless you subscribe to the Jim H. school of statistical mangling.
Dr. Lacis,
Once again you present another fact-free defense of the team’s consensus. No addressing of historical data. No addressing missing data. Only conjecture and snark by you.
Confusion of regional weather with global climate seems top be an important part of what you do. Is there a scientific reason for this?
Over arching all of this is your tactic of claiming “a” is caused by CO2, but offering no evidence that “a” is different from earlier episodes of “a”:, even though it was as warm/cool/wet/dry/etc.
It is frankly more of technique one would expect of a bad used car salesman.
By the way, it would be interesting to have comments regarding the coordination between enviro/climate NGO’s and the hiding of documents by climate scientists. Is this something that Dr. Lacis thinks helps demonstrate the integrity and strength of climate science?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/07/the-collusion-of-the-climate-crowd/#more-66980
@@ A Lacis | July 7, 2012 at 7:24 pm said: ”if we go back 6000 years and monitor for every day”
A Lacis, monitoring today, last year, AND FOR THE LAST 200y, is as accurate, as 6000y ago. 2/3 of the planet, above the oceans, nobody is monitoring. Satellite infrared picture is the most unreliable – same as counting the number of people in USA, from a A4 format picture. b] people don’t stand as solders in line; temp on one side of the hill is different than the other – and fluctuates every 10-15 minutes. Shonky science
2] monitoring temp on city airports – in-between those airports on 500000km2 has 10000000 different temperatures that nobody monitors. aren’t those places part of your globe?
Monitoring for the hottest minute of the day; but ignoring the other 1439 minutes – is the mother of all CON. Monitor temp in your yard at 9,15 and at lunch time at 12, remember the difference in temp between those two monitoring; repeat again tomorrow at the same time = you will see difference by 2-3C. That’s only for 2 minutes in one day – what about the ”different fluctuation for the other minutes in the whole year?
I know, the Fakes are bigger liars than the Warmist; but the Warmist are justifiably earning their silver medal
A Lacis,
If our record was 6300 years, then we would not be setting any record highs in the past 200 years because the temperatures 8,000 to 5,000 years ago (roughly) were higher than now.
STOP THAT.
Lackluster gave a perfectly mediocre “just so” story.
A Lacis,
Where has the ‘hard science’ gone? And where has the rational risk analysis and rational analysis of benefits versus costs of mitigation options gone?
If we are getting down to these sorts of comments by the top climate scientists it certainly seems CAGW is in its death throws.
A Lacis
I think that statement is wrong because the planet is in a warming phase and, I understand, we do not have persuasive evidence the present warm period is warmer nor that the rate of warming is faster than during previous warmings. To show the warming is faster than previous rates of warming over the same duration we’d need temperature readings over the same duration (and with the same frequency and accuracy). We don’t have the readings during the past warm periods (warmer periods!) so we cannot say the present warming is faster than in previous warming periods [1]. [I understand the Greenland ice core data shows rates of warming in Greenland of up to 0.2C per year (admittedly local, but local is all life is concerned about).]
[1] How IPCC invented a new calculus https://sites.google.com/site/globalwarmingquestions/howtheipccinventedanewcalculus
But the readings are not over a period of 8,000 years, so they are meaningless. We are in a warming period, so of course we will be seeing more frequent records on the high side and less on the low side. I expect the same would have occurred, only higher, in previous warming periods. There does not seem to be any persuasive evidence that there is anything unusual about the current warm period.
<blockquote< So, if you have been inclined to view the recent heat waves as some unexpected aberrations that can happen from time to time within the climate system, you can be assured that you aint seen nothing yet.
So what? What are the advantages and disadvantages and the costs and benefits of warmings? Have any truly objective analyses been done to address these questions?
You are saying that we can’t say it is warming rapidly and explain it because we don’t have data going back 8000 years. How would you propose resolving this problem?
Jim D,
I am saying that Lacic’s argument – that the current warming period is unusual – is unsubstantiated and baseless. Therefore, a top climate scientist should not make the statement unless he can substantiate it. If he cannot substantiate his statement, he should withdraw it. That is how I’d propose problem be resolved.
The warming is very explainable, and to that extent also predictable. You may not be happy that we have had enough to convince you yet, but what we have had so far is impressive within the measurement record. With new and better ocean and satellite measurements, the cause is rather constrained to known factors, and will only be more so as time goes on.
How long is time?,To put it another way,we seem to have a divergence problem in the 21st century.
Hanson argued that the “stabilization” in the T record was caused by the decrease in liquid fuels in the 70’s,the delayed rebound to Pinatubo,and the extended solar minimum.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3nh/from:2000/plot/hadcrut3nh/from:2000/trend/plot/hadcrut3sh/from:2000/plot/hadcrut3sh/from:2000/trend
There is no divergence problem if you take the rising ocean heat content into account.
There is if we look at the Southern ocean,do not confuse models with theory.
The ocean heat content comes from observations.
Jim D,
You are making more assertions but they are all over the place and not addressing the point we are debating – which is:
what is the evidence that the current warm period is warming unusually rapidly or is unusually warm or maximum temperature records are being set compared with the last 8000 years? Show me the empirical evidence to support your assertion or acknowledge that no such evidence exists
Do you have a temperature record for the last 8000 years? I only find things like this
http://www.biocab.org/Holocene_Delta_T_and_Delta_CO2_Full.jpg
where adding the current warming at the end would stand out due to its gradient, and you can imagine what 2 or more degrees would look like.
Go to Climate4you.com and show us how the CO2 and temps
are over the Holocene….. instead of guessing around….
Jim D,
I now realise you don’t have the faintest idea what you are talking about, and also are incapable of following the point under discussion.
Peter Lang, as far as I could tell, you wanted an 8000 year temperature record and a discussion putting the current and expected warming in perspective, and I gave you the CO2 as a bonus. I am not going to try to guess what you want now.
Jim D
You claim:
This is not true.
In its myopic fixation on human GHGs, IPCC has tried to “explain” the late 20th century “warming” by attributing “most” of it to human GHG emissions.
Using this correlation, IPCC has then attempted to “predict warming” for the early decades of the 21st century (first in TAR and then in AR4).
The latest “predictions” were warming of 0.2 degC per decade (based on continued increasing GHG levels.
The GHG levels continued to rise as “predicted”, BUT THE GLOBAL SURFACE TEMPERATURE DID NOT (it essentially stood still or even cooled slightly).
This has directly falsified your statement..
The warming is not only NOT “explainable”, it is also NOT “predictable”.
Max
I can bring up BEST which has 0.3 degrees per decade for land areas in the last 3 decades, and no sign of slowing. This dataset should be more in the discussion. Since the Charney report in 1979 defined the sensitivity and gave it a value of 2-4 degrees per doubling, this could have been used to predict the current warming because it was also established how quickly CO2 was increasing by then. This is why I say predictable, at least since then.
Jim D,
Your unsubstantiated assertions do not help in the slightest. They simply reinforce the impression that climate activists are more interested in spin than in providing rational and well supported argument.
If you believe you have a case to show that the rate of warming over the past 100 or 200 years or the frequency of ‘record high temperatures’ is unusual over the past 8000 years, then make the case and provide the evidence to support it.
The warming is explainable in terms of the forcing change, primarily from increasing CO2. This is substantiated by both theory and energy budgets. The forcing change from doubling CO2 will be many times the cooling effect of a solar reduction such as a Maunder Minimum. This is just forcing before considering feedbacks, which may apply about equally to solar and CO2 forcing. We see this effect clearly in paleoclimate, specifically the last 100 million years as CO2 decreased from about twice the current amount, and the earth cooled into the Ice Ages.
Jim D.: I see, you are “paleoclimate expert”….
Lets forget the years of the millions, let’s stay in our present
Holocene and the CO2-graph can be seen in “climate4you”:
please explain your great knowledge of CO2-forcing with
more timely data taken from the past 10,000 years….
this would be a help for all interested…. .thanks, forget
the “Millions years”, stay on the ground and help us with
the Holocene numbers…..
please start with year 8,000 BC going to 1850 AD.
The counting in the millions is worthless, we need a
decadal or centennial picture resolution…. which is
provided by Arctic ice core measurements…..
I believe the conventional Milankovitch explanation of the Holocene Optimum that caused the northern hemisphere sea-ice to be less than the pre-industrial value because the NH summer was when earth closest to the sun due to precession. The global average may have been 0.5 degrees warmer than 1850. It is not all CO2, of course, especially on Milankovitch scales.
Yep, about right on target Jim D. What is most unusual for this particular interglacial period is the rapid warming now this late into the interglacial, and of course this coincides with the rapid increase in CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Most likely in the next few decades we will see temperatures exceeding anything we’ve seen in the Holocene, and then as temperatures continue to climb and more Earth system feedbacks kick in, we’ll see temperatures match those of the mid-Pliocene and then onto the Miocene.
Yes, and after Greenland and Antarctica melt some time within a few centuries from now it is on to the Cretaceous. Only their albedo stops it from happening faster.
What is “not all CO2-caused”? How much is caused by CO2?…
take the
climate4you CO2-graph from EPICA DOME and tell us how much
warming was caused by CO2 in which exact century of the past
10,000 years….
…..And which Milankovitch cycle? The 21,000, the 26,000, the 41,000
or the 100,000 year cycle are you pointing at ?…..You are the
expert, let us share your knowledge, I am sure you do not refer to
“I have heard/read/someone told me” – AGW climate “science”….
JS
Up until recently CO2 changes were slow or lagged responses to Milankovitch forcings. But they drove the temperature change until the ice ages started within the last 2 million years, then Milankovitch forcings caused the flips between icy and non-icy states. The Holocene started from the last ice age when the Milankovitch forcing strongly disfavored the northern ice fields, and of course CO2 followed the warming. This should be standard stuff.
Jim, your science is just name dropping: Please specify
when and what cycle type of “Milankovitch forcing disfavoured
the North” in which of the existing 10 millenia of the Holocene did
this happen?……..
and you are an expert in “this SHOULD be STANDARD stuff”…
…….so your name dropping needs no further explanation…
I am sure you are a 5th grader trying to feel big… Better
do some good work, put the CO2-graph line into the
GRIP or GISP2 graphs temp lines for the Holocene and
comment with you deep knowledge….then we can seeappreciate
your expertise….Refrain from hollow words….
“Yep, about right on target Jim D. What is most unusual for this particular interglacial period is the rapid warming now this late into the interglacial, and of course this coincides with the rapid increase in CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Most likely in the next few decades we will see temperatures exceeding anything we’ve seen in the Holocene, and then as temperatures continue to climb and more Earth system feedbacks kick in, we’ll see temperatures match those of the mid-Pliocene and then onto the Miocene.”
Maybe. Though I think that far into the future, humans will want temperature that warm- they will deliberately engineer to get such warming.
But it seems very unlikely regardless of any theory now proposed [not wild raving] that temperature will reach Holocene in less than a century.
So even if Hansen science is correct, it will take a number of decades
before we see anything which resembles his prediction and if everything follows such large increases in temperature- than still a century away.
Or said differently there is zero risk if “nothing is done”. Keeping in mind humans couldn’t do nothing even if desired.
Or in about 10 to 15 years we will have far more certainty than we did 2 decades ago, or at the present time.
So there things we could do, which would useful regardless if temperature increases or decreases. But decreases in temperature is harder to deal with and more consequential than warmer.
gbaikie, before we get to Eocene, etc. climates, we will go through a transient state with warm/hot land, cooler lagged-warming oceans, that could be quite dry in comparison to what we have now over continents. It is this transient dry climate that is the main cause for concern for agriculture, if we ignore rising sea levels.
“Yes, and after Greenland and Antarctica melt some time within a few centuries from now it is on to the Cretaceous. Only their albedo stops it from happening faster.”
And the enormous mass of the ice, and that average temperature of Antarctic is -40 C, and Greenland more than -10 C on average.
Even if all the ice could in some over simplified model “slide into the ocean” it take century or more for ocean [assuming it warm ocean water] to melt it.
Because of Greenland’s topography, not much of it will be sliding into the ocean. It’s a big rock bowl. But were it to slide into the ocean, the SLR would be instantaneous, right?
Joachim, I tried, but I really don’t know which part you don’t understand. Do you not think Milankovitch cycles ended the last ice age due to the relative warmth of the northern hemisphere summer compared to other parts of the cycles?
There are 4 Milankovitch cycles, look at their cycle top
and bottom peaks and tell me which of those you detect
WITHIN the last 10,000 years…..and how the 4 cycles
influence each of the 10 past millenia….
The same with the CO2-graph: Take the graph of
CO2-content for the Holocene (I provided the source
before) and tell me in which century of the Holocene
you can detect a detectable CO2-climate forcing…..
Please help to find this out and I will take you as
reference in my new paper on the Holocene…..
Do some serious climate work this way, instead of
low quality remarks based on vague AGW name
droppings…
Your dedicated help is appreciated….
“gbaikie, before we get to Eocene, etc. climates, we will go through a transient state with warm/hot land, cooler lagged-warming oceans, that could be quite dry in comparison to what we have now over continents. It is this transient dry climate that is the main cause for concern for agriculture, if we ignore rising sea levels.”
So you saying the max glacier retreat of Eocene is centuries [My opinion, at best]. And before this we have some problems. Fine.
It seems the biggest concern is drought. Obviously it’s possible we could, regardless almost any model, get a 1930 US type drought. Nor could rule out a 1000 year flood occurring with a decade or three into the future. And of course it doesn’t have be in the US.
It seems to me, that if in the US, if we had same 1930 drought in near future, we in a better place in terms of dealing with it. [which not saying we could not be in a better place to deal with it]. And why we are in better place is. One we have better information. Two we have better infrastructure. Three we far more capable of mobilizing in some fashion to deal with it. Fourth farmer are doing same practices which could said to contribute to the problems with drought in 1930.
But if drought is the concern [and drought is potential real threat [millions could die as result]] then what is needed is more water reservoirs.
So if want government program- how about more reserviors. Both in US in vulnerable regions, and other places in the the world where their is a massive amount farming occurring- and could be vulnerable to drought.
We’re in a somewhat better place to deal with drought, but drought is still devastating to agriculture. It was so hot in West Texas last summer that irrigated cotton plants wilted and died. And I do not know a single cotton farmer who had ever seen that happen before. So maybe they could switch to another crop. People say cactus is good to eat.
“Because of Greenland’s topography, not much of it will be sliding into the ocean. It’s a big rock bowl. But were it to slide into the ocean, the SLR would be instantaneous, right?”
Yeah of course. But scale. Think of the scale of this. If this occurred [and it can’t, as you say] the danger isn’t SLR, it’s the tsunamis that would part of such rapid vast of amount ice somehow getting into the ocean.
gbaikie, not so much a drought as a desertification over some decades, I think, unless we prepare by somehow keeping water in, or getting water to, these areas. This is why advanced planning is needed, and some more study to know what the climate will permit to grow, if anything, and how much each region will be affected.
“We’re in a somewhat better place to deal with drought, but drought is still devastating to agriculture. It was so hot in West Texas last summer that irrigated cotton plants wilted and died. And I do not know a single cotton farmer who had ever seen that happen before. So maybe they could switch to another crop. People say cactus is good to eat.”
Hmm. Farming is not easy. A failed crop can occur for many reasons.
In Texas tyically they when growing cotton they could growing two crops a year- such as wheat after cotton. So imagine quite possible that one could have failed cotton crop followed by successful wheat crop.
Or when a cotton crop is planted could make it more invulnerable various kind different conditions [too warm, too cold, rain when not wanted, etc.].
“Jim D | July 8, 2012 at 12:49 am |
gbaikie, not so much a drought as a desertification over some decades, I think, unless we prepare by somehow keeping water in, or getting water to, these areas. This is why advanced planning is needed, and some more study to know what the climate will permit to grow, if anything, and how much each region will be affected.”
Exactly. This why studying climate is so important. This is why it’s easily worth billions spent for satellites and all the work done trying understand how predict climate.
Joachim, you ask how Milankovitch affected the last 10000 years. This was about half a precession cycle that started with favoring a warm northern hemisphere and little sea ice, and now favors a cold north hemisphere and more sea ice, so it was a cooling phase according to Milankovitch. However, the recent unnatural growth of CO2 has swamped the Milankovitch forcing, so that is all we see now.
@@ gbaikie | July 8, 2012 at 12:09 am said: “Yes, and after Greenland and Antarctica melt some time within a few centuries from now it is on to the Cretaceous.”
gbaike,mate; Nostradamus tactic only works on the already brainwashed. You need new victims; because more and more people on the street are realizing that: the whole propaganda is just expensive crap. Your crystal ball is unreliable, because is too cloudy – it came out of Jim D’s ass, you should wash it first. Unless your crystal ball is completely clean =is not scientific. Use Jim’s tarot cards, they are much more accurate; ask Jim
R. Gates
If you are truly a “skeptical warmist” then you’ll see right through the arguments of Jim D.
Lots of theory and some questionable interpretations of highly suspect paleoclimate data, but where is the empirical evidence based on actual real-time physical data or reproducible experimentation?
Most recent real data (HadCRUT3) show a slight cooling of the globally and annually average land and sea surface temperature over the past 15 years.
They also show unabated continuation of human CO2 emissions (CDIAC) and atmospheric CO2 concentrations (Mauna Loa) reaching record levels.
But Jim D chooses to ignore these real-time physical data and rely on GH theory and paleo junk data instead.
As a self-proclaimed “skeptical warmist”, I’m sure you have noticed these weaknesses in the arguments of Jim D, right?
Max
I think it’s shows a slight cooling of the region of the earth it measures – a sort of regional temperature series.
Max
Just to put on record that I received a very civil reply direct from Andy Lacis in reply to my email direct to him asking about the 40000pmv. This references the earlier exchanges on this thread
tonyb
Main, Douglas. “What’s Behind the Record Heat?” Text.Article. LiveScience, July 7, 2012. http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/07/03/what-behind-record-heat/
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