Week in review 7/30/11

Posted on July 30, 2011 by | 67 Comments

by Judith Curry

Here are a few items that caught my eye this past week:

Alarming(!) news

Yahoo.news posted a story from the Associated Press entitled “Northeast Braces for Temperatures Near Boiling Point” (h/t Angela Fritz.)  It seems that the confused 100F with 100C.  Here’s a book idea for Chris Mooney: “Unscientific reporters and editors”

Good news for the UK

Treehugger.com reports that “UK growing its own tea, olives and hot peppers as climate warms.”   The treehugger article refers to a more extensive Reuters piece, which is quite interesting.  The treehugger article concludes with “Be clear, I’m not presenting this, in any way, in an attempt to say ‘see, climate change won’t be a bad thing’, as is sometimes done to distract from the need to change our carbon-intensive lives. Rather, I see it as an example of the just plain interesting things that we’re surely likely to see more and more of.”

Memo to climate change pundits: don’t mention the weather

Chris Turner of the Mother Nature Network has an interesting post.  He argues that:

At the peak of a hot summer, commentators are making links between heat waves and global warming.  The weather, though, is a lousy frame for talking about climate change.

[I]t plays into a terribly ineffective frame for public engagement on climate change, one that equates the infinite variability of the weather in any one place with the status of the Earth’s climate as a whole. 
.
Weather is by its nature unpredictable, and it is understood — scientifically as well as at gut level — as beyond our control. 
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We need to recognize that weather is the wrong frame for public engagement about climate change, because weather is not climate. It suggests not something permanent, long-term, and inescapably negative but something immediate, variable, and inexplicable. 
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 The weather will never tell a single story about climate change. For that reason alone, it’s a frame as unreliable as the long-term forecast. Climate activists and commentators need to abandon it entirely.  Or, as the greatest of all British comedians once put it: Don’t mention the war!

Release of the CRU surface temperature data
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More than 2 years after the FOI request, CRU has made public its raw surface temperature data (see this report from newscientist). RealClimate has a brief post on this, with this amusing closing sentence: “This dataset has occasionally come up in blogospheric discussions.”  Two years is a long time in the climate debate.  The scientific impact of the data release is expected to be minimal at this point; people have moved on and the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature data set (which should be released soon) may make the CRU data set obsolete.
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The significance of the release is the continuing CRU efforts to avoid releasing its data.  From the New Scientist article:

The university were ordered to release data by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office, following a freedom-of-information request for the raw data from researchers Jonathan Jones of the University of Oxford and Don Keiller of Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, UK.

Davies says that the university initially refused on the grounds that the data is not owned by the CRU but by the national meteorological organisations that collect the data and share it with the CRU.

When the CRU’s refusal was overruled by the information commissioner, the UK Met Office was recruited to act as a go-between and obtain permission to release all the data.


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67 responses to “Week in review 7/30/11”

  1. Girma | July 30, 2011 at 8:59 am |

    CRU surface temperature data

    The CRU surface data shows the following:

    A global warming or cooling of 0.5 deg C is NATURAL

    Why you may ask.

    I answer, for 130 years of the CRU data, the global mean temperature oscillated between an upper and lower limit lines that are 0.5 deg C apart, indicating that a global cooling or warming of 0.5 deg C is NATURAL.

    http://bit.ly/nicmt9

    Now we know how much of the recent warming is natural.

    • steven mosher | July 30, 2011 at 1:05 pm |

      A couple points Girma
      1. Your lines clip off the 1998 el nino
      2. You dont go back to 1850
      3. The “noise” in the early data is substantially higher than in the current data so your lines really make no sense.
      4. That’s not how you diagnose a TREND in time series data, neither is a least squares fit a ‘trend”. To estimate a trend component you have to construct a statistical model of the underlying process, see all the commentary on unit roots and get back to us.

      • Girma | July 30, 2011 at 2:01 pm |

        My GMT prediction for 2030 = GMT for 2000s – 0.32 = 0.45 – 0.32 = 0.13

        IPCC GMT prediction for 2030 = 1 deg C!

        http://bit.ly/p9Cwqr

        I am prepared to put 5000 USD bet that the observed data will be closer to my prediction than IPCC’s.

      • Edim | July 30, 2011 at 3:50 pm |

        I think it will be 0.0 +/- 0.2 by 2030.

      • M. carey | July 31, 2011 at 3:35 am |

        Girma, just so readers will know you are serious about betting on an outcome that won’t be known for 19 years, you should give the $5,000 to me for safekeeping. But let me make it clear, I ain’t taking no check postdated to 2030. It has to be cash.

        I will invest the money in one of my fool-proof get rich schemes. Otherwise, what with inflation and all, that $5,000 probably wouldn’t be enough to by a hotdog after 19 years.

        Where shall I pick up the money?

      • Girma | July 31, 2011 at 5:13 am |

        M. Carey

        Do you want to bet?

        We may organize it with the BBC.

        We don’t need to wait until 2030.

        We would definitely know by 2015, in five years time.

        If the trend from 2000 to 2015 is less than 0.1 deg C per decade, which is IPCC’s projection for the case CO2 held at the 2000 level, IPCC and M. Carey would have lost and I would have won my bet.

      • Girma | July 30, 2011 at 2:16 pm |

        Steven Mosher

        Does not a single straight line (upper GMT boundary line) pass through the peaks for 1880s, 1940s and 2000s as shown in the following graph?

        http://bit.ly/nicmt9

        Is it not the case that the trend for the 130 years data is PARALLEL to the above upper boundary line?

        Does not a single straight line (lower GMT boundary line) pass through the GMT valleys?

        Is it not the case that the lower GMT boundary line is also parallel to the trend line for the 130 years data?

        Is it not the case that the trend line is exactly in the middle of the upper and boundary lines that are 0.5 deg C apart?

        Is it not the case that because the GMT oscillated between the upper and lower boundary lines that are 0.5 deg C apart for 130 years this means that global warming or cooling by 0.5 deg C is natural?

        Steven, I am only interested in the peak and valley estimates as predicting the individual year’s GMT estimate is complex.

      • Arno Arrak | July 31, 2011 at 11:49 am |

        Girma – Looked at the graph and find much to dislike. First of all, drawing a straight line for a 230 year stretch of temperature is invalid. There are breakpoints in the global temperature trend that divide it into regions that must not be thrown in together in search of a trend. Starting from the left, the period from 1880 to 1910 was a cooling period that suddenly reversed in 1910. From 1910 to 1940 there was an almost linear warming trend that is best looked at as still coming out of the Little Ice Age. It came to an end In the winter of 1939/1940, just as World War 2 had started. There was a huge drop in temperature and it stayed cold for the duration of the war. This and other temperature curves feature a heat wave during World War 2 that is purely imaginary. The temperature stabilized after the war although even in 1947 a blizzard shut down the City of New York for weeks. From the fifties to 1998 nothing much happened and it should be a nearly horizontal line. I know about the warming that was supposed to have started in the late seventies. It did not happen. Satellite temperature measurements simply cannot see this “late twentieth century warming.”. In its place a series of El Nino peaks can be observed with La Nina valleys in between. The warming is faked by raising the temperatures of these intervening La Nina valleys and thereby creating an apparent warming trend. Real warming did not start until 1998 when a super El Nino showed up. It was a short squirt that raised global temperature by a third of a degree in four years and then stopped. This was the second installment of twentieth century warming, the first one having been the 1910 to 1940 period of warming. It was not greenhouse but oceanic in origin. There was no more warming after it and by 2008 the ENSO oscillations interrupted by the super El Nino had resumed. ENSO is our climate future, not an imaginary greenhouse warming that Ferenc Miskolczi has proved impossible. Each of these periods must be separately fitted to its own segment of global temperature curve and adjacent segments must not be joined by computer fitting across temperature breakpoints.

      • Arno Arrak | July 31, 2011 at 12:08 pm |

        Addendum to temperature analysis. In 1976 there was supposed to be a “Great Pacific Climate change” that by some accounts raised global temperature by 0.2 degrees. I have not been able to identify it but a higher resolution temperature graph in that region should be used to determine whether that should be regarded as another temperature break-point.

      • steven mosher | July 31, 2011 at 1:23 pm |

        Girma. You put up a chart. I explained the issues. Now you gallop away.
        The lines you draw have no analytical meaning.
        You are not justified in concluding that the warming is “natural” from such an analysis. There is nothing in the chart that shows that. That is a conclusion you wish to draw from the chart that cannot be drawn.
        It would be nice if detection and attribution were that easy, but its not.

      • Girma | July 31, 2011 at 8:07 pm |

        Steven, how come you have issue with my cyclic global temperature interpretation, but I have never seen you commenting on the “accelerating warming” global temperature interpretation of the IPCC?

      • Steven Mosher | July 31, 2011 at 9:52 pm |

        because you dont read everything I write. Further, BAD practice on the part of the IPCC does not give you license to do junk science

      • Girma | August 1, 2011 at 7:53 am |

        Steven

        does not give you license to do junk science

        Let observation be our judge.

        Like a pendulum, the GMT has reached its maximum in the 2000s, and like the 1880s and 1940s, it will reverse and move towards is minimum by 2030.

        I am 100% sure of that.

        Why?

        Because, that is what a pendulum does after reaching its maximum swing!

      • Girma | July 30, 2011 at 2:36 pm |

        Steven Mosher

        1. Your lines clip off the 1998 el nino

        This is an approximate analysis with accuracy of +/- 0.1 deg C

        You dont go back to 1850

        I am only interested in the GMT peak and valley values

        The “noise” in the early data is substantially higher than in the current data so your lines really make no sense.

        Again, I am only interested in the GMT peak and valley values

        That’s not how you diagnose a TREND in time series data

        I first drew the upper boundary line through the 1880s & 1940s peak and found that it also passes through the 2000s peak. If this line was a curve this would have indicated climate change, but it is a straight line.

        I determined the trend for the data from 1880 to 2010 and found that it is parallel to the upper boundary line.

        The upper and lower boundary lines are parallel. If these lines were not parallel, this would have indicated climate change, but that is not the case.

        Steven, the GMT shows a persistent warming of only 0.06 deg C per decade. The rest of the warming is just part of a warming/cooling 30 years oscillation that has been observed throughout the 130 years long data.

      • steven mosher | July 31, 2011 at 1:28 pm |

        Ah girma the point you miss is the difference in uncertainty throughout the series means that your “lines” in reality can be wildly off: They dont really measure anything except your failure to understand trends and the underlying process. Keep trying though. its fun

    • Oliver K. Manuel | July 30, 2011 at 1:09 pm |

      Thanks, Girma, for reminding us of reality.

      The background (1945-2011) of scary anthropologic climate change is coming into better focus, thanks to input from members of the nuclear industry and a former CIA espionage agent, Kent Clizbe.

      The review was revised, a new reference (#3) added, and major conclusions high-lighted in red in the abstract:

      http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10640850/20110722_Climategate_Roots.pdf

      http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10640850/20110722_Climategate_Roots.doc

      Abstract: World leaders shadowboxed before TV cameras to hide a secret 1972 agreement: Anthropologic* climate change is the common enemy to unite nations, and avoid global nuclear war [1]. The decision thatEarth’s natural heat source is constant stymied understanding of the Sun and diverted resources to develop fusion – the Sun’s imaginary heat source – instead of reliable fission reactors powered by neutron repulsionlike the Sun. Eisenhower’s warning on elitist science in 1961 [2] failed to prevent the current economic/energy/social crisis that espionage agents forecast from “politically-correct” consensus science [3].

      So far no word from the editor of Nature on publication of this review.

      With kind regards,
      Oliver K. Manuel

  2. Julian Flood | July 30, 2011 at 9:12 am |

    Re: UK crops. There are sensible caveats in the Reuters’ piece — note the emphasis on improved varieties in the report. Here in East Anglia, for instance, the vineyard at Ickworth can now produce Rondo grapes for red wine, and a very decent glass at that. Their white Bacchus wine is very English — that is, a bit sharp for those brought up on the sweeter Rhenish types — but is a huge leap forward compared with the ghastly Sauvingnon Blanc of a few decades ago.

    So that proves it, climate change, worse than we thought, etc etc? Well, no. Bacchus is just an improved vinifera grape, a bit better than Madeleine Angevine its predecessor which was a bit better than Sauvingnon which was… Rondo is more interesting, a bi-specific cross between vinifera and amurensis, the latter an extraordinary species which grows on the Russian Chinese border and is adapted to a very early winter onset. As an amusing aside, Rondo can’t be sold as the high quality wine it is, but only as table wine. The French don’t approve of hybrid varieties.

    Both varieties are grown at Wyken, just down the road from here. Surely that must prove it, doom, wolf, end of the world? Well, no. When they established the Wyken vineyard, the Carlisles found that they had selected the slope and the field where Romans had set out their own vineyard more than fifteen hundred years ago.

    Olives: I heard the man who was growing olives do an interview on the radio a few months ago. I’d advise against trying it.

    And now a culinary tip. When making dolmades, pick your vine leaves very early in the morning. Vines use a crassula acid metabolic pathway to save CO2 overnight, and this gives the leaves a pleasant lemony flavour. Oddly enough, diatoms use the same fixing technique and, as this discriminates less rigorously against the heavier C isotopes, a shift in the oceans towards diatoms from calcareous phytoplankton would leave a light C signal in the atmosphere. And diatoms export less C to the deep ocean reservoir. Just think, light signal, more atmospheric CO2. Whatever does that remind me of?

    JF
    (If I were a warmist I’d go for the parrots, wild parrots living in the UK. Must be a sign of something).

    • Latimer Alder | July 30, 2011 at 11:56 am |

      I think you’ll find they are ring-necked parakeets, not parrots. And they’ve been here since before ‘climate change’ is supposed to have started. Probably escaped from the Animal Quarantine Centre at Heathrow.

      A couple are squawking away right now while eating all the food I put out for the garden birds :-(

  3. stan | July 30, 2011 at 9:13 am |

    Judy,

    You might want to mention that we learned about the scientific robustness of global warming claims. Apparently spotting a few polar bears from an airplane on two flights a week apart is a sufficient data set to establish global warming’s impact on the polar bear and get it classified as endangered. We know it is sufficient because the study was peer reviewed.

  4. Ecotretas | July 30, 2011 at 9:16 am |

    Holy Shit! Temperatures near boiling point??? How hot can this really be? Such reporter should have only one destiny: unemployment!
    Ecotretas

    • Brian H | July 30, 2011 at 2:50 pm |

      Ditto for the Editors all the way up. What the Russian Army called “A Vertical Stroke” — cashiering 3 or 4 levels of supervision above the person who made a seriously stupid mistake.

  5. David L. Hagen | July 30, 2011 at 9:51 am |

    Spencer & Braswell’s paper is now out:
    Spencer, R.W.; Braswell, W.D. On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance Remote Sens. 2011, 3, 1603-1613. pdf

    The sensitivity of the climate system to an imposed radiative imbalance remains the largest source of uncertainty in projections of future anthropogenic climate change. Here we present further evidence that this uncertainty from an observational perspective is largely due to the masking of the radiative feedback signal by internal radiative forcing, probably due to natural cloud variations.

    They show actual energy gains/losses are about three times larger than predicted by IPCC models.
    Spencer and Braswell 2011 is discussed at WUWT

    Pielke Sr. discusses: Additional Information On The “Ocean’s Missing Heat” By Katsman and van Oldenborgh 2011 He quotes:

    “Observations of the sea water temperature show that the upper ocean has not warmed since 2003. This is remarkable as it is expected the ocean would store that the lion’s share of the extra heat retained by the Earth due to the increased concentrations of greenhouse gases.

    Spencer & Braswell’s larger heat loss/gains may shed light on the “ocean’s missing heat” observed by Katsman & van Oldenborgh.

    • curryja | July 30, 2011 at 11:39 am |

      I’m working a post now, will be up later today

      • Jim D | July 30, 2011 at 12:56 pm |

        At Real Climate is a critical response by Trenberth and Fasullo. It makes some points about the importance of ENSO in the models, and comparing like with like. They have their own diagnoses along the same lines as SB11.

      • steven mosher | July 30, 2011 at 1:18 pm |

        Judy:
        Gavin lays out what needs to be done:
        “The study finds a mismatch between the month-to-month variations in temperature and cloud cover in models versus the real world over the past 10 years, said Gavin Schmidt, a NASA Goddard climatologist. “What this mismatch is due to — data processing, errors in the data or real problems in the models — is completely unclear.

        1. If we find no problems in data processing.
        2. if we find no problems in data

        We are left asking.. what exactly is wrong with the models.

        I would ask Roy to show us his results if we only look at Gavins model. ModelE. How did each and every realization of modelE do in this question.

        Because gavin is right. If its not the data processing, and not the data, then it has to be the models. And the ball is then squarely in his court.

        If I were Roy I’d look at ModelE and put a fine point on the debate

      • steven mosher | July 30, 2011 at 1:19 pm |

        Fixing quote for clarity
        “Gavin lays out what needs to be done:
        “The study finds a mismatch between the month-to-month variations in temperature and cloud cover in models versus the real world over the past 10 years, said Gavin Schmidt, a NASA Goddard climatologist. “What this mismatch is due to — data processing, errors in the data or real problems in the models — is completely unclear.””

      • Jim D | July 30, 2011 at 1:26 pm |

        According to Trenberth and Fasullo (Real Climate posting), ModelE has a problem with ENSO, which makes it one of the under-responsive models in Spencer’s terms. They show that models with ENSO do much better in the Spencer type diagnostics.

      • curryja | July 30, 2011 at 2:20 pm |

        Check out the new thread on S&B

    • David L. Hagen | July 30, 2011 at 12:44 pm |

      News ranges from pro: New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism to con:
      Climate Change Debunked? Not So Fast

      “mainstream climate scientists dismissed the research as unrealistic and politically motivated.”

      (That’s rich hypocritical ad hominem attack on motives/red herring, especially in light of ClimateGate revelations).
      Spencer responds: Fallout from Our Paper: The Empire Strikes Back

      If they are going to validate their models with short term variability as some sort of indication that their models can be believed for long-term global warming, then they are going to HAVE to explain why there is such a huge discrepancy (see Fig. 3 in our paper) between the models and the satellite observations in what is the most fundamental issue: How fast do the models lose excess radiant energy in response to warming?

      • David L. Hagen | July 30, 2011 at 1:00 pm |

        Errata: See Spencer’s response at his blog, and at WUWT

        Speaking of “hiding the decline”, instead of attacking motives, I highly recommend readers study Spencer’s post: The Debt Crisis Compromise is Not an Option. Look especially at his graph of the rapidly increasing unsustainable gap between expenditures and revenue. Spencer warns that Washington is driving the US off the cliff following Argentina:

        Clearly, the path we are on is unsustainable. I fear we will soon find ourselves in the same situation as Argentina, whose unsustainable rate of borrowing finally culminated in what amounted to economic collapse around 2001. Much of the country was suddenly poverty stricken, with rampant crime as people were just trying to survive.

        Banks either closed, or only allowed customers to withdraw very small amounts of cash each week. Inflation skyrocketed. Many of the ruling elite fled the country with great amounts of wealth, since they saw the crisis coming.

        In a matter of a couple of years, Argentina became virtually a Third World country.

        See especially the US Government Expenditures vs Receiptsgraph
        Why are politicians “hiding the decline” caused by this rapid divergence?
        See Argentina’s Economic Collapsevideo
        Argentine economic crisis

        The present US government policies are a sure cure for “anthropogenic global warming” – by destroying the economy – which will force a massive reduction in “greenhouse emissions”! It will also “cure” “excessive government spending” on “climate change” (but not as expected!)

  6. Sean | July 30, 2011 at 10:09 am |

    The comment about “reaching the boiling point” generated a starkly different though in my mind. Having been a bench chemist working with low boiling point solvents like diethyl ether, the 100F is pretty close to the boiling point of diethyl ether and you could control your reaction temperatures by virtue of the specific solvent you ran your reaction with. Well in the late ’70’s and early ’80’s you could also use that characteristic to control building temperatures. How could this be? Back in the days of the second oil shock, the government mandated that its buildings not be heated before a certain date in the fall or cooled before a certain date in the spring based on the historic average temperatures. The problem was it was not unusual to have hot spells in the mid to upper 90’s prior to start date. The high temps often blew the lids off the containers of the volatile and flammable solvents. As a result, all building with labs that had such chemicals got exemted from the activation date of the HVAC systems and were allowed to operate as they were designed to control the temperatures.

  7. Jim Cripwell | July 30, 2011 at 10:23 am |

    One of the few remaining forecast of the proponents of CAGW, which has any real hope of being correct, is that Arctic sea ice will disappear in the summer in the near future. For the 2011 melt season, ice levels were running at the lowest recorded level. Suddenly, on 19th July, the rate of melt dropped from over 100,000 sq kms per day, to less that 50,000 sq kms per day. Why, no-one seems to know. The trend towards the lower rate of melting has persisited to today.

    The middle of September might be interesting for two reasons. It is the height of the hurricane season in the North Atlantic, and it produces the lowest sea ice levels in the Arctic. Only about 6 weeks to go.

    • Sean | July 30, 2011 at 11:30 am |

      Actic sea ice extent is much more about emotion and publicity than it is an indicator of the climate, particularly if you go back 150 years to see the way the AMO drives it. Just look at the 2006 and 2007 lines. 2006 started the season with less ice than most years but ended up having one of the highest minimum ice recent years while 2007 started higher but went way lower. There are so many factors other then “global average temperature” that affect ice extent I see this metric as a distraction to the overall argument.

      • Jim Cripwell | July 30, 2011 at 12:37 pm |

        I completely agree with you, Sean. Arctic sea ice is important, ONLY because the proponents of CAGW said it was important. However, it is still good for propoganda in the MSM. Hence, I hope the data will soon show exactly what you are saying. That is why I feel it is important. It comes in the same class as hurricanes, which I also mentioned. Here the data has shown precisely what you are saying, and the proponents of CAGW are trying as hard as possible to forget they ever mentioned hurricanes as a sign of CAGW.

      • Jim D | July 30, 2011 at 1:34 pm |

        A low amount of sea ice in the summer leads to lower albedo and more radiative warming which has a global impact. Most would regard this as an important positive feedback to the CO2 warming, and not irrelevant by any stretch of the imagination.

      • Richard J | July 30, 2011 at 2:36 pm |

        The Royal Society said

        “It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated.

        [it] affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.”
        President of the Royal Society, London, to the Admiralty, 20th November, 1817

        Puzzling, that it is only since the late C20th suggested influence of man on climatic warming, that warming has morphed from a serendipitous benefit, (optimum etc.) to a malignant evil.

      • John Vetterling | July 30, 2011 at 2:36 pm |

        That’s not actually the case. Because the earths surface is round, all albedo is not the same. Albedo near the equator is very significant. But very little downward radiation strikes the earth outside 80 degrees latitude. Hence a change in albedo near the poles is really not that significant. Compared to cloud based changes in albedo near the equator it just doesn’t change to total energy budget that much.

      • Sean | July 30, 2011 at 2:40 pm |

        How important is this really? The temperature late in the summer is already in decline, the angle of incidence is very shallow and what proportion of the ice cap is covered in clouds at this time of year (according to Wikipedia its 80% in mid summer). I bet if you totaled up the entire contribution for correction of albedo for ice vs. water at the poles, the number would be vanishingly small compared to global averages.

      • Lars Per | July 30, 2011 at 5:35 pm |

        Jim,
        As already mentioned a lower albedo near the north pole does not really change the incoming radiation – very little downward radiation strikes the earth outside 80 degrees latitude. On the other side I wonder if not much more is emitted by the open sea increasing the heat lost.

      • Jim D | July 30, 2011 at 5:56 pm |

        In the summer months, the whole ice cap is lit by the sun 24 hours a day, with the Arctic Circle within 45 degrees of the sub-solar point at the Tropic of Cancer. Its albedo effect is maximized in these months, and the shortwave effect far exceeds the opposing longwave effect, as we know from the net positive albedo feedback in Ice Ages.

  8. Girma | July 30, 2011 at 11:19 am |

    GIRMA’S SIMPLE GMT PREDICTION MODEL

    Predictions of Global Mean Temperature (GMT) given its oscillating cooling and warming by 0.5 deg C in approximately 30 years and its persistent warming of 0.06 deg C per decade shown below

    http://bit.ly/nicmt9

    Change in GMT during its 30 years cooling phase = 0.5 – 0.06×3= 0.32 deg C

    Change in GMT during its 30 years warming phase = 0.5 + 0.06×3= 0.68 deg C

    Given the GMT for 1880 of –0.27 deg C how to calculate the other GMT peaks and valleys

    GMT for 1910s = GMT for 1880s – 0.32 = -0.27 – 0.32 = -0.59
    GMT for 1940s = GMT for 1910s + 0.68 = -0.59 + 0.68 = 0.09
    GMT for 1970s = GMT for 1940s – 0.32 = 0.09 – 0.32 = -0.23
    GMT for 2000s = GMT for 1970s + 0.68 = -0.23 + 0.68 = 0.45

    PREDICTION

    GMT for 2030 = GMT for 2000s – 0.32 = 0.45 – 0.32 = 0.13

    IPCC GMT PREDICTION for 2030 = 1 deg C!

    http://bit.ly/p9Cwqr

  9. Bruce | July 30, 2011 at 11:31 am |

    Has anyone waded through the CRU data to see how much modern data there really is?

    The places near me have lots of -99 (no data for the last many years).

    • steven mosher | July 30, 2011 at 1:27 pm |

      Should take a couple minutes. There wont be anything very interesting found in CRU data. That’s never been the issue.

      For the benefit of people who have no idea of why we requested the data and for the benefit of those who INVENT ideas for why we requested the data let me be clear.

      1. Willis and Steve Requested the data to look at how CRU investigated UHI.

      2. peter requested the data to look at the issue of natural variability

      3. rutherford and mann requested the data for reconstructions.

      4. I requested the data for QC On work I wanted to do ( that is match their results )

      2&3 were granted access long ago. now 1 and 4 can do what they wanted to do.

      • Bruce | July 30, 2011 at 9:22 pm |

        Lubos Motl found that 30% of stations have been cooling.

        Not very “global” is it?

        http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/07/hadcrut3-30-of-stations-recorded.html

      • steven mosher | July 30, 2011 at 9:56 pm |

        Who EVER claimed that every station would have a positive trend. If you read here you would see that everyone who works with this data understands that

        a: The trend is NOT the same at every station
        b. During periods of warming you can have areas that cool
        c. REGIONAL forecasting is important.

        Many people who throw around the term “global” on both sides should learn to speak more carefully. And average of all stations shows a warming trend. Some show cooling, some show no trend, others show high trends. In gross terms we can say that trends go up with latitude, but understanding why some regions race ahead of others is an important question.

        In NO CASE does local cooling overturn the basic laws of physics: more GHG means ( on average) higher temps.

      • Bruce | July 30, 2011 at 10:41 pm |

        “more GHG means ( on average) higher temps.”

        Except for the ones that cool.

        Seems less likely to be GHG’s then.

      • steven mosher | July 31, 2011 at 1:35 pm |

        Hardly. What it points to is what we ALREADY KNEW. That the climate has natural variability. GHG forcing is a trend imposed on top of these natural cycles which vary in time and space. So if a space naturally cooled by .5C, under GHG loading it might only cool by .2C or .1C .
        There is nothing odd whatsoever in finding cooling regimes.

      • Bad Andrew | July 31, 2011 at 1:37 pm |

        “it might”

        Still peddling “the science is settled” meme, eh Mr. Mosher? lol

        Andrew

      • Steven Mosher | July 31, 2011 at 9:54 pm |

        science is never settled. logic isnt even settled or math.
        dont be an idiot

    • Nick Stokes | July 30, 2011 at 5:52 pm |

      Has anyone waded through the CRU data to see how much modern data there really is?

      Yes. Graphs are here.

      • Bruce | July 30, 2011 at 9:23 pm |

        The nearest station to me has the last 7 years of -99.

        Yet the metadata says the last year with data is a full -99 year.

        The metadata is incorrect.

      • Nick Stokes | July 30, 2011 at 9:46 pm |

        I wasn’t working from the metadata. It’s an actual count of entries in the data file. It plots the number of stations returning at least one data point (not -999) in the year.

      • steven mosher | July 30, 2011 at 10:02 pm |

        The number of years is merely the number of lines in the datafile.
        the first reliable year is indicated.

      • Bruce | July 30, 2011 at 10:52 pm |

        But not the last reliable year.

      • Bruce | July 30, 2011 at 11:03 pm |

        CRU
        717990 Victoria Int A
        1999 5.3 5.5 6.1 8.5 10.7 14.1 16.1 16.9 14.2 9.7 7.5 5.4

        Environment Canada
        1999 5.3 5.5 6.1 8.5 10.7 14.1 16.0 16.9 14.2 9.8 7.5 5.4

        Close. But not identical. First one I checked.

        And of course CRU has no post 2001 data.

      • steven mosher | July 31, 2011 at 2:51 am |

        Why would you imagine that they would match? You must be new to this

      • Bruce | July 31, 2011 at 11:47 am |

        You mean the data can’t be trusted?

        I already knew that.

      • steven mosher | July 31, 2011 at 1:39 pm |

        Yes, I would not trust the web display of enviroment canada.

        If you remove your bias you will see this. you will find that various sources or data give different answers. That fact alone doesnt tell you how that occurred, which data is ‘correct” or If the difference even matters.

        4 years or so of looking at these differences and i’ve found that

        1. tracking down the real source is difficult
        2. figuring out who made changes is difficult
        3. none of the difference matter
        4. people who confirm their bias are not worth my time

      • Bruce | July 31, 2011 at 8:07 pm |

        #3 none of the difference matter

        An unproven assertion. Please back it up with data and methodology when you find the real source of the data. If you can.

      • steven mosher | July 31, 2011 at 2:53 am |

        Look through all the records where the first year and the first reliable year dont match.

      • Steven Mosher | July 31, 2011 at 9:55 pm |

        here bruce:

        Cru data .. Guess what, they are colder when they use their algorithm and warmer when we use mine and nicks and romans.

        http://stevemosher.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/cru-data-in-rghcnv3/

  10. paul haynes | July 30, 2011 at 11:52 am |

    I would jokingly say that Jonathan Jones and Don Kellier had better be going through the data after all that effort!

    Presumably Steve M. and one or two others at Climate Audit will be having a good look through the data.

  11. Ormond Otvos | July 30, 2011 at 4:32 pm |

    Another cherry-picking analysis to generate some more teapot tempests…

    The dogs bark, but the caravan continues on its way…

  12. pokerguy | July 30, 2011 at 8:58 pm |

    http://news.yahoo.com/northeast-braces-temps-near-boiling-point-104346055.html

    Anyone interested in some good belly laughs should check out the comments following this ridiculous article from the AP. My wife and I laughed so hard we both had tears in our eyes.

  13. Joe Lalonde | August 2, 2011 at 7:33 am |

    Judith,

    At some point, when the ocean water on this planet is too low, it will overheat and evaporate off the rest of the water.
    But this is still in the far future.