by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.
President Obama
After the election, President Obama is now talking about climate change. He isn’t proposing any specific policies, but wants to have a ‘conversation.’ Huffington Post has an article on this:
“I am a firm believer that climate change is real, that it is impacted by human behavior and carbon emissions,” Obama said. “And as a consequence, I think we’ve got an obligation to future generations to do something about it.”
Responding to a question from The New York Times’ Mark Landler about calls to combat climate change in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Obama cautioned, as others have, that no single weather event can be linked directly to climate change. But he said that the overwhelming scientific evidence suggests that the changing climate is contributing to extreme weather more generally.
“What we do know is the temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted even 10 years ago,” Obama stated. “We do know that the Arctic ice cap is melting faster than was predicted even five years ago. We do know that there have been an extraordinarily large number of severe weather events here in North America, but also around the globe.”
Hmmmmm. . . I wonder what his source was on the bolded statement.
Climate caution
Some welcome climate caution from DailyClimate. Tread carefully linking extreme weather to climate crisis. An excerpt:
Many climate advocates hope that the recent bout of extreme weather will awaken Americans to the dangers of climate change. Advocates and scientists have pointed to superstorm Sandy and the Texas drought as clear and present signs of the climate crisis. Although the public does seem to be taking notice, I fear these efforts could backfire if we do not proceed cautiously with our framing around extreme weather and climate change. Our challenge to solve the climate crisis could become more difficult in the end.
How? Let’s consider where efforts to tie extreme weather to climate crisis might lead:
1. Could linking today’s extreme weather with the urgency of the climate crisis lead the public to support policies that reduce emissions?
Probably not. The link between today’s extreme weather and greenhouse gas policy is weak. Policy decisions made today are not going to eliminate or even significantly alter the patterns of these extreme weather events in the next few decades.
This is due to the long lifetime of the heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere coupled with the time it takes to change our societal infrastructure. Furthermore, over the near and medium term, there are more effective ways to respond to extreme weather, namely investing in infrastructure, planning, and institution-building to make communities more resilient.
Be persuasive, be brave, be arrested
Nature has published commentary by Jeremy Grantham entitled Be persuasive. Be brave. Be arrested (if necessary). Subtitle: A resource crisis exacerbated by global warming is looming, argues financier Jeremy Grantham. More scientists must speak out. His closing paragraph:
It is crucial that scientists take more career risks and sound a more realistic, more desperate, note on the global-warming problem. Younger scientists are obsessed by thoughts of tenure, so it is probably up to older, senior and retired scientists to do the heavy lifting. Be arrested if necessary. This is not only the crisis of your lives — it is also the crisis of our species’ existence. I implore you to be brave.
Well this is a different angle on ‘going emeritus.’
Surging storms
The Christian Science Monitor has a very good article Can the U.S. adapt in time to avert coastal damage?
Climate Dialogue
In case you haven’t picked up on this from comments on the other threads, there is a new blog Climate Dialogue, which has a unique format. From the About page:
Climate Dialogue offers a platform for discussions between (climate) scientists on important climate topics that are of interest to both fellow scientists and the general public. The goal of the platform is to explore the full range of views that scientists have on these issues.
Each discussion will be kicked off by a short introduction written by the editorial staff, followed by a guest blog by two or more invited scientists. The scientists will start the discussion by reacting to each others’ arguments moderated by one of the members of the editorial staff. Once the discussion has reached the point where it is clear what the discussants agree or disagree on and why, the editioral staff will round off the discussion. The decision on when that point will have been reached is up to the editorial staff. It is not the goal of Climate Dialogue to reach a consensus, but to stimulate the discussion.
To round off the discussion on a particular topic, the Climate Dialogue editor will write a summary, describing the areas of agreement and disagreement between the discussants. The participants will be asked to approve this final article, the discussion between the experts on that topic will be closed and the editorial staff will open a new discussion on a different topic.
The public (including other climate scientists) is also free to comment, but for practical reasons these comments will be shown separately.
Based on the IAC recommendation that ‘the full range of views’ should be covered in the IPCC-reports, [Netherlands] Parliament asked the government ‘to also involve climate skeptics in future studies on climate change’.
As a result of this, the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment announced a couple of projects that are aimed to increase this involvement. Climate Dialogue is one of these projects.
The first topic is the decline of Arctic sea ice. I am one of three invited experts (the other two are Walt Meiers and Ron Lindsay). The 3 experts and the moderators have one discussion thread, there is another thread for public comments, and third thread for off topic comments (interesting to see who has gotten relegated to the off topic comments).
The bottom line is that the 3 experts are not in major disagreement. This disappoints a number of people (from both sides). We pretty much agree on the relevant physical processes and the uncertainties. But how evidence gets weighted and the actual reasoning process leads to somewhat different conclusions about attribution. It will be very interesting to see the summary from the editorial staff.
Overall, a very good addition to the climate debate. Check it out if you haven’t already.
Judith I believe the URL to ClimateDialogue should be:
http://www.climatedialogue.org/
“What we do know is the temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted even 10 years ago”, Obama stated.
Well, Mr. President, tell us the scientific basis for this bold, post-election statement, if there is any.
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-1802
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
PhD Nuclear Chemistry
Postdoc Space Physics
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
The game is up, Mr. Obama. Climategate emails exposed deceptive global temperature data in Nov 2009. Official responses strongly suggest publicly financed science was purposefully distorted to deceive the public.
You can clear this matter up immediately by ordering your Science Advisor and the Secretary of Energy to address, confirm, or deny experimental data and observations [1] that directly falsify the foundation of the AGW claim.
[1] “Neutron repulsion, The Apeiron J. 19, 123-150 (2012)
http://redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/V19NO2pdf/V19N2MAN.pdf“
Mr. Obama’s scientists cannot predict global temperatures, but I can confidently state that Thomas Jefferson’s assumptions in the 1776 Declaration of Independence were scientifically correct:
A Power Higher than the combined forces of all world governments – is the force our Creator (Reality, Truth, God, Spirit of the Universe) used to
_ a.) Make the elements
_ b.) Birth the world ~5 Gyr ago
_ c.) Sustain the origin of life ~3.5 Gyr ago
_ d.) Sustain life’s evolution and endowment of humans with
Unalienable rights Thomas Jefferson proclaimed in 1776 to
_ a.) Govern ourselves, and to
_ b.) Establish governments to protect
_ c.) Our other Divine and unalienable rights to
_ d.) Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, and to
_ e.) Abolish any government that becomes destructive of these ends
It would benefit everyone and restore sanity to our society if Mr. Obama ordered an immediate end to deceptive government science before we reach that final stage.
Hmmmmm. . . I wonder what his source was on the bolded statement.
Teleprompter
Perhaps he was overwhelmed by the evidence and just got it backwards. There is a lot of that going around.
I’ll bet the source was Hansen being misquoted.
IIRC The rise of extreme temperature events(days above 95F in the US) has been faster then models predicted according to Hansen.
Of course to make such a strong case then one has to draw the line on climate in the 1950’s(there apparently was no climate prior to 1955) to avoid the 1930’s problem.
ClimateDialogue.org says:
Then it says the editorial staff are:
All the editorial staff and the board are insiders; i.e members of the climate alarmist establishment. How on Earth can they fulfill the ‘main task’ objectively?
Peter,
Marcel Crok is far from being a “member of the climate alarmist establishment”. IMHO, this project is a welcome change. The structure of the discussions they are facilitating certainly requires some heavy-duty moderation of the public comments, which are not censored in any way, as far as I can tell.
But it does permit the interested lurker to focus on the relevant comments without having to wade through the recitations from the all too familiar barrage of bitchers ‘n bashers whose blindspots seem to preclude their developing an ability to step down from their well-known hobby-horses.
Do EPA government science authoritarians control average global temperatures or, is it the sun, stupid?
A secular, socialist US government is essentially using the EPA to engage in an academic exercise which is the equivalent of casting of chicken bones to foretell the future and playing with the lives of the productive in the bargain.
“Unfortunately, the academics, activists, politicians and bureaucrats leading the push for carbon dioxide taxation and use of renewable energy are non-producers who are woefully ignorant of both the economic reality of productive activity and the practical limits of technology. They are techno-economic-illiterates with a cargo cult understanding of production. Their prescriptions amount to a ritualistic belief that admitting sin (GW) and making an appropriate sacrifice (carbon dioxide taxes) will in some undefined (magical) way bring forth all the right changes, discoveries and implementations that are needed to effect a bright new world of clean endlessly renewable energy with minimal inconvenience to anyone…” ~Walter Starck
Waggy said:
“Do EPA government science authoritarians control average global temperatures or, is it the sun, stupid?”
____
Or is it neither, but the sum of all forcings, Stupid.
“
Thank you, Wagathon, for speaking the truth, bluntly and forcefully.
The powerful force in the core of the Sun:
1. Made our elements
2. Birthed the world ~5 billion years ago
3. Sustained the beginnings of life on Earth ~3.5 billion years ago
4. Sustained the evolution of life into the highly evolved forms here today
5. Endowed humans with unusual talents and the unalienable rights Thomas Jefferson described in the US Declaration of Independence
6. Voyager spacecraft found in control of a vast region of space that extends 18 billion kilometers out from the Sun [A].
7. At least ten billion, billion (~10^19) Earths could fit inside this gigantic “sphere of influence” that is now filled with waste products from the Sun’s pulsar core [B].
8. The real Earth’s close proximity to this powerful pulsar and its daily impact on Earth cause our constantly changing climate [C].
The AGW story ignores these scientific facts.
[A] Ron Cowan, “Voyager’s long good-bye. NASA probes find surprises at the edge of the Solar System,” Nature 489, 20-21 (2012)
http://www.nature.com/news/voyager-s-long-goodbye-1.11348
[B] Oliver K. Manuel, “Neutron repulsion,” The APEIRON J. 19, 123-150
(2012) http://redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/V19NO2pdf/V19N2MAN.pdf
[C] Oliver K. Manuel, Barry W. Ninham and Stig E. Friberg, “Super-fluidity in the solar interior: Implications for solar eruptions and climate,” Journal of Fusion Energy 21, 193-198 (2002)
http://www.springerlink.com/content/r2352635vv166363/
Do EPA government science authoritarians control average global temperatures…
The government is essentially using the EPA to engage in an academic exercise which is the equivalent of casting of chicken bones to foretell the future and playing with the lives of the productive in the bargain.
EPA documentation accompanying proposed greenhouse gas emission regulations states that it’s regulations will reduce the average global temperature by ’0.006 to 0.0015C by 2100,’ but that of course assumes that we are not headed for an overdue ice age in 50 years, right? Reality is stranger than fiction.
On the one hand, Obama is making the weird claim that temperature is increasing faster. On the other hand, he says that it’s “iimpacted by human behavior and carbon emissions”. I read “impacted by” as weaker than the usual clichés. It doesn’t rule out a less dominant role for AGW than the IPCC asserts. Not sure what it means.
I think it means we need to increase the federal excise tax on gasoline.
Dagfinn
I think it means (if you live in the USA), dig deeper into your pocket – another tax to save the planet is going to pop up somewhere.
You voted for him – now you’ve got him.
Max
Indeed. Extraordinary stupidity. We in Europe are now witnessing the long term effects of social democracy. It’s appalling. So what does the USA do? Elect someone who will do the same thing. Poor America.
Mr President, you are being misled.
Here is the evidence from the observed data.
Here is IPCC’s projection:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html
Here is the observed data for the global warming rate in the last 10 years.
http://bit.ly/ST4ClL
Here are what the data show:
1) HADCRUT3 => -0.09 deg C decade cooling
2) HADCRUT4=> -0.04 deg C per decade cooling
3) GISS => -0.01 deg C per decade cooling
4) UAH => 0.03 deg C per decade warming (only 15% of IPCC prediction)
5) RSS=> -0.07 deg C per decade cooling
Mr. President, IPCC predicted for a warming rate of 0.2 deg C per decade, but all the observed dataset show a much smaller global warming rate. Actually, most of them show a slight cooling or a warming of only a fraction of IPCC’s prediction. Mr. President, your statement the temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted 10 years ago” is incorrect. You have been misled.
Tut, tut, Girma’s being tricksy with graphs, again.
What if we don’t start with the hot spike at 2002? That, after all, is going to distort the results.
What if instead, we examine the marked effect of the two strong La Niña at the end of the record (2008; 2010 – 11 ‘double-dip’)?
Comparing HadCRUT4 and GISTEMP we see something interesting. We see that those two strong La Niña at the end of the record have a substantial effect.
Decadal trend 1995 – 2008
HadCRUT4 0.18C
GISTEMP 0.19C
Decadal trend 1995 – present
HadCRUT4 0.1C
GISTEMP 0.1C
Let’s run that back a bit and see what happens. Here’s HadCRUT4 and GISTEMP from 1975 – 2008 and 1975 – present.
Decadal trend 1975 – 2008
HadCRUT4 0.19C
GISTEMP 0.18C
Decadal trend 1975 – present
HadCRUT4 0.17C
GISTEMP 0.16C
And there you have it. The two strong La Niña at the end of the record have a substantial effect on the decadal trend.
We should therefore be very careful how we represent the recent term GAT data.
Shouldn’t we, Girma?
He said 10 years.
2012 – 10 = 2002.
So we need to start in 2002
What we need to do is be careful to avoid unintentional misrepresentation.
So what do we take from this. Both Girma and BBD are cherry picking and Obama is hyping nonsense. A veritable climate tower of Babel.
Good stuff, Judith. One article says:
I love the vagueness of that statement. Climate change is “contributing to” extreme weather. What does that even mean?
And there are so few things in climate science for which there is “overwhelming evidence”, I’d have to see a dozen solid citations to back that hyperbole up. Amateur alarmism.
But that’s just the author. The President himself is quoted directly as saying:
No, we don’t know that at all. That’s a total misrepresentation. I know of no evidence to support that claim. To the contrary, a variety of studies have shown that there has not been an “extraordinarily large” amount of severe weather. The weather has been generally normal, it’s been pretty much plain vanilla, for all kinds of foretold disasters (droughts, floods, cyclones, tornadoes, the usual suspects). Yes, we got a “Superstorm”, but the US has been hit by superstorms many times in the past.
So … claiming that there has been an “extraordinarily large number of severe weather events” is just more of the standard line of bogus alarmism, only this time it’s from the Alarmist-In-Chief.
Sigh …
w.
Extreme events presumably include extreme cold. So by definition global warming must also include reducing the frequency and/or severity of extreme events too. Too bad there isn’t a reporter with access, cajones, and brains enough to ask the president if he agrees.
Instead we get parrots parroting parrots all the way down.
David Spring said:
“Extreme events presumably include extreme cold. So by definition global warming must also include reducing the frequency and/or severity of extreme events too…”
_______
Your logic doesn’t track. Extreme cold outbreaks can be as much a part of more energy in the Earth system as extreme heat waves. Alterations in planetary waves caused by changes in thermal gradients between equator and pole can lead to all sorts of extremes from the blocking events and higher amplitude jet stream patterns. Might want to follow more closely the research being done by Dr. Francis at Rutgers.
Remember when it was called “global warming”? And we were told that the warming would be greatest in the polar regions. Ergo, the number of extreme cold events should be reduced. You “realists” can’t have your cake and eat it too!
Robert,
You ought to do a bit more research about what happens when the polar vortex breaks down in the middle of winter. Very cold outbreaks at lower latitudes but warm at the pole. Odd, isn’t it?
Yes of course, Gates. If the average temperature of the globe is increasing it is not logical that there will be fewer killer frosts and milder winters. Global warming means global freezing too.
/sarc
You’re either an imbecile, a liar, or both. I’m going with both.
David Springer | November 20, 2012 at 9:32 am |
… You’re either an imbecile, a liar, or both. I’m going with both.
Joining Badfaith and Web in the gutter. Most disheartening.
“What we do know is the temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted even 10 years ago,” Obama stated.
The President needs to get some new advisors on climate. Measurements show there has been no increse in global average temperature since the year 2000.
“The first topic (of the Climate Dialogue) is the decline of Arctic sea ice”
Owing to the large number of urban heat islands around the north Atlantic, I would expect there would be a permanent plume of warm ait over that region which would promote the melting of sea ice. If this were the case one would expect more melting of sea ice oner the North Atlantic than over the same latitude of the North Pacific..
The country has changed. We’re not ever going back and that changes a lot of other things–e.g., this ain’t your grandfather’s science.
Not my grandfather’s science. Not my father’s science. Not my science. Not science!
Science is skeptical, always!
GCMs are Climatology’s $10,000 toilet seats. Climatology has been likened by non-Western academics to the ancient science of astrology. The EPA has become the IRS and EPA regulations have become a payroll tax. The Left’s vision of liberal Utopia has become the art of deciphering flickering shadows on the wall in Plato’s prison cave. A secular, socialist government that’s too big to fail has become sledgehammer in the hands of a heart surgeon.
Well this is a different angle on ‘going emeritus.’
Pretty funny too because what we’ve seen up to now is that it has been retirees who have been leading the rush for the UN exits and many have not been bashful about saying that no longer being a part of academia is the reason they are now finally able to tell the truth about the global warming hoax.
One of the brave exceptions was MIT’s Lindzen. But he’s now “emeritus”, too. Possibly accelerated by his views?
“I am a firm believer that climate change is real, that it is impacted by human behavior and carbon emissions,” Belief obviously trumps facts for Obama.
seems not to be the right link – http://www.climatedialogue.com/
It’s here: http://www.climatedialogue.org/
Japan: there is something odd in the nearby Pacific
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NoaaD.htm
Do check it for yourself
Interesting but what are the possible theories? Or are they related to some other driver of these indices?
Hi Dennis
Not even hypothesis.
With due respect to Dr. Curry our charming hostess, I don’t think anyone knows how natural variability works or what the extent of it is; if so than even less can be concluded for the AGW.
But let’s have a shot at it.
On the http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NoaaD.htm
illustration maps show tectonic fault (red line) and two major currents of the North Pacific, Kuroshio (warm current) and Oyashio (cold current). Relative strength of these currents determines if the N. Pacific and the lands of surrounding continents where lot of the glob temps records come from, are warmer or colder.
It could be suggested that the tectonic movements have some effect on balance of these currents.
So far so good.
Now, for the magnetic field. Its generation and changes of its intensity deep inside the Earth’s (outer) core are even bigger mystery than the climate change.
Movement of the tectonic plates (subduction see http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a4/SubZone.jpg ) interferes with the magma flow further down. These disturbances in the flow propagate slowly through the dense magma affecting its thermal convection. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Outer_core_convection_rolls.jpg
which is assumed to be the generator of the magnetic field.
What about the 15 year delay?
In the last wiki link there are some cylinders depicted. This appears to be a complex subject, if so inclined look up article by a JPL-NASA scientist and an Oxford professor
http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/19162/1/98-0417.pdf
which considers mechanical disturbances propagation between the Earth’s core and lithosphere at various latitudes.
Thus
1. Tectonic movements affect balance of the two major N. Pacific currents (Kuroshio warm and Oyashio cold) and in doing so changes temperature across N. Hemisphere.
2. The same tectonic movements affect magma flow, propagating slowly further down, where the magnetic field is generated; changes in the MF are then observed on the surface.
There are number of experts and other ‘experts’ from the many fields of science, which may disagree, offer different more plausible ideas, or declare correlation spurious and the whole charabanc a nonsense.
Have a nice weekend.
I am ok until this……”changes in the MF are then observed on the surface.” I am lost on the process. MF being Magnetic Field of Magma Flow? Thanks. For what its worth I am not sure if the correlation looks spurious, at least to this untrained eye.
I was running out of steam.
Wikipedia: ‘The motion of the fluid is sustained by convection, motion driven by buoyancy. The temperature increases towards the center of the Earth, and the higher temperature of the fluid lower down makes it buoyant.’
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_magnetic_field (scroll down to Earth’s core and the geodynamo) So any ‘subduction’ interference with the normal convection would eventually reach area where the field is generated and presumably affect its intensity – e.g. faster movement stronger field. Any change in intensity at the core is almost instantaneously registered by geomagnetic stations around the world, but the signal strength is the most prominent at the nearest point at the surface. At two distant points magnetic intensity often is moving in opposite directions, most notable is the case of Hudson Bay compared to Central Siberia.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm (right hand magnetic scale has values in reverse order)
About the Arctic ice melt attribution, Dr Curry wrote:
“My assessment is that it is likely (>66% likelihood) that there is 50-50 split between natural variability and anthropogenic forcing, with +/-20% range. Why such a ‘wishy washy’ statement with large error bars?”
Would it not have been more honest and more accurate to state just: “I don’t know” ? Such guesses, expressed in pseudo-scientific jargon are meaningless and misleading.
This is hardly a skeptical assessment which means that so far they have not had a real skeptic. That humans are probably from 30 to 70% responsible is minimally skeptical, if that. Perhaps lukewarmers are as far as they will go, which is hardly a dialog with skeptics.
so you are certain the human role is less than 30%.
very skeptical.
50% percent minimizes your error when you know nothing.so unless you have something more than doubt the skeptical position is 50%
I am 99.9% sure that all of the Earth’s surface heat and atmospheric heat is generated by the sun. So to minimize the error in my skeptical position, I’m presuming that there is a 50% likelihood that any temperature change we see over time is due to a variation in solar irradiance. The remaining 50% I am dividing up equally between possible other causes: tectonic plate activity, ocean circulation, galactic rotation and anthropogenic causes. (I of course divide equally to minimize errors in my skeptical position). This leaves a value of 12.5% for anthropogenic causes: 6.25% for fossil fuels and 6.25% for land use changes. So as a skeptic, I attribute a value of 6.25% to the likelihood that burning fossil fuels is the reason for the temperature rise over the last century.
How’s my math?
Mosher, first I know a great deal more than nothing. Second the claim was for a range, implying a distribution, so presumably this is not a simple measure of ignorance. Finally, I am not certain of anything but I am pretty sure the human role is less than 30%. It may well be zero. So yes I am very skeptical of AGW. At least you got that part right.
willb said:
“I am 99.9% sure that all of the Earth’s surface heat and atmospheric heat is generated by the sun.”
____
Then you’d be 100% incorrect. Isn’t that strange how someone can be 99.9% certain and still 100% incorrect?
R. Gates said:
“Then you’d be 100% incorrect.”
I’m 100% incorrect? Are you saying that none of the Earth’s surface heat and atmospheric heat is generated by the sun? Excuse me, but I’m skeptical of that claim.
willb,
You said “all” Earth’s surface and atmospheric heat was generated by the sun– which is 100% incorrect.
So, R. Gates, if the sun were to disappear, what does your fevered imagination tell you would happen to Earth’s surface temperature? To what temperature do you think it would settle?
“How’s my math?”
the math isn’t the problem. It’s the logic that fails.
Hey Mosher, lolwot thinks your logic sucks.
Btw, in case you missed it, my first comment was just meant to show Mosher’s argument to be a bit silly. But I don’t think he was really being serious anyway.
willb asks”
“So, R. Gates, if the sun were to disappear, what does your fevered imagination tell you would happen to Earth’s surface temperature? To what temperature do you think it would settle?”
____
The oceans would freeze over pretty rapidly if the sun just disappeared. We would get maybe 20 meter or more thick ice right to the poles. All surface life would die, yet some life in the oceans and deep in mines and caves would live from the geothermal heat of the Earth. The ice on the surface of the oceans would act to insulate the oceans and thus, the geothermal heat from the Earth would become extremely important as it would be the only source of heat on the planet. There is a good chance that there is moon much like this already in our solar system…possible Titan or Europa? A final important factor related to a sun-less Earth, would be whether or not Earth would keep its own moon as tidal fluxing from it would add a bit more energy to the Earth system.
As far as surface temperatures on such a planet (given that the atmosphere would all but disappear), you would see temperatures hover very close to what we see on the outer planets of the solar system…right around -180C or so. You’d be much better off not being on the surface, but living deep in a mine, cave, or under the ice cap in the ocean.
> willb, You said “all” Earth’s surface and atmospheric heat was generated by the sun– which is 100% incorrect.
So what is the correct figure – only 99% Earth’s surface and atmospheric heat is generated by the sun (the rest being from the earth’s core) ?
jacobress
Judith Curry’s statement on Arctic sea ice is “scientific jargon” for “we really don’t know, but it’s unlikely to be caused by anthropogenic forcing”.
You take all the data out there with error bars included and try to make some sense out of it (even if the data aren’t really giving you any kind of clear message).
50% of 66% = 33% = “unlikely” (in IPCC jargon)
So JC is really telling us that the data are sketchy but it is “unlikely” that the melt is anthropogenic.
That’s how I read it.
Max
No Max, the percentages do not multiply that way. The first is an attribution while the second is a confidence. You cannot multiply them to reduce the attribution.
R Gates
You wrote.
We also know with a high degree of certainty that the Arctic has not been ice free in many centuries
The Arctic was ice free during the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm period and many other warm periods over the past well bounded ten thousand years.
We are currently in the warm phase of a natural cycle that that has been well bounded for ten thousand years.
The point is that there are BOTH natural and anthropogenic factors at play. The question is how much can be attributed to anthropogenic. My point is that it is unlikely to be 0 or 20%, and also unlikely to be 80 or 100%. Somewhere between 30 and 70% is where I think it lies, but I have left plenty of room in my estimate (with the ‘likely’ confidence level) to be wrong.
NOAA’s data for Pacific Ocean says not even 10%
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NoaaD.htm
but then no one knows what is the climate change about anyway.
OK. I get it. “Between 30% and 70%” = 50%+/-20% is “likely” (more than 66%) to be “anthropogenic”.
Max
Max, “OK. I get it. “Between 30% and 70%” = 50%+/-20% is “likely” (more than 66%) to be “anthropogenic”.”
Let’s see, since Antrophogeneic green house gases versus natural was the initial comparison, 67% of Arctic ice melt would likely be due to those two with a +/-20% split in attribution to either. So the other 33% could be “other”.
That “other” doesn’t get discussed much.
Cap’n –
I see it discussed a lot. One version of “other” gets discussed at places like WUWT (and sometimes here also), and another version of the “other” gets discussed at places like Neven’s blog.
There are reasonable arguments that all of the decline is natural so this liklihood range is not supportable. We do not even know that GW has a significant anthro component, much less Arctic ice changes.
Although at those places the “other” is generally thought to be larger than 33% likely.
Joshua, “Although at those places the “other” is generally thought to be larger than 33% likely.” There are plenty of thoughts but not much action on the “other”.
Other, land use, dust from land use and erosion, ash from natural and anthropogenic fires, ice breaking to clear channels and large scale snow removal, would tend to be amplified by both natural and anthropogenic forcing. That makes pointing the blame a little more complicated.
Cap’n –
Gotcha. Yeah – haven’t seen those factors discussed much.
Although to be clear – the 33% in Judith’s reference is not those other factors – but the likelihood that anthropogenic or natural forcing are outside the 30%-70% range. My guess is that she would peg them at far less than 33% causative.
Joshua, “My guess is that she would peg them at far less than 33% causative.”
My guess would be she doesn’t know or she would have picked a different number. That is kind of the point, the unknown unknowns doncha know.
Joshua, Actually the 1/3 make perfectly good sense and is totally consistent with her general position. CO2 forcing is only known to be worth about 1 to 1.5 C per doubling with that range mainly due to what surface is being impacted. Natural variability based on the instrumental period is only in the range of 0.2 to 0.4 C putting it in the same 1 to 1.5 C range if you extrapolate to a doubling. The underlying trend from pre-industrial, which could be natural or Anthropogenic, the “others” could be in the same range.
If you are into parsimonious reasoning, that is about all you got.
Cap’n –
Your characterization of the “other 33%” is entirely different than what she is referencing. Her 33% is the likelihood of the mixture of anthropogenic and natural attributions being more or less than the 20%-70% range. It is not a reference to those other factors you mention.
Now she may, indeed, think that “other” factors contribute significantly to the ice melting – I haven’t read her say anything to that effect which would be kind of odd if she did think they were significant: She discusses attribution a lot, if she thought that other factors were significant I’d think she’d be talking about them. But that is basically something that lies outside of the discussion of her statement at the top of this mini-thread.
Joshua, think about what she said, not what anyone thinks she said,
“5) What percentage of the recent decline would you attribute to anthropogenic greenhouse gases?
In my essay, I state:
My assessment is that it is likely (>66% likelihood) that there is 50-50 split between natural variability and anthropogenic forcing, with +/-20% range.”
There is likely a 50% split between natural and anthropogenic forcing, with a +/-20% uncertainty on that split. 70/30 either way. She only has 67% confidence in that statement, the range could be larger than +/- 20%. You can’t draw anymore conclusions from that statement.
I add my thoughts on the 33% uncertainty which I feel are consistent with her general position. Since there is only natural or not, the ultimate total would have to be 100%, but unlike natural, the not has other factors than just GHGs which either natural or not could amplify, creating the uncertainty.
She made a statement, I added my thoughts.
sorry, ” She only has 67% confidence in that statement, the range could be larger than +/- 20%” “only has” should be “at least has”.
curryja-
“The point is that there are BOTH natural and anthropogenic factors at play. … Somewhere between 30 and 70% … but I have left plenty of room in my estimate (with the ‘likely’ confidence level) to be wrong.”
The above is good, clean statement as is that just got me thinking a little about a formal problem statement as we (in the US) enter a new phase of ‘debate’. Let me say that I think that a consensus formulation, under 500-1000 words in plain language, of the policy problem under debate would be a good start. (Not likely in my view.) If we can not do that we are not ready to start making policy.
Estimates of contribution are necessary for debate, providing a handle on the scale of the problem. Hence they are frequently seen. And some approximate quantification such as the above is close to the core of problem statement. A couple of observations on the genre–just personal tastes–with the wider statement context.
The simplicity of these breakdowns is double-edged, and I wonder whether such statements should carry a little more qualification. First, from a perception and policy perspective there is no parsing the difference between 30%, 50%, or 70%. In the common vernacular, ‘Ain’t likely to happen.’
In addition, there are some important qualitative distinctions between natural and anthropogenic beyond relative contributions that are essential to any formulation of a ‘problem statement, and these should be pointed out at the same time. The direction of change in atmospheric loading (not effect) of different anthropogenic factors is positive–the rates may change but by their very nature are still positive. The qualitative aspects and behaviors of natural factors are of course more varied–natural loadings, extra-terrestrial factors, ‘control-ability’….
Just a simple concise concensus formulating the salient aspects debate issue.
Does it really matter what the exact percentages are? We know with a very high degree of certainty that there is some natural variability and some anthropogenic forcing. We also know with a high degree of certainty that the Arctic has not been ice free in many centuries, well beyond any multi-decadal variability (though not perhaps beyond a Bond Event). So what we’re left with is the ability to say that natural variability and anthropogenic forcing are leading to the regime change we’re seeing in the Arctic. Furthermore, what you could figure out is if this regime change could have happened without both factors being present, or if the their interaction caused regime change. For example, if we know that the Atlantic currents flowing into the Arctic go through cycles of cold and warm, and that during the warm cycles the sea ice naturally trends downward (but never to an ice free condition) and that during this particular downtrend, the extra forcing from the accumulation of GHG’s has tipped the trend into a regime change whereby an ice free Arctic is going to occur in the next few decades (or years if you believe Maslowski & Wadhams). This ice free Arctic is now going to occur regardless of the next cold phase of the Arctic. Furthermore, related back to the discussion about the interaction of natural variability and anthropogenic forcing, it could well be the case that there is an interaction between the two such that the natural cycle is being influenced by anthropogenic forcing so that the next cool phase of the Atlantic is either delayed, not quite as cold, shorter in duration, etc.
If there is an upside to the Arctic being so sensitive to Anthropogenic forcing, we won’t have to wait too terribly long to get some answers…
R. Gates, “Does it really matter what the exact percentages are?”
It would be kinda nice to have a rough idea. Did you know, that in the late 1980s there was a step change in the temperature Arctic region? The slope of the diurnal temperature range reversed. The average Tmin in Iceland shifted from below zero to above zero. Between 1988/89 and 1998/99 there was only one NH SSW event recorded. 88/89 was the year that Scandinavian had the about 2 degree C step change. So for some odd reason, the period of most of the AGW, was also a period of low SSW events.
Since we know exactly how much energy that is lost during SSW event and know exactly why there were so few during 88/89 to 98/99, we should be able to nail down a better estimate of how much is A and how much is N warming right? Or is there room for a tad of uncertainty?
CaptDallas,
You said:
“Since we know exactly how much energy that is lost during SSW event…”
We do? Please lead me to the data or calculation of this. I have yet to find one expert to give me any estimate at all of the energy loss from any SSW event, NH or SH. This could be a very important addition to the calculation of the overall planetary energy balance.
One additional note: You must be aware of the statistical association of SSW events with both ENSO and the QBO. See:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2006GL028521.shtml
http://www.sparc-climate.org/fileadmin/customer/6_Publications/Newsletter_PDF/39_SPARCnewsletter_Jul2012_web.pdf#page=17
If, as seems to be the case, SSW events both respond to and cause changes to ENSO activity, then getting a handle on exactly how much energy they release to space would be crucial to closing the loop in our understanding of energy transport from ocean to atmosphere to space during these events.
But again, if you have a calculation, paper, analysis or whatever that demonstrates how much energy is lost from the Earth system to space during a SSW event I’d be most interested to see it.
R. Gates, “But again, if you have a calculation, paper, analysis or whatever that demonstrates how much energy is lost from the Earth system to space during a SSW event I’d be most interested to see it.”
There are a couple of papers that estimate regional impacts of SSW but none that I have seen that estimate SSW energy fully. But all the data is there for a reasonable estimate. There was only one event between 1988/89 and there have been 9 since 2000. Each event has a number of days of surface impact up to about 50, The regional temperature during those events is below normal and when there are no events, 88/89 to 98/99 surface temperatures would be above normal. You should be able to get that data together pretty easy, since an estimate is about the best you can hope for. Note that puts a fairly large amount of the GW in the NH during the 88/89 to 98/99 in the natural column after allowing for some Anthropogenic amplification.
Then you could assume that GHGs does it all and wait for the AMO shift to surprise you.
One thing you also might like to look into is why would they be related to ENSO? Since the 1998/99 was the mother of all SSW events, they could be related to energy distribution and occur in more than just the higher latitudes. That is a problem since that implies a non-uniform climate sensitivity, but since the NH is 40% land and the SH is 20% land, land has a different heat capacity than oceans, a non-uniform, non-linear “sensitivity” kinda makes sense, docha know.
captdallas,
In looking at the actual data:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/
I’m not seeing the big gap that you’re talking about related to SSW events. In fact, the data and studies seem to show a steadily increasing frequency of these events over the longer term:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007JD009571.shtml
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI3655.1
And even, more interestingly, an association between the increased frequency of blocking events that Dr. Francis is studying and increased SSW events:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL038776.shtml
In short, it seems that there really was not a let up in SSW events during the time frame you’re indicating, but if anything, a slowly increasing frequency and intensity. 2009 and 2012 had monstrously large SSW events, both of which split the polar vortex and caused a large outbreak of very cold weather in lower latitudes.
I believe that there is a 100% chance that anthropogenic factors are in play. I believe that there is a 100% chance that we don’t know what they all are and that we don’t know if they have tried to cool or tried to warm the earth. Except for CO2, 100% of the modern data is well inside the bounds of the past ten thousand years and it is therefore 100% likely that man has not pushed temperature or sea level or albedo or anything else outside the bounds. We have data that does show that to 100%.
The gap was mentioned in a science daily article referencing Geophysical Research Letters, Semjon Schimanke. They mention the gap, likely related to European not global SSW events. The 1988/89 shift was in iceland and Scandinavian, so I imagine the where is somewhat important. Sorry I don’t have a link to that paper. There was also a paper on US SSW events from 1958 to 1980. Some caused cold snaps of 4 to 6 C lasting for nearly a month if I remember correctly.
I will check out your links here shortly.
R. Gates, I don’t, looks like an NH lull to me between 89/99 in the T anom. anyway. It may depend on the definition. One paper I saw had a +30C warming threshold for “events” and they tended to last at least 15 days with the longest over 50 days. The first recorded event was in 1952 and there are supposed to be 30 NH events since then or about one every two years. 2000, 01,and 02 all looked like pretty strong SSW period with 2009 being the one that caused the fish kill down here in the Keys.
Wonder if you could Tom Saywer someone into doing an animation?
Captdallas,
There was a very large one in 1992, and of course, the big one at the end of 1998’s El Nino, that set the stage for the ensuing large La Nina. What some people don’t recognize is the scale of these events nor their effect across the entire stratosphere and troposphere. When this heat is released from the top of the Arctic stratosphere you can see the effects ripple in cooling right down to the tropical stratosphere and an increase and southerly shift in the formation of thunderstorms over the equatorial Pacific. This effect is quite evident in the beginning of the 1999 La Nina period.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-y8W_1HRBN04/UKf600o0sBI/AAAAAAAAFqY/XnHNZ4Fvnr0/s791/uah%2520Strat%2520for%2520SSW.png
Gates, that is the UAH north pole lower stratosphere and than looks kinda like a lull in the 90s.
Gates, ” What some people don’t recognize is the scale of these events nor their effect across the entire stratosphere and troposphere.”
I recognize the scale fer sure. I just am not particularly keen on the definitions of what is an event. The general shift in 1995 from stratospheric cooling to neutral is an indication to me of the global impact of the “events” But defining SSW events and not considering that the same type event on smaller scales but wider areas kinda devalues the impact.
captdallas,
Thanks for the UAH chart. Source of data?
Also, your comments about the lull in SSW events got me to looking a bit closer at the events leading up to the large El Nino in 1998 and then the large La Nina that followed. In looking at NH SSW events there really wasn’t a large one between early 2005 and late 2007. Now, those of us who have studied the “1998” El Nino know that the bulk of the actual El Nino activity actually occurred in 1997, even though the spike in tropospheric temperatures from this event occurred a few months later in 1998 as all that heat was removed from ocean to atmosphere and helped to make that year so warm in global surface temperatures. But back to the SSW relationship. We saw no real SSW event in the NH for almost 3 years– meaning that energy was being stored in the system from early 1995 to late 1997. Then, not coincidentally, at the peak of the 1997-98 El Nino, in late 1997 we got a moderate sized SSW event. The El Nino began to fade, (even thought heat was still being released to the troposphere) and then at the end of 1998 we got a monstrously large SSW event and a rather strong and large La Nino period began. Coincidence? I doubt it.
In my previous post, this sentence:
“In looking at NH SSW events there really wasn’t a large one between early 2005 and late 2007.” should of course read:
” In looking at NH SSW events there really wasn’t a large one between early 1995 and late 1997.”
Gate, I had downloaded the UAH data from noaa and just threw that plot together. I was looking at downloading the gridded but that is a PITA without R experience and I don’t care to learn R at this stage.
BTW, there appears to be a tad more natural variability going on, like a Bond Event in the offing instead of the run of the mill AMO shift. Interesting times.
captdallas said:
” What some people don’t recognize is the scale of these events nor their effect across the entire stratosphere and troposphere.”
I recognize the scale fer sure. I just am not particularly keen on the definitions of what is an event.
______
The exact definition is elusive because these events are so variable in their intensity, duration, and effect on the stratospheric polar vortex. By studying the data here very closely (as I have for many hours), you can get a feel for these events in seeing the large ones, moderate ones, and small ones. The largest usually have some major effect on the polar vortex whereas the smaller ones do not. The polar vortex and be simply displaced (causing severe cold in the direction of displacement) or completely shattered. (causing severe cold on both sides of the NH). I would suggest looking at the data, and getting a “feel” for what these events look like. Study a large NH event such as we saw in December of 1998, or January of 2009 and 2012. Study medium ones such as we saw in January 1995 or December 1997, and then compare those to the smaller ones such as we see saw in January 1991. When you start to think of these as large releases of energy from Earth system to space, and then relate them back to other events like outbreaks of cold in the NH or the beginning and ending of ENSO events, a very consistent pattern emerges.
Gates, yep it is a lot of energy. Seems like someone would have already set up an index of sorts.
captdallas,
I have been in correspondence with a well known and frequently published researcher who recently (within the past year) released a paper on Earth’s energy balance. I was amazed to learn this researcher had very little knowledge of SSW’s. Here’s my most recent email to this researcher:
____
Wow, really amazed that you’d not come across SSW’s in your work before. These are very large scale atmospheric events involving enormous amount of energy being advected both poleward and vertically into the atmosphere from troposphere into the stratosphere and mesosphere. They were first discovered in 1951 by Richard Scherhag and are the subject of much ongoing intense research. What no one has yet (as far as I know) determined is exactly how much energy is involved in one of these. They are certainly on the scale of the energy released from ocean to atmosphere during a good sized El Nino event, and in fact, there is an association between ENSO and SSW’s, along with the QBO and MJO. Here’s a few quick places to start:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JAS-D-11-0194.1?journalCode=atsc
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI3996.1
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/12/7243/2012/acpd-12-7243-2012-print.pdf
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI3655.1
And start reading on page 17 of this recent newsletter: http://www.sparc-climate.org/fileadmin/customer/6_Publications/Newsletter_PDF/39_SPARCnewsletter_Jul2012_web.pdf
As the energy released from the Earth system during one of these (as seen in both the EP Flux and temperature data) is considerable, it seems remarkable to me that no one has yet included them in Earth’s energy budget calculations. Given that they occur every few winters and involve such large amounts of energy, it would seem that they might have some signficant impact on energy flux from Earth to space and might account for some portion of the so called “missing” heat.
Once you get a handle on what these SSW events are all about, and how truly large scale they are, I think you might get as excited about them as I have for the potential they offer in filling in some missing pieces in the overall energy budget of the Earth system. I look forward to hearing your perspective on them once you have time to research them a bit more.
Best regards
______
My question: How can you do a relatively accurate calculation of Earth’s energy balance without taking into account these major atmospheric events?
Max,
Another stunner, Max.
And yet another.
Here’s a chance for you to show some accountability, and deal with your incorrect analysis. You might start by explaining what led you to your erroneous analysis — in spite of you having no doubt many times read Judith say things in direct contrast to your characterization of her views.
Josh
It’s corrected. You can go back under your rock.
Max
No Max – it wasn’t corrected. You completely misread Judith and completely skewed what she said – into a form that is completely unrecognizable if you have ever read anything she said about Acrtic ice.
In fact, your statement of:
not anything related to what Judith said. Your attribution there is an either/or frame – and Judith obviously does not look at the attribution in such a manner.
This is like your completely incorrect statements about what Muller said. When I asked you to explain how you could have been so wrong even though you no doubt had read what Muller had to say – you ducked rather than showed accountability.
I’ll ask you again – what led to your strange interpretation of what Judith said?
Joshua
Improve your reading (or observational) skills.
David Wojick corrected my false interpretation.
I responded with the correct interpretation.
Judith added a few words of explanation
It was all over and resolved, Joshua, before you even chimed in.
Max
PS I’ve posted some stuff on the early 20th century Arctic warming (EAW) and sea ice decline, which might interest you. It pretty much confirms Judith’s conclusion that there is a lot of uncertainty regarding the attribution of the current Arctic sea ice decline.
Max:
We’re going ’round in circles here. On last try.
You have yet to explain how you could read Judith’s statement and offer an interpretation that is completely inconsistent with what she said. David corrected your mathematical error, but not your errors in thinking.
Judith made a statement about the ratio of anthropogenic to natural attribution. Her statement necessarily rests on an understanding that it is certainly likely that a significant amount of the cause for the melting is anthropogenic. And from that, you came up with:
Not only is your statement illogical (the notion that “the melt” is either anthropogenic or not is a false dichotomy), it also is basically unrelated to Judith’s statement.
So the question is what would cause you to state that Judith was stating something unrelated to what she stated.
This is very similar to how you stated that Muller said something he didn’t say.
It is an interesting phenomenon – if you care to share information on how it came about, it might be interesting. Your choice, of course.
On the attribution of the recent Arctic sea ice decline, it appears that there is a lot of uncertainty in the estimates.
To understand this better, it probably makes sense to look at earlier periods of sea ice decline.
On the climatedialogue.org site where Dr. Curry’s statement was posted, I posted some links to a statement by Dr. Igor Polyakov, who coauthored an earlier Russian study on the early 20th century Arctic warming and sea ice decline, from ~1920 to ~1940 (EAW)
http://seagrant.uaf.edu/news/00ASJ/08.30.00_MeltingIcecap.html
“Dr. Igor Polyakov is a physical oceanographer at the International Arctic Research Center in Fairbanks. He says the open water tourists saw is more the result of wind and ocean currents than climate change. He also says sea ice thickness varies according to large-scale ocean-atmosphere oscillations that take decades to unfold.
POLYAKOV: “We found a 60- to 70-year cycle with many Arctic parameters, such as surface temperature, air pressure, and ice thickness variability. And we believe this signal comes from the North Atlantic and is induced by very slow anomalies in the circulation in the North Atlantic. We believe that this cycle is very important for the Arctic environment, because all major parameters show this slow variability.”
There is also a 2009 paper by Dr. Arnd Bernaerts on the EAW:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/past-arctic-warming-also-created-by-currents/
“How is the EAW explained today
Although 90 years have passed since the earlier Arctic Warming (EAW) commenced, it seems that the issue is still one of the most puzzling climatic anomalies of the 20th century (Bengtsson, 2004:4055), and there are many questions not answered yet. Instead the matter is often sidelined by regarding it as:
• Natural variability is the most likely cause (Bengtsson, 2004:4045);
• We theorize that the Arctic warming in the 1920s/1930s was due to natural fluctuations internal to the climate system (Johannessen, 2004:341)
• The temperature anomalies are due primarily to natural variability in the weather system (Overland, 2008:81).”
And a 2006 study by Chylek on the early 20th century warming in Greenland, which states
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL026510.shtml
“We provide an analysis of Greenland temperature records to compare the current (1995–2005) warming period with the previous (1920–1930) Greenland warming. We find that the current Greenland warming is not unprecedented in recent Greenland history. Temperature increases in the two warming periods are of a similar magnitude, however, the rate of warming in 1920–1930 was about 50% higher than that in 1995–2005.”
And, finally, the temperature record at Illulissat, Greenland clearly shows this EAW (in fact it was greater than the current warming at that station):
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2620/3797223161_16c1ac5e39_b.jpg
It appear to me that this earlier warming period should be studied in more detail in order to give a better clue to what is causing the current Arctic sea ice decline.
Max
Tony Brown is looking at historical sea ice records during this period, stay tuned.
Max,
See my post above regarding the level of “uncertainty” in the decline of the Arctic sea ice. If one is looking for exact percentages of attribution, yes, there is some uncertainty, but if one is wondering whether or not there is a high degree of uncertainty as to the fact that anthropogenic forcing is playing some role in the changes going on in the Arctic (of which the decline in sea ice is only one) then no, there is not a high degree of uncertainty. We can in fact state the exact opposite, that with a very high degree of certainty (>90%) that anthropogenic forcing is involved in the climate regime change being see across the Arctic.
Gates, you can state anything you like but that is not we. My view is that there is zero confidence that humans have anything to do with the arctic ice decline, as it may well be entirely natural. Factor that into your “we can state.” Nor is there any evidence of a regime change, just a downward trend over a few decades. Perfectly normal for climate. Your hyperbole is showing.
David W.,
There is a name for those who continue to deny the facts. Your insistence that there is no evidence to support an anthropogenic component to the current Arctic climate change is what is truly “hyperbole”. There is evidence in the hydrosphere, atmosphere, and of course cryosphere. Natural variability alone, on any time scale, is not enough to account for the changes.
R. Gates
An example of “an argument from ignorance”:
But there was apparently a similar change in Arctic sea ice extent from ~1920 to ~1940, when there was hardly any AGW, yet the Arctic warming was quite similar to the current warming there (a period known as the “early 20thC Arctic warming”, or EAW). (Polyakov 2005, Chylek 2006, Berearts 2009 – see my post #268410 above)
Better than an “argument from ignorance”</em ("we can only explain it if w assume…") would be an “argument from evidence”.
But first you have to figure out what caused the EAW.
Max
Max said:
“But there was apparently a similar change in Arctic sea ice extent from ~1920 to ~1940…”
_____
The operative word would be “apparently”. There was a certainly some dip in Arctic sea ice extent during part of this period, but it seems some are wanting to exaggerate the extent and magnitude of this dip. It certainly was nothing close to what we are seeing today. For a good reference on the past few hundred years of Arctic sea ice, I would go with sources such as Polyak:
http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/jbg/Pubs/Polyak%20etal%20seaice%20QSR10%20inpress.pdf
If you study the charts, you’ll see the dip in this period 1920-194(but it is nothing really similar to what we have occurring today.
“The operative word would be “apparently”. There was a certainly some dip in Arctic sea ice extent during part of this period, but it seems some are wanting to exaggerate the extent and magnitude of this dip. It certainly was nothing close to what we are seeing today.”
Apparently you don’t know what the word, certainly , means.
gbaikie,
You’re right, I should have said:
“There might have been some dip in sea ice during this period…but nothing similar to today…”
POLYAKOV: “We found a 60- to 70-year cycle with many Arctic parameters, such as surface temperature, air pressure, and ice thickness variability. And we believe this signal comes from the North Atlantic and is induced by very slow anomalies in the circulation in the North Atlantic. We believe that this cycle is very important for the Arctic environment, because all major parameters show this slow variability.”
I wonder if that Arctic “signal” correlates with the ocean temperatures along western Europe and Scandinavia, as I believe the Norwegian current brings the warming from the Gulf Stream to all three areas.
R. Gates
Natural variability alone, on many time scales, has accounted for changes that match and exceed what we see now. Look at the data. To say that we are outside the range of historical data is not supported by any data. Only CO2 exceeds the bounds of the past ten thousand years. Of all of earth’s history, the modern million years has extremely low CO2 compared with many periods before.
Joshua
Just so you can crawl back under your rock on the Arctic sea ice statement of Dr. Curry, here is the chronological sequence:
6:34am – I make an erroneous interpretation of her statement
6:47am – David Wojick corrects me
7:35am – Judith Curry adds an explanation
7:52am – I respond: “OK. I got it…”
—————————————————————————-
8:08am – Then, after it has already been resolved, you chime in
9:05am – I explain to you that it’s already been corrected
9:10am – You keep harping on a long-resolved issue
9:52am – I explain to you again that the issue has long been resolved
Got it now?
End of story.
Max
100% certainty of 50% anthropogenic, 50% natural +-50% margin of error.
That’s another way of saying what she said.
Yet another way would be “I don’t know.”
If a doctor told me “there’s a 30% to 70% you have cancer and I’m 66% confident of that” I’d fire him or her.
Curry’s a doctor, right?
David Springer
Yeah. But (late-summer) Arctic sea ice isn’t cancer.
In fact, it’s irrelevant (even to the polar bears).
Max
I don’t think attribution makes much sense in this case because of the positive feedback in Arctic sea-ice loss. How do we count the part that is lost because the previous year had less ice? Is that natural? At some point, we are consigned to a loss of all ice regardless of which fraction of the initial loss is anthropogenic. Perhaps the anthropogenic fraction was the small amount needed to trigger the runaway feedback.
Of course, the guesses of the other two participants, (stating that most of the melt was anthropogenic) were even more baseless and misleading.
Indeed, given that GW stopped over a decade ago there is no clear connection with the recent ice losses, much less with AGW. This is overwhelming speculation disguised as science. Hopefully the CD comments will make this clear.
In nonpolitical sciences this loss of correlation would be deemed significant. Is it evem mentioned in the CD expert dialog?
David W. inaccurately said:
“Indeed, given that GW stopped over a decade ago ..”
Why this persistence in inaccuracy? Why the conflation of GW with only near-surface temperatures? Why this short-term perspective on a long-term forcing? Why the denial of the dramatic changes seen in the Arctic and the refusal to admit at least a partial anthropogenic cause?
I do not believe the Levitus ocean warming model estimates, nor the surface statistical model estimates for that matter. They are statistical jokes in progress as both are contradicted by actual observations, where these overlap, argo and UAH. So you socalled facts are nonfacts to me. Hence our differences.
What’s the inaccuracy? The near surface temperature (anomaly) is by definition THE GW index. No positive trend means no GW (whatever length, 20, 30 years?). Are you saying if the temperature indices are flat for 30 years or more (let’s say in 2020/25), you will still believe in high CS (to CO2)? Dramatic changes is only in your mind, why the denial of climate change? There’s no need to ‘admit’ any global human cause, without evidence.
Edim,
GHG warming of the planet is an issue of energy balance in be system, not just near surface temperatures. The low heat capacity and low thermal inertia of the troposphere makes it a very poor choice to measure a long term imbalance in Earth’s energy system. But you know this…or should.
Yes and that was one of the skeptics’ points (that it’s the internal energy of the system not the temperature), but when the temperatures were still rising warmists ignored the point.
So, you admit that even after 30 years of flat temperatures, you would still believe in AGW? Not that I’m surprised. But it will not work. The only thing that can save the AGW story is further warming, and fast. I wouldn’t bet on any warming in the next decades. The scene is set for cooling.
Gates,
https://picasaweb.google.com/118214947668992946731/HelpingTheHandicapped#5812161755036579266
That chart is plot of eddy heat flux for 45 to 75 north and south in 1998. There should be a way to “normalize” that data set so that more can be done with it in comparison to SST. Remember the Antarctic has a tight convergence and the Arctic wanders quite a bit with PDO, AMO, NAO, AO, QBO all the Os :)
The ocean heat content has increased and the global land temperature, especially northern continents have warmed during this period. These both have a likely effect on the Arctic sea-ice decline. You may think nothing has happened in 17 years, but this would mean you were asleep/blind while these things were happening.
Jim D.,
The refusal by some to accept the increasingly obvious fact that ocean heat content has indeed been rising quite consistently over not just the past 10 or 15 or 20 years, but the past 50 years will prove to be short-sighted for many. This additional energy in the oceans has all sorts of implications for not just the Arctic, but general climate and weather over the short and long term. The wise are studying those implications and others are in denial. Such has been the way of human history for thousands of years.
Yes, it is called taking all the facts into account. Skeptics appear somewhat blind to inconvenient truths, and don’t even discuss them hoping they will go away if nobody takes notice.
On the contrary I reject this data on the basis of detailed analysis, something I suspect you have not done. Skeptics do the hard work.
More generally, until alarmists seriously consider natural variability and expain it away it will stand in the road of your agenda. Your hand waving does not budge it.
R. Gates, “The refusal by some to accept the increasingly obvious fact that ocean heat content has indeed been rising quite consistently over not just the past 10 or 15 or 20 years, but the past 50 years will prove to be short-sighted for many.”
Isn’t limiting the start of OHC increase to 50 years short sighted? The increase in OHC likely started in 1900 or before. There was a change in the rate of uptake circa 1946 with acceleration in the uptake rate in circa 1955. Then in circa 1985 the rate started declining. Picking the maximum rate of uptake is a bit odd doncha know.
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“What we do know is the temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted even 10 years ago,” Obama stated
A little more than 10 years ago (2001), IPCC issued its TAR report.
In it, IPCC predicted (or “projected”) warming for the next decades at a rate of 0.15 to 0.3 degC per decade = 0.225+/-0.075 deg C.
In actual fact, the HadCRUT3 record shows us that it cooled at a rate of around 0.08 degC per decade.
There are two possibilities here:
– Either President Obama has been lied to by an adviser and fell for it
– Or he knows the truth and is deliberately lying
Which is it, and how can it be corrected ASAP to keep the most powerful man in the world from spreading false information and looking like a fool?
Max
Let me substantiate Max’s statement with data.
Source: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html
Source: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2012/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2012
Max
I have found an interesting published article that includes Mann as a co-author that states:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/06/27/1102467108.abstract
It is good that the pause in global warming is being acknowledged in published papers.
Why has not the president heard about it?
Mr President said.”We do know that there have been an extraordinarily large number of severe weather events here in North America, but also around the globe.”
However, here in the UK, there has not been anything like “extreme weather”. It has just been wet and dreary for most of the year, with the exception of a particularly warm and dry early spring. The overall temperature this year has shown absolutely no extremes. It is surprising how few strong gales have occurred this year. In fact, I can’t think of any.
Anyway, mild wet weather is normal for this country, due to it being an island in the Atlantic. So we have had a high incidence of normal weather this year.
I think that the President is making generalizations for the world based on what appears to be happening in the USA. But this is a common mistake made by Americans in general, on a variety of subjects.
Mark B #2
It is true that (US) Americans often confuse US data with global data, so we can’t blame President Obama too much for that.
But he’s even got the US extreme weather data wrong and the global temperature data totally screwed up.
And guess what?
It’s all in the direction of making “global warming” look worse.
He’s either got some very bad advisers or a hidden agenda. (Or both?)
Which is it?
Max
Judith,
What are you doing up so late to post this late at night?
The old brain pan won’t let you sleep?
The president is technically right. The rate of global warming has increased very slightly from what it was 10 years ago. 10 years ago the trend from 1980 was 0.205C/decade. Today it’s 0.209C/decade
Although the accurate statement, considering the uncertainty, would be to say the rate of global warming is consistent with what it was 10 years ago. Ie no sign of acceleration or slowdown.
Lolwot
Apparently Michael Mann has “gotten the word” about the pause in warming (bold by me).
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/06/27/1102467108.abstract
You need to get up-to-date, lolwot (as does President Obama).
Max
Well this is pretty amazing, really. I have been called a ‘denier’ for saying the same things. Maybe this will become the ‘new normal.’
That’s, however, exactly what Foster and Rahmstorf have concluded in their paper.
Pekka
Which paper?
Judging from the abstract that is what Kaufmann et al conclude as well. The abstract says that “Declining solar insolation as part of a normal eleven-year cycle, and a cyclical change from an El Nino to a La Nina dominate our measure of anthropogenic effects because rapid growth in short-lived sulfur emissions partially offsets rising greenhouse gas concentrations.” Which I take to mean that the net effect of the forcings (solar, GHG and aerosols) is small over the timescale considered relative to the effects of ENSO. In other words, it is the sort of thing you would expect to see occasionally, even if long term AGW continues unabated, due to natural variability (c.f. Easterling and Wehner).
Pekka, “That’s, however, exactly what Foster and Rahmstorf have concluded in their paper.”
Since the F&R lags look a little uncertain, wouldn’t that be implied instead of concluded? I have always had a problem with that. The measurable lag of solar is about 4.5 years, a solar cycle is about 11 years, shorter solar cycles appear to have a large impact than longer. Seems to me that F&R might have missed something. If they concluded that solar, ENSO and sulfates together can cause a pause, they should have concluded that solar, ENSO and sulfates could amplify warming. I don’t recall them highlighting that or the odd situation where not every solar cycle has the same impact.
Capt.Dallas,
I would say that this is one way of expressing the conclusion of the paper. Of course that’s not a proof that the conclusion is correct as the analysis cannot prove that the background trend has proceeded linearly in time over the whole period.
Thus what they really show is that the temperature history over the period 1979-2010 is consistent with the hypothesis that the average surface (or lower troposphere) temperature is a linear combination of
– trend (constant rate in time)
– total solar irradiance (TSI) with lag of 0-1 month
– Multivariate El Nino Index (MEI) with lag of 2-5 months
– aerosol optical thickness (AOD) that describes volcanic influence with delay of 5-7 months
– rather weak additional noise or unaccounted factors (of the order of 0.05 C in annual averages)
Consistency is not a proof of correctness. In particular it’s clear that a constant trend cannot be true over extended periods. Going just a few years back in time contradicts such a trend.
The 2011 PNAS paper of Kaufmann, Mann, Kauppi and Stock presented similar conclusions as have presented also Lean and Rind (2008 and 2009). The view that solar activity has played a significant role and that ENSO related phenomena have affected the observed temperature trends seems to be main stream and certainly not unexpected from Mann who was one of the authors of these papers.
Judith there is a big difference between you saying it and somebody on the team saying it. At least in their mind. When you say it its wrong or misleading or makes no sense or serves the evil forces of denial or makes no sense. When they say the same thing.. well its pal reviewed.
Of course it is utterly inconsistent with ARGO – http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net/8/999/2011/osd-8-999-2011.pdf – and CERES – http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1375.html
Mind you the net CERES is all SW – which can’t be right.
If Foster and Rahmstorf can conclude the the hiatus in warming could be down to an unique alignment of forcings, could the 1970-1998 warning not also be down to some unique alignment ?
Lolwot
You cannot compare GMST trends having different periods. That is comparing apples and oranges.
Here is the right way to compare two-ten year periods:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1992/to:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2012/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1992/to:2002/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2012
“You cannot compare GMST trends having different periods.”
yeah you can.
C/decade. The data simply doesn’t support the claim that global warming has slowed down or stopped since 10 years ago.
Of course if you have a theory – it all makes perfect sense.
‘Natural, large-scale climate patterns like the PDO and El Niño-La Niña are superimposed on global warming caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and landscape changes like deforestation. According to Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, “These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.”’ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703
Expect another decade or three of no warming at least.
Chief, see the Foster and Rahmstorf paper. El Ninos and La Ninas matter, but they show warming is still happening and hasn’t stopped.
PDO had a cooling impact in recent decades. That’s spent.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/jisao-pdo
Lolwot,
I don’t think that you formulation is correct. What Foster and Rahmstorf show is that the plateau does not contradict the presence of a constant background trend in the temperature of the period studied. That leaves the plateau as a plateau, i.e. a period without warming (defined as an increase in average surface or lower troposphere temperature). The paper doesn’t show anything about warming defined in some other way as it studies only the temperature time series.
It’s better to have some care in use of concepts in this kind of argumentation.
The Foster and Rahmstorf paper strongly contradicts the notion of “Expect another decade or three of no warming at least”
lolwot
Pull your head out of the sand.
You only look like a sillier “denier” when you close your eyes to the observed fact that there is a current “pause” in global warming (in fact, an observed cooling of 0.08C over the past decade).
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1992/to:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2012/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1992/to:2002/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2012
You should actually be very happy that this is so, in view of your apparent fear of global warming.
Instead, in your doomsday gloom, you simply deny what all those thermometer out there are telling you (even the ones next to AC exhausts or asphalt parking lots).
Rejoice!
Max
Global warming from 1975 to 1997 (green line) has continued (dashed green line
You focus on the short-term trends (the pink lines), which are irrelevant.
Lolwot,
They may think so (and they may be right), but their paper doesn’t show that. The expectation that the warming resumes is based on other arguments.
Such an statistical analysis cannot show that the constant background trend has continued to the last few years of the range as it’s certainly easy to create models for temperature development which agree essentially as well with the data but with a stop in the trend.
They have a good argument against claims that the observations contradict a warming background trend that continues to 2010, but they cannot prove the constancy of the trend up to that year.
“They may think so (and they may be right), but their paper doesn’t show that.”
It does. The paper argues that warming in the last decade has been offset by a dive in ENSO and solar. To continue to offset warming for the next decade, let alone longer, requires ENSO and solar to both continuing diving according to the FR paper. This isn’t credible. La Nina frequency cannot get much higher, if at all and the fall in solar activity is reversing rather than continuing.
lolwot, “The paper argues that warming in the last decade has been offset by a dive in ENSO and solar. ” Argues with simplistic choices of lag times. There is a 4 to 5 year solar lag and that lag is long enough to be influence by the next cycle. That is likely why shorter solar cycles appear to have a greater impact on SAT than longer cycles regardless of the peak value of the cycles.
It is a chaotic system with dozens of decay curves to consider. F&R produced a simplistic analysis with convenient results.
They make one more assumption: The rest is linear in time. Without that additional assumption they cannot conclude much anything about the very last years or future. Making this assumption is the additional input that I refer to.
To be more specific. An alternative that would also agree with the data would some longer term variability, which could also be used to fit data from the years before 1979. Such a variability could be close enough to linear rise over that period, but rise less during the very last years and not at all after 2010. It’s actually a real possibility that some longer term variability of that kind is present.
My personal guess is that the trend that they expect to resume is really there with a strength not very different from their fit, but this is a judgment based on other arguments, not on that analysis alone.
Capt.Dallas,
The lag is not 4-5 years, it’s 0-1 months for solar (TSI) and 2-7 months for the other factors.
I have been wondering why you overemphasize the role of lag, now I see the reason.
Pekka, the lag F&R use is just months while there is documentation of a 4 to 5 year solar lag. They make it appear that the only lags of any concern are the ones they used. That is an odd assumption that produced convenient results.
So basically they are only considering the long wave, short lag, when the deeper SW ocean absorption, longer lag, also has a significant impact. That is not very comprehensive in my opinion.
Capt. Dallas,
For a fit they don’t need to worry about anything that doesn’t technically enter in doing the fit.
Proceeding from a fit to improved understanding of the mechanisms depends on all previous knowledge on the processes. All new information must be combined with the old to reach a refined new interpretation.
It’s true that one weakness of the Foster and Rahmstorf paper and the other similar papers is that many phenomena have been identified previously and disregarding those makes it difficult to understand, how the fit can be as good as it is – except by overfitting.
Even so the paper presents a strong argument against the claim that the plateau presents strong evidence against main stream views on AGW.
Pekka, “Even so the paper presents a strong argument against the claim that the plateau presents strong evidence against main stream views on AGW.”
The object should be objectivity, not throwing together a simplistic analysis to possibly support an agenda. If they had any real curiosity, they would have put together a meaningful paper instead of that drivel.
What FR did was adjust for some fairly obvious factors that influence global temperature on short timescales, such as the 11-year solar cycle and ENSO.
The reason climate skeptics bitterly oppose the kind of analysis FR11 did is because the results of any such analysis to factor in eg the solar cycle, are inconvenient to climate skeptics. Here’s why with an example:
HadCRUT4 shows a trend of 0.05C/decade cooling since 2002.
If the solar minimum caused 0.25C/decade cooling since 2002 and observations only show 0.05C/decade cooling, then the only way that adds up is if something else induced a 0.2C/decade warming effect…
It doesn’t have to be as high as 0.25C of course. Even 0.15C cooling would require that something else (*cough* AGW) to have had a warming influence since 2002.
And this is why climate skeptics really really don’t like this line of discussion. Because the only way they can negate that implication is to argue 0.25C/decade cooling from solar max to minimum is far too high.
Climate skeptics simply don’t have the tools to argue that. Through years of exaggerating the role of the Sun on climate and playing up uncertainty, they have no means to argue 0.25C cooling from the solar minimum is unrealistic.
So when an analysis like FR11 actually bothers to factor in the cooling influence of the solar minimum, there’s nothing wrong with that. The reason climate skeptics push back against such an analysis is simply because the results are inconvenient for them.
Capt.Dallas,
You are probably right in implying that the paper was written more to counter the skeptic arguments than to improve understanding on the Earth system. I do, however, consider it as a valid paper for that purpose. To the extent it has scientific value it differs little from Lean and Rind (2008), except that the period Foster and Rahmstorf studied is much shorter and the results therefore less informative.
They added a few years and they repeated the analysis for five different time series rather than only one used by Lean and Rind. All this added little of real scientific value – but clearly applicable to the debate.
lolwot, “What FR did was adjust for some fairly obvious factors that influence global temperature on short timescales, such as the 11-year solar cycle and ENSO.”
lolwot, that paper is little more than an oped piece. If there is an obvious a longer lag, it should have considered that lag. If they adjust for ESNO, Solar and Aersols for 1980 to 2010, then they should have compared that to 1910 to 1940 if they were serious about producing something of lasting value.
This rush to publish, oped, peer reviewed drivel is not science.
“If there is an obvious a longer lag”
What do you mean? They included a solar cycle lag in the analysis which they derived from the data.
What have skeptics done to account for the cooling impact of the solar minimum?
Answer this one simple question if you can: Could the recent solar minimum have caused 0.25C cooling since 2002? Yes or no.
“If they adjust for ESNO, Solar and Aersols for 1980 to 2010, then they should have compared that to 1910 to 1940 if they were serious about producing something of lasting value.”
The analysis covered 1980 to 2010 because satellite records start around 1980 and because they were testing the approximately linear warming over recent decades.
Demanding they cover 1910 to 1940 is just an excuse to avoid having to contemplate what they found about the recent warming period.
lolwot, “What do you mean? They included a solar cycle lag in the analysis which they derived from the data.”
That they did, A lag. The SW energy absorbed by the oceans does not produce A lag. The first meter produces A lag, The next 10 produces A different lag, the next 100 produces Another different lag. The 10 plus meter lag is on the order of 4 to 5 years with longer lags quite possible.
The oceans are like a battery charging, the atmosphere is like your night light, load only.
They tested the temperature data statistically to find the net lag. Too bad the result is inconvenient for you, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t science.
lolwot, “Demanding they cover 1910 to 1940 is just an excuse to avoid having to contemplate what they found about the recent warming period.” I am demanding they do anything. They are all growed up and haired over, they can do what they wish. If they wish to be scientifically complete, they would have done more.. If they wish to publish BS, they done a good job.
Is there a solar influence?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/mean:36/from:1950/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1950/scale:0.001/mean:36
Hard to tell, isn’t it? Maybe it could be considered that possibly there might just be a little contributing to the last solar minimum by the skeptics? They used to like solar influences, but now have deliberately refused to even discuss it.
Exactly when the subject comes up they now pretend the solar impact is delayed by decades or some such BS just so they don’t have to address the pittance of cooling the deep solar minimum they had been talking up has produced.
Typically they try to divert attention from the subject by eg appealing to red herrings like the 1910-1940 period.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-VyS6RTyqwjs/UKkNtyMWn3I/AAAAAAAAFrI/ytpp2_Xdd00/s747/tsi%2520averaging%2520impacts.png
If delays are long enough solar would have a cumulative impact.
This paper:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/06/27/1102467108.abstract
“Given the widely noted increase in the warming effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations, it has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008. We find that this hiatus in warming coincides with a period of little increase in the sum of anthropogenic and natural forcings. Declining solar insolation as part of a normal eleven-year cycle, and a cyclical change from an El Nino to a La Nina dominate our measure of anthropogenic effects because rapid growth in short-lived sulfur emissions partially offsets rising greenhouse gas concentrations.”
Says there’s a solar influence and it swamped all the CO2 forcing at its maximum and all the numerous positive feedbacks. Some knob.
Says there’s a solar influence and it temporarily swamped all the CO2 forcing.
Yes, temporarily is the word. I keep saying that by 2020 we will know. The scene is set for cooling and warmists desperately need warming (roll on the next El Nino!), and a lot, and fast. The divergence will be spectacular.
Edim, temporarily, like in the past few solar minima (as my graph showed). Perhaps this time will be the charm, you say.
Jim, we’re talking about the longer-term minimum, not the minimum between the 11-year cycles. SC 23 was weak, SC24 seems to be even weaker, that’s the minimum.
Edim, if you are predicting a Maunder-type Minimum, that may have a forcing impact of 0.5 W/m2 which is about a third of the CO2 forcing so far and a tenth of what is expected by 2100. A dent, yes, but not much of one.
Jim, all speculations IMO, without the evidence. What we know is that the periods of lower solar activity (Maunder, Dalton, Spörer, Wolf…) do cause colder periods (advancing glaciers for example) and vice versa.
And their relative magnitude to what we have now is no mystery either.
The president is technically right. The rate of global warming has increased very slightly from what it was 10 years ago. 10 years ago the trend from 1980 was 0.205C/decade. Today it’s 0.209C/decade
…
Although the accurate statement, considering the uncertainty, would be to say the rate of global warming is consistent with what it was 10 years ago. Ie no sign of acceleration or slowdown.
Amazing how little difference the lack of warming in 16 years makes to the ‘technical’ argument. I guess Hell first has to first freeze over before the .politically-motivated will acknowledge any change.
I just looked at the CD site. Unfortunately one has to scroll through all of the supposedly on topic comments, of which there are already a great many, to find the link to the so-called off topic comments. Every comment pointing out that there is no skeptic on the panel is classed off topic. So is every comment criticizing the opening topic description. Even worse perhaps those comments which raise well known skeptical scientific arguments on the topic are classed as off topic. This is clearly not a good start. If this pattern continues then CD is simply a false representation of the scientific debate.
Agreed, some of these should not have been relegated to ‘off topic.’ i found it interesting that Eli and Stoat landed in off topic also.
That was only proper, since what Eli wrote that landed off topic, was an off topic, reply to an off topic fallacious claim that the Mauna Loa CO2 record was contaminated by emissions from the volcano and another (but more interesting) red herring.
As the Rabett wrote at the end of that comment,
Stoat’s comment does not appear to be in the off topic pile and indeed, it is not off topic.
I wager that you cannot and will not ever write a comment that is both cogent and on topic. We are used to the rabbit turds. dont stop dropping them.
Writing in the third person is indicative of pathologic personality disorder. You ought to get that checked.
Oops. Sorry.
The Rabbett ought to get that checked.
LOL – I kill me sometimes!
Hmm. Maybe that explains the short lines at the supermarket. Not a bug, a feature!:)
lolwot
You need to check the data out there
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1992/to:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1992/plot/none
As you can see the 10-year period since 2002 has shown cooling at a linear rate of about -0.08C per decade, while the previous 10-year period showed warming at a rate of around +0.3C per decade.
It’s always best to check out the data before you shoot off a claim (that turns out to be false).
Max
Global warming didn’t start in 1992. No-one would be so silly to claim that. Even David Rose of the Daily Mail admits the recent global warming started in 1980.
10 years ago the trend from 1980 was 0.205C/decade. Today it’s 0.209C/decade. Quite clearly there’s no sign global warming has stopped.
Michael Mann (co-author)
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/06/27/1102467108.abstract
It is good that the pause in global warming is being acknowledged in published papers.
Why has not the president heard about it?
With respect to Climate Dialogue, there is an excellent discussion on WUWT, and my comments are reproduced in full on the Off Topic part of Climate Dialogue. I am prepared to wait for the next topic before I finally pass judgement as to how level the playing field is that this blog is going to establish. However, I am not hopeful. The major issue, as I see it, is how they choose experts. The usual scientific publications are, basically, no-go places for climate skeptics; Roy Spencer is an exception. So skeptics publish on line. If publication in peer reviewed magazines is a requirement to be classified as an expert, then the playing field will never be level.
The one aspect that is encouraging is from http://www.pbl.nl/en/news/newsitems/2012/pbl-knmi-and-crok-launch-climate-discussion-platform-climatedialogueorg
@@@
ClimateDialogue.org is the result of a request by the Dutch parliament to facilitate the scientific discussions between climate experts representing the full range of views on the subject. It is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment.
@@@
So, if Climate Dialogue fails to provide an even playing field, then they might find themselves in contempt of the Dutch Parliament, and guilty of wasting public funds.
I’m betting they dont consider your opinion on who and who is not a skeptic to be important. Im betting they wont consider your opinion on who the experts should be. You’re not an expert on skeptics nor an expert on experts.
One of the things that has caught my eye, is the political situation in Europe. The EU has backed off trying to collect it’s carbon tax on airlines flying into the EU. The issue is now under the auspices of IATA, which, surely, will take a decade to decide anything.
In the UK, the Coalition’s energy policy seems to have run into major difficulties. So far as I can see, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has looked at the books and can see that if the UK rigidly applies the provisions of the Climate Change Act, it is committing economic suicide. But the Lib. Dems are determined to stick with a “greeen” agenda. The government policy is due to be issued this month, and it will be interesting to see precisely what this document contains.
“What we do know is the temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted even 10 years ago,”
Judith, seize your chance, and write to Obama with the true facts!
It seems clear to me that Obama has become luke warm about climate change – which may mean he is starting to realise the truth – and you might just make a difference.
My feeling is that the apocalyptic propaganda has become so divorced from reality that it may be vulnerable. The difference between the hype that Obama referred to, and the flat temperature curve for the last 16 years, might just do the job.
There is a 99% chance it will do no good, but it wouldn’t take much effort!
I agree David.
Is it not, indeed, your duty, Judith? After all he is your president. Surely, you don’t want him to look like an oaf?
Obama is not an oaf, and if I were a US citizen, I would have voted for him for reasons unrelated to climate, but I think any leader is vulnerable to being lied to, particularly in scientific matters which are not usually their forte.
Because he shoots hoops or the vast amount of leadership experience he had prior to his first election?
Judith, Regarding sea ice. I remember seeing a graph some time ago at WUWT, that showed that the amount of ice at the two poles oscillates out of phase on a fairly long time scale. I can’t seem to find that entry now, but is it true, and can it account for the fact that the Arctic ice has diminished while the Antarctic ice has possibly increased in recent years? Are we, in effect, worrying about the instantaneous slope of a sine wave!
David, you write “I can’t seem to find that entry now, but is it true, and can it account for the fact that the Arctic ice has diminished while the Antarctic ice has possibly increased in recent years? Are we, in effect, worrying about the instantaneous slope of a sine wave!”
This is what ought to have been the issue discussed on Climate Dialogue. Your observation is correct. The data is in any of the places where sea ice extent is quoted for the north and south poles. The negative correlation is highly sigfniicant. It seems to me that this cannot be explained with a phenomenon that claims the world is warming. Something is causing the Arctic and Antarctic to be out of phase. A hypothesis is that changing cloud cover is the cause. The albedo of clouds is higher than the surface in just about all places, except Antarctica, when the huge extent of the land ice has a higher albedo than clouds. So clouds cause cooling over the earth, except over Antarctica, where they cause warming. So a global wide change in cloud cover could explain the observations. The truth of this hypothesis is not clear
Well you obviously know more details than I do – why not ask a question over there? I had intended to do that, but I couldn’t find the relevant graph to make my point. It seems to me that that website offers an opportunity for proponents of global warming to be shamed into responding to issues like this.
David Bailey and Jim Cripwell
The raw sea ice data from NSIDC are available at:
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135
This site has had some problems lately. If so, go to the NSIDC page:
http://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g02135_seaice_index/index.html#monthly_data_files
Click on “FTP directory”
Select the month and select “Arctic” or “Antarctic”
This gives you the sea ice extent in millions of square km for the end of that month by year since 1979.
I’ve taken the time to download and periodically update these data files.
You’ll see that the sea ice in both locations recedes in summer and recovers in winter; this happens every year.
What gets all the media attention is the “extent” of Arctic sea ice at its lowest annual point in late summer.
End-summer (September) Arctic sea ice has declined significantly since 1979. The linear rate of decrease figures out to around 0.9 msk out of a (1979-2000 baseline) total of 7 msk or 12% per decade.
On the other hand, end-summer Antarctic sea ice (March) has increased since 1979, but at a slower rate. Here the linear increase is only 0.2 msk out of a (1979-2000 baseline) total of 4.5 msk or 4% per decade.
The two are anticyclical (winter/summer) so adding them up is meaningless, but if you did add up the two end summer records, you’d see a net decline in overall end-summer sea ice.
Melting sea ice has no impact on sea level, since it is already floating
Max
Max, I did not explain myself properly. Arctic sea ice extent has been decreasing since 1979; Antractic has been increasing; negative correlation. Both graphs are noisy. However, in the years when the Arctic sea ice is above the trend line, most of the time the Antarctic sea ice is below the trend line; and vice versa. There is a very high negative correlation between the sea ice extents in this regard. That is the important issue to me.
Do you think it somehow possible that increasing Antarctic sea ice is having an effect upon arctic sea ice?
gbaikie you write “Do you think it somehow possible that increasing Antarctic sea ice is having an effect upon arctic sea ice?”
No I dont. I think that the progress at both poles is driven by the same cause. As I have explained elsewhere, my guess is the hypothesis is that the main cause is changing cloud cover. More clouds make the climate colder in general, as they have a higher albedo than the surface. EXCEPT for Antarctica, where the albedo of the land ice is higher than the albedo of clouds, so more clouds mean warming.
Max, My email address is bf906@ncf.ca. I have some confidential information which I am sure you will be interested in. if you dont mind my having your email address, which I will keep confidential, please email me.
I was outraged to hear Obama’s fantastical declaration. I continue to be amazed in equal measure by the ignorance (to be kind about it) of ohterwise intelligent people, and the failure…over and over and over again…of those who know better to speak truth to power.
So vote against him.
Oh wait.
Eli
Yeah. Apparently only 49% of the US voters did (assuming there was no massive voter fraud).
It appears that the POTUSA’s team (Jim Messina, David Axelrod et al) ran one helluva slick and well-organized campaign, while his challenger’s campaign made some key mistakes and was much more poorly organized.
That’s all history now – so let’s see what happens next.
Max
Or then again, maybe the ideology that 47% of Americans are moochers turned out not to be an ideology that most Americans support.
Or maybe most Americans just think that Romney was a lousy candidate.
There are reasons why majorities of women (who outnumber and vote more than men), African Americans, and Latinos have rejected Republican ideology. Republican candidates have lost the popular vote in what, 5 out of the last 6 presidential elections.
It’s interesting to watch how “conservatives” are running around trying to explain the results of the election.
Joshua
No doubt you are correct that Obama’s campaign did a great job motivating and mobilizing African-American, Hispanics and women voters.
Hats off to them.
The other team got around 49% of the popular vote, but scored poorly on electoral votes.
It appears you still have a “split” nation – I hope the elected politicians on both sides will be able to work together.
But I guess we’ll see.
Max
manacker –
Once again – evidence of stunning selectivity of your logic:
I think that the Romney campaign did a great job of motivating Democratic voters. I certainly know that for me, absent the odious ideology of Republicans, I may well not vote for another Dem again.
So once again, you selectively attribute Romney’s and Obama’s tactics and teams without ever giving American voters credit for voting based on their assessment of policies and stances on issues. Outside of the condescension in your statements, we also just see weak logic. In your zeal to confirm your biases, you fail to account for obvious variables.
And how ironic that you would find fault largely residing in Romney’s campaign and staff – given that his main qualification was supposed to be his organizational skills and other abilities related to his supposed business acumen. Amazing, isn’t it, that someone who is such a success because of his rational analysis and strategical choices would have failed in the most significant endeavor of his entire life?
You will note, manacker, that not a few Republicans have begun to notice the weakness of their policy stances as a political strategy – particularly when you consider demographic trends. Notice the turn-arounds such as seen by Hannity’s flip-flop on immigration.
On the one hand, I applaud such a shift among Republican strategists as it will likely lead to differentially better results for the American public. But it is also hard for me not to applaud the vacuous after-action analysis presented by partisans such as yourself – that only seeks to confirm biases rather than identify the real reasons for Romney’s failure.
Romney’s 47% quip was stupid and will have cost him white votes, the election was won by Obama on turnout, ie. a higher percentage of blacks and Hispanics turned out to vote for Obama than whites did for Romney.
US elections are now racial, especially amongst the black population, also amongst the Hispanic population though to a lesser extent.
The Republicans will need to make sure in future that they field a non white candidate against a non white Democrat candidate, and visa versa.
The only way a white Republican candidate could defeat a black Democrat candidate now is if the Republican is a woman.
This is the modern reality.
J Martin,
You say the election was won by Obama on turnout then go to say it was the black and hispanic voters who were doing the turning out.
I’ve looked up the figures and, yes, the “turnout” was the highest since 1968 when Richard Nixon was elected.
Was he said to have won the election on “turnout” too? I don’t remember anyone saying that. The largely white voters, voting for Nixon, would have been doing their civic duty. Not just ‘turning out’.
So, in the USA, voting is a good thing, but only if its done by white voters supporting Republican candidates?
Tempterrain.
As I am a Brit living in Ye Olde England I have no particular political allegiance to either Democrat or Republican party.
It is clear from this side of the pond that voting on a racial basis is today a part of American politics. In parts of the States the Republicans received zero votes from black voters, this does not seem to me to be indicative of anything other than voting on a racial basis.
This was not a factor back in Nixon’s era as minorities were smaller, and there were no black candidates. Today minorities have grown and will become a majority in the course of time, demography is an electoral time bomb that the republicans in particular have so far failed to grasp.
At this time it would seem that the black population in the USA do not give any thought whatsoever to the differing approaches to the economy and other political issues that one would hope an educated and involved electorate would consider when casting their vote.
The republicans need to wake up,smell the roses, and grasp the thorns, they need to have black candidates and female candidates as well as white male candidates standing for election as the republican representative. Perhaps one day they may even elect a black or female to represent them as candidate in the presidential elections.
Racism is today an unavoidable factor in US elections and the republicans must open their minds and learn how to address this if they are to stand any chance in future elections in the USA.
They must sell the Laffer curve to the black population and also to the whole of the US electorate as the USA is currently on course for a much more serious economic collapse than the headline figure of 16 going on 20 trillion dollar debt would indicate.
Since I seem to have digressed into economics, one cannot consider the (US) national debt in isolation, issues such as demography and more especially, mandated spending must be taken into account. Before long the US faces the possibility that mandated spending will exceed (tax) revenue even after all other spending has been cut, ie. health and the entirety of the military budget and many other expenditures.
This is an unsustainable situation and the US will go bankrupt even more spectacularly than Greece. with dire consequences not just for the population of the US but also for the whole world. Beside this, issues such as electoral racism and possible electronic electoral fraud pale into abject insignificance.
And on the economics stuff, some links,
“That it has been nearly 700 years … that this effect of greater revenues from lower rates has been known; yet we still do not have leaders that recognize it today, … That as recently as the 1980s the Republicans knew it, and that in 1963 the Democrats new it; yet today NEITHER PARTY seems aware of it, or willing to act on the awareness;
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/cameron-meets-smith-keynes-and-laffer/
Lots of graphs;
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/demographic-bomb-and-us-debt-explosion/
Federal spending +229%, home income +27%;
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/well-theres-your-problem-fed-spending-299-home-income-27/
The Laffer curve itself;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
It is interesting to note that those economies that have followed the Cowperthwaite policy of adherence to the Laffer curve taxation principles are growing steadily (bar occasional world wide blips) and reducing their national debts, not increasing as seen in the EU and US. Russia and Hong Kong are examples of economies with low taxation, few tax regulations and hence loopholes. The growth and success of Hong Kong is largely considered to be the result of just one man a Scotsman James Cowperthwaite. Russia seems to be pursuing a similar course with the result of steady growth and steady and continued reduction in national debt, if Russia continues on this course then Russia will become one of the very few countries with no national debt.
Unless the EU and the US come to their taxation senses, then there will be two economic powers in the world, China and Russia, with an emergent India and possibly Brazil queueing up to join them.
Ironic, isn’t it.
In the west, we face nothing but economic disaster. One hopes that the US will bite the bullet and grasp the thorns and deal with their institutionalised debt before national expenditure reaches a level of twice the income which the US is on course for.
The re-election of Obama will likely speed the process of escalating debt, especially if the US pursues renewables in the manner that Spain has done where unemployment has now reached 25%.
Ideally the US needs to elect a James Cowperthwaite clone to be president of the US. We need that here in the UK also.
In my brief and necessarily shallow post on the state of the US economy I omitted a game changing miracle.
Fracking and US energy independence.
This offers the capability of allowing the US economy to regenerate whilst bringing to an end the debt increasing effects of spending money to import oil.
It may also help cushion or even stop the societal breakup that might have been seen had the fiscal cliff been postponed to the bitter end.
Fracking plus Laffer / Cowperthwaite offers the US a near miraculous opportunity to escape what did and still may be inevitable.
The saying “If America sneezes the rest of the World catches a cold” still has some validity. Guys, you need to sort your economy out.
J Martin,
If the USA has borrowed too much money from China, I would suggest it’s more China’s problem than the USA’s. If the US won’t or can’t repay what can the Chinese do about it? Demand Alaska or the Hawaiian Islands in compensation? I don’t think so, do you? Not with all the nuclear firepower at the USA’s disposal.
All major powers behave the same way. It was the same story with the British Empire in the 19th century. Right wing ideologues in the UK, like Mrs Thatcher, are fond of the idea of Victorian values. But the ‘Victorians’ ran up huge public debts. By comparison, UK debts are quite modest now.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_4Sy6qBb89-M/TK4j5j3F3TI/AAAAAAAAAnE/K4mx2ZRHdmQ/s400/UK+Debt+History.bmp
I’m not sure why it should be but those of a right wing disposition do seem unnecessarily alarmist about debt levels and unjustifiably sanguine on issues like climate change.
Didn’t Bush use California for collateral on the Chinese loans?
tempterrain “I’m not sure why it should be but those of a right wing disposition do seem unnecessarily alarmist about debt levels and unjustifiably sanguine on issues like climate change.”
Only in the view of leftwing ideologues. Whose chief interest in climate change is the impetus it gives for more taxes and a generally more totalitarian society. And as for insolvency not being a problem for the debtor since the creditor is going to suffer … (anyone know of a smiley for shaking one’s head in disbelief?)
There’s no mystery about where Pres. Obama’s views on climate science originate. They come from his science adviser John Holdren, whose views are well known and easily accessible. Holdren, like so many, oversimplifies the issues for the president’s consumption, although it appears he reflects some of the gnarly aspects of the science (not being able to nail down man-made emissions and any particular weather event, for example). The president, surely on the advice of those around him and perhaps out of personal experience, chose Holdren to advise him. So what comes out is not at all surprising.
I will say the level of “outrage” about Obama’s veracity is rather amusing.
We read “skeptics” all the time saying things like they dismiss the “cranks” who talk of a “hoax.” We read that “most” “skeptics” reject the thinking of anyone who doesn’t think that ACO2 warms the climate.
Now we have also read many Republican politicians make statements like those I noted that our “skeptic” friends reject – yet their level of “outrage” about those other statements are nothing like their level of outrage about statements of Obama that they also reject as false.
Now the reason for this difference in “outrage” could be that Obama is more powerful than those other politicians. I wonder if there might be any other explanation?
Joshua
Anytime a very influential individual (like the POTUSA) makes a blatantly incorrect statement on a very important issue (as was the case here), it is important that the record be corrected (because many people will simply “trust” the POTUSA – and be misinformed as a result).
Some others may follow former President Reagan’s advice to “trust but verify”, check the temperature record and, thereby, find out that the statement by the POTUSA was flat wrong – but I would guess that this will be the minority.
“Outrage”?
Not really, as far as I’m concerned. I think he acted in good faith and was simply given incorrect data by his advisers (Holdren?).
It can happen to the POTUSA, as you know (WMD/Bush).
So correcting his statement is important.
Max
“their level of “outrage” about those other statements are nothing like their level of outrage…”
Mommy! Mommy! Skeptics weren’t correctly outraged!
Andrew
Not sure how you are measuring the level of outrage.
It would be a good exercise for you to do some comparisons.
For example:
1. the level of outrage against David Rose
2. the level of outrage against sarah palin for her bone headed
errors about climategate.
Without a measure for outrage it’s hard to examine an explanation
for it. The fact that you see the outrage as “higher” is protentially
confirmation bias. One way we “control” for motivated reasoning
is by sharing data and methods. So, how did you measure the level of outrage and what comparsions did you make?
If you made no measurement of the “level” of “outrage”, then its very possible that you are just seeing what you expect to see. As you know
we ‘control’ for observer bias by sharing data and methods.
Judith writes re Obama’s statement: “Hmmmmm. . . I wonder what his source was on the bolded statement.”
Why Al Gore, of course!
theduke
Are you referring to Al Gore, the “ex-next-President-of-the-USA”, who’s made millions with his CAGW shtick since leaving office as VP?
Max
Here is an excellent example of how climate science works courtesy of New Scientist via our friends at the Hockey Shtick – see http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628914.600-link-between-global-warming-and-drought-questioned.html
We learn that the main measure of drought is the Palmer Drought Severity Index.
Then this
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 science assessment cited studies using the PDSI to conclude that “droughts have become more common since the 1970s” as the world has warmed. ……… The report predicted droughts will increase with global warming.”
So far so good. Now lets look at how the PDSI is compiled.
“The PDSI does not directly measure drought. Instead, it looks at the difference between precipitation and evaporation. But since evaporation rates are hard to determine, it uses temperature as a proxy, on the assumption that evaporation rises as it gets hotter.”
So, the IPCC uses an index that assumes that droughts increase with temperature to show that droughts increase with temperature.
Justin Sheffield of Princeton University points out “that temperature is only one factor influencing evaporation. He inferred evaporation rates using the Penman-Monteith equation, which includes factors such as wind speed and humidity, and found “little change in global drought over the past 60 years” (Nature, DOI: 0.1038/nature11575). His new calculations back up his own previous analysis that the most significant of recent droughts mostly occurred in the 1950s and 60s, before global warming got going.”
We also have this
“Simon Brown of the UK Met Office in Exeter says Sheffield’s analysis is probably right. “There has been a growing acknowledgement that the PDSI should not be trusted when doing climate change studies,” he says. But one of the lead authors of parts of the 2007 IPCC report, Kevin Trenberth of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, is sceptical. He backs work by Aiguo Dai of the State University of New York, Albany, who reported last year that using the Penman-Monteith equation “only slightly reduces the drying trend”.
Sheffield’s findings raise important questions, says Steve Running at the University of Montana in Missoula. “If global drought is not increasing, if warmer temperatures are accompanied by more rainfall and lower evaporation rates, then a warmer wetter world would [mean] a more benign climate.”
I found the Climate Dialogue blog useful and interesting. I don’t think one has to have diametrically opposed participants to make dialogue. Honest participants is the key. Participants who can state their position, and why they hold it, and admit that others hold different but possibly equally valid positions and be willing to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of those alternate positions. So far, so good.
The difference between honest dialogue and the silly name calling from certain quarters of the CliSci World (without mentioning any specific names) are thunderingly obvious in the comments.
Jim Cripwell
Over on scienceblogs.com William Connolley comments on the new climatedialogue.org site.
As the first response, Gavin comments to Judith’s statement on attribution of Arctic sea ice decline:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/11/14/climatedialogue-org/
Yeah, Gavin. There’s an awful lot of that ”based on expert judgment rather than formal attribution studies” stuff in AR4 WG1.
In fact, almost all the attribution of “extreme weather” has this footnote.
Oh, well…
Max
Something else is happening in the Netherlands. Does anyone know anything about this development? Is it likely to become a big deal?
A new Dutch book written by ‘the climate-lawyer’ Roger H.J. Cox has sparked a lawsuit being filed against the Dutch government, claiming that the Netherlands is under a legal obligation to reduce its CO2 emissions by as much as 40% by 2020 and up to 95% by 2050.
The book provided not only the impetus but a blueprint for such lawsuits, and a call for similar suits to be levied against many other Western nations.
The book is backed by world-renowned American climate scientist James Hansen, who was the first to receive an English translation of the work at the book’s launch in The Hague.
http://cleantechnica.com/2012/11/17/new-book-sparks-climate-suit-against-the-netherlands/
About the arctic sea ice melt: two possible causes were considered: 1. anthropogenic GHG 2. natural variation. Maybe there is a third one.
Under natural variation short term oscillations were considered – AMO, PDO, ENSO – which are cyclical over periods from a few years to a few decades.
But maybe there is also a centuries long natural cycle at work – the one that caused a steady rise of temperatures from the Little Ice Age, preceded by a drop in temps from the MWP.
What part of the melt can be attributed to this cycle ? I believe it’s more than zero.
“Outrage” is the appropriate response it seems to me to Obama’s false statement. The so-called leader of the free world doesn’t have a clue, nor apparently any inclination to go out and get one. Joshua, you’re too busy trying to appear superior to muster anything more than your usual sniggering response. I doubt you’ve ever had an honest emotion in your life.
I think Obama and the Democratic members of both the house and the senate recognize that the jig is up with global warming alarmism. It’s no longer a real issue. It’s a bargaining chip. And he is just stirring the pot to get his constituents riled up.
To be fair to Democratic members of both the house and the senate, many of them have been there for very long time and for very long time they have realized it is not a real issue.
Saying the “jig is up” is not really the way the politicians think of the issue of climate change, and no politician is going to get any traction being an “alarmist” in public even if they privately think that climate change could be a significant issue facing both the U.S. and of course the world. But what politicians are willing to say in public can be traced directly to events that the public can perceive and experience, but I think what you see done quietly behind the scenes in terms of policy and where monies are being spent tells you something about what it is really seen as important. In this regard, increasingly larger sums of money are being spent by the Pentagon every year studying and even preparing for the longer-term strategic and security implications of climate change. This is not alarmism (as the Pentagon would not want to ever be cast in this light) but simple thoughtful preparation based on current scientific research.
“climate change” AKA “global warming”
In other words, preparing for the very opposite of what is far more likely to happen. Prolonged and possibly severe cooling.
J Martin,
There is no evidence that prolonged and severe cooling is in store…only the pronouncements from what I consider to be the “CNGC” crowd– Catastrophic Natural Global Cooling” who like to base everything on solar effects, galactic cosmic rays, etc.
Now there is no doubt that the natural variations of solar output play some role in the climate, and the current “sleepy sun” period has had some role to play in the flattening of near surface temperatures, along with a cool phase of the PDO, increased natural and anthropogenic aerosols, etc., but to extrapolate this to mean “prolonged and severe” cooling is to completely discount the effects of the 40% increase in CO2 (and similar rises in methane and N20) that we’ve seen over the past few centuries. Furthermore, other natural negative forcings, such as from a series of large volcanic eruptions, may have had the initially large role to play our immediate past cooler period of the LIA. Probably the only way we’d go into some prolonged cooling period would be a singularly large volcanic eruption such as we saw in Mt. Toba 74K years ago, or a series of continuous smaller eruptions, or of course a large asteroid strike. In that none of these are predictable, the CNGC crowd has little to base their conjectures on.
R Gates
Since the effects of co2 are logarithmic and the postulated feedbacks in the models have yet to manifest themselves, I think it’s entirely reasonable to to “completely discount the effects of the 40% increase in CO2”.
On the subject of future temperatures I guess we shall have to agree to disagree for now. However, on the bright side, we shouldn’t have to wait too many years before we see if temperatures go down or up.
‘CNGC’ a new label, much more civilised than ‘deniers’. I will wear it with pride.
J Martin
Glad you approve of the moniker. If the shoe fits…
But you said:
“Since the effects of co2 are logarithmic and the postulated feedbacks in the models have yet to manifest themselves…”
_____
Are you certain the feedbacks have yet to manifest themselves? Global atmospheric water vapor levels have been increasing and sea ice in the Arctic has declined even faster than the models forecast just a few years ago. On what do you base the supposition that feedbacks have yet to manifest themselves?
R. Gates | November 17, 2012 at 3:24 pm | J Martin,
There is no evidence that prolonged and severe cooling is in store…only the pronouncements from what I consider to be the “CNGC” crowd– Catastrophic Natural Global Cooling” who like to base everything on solar effects, galactic cosmic rays, etc.
So you don’t understand what the Vostok and other data are telling us?
http://www.iceagenow.com/Pravda-Earth_on_the_Brink_of_an_Ice_Age.htm
.. but to extrapolate this to mean “prolonged and severe” cooling is to completely discount the effects of the 40% increase in CO2 (and similar rises in methane and N20) that we’ve seen over the past few centuries.
CO2 levels lag behind temperature rises by c800 years, any increase in carbon dioxide now is accountable for if you put back the MWP.
How exactly does Methane drive global warming according to your religion? Being lighter than air methane will rise up and away, logically then will take away heat from the surface. As does water vapour, with its large heat capacity it takes away heat from the surface and releases it in the colder heights as it condenses back to liquid water or ice, forming clouds and rain, together with carbon dioxide. That’s called the Water Cycle – try putting it back in to your dogma.
Probably the only way we’d go into some prolonged cooling period would be a singularly large volcanic eruption such as we saw in Mt. Toba 74K years ago, or a series of continuous smaller eruptions, or of course a large asteroid strike. In that none of these are predictable, the CNGC crowd has little to base their conjectures on.
How has AGW completely discounted that we’re in a brief warming period in the middle of an Ice Age?
Are you really all so, well, um, lacking in knowledge about climate?
As you clearly are about weather or you’d have noticed you don’t have the Water Cycle or rain in your Carbon Cycle.
16 years of flat temperatures.
(01:00 am here and I’m going to get some sleep.)
Myrrh said:
“CO2 levels lag behind temperature rises by c800 years, any increase in carbon dioxide now is accountable for if you put back the MWP.”
Repsonse: Sorry Myrrh, the MWP did not cause the current high CO2 levels (though I’d not heard that denialist line before, so I’ve got to give you credit for something new). Human burning of fossil fuels mainly caused it along with some other human activities. It would be nice if it were all natural cycles and the 7+ Billion of us now alive and the billions of humans who have come before us could walk with complete immunity across this planet, doing whatever we’d like without affecting the world we rely on. But that is not the case, humans do affect the planet in multiple ways,
_______________
Myrrh said:
“How exactly does Methane drive global warming according to your religion?”
Response: As I’ve got no religion so I couldn’t answer that, but according to radiative transfer theory and measurements, methane is a potent greenhouse gas that, though many times more potent than CO2, resides in the atmosphere as methane for less time (thankfully). Any significant increase in CH4 beyond the background levels we’ve seen during the Holocene will affect the greenhouse gas forcing overall.
_____
Myrrh asked:
“How has AGW completely discounted that we’re in a brief warming period in the middle of an Ice Age?”
Response: The cycles of glacial growth and retreat over the past 2.5 million years are driven by the Milankovitch cycles. Our current interglacial might have come to naturally end in the next few thousands of years were it not for the additional positive forcing brought about by anthropogenic activities (mainly greenhouse gas emissions). Expect a longer warm period (perhaps a very warm period) The key issue will be how warm it will get and how humans will adapt to the warmth. At this point in time, going back to 350 ppm of CO2 seems unrealistic. Prepare to adapt to Pliocene-like conditions or warmer.
R Gates.
Oh come on, your comment is nothing more than speculative wishful thinking !
co2 derived warming (if indeed it exists at all) is thought to be able to produce about 1.5 C warming by the end of the century with a possible maximum of 1.5 degrees C. There is no evidence to the contrary much to the distress of the climate modellers.
A glaciation can produce a drop in temperatures of up to 10 degrees C.
The idea that somehow mankind’s use of co2 will prevent or even delay the next glaciation is real ostrich head in the sand stuff.
As we go through solar cycles 24 and 25 we will undoubtedly gain a great deal of highly enlightening data as to the relative effects of co2 and the only thing that does generate heat on Earth, namely the Sun.
Medieval man changed the climate. I think not. Show me your graphs and evidence for such a patently ridiculous statement.
R. Gates | November 17, 2012 at 9:35 pm |
Repsonse: Sorry Myrrh, the MWP did not cause the current high CO2 levels (though I’d not heard that denialist line before, so I’ve got to give you credit for something new). Human burning of fossil fuels mainly caused it along with some other human activities.
How can you keep regurgitating this unproven claim, and never proven in any show and tell when requested of your ilk, when Carbon Dioxide had nothing to do with driving the great and dramatic temperature changes in and out of our interglacials in the norm which is the Ice Age we are in?
Why is there this seeming inability to make logical connections from those with your faith based unproven science claims? Which is what makes this a religious belief.
As I’ve got no religion so I couldn’t answer that, but according to radiative transfer theory and measurements, methane is a potent greenhouse gas that, though many times more potent than CO2, resides in the atmosphere as methane for less time (thankfully). Any significant increase in CH4 beyond the background levels we’ve seen during the Holocene will affect the greenhouse gas forcing overall.
Until you can show any science facts about your claims, your claims remain faith based, therefore you are regurgitating doctrine from your religion.
Carbon dioxide is heavier than air, it cannot defy gravity to “accumulate for hundreds and thousands of years” as is claimed by your priests. It is also fully part of the Water Cycle which your religion has excised from its imagined reality, in this carbon dioxide has the same residence time as water in the atmosphere which is 8-10 DAYS. You don’t have any rain in your Carbon Cycle in your imaginary world. Your world isn’t real.
Methane rises because it is lighter than air, carbon dioxide sinks because it is heavier than air. All part of the CYCLES of Life, which you don’t have. Your religion is describing a dead world.
Whatever heat capacity methane has it will be taking this up and away from the surface, and carbon dioxide has for all practical purposes zilch ability to trap heat, and, heat rises.
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/01/is-there-any-evidence/
Your religion is faith in the memes of the fake beliefs of The Greenhouse Effect. Regurgitating the memes is not proof that your claims are real world. Fetch real physics from the real world not fake fisics from your modelled world which doesn’t even have the Water Cycle.
“How has AGW completely discounted that we’re in a brief warming period in the middle of an Ice Age?”
Response: The cycles of glacial growth and retreat over the past 2.5 million years are driven by the Milankovitch cycles. Our current interglacial might have come to naturally end in the next few thousands of years were it not for the additional positive forcing brought about by anthropogenic activities (mainly greenhouse gas emissions). Expect a longer warm period (perhaps a very warm period) The key issue will be how warm it will get and how humans will adapt to the warmth. At this point in time, going back to 350 ppm of CO2 seems unrealistic. Prepare to adapt to Pliocene-like conditions or warmer.
Until you can show how carbon dioxide drives temperatures then you have no ground for any of your statements. Clearly, you can’t read graphs and have no time awareness of the cycles in and out of interglacials. All you’re doing is adding more nonsense into the AGWScienceFiction Greenhouse Effect claims. It’s clear you’re not interested in how the real world works.
Why should we expect a longer period of warming now when our interglacial is coming to its end and you have not shown even elementary physics to your “carbon dioxide driving global warming” doctrine?
You are unable to fetch real physics explanations because there are none.
Do you or does anyone in ‘climate science’, pro or lay, know how this non-observable Carbon dioxide forcing figure was calculated?
Ignoring this question will not make it go away..
Myrrh says CO2 is heavier than air and so falls to the bottom of the atmosphere.
So that’s what we are breathing then.
Did anyone watch Al Gore’s ’24 Hours Of Reality: The Dirty Weather Report’?
And if so, did they find anything of scientific interest?
Watched a very short amount. It wasn’t really about science (certainly nothing new that most of us on this blog don’t know), it was a motivational, cheer leading event. Certainly some younger people will remain/become inspired by such events.
Right. “Inspired.” By what? what you call a “motivational, cheer leading event” was actually rife with exaggerations and out-right lies…exactly what we’ve learned to expect from Mr. Gore. WHy would this be? Usually if a cause is worthy, the truth serves nicely. But that won’t work here, will it?
Gore is making a play for the hearts and minds of the youth…this much is clear, and in this regard, Hansen is no different (with his arrests, etc).
You could say that both men are being deceptive, or that they are simply standing up for a cause they truly believe in. I would tend to think the later is more likely (casting aside the spiteful political rhetoric). But it doesn’t matter as the net result is the same…Gore does big events and Hansen get’s arrested.
Whilst I would agree with Gates that they believe in their cause, I also think there is more to it;
I think that in Gore’s case it was an ideal vehicle for his ego and I doubt that he is even aware of it.
In Hansen’s case he burnt his boats with his initial drama show in the 80s and irrevocably tied his reputation to runaway global warming caused by co2. Again, he may no longer be capable of separating fact from fiction.
Both should get out of the public arena and do do something useful, like take up gardening (preferably in leg irons).
(This must be only the second time I have agreed with something R gates has said, good job I’m sitting down with a beer.)
“In Hansen’s case he burnt his boats with his initial drama show in the 80s and irrevocably tied his reputation to runaway global warming caused by co2. Again, he may no longer be capable of separating fact from fiction.
Both should get out of the public arena and do do something useful, like take up gardening (preferably in leg irons).”
I believe the most significant thing that could happen in 21 century is
for us to have Cheaper Access to Space [CATS].
I would define CATS as the ticket price of seat to Low Earth orbit as being
1 million dollar or less.
Currently, it’s about 10 million dollars or more per seat.
I would add 1 million to LEO, or 5 million to lunar surface, and/or 50 million to the Mars surface. That would be CATS as I am using the expression.
Doing this is part of Hansen’s job. So I say, instead farting around with his hobby, Hansen should do his job. Or quit and allow someone more serious do his job.
The only thing that is actually “increasing faster” is climate data fraud as practised by GISS, NOAA and others.
When are our dumbo politicians and their rabid advisor’s going to wake up ?
3 or 4 severe winters on the trot might do it, though I think we have a few years to wait.
Arctic air temperature change amplification and the Atlantic
Multidecadal Oscillation
Abstract
Understanding Arctic temperature variability is essential for assessing possible future melting of the Greenland ice sheet, Arctic sea ice and Arctic permafrost. Temperature trend reversals in 1940 and 1970 separate two Arctic warming periods (1910–1940 and 1970–2008) by a significant 1940–1970 cooling period. Analyzing temperature records of the Arctic meteorological stations we find that (a) the Arctic amplification (ratio of the Arctic to global temperature trends) is not a constant but varies in time on a multi-decadal time scale, (b) the Arctic warming from 1910 – 1940 proceeded at a significantly faster rate than the current 1970 – 2008 warming, and (c) the Arctic temperature changes are highly correlated with the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) suggesting the Atlantic Ocean thermohaline circulation is linked to the Arctic temperature variability on a multi-decadal time scale.
http://www.lanl.gov/source/orgs/ees/ees14/pdfs/09Chlylek.pdf
Is there a 60-year oscillation in global mean sea level?
Key Points
-There is a 60-year oscillation in the majority of long tide gauge records
-The signal is consistent in phase and amplitude in many ocean basins
-This has important implications for quantifying sea level acceleration
Chambers et al.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2012GL052885.shtml
“What we do know is the temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted even 10 years ago,”
I do hear this total false information repeated in the media, but I do not hear the truth of this exposed from the media.
Climate sensitivity to CO2, based on actual data, is more of a joke or a scam or a hoax, than anything scientific. 1998 was our warmest year in modern times and temperature has gone up and down below that level ever since then while CO2 has gone up with no acknowledgment by temperature.
How many years of the climate-gate lack of warming travesty must we endure before the people say that is too much?
How many years of the climate-gate lack of warming travesty must we endure before the climate scientists say that is too much?
I say that is too much already. I say that is too long already.
Herman
They have said at least 17 years. We need to wait a couple of years.
But they might move the goal post then.
They will definitely attempt to move the goalposts and it should certainly be an interesting bit of goalpost moving since the likelihood of temperatures going anywhere other than down is low. Solar activity may amble along for a while before it declines, taking temperatures with it.
Girma
It’s Christmas Eve 2014, as the 17th year of “no global warming” nears its end…
Two grandfatherly climatologists, Jim and Phil, are sitting by the burning Yule log, sipping their Kool-Aid, as a sudden rattling noise startles them
Jim (on edge): What’s that noise I hear?
Phil (concerned): Is it Santer’s reindeer up on the roof?
Jim (worried): No, but could it be the rustle of a falling house of cards?
Phil (shuddering): Or, perhaps the sound of of tables being turned?
Both (sighing with relief): Whew! No, it’s just the sound of goalposts being moved.
(The lights dim as the two take another sip of Kool-Aid…)
Max
Nice. Now we just need to get it printed onto a Christmas card and get it sent out to a number of the ‘team’ and their assistant priests.
With the next temperature step that will predictably occur in an El Nino around or after the next solar max, that noise will be the skeptics’ hot air balloon deflating.
I second J Martin
Max
+1
Jim D is sipping the same Kool-Aid as the two grandfatherly climatologists.
What flavor, Jim: cherry?
Max
Jim D
I’m afraid your next solar max is at least 20 years away and possibly very much further. Most solar pundits reckon that the next cycle may effectively go missing, and some think that cooling could continue on to the year 2100.
Any El Nino’s that do appear will be mere toddlers, whereas the La Nina’s will be full grown voluptuous wonders.
Look here. Jumps at solar max. Next solar max due 2014-5 (yes, there is still one coming).
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:36/from:1950/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1950/scale:0.001/mean:36
Jim D
So far this cycle (24) we have had half a solar max of sorts with the other half to come in 2013 ? 2014 ?
But I can’t see it spawning an El Nino as the last one petered out, perhaps the current half height solar high if it carrys on for a year longer may produce a half hearted pre pubescent El Nino, before the solar cycle goes into decline and delivers a string of grown up La Nina’s.
Idle speculation on my part.
Cycle 25 will do what ? we can but wait and see, but the betting is on very low to missing.
It doesn’t have to be an exceptional El Nino to make a step when it is given a boost by the solar max. From the graph, this behavior looks very predictable.
Indeed already we are seeing very warm temperatures for an ENSO neutral period. It’s amusing to see the climate skeptics don’t realize they are pounding nails into their own coffins.
I have been asking how many more years and never hear an answer. Maybe, just maybe, in another decade some will start to say “yea but-fill in the excuses of why it has not warmed- and then, we ain’t giving up yet.”
Dennis Adams, that’s because the starting postulate that ‘warming has stopped’ is delusional.
How may we further illuminate your understanding, Dennis Adams [and Girma, and Herman Alexander Pope]? ;) :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
I certainly hope it does keep warming. But I think you’ll find that too great a reliance on ‘adjusted’ data sets will lead you to a false conclusion in the end.
In a number of cases the adjustments have become quite extreme as both Steven Goddard’s blog and WUWT have shown.
Give it few years and the Sun will “further illuminate your (own) understanding”.
Link added. :eek: :oops: :cry: :eek: :oops: :cry:
Who knew that heat-loving anaerobic marine bacteria posted here on Climate Etc? :eek: :oops: :cry: :eek: :oops: :cry:
And what foresighted heat-loving bacteria want is simple … they want us humans to keep burning carbon. :eek: :oops: :cry: :eek: :oops: :cry:
That article you linked to about runaway Triassic warming has been thoroughly debunked in WUWT. Nice try though.
Logic extended! ;) :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
Fan
You ask (Dennis Adams) regarding the current 15-year “pause” in global warming, which you deny:
Very simple.
By bringing data to refute the actual physical observations:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend
Ball’s in your court, Fan.
Max
J Martin.
1. both Goddard and WUWT have focused on GHCN and CRU.
2. You can do a global average using other un-adjusted data.
Outside of GHCN and CRU there are over 30,000 stations.
That is, there are roughly 36000 stations, if you remove
GHCN and CRU from that you are left with roughly 30K stations
of unadjusted data.
3. A global average of this data ( non GHCN, non CRU ) is statistically
indistinguishable from GISS or CRU answers.
4. You can select a ‘rural only’ subset of those 30K stations and you
also get a result that is statistically indistinguishable.
5. You can prove this to your self. All the data and code is freely avaliable to you. If you need help just ask.
6. A real skeptic tests his own ideas, rather than trusting others (like goddard)
J Martin
So there is a conspiracy amongst the keepers of the temperature records to exaggerate warming? This is what you suggest, is it not?
Conspiracy. A number of the Climategate emails indicated as much.
Self delusion / confirmation bias for the most part.
“So there is a conspiracy amongst the keepers of the temperature records to exaggerate warming?”
Only a Warmer Tribal Troll like yourself pretends the idea hasn’t crossed your mind.
Andrew
J. Martin.
There is no evidence whatsoever that the myriad of national weather services that provide data are part of any conspiracy. You probably never read all the climategate mails, and have little idea about what they really show. Please. Go get a new argument. I suggest you argue about sensitivity, at least you’d have a fighting chance there
Definition of MYRIAD
1: ten thousand
2: a great number
So Steven Mosher, how many national weather services provide data?
Andrew
Steven Mosher is right that “There is no evidence whatsoever that the myriad of national weather services that provide data are part of any conspiracy”.
I assume when he says “myriad” he is referring to the individual weather stations, that are scattered all over the globe. They may have thermometers next to AC exhausts, asphalt runways and parking lots, etc., but this is probably just carelessness or inattention rather than willful intent to deceive on the part of the station operators.
What raises suspicion is when the “keepers of the records” (Jones) hide data from FOIA requests, (Jones, Hansen) when they make forecasts of accelerated warming, when they constantly “correct” and “adjust” numbers ex post facto (and these adjustments all go in the direction of making recent warming look larger).
No, this is not “proof” of a “conspiracy” – but it is “circumstantial evidence” of suspicious behavior IMO.
Max
PS And, folks, don’t forget that there is sort of a check on these guys with the satellite record of tropospheric temperature (which does not have the urbanization or siting problems of the surface stations). It confirms warming but shows a slightly lower rate of warming than the surface (even though IPCC curiously claims the opposite).
.
It has, but the idea that there’s a cabal of climate scientists distorting the temperature data for murky but leftish reasons is too much for me. As for most people, except for the conspiracy theorists.
Oddly, suggesting that there is a substantial cohort of conspiracy theorists in the sceptic camp triggers a furious response (eg. Lewandowsky). Yet there is abundant evidence that this is the case. This exchange is now part of it.
“It has, but the idea that there’s a cabal of climate scientists distorting the temperature data for murky but leftish reasons is too much for me.”
Leftists want state control of industry. It’s their stated objective and their behavior follows. What’s murky about that?
Andrew
Bad Andrew.
you guys have no idea how the data flows from an observer station through a national weather service ( one in every nation ) or through the WMO ending up in a final database.
No idea whatsoever.
GHCN Monthly is but one such data base. Its one of the smaller databases. You can go look and see what sources they use and how they compile the data.
If you dont like the fact that Hansen uses GHCN, then you can do a simple check. Use other stations. Use the thousands of stations that report through WMO. Use USAF stations. Use daily station data that never gets adjusted. You could also use data from agricultural networks.
That’s a fun check. take the state of california. It runs an independent hourly set of thousands of stations that farmers rely on. You can, and I have, compared these agricultural stations to GHCN stations, to GCOS, to GHCN Daily. Now, you gotta figure if somebody was “cooking” the GHCN data that it would not match with the agri data. Guess what?
it matches. You could look at the state networks. you could look at the calibration stations set up for satillite work. You could compare CRN, the WUWT gold standard, with USHCN. no difference.
There is no evidence of conspiracy. The conspiricay would have to extend to all the national weather services ( 200+). The states that run networks. The universities that run networks. The department of agriculture in various states that run networks. To Spencer and Christy and RSS.
If you want to talk about the surface record there is one and only one argument worth making: UHI and Micro site.
Arguments about adjustments are broken by the fact that we get the same answer using unadjusted data. Arguments about data tampering are busted by doing comparisons with other networks ( like networks used by business, like CRN, like UHA ) Arguments about spatial coverage and instrument accuracy are busted by out of sample testing.
Down to one one argument. My suggestion is that you forget the stupid arguments and the busted arguments and focus you energy on the one remaining leverage point
“suggesting that there is a substantial cohort of conspiracy theorists in the sceptic camp triggers a furious response”
BBD,
And what do you think a cohort of skeptic theorists could accomplish?
Andrew
All the *real scientists* are sceptics. All the right wing ideologues busily denying AGW are ‘sceptics’. Don’t confuse the two.
BBD and Bad Andrew
Those who are rationally skeptical of IPCC’s CAGW hypothesis are skeptics (by definition).
Several posters here (including myself) fall into that category.
They are not convinced that the IPCC’s CAGW premise is supported by empirical scientific evidence, so they have concluded that it is based on an invalid or at best uncorroborated hypothesis.
“Conspiracy theorists” sounds like a term coined by those who realize that they are unable to show the empirical evidence the skeptics insist on, in order to defend their paradigm..
I haven’t heard of any skeptics talk about a conspiracy – a collusion of interests, maybe, but not a conspiracy.
Sounds like a “side track” to me in order to avoid the main issue.
Max
Argument from incredulity doesn’t challenge the scientific consensus. To do that requires a widely-supported scientifc case and you do not have one. Whatever you may claim.
BBD
Wrong.
What it requires is “argument from evidence”.
And that is precisely what is missing.
Max
Manacker
From the ‘sceptical’ arguments that I have seen, yes.
Something that gets obscured by the gunsmoke is the simple truth that we’d all weep with relief if there was a persuasive scientific case that ‘CAGW’ was yarbles.
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see a persuasive counter to the scientific consensus on AGW. On this we are united.
Manaker:
“Those who are rationally skeptical of IPCC’s CAGW hypothesis are skeptics (by definition).”
a couple points. first, one isnt skeptical of a hypothesis. One tests a hypothesis. One would be skeptical of a theory. but that’s quibbling.
For the record. What is the CAGW hypothesis ? lets start with that simple definitional aspect of the question.
You cannot forget that the first step of skepticism is being able to accurately represent the position you are skeptical of.
lets see if you pass skeptical kindergarten
Mosher, testing a hypothesis can be a challenge in some cases.
Speaking of that, weren’t you thinking about looking into that diurnal temperature range thing? It is pretty interesting, not only that it shifted, but where it shifted and when. ‘course, I am sure that would have no impact on a full blow Theory with a capital T.
bbd > All the right wing ideologues busily denying AGW are ‘sceptics’.
“Right wing ideolgue” here meaning anyone who doesn’t swallow whole the left-wing ideology which is the driving force behind CAGW.
Whose adherents include the bulk of government climate ‘scientists’ who gave us Climategate, pal-review etc etc, and to this day will admit no wrong therein. The sort of politically-correct crookery BBD so admires.
Steven Mosher
Up-thread you ask me to articulate what has become generally known as the “CAGW premise” (or hypothesis).
Here’s my best attempt at doing that.
“AGW, caused principally by human CO2 emissions, has been the principal driver of global temperature since around 1950 and this represents a serious potential threat to humanity and our environment [with potentially catastrophic impacts] unless actions are undertaken to dramatically reduce the emissions of human GHGs (principally CO2)”
This premise is based on the supposition (or postulation) of a “high” 2xCO2 climate sensitivity (i.e. a mean value of 3.2C).
I am rationally skeptical of this premise, Steven, for reasons I have already cited but will summarize her:
The above “CAGW hypothesis” is not falsifiable (Popper), nor is it supported by empirical scientific evidence (Feynman).
Max
Steven Mosher
Since you asked me (as a “kindergarten” exercise) to articulate the hypothesis (or premise) of which I am rationally skeptical, I have done this (above).
Now I’m going to ask you two “kindergarten” questions for someone who accepts this hypothesis (or premise) as valid (assuming you do).
– How can it be falsified? (Popper)
– What empirical scientific evidence can be cited to support it (Feynman)
[If you do NOT accept the above-stated “CAGW premise” as valid, just say so.]
Thanks in advance for responding.
Max
Judith, do one-line “snarks” contribute anything substantial to the climate-change debate? Haven’t we got an ample supply of them? :?: :?: :?:
Snark is easy … what’s difficult is to unite civic passion with scientific reason … a task at which famed ecologist Ed Wilson succeeds admirably:
For resisting the quadruple scientific temptations of snarky – selfish – simplistic – shortsightedness,, GOOD ON YAH, ED WILSON [AND NAOMI ORESKES TOO] ;) :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
Fan, Are you joking? You’ve raised snark to an art form here on climate etc. Your every post drips with it. Yikes. The hypocricy is stunning.
Pokerguy, no-one has yet detected “snark” in any of Ed Wilson’s scholarly works … like Wilson’s recent, remarkable Seminar About Long-term Thinking, for example. :!: :!: :!:
That’s why Wilson’s works are well-worth contemplating! ;) :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
Whereas cherry-picked climate-change “snark” is instantly forgotten, eh? ;) ;) ;)
The proper comparison would not be do compare his scholarly work with her blog writings. Different audience. Different Purpose. Entails a different choice of rhetorical tools.
So, you either compare their scholarly ( edited by others, vetted by others, published by others) work. Or you find work he did where he was writing to a similar audience using a comparable medium.. say one with no editorial intervention.
All writing happens in a situation. I write to you in a place for a purpose. All those factors control the range of rhetorical tools that may or may not be effective.
Like smiley faces. Wllson never used them. But it would be silly to make that comparison. You use them here to define your character and your attitude. It works for some ( i find it charming on occasion) and others find it annoying. ( meanies). So, just a short lesson in comapring styles and devices. Hope that helps
pokerguy
If you are good at your game, you must be highly observant. How then did you miss the entire of FOMD’s comment before deciding to respond to it?
FOMD – apologies – we crossed.
More scientists should speak out.
Jeremy Grantham should be more careful about what he wishes for.
Lucia
At least with respect to global surface temperatures warming is not happening faster than predicted by models. Observed warming is on the low end of the range predicted by models used in the AR4.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/trends-relative-to-models/
The president is incorrect.
‘The global climate change debate has gone badly wrong. Many mainstream environmentalists are arguing for the wrong actions and for the wrong reasons, and as long as they continue to do so they put all our futures in jeopardy.
My diagnosis is a twofold ethical failure: of pragmatism and perspective (or, more eloquently, of “sense and sensibility”). Many environmentalists argue that climate change is fundamentally a values problem. And yet their interpretation of this has taken a narrow moralising form that systematically excludes consideration of such important ethical values as improving the lives of the one billion people presently living in unacceptable poverty, or even protecting other aspects of the environment.
That narrowness also leads to self-defeating policy proposals based almost entirely in the economy of nature rather than political economy. The result is a fixation on global CO2 levels alone as both the problem and the solution, at the cost of systematic and broad evaluation of the feasible policy space.
These foundational errors have induced a kind of millenarian meltdown in many otherwise sensible people, to the extent that to be an environmentalist these days is to fear the oncoming storm and know that all hope is lost. To put it mildly, people in this state of mind are not well placed to contribute helpfully to the political debate about what we should do about the fact of climate change. In their reconciliation with despair, environmentalists are not only mistaken, but display a disturbing symmetry with those opponents of action who are mistakenly complacent about the status quo. My recommended treatment, to reinvigorate their confidence as well as their ethics, is a dose of economic reasoning.’ http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/09/14/3590260.htm
It is not merely the debate on climate change that has gone badly wrong – but impetus to restoration and conservation of global ecosystems is subsumed under a single obsessive fear. There is glacial progress – yet moralising by fan doesn’t do it for me. Funny about that.
The other theme in this post – again – is the stubborn denial of a natural cooling influence. And yet there is a theory – obvious for many years – for why the world is not warming for a decade or three more at least.
‘Unlike El Niño and La Niña, which may occur every 3 to 7 years and last from 6 to 18 months, the PDO can remain in the same phase for 20 to 30 years. The shift in the PDO can have significant implications for global climate, affecting Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, the productivity of marine ecosystems, and global land temperature patterns. This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation ‘cool’ trend can intensify La Niña or diminish El Niño impacts around the Pacific basin,” said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “The persistence of this large-scale pattern [in 2008] tells us there is much more than an isolated La Niña occurring in the Pacific Ocean.”’ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703
Go figure.
I like this last summary sentence of the article you linked to:
““These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.”
But this article puts the whole thing in nice perspective:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/blaming-the-pdo.html
It’s the whole long-term vs. short-term, anthropogenic versus natural variability thing. No climate scientist of with any credibility at all denies the influence of the PDO, but neither do they deny the long-term implications and climate forcing of increasingly higher concentrations of GHG’s.
They may have to in the end as the ‘forcing’ is a no show so far.
Does anyone in ‘climate science’, pro or lay, know how this non-observable Carbon dioxide forcing figure was calculated?
Myrrh
You ask:
IPCC uses the estimate by Myhre et al. for calculating the (no-feedback) 2xCO2 forcing and temperature response:
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/222.htm
Using this formula, the radiative forcing from added CO2 since pre-industrial times is 1.66 Wm-2 and the no-feedback 2xCO2 temperature response is ~1°C.
[There are other formulas and estimates listed by Hansen 1988 and Shi 1992, which arrive at a temperature response of 0.85°-1.2°C. Not listed is an estimate by Lindzen, which arrives at a figure of 0.65°C.]
In a footnote, IPCC tell us:
We can then check the cited Myhre et al. study, which states in the Abstract:
http://folk.uio.no/gunnarmy/paper/myhre_grl98.pdf
Reading further, we see that the model-derived estimate is based on theoretical deliberations plus spectral band data for CO2 from HITRAN-1996.
The HITRAN-1996 spectral band data base is here:
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/hitran/Download/HITRAN96.pdf
So, to answer your question, the no-feedback 2xCO2 climate sensitivity used by IPCC is a model-derived figure, based on theoretical deliberations and laboratory-derived spectral band data, rather than on empirical evidence from real-time physical observations or reproducible experimentation.
And that’s the problem many skeptics have with this figure.
This would be OK in itself.
But the problem is compounded by model-derived feedbacks, which end up increasing the theoretical 2xCO2 response by a factor of 3 or more.
That’s where I am rationally skeptical.
And I will remain so until someone can show me empirical scientific evidence to support a mean 2xCO2 temperature response of 3°C, which no one has been able to do, so far.
[As a matter of fact, the past CO2 and temperature record would indicate a 2xCO2 temperature response of between 0.8°C and 1.4°C, rather than 3°C.]
Max
Max,
Myhre estimate is reached combining empirically thoroughly verified information on interaction of IR with gases and clouds with empirically observed properties of the atmosphere. The theory needed in the calculation is solid and confirmed extensively by laboratory experiments as well as empirical work in real atmosphere.
The main source of uncertainty relates to the accuracy and completeness of the empirical data on the properties of the atmosphere. I haven’t seen current estimates on the accuracy of the value 3.7 W/m^2, but based on what I have read I believe that the uncertainty is less than 10%, perhaps around 5%.
Thank you Max. I’ve been puzzled where this claimed ‘heat trapping’ capability of carbon dioxide comes from, it’s clear from the fake ‘experiments’ they produce for the gullible public that they have no intention of showing this..
For the umpteemth time – the observations suggest intensification of the cool mode over the next decade or three. No warming at least for this period as the current cool mode intensifies.
It is really a Pacific thing – rather than just the PDO – as the NASA article makes clear. An intensification of ENSO events associated the phases of the PDO.
I don’t read skepticalscience – I prefer a reputable source.
‘Nevertheless, however much models improve, there will always be an irreducible level of uncertainty—‘flap of the seagull’s wings’—because of the chaotic nature of the system. Even the climate we have observed over the past century or so is only one realization of what the real system might produce.
Figure 12 shows 2000 years of El Nino behaviour simulated by a state-of-the-art climate model forced with present day solar irradiance and greenhouse gas concentrations. The richness of the El Nino behaviour, decade by decade and century by century, testifies to the fundamentally chaotic nature of the system that we are attempting to predict. It challenges the way in which we evaluate models and emphasizes the importance of continuing to focus on observing and understanding processes and phenomena in the climate system. It is also a classic demonstration of the need for ensemble prediction systems on all time scales in order to sample the range of possible outcomes that even the real world could produce. Nothing is certain.’ http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1956/4751.full
Shorter term – it is the Pacific that was the dominant cause of recent warming and is the current source of restrained warming. Longer term – it is the ‘richness of the El Nino behaviour’ that dominated variability on the scale of the last 1000 years. By no means does it add up to zero on any scale. Natural variation dominates and we have by no means seen the limit of natural variability.
These are chaotic climate shifts – emergent behaviour – that will shift again unpredictably. That’s where any real risk emerges from.
Chief Hydrologist says:
“…the observations suggest intensification of the cool mode over the next decade or three…”
______
Simple extrapolation of previous “apparent” trends? Very unreliable as a predictor of actual future trends. Given that the Earth system of 2012 does not equal the Earth system of 1940 or any other recent year, it gets even more speculative. Best to go with known forcings, known climate dynamics, and laws of thermodynamics don’t ya think? These won’t get us the natural variability part (so you could be right in your cooling for a decade or three forecast, but wrong as to the reasons), but I’d rather go with science and math and physics than extrapolation of prior trends based on an Earth system that no longer exists.
Even the climate we have observed over the past century or so is only one realization of what the real system might produce…
It challenges the way in which we evaluate models and emphasizes the importance of continuing to focus on observing and understanding processes and phenomena in the climate system. op.cit
I would rather focus on ‘observing and understanding’. If you are content with simple radiative physics – it is not my problem but you miss out on all of the richness and complexity from which uncertainty emerges.
We are certainly, however, in a cool Pacific multi-decadal mode. This is not a prediction but an indisputable fact – as described in the NASA article. These last for 20 to 40 years in the proxy records. There are longer term variations as well with El Niño dominant periods around the modern period and the Medieval optimum – with La Niña dominant in the interim.
‘ENSO causes climate extremes across and beyond the Pacific Basin, however evidence of ENSO at high southern latitudes is generally restricted to the South Pacific and West Antarctica. Here we report a statistically significant link between ENSO and sea salt deposition during summer from the Law Dome (LD) ice core in East Antarctica. ENSO-related atmospheric anomalies from the central-western Equatorial Pacific (CWEP) propagate to the South Pacific and the circumpolar high latitudes. These anomalies modulate high latitude zonal winds, with El Niño (La Niña) conditions causing reduced (enhanced) zonal wind speeds and subsequently, reduced (enhanced) summer sea salt deposition at LD. Over the last 1010 years, the LD summer sea salt (LDSSS) record has exhibited two below average (El Niño-like) epochs, 1000-1260 AD and 1920-2009 AD, and a longer above average (La Niña-like) epoch from 1260-1860 AD. Spectral analysis shows the below average epochs are associated with enhanced ENSO-like variability around 2-5 years, while the above average epoch is associated more with variability around 6-7 years. The LDSSS record is also significantly correlated with annual rainfall in eastern mainland Australia. While the correlation displays decadal-scale variability similar to changes in the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO), the LDSSS record suggests rainfall in the modern instrumental era (1910-2009 AD) is below the long-term average. In addition, recent rainfall declines in some regions of eastern and south-eastern Australia appear to be mirrored by a downward trend in the LDSSS record, suggesting current rainfall regimes are unusual though not unknown over the last millennium.’ http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00003.1?journalCode=clim
Most recent warming – if we believe ERBE, ISCCP-FD and more recently CERES – was largely the result of cloud cover changes. This has been correlated with the IPO – Pacific wide changes that occur over many time scales. I much prefer data to speculation.
‘In summary, although there is independent evidence for decadal changes in TOA radiative fluxes over the last two decades, the evidence is equivocal. 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.’ IPCC 3.4.4.1
Although we have seen in the last hundred year the shifts adding to warming and alternatively subtracting from warming. It seems unlikely that this pattern will repeat. It seems more likely that – as we retreat from the 1000 year high in El Niño frequency and intensity – that the pattern could well be hiding the warming and then more hiding of the warming. It must be remembered that these shifts – spontaneous reorganisation of the system when climate is pushed past a tipping point – is chaotic and therefore in principle deterministic but incalculable.
‘Sensitive dependence and structural instability are humbling twin properties for chaotic dynamical systems, indicating limits about which kinds of questions are theoretically answerable. They echo other famous limitations on scientist’s expectations, namely the undecidability of some propositions within axiomatic mathematical systems (Gödel’s theorem) and the uncomputability of some algorithms due to excessive size of the calculation .’ McWilliams 2007, PNAS
R Gates.
Kool-Aid stuff. There are no known forcings since none have been demonstrated to exist, they are only speculative hypotheses incorporated into failed climate models.
The sun looks like it is indeed setting about delivering “natural variability” for the next few decades. We’ve been waiting for these so called ‘forcings’ for the best part of 30 years now, still no sign of them. They’d better hurry up because if solar “natural variability” is about to make life cold for the next 3 decades then we are going to need those mythical forcings soon. Where are they ?
R. Gates
It appears to me that there are two ways to “predict” future climate:
– one way is to study past climate and look for repetitive trends or cycles – and to project that these will repeat themselves, due to unknown or ill-defined cyclical drivers, such as changes in ocean currents, etc. (Girma’s approach); a variation of this approach is to study these cyclical factors in detail and see if it’s possible to define some sort of pattern in their behavior (Chief)
– a second way (the IPCC approach) is to take one theoretical aspect (greenhouse forcing) and build everything up around this one principal “climate control knob”, essentially ignoring other factors as “noise”, and project the changes in this one driver plus the resulting climate change.
The first approach tends to be primarily empirical while the second is primarily theoretical.
The first approach is derided by the theoreticians as simple “curve fitting”, because it does not provide a well-defined, plausible theoretical mechanism for the observed changes.
Yet it has become clear over the past 15 years that the second approach doesn’t work over decadal time periods, where the principal driver (human GHGs) have increased unabated to record levels, with projected temperature increase of 0.2C per decade, yet temperature has not changed.
[And it all looked so simple back in 1998, when the record heat could be blamed on AGW.]
Max
Max,
IPCC tries to estimate the strength and consequences of AGW because it’s task is to do that. It does it using results of climate science. It’s a total mischaracterization of climate science to imply that the real Earth system and the natural variability were not studied as those are almost the only thing that are being studied.
Chief Hydrologist says:
“Shorter term – it is the Pacific that was the dominant cause of recent warming and is the current source of restrained warming. Longer term – it is the ‘richness of the El Nino behaviour’ that dominated variability on the scale of the last 1000 years. By no means does it add up to zero on any scale. Natural variation dominates and we have by no means seen the limit of natural variability.”
_____
There is no doubt that ENSO is the source of a great deal of the short-term climate variability but thankfully, we do have the means to filter out this short term ENSO behavior and other natural variability and see what might be left. Also, on the longest time scale you want to postulate that ENSO is operating, it is a zero-sum game. There is no long-term forcing from ENSO behavior. Even in a period that favors El Ninos, we are simply see more energy leaving the ocean than during ENSO neutral or La Nina periods.But this is just stored solar energy that was already in the system anyway. Slowly accumulating greenhouse gases. building up over decades and centuries, gradually are restricting the rate of energy flowing from ocean to atmosphere and back to space. One would expect then to see a gradual accumulation of that energy both in the ocean and secondarily, in the atmosphere, though the atmospheric thermal storage and thermal inertia is quite puny compared to the oceans, so you’re going to get a lot more variability there.
Again it is quite evidently not true that ENSO doesn’t affect cloud cover. For instance. ‘El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the most important coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon to cause global climate variability on interannual time scales. Here we attempt to monitor ENSO by basing the Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) on the six main observed variables over the tropical Pacific. These six variables are: sea-level pressure (P), zonal (U) and meridional (V) components of the surface wind, sea surface temperature (S), surface air temperature (A), and total cloudiness fraction of the sky (C). ‘ http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/
Unless you incorporate this – it just doesn’t make sense.
Chief,
Did someone say ENSO did not affect cloud cover? Where was that stated? Certainly ENSO does affect cloud over and ENSO is affected by cloud cover. It is a two-way street. ENSO, the QBO and SSW events all seem to have a interaction that goes both ways and involve moving huge amounts of energy from ocean to atmosphere and eventually to space. The interplay of these three is one of energy accumulation, transport, and dissipation within the Earth system. The trillion dollar question is: What role does introducing an external forcing such as significantly altering atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases play in this QBO-ENSO-SSW dynamic?
Oh for God’s sake – if you are stating that ENSO doesn’t change the global energy budget the only conclusion is that clouds don’t change. Do you forget that I have had this conversation with you before? Cloud cover is anti-correlated with sea surface temperature. And as Andy Dessler said – no one is suggesting that clouds cause ENSO. ENSO is a phenomenon of upwelling cold water in the eastern and central Pacific. It means that the energy is in the other direction from what you suggest. Into the oceans in El Nino and out during La Nina.
The role of the Quasi-biennial oscillation and of sudden stratospheric warming are a side show. The QBO is about upwelling in the tropical regions, SSW upwelling in the Arctic and is certainly related to the Arctic Oscillation. All of these indices – including ENSO – are best seen as network nodes expressing aspects of the underlying dynamic system.
‘By analyzing a lagged covariance structure of a network of climate indices, this study details the AMO-signal propagation throughout the Northern Hemisphere via a sequence of atmospheric and lagged oceanic teleconnections, which the authors term the “stadium wave”. Initial changes in the North Atlantic temperature anomaly associated with AMO culminate in an oppositely signed hemispheric signal about 30 years later. Furthermore, shorter-term, interannual-to-interdecadal climate variability alters character according to polarity of the stadium-wave-induced prevailing hemispheric climate regime. Ongoing research suggests mutual interaction between shorter-term variability and the stadium wave, with indication of ensuing modifications of multidecadal variability within the Atlantic sector. Results presented here support the hypothesis that AMO plays a significant role in hemispheric and, by inference, global climate variability, with implications for climate-change attribution and prediction.’ http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/guest-post-atlantic-multidecadal-oscillation-and-northern-hemisphere%E2%80%99s-climate-variability-by-marcia-glaze-wyatt-sergey-kravtsov-and-anastasios-a-tsonis/
However – the albedo term and therefore the global energy budget is most clearly linked to the ENSO node. There was much idle speculation that global warming caused the “Great Pacific Climate Shift’ in 1976/77. The reality is that ENSO caused most of the recent warming through the albedo effect – at least that is the satellite data says. The turnaround since 1998 suggests that ENSO is driven by other factors predominantly. I have a theory involving the polar annular modes and flow in the Peruvian and Californian Currents.
Chief H20’ist said:
” It means that the energy is in the other direction from what you suggest. Into the oceans in El Nino and out during La Nina.”
and also said:
“The reality is that ENSO caused most of the recent warming through the albedo effect – at least that is the satellite data says.”
_____
Yes, we’ve had this conversation before and I continue to completely disagree with your assessments. ENSO causes warming in the troposphere because it releases more energy from the oceans to the troposphere then during ENSO neutral or La Nina conditions. A simply look at ocean heat content following the 1997-98 El Nino shows this quite readily. If it was about mainly the clouds, then we’d see ocean heat content increase during El Ninos. Finally, as is often the case at the end of an El Nino, the QBO turns easterly and combines then with a strong SSW and all that heat (that came originally out of the big ocean storage tank of energy, aka Western Pacific Warm Pool etc.) passes up through the stratosphere, into the mesosphere and out into space, thereby contributing to the entropy of this universe and slow but steady unwinding to it’s eventual heat death.
As an interesting feedback process from the SSW event, we see a sudden cooling in the tropical stratosphere as all this heat goes out the top of Arctic stratosphere and the an increase in convective activity along the equator, and the cycle begins again.
An intermediary step in this process that I left out is of course the role of the MJO in the advection of heat and moisture from the tropics northward and upward. We often see a significant MJO event as a “preconditioning” event to the SSW. This is often dubbed a “pineapple express” on the West Coast of the U.S. We saw one in early 2009, just a few weeks prior to the 2009 SSW event. This “pineapple express” MJO event was an express indeed, as this was energy that was eventually bound to leave the Earth system a few weeks later in the major SSW event that was strong enough to split the Arctic vortex, warming the Arctic and pouring very cold air down over Europe and N. America. So, for future reference, when you see a “pineapple express” develop over the U.S. West Coast in the winter, get ready for a very cold outbreak somewhere over the NH a few weeks later as that express is like an arrow aiming right toward the Arctic vortex. Neato, eh?
Again – here is the data – http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=Wong2006figure7.gif – both ERBS and ocean heat content from satellite altimetry. We do indeed see an increase in net radiation (all shortwave) in the 1998 El Niño and a increase in ocean heat content – followed by a decrease in net radiation and ocean heat content in the 1999/2000 La Niña. Well correlated indeed. The graph comes from here – http://www.image.ucar.edu/idag/Papers/Wong_ERBEreanalysis.pdf
Interesting as all these systems are – and the Madden-Julian oscillation is very quirky indeed – the energy pathways are extremely complex indeed as I keep saying and ultimately can only be accounted for at TOA.
To borrow a graph from Norman Loeb – http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=CERES_MODIS-1.gif – clouds seem to be a major player in the system.
Chief,
During the largest El Nino of the past 20 years—the 1997-98 event, Pacific Basin Ocean heat content as measured down to 700 meters was reduced by about 50%. This is of course an incredible amount, but all that heat was transferred nicely to the troposphere, making 1998 one of the top 3 warmest years on instrument record. But that’s not all, all that heat had to go somewhere, and in the winter of 1998-1999 we saw a very strong SSW event as the heat was transferred from troposphere to stratosphere to mesosphere and out into space.
You are just flat out wrong about your ENSO understanding of ocean heat content Chief. Please take a look at the actual data for the Pacific Basin here:
http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/yearly/h22-p0-700m.dat
And line it up with the ENSO graph over this period. El Nino’s are times when the oceans (especially the Pacific) release more heat than they do during ENSO neutral or La Nina periods. There is no way around this basic physical fact. That’s why the troposphere warms, and that’s why during the winter following a large El Nino period (like the winter of 1998-99 following the 97-98 El Nino, or the winter of 2003-2004 following the 2002-2003 El Nino) we get a sizable SSW event. That energy went from ocean to atmosphere (El Nino) and then to space (SSW event).
Willis et al. (2004) provides new estimates of annual global ocean heat storage for 1992–2002 using a combination of improved in situ temperature profile sampling and constraints on thermal expansion from satellite global ocean altimeter observations. The major advantage of this dataset over previous ocean estimates is the use of global altimeter data to supplement sparse in situ sampling in the Southern Hemisphere oceans. On a global annual scale, the change in TOA net radiation and ocean heat storage should be in phase and of the same magnitude. This is due to the fact that all other forms of heat storage in the earth system are factors of 10 or more smaller than ocean heat storage (Levitus et al. 2001). Previous ocean heat storage datasets required 5- to 10-yr averages to reduce sampling errors. The Willis et al. (2004) analysis demonstrated a sampling error of 0.4 W m2 (1) for global annual ocean heat storage. Figure 7 gives a direct interannual comparison of these new ocean heat storage data from 1993 to 2003 against those from the 12-month running mean ERBE/ERBS Nonscanner WFOV Edition3_Rev1 and
CERES/Terra Scanner ES4 Edition2_Rev1 net flux anomalies. The CERES/Terra Scanner results are global and the ERBE/ERBS Nonscanner WFOV results cover 60°N to 60°S (or 87% of the earth’s surface). The net flux anomalies are calculated with respect to the 1985–89 period. They are basically deseasonalized anomalies similar to those shown in previous figures. A 12-month running mean filter has been applied to the TOA radiation data to reduce the temporal sampling noise and to match up directly with the corresponding time scale of the ocean storage data.’
http://www.image.ucar.edu/idag/Papers/Wong_ERBEreanalysis.pdf
You should look more closely at sea level rise,
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=sealevel.png
R. Gates ref. SSW Events
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056438481
There is a German site that has a lot of information that these guys use plus quite a few other links. Caution though! They are weather geeks.
PDO magnitude: 0.2 deg C
Long-term average: zero
Importance to climate change: none
Aye, there’s the rub … if not the nub and/or the hub!
For all the gazillions that have been expended on so-called “climate research” in the past twenty years, I have yet to see any verifiable empirical evidence (as opposed to computer-generated outputs) that human-generated CO2 is the PRIMARY CAUSE of whatever global warming, aka climate change, might (or might not) be occurring.
It’s not inconceivable that Obama may be as much a victim of the “brainwashing” – conducted by, for example, the far from impartial BBC – as John and/or Jane Q. Public.
In fact, I’d be willing to bet that if anyone ever asked Obama (or any other green-growther celebrity-activist) what percentage of GHGs (let alone the earth’s atmosphere) is comprised of human-generated CO2, his answer would be quite similar to the response I receive when I pose the question to those in my social circle who challenge my arguments with the all too familiar trope of “oh, but all those ‘expert’ scientists can’t be wrong”. Their answer is, invariably, “I haven’t a clue”.
There is a gnawing uncomfortable feeling I have that the great fiscal precipice looming after December 31st could result in a decrease in GNP of 4%, accompanied by a recession, a double dip recession. Going over that cliff may mean money for a green agenda will disappear over that cliff as well. Congress knows that defense budgets will require shoring up; entitlement spending will be downsized, and government will get smaller.
I don’t advocate playing out this scenario as the uncertainty of our recovery from a second recession is likely to usher in significant social changes, subject to the escalating screeches of ever more radical voices.
We have a fresh example of extremism fostering fatalism: a strike which ended in liquidation of Hostess Industries. Loss of 18,000 jobs even though the work force was only 1/3 unionized. The nays carried the day. What will 18,000 people do after their jobless benefits run out? How many other ailing industries will be struck and choose to fail? Hostess did not have the time or resources to be refreshed and made anew. Rather, as an already crippled company, in the face of a strike, management bailed.
After the cliff, windmills will be un-subsidized and solar energy will become just a reflection of wishful thinking. Righty that these testaments to environmentalism’s intransigence will be abandoned. But what happens to new energy technologies? There will be no money for R&D for them. And, as the Germans have gone back to coal from their windmill and nuclear past, we will go back to coal fired energy as the cheapest, and only energy we can afford. We would be mired in 2013 for 50 years.
Borrowing money from China to fund environmentalism or anything else will not be possible. Borrowing money from anyone will be dubious since the rates will be extortionist.
Not going over the fiscal cliff seems warranted even if Obama keeps Lisa Jackson in EPA. Or, as a bone to toss to the Republicans to raise taxes, Obama can always throw Lisa Jackson and the EPA’s endangerment finding under the bus.
Did I just read something in the recent news that politics can make new & strange bedfellows?
RiHo08
Look for the POTUSA to become the “oil shale boom king” (extracting enough from the operators to balance the budget and fund pet projects / reward supporters along the way, as some howling “greenies” are tossed under the bus).
“Drill, baby, drill!”
Max
RiHo08,
Good comment. An interesting comment by Professor Judith Sloan arguing a similar point of view appeared in yesterday’s The Weekend Australian. It’s behind a paywall so I’ll extract some.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/cliff-hangers-go-jump-lets-talk-about-discretionary-spend/story-e6frg6zo-1226517934753
RiHo08, I agree the wind and solar subsidies and all the green schemes have to go. The sooner the better. It seems the UK is leading the way in starting to recognise what an enormous waste of money they are. They are making the political case to disband them on the basis of the energy poverty they are already causing. It will get much worse.
RiHo08 an FYI, you might want to indulge in a little more info gathering re: the Hostess Liquidation; I can recommend this article on ZH for starters:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-16/hostess-liquidation-curious-cast-characters-twinkie-tumbles
Note particularly what *has* been tried in the way of financing and union givebacks and the recent ‘stiffening’ of the union when it came to negotiations.
I also take exception to the claim of being 1/3 unionized; this does not in fact seem to be the case …
_Jim
Jim
Thank you for the link as the Hostess bankruptcy tale is convoluted.
Key words that I took home have a familiar ring: Teamsters; unfunded pension liabilities; emerging from an earlier bankruptcy with a higher cost structure; so called vulture capital firms holding secured debt, and of course I was wrong: 18,500 lost jobs not 18,000. And the strike? Straw, camel’s back and all that.
I think the summary statement from the article says much:
“Sadly, in many ways Hostess is now indicative of that just as insolvent larger corporation, the USA, whose insurmountable balance sheet liabilities will be the eventual catalyst for its collapse, but only once the Income Statement and the Cash Flow sheet join in. For now, the Fed provides the flow needed to avoid the day of reckoning, but everything ends eventually.”
Again, thank you for the link. Strangely, I found the article confirming what I had previously said. You apparently saw it differently.
RiH008, ““Sadly, in many ways Hostess is now indicative of that just as insolvent larger corporation, the USA, whose insurmountable balance sheet liabilities will be the eventual catalyst for its collapse, but only once the Income Statement and the Cash Flow sheet join in. For now, the Fed provides the flow needed to avoid the day of reckoning, but everything ends eventually.”
True. The second wave of short sales just started down here. 60 cents on the dollar value so someone is eating 40. Wonder who dat is?
Very interesting collection of weekly climate related subjects once again, and thank heavens President Obama understands that there is a problem. I agree strongly with the Science Christians Monitor article – we need to start adapting our environment, instead of the continuation of building and developing areas subject to changing elements, and the IPCC recommendation to include a skeptical view seems very wise. Unfortunately we will need to spend large amounts of time and money adapting our environment and communities, and we are not sure how much time we have. Whether the temperature is rising or not, measurable CO2 is steadily rising and I believe those who say the red line is around 450 ppm. A lot of work for both lay and scientists ahead, lets try and get a better consensus of what needs to be done. Also I’ve been watching an interesting program called Arctic with Bruce Parry which makes me understand some of the gravity of the problem. Interesting enough in small opinion poll in my country (New Zealand) opinion seems fairly divided 37% think we can do more : 36% don’t believe there is any problem, the rest don’t care certainly a work of work needed to unite public opinion, which I think is very important. I think as important to get a group spirit on tackling this as much as it was in WWII..Thanks for the opportunity to unload my opinion.
ConcernedBob
By then temperatures will be heading down, unhappily for the co2 climate alarmists who thought the sun had no effect on climate. As the sun is heading for one of it’s regular-ish 200 year slow downs, temperatures can only go down, the problem is temperatures may go down to levels last seen when the river Thames in London froze.
So I suggest you change your handle to
‘No longer concerned about co2 Bob’.
For the sake of my descendants I hope you are right and all those other distinguished people are wrong, but I am not prepared to bet and risk the lives of my future descendents on it.
As mentioned by other posters here, Professor Murray Salby of some Australian University has done the most extensive analysis of natural and anthropogenic co2 so far and has concluded that mankind is only responsible for 4% of the increase in co2 levels.
This would mean that concern about mankind’s co2 emissions is misplaced to say the least. It also means that it is pointless destroying our economies in order to attempt to reduce our emissions as any effect will be immeasurable.
Adaptation is the only sensible solution. The world didn’t self destruct when it was warm enough for the Romans to grow grapes as far North as Hadrian’s Wall, something we still cannot do today despite the trumpeted warming.
If one wanted to reduce co2 emissions regardless then building windmills is about the least effective solution imaginable. Putting resources into other more down to earth projects such as heat pumps would produce a a far greater reduction in co2 for a much lower cost.
Some subtle changes to legislation may also be useful, in the UK company car tax legislation actually discourages the take up of fuel efficient cars. It is actually cheaper for me to have a thirsty company car than a state of the art fuel efficient car. A ridiculous state of affairs.
Research into better insulation for homes and businesses would also be worthwhile, where there is and will be before long a pressing need for retrofit technologies that will allow people to stay warm in their own homes without having to choose between warmth and food, an experience all too many pensioners in the UK are already familiar with and one which is set to get worse.
We only need to worry about co2 if it turns out that it in fact causes or aids cooling, which may in fact be the case.
The conclusion of Professor Murray Salby is very strongly disputed, I suspect you want to believe him and not the equally eminent climatologists who dispute him. For myself I do not want to bet… I remain concerned
J Martin,
You seem to have swallowed the pill that makes you assume that the LIA was primarily caused by a sleepy sun. Might want to rethink that. Here’s some things to help counter the effects of that pill:
http://www.livescience.com/18205-ice-age-volcanoes-sea-ice.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16797075
http://news.discovery.com/earth/volcanoes-erupted-little-ice-age-120203.html
Now I know it is the accepted meme of the CNGC group to believe some combination of a sleepy sun, cool phase of the PDO, a new cool AMO, slowing down of the THC, etc. is going to launch the Earth into a period as cold, if not colder than the LIA, and that CO2 (that minor trace gas), despite being 40% greater in concentration that during the actual LIA, will have no consequence. But as pointed out in my last post to you, it will take something bigger…like a major volcanic eruption or series of them to provide any real negative forcing to counter the effects of increasing GHG’s. These other things (some of which probably show a response to increased volcanic activity) are just not going to get us into this Catastrophic Natural Global Cooling that you and others are so fond of holding on to.
I think Landscheidt got it right back in 1983 unlike Hansen. Volcanic activity increases at times of low solar activity, there is a graph somewhere, I had a quick look but couldn’t find it. So it would seem that whatever magnetic / gravitational effect or other effect that causes solar slowdowns also increases volcanic and earthquake activity.
Thus it may indirectly via, largely the sun, though perhaps with a little help from an occasional volcano or through processes not yet understood eg. magnetism act to cause significant temperature drops that DO tie up with graphs of TSI and sunspots regardless of the fact that warmists cannot understand the mechanism.
The fact that warmists cannot understand the mechanism or make the figures add up does not invalidate the fact that the LIA took place as did the Dalton minimum which you are no doubt going to tell me was also caused by volcanoes.
Thanks for the link to the worthless and absurdly biased website of the BBC which had an article by Michael Mann’s lost twin Richard Black. You don’t seriously expect anyone to listen to a word he says do you ?
J Martin,
Seems you are wanting to find a theory that explains it all, rather than looking at the complexity of the system and realizing that multiple forcings go into the making up the climate system. This is the same as trying to put percentages on the attribution of singular events (30% of Sandy caused by global warming, 50% of sea ice decline cause by global warming,etc.) Best to take a wholistic approach and understand that the LIA (which had global effects but was most severe in the NH) may not have occurred to the severity or length it did (it was actually more spotty than some might realize, except for Tony). if it were not for the large volcanic eruptions that got the whole party going. Did a quiet sun help? Probably. And changes to the AMO, etc. Possibly. But what is probably wrong to do is try and put all your eggs in one basket and look to one single magical cause of climate. Climate is the sum of all forcings, working in combination with all associated feedbacks and interconnections. A one cause fits all magical model (i.e. Landscheidt) just doesn’t work.
Joshua, you say “Or then again, maybe the ideology that 47% of Americans are moochers turned out not to be an ideology that most Americans support. ” Might that be you, Joshua. I wonder how or who pays you Joshua. Are you a moocher, Joshua? Are you paid by taxpayers, Joshua? Your a classic blogoholoic. No person in the private sector has the time you do to bloviate all day and night.
Dang. You figure me out, Bob. Yes, I’m getting paid (with taxpayer’s money) to post comments at this blog. Quite handsomely, too, I might at. You should know that each time I get folks like you to post wacky theories, I get a bonus. You are exactly the type of folks my employers want to get the most riled up.
Joshua, I posted no theory, lest of not a wacky one. I think it is time for you to be audited. You’re a taker, most definitely not a maker.
makers include makers of Twinkies. Takers include members of our Armed Forces. Which are more valuable? Hard to generalize, isn’t it?
Bob – Whatever you’d like to call it, bob; it looks like a theory to me, but regardless your speculation and questions about whether I’m getting paid to post here are increasing my take. Please continue. My employers are loving it and the extra money for me certainly helps out.
And Bob – the majority of the 47% are working poor, elderly, and disabled. Calling them moochers is not only inaccurate, it is also bad electoral strategy as well as classless. And bob – there are plenty of blogoholics in these here parts – do you think they are also on the taxpayers’ dime, or is it just me?
Might I suggest that you get together with Peter Lang? – Between your theories about me getting paid by the government to post here, and his theories about how his posts caused Judith’s blog to be shut down temporarily, there is a great deal of imaginative creativity. There’s no end to what you two might accomplish if you combined your efforts.
“makers include makers of Twinkies. Takers include members of our Armed Forces. Which are more valuable? Hard to generalize, isn’t it?”
So is Joshua a marine?
Never liked Twinkies, much. But if military expenses were so high as make Twinkies bankrupt, then I think have cut military expenses.
But as it is:
“During FY 2011, the federal government spent $3.60 trillion on a budget or cash basis, up 4% vs. FY 2010 spending of $3.46 trillion and up 20% versus FY2008 spend of $2.97 trillion. Major categories of FY 2011 spending included: Medicare & Medicaid ($835B or 24%), Social Security ($725B or 20%), Defense Department ($700B or 19%), non-defense discretionary ($646B or 19%), other ($465B or 12%) and interest ($227B or 6%). ”
So 3.6 divided by .7 trillion is 1/5th of federal government expenses.
So if military expenses were 4 or 5 times higher than than what they are, then they would be moochers.
Social Security is interesting. The people on Social Security probably paid in more money than they will get. But with private pension [or even well managed public pensions] the money you pay in is invested in profitable activity. With Social security the money was “invested” in government activity. This sort of like “investing” in alcohol or heroin.
My point was about this false divide ‘maker – good’ versus ‘taker – bad’. Takers include teachers, police, firemen, charitable organizations including religious ones, etc. The divide is not well thought through, although it sounds clever to free-marketeers.
“My point was about this false divide ‘maker – good’ versus ‘taker – bad’. Takers include teachers, police, firemen, charitable organizations including religious ones, etc. The divide is not well thought through, although it sounds clever to free-marketeers.”
I think if a National church took 1/4 of a Nation’s GDP- it would be very bad.
And of course teachers, police, and fireman are at the state level, and one thing about state government is they can only spend the money they get from state’s tax payers, unlike Federal government which can run up a 16 trillion debt.
Of course one sound reason we want a federal able to run up a debt, is because wars can be costly and something one can’t really plan for.
But federal debt, contrary to the propaganda, was not due to military spending.
Interesting distinction, so Medicare and Social Security recipients are bad because they are federal, but Medicaid and welfare recipients would be good because they are state?
Interesting distinction, so Medicare and Social Security recipients are bad because they are federal, but Medicaid and welfare recipients would be good because they are state?”
All government is bad.
Reasonable people realize a government is necessary.
A government must accountable or becomes worse than bad.
State government is more accountable.
State government in some aspects can be in some ways worse than the Federal, but at least a State government is more accountable.
And a State can become bankrupt, and there isn’t much in terms of serious global consequences.
When the federal government become bankrupt, many people outside the US will suffer- it has global impact in addition to national impacts.
If US wants lead in maintaining global order, this desire comes with responsibilities.
Jim D
There is a not-so-subtle difference between those who work for the state in some value-added function, such as teachers, firemen, police, municipal administration, etc. and those who are simply “taking” from the state because of their “need”.
The first category are not really “takers”.
The second category are.
Admittedly, there are many among the “takers” who have a physical or mental disability, and are hence unable to “add value” to society by “working” – and the majority of voters in our representative democratic society believe that these people should be helped.
If the “help” starts to cover those who are able to “work”, but simply choose not to do so, then it is being mis-spent.
Max
Anonymous coward vs. anonymous coward. Ain’t that cute?
Montford’s Hiding the Decline, A history of the Climategate affair, is now available in the US on Amazon.com.
Dr. Curry, could you give us a review?
I have read it, a review will come soon, but I have a lead in post i need to do first. hopefully i will get to this before AGU, but it might be the xmas break before I get to this.
Joshua, again no theory. Also, never heard of Lang. I worked 40 years in the private sector. It is liberating, Joshua. You’d be surprised at your potential once your separate from the government’s nipple. You would not have the time to post thousands of gobbled y gook comments. Your life might just become productive. Seriously, try it.
Bob –
Here you go. See if he would be interested in collaborating. If you and he do decide to combine efforts, please be sure to let me know. I’d actually pay the two of you if you’d agree to work together. The entertainment value would be off da’ charts.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/11/14/policy-rhetoric-and-public-bewilderment/#comment-267912
This really does need to be repeated for emphasis:
Oh. My freakin’ sides. That post is absolutely hilarious!
Will we ever know????!!!!????!!!!
You divert again. Hopeless I’d say. As Paul Harvey said, Gud Night
I think the real diverter here is yourself
Really? You’d pay them? How would you do that without revealing your cowardly real world name?
(Be brave, be persuasive, be arrested!)
Hmm …
Modellers in cloud towers
Whiling away the tenured hours,
Tend ter fergit, models jest ain’t
Reality.
Silk -shirted coteries in the whispery corridors
Of power, do not concern themselves
With uncertainty in science, their mission is
Consensus.
A call ter action.Time ter bid the modellers
Enter the political fray as advocates.
Cloud tower join the corridors of power!
Make the proletariat sit up, take notice and
Obey.
So during campaigning Obama keeps quiet about his climate alarmism, but immediately in office he brings it out. What a sneak. Par for the alarmist cause I guess.
Tomas Milanovic would have you believe that if the sun’s output radiation level were to double over time, the earth’s climate would still be at the mercy of chaotic dynamics and we could not detect the shift in warming caused by the increase in input forcing.
Experienced physicists know how to construct very similar “thought experiments” to puncture and therefore deflate weak arguments.
Milanovic has no comeback to this except to say the forcing is hypothetical. But if he says this, he cannot defend his chaos argument. He is in what we refer to a logical trick box.
It also explains why he only rarely comments here. It’s not good for his credibility to spout such easily refutable theories. Contrast this to Chief, who has the same argument, but has no credibility to lose, as he didn’t have any to start with. webnutcolonoscope
A logical trick box aye? Hmmmm. Idiot comment of the month let alone week – perhaps even decade. I know – the most idiotic comment this millennia. There is so much wrong that I can only think to start at the last. As I have said before to him – someone with a tag fashioned after Cecil Terwillerger is aiming more for wit than authority.
Obviously if the sun’s output doubled the sunburn as you collected the paper in the morning would be a dead giveaway and we would have to turn up the airconditioning quite a bit. Dynamical complexity – the physics theory that in complex and dynamic systems a small change in control variables destabilises the system feeding through multiple negative and positive feedbacks in sub-systems spontaneously reorganising itself into a new configuration – is totally immaterial because your arse just caught fire.
As thought experiments go it is perhaps less thought and more experiment. I suggest next time he try this brain freeze experiment – http://theusualmayhem.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/brain-freeze-very-scientific-experiment.html – to unfreeze his brain. Does that come from living in Minnisota?
Evidently I am wrong. There is nothing I can say about hypothetical forcings without ending up in a logical trick box. Not sure what that is but it sounds a terrible fate. Let’s try it as a thought experiment. The forcing equivalent to several hundred Watts per metre squared at the surface is hypothetical therefore I can’t defend dynamical complexity. Wait for it. Nothing yet. Is that Edward Lorenz and Rene Thom turning over in their graves? Do you think he means a logical paradox?
‘Søren Kierkegaard, for example, writes, in the Philosophical Fragments, that one must not think ill of the paradox, for the paradox is the passion of thought, and the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion: a mediocre fellow. But the ultimate potentiation of every passion is always to will its own downfall, and so it is also the ultimate passion of the understanding to will the collision, although in one way or another the collision must become its downfall. This, then, is the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.’
That sounds more likely. Webby has discovered something thought itself cannot think. The forcing is hypothetical therefore I cannot defend dynamical complexity. Very deep. A Kierkegaardian Paradox. I admit defeat.
Actually the sun has been growing steadily stronger to the tune of 30% over the earth’s history and for the past 4 million years we’re in an ice age thank you very much. Perhaps webnutcolonoscope or Big Butted Dipstick can explain how that happened.
Funny that David Springer needs help explaining this, as it is the explanation that Springer has always relied on.
He thinks that all of nature is explainable by invoking the principle of Intelligent Design.
Thanks to whoever pointed this out some months ago.
David Springer said:
“Actually the sun has been growing steadily stronger to the tune of 30% over the earth’s history and for the past 4 million years we’re in an ice age thank you very much.”
_____
And of course, we have far less CO2 in the atmosphere than we did when the sun was weaker and the continents are in a different location…but other than that, it’s exactly the same planet!
David Springer
Exactly as R. Gates says. For a more detailed examination of the effect of CO2 forcing on the last 65Ma of climate see Hansen & Sato (2012):
And David, can you please try to convey your intellectual contempt for me with more wit and invention? Even Monkeys can screech, jump up and down and throw their own excrement at the object of their disapproval. I expect better from you. Let’s see some style, FFS.
@British Bollocks Dispenser and Unskeptical Warmist,
Oh thanks. I wasn’t aware the faint young sun paradox had been solved by Hansen and was now settled science.
BTW BBD, the sun hasn’t increased its output very much in 65my. It’s increased 30% over its lifetime of 4 billion years. 65my represents less than 1% of its lifetime, imbecile.
You are so stupid talking to you is pointless.
He and Chief and others like them continue to think that the fluids surrounding us will completely obscure the energy balance. No they won’t. We all know that every time the sun goes down at night. It gets cold because we lack the radiative warmth of the sun’s direct rays … and whatever warmth is retained at night is modulated by the average humidity of the air, which will reduce the mean path of the outward radiating infrared. This essentially traps the warmth temporarily.
Chief hates hypothetical thought experiments as well so I will bring this up again. What would happen if the sun’s average solar radiation increased by 1%? Would we need detailed meshed models of the atmosphere and ocean to figure out what the first-order response to this stimulus would be?
A professor could place that as a question on a final exam and if you didn’t answer it with some good physical or engineering judgment you might actually flunk the course. I bet that David Young would write in the margin refusing to answer the question, blaming numerical limitations of climate algorithms, and Chief would just quote Tsonis and tell the professor that he was a Space Cadet.
Down to 1% now? The answer to the previous question was bend over, put your head between your legs and kiss your arse goodbye.
The answer to this 1% is probably a bit more subtle. It probably does about half of that in a solar cycle. There are of course many changes that propagate through the system – and there is every expectation that the system response will not be linear ‘first order’ responses. It is absurd to expect it to be. If we are talking about energy balances – these changes progagating through the system influence the albedo term.
‘Since then, by itself increasing CO2 concentrations of roughly 20ppm should have further added roughly 0.2 Wm2 to this top-of-the-atmosphere excess of absorption over emission. Assuming a mixed layer ocean depth of 200 m, an anomaly of roughly 1 Wm2 should in principle have been sufficient to drive roughly a 0.2C increase in global temperature since 2001/02. That such warming has not occurred suggests an internal reorganization of the climate system has offset this presumptive radiative imbalance, either via an anomalously large uptake of heat by the deep ocean or a direct offset of the greenhouse gas forcing by a shift in cloud forcing.’ S&T 09 – Has the climate recently shifted?
The guy is a cult of AGW groupthink space cadet who can’t even get the groupthink right.
The change in a solar cycle is less than 0.1%, but is noticeable with rises and falls in temperature. Multiply this by ten and you might have some idea of the response to a 1% increase in solar energy.
It is a hypothetical forcing. Whether it is double, 1% and 0.1% makes absolutely no difference. Hypothetically do we know what cloud will do? Hypothetically do we know other changes will propagate through the system. The system is nonlinear and thermodynamically nonequilibrium. Yes we need a supercomputer to analyse the complex physics – and even then it can only be done probabalistically.
‘Since then, by itself increasing CO2 concentrations of roughly 20ppm should have further added roughly 0.2 Wm2 to this top-of-the-atmosphere excess of absorption over emission. Assuming a mixed layer ocean depth of 200 m, an anomaly of roughly 1 Wm2 should in principle have been sufficient to drive roughly a 0.2C increase in global temperature since 2001/02. That such warming has not occurred suggests an internal reorganization of the climate system has offset this presumptive radiative imbalance, either via an anomalously large uptake of heat by the deep ocean or a direct offset of the greenhouse gas forcing by a shift in cloud forcing.’ Tsonis et al 2007 – A new dynamical mechanisms for major climate shifts
There is no likelihood of a believable simplification of the system emerging any time soon. Thinking in linear terms in a nonlinear universe will be misleading.
The solar cycle is not hypothetical. It is measurable, and its effects are observable. This gives us a nice lab to understand forcing changes every 11 years.
I realized only recently how well the solar variability can be used to get an estimate for transient climate response for a time scale of a few years. Based on Lean and Rind (GRL 2008) I estimated the TCR as 2 – 2.2 K.
Then I started to search information on similar earlier analysis and was surprised that the idea had not been discussed more widely. Finally I found the paper of Tung, Zhou and Camp Constraining model transient climate response using independent observations of solar-cycle forcing and response GRL, VOL. 35, L17707, doi:10.1029/2008GL034240, 2008.
They get a little higher estimate 2.5 K based on use of more regional data. They argue for some further factors that might raise the value to 3.6 K. (I do still like my own simple estimate.)
While Foster and Rahmstorf do not study a long enough period to reach the same accuracy for the coefficient as Lean and Rind, their paper provides some additional information. In particular their Figure 3 tells that the warming appears to be some 30% stronger for the Northern hemisphere than for the global temperature. That may tell about the influence of oceans in making the short term TCR significantly less than TCR would be over longer periods.
Yes, we have to realize that this TCS estimate is reduced by the full cycle being 11 years. A steady forcing like CO2 would be more effective by not having to reverse its deeper effect every cycle.
The websters hypothetical increase is what we were talking about. But at any rate linear thinking is not viable in principle. Lean and Rind used multiple linear regression and I quite like the approach. Still it all falls apart if the TOA flux is what the satellite records show it to be. Colour me skeptical.
Jim D
True.
But we cannot yet quantify (or even identify) all the mechanisms by which the sun affects our climate. So far we can only measure direct solar irradiance, which is arguably only a relatively small part of the total solar influence.
IPCC mentions a few of these in AR4 WG1 Ch.2, but concedes that its “level of scientific understanding of solar forcing is low”.
According to NASA, “Solar Cycle 24 is expected to have a below-average number of sunspots, the lowest of any cycle since 1928.”
http://www.lunarplanner.com/SolarCycles.html
What impact this is having or will have on our climate is unclear.
I have seen studies postulating a solar connection with PDO, ENSO, etc., but these appear inconclusive.
The work at CERN may shed some new light on one possible solar mechanism, but IMO there should be more effort on identifying and quantifying mechanisms by which the sun influences our climate.
Max
I should perhaps add that solar forcing differs from GHG forcing as it’s influence is stronger at low latitudes and weak at high latitudes. It’s diurnal variation is also different and there are certainly other differences as well. Even so I would expect the overall strength of the forcing to be the dominant factor.
The skeptics should be encouraged that the measured solar forcing effects lead to similar sensitivities as those hypothesized for CO2 forcing. This might reduce their doubts and ideas of mysterious negative feedbacks coming into play.
Pekka, “In particular their Figure 3 tells that the warming appears to be some 30% stronger for the Northern hemisphere than for the global temperature. That may tell about the influence of oceans in making the short term TCR significantly less than TCR would be over longer periods.”
More likely land/ land use amplification. If you look at regional, 44-64S has a trend of 0.7C per centrury from 1900 and 0.00C from 1980. That band of course has very little land area. If you back out the long term 0.7C per century you end up with the 0.8 to 1.6 range of “sensitivity” that seems to be growing more common. The real question is if that 0.7 is a long term natural variability or not. With the 1980 to 2011 trend being zero in 44-64S, natural looks pretty likely.
To those who want to reduce CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, you have no control over it. It is a function of El Nino and La Nina.
Look at the correlation of annual change in CO2 concentration to El Nino and La Nina => http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/compress:12/normalise/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979.3/compress:12/derivative/normalise
During the warm PDO phase, the warming due El Nino is generally greater than the cooling due to La Nina. As a result, during the warm PDO phase, the global mean temperature has a warming trend. This warming trend results in increase in CO2 concentration.
During the cool PDO phase, the warming due El Nino is generally less than the cooling due to La Nina. As a result, during the cool PDO phase, the global mean temperature has a cooling trend. This cooling trend results in decrease in CO2 concentration.
Based on the above data, trying to reduce CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is a fool’s errand.
If what you claim is true, there was no medieval warm period
http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/images/lawdome.GIF
The CO2 in your chart is higher during ~1100 to 1550 AD. If you compare with the Neukom et al. 2010 southern South American reconstruction,
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-RFqDb3MWL1M/UIrhKS_7fBI/AAAAAAAAFRk/W4LL3HhW-a4/s863/Southern%2520Ocean%2520Oscillation.png
The period around the MWP was generally warmer than 1400 to 1900 AD. It appears climate tends to wander around a tad.
Temperatures are currently the warmest they’ve been for over 400,000 years *
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/CO2_history_1024.jpg
*according to Girma
Girma’s attempt to connect CO2 solely to instrumental temperature is a waste of time, since it is TIME that has to be considered. If you compare the chart you posted with the chart I posted, CO2 lagged temperature by about 200 years between SSA and the Law Dome on the down side. It takes time for a large dynamic system to settle.
lolwot
I prefer the following CO2 & Temperature record
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/paleoclimate
Any way, the paleo data is not that precise.
Again that data shows no medieval warm period
lolwot
The CO2 and temperature data are for Antarctica (Vostock ice core) over the past 450,000 years. If you look closely, you’ll see that they do show the MWP, Roman Optimum, etc. as “squiggles” in the curve
But for a better source of data on the MWP in Antarctica (Amery Ice Shelf, East Antarctica) see:
Hemer, M.A. and Harris, P.T
http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/31/2/127.abstract
.
Max
lolwot
As Girma says, “the paleo data is not that precise.”
He’s right. In fact, the subjective interpretation of dicey paleo proxy data from carefully selected time periods of our planet’s geological past is questionable to start with.
When it is used to demonstrate attribution of climate change to CO2 (or any other forcing), or to claim that the current warming is unusual, this is not much better than reading tea leaves.
Max
Manacker if you believe CO2 level is controlled by temperature not man then you believe there was no MWP:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/co2_10000_years.gif
lolwot
Back to paleo data.
One source, which is much more reliable than paleo stuff, is actual physical evidence.
There’s not much of this in Antarctica, but the Alpine glaciers tell us quite a bit about past warm periods.
Carbon-dated remains of ancient trees that are recovered far above the present tree line under receding glaciers tell us that it was warmer during earlier periods, such as the MWP or Roman Optimum.
Some examples:
Schlüchter et al. 2004 (Switzerland)
http://alpen.sac-cas.ch/de/archiv/2004/200406/ad_2004_06_12.pdf
[MWP and other earlier periods warmer than today, but no temperature estimate given.]
Patzelt 2009 (Austria)
http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/uploads/media/Patzelt_01.pdf
[MWP ~900 AD slightly warmer than today, earlier periods even warmer.]
I would not categorize these studies as “paleo data”, but rather “physical evidence”. Then there is a “paleo” study that confirms what the physical evidence shows:
Larocque-Tobler et al. 2010 (Switzerland)
http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Publication/41052746/thousand-years-of-climate-change-reconstructed-from-chironomid-subfossils-preserved-in-varved-lake
[mean July air temperatures were 1°C warmer than the climate reference period (1961-1990)]
Max
Well the data shows current temperatures are far higher than Medieval temperatures
This is based on the principle established by several serious climate skeptic posters here that CO2 levels are directly caused by temperature levels and man hasn’t significantly affected CO2 level recently.
lolwot
You write:
– I believe the evidence shows that (atmospheric) CO2 is “controlled” by several things, including “temperature” (IPCC calls this the “climate-carbon cycle feedback”). Humans also play a role today, but the measurements show us that there is also something else at work (oceans, plants, biosphere?)..
– I also believe the evidence shows that there was a global MWP, which was slightly warmer than today’s temperature.
These two things are not mutually exclusive, as you seem to believe.
Please explain.
Max
lolwot
The graph you just posted doesn’t even show temperature.
Duh!
Max
It does according to Girma and Lauri Heimonen and various other skeptics.
Girma incorrectly said:
“To those who want to reduce CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, you have no control over it. It is a function of El Nino and La Nina.”
_____
Complete fail Girma. Where do you go to dig up such tripe?!
Steady Eddie
Not to put an edge on it, but BBD could also mean:
Blindly Believing Dumbbell
where “dumbbell” refers to the second meaning:
dumb·bell [duhm-bel]
noun
1.
a gymnastic apparatus consisting of two wooden or metal balls connected by a short bar serving as a handle, used as a weight for exercising.
2.
a stupid person.
But maybe “BBD” will tell us what it really stands for?
Max
Then there’s:
Bring Back Dystopia
dys•to•pi•a
noun
A place or state in which the condition of life is extremely bad, as from deprivation, oppression, or terror.
Grow up, Max. This sort of sniggering together behind the bike sheds should be beneath us all. It makes you look *dreadful*.
BBD: They are just meeting you on your level.
And you are down there with the children too I see. Not very clever, David.
Not clever, just true.
BBD | Grow up, Max. This sort of sniggering [Bring Back Distopia] together behind the bike sheds should be beneath us all. It makes you look *dreadful*.
Yes, naughty naughty Max – don’t you know left-wing ideologues have no place or time for humour. Especially when reminded of what they really stand for.
Auf Deutsch
Böser Bekloppter Dummkopf
“Angry, crazy doofus”
Or does he just ACT that way?
> But maybe “BBD” will tell us what it really stands for?
British Bull Dog:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davey_Boy_Smith
no it’s Blah Blah Duh, the scientific equivalent of a Valley Girl
A Valley Girl who has shown you up *twice* for the nonsense-spouting crank that you are, capn. And don’t you forget it ;-)
nonsense, you point out what is a minor error considering the point of the conversation and think you have accomplished something meaningful. OH uptake and discharge is nowhere near as simple as you believe.
A minor error? Stating that there was no permanent Antarctic ice prior to 800ka is not a minor error. It is categorical evidence that the speaker hasn’t got a clue what they are talking about.
Presenting other people’s data upside down and then spinning some crackpot tale out of the relationship between a correctly-orientated curve is evidence of ignorance, sloppiness and a quite astonishing level of confirmation bias.
You have utterly discredited yourself on this blog *just in exchanges with me*. Goodness knows what science-crimes you have committed in the past, before I came along.
Blah Blah Duh, the Parsimonious Valley Girl said, “A minor error? Stating that there was no permanent Antarctic ice prior to 800ka is not a minor error. It is categorical evidence that the speaker hasn’t got a clue what they are talking about.”
Oh is that incorrect? Odd, I thought there was no ice found on Antarctica that can be dated from before 800ka ago. Some areas the oldest base ice found is less than 200KA old. Since a large portion of the continent is below sea level I thought that sea level change and land sinking or rising under the changing weight of ice might be a factor. It is rather odd that the paleo data indicates that southern ocean temperatures have been rising since about 800ka ago.
Presenting other people’s data upside down and then spinning some crackpot tale out of the relationship between a correctly-orientated curve is evidence of ignorance, sloppiness and a quite astonishing level of confirmation bias. I don’t recall presenting anyone’s data upside down without stating that I had inverted the data. I did present Martin’s do18 data in exactly the orientation that is was in the spread sheet I downloaded from NOAA paleo. I seem to recall comparing the timing of events between Martin and Herbert/Sikes archived data at the time and noting that after an initial “synchronizing” perturbation (interglacial) that the bottom water reconstructions developed an inverse relationship with the top water reconstructions, especially in the Eastern Pacific. I think a guy name Stott noted something similar. What was it, temperature leading CO2 I believe he said? Would it really matter if it was upside down or right side up if I was looking for changes in relationships?
I would have to respect your opinion since you are the champion of Parsimonious reasoning.
capn
1/ You can’t get off the hook by pointing to the age of the basal ice sheet. It is not an indicator of the existence of a permanent Antarctic ice sheet. If you had the remotest idea what you were on about, you would know this.
2/ You didn’t realise what you had done because you hadn’t even bothered to read the paper from which you plundered the data. This was obvious at the time. If you persist in lying about this, we will go through the whole farce again, here, with quotes. You will look *twice* as bad. Not just incompetent and confused but *dishonest*, incompetent and confused.
Do you wish to continue?
As a historical footnote to this valuable discussion, let me add that I once suggested BBD was an acronym for “Booger-Brain Dork”–a suggestion that did not long survive the moderator’s zingercidal disapproval, unfortunately. .
And, of course, the above suggestion pre-dated my subsequent decision to commit my blogospheric labors to the noble work of building bridges between us “skeptics” and our greenshirt creep-out, hive-bozo, eco-Giap-crusher-crew wannabes on the opposite side of and actively pushing the CAGW taxpayer rip-off hustle.
I for one appreciate your efforts to build bridges between the millennialist cult of AGW groupthink space cadets and normal people.
I am sure that in the annals of the climate war – your name will be especially revered as a peace maker. I am sadly not up to your Christian, turn the other cheek, blessed are the peacemakers standard. My inclimation is more the stomp on them like bugs kind. Don’t get me started. They are the worst kind of smug, self satisified, ignorant, superior, moralising cr@p artists it has ever been my misfortune to come across.
You deserve a Nobel Prize mike.
Someone broke the thread again.
Okay CH, I will say it for you:
You were completely wrong about what S&T says about the implications for C21st warming. This statement is incorrect and misleading:
S&T are not actually predicting warmer
Wrong and misleading.
You misrepresented S&T over the course of several threads in the promotion of a specious argument about the likely frequency, duration and significance of cooling episodes during this century.
The very scientists you quote ad nauseam do not agree with your conclusions. And although I showed you the relevant quote from S&T more times that I can count, you were utterly incapable of reading/understanding the words in front of your nose. You have completely discredited yourself. All you had to do was *listen*, but no.
What is actually worse is that despite being exposed as being entirely wrong, you haven’t got the decency to admit it and accept that this largely demolishes your position. You literally *cannot* say ‘sorry, I was wrong’. It’s *pitiful*.
Which brings us to the appropriate and final absurdity. Here’s you, being your usual unpleasant blog crank self earlier:
‘The ability of space cadets to ignore evidence is constantly astonishing.’
You have proved yourself to be a perfect space cadet and more besides, haven’t you? Nice work, CH. BBD – Booger Brain Dead
Passive aggressive when not actually being aggressive and abusive. The cooling episode is fairly obvious – http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703 – and should last another decade or three. The Tsonis papers are about climate shifts. Chaotic bifurcations in the instrument record.
For those unaware – Anastasios Tsonis, of the Atmospheric Sciences Group at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and colleagues used a mathematical network approach to analyse abrupt climate change on decadal timescales. Ocean and atmospheric indices – in this case the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation and the North Pacific Oscillation – can be thought of as chaotic oscillators that capture the major modes of climate variability. Tsonis and colleagues calculated the ‘distance’ between the indices. It was found that they would synchronise at certain times and then shift into a new state.
It is no coincidence that shifts in ocean and atmospheric indices occur at the same time as changes in the trajectory of global surface temperature. Our ‘interest is to understand – first the natural variability of climate – and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,’ Tsonis said.
Four multi-decadal climate shifts were identified in the last century coinciding with changes in the surface temperature trajectory. Warming from 1909 to the mid 1940’s, cooling to the late 1970’s, warming to 1998 and declining since. The shifts are punctuated by extreme El Niño Southern Oscillation events. Fluctuations between La Niña and El Niño peak at these times and climate then settles into a damped oscillation. Until the next critical climate threshold – due perhaps in a decade or two if the recent past is any indication. I am as I keep saying a climate catastrophist (in the sense of Rene Thom) and refuse to predict past the current cool state. These states are inherently unpredictable.
Swanson and Tsonis stated in their 2009 paper that these shifts imply sensitivity and that warming may well be greater than predicted in this century. It may well be cooler. There is no theoretical justification that these spontaneous reorganisations of the climate system – and of cloud cover especially – will be to cool or warm. S&T09 did not predict warming because as they are well aware – unlike BBD – this mechanism they are talking about (A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts) is in principle deterministic but practically incalculable.
So my calm reply prompted this tirade of millennialist cult of AGW groupthink space cadet outrage. Simply because dynamical complexity leads to uncertainty. I keep suggesting that he Google the relevant terms and educate himself. But perhaps there are people who are unable to grasp this idea. The ill-informed arguments of the webster with Tomas come to mind.
BBD is obnoxiously stupid and opinionated and has such a facile approach. This is definitely a pattern with the space cadets. As an unpleasant blog crank – the ability to ignore anomalous information is great and the toleration of dissention from the groupthink memes before descending into absurd hand waving tirades is negligible.
As for saying it for me – thanks but no thanks
CH
But this is wrong. Not only do S&T predict warming, they predict more warming than predicted :-)
Here, in their own words:
You keep going around in circles like a hamster in a treadmill. This is absurd.
We still have a problem here which still needs clearing up.
You were mistaken to claim that S&T09 does not predict warming. It does. In fact it goes further and cautions that:
Much of what you have said on several threads depends on a mistake, if that is what it was. So do you accept, given the unequivocal evidence, that you were mistaken?
Yes, or no?
Before it gets lost in space, here’s the context from S&T09:
Chief’s credibility is shot, if he had any to begin with. He may not be able to regain it for a decade or three.
This is what we know both warms and cools the world – http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703
‘Unlike El Niño and La Niña, which may occur every 3 to 7 years and last from 6 to 18 months, the PDO can remain in the same phase for 20 to 30 years. The shift in the PDO can have significant implications for global climate, affecting Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, the productivity of marine ecosystems, and global land temperature patterns. This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation ‘cool’ trend can intensify La Niña or diminish El Niño impacts around the Pacific basin,” said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “The persistence of this large-scale pattern [in 2008] tells us there is much more than an isolated La Niña occurring in the Pacific Ocean.”
Natural, large-scale climate patterns like the PDO and El Niño-La Niña are superimposed on global warming caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and landscape changes like deforestation. According to Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, “These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.”’
Either understand it or stop wasting my rime with th odd angty snark.
Chief
Here is a graph that supports your description above:
http://bit.ly/RNiu2d
aimed at webby of course – this threads gone to hell
…ah… wasting my time with the odd angry snark is what I meant … but the other version is just as good…
You think Webster, Blah Blah Duh and Robert were all institutionalized together?
Look, I think Chief has a point. The whole point of the paper seems to be that we don’t know because variability is large. This just says to me that climate is always changing and we are not going to be able to predict it with any reliability. That’s not much comfort for us, but perhaps argues for adaptation.
David,
If you have not read it then – try this one – https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/aatsonis/www/2007GL030288.pdf
A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts.
Worth a Nobel Prize in my opinion – along with the one for Mike for attempts to bring peace in the climate war between normal people and greenshirt creep-out, hive-bozo, eco-Giap-crusher-crew wannabe space cadets.
Cheers
Unpublished paper by Kravtsov and Tsnois, complete with Girma-like graphs!
JCH, They might not have time to actually click,
Abstract:
Climate evolution during the last century has shown evidence of multi-decadal variability (1–8). One interpretation of non-uniformity of the global temperature trend is that it is due to a superposition of human-induced warming and a multidecadal climate oscillation (9–11). Evidence for such intrinsic climate variability has also been found in coupled general circulation models [GCMs] (12, 13, 14). Here we further explore this hypothesis by constructing a three-parameter statistical model of the global temperature evolution, in which we use the concept of the delayed-feedback oscillator (15) to represent intrinsic multi-decadal signal, the values of the parameters being determined from the observed data. The model predicts non-uniform temperature changes prior to, and a net warming by Year 2100, which is smaller than that predicted by GCMs. Rapid temperature rise in 1980–2005 is rationalized as the result of a warming swing of the multi-decadal oscillation reinforcing a small positive anthropogenic trend.
Hallelujah
Here is the model for the above paragraph=> http://bit.ly/OsdxJf
That is what the data says.
The nesting seems not to be working.
Tsonis Tsonis Tsonis.
And, perhaps “worse” than Girma-like graphs.
The skeptics have now found models that they don’t question. Interesting phenomenon.
Jim D, true skeptics question everything and do basic estimates on their own. Some even try different frames of reference. BTW, what happens when you increase temperature with a constant relative humidity?
capt. d., CH seems to worship at the House of modeler Tsonis these days. Why are you asking about RH? However that gives you the first-order positive feedback of water vapor. Glad you asked.
Then we should see some first order water vapor feedback. BEST has Tmax and Tmin data with real absolute temperature estimates. Interesting stuff.
The continents are getting drier because the SST is not keeping up with the land heating. This is not constant RH, but worse for droughts. BTW, nice documentary on the Dust Bowl on PBS today and tomorrow.
Speaking of Dust Bowls, Khrushchev must have been jealous and made his own.
I also hear there is a new paper out on soil, carbon, erosion and climate change. Wonder what that is all about?
JimD said, “Why are you asking about RH? However that gives you the first-order positive feedback of water vapor.” And “The continents are getting drier because the SST is not keeping up with the land heating.”
Got all your bases covered I see.
Funny – I remember a discussion about McWilliams with Jim.
‘Atmospheric and oceanic computational simulation models often successfully depict chaotic space–time patterns, flow phenomena, dynamical balances, and equilibrium distributions that mimic nature. This success is accomplished through necessary but nonunique choices for discrete algorithms, parameterizations, and coupled contributing processes that introduce structural instability into the model. Therefore, we should expect a degree of irreducible imprecision in quantitative correspondences with nature, even with plausibly formulated models and careful calibration (tuning) to several empirical measures. Where precision is an issue (e.g., in a climate forecast), only simulation ensembles made across systematically designed model families allow an estimate of the level of relevant irreducible imprecision. ‘
The bit I bolded is apparently all that you need to read if you’re Jim. The latter parts invoke probabalisitc forecasts.
Having consulted Tim Palmer’s Lorenzian Meteorological Office
‘Prediction of weather and climate are necessarily uncertain: our observations of weather and climate are uncertain, the models into which we assimilate this data and predict the future are uncertain, and external effects such as volcanoes and anthropogenic greenhouse emissions are also uncertain. Fundamentally, therefore, therefore we should think of weather and climate predictions in terms of equations whose basic prognostic variables are probability densities ρ(X,t) where X denotes some climatic variable and t denoted time. In this way, ρ(X,t)dV represents the probability that, at time t, the true value of X lies in some small volume dV of state space.’ (Predicting Weather and Climate – Palmer and Hagedorn eds – 2006)
The drought in the US is only getting worse. Negative PDO and positive AMO plays havoc with US rainfall. People have been saying this for years. Standing patterns change and redistribute rainfall globally. There is not much of a change in net global rainfall – only where it falls. Trust me – I’m a hydrologist.
Just realised that html code isn’t copied when you cut and paste. Should of thought of that before – it is the first sentence that should be bolded.
The problem with Hansen is that he got the wrong bus. Most recent warming is not CO2 – it is albedo.
http://www.image.ucar.edu/idag/Papers/Wong_ERBEreanalysis.pdf
If you have some other evidence – by all means let someone know.
Chief Hydrologist | November 19, 2012 at 12:47 am | Reply
“The problem with Hansen is that he got the wrong bus. Most recent warming is not CO2 – it is albedo.”
Technically speaking CO2 alters albedo.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/phyopt/albedo.html
Rhis I hav seen before and it is wrong.
I was replying to Springer – the link on CO2 and albedo is incorrect I believe.
Threadings gone to hell – time to call it a day.
‘This little essay of Chief’s needs to be graded against the Crackpot Index. It is certain to score off the charts.’
I explain why Tsonis, McWilliams and Palmer as asked. To be called a crackpot by the webster is the ultimate in unintended irony. Humour is not his strong point. Over the top spiels about his own perspicacity seem to be the only talent. The guy is a wack job.
Blah Blah Dum is another. He copies and pastes things that he believes says something different to what it actually means and imagines thereby to score some victory over the infidels. In his own fervid imaginings only. He pretends to knowledge he does not possess. He pretends to be an expert in everything. He insults and berates and goes all injured innocence when replied to in the same vein.
He is a pretender with no worth at all – merely a pointless distraction with an ideological agenda.
Tomas on the other hand provides some serious discussion of what is the most important topic in climate science – it is worth discussing more.
capt. d., yes, a transient climate doesn’t need to preserve RH, only an equilibrium one. We are in a transient climate for now.
Well, sorry to hear about the first order feedback not kicking in for ya just yet. That’s in the pipeline right?
Wait… wouldn’t that kinda imply that some of the transient climate could be due to natural variability being amplified by “other” stuff?
The Dust Bowl and previous Arctic melting and snowy Europe also occurred in a transient climate when the forcing change (possibly partially from solar) seemed almost as fast from 1910-1940. Just seems like a pattern we need to get used to this time.
Oh for God’s sake – the oceans determine rainfall. Stop making things up as you go.
http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/oceanography-book/oceananddrought.html
Well, I reckon we could just get used to it, but then again, I seem to recall there was something that changed the soil moisture. Plumb slips my mind what that was though.
Jim D
The early 20th century global warming cycle to which you refer resulted in linear warming of 0.53C over the 34-year period 1910 to 1944 (or 0.16C/decade). You indicate that this was mostly from solar.
Phil Jones has stated that this period is “statistically indistinguishable” from the late 20th century warming that started around 1970, which has been attributed in large part to AGW.
In between there was a ~30 year “pause” in global warming (slight cooling) despite rapidly increasing human GHG emissions in the post WWII boom period.
Now we are in a very weak solar cycle 24, and temperature has been falling slightly since 2001, despite unabated human GHG emissions. This is being attributed (Met Office) to “natural variability”.
I agree with you that this “seems like a pattern we need to get used to this time”.
For me this means that the next 20 years or so will probably see no warming even if no substantive “climate initiatives” are taken, thereby falsifying the IPCC projection of 0.2C warming per decade from AGW (and, of course, the longer range IPCC projections for 2100).
Would you agree?
Max
.
manacker, re 9:09am, I think the solar effect was about half of the 1910-40 warming. Getting used to droughts, etc., yes. You think no rise is also something to get used to rather than the predictable steps at solar maxes, which is where I disagree. The last 3 solar maxes have had very distinct steps, and I expect this again in the next one. Land temperatures have risen 0.3 degrees per decade for three decades according to BEST. This may continue along with the OHC rise and Arctic melt, etc. You would agree with these too, I guess.
Jim D
Arctic melt: agree
50% solar effect 1910-1944: have seen estimates that are a bit higher, but basically agree
Droughts: do not agree that there are any formal attribution studies that link AGW to droughts
OHC rise: Question this – data prior to ARGO very spotty, ARGO shows no warming since 2003 (agree that it is logical that a small bit of ocean warming probably occurred while atmosphere was warming, even if this cannot be measured)
Future temperature trend (next 2 decades): who knows? Are we in a ~30-year lull or will long-term warming trend re-start soon?
Have also seen studies that attribute ~20% of the late 20thC warming to solar.
1910-1944 warming = 0.53C; 50% = 0.265C
1976-2000 warming = 0.40C, 20% = 0.08C
Total 20thC solar warming = 0.345C (roughly 50% of observed total)
Max
@Jim D “We are in a transient climate for now.”
You betcha! Climate always has been and always will be. It only becomes stable when it passes into the past and any analysis of past climate information for the purposes of determining trends is too much of a stretch.
Jim D
If the “continents are getting drier because the SST is not keeping up with the land heating”, then you are right that RH will decrease (rather than remain constant, as assumed by the IPCC models).
This seems to have been confirmed by M+D 2004, which showed that the observed moisture increase with warming was less than one-fourth of the increase with constant RH.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3347/3610454667_9ac0b7773f_b.jpg
But doesn’t this mean that the IPCC water vapor feedback estimate (and thus the 2xCO2 climate sensitivity estimate) is too high?
Max
manacker, as I mention elsewhere the constant-RH assumption works in the long run, but not in a climate where the land is warming so much faster, which is what we have now due to the ocean’s thermal inertia.
Jim D
If you check the NOAA record on tropospheric water vapor content since 1948, you’ll see that “the constant-RH assumption
worksdoes not work in the long run.Clausius-Clapeyron is a great theory, which works within a simple closed system, but there are too many other variables in our climate system for it to work in lockstep in our climate.
See M+D 2004 for a better idea of short-term water vapor response (less than 1/4 of the amount if RH were held constant).
It just ain’t happening out there in the real world, Jim – either short term or long term. Only in the models.
Max
Oh I will question it Jim D. Tsonis’ model is more of a ‘toy model’ demonstration of concept rather than a full blown physical model. It provides a quantification of what many know intuitively to be so. Life is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you are going to get.
Tsonis writes about the ENSO, the drying of the Sahel and the demise of the Minoan Civilisation. He has the soul of a poet. But I am sure he knows that it is by no means certain that ENSO will repeat the pattern of the last 100 years.
I use models all the time. They are fit for specific purposes. One of these for climate models might be probabalistic climate forecasts. We are nowhere near that on an IPCC level – even though it was flagged in the 3AR. Perhaps next time.
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1956/4751.short
CH, OK you should check out a toy model by a guy named Hansen in 1981 (Science). It predicted the current warming quite well.
capt
My empirical estimate of climate estimate is also about 0.8 deg C. Don’t change your blog name. I will join you by including 0.8 deg C in my blog name.
“The skeptics have now found models that they don’t question. ”
Wow.
Where?
And do they predict 100 years into the future?
gbaikie, you have presumably learned to ignore CHs’ postings. Good for you.
“gbaikie, you have presumably learned to ignore CHs’ postings. Good for you.”
Oh, you mean this:
https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/aatsonis/www/2007GL030288.pdf
I did look at briefly. And then looked at again.
It says:
“Figure 4 is analogous to Figure 1 but for the 21st
century simulation, with the exception that the greenhouse
gases radiative trend of 2C/century in global temperature
(Figure 4c) is removed to better isolate internal shifts in
behavior.”
So it’s assuming there 2 C per century due to CO2.
Is that what is called skeptic?
I believe 2 C warming by 2100 is possible.
But don’t think all the 2 C warming would due to CO2. Just as I don’t think all of the 20th century warming is due to CO2.
Mainly it seemed about natural variability, involving PDO, etc. Of recently, I thought this was fairly mainstream kind of stuff.
But in general, it seemed making an attempt at roughly approximating the main elements of climate variability. And a work in progress type thing rather than something definitive- though this is as can be expected considering the rudimentary state of climate science.
gbaikie
Ah – but you have to ask yourself why we get these sudden shifts in temperature and ENSO and PDO behaviour at the mid 1940’s, the late 1970’s and 1998/2001? When the forcings all move so slowly and uniformly? Should we not get smooth transitions rather than sudden shifts?
The answer is that the climate is a complex and dynamic mechanisms with hundreds if not thousands of elements all dynamically changing over time. And that is how a complex and dynamic system behaves. It is stable until pushed into a response and then the response propagates through the system causing large flucuations until the system ultimately settles into a new stable state.
How very unlike simple notions of cause and effect this is.
Cheers
“gbaikie
Ah – but you have to ask yourself why we get these sudden shifts in temperature and ENSO and PDO behaviour at the mid 1940′s, the late 1970′s and 1998/2001? When the forcings all move so slowly and uniformly? Should we not get smooth transitions rather than sudden shifts?”
If I ask myself why we are getting sudden shifts in average global temperature.
First, I don’t know if can call tenths of degrees as sudden shifts.
In terms climate on regional level we do get what one could call sudden shifts.
So very large regions or smaller regions we get very perceptible sudden shifts. And that is common or “normal”.
In terms global climate one has things like PDO which increasing the chances of certain weather phenomena and/or affecting regional climates- and so thereby have larger effect on global averaged temperature.
But I believe what you mean small trends in average global temperature, the prolonged nature of things like PDO, again on averaged basis going have significant effect [assuming there isn’t some other large global effecting effect cancelling out the temperature difference. Or the effect has be big enough to escape the noise of fluctuation and other effect[s] which rises above the noise.
But of course there other things, but do not think one can ignore PDO, NAO, and ENSO.
Denying they don’t have large effect upon global temperature, means you are simply ignoring climate science.
But paper in question, it’s about chaos theory- which tends to make my head hurt:)
Whereas climate science probably must involve chaos theory, I guess my biggest problem has to do with magnitudes involved- at least on global scale.
“The answer is that the climate is a complex and dynamic mechanisms with hundreds if not thousands of elements all dynamically changing over time. And that is how a complex and dynamic system behaves.”
Yes.
But someone else deal with all this stuff. I am happy if I can understand it in terms of the basic main factors involved.
Which I think would include this:
” It is stable until pushed into a response and then the response propagates through the system causing large flucuations until the system ultimately settles into a new stable state. ”
Which my opinion is another important aspect of climate.
Though this part about stable state is a bit tricky in terms duration and if slow rise or fall is included in what is called a stable state. Or the result of steep rise or fall and “the landing” is also what one is calling a stable state [entering glacial period and exiting a glacial period]. And during last few million years, obviously, The Stable State has been the glacial periods.
<This was why I was wondering why you keep quoting Tsonis, who uses GCM results and is clearly a warmist as gbaikie pointed out, and now also McWilliams and Palmer who are far from skeptics too.
You obviously haven’t seen the graphs that JCH just introduced above. But perhaps if I describe my intellectual evolution. In the late 1980’s I read a paper that changed my life. Two Australian fluvial geomorphologist by the names of Erskine and Warner noticed that central New South Wales streams changed form from high energy braided to low energy meandering. At that stage I was reading everything I could find on limnology and estuarine and coastal dynamics – tracing the movement of water, nutrients and pollutants through surface water, organisms and soils to the ocean. The hydrological cycle was my passion and biogeochemical cycling was the way to protect it, nurture it and restore it.
Erskine and Warner realised that the only way rivers can change form is if the characteristic flow changes. So they looked at the flood records and found alternating regimes of flooding and drought of about 25 years duration. This sent me on a decades long quest to find the source of these regimes. The PDO wasn’t described until 1996 and I was impressed that the periods of the PDO coincided exactly with these rainfall regimes. But how could something in the north-east Pacific influence Australian rainfall.
I had read the first assessment report – thought it seemed reasonable enough and didn’t give it a second thought. Except when someone would say that we were now in permanent drought because global warming had changed the nature of ENSO in the late 1970’s. I would think to myself that this had happened in the past and might just happen again. By 2000 the evidence coming out of Australian hydrology linked the PDO with the frequency and intensity of ENSO events. By 2003 it was clear that it had happened – that the Pacific multi-decadal mode had switched again. The ENSO message was mixed but the biological indicators were evidence enough.
In 2003 I was staring at the PDO graph and the CRUTEM data – and it struck me that the inflection points in temperature were exactly at the times when the PDO changed mode. These Pacific phenomenon were influencing global surface temperature – as we now know all too well. I felt sure that as time went on that these ‘cycles’ would be recognised by the IPCC in 2007. They were not.
Thus a skeptic was created. I wrote for American Thinker, E&E, Quadrant – I was one of the Inhofe 400. I was a darling of the skeptical world. It didn’t last. In 2008 I discovered I was wrong. These were not cycles. These were climate shifts in a system that is dynamically complex – and therefore exquisitely sensitive to small changes. I became a climate catastrophist – in the sense of Rene Thom. I tried to convey my new knowledge to my erstwhile skeptic friends – some of the biggest names in the business. I was shunned. I was now shunned, insulted and despised by both sides.
It matters little – I am a true natural philosopher and I follow my curiosity. I am beholden to no one and owe no loyalties. Why Tsonis, McWilliams and Palmer you ask? Because this is truly a new paradigm. There are no first or second order effects. There are control variables and a system that responds in the ways a complex and dynamic systems behaves. There is no proximate cause and effect. There are tremendous energies cascading through powerful mechanisms.
Should I try that again?
This was why I was wondering why you keep quoting Tsonis, who uses GCM results and is clearly a warmist as gbaikie pointed out, and now also McWilliams and Palmer who are far from skeptics too.
You obviously haven’t seen the graphs that JCH just introduced above. But perhaps if I describe my intellectual evolution. In the late 1980′s I read a paper that changed my life. Two Australian fluvial geomorphologist by the names of Erskine and Warner noticed that central New South Wales streams changed form from high energy braided to low energy meandering. At that stage I was reading everything I could find on limnology and estuarine and coastal dynamics – tracing the movement of water, nutrients and pollutants through surface water, organisms and soils to the ocean. The hydrological cycle was my passion and biogeochemical cycling was the way to protect it, nurture it and restore it.
Erskine and Warner realised that the only way rivers can change form is if the characteristic flow changes. So they looked at the flood records and found alternating regimes of flooding and drought of about 25 years duration. This sent me on a decades long quest to find the source of these regimes. The PDO wasn’t described until 1996 and I was impressed that the periods of the PDO coincided exactly with these rainfall regimes. But how could something in the north-east Pacific influence Australian rainfall.
I had read the first assessment report – thought it seemed reasonable enough and didn’t give it a second thought. Except when someone would say that we were now in permanent drought because global warming had changed the nature of ENSO in the late 1970′s. I would think to myself that this had happened in the past and might just happen again. By 2000 the evidence coming out of Australian hydrology linked the PDO with the frequency and intensity of ENSO events. By 2003 it was clear that it had happened – that the Pacific multi-decadal mode had switched again. The ENSO message was mixed but the biological indicators were evidence enough.
In 2003 I was staring at the PDO graph and the CRUTEM data – and it struck me that the inflection points in temperature were exactly at the times when the PDO changed mode. These Pacific phenomenon were influencing global surface temperature – as we now know all too well. I felt sure that as time went on that these ‘cycles’ would be recognised by the IPCC in 2007. They were not.
Thus a skeptic was created. I wrote for American Thinker, E&E, Quadrant – I was one of the Inhofe 400. I was a darling of the skeptical world. It didn’t last. In 2008 I discovered I was wrong. These were not cycles. These were climate shifts in a system that is dynamically complex – and therefore exquisitely sensitive to small changes. I became a climate catastrophist – in the sense of Rene Thom. I tried to convey my new knowledge to my erstwhile skeptic friends – some of the biggest names in the business. I was shunned. I was now shunned, insulted and despised by both sides.
It matters little – I am a true natural philosopher and I follow my curiosity. I am beholden to no one and owe no loyalties. Why Tsonis, McWilliams and Palmer you ask? Because this is truly a new paradigm. There are no first or second order effects. There are control variables and a system that responds in the ways a complex and dynamic systems behaves. There is no proximate cause and effect. There are tremendous energies cascading through powerful mechanisms.
This little essay of Chief’s needs to be graded against the Crackpot Index. It is certain to score off the charts.
On a par, odd how that center projection curve nearly nails 0.8. Oh well, I guess now I’ll just have to change my sockpuppet add-on.
I don’t really have time to read Tsonis, Tsonis, Tsonis right now. But the graphs did give me a much needed laugh.
Thanks JCH.
Here is my model => http://bit.ly/OsdxJf
I wish they tried it with HADCRUT3 instead of GISS. Before mid-20th century, the GISS data does not show much multi-decadal variability.
Kravtsov and Tsnois, please do you analysis with HADCRUT3.
Only maroons play with HadCrappy.
JCH
You mean “maroons” like IPCC?
Max
[This comment got posted in the wrong spot, so I’ll repeat]
JCH
You mean “maroons” like IPCC?
Max
[comment vanished upthread; second try:]
We have HadCRUT4 now. HadCRUT3 is obsolete. One should really try to keep up.
HadCRUT4 vs GISTEMP on a common 1981 – 2010 baseline for direct comparison.
Blah Blah Duh, darn it! HADCRAPPY 3 is obsolete, seems people were making wagers based on HADCRAPPY 3, I wonder if that messed up the betting line?
By the By, is this the correct way to orient the Martin Mg data?
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-a9lFe-WJwq4/UKo6K3MknwI/AAAAAAAAFto/y2B5aR63z6k/s912/martin%2520mg%2520BTW%2520and%2520EPICA.png
I know that OHC is dear to your heart and would hate to offend your sensibilities.
Your graph says the Mg BWT reconstructions came from Martin et al. (2008). Could you link to this paper before we continue?
Thanks
It is not a link to their paper, it is a link to their archived data on NOAA. That data has been updated once or twice and used in a few papers. Might be why there is a discrepancy in one of the core designations. On NOAA paleo it is under
“Atlantic/Pacific Bottom Water Temperature, 331,000 years, Martin et al. 2002” which was the original reference, but there are a few notes here and there in the Excel download. The CO2 data is also from NOAA Paleo.
Shame that some of the more interesting cores calibrations are a tad difficult to track down. There is an interesting ocean mound real close to the ACC that seems fairly popular lately.
capn
Right, good. We’ll stick with M02 then.
When are you going to admit that you plotted the δ18O data from Martin et al. (2002) upside-down but did not realise what you had done because you hadn’t bothered to read the actual paper? Why am I so sure? Because when I read M02 as I checked your work it was instantly obvious what you had done. Impossible to miss if you had read the paper.
Other things rather jumped out too. Notably that M02 was an exploration of the potential for using benthinc foraminiferal Mg/Ca as a proxy for BWT. The initial results were promising, but not definitive:
It is exceedingly unwise to try to build an argument on an experimental and caveated study like this. Wild surmise is the sort of unscientific behaviour typically associated with cranks and crackpots. Obviously you wouldn’t want to be taken for a crank and a crackpot.
Now, time for honesty and a demonstration of good faith that will at least partially restore my estimation of you. Admit your errors frankly and openly. You will feel better for it, you will *look* better for it, and we can move on.
1/ Admit that your claim about the age of the permanent Antarctic ice sheet was dead wrong.
2/ Admit that you plotted the δ18O data from Martin et al. (2002) upside-down but did not realise what you had done because you hadn’t bothered to read the actual paper.
Blah Blah Duh, First I did not plot the do18 upside down, I plotted the do18 exactly as it was archived. I did mistake the C. for C degrees, but as I stated, I was looking for divergence timing not absolute magnitudes. So I admitted the mistake, C degree labeling the axis, but it did not impact my comparison of the divergence timing. I know that is difficult for you to wrap your brain around, but I am looking for recurrent patterns in the data, not precision absolute temperatures which would be unrealistic to expect.
Second, Permanent Antarctic Ice Sheet would mean “PERMANENT” if a large enough section of Antarctic ice separates from the land, it would not be PERMANENTLY fixed to the continent. Separation of large chunks of fixed ice would impact the ACC flow. Changes in ACC flow would impact surface and bottom water temperatures in that region and the THC globally. That was the point of the conversation, the search of archived paleo ocean data. to determine Antarctic ice configuration on global climate.
Did you not yerself mention that a rather sizable chunk of the not so PERMANENT ice is relatively young?
That’s right Capn. Continue name calling like a five year old but fail to admit your glaring and credibility-destroying errors.
But bluff, misdirection and insults are all you’ve got. Your problem going forward is that I know this now.
And before your tedious convolutions go any further, the permanent Antarctic ice sheet is the EAIS, not the WAIS. Of course the WAIS is highly unstable and sensitive to slight increases in GAT.
Now, let’s try again:
1/ Admit that your claim about the age of the permanent Antarctic ice sheet was dead wrong.
2/ Admit that you plotted the δ18O data from Martin et al. (2002) upside-down but did not realise what you had done because you hadn’t bothered to read the actual paper.
Balh Blah Duh, does this GFY mean anything to you :)
Bugger the threading on this blog today. Again:
Read widely on this topic have you?
You *never learn* do you?
Blah Blah Duh, “Read widely on this topic have you?” A bit. 20 something years of measuring temperatures, flows, heat capacities. Nothing serious though.
Do you actually posses the capability of rational thought? Surface air temperature is based on surface air temperatures. The RSS/UAH is based on an average from the near surface to the mid troposphere and how the filter is adjusted would impact the output. As long as the filtering is consistent, the data is useful.
You don’t know how the satellite MSU/AMSU data are used to calculate TLT, do you capn? It’s pretty obvious, so be careful what you decide to say next.
Blah Blah Duh, you should read up on it then.
http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html
The weighting functions or filtering are the what I mentioned have to be considered. When I compared the AQUA data which included absolute temperature estimates with various other indications of temperature, Thermosteric sealevel, CO2, solar TSI, it is accurate enough to be useful. There are some obvious drift errors, but for rough estimates it is fine. The Satellite data is really nice because it is purely radiant energy based, gives you a feel for what photons “see”. That is one of the limitations of temperature anomalies. You can forget there is real heat capacity that needs to be considered.
Both RSS and UAH do pretty well too though there are different weighting and drift adjustments used. RSS tended to drift to a cool bias relative to UAH recently, but there are several layers that can be used to estimate the impact. As long as you don’t fool yourself into being overconfident in the precision. That is where words like “likely” come in handy.
Yet another threading failure. Again:
captn
This is wrong. Do you know why it is wrong? You’ve just googled the RSS stuff and haven’t bothered to read it. Something of a habit with you.
Here’s why you are wrong:
Straight from the source you link but which you obviously have not read.
You never seem to get anything right, which suggests that you should be treated as a joke. Shall we treat you as a joke?
dude. you plotted it upside down.
Dude, I plotted the data as it was and posted it as part of a conversation on a blog. I admitted that it was not properly orient for the C degrees labeled on the plot. The BTW still warms before the onset of an interglacial and CO2 rise.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-a9lFe-WJwq4/UKo6K3MknwI/AAAAAAAAFto/y2B5aR63z6k/s912/martin%2520mg%2520BTW%2520and%2520EPICA.png
The Tropical eastern pacific difference would interesting to them not totally anal.
captdallas
Your graph says the Mg BWT reconstructions came from Martin et al. (2008). Could you link to this paper before we continue?
Thanks
BBD
Yeah.
Changing data sets is always a bit suspicious, but here’s HadCRUT4 and GISS for the past 12 years (since the new millennium started):
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001/offset:-0.287/plot/gistemp/from:2001/offset:-0.363/to:2012.75/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001/offset:-0.287/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2001/offset:-0.363/trend
Both show no warming.
Max
More paranoid conspiracy theorising. You need to stop doing this Max. It looks bad.
Blatant cherry picking looks bad too. Here’s a more revealing look at the data which shows up the significant effect of the two strong La Niña at the end of the record (2008; 2010 – 11 ‘double-dip’)?
Comparing HadCRUT4 and GISTEMP we see something interesting. We see that those two strong La Niña at the end of the record have a substantial effect.
Decadal trend 1995 – 2008
HadCRUT4 0.18C
GISTEMP 0.19C
Decadal trend 1995 – present
HadCRUT4 0.1C
GISTEMP 0.1C
Let’s run that back a bit and see what happens. Here’s HadCRUT4 and GISTEMP from 1975 – 2008 and 1975 – present.
Decadal trend 1975 – 2008
HadCRUT4 0.19C
GISTEMP 0.18C
Decadal trend 1975 – present
HadCRUT4 0.17C
GISTEMP 0.16C
And there you have it. The two strong La Niña at the end of the record have a substantial effect on the decadal trend.
We should therefore be very careful how we represent and interpret the recent term GAT data.
Last 12 years of Gistemp shows warming.
That what sevearl months of anemic ENSO neutral will do to people who went long on the 2nd strongest La Nina in the record.
JCH | November 19, 2012 at 9:38 am | Reply
“Last 12 years of Gistemp shows warming.”
Same graph, using RSS satellite data instead of Gistemp shows substantial cooling.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2000.76/to:2012.76/trend/plot/rss/from:2000.76/to:2012.76
Looks like Gistemp has been pencil whipped to show what someone wanted it to show. Use the satellite data whenever practical for the greatest credibility.
Looks like RSS needs to rethink.
JCH
I wish the ‘sceptics’ would apply their ‘scepticism’ a little more vigorously to the reliability of the satellite reconstructions of TLT. What with them being modelled estimates based on a *proxy* for tropospheric T rather than direct measurements of TLT temperature itself.
Of course *scientists* are asking questions about how reliable the RSS and (closely related) UAH methodologies are, eg Po-Chedley & Fu (2012).
Cool bias in the methodology would explain a lot.
Wood for Trees has stopped updating UAH, but, even with the latest version of UAH to date, I think it would show the same warming over the last 12 years as Gistemp.
And AMSU channel 5 just completed another La Nina erasing wiggle to the upwards and beyond. Lol, new version time!
Blah Blah Duh, “I wish the ‘sceptics’ would apply their ‘scepticism’ a little more vigorously to the reliability of the satellite reconstructions of TLT” Some skeptics have done just that. I have even compare RSS and UAH to steric sea level change and seasonal CO2 fluctuations.
In fact, as I noted to David Springer above, you have to allow for the difference in air density and remember you are dealing with anomalies not absolute temperatures.
The “cool” bias in the methodology is likely not a cool bias, but an indication of differences in the heat flux. Consider that the average cloud altitude has decreased, ala IRIS effect which would impact the ERL altitude. There should be a difference between the surface trend and lower troposphere trends.
Are y’all really scientists?
capn, why can’t you see that repeating this doesn’t get you off hook:
I know how the data are archived because I replicated your graph. Or rather, I discovered that you had your head up your backside and hadn’t read M02. At the time, I called you a buffoon, which in hindsight was generous.
I repeat: you plotted the δ18O data from Martin et al. (2002) upside-down but did not realise what you had done because you hadn’t bothered to read the actual paper. Why am I so sure? Because when I read M02 as I checked your work it was instantly obvious what you had done. And impossible to miss if you had read the paper.
Buffoonery is one thing. Persistent refusal to admit error is another. It swiftly becomes *dishonesty*. Why are you doing this to yourself when all you have to do is admit your errors? We all make mistakes. Although your horrible gaffe over the age of the permanent Antarctic ice sheet cannot be forgotten but there’s no helping that now. The best and only solution there would be to admit that you don’t know what you are talking about and hope for charity from others. Of course if you have been insulting people and calling them silly names then you might get very little, but that’s the risk you run when you make childish insults a mainstay of your commenting technique. As you are now discovering.
Blah Blah Duh, Look. When you first mentioned that I double checked. I redownloaded the Martin Excel file off NOAA paleo
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/contributions_by_author/martin2002/martin2002.xls
I check the excel against the text version. That is when I saw the (C. wuellerstorfi) which my spreadsheet column width cut down to (C. >
The text list, “Tropical Atlantic core M16772” and the Excel data page has M16722 for the Atlantic Core.
I did not invert that do18. I did have another chart where I inverted the mg and that chart specifically stated that it was inverted.
The first few data points for that core do18 are:
Age Depth Mg/Ca T d18O
0.58 2 1.044 2.2 2.48
1.45 5 1.055 1.96 2.4
2.9 10 1.235 3.4 2.44
4.36 15 1.172 2.92 2.5
5.81 20 1.171 2.91 2.56
7.26 25 1.172 2.92 2.57
8.71 30 1.259 3.57 2.62
10.57 35 1.176 2.95 2.98
That is the way the data is archived.
Using the data “as is” even with the M16722, I did that. I did not do anything to intentionally deceive, not my style.
The reason I started on the southern hemisphere and ocean paleo data is because of this:
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-A-zUL62VR7g/UKqOo6Hq3LI/AAAAAAAAFuE/zce_hbJuEnQ/s883/giss%2520regional%2520with%2520trend%25201904.png
And this:
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-bcbV00zTNBg/UKqOo-dkJQI/AAAAAAAAFuA/CAEJI-fHw8c/s912/giss%2520regional%2520with%2520trend%25201980.png
See I am curious as to why that is like that.
You are only interesting in being a pest and you are good at it.
capn
Do stop lying. It is hopeless and only makes it worse.
For the record (which I will be revisiting, from time to time) you have refused to :
1/ Admit that your claim about the age of the permanent Antarctic ice sheet was dead wrong.
2/ Admit that you plotted the δ18O data from Martin et al. (2002) upside-down but did not realise what you had done because you hadn’t bothered to read the actual paper.
In doing so, repeatedly and doggedly, you have revealed yourself to be dishonest as well as a careless crank.
Yet again BBD repeatedly and doggedly dishonestly claiming dishonesty on the part of others. Makes the likes of lolwot look like honest brokers.
For the final time, your latest childish attempt to talk your way out of acknowledging that you are incompetent does not work.
You *still* don’t seem to understand that I noticed your mistakes because Martin presents the δ18O curve in the *correct* orientation.
How the data are archived is irrelevant. The correct orientation is obvious to anyone who has seen δ18O proxy/temperature curves before.
How could you have made such an obvious, glaring, elementary mistake? And then to try and build one of your crank theories on it?
As I said, you are a joke. And everybody reading this knows it.
Blah Blah Duh, I gave you the link, I gave you the start of the data.
here is a plot of everything on that page of the Excel download.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-a5p5QayerCU/UKqcXxXuD6I/AAAAAAAAFug/X1LfJJpRUzI/s747/blah%2520blah%2520duh.png
Age Kyr Depth cm. Mg/Ca (C. wuellerstorfi, mmol/mol) Mg-derived Temperature (C. wuellerstorfi, degrees C) delta O-18 (C. wuellerstorfi)
Those are the headings on the Excel spreadsheet, there is no degrees C following the do-18 is there? I have no clue where you got your data, but this is where I got mine.
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/contributions_by_author/martin2002/martin2002.xls
GFY
Capn
It’s mind-boggling. You still don’t understand that you revealed the true depth of your ignorance by *not realising* that the δ18O *as archived* was inverted.
You don’t know how δ18O should correlate with T or you would have spotted this *instantly*.
And I caught you out. Now, the real stupidity is for you to relentlessly accuse *me* of ignorance.
Until you cease, I will relentlessly remind everyone here that you are a fraudulent buffoon who believes that there was no permanent Antarctic ice sheet more than 800ka and who doesn’t know how δ18O correlates with T.
Until you get your thick head around this, you are going to suffer for it.
My advice: learn your lesson and alter your behaviour toward me, starting immediately.
BBD,
There is a difference between a mistake and “FRAUD”. I do make mistakes. I don’t intentionally try to defraud people. Not my style.
I consider you *ignorant* because you have no imagination and select nits to pick instead of allowing curiosity to lead you to discovery. The anomalies, those weird little things that don’t fit are the interesting parts of this complex puzzle. But in your unimaginative milquetoast world, they are just noise, much like you.
There is evidence of a strong precession signal in the southern oceans, there is a 4.3 ka recurrent pattern associated with the precession cycle signal, the deep oceans have warmed during glacial periods out of phase with the surface. All of those are interesting anomalies. You are not interested in discovery so GFY
capn
“BBD” – that’s better. Let’s keep it that way from now on.
Indeed there is. When you refuse to admit an error upon which you based an entire argument despite being confronted with unequivocal evidence of that error you go from mistaken to fraudulent.
Let’s go back to where it all began.
Here’s the graph you f*cked up.
Here is the *crank theory* derived directly from your accidental use of an upside-down δ18O curve which leads you to believe that there is an inverse relationship between bottom water temperature and CO2:
Kinda hilariously wrong. BWT and CO2 of course are broadly correlated across the entire record.
And contrary to your dishonest wriggling upthread, your crank theory depends on your mistake. There’s not getting out of this Capn. You are well and truly scuppered and you know it.
Your lifeboat is the truth: admit your errors and apologise for the dishonesty. Also stop insulting my intelligence literally and metaphorically in every single comment you make and we’ll let this drop, for now.
What happens next is up to you.
Do you wish to continue?
BBD, “your crank theory depends on your mistake.” It does not and that is the point idiot. You can’t get past that can you? You are married to a theory and don’t care to look for yourself. It is the timing of the changes that differ and that is not falsified.
BTW, it is not my crank theory, I just observed an anomaly and found that others had discovered the same before me. Stott for example, which you say is wrong because his work doesn’t agree with yours. Lawrence also has noted the same thing. Tuggweilder’s ACC work also meshes with more dominate Southern Hemisphere control over the THC. Tsonis, Douglas etc. etc. etc. The world is passing you by Blah Blah Duh. You are a speed bump in the path of progress.
For goodness sake capn. Just stop.
You claimed an inverse relationship between BWT and CO2. You did so because you had the δ18O curve upside-down. Here – again – is the evidence in your own words:
How can you have the gall to *persist in lying* about this?
I am a speed bump in the path of lying cranks like you.
Cappy Dick lacks any kind of filter on the “analysis” he does. It is simply numerology and fun with numbers, more suitable for the comics page than serious discussion.
Yes, these systematic lies saying that others are lying, does seem to be BBD’s central characteristic or “trick”.
BBD says they are lying. I agree and go a step further and assert that they are also crackpots.
This is not a stretch, as crackpots infiltrate every social media that exists. They get attracted by any talk of uncertainty and feel that this gives them the chance to make stuff up.
WHT
I’ve come across a few poisonous loons in the climate ‘debate’ but CH is in a class of his own.
BBD | I’ve come across a few poisonous loons in the climate ‘debate’ but CH is in a class of his own.
Did someone mention a chutzpah award ?
David – Not necessarily pencil whipped. The relationship between GISS surface and the UAH/RSS lower troposphere at about 600mb changes with uptake or loss depending on region. That difference is like a crude Watt meter. Since there is about a 17% difference in air density, the RSS/UAH tends to amplify the relative imbalance.
JCH and David
“Gistemp shows warming” [last 12 years].
Huh?
Not really.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2001/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2001
And it shows cooling last 11 years:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2002/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2002
Max
Indeed. And not only was it the second strongest La Nina on record (in terms of SST’s and duration) it was also saw the warmest tropospheric temperatures for any La Nina period. But Bob Tisdale already has it figured out…it was residual heat from the 1998 El Nino! That’s what psychotropic Tisdale cherries will do!
Reposted from below:
Indeed. And not only was it the second strongest La Nina on record (in terms of SST’s and duration) it was also saw the warmest tropospheric temperatures for any La Nina period. But Bob Tisdale already has it figured out…it was residual heat from the 1998 El Nino! That’s what psychotropic Tisdale cherries will do!
RSS lower troposphere global mean (full record 1979-2013
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979/to:2013/mean:12/plot/rss/from:1979/to:2013/trend/plot/rss/from:1979/to:2013/trend/detrend:0.45
Linear trend = 0.13C/decade
Same thing ending in 2008
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979/to:2008/mean:12/plot/rss/from:1979/to:2008/trend/plot/rss/from:1979/to:2008/trend/detrend:0.46
Linear trend = 0.16C/decade
The difference using the most dependable measure of global average temperature we have is quite a bit larger than you want to admit.
The other bit of intellectual dishonesty is you’d like us to discount the La Nina’s responsible for the decline. To be fair we should then discount El Nino as well. Take the 1998 El Nino out of the record and there’s precious little warming left in the satellite record.
You stink of fear and your protests are no more than whistling past the graveyard of failed global warming hypotheses.