A guess is no help to knowing
A paper published in Nature on 10 February 2013 could destroy the global warming scare.
It’s called Atmospheric verification of anthropogenic CO2 emission trends and the Abstract is available on our side of the paywall, along with the Supplementary Information. However, I’ve also obtained a copy of the paper (800 KB) and it’s fascinating. There’s a larger version (3 MB), not so heavily compressed and less murky.
Until now, the only way to measure human carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions has been to calculate the theoretical amount of CO2 produced by burning various carbon-based fuels and adding them up. But this paper uses actual measurements of atmospheric CO2 levels. Then these data are compared with the calculated emissions.
What do you think it means?
Views: 161
Before you embarrass yourself any further, RT, here is the abstract: kindly indicate which of their findings “destroy the global warming scare” – or whatever small part of it remains after Willis “crushed” it so convincingly in your last post…
“International efforts to limit global warming and ocean acidification aim to slow the growth of atmospheric CO2, guided primarily by national and industry estimates of production and consumption of fossil fuels. Atmospheric verification of emissions is vital but present global inversion methods are inadequate for this purpose. We demonstrate a clear response in atmospheric CO2 coinciding with a sharp 2010 increase in Asian emissions but show persisting slowing mean CO2 growth from 2002/03. Growth and inter-hemispheric concentration difference during the onset and recovery of the Global Financial Crisis support a previous speculation that the reported 2000–2008 emissions surge is an artefact, most simply explained by a cumulative underestimation (~ 9 Pg C) of 1994–2007 emissions; in this case, post-2000 emissions would track mid-range of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emission scenarios. An alternative explanation requires changes in the northern terrestrial land sink that offset anthropogenic emission changes. We suggest atmospheric methods to help resolve this ambiguity.”
Rob, if I read the paper correctly in the quick perusal I have just made, then haven’t you missed the implication of Richard’s question (“What do you think it means”)?
The point is that the few actual measurements (i.e. empirical) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere indicate that it’s composition in the atmosphere has been increasing over the last however many years (albeit that publicity about it reaching 400ppm came from Hawaii where the measuring station is close to a volcano which continually emits gases very high in carbon dioxide!). I doubt anyone disputes that the burning of carbonaceous fuels adds to that composition and this paper may well be a very good guide to how that amount is estimated.
But that the composition is rising in itself is not necessarily a problem. It can only considered to be a problem if it contributes to warming of the atmosphere and even then, only if that is a problem.
The most compelling evidence that warming is not likely to result from increasing carbon dioxide composition in the atmosphere is that the trend from estimates of global average temperature has not increased in the last 16 or so years, a fact recognized by several authorities.
I therefore take the answer to Richard’s question to be that the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to anthropogenic sources has not caused additional warming of the atmosphere and therefore casts doubt on the theory.
So I doubt that you publishing the abstract, for which he provided a link, warrants your claim that he is embarrassing himself.
“The point is that the few actual measurements (i.e. empirical) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere indicate…”
Now Gary, where did you get that idea from that CO2 is measured only in a few places again?
FYI: http://co2now.org/Know-CO2/CO2-Monitoring/co2-measuring-stations.html
What you don’t grasp is that the paper is NOT at all commenting about the TOTAL CO2 content measurements in the Atmosphere, which are plentiful and mare all over the world, also in NZ, NO, what the article proclaims is that we need to do more to measure the industrial components of CO2 in the atmosphere to differentiate any natural source from industrial ones. The paper is addressing this and concludes that we are tracking at the middle of IPCC projections. So far nothing too new and the rhetorical headline by RT is rather misleading as people will jump to the headline (RTs intention) and overlook the question (also RTs intention as I have little doubt). If RT does not comprehend the article then he should not rush to the press and put sensation and spin on a paper that he has – to his own omission ( he does not know what the paper means) – not comprehended.
Gary, I would certainly be embarrassed if I, say, were to pontificate endlessly on about All Black selection procedures whem in fact, I know nothing about the subject.
I do, however, know enough to recognise my own ignorance, and thus avoid making a fool of myself. Unfortunately, the same is not true for the scientifically illiterate who cling to climate change denial sites such as this one.
As an example, your statement above shows your woeful ignorance of elementary physics – the difference between heat and temperature. Perhaps you could read an elementary text before you embarrass yourself any further?
“The most compelling evidence that warming is not likely to result from increasing carbon dioxide composition in the atmosphere is that the trend from estimates of global average temperature has not increased in the last 16 or so years, a fact recognized by several authorities.”
RT, I’m still waiting to hear your explanation of how, if “water always melts the ice it is in contact with”, that the polar sea ice grows in winter, or that the ice ages ever happened!
Perhaps you’re just too busy “smashing”, “annihilating”, “extirpating” and “destroying” the myth of global warming, but here’s another question to ponder: why is malaria expanding its range northwards into Europe, even threatening the UK?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3325067/Malaria-warning-as-UK-becomes-warmer.html
Found that water vapour yet Rob? AGW fails to work without it.
AGW is working perfectly well without your little straw man, Magoo, because AGW is observed in action by a multitude of independent observations in the real world; pull your head out from under the covers and take a look:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/big-picture.html
HAHA, that’s hilarious Rob. No warming in 16-23 yrs, failed computer models, no tropospheric hotspot, no positive feedback from water vapour, collapsing CO2 markets, oceans starting to cool, official climate sensitivities lowered, a failed attempt to revitalise Kyoto, etc. Is there anything that was predicted that has come true?
No wonder you’re so ignorant if you place your faith in skeptical science, it’s the last bastion of the desperate. Well you don’t have to see the truth if don’t want to but everyone else is, including the IPCC and the climate science community. It must be hard for those who spouted such absurd rubbish about AGW to back down now that all those global warming predictions have failed so badly. No wonder the warmist trolls all have such bad attitudes in the climate blogs, they’re looking like complete idiots, and even thought they know it deep down some of them just can’t bring themselves to admit they were wrong. The rest of us just think they’re bad jokes.
Malaria? Sheesh talk about Gish Galloping
[EDIT]
I see that the Telegraph article is written by a “political correspondent” who has picked up some NGO propaganda and extrapolated that to mean that Malaria might come to the UK within 5 years (I thought they stopped writing this tosh around 2007)
Meanwhile The Beeb reports the coldest spring in 50 years in the UK.
Sorry to offend your delicate sensibilities with an article from the Telegraph, Andy, rather than your favourite, the Daily Fail, but here is the report itself:
http://www.hpa.org.uk/NewsCentre/NationalPressReleases/2012PressReleases/120911Climatechangewillmeanincreasedhealthrisksin/
Of course, it’s only written by a panel of health experts which, inexplicably, did not include any witchdoctors, voodoo priests or climate change deniers, but it’s still worth a read:
Dr David Heymann, Chairman of the Health Protection Agency, said: “There is no doubt that climate change poses a wide range of challenges to public health in the UK.
“From increased risks of heatwaves through to potentially greater exposure to air pollution, indoors and outdoors, and potential changes to established pollen seasons, there are many issues all of which need further research and attention if we are to adapt to, or mitigate the effects.
“We are confident that this report will provide all Government departments with the further information they need to properly prioritise areas for future work and protect the UK public from the significant looming health challenges that climate change presents.”
This report, which uses the latest UK climate projections published in 2009, also includes a more detailed analysis of the effect rising temperatures will have on death rates in hot and cold spells.
Using new models, and taking population changes into account, the report predicts that by the 2080s there may be on average more than 12,000 heat related deaths a year in the UK – compared to about 2,000 a year now.
It also suggests that;
Premature deaths and respiratory hospital admissions related to ozone exposure may increase as a result of climate change.
The warmer climate will mean that the UK pollen season may start earlier and last longer.
Climate change may lead to increased risks to health from building overheating, and biological and chemical contamination indoors.
Populations of exotic mosquitoes, which could spread chikungunya and dengue fever, are establishing in Europe, and the chances of these mosquitoes establishing in the UK will increase with changing climatic conditions.
Rob
Sorry to offend your delicate sensibilities with an article from the Telegraph, Andy, rather than your favourite, the Daily Fail, but here is the report itself:
First of all, give me one reason why “The Daily Fail (sic)” is my favorite
Secondly, give me one reason we should believe any of these so-called medical “experts” who base their extrapolations of disease on unverified models.
They should be spending their time looking into the medical ramifications on a population should the climate get colder. Warm is good, cold is bad: bad for food production, for energy consumption, for elderly, young, sick, poor, bad for homeless people, for travel, for livestock.
By the way, in Roger Pielke Jr’s book The Climate Fix, he gives us a fairly good reason not to trust organisations like WHO
In his particular example, they cited some health related numbers and gave no attribution to anthropogenic climate change
Shortly after, the WHO doubled all the numbers and attributed them to AGW
In essence, these guys are just making it up as they go along
Why is it that those who do not like being challenged resort to insulting remarks. You’ve taught thermodynamics have you, Rob? I always thought temperature was an indicator of the quantity of thermal energy contained in a body. Is this incorrect?
Indeed Gary, (at least if you exclude phase changes such as melting or evaporation) and as you can see, the heat content has been rising in the biggest thermal mass in our climate system: http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content2000m.png
Now as the vast majority of the oceans is vastly colder than the surface temperatures in the tropics, where the majority of the heat influx happens, warming of the oceans will continue. Ocean heat content lags behind the temperature development of surface temperatures.
Not since Argo buoys were deployed. http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/19-argo-era-ohc-atl-ind-pac.png
Mike, if you are actually interested on the ocean heat content, I recommend this site:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
and this graph in particular.
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content2000m.png
Now it will take something very significant don’t you think, to change the trend that you can see.
>”if you are actually interested on the ocean heat content,”
Yes very, especially basin data.
>’I recommend this site:”
Thanks, seen it lots of times. Lots and lots of basin data. Here in fact:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/basin_data.html
But why do YOU ignore that page Thomas?
Inconvenient data, doesn’t suit your – oft repeated – meme?
On average there is one Argo buoy per 320km x 320km, or 102,400 square kilometres. Average depth of world’s oceans is 3.6km, therefore on average each Argo buoy is sitting somewhere in 368,640 cubic kilometres of water. Nevertheless, this is the best sampling rate we have ever had. But it’s only been around for 10 years. Prior to that it was mainly shipping lane samples, erratically with a bucket or XBTs. I tend to put more weight on the best data available, less weight on unreliable data with greater uncertainties.
Here’s a graph which shows the picture. http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/ocean/global-ocean-temperature-0-700m.gif
So the “trend that I see” in the Argo data is close to zero in ten years. Where is all that extra heat going Thomas? It ain’t in the air, and it ain’t in the sea.
>”Now as the vast majority of the oceans is vastly colder than the surface temperatures in the tropics, where the majority of the heat influx happens,”
Huh? “vast majority”? “vastly colder”? Implied air => sea sensible heat flux? Citations/observations please Thomas, this is radical stuff you’re purporting here. Not even the IPCC have established exactly “where the majority of the [non-solar] heat influx happens after 25 years of speculation.
But well yes, the majority of the SOLAR heat influx to the ocean happens in the tropics and air temperature is warmer due to direct solar heating and “[in some tropical locations] the [surface air] is [a little warmer (air say 35 C, sea say just over 30 C at the most)] than the [ocean] surface temperatures so an air => sea thermal gradient can exist but not predominantly so that air => sea heat transfer occurs (that process is highly unconventional anyway, but not impossible – post coming up on this). But the vast majority of the oceans [are a little warmer] than the surface [air] temperatures by about 3 C on global average so the predominant planetary thermal gradient is sea => air especially at polar/sub-polar regions where heat gained by the ocean in the tropics is lost to the atmosphere after circulation taking anything up to 100 years (see below).
>”…warming of the oceans will continue.
Not if energy input is declining it wont. Warming at depth will continue due to propagation from the upper layer but the upper Pacific and Atlantic are cooling (see graph previous comment from Mike Jowsey).
>”Ocean heat content lags behind the temperature development of surface temperatures.”
But only because it takes a very small heat transfer from ocean to warm the atmosphere due to the respective specific heat capacities and the apparent atmospheric lead is only due to the very fastest responses from the subsurface of ocean (there’s been citations of diurnal studies of this here at CCG recently that show empirically how heat moves horizontally from and down below the subsurface thereby setting up an atmospheric lag behind ocean. Below the subsurface there’s considerable lag (see below). Observed atmospheric temperature today is more an indicator of solar input to the ocean over a dozen years ago than it is of “temperature development of surface temperatures” – whatever that is.
Ocean heat content actually LEADS the temperature development of surface temperatures because the system is: sun input => ocean heat sink => atmosphere temperature lag. You are completely at odds with established planetary thermal inertia Thomas. Trenberth:-
Abdussamatov (2012) calculates planetary thermal inertia (atmosphere lagging sun/ocean) at 14 +/- 6 years from thermodynamic principles and Scafetta obtains 12 years statistically.
Thomas (in the kindest way), it is very clear that you have no clue whatsoever about the sun-ocean-atmosphere thermally lagged system. Neither have you acquainted yourself with the scientific literature pertaining to it. If you insist on putting your oar in on that basis of ignorance, you’re really just making a fool of yourself.
RIchard said: “Thomas, this is radical stuff you’re purporting here….. (commenting on my assertion that the majority of the ocean is much colder than the surface temps).”
Richard: the average depth of the oceans is around 4km or so. The vast majority of the ocean waters is much colder than the surface layers and as you pointed out, it takes a long while for the oceans to catch up to the new climate reality we are creating.
Further Richard, and this is where you are loosing the plot: Ocean heat content change is the result of two flow: Energy in (mostly in the topics but increasingly in the more and more ice free arctic summers!!) and Energy out (mostly due to cooling the high latitudes.) And here AWG is playing its game: Reduction of the outflow of heat to space. The high arctic amplification of AGW and its resulting much stronger warming there. Ocean heat content is rising over all due not to more solar radiation being absorbed, no its due to less cooling.
You can confabulate about ocean heat content as much as you want and declare its cooling or whatever but the picture is rather different:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content2000m.png
Just meditate over this. If you indeed think that NOAA is lying to us with that graph, have a rant at them…
good luck!
>”The vast majority of the ocean waters is much colder than the surface layers”
Yes, but only the surface interfaces with the atmosphere.
>”Ocean heat content change is the result of two flow: Energy in (mostly in the topics but increasingly in the more and more ice free arctic summers!!) and Energy out (mostly due to cooling the high latitudes.) And here AWG is playing its game:”
Energy in has been at the highest level in over 1000 years. Energy out has not kept up with energy in, hence accumulation. Energy in has now started to decrease. No need to invoke any other mechanism. There’s a post coming up on ‘The ‘Improbable IPCC Mechanism’ too.
>You can confabulate about ocean heat content as much as you want and declare its cooling or whatever but the picture is rather different:”
No anthro signal whatsoever in the upper Pacific and Atlantic (and 700m is a considerable depth BTW). Pacific:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/01-argo-era-pacific-ohc.png
Then there’s the CO2-forced model failure wrt OHC:
http://i56.tinypic.com/9amivl.jpg
All in all, AGW is out in the cold when it comes to ocean heat.
Thomas I get the impression (my inference) from your statement quoted below that in your understanding the atmosphere drives ocean heat content:-
>”Ocean heat content lags behind the temperature development of surface temperatures”
If my impression/inference is correct – where on earth did you get that idea from? It is an upside down notion with no basis in conventions, laws, or observations.
Richard: Changes in Ocean heat content are the result of imbalances between the inflow and the outflow of energy. AGW is reducing the heat outflow. When you look at the global maps of the Earth temperature anomaly you can see where the biggest impact is made. It is also where the net cooling of the planet happens. Earth Energy balance versus latitudes
Ocean heat content will lag behind any surface climate change obviously, due to the giant heat capacity of our oceans. Does this really surprise you?
Richard, you once again burrow yourself into details of ocean/atmosphere interface science, interesting as that may be, while you refuse to see the bigger picture. Funny that. Tell me, if you modify the gas content of the atmosphere by adding GHGs, how come you think that this is not going to affect the temperatures, oceans included? Not only do you have to explain why this should not occur, you must also explain where all the extra heat over the past century has come from! Good luck.
Oh, and don’t tell me the oceans have not warmed over the last century. We have debated this. The oceans added about 7×10^22 J over the last 10 years alone. Unless you accuse NOAA of lying to us, you must admit that. The “up-tick” on the graph is especially steep over just the past half year according to NOAA. The constant repetition of the mantra that the oceans have been cooling over the last years seems not to show in the global summary. In fact, the opposite seems to be occurring, with global ocean heat content to 2000m rising unabated.
Thomas, the uptick is irrelevant as the data in blue has been smoothed and the data in red (i.e with the uptick) hasn’t.
The data you present shows an increase in ocean heat content. Is it statistically significant (for which you need a statistical model)?
i.e is the warming trend statistically different from random fluctuation?
>”Changes in Ocean heat content are the result of imbalances between the inflow and the outflow of energy.”
Good, we agree on that.
>”AGW is reducing the heat outflow.”
So you subscribe to the Minnett theory from the ‘Skeptical Science Offside’ post Thomas? And you DON’T agree with Rahmstorf and Schmittner? There’s a post coming up on this too ‘Rahmstorf, Schmittner and Nuccitelli’.
>”Ocean heat content will lag behind any surface climate change obviously, due to the giant heat capacity of our oceans. Does this really surprise you?”
No, I’ve given you the lags from Trenberth, Abdussamatov and Scafetta, 6 and 10 – 100+ years, 14 +/- 6 years, and 1 and 12 years respectively, all from different methods (Trenberth’s undisclosed).
>”you once again burrow yourself into details of ocean/atmosphere interface science”
Of course I do, and so does the literature I’ve cited because that’s where all the components are measured, analyzed and quantified.
>”you refuse to see the bigger picture.”
Rubbish. I see the bigger picture perfectly well (at millennial scale BTW, do you see that picture Thomas?).
>”Tell me, if you modify the gas content of the atmosphere by adding GHGs, how come you think that this is not going to affect the temperatures, oceans included?”
The effect in the atmosphere this century is evidently non-existent. And there has NOT been an anthro ocean heating mechanism actually specifcally identified, measured empirically in-situ, documented with supporting thermodynamic calculations, and therefore quantified, in 25 years of the IPCC looking for one. The upcoming post ‘The Improbable IPCC Mechanism’ covers this.
Any posited anthro ocean heating mechanism has also been evidently completely ineffective (actually a cooling mechnism) in the case of the upper Pacific and Atlantic.
>”Not only do you have to explain why this should not occur,”
No that’s a redundant exercise as I’ve stated before when you asked this previously (don’t you remember Thomas?).
>”you must also explain where all the extra heat over the past century has come from! Good luck.”
Not just the past century Thomas, over 4 centuries since 1600s of Grand Minimum solar input to Grand Maximum solar input. Simple.
>”Oh, and don’t tell me the oceans have not warmed over the last century.”
I haven’t and I wont. It is a no-brainer that water warms when energy input is increased.
>The “up-tick” on the graph is especially steep over just the past half year according to NOAA.”
80% of that uptick occurring in the Indian ocean.
>The constant repetition of the mantra that the oceans have been cooling over the last years seems not to show in the global summary.”
Of course doesn’t, it’s an AGGREGATE that includes Indian Ocean data skew. But the upper Pacific and Atlantic are clearly cooling (for the umpteenth time).
And global surface sea temperature (SST) has been cooling too since around 2002:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/hadsst3gl/from:2002/plot/hadsst3gl/from:2002/trend/plot/none
The fastest responses being at the surface, this is entirely consistent with the solar deficit:-
http://nextgrandminimum.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/figure-2-tsi-variations.png?w=640&h=475
But totally inconsistent with rising CO2. Or are you denying that Thomas?
Rob Taylor,
The ice is solid H2O; the water is liquid H2O. What causes this difference between the two forms? It’s their temperature, give or take a little leeway to account for “impurities” in the H2O. When a colder object contacts a warmer object, which way would you expect the thermal energy to travel? When the ice receives “extra” thermal energy, would you expect its temperature to rise or fall? When the temperature of ice rises, does it becomes more likely to freeze the (warmer) adjacent liquid water or more likely to get closer to melting? You see where I’m going with this?
So the question probably arises in your mind: “What causes the ice to form in the first place?” That’s a very good question. What’s the answer?
There is some freezing possible under water, I think, depending on salinity, but most of the ice forms from water in contact with a sub-zero atmosphere. Because, by definition, as I have some fun with above, water is warmer than ice. The air is almost always colder than the water.
The Met Office have issued a response to the Keenan questions here
The interesting graph for me is Figure 1, which shows no change in radiative forcing since about 2000.
Yes, at the same time, CO2 emissions continue to rise.
The overall change in radiative forcing since 1900 looks to be 1.5 W/m2
[EDIT]
I see that Lord Donoughue of Ashton responds in comments on the BH thread
The radiative forcing also seems to flatline between 1910 and 1950, when a warming period occurred, then becomes quite noisy but trending upwards between 1975 and 1998 during the late 20th C warming period, then flattens off during the 21st C, corresponding to the lack of surface warming
Yes, I found that interesting. What they’re doing is back-fitting the real results to their “models” and then pretending they predicted it all along.
To show this, have a look at the difference between Fig 1b and the fifth box (ANT) in Fig. 2, which charts the anthropogenic CO2 temperature response. Note that they don’t match, the radiative forcing drops, as you say, after 1998, and there are no volcanic forcings at work over the period. Yet the ANT response keeps rising monotonically. What else could cause the drop after 1998? Only solar, yet Hansen (2005) shows solar TSI variation to be minimal compared with the ANT line (0.22 vs 2.75 W/m2).
The other explanation is aerosols, but that is also admitted by Hansen to be a guess based on little data.
The ANT graph shown by the Met Office is pure circular reasoning, and it doesn’t, as you point out Bob, even add up
This theory looks shakier by the day. I thought I had seen it all until I saw these RF graphs
Andy what am I actually looking at in the following Met Office figure (sorry, I’m a bit late on this)?
Figure 1: (b) Radiative forcing, Wm-2 [blue line]
1) Is this an implied forcing derived from observations?
2) Is it an aggregation of external forcings so that a rising forcing has been offset by falling forcing(s)
I haven’t seen this before, it’s contradictory. ANT rising, 1(b) flatlined since 1998. I’m thinking, once I understand this graph, I’ll be saying the same as you – “I thought I had seen it all until I saw these RF graphs”.
Commenter “Nullius in Verba” (on the BH thread) gave a good summary of the Met Office paper
I should add that there is quite a lot of “natural variation” in the Met Office graphs since CO2 attribution doesn’t start until 1950
>”What else could cause the drop after 1998? Only solar, yet Hansen (2005) shows solar TSI variation to be minimal compared with the ANT line (0.22 vs 2.75 W/m2).”
Solar change since peak in 1986ish wont show up in atm temp for a while yet, Peak level was maintained pretty much right up to 2011/12. It’s only after then that solar starts to take effect but with some delay. CMIP5 left TSI at early 21st century peak levels right out to 2100 – duh.
The other factor missing is 60 year cyclicity (or any oscillations e.g. PDO, AMO, NAO) and the change of phase, positive to negative, around the turn of the century. Not sure how that should be incorporated though because it’s not something that fits RF methodology.
Also, Fig. 3 is plainly cherry-picking. Note two things that stand out immediately. They point out that stratospheric cooling is predicted by the IPCC theory, yet fail to mention the other part of that – the lack of the predicted tropospheric hot spot. Also, they show a chart of Arctic sea ice extent, and not the Antarctic, ‘cos it’s growing.
The above is yet more tosh, mumbo-jumbo and pseudoscience from willfully ignorant idealogues with their heads in the sand and their derrieres exposed for the amusement of all.
Here’s what real scientists conducting real observations with real ships, planes and satellites say:
Royal Society
It is certain that increased greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and from land use change lead to a warming of climate, and it is very likely that these green house gases are the dominant cause of the global warming that has been taking place over the last 50 years.
Whilst the extent of climate change is often expressed in a single figure – global temperature – the effects of climate change (such as temperature, precipitation and the frequency of extreme weather events) will vary greatly from place to place.
Increasing atmospheric CO2 also leads to ocean acidification which risks profound impacts on many marine ecosystems and in turn the societies which depend on them.
The Society has worked on the issue of climate change for many years to further the understanding of this issue. These activities have been informed by decades of publicly available, peer-reviewed studies by thousands of scientists across a wide range of disciplines.
Climate science, like any other scientific discipline, develops through vigorous debates between experts, but there is an overwhelming consensus regarding its fundamentals. Climate science has a firm basis in physics and is supported by a wealth of evidence from real world observations.
http://royalsociety.org/policy/climate-change/
NASA
Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities, and most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position.
The following is a partial list of these organizations, along with links to their published statements and a selection of related resources…
http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus
NOAA
Many lines of scientific evidence show the Earth’s climate is changing.
This page presents the latest information from several independent measures of observed climate change that illustrate an overwhelmingly compelling story of a planet that is undergoing global warming.
It is worth noting that increasing global temperature is only one element of observed global climate change. Precipitation patterns are also changing; storms and other extremes are changing as well…
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/indicators/
and NIWA
Human induced climate change is one of the widest-reaching hazards facing New Zealand.
It significantly influences how the risks from many hazards are likely to change in the future.
http://www.niwa.co.nz/natural-hazards/hazards/climate-change
>”…it is very likely that these green house gases are the dominant cause of the global warming that has been taking place over the last 50 years”
November/December 2009 – getting out of date now Rob.
What’s the Royal Society’s explanation as to the “very likely” dominant cause of the global warming that HASN’T been taking place over the last 10+ years?
That explanation would be one “develop[ed] through vigorous debates between experts” and “there is an overwhelming consensus regarding its fundamentals” wouldn’t it? Especially given “climate science has a firm basis in physics and is supported by a wealth of evidence from real world observations”.
Should be a no-brainer.
Richard, just for good measure, the vast majority of the energy imbalance due to AGW ends up rising the ocean temperatures (oceans huge heat capacity, etc….) and one and for all: Ocean heat content has been RISING and especially sharply also over the past 6 month.
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content2000m.png
If you think NOAA is lying to us, write to them!
Thomas, it actually hasn’t been because of AGW that the deep ocean is warming. We’ve shown you on several occasions that the deep ocean warms and cools on a different timescale. The upper ocean isn’t warming, and neither is the atmosphere. This shows that the CS is very low. The deep ocean is still warming from surface warming that occurred in the past, up to 1,000 years ago. In the future, this too will stop.
Bob: The NOAA data (see graph linked above) show the total heat content of the oceans from 0 to 2000m. It has been rising and especially also in past year. Just look at the graph.
If the total heat content has been rising, that means that summed up over the ocean, more heat has accumulated and further warming has occurred.
Again, if you think you know better and if you believe the NOAA data are in error and can prove it, write to them, publish your findings.
For now, I prefer to trust the NOAA accounting over Bob and Richards view of the matter.
Thomas, look at the breakdown chart, by depth.
For example:
NOAA data by depth.
Or you can do it yourself.
Sure Bob, and? I see Increased transfer of excess heat from the surface to the lower layers. Overall the heat content has increased without any doubt. That increase of heat content comes from somewhere. Unless you invoke magic, it must have come from changes in the net energy transfer of Earth with the outside. The solar flux has not increased but we know that we are adding GHGs to the atmosphere that increase the GH effect of the atmosphere and thus reduce the heat outflow until the temperature and heat content stabilize at a new level. While this process is continuing, temperatures and heat content rise.
We see what we would expect.
Thomas:
Mechanism? Even the experts are stumped when trying to explain exactly how the warm water sinks. Jochem Marotzke, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg: “In such periods, the heat is taken in more strongly by the deep oceans. We still cannot explain why this is so.”
However, unlike the warmists, the sceptics have been able to explain this all along. The upper ocean surface was heating until about the year 2000 due to mostly natural causes, most likely to do with increased solar insolation reaching the oceans, possibly linked to cloud cover. We know that a 1-2% drop in cloudiness has a greater “forcing” than all the anthropogenic GHGs.
Since 2000, this has reversed, and the upper oceans are now cooling. The deep oceans are still reflecting the earlier warming, but slowly the heat will work its way back up out of the deeper layers. This is a slow process, however, and will take years to complete.
As a check we would expect the SST values to be dropping if the sceptics are right, and rising if the warmists are right. The reason is that the sceptics maintain that the planet is able to shed excess heat easily and relatively quickly, while the warmists believe that CO2 in the atmosphere traps the heat in the troposphere, and because the atmospheric CO2 is long-lived the effect will continue even if we reduce emissions now (Hansen, 2005).
What are the SSTs doing? They’re dropping:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst3gl/from:2003/plot/hadsst3gl/from:2003/trend
Just how likely is a 1-2% decrease in cloudiness? Well, it happened over China from 1954-2005 (-1.6% per decade):
http://www.ann-geophys.net/30/573/2012/angeo-30-573-2012.pdf
Cloud height has an effect as well. The higher the average cloud height, the warmer the surface temps, in general. Since the year 2000 the average global cloud height has been dropping.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011GL050506/abstract
The clouds have always been rogue elements in the IPCC models – they weren’t modelled at all well, and the effect of cloud feedbacks is hugely unknown (see AR4).
So how the IPCC could state that they fully understood the climate enough to rule out all influences on 1976-1998 warming except CO2 is unclear.
Richard, just for good measure, the vast majority of the energy imbalance due to AGW ends up rising the ocean temperatures (oceans huge heat capacity, etc….)
Hand waving tosh. Citations, literature, proof Thomas. If you’ve got it you’re way ahead of the IPCC.
>”and one and for all: Ocean heat content has been RISING and especially sharply also over the past 6 month.”
On aggregate, but basin-by-basin, depth-by-depth identifies WHERE warming is, and where COOLING is too.
>”If you think NOAA is lying to us, write to them!”
No argument with the global aggregate Thomas, that’s your strawman. But about that NOAA – UKMO EN3 OHC disparity………
Thomas:
And:
And then this clanger:
So a decade is way too short to detect cooling, but we can see increased warming over only 6 months. Lol.
>”Overall”
How do NODC compile “overall” Thomas?
Basin-by-basin, depth-by-depth.
>”The solar flux has not increased”
Thank you Thomas, in fact it has decreased. This explains cooling SST and cooling upper Pacific and Atlantic OHC.
aGHGs don’t on the other hand.
>”….most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position”
That wasn’t always the case Rob:- [RC, the comments below repeat “I” and “my”, which confused me until I checked the references. It turns out they’re not your comments, although you don’t make that clear. You’ve contributed just six words and the remainder has been copied and pasted from John O’Sullivan. We’re not writing an encyclopedia here. I think we should offer insights and ask questions, linked elsewhere, sure, but not copied in bulk like this. I “borrow” articles myself, somewhat freely, but I say what I’ve done. – RT]
Breaking: U.S. National Academies Find Greenhouse Effect Doesn’t Exist
This story is huge. America’s prestigious National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and related government bodies found no greenhouse effect in Earth’s atmosphere. Evidence shows the U.S. government held the smoking gun all along – a fresh examination of an overlooked science report proves America’s brightest and best had shown the White House that the greenhouse gas effect was not real and of no scientific significance since 1979 or earlier.*
http://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/breaking-u-s-national-academies-find-greenhouse-effect-doesnt-exist/
U.S. National Academies and the (non) Greenhouse Gas Effect (Part Two)
Glenn Tamblyn (climateandrisk.com) and John Cook (skepticalscience.com) were among a myriad commenters apoplectic with rage about my article yesterday. * Their outrage was because I showed that no American science academy, at least till 1979, gave the idea of the greenhouse gas theory the time of day. In fact it was never even mentioned in a key report to Congress that year. So much for ‘settled science’ I said.
http://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2012/12/21/u-s-national-academies-and-the-greenhouse-gas-effect-part-two/
US National Academies and the (non) Greenhouse Gas Effect: Part Three
This article is the third in a series that traces the back story of the (non) greenhouse gas theory.* Their purpose is to expose the truth that this so-called ‘settled science’ never appeared on any national science academy’s radar until the 1980′s.
http://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2012/12/22/us-national-academies-and-the-non-greenhouse-gas-effect-part-three/
National Academies and the (non) Greenhouse Gas Effect: Part 4
Not only are there so many assumptions made about what is the greenhouse gas effect (GHE) but what strikes me most about these discussions is how believers in the ‘theory’ avoid addressing why, if this is all ‘settled science,’ there is no standard definition. Moreover, the closer we look at it the less it is clear just how this ‘theory’ even operates. Pointedly, despite around $100 billion spent on climate research, this cornerstone of the man-made global warming science hasn’t even been validated by any objective test in earth’s atmosphere.
What has triggered the furor is my analysis of the seminal 13,000-word report from 1979 by the National Academy of Sciences. The study is often referred to as the Charney Report and was commissioned by the U.S. Government to supposedly explain how carbon dioxide (CO2) will impact future climate. From our modern perspective – 33 years on – it seems incredible that such an in-depth report should fail to mention the greenhouse gas effect (GHE). This is especially incongruous being that climatologists will glibly tell you the theory has unimpeachable provenance stretching back 150 years to the formative era of radiative physics and Arrhenius and Tyndall.
http://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2012/12/28/national-academies-and-the-non-greenhouse-gas-effect-part-4/
National Academies and the (non) Greenhouse Gas Effect: Part 5
This article contrasts and compares two of the most important peer-reviewed climate studies of their day – one generation apart – to expose bogus greenhouse gas claims. We see how short the time frame was when consensus science switched from declaring the greenhouse gas effect as junk to claiming it as a trigger for an impending climate apocalypse.
http://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/national-academies-and-the-non-greenhouse-gas-effect-part-5/
National Academies and the (non) Greenhouse Gas Effect: Part 6
This article summarizes the brilliant essay of Marjorie Mazel Hecht that offers one of the most compelling insights into the back-story of how a clique of U.S. academics sold a Malthusian population control scare story.* Their aim: to use man-made global warming as the front to introduce drastic worldwide population control.
http://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/national-academies-and-the-non-greenhouse-gas-effect-part-6/
>”You’ve contributed just six words and the remainder has been copied and pasted from John O’Sullivan”
Yes, PSI’s revelations re Charney Report – anathema to Cook and Tamblyn – support my six words, that was all the words I needed.
The addition of the article intros to the titles was an afterthought because the titles didn’t indicate content
>”We’re not writing an encyclopedia here. I think we should offer insights and ask questions, linked elsewhere, sure, but not copied in bulk like this. I “borrow” articles myself, somewhat freely, but I say what I’ve done. – RT”
What exactly, was the difference between my reply and the comment by Rob Taylor that I was replying to? He contributed:-
“The above is yet more tosh, mumbo-jumbo and pseudoscience from willfully ignorant idealogues with their heads in the sand and their derrieres exposed for the amusement of all.
Here’s what real scientists conducting real observations with real ships, planes and satellites say:”
My reply was NOT to what Rob contributed himself however (nothing of substance to reply to), it was to selected passages he “copied and pasted from [Royal Society and NASA]”
Rob’s comment – 37 lines.
My reply – 55 lines including the quote I was addressing from Rob’s copied articles, my comment made longer by the additional 17 or so lines of the Part 4 intro which includes the naming convention (the “Charney Report”) not included in Part 1 intro – did you know prior to this what the “Charney Report” was about RT, or even that such a contentious document existed? [No. Thanks for that. – RT]
Rob followed his 37 line comment with another 28 line comment, 25 of which were “copied and pasted from [HPA Press Release]” for total of 58 lines (33+25) “copied in bulk”. Yet I get pinged for 52 lines “copied and pasted” but Rob Taylor doesn’t for 58.
Why the double standard? [Look, I didn’t like his lack of effort much, either, but he made it clear it wasn’t his own writing, you didn’t. My concern was first the lack of attribution and then the length. People complain about length, but do you want me to keep silent on it? – RT]
>”[RC, the comments below repeat “I” and “my”, which confused me until I checked the references. It turns out they’re not your comments, although you don’t make that clear…]”
Actually I was using the “:-” writing convention after my initial six words.
E.g. from The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:-
Common uses of colons
To announce, introduce, or direct attention to a list, a noun or noun phrase, a quotation, or an example/explanation.
Dashes
…….let’s take a look at some ways to put dashes to work in your writing.
To set off material for emphasis.
http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/semi-colons-colons-and-dashes/
I’ve written and read piles of business reports that use this convention.
[You drive your points home with a sledgehammer, RC. But you didn’t say who wrote it, simple as that, so I thought you did. My mistake, clearly. – RT]
>”…he made it clear it wasn’t his own writing, you didn’t. My concern was first the lack of attribution”
>”….you didn’t say who wrote it, simple as that, so I thought you did”
OK fair enough, sloppy on my part. Must state author or source org, etc in future e.g. “From PSI:” would have been helpful.
>”I was using the “:-” writing convention”
I’ve looked this up for usage and concede that it has probably been poor form for some years depending on where it is used. One discussion group on this topic has an answer:
“According to Nick Marten’s The Secret History of Typography in the Oxford English Dictionary, a colon followed by a dash is a typographical mark that the OED refers to as the dog’s bollocks:”
And the University of Sussex has a strong opinion on the matter,
“The colon [is] never preceded by a white space; it is always followed by a single white space in normal use, and it is never, never, never followed by a hyphen or a dash — in spite of what you might have been taught in school.”
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/31060/is-it-proper-to-use-a-colon-followed-immediately-by-a-hyphen
But another comment in the thread says:
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a colon followed by a hyphen, but I have seen it followed by a dash, especially before beginning a long list. @Marcin’s answer mentions court documents, and I think that’s where I’ve seen it too.” – TRiG Oct 20 ’11 at 17:18
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/31060/is-it-proper-to-use-a-colon-followed-immediately-by-a-hyphen#comment84250_31060
“It’s correct, because it is a recognised, well-known usage. However, it is redundant, and in most situations not the correct best or right usage. I would only use it where there is an established convention for its usage, such as in certain court documents.” – Marcin Jun 22 ’11 at 19:14
http://english.stackexchange.com/posts/31063/revisions
# # #
“Redundant” is not quite right, the colon and dash are quite different in purpose. I’ve only got a hyphen on my keyboard that I can see so I’ve been using that. Mostly the use now days is in this form following a colon:
– Item 1
– Item 2
Or other symbol e.g.
> Item 1
> Item 2
Or bullet pointed list . A subtle variation on “:-“. I suppose blog convention is best for blog comments though, force of habit will be hard to change.
[This is very long, and off-topic, I think. Are you taking the Mickey, RC? The purpose of the colon is to introduce. It never needs a horizontal line, short or long. Only the hyphen, as you say, resides natively on the keyboard. The en and em dashes can be generated on the PC, as can all extended ASCII characters, with Alt codes entered on the numeric keypad. Hold down the Alt key, press 0151 on the keypad, release the Alt key and the em dash — appears at the cursor. Alt+0150 produces the en dash –. Alt+0176 produces the degree symbol °. Easy. Now back to global warming. – RT]
ROFL, Richard – you quote approvingly from JOHN O’SULLIVAN, the serial fraudster and would-be identity thief:
http://www.desmogblog.com/affidavits-michael-mann-libel-suit-reveal-astonishing-facts-about-tim-ball-associate-john-o-sullivan
JOHN O’SULLIVAN, [snipped]?
http://hot-topic.co.nz/leyland-joins-the-uber-cranks-signs-up-with-serial-liar-osullivans-vanity-science-group/
JOHN O’SULLIVAN,, who even Christopher Monckton has described as “confused and scientifically illiterate “?
http://www.principia-scientific.org/supportnews/latest-news/176-lord-monckton-replies-to-john-o-sullivan-s-open-letter.html
You really are dredging the bottom of the barrel, RC, and that hollow sound is all that is left of your own credibilty.
>”ROFL, Richard – you quote approvingly from JOHN O’SULLIVAN”
You can fact-check the articles yourself Rob, e.g. Part 1:
“Acting on their suggestion this author obtained a download copy from the NAS website and ran it through a full word search to confirm the numbers. Readers can check for themselves. There is ZERO mention of any greenhouse gas effect as a factor on our climate.”
http://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/breaking-u-s-national-academies-find-greenhouse-effect-doesnt-exist/
Note: “Readers can check for themselves”
That’s you Rob.
Fascinatingly content-free propaganda from our leading science institutions.
Is it surprising that young people can’t be bothered learning science anymore?
It is certain that increased greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and from land use change lead to a warming of climate, and it is very likely that these green house gases are the dominant cause of the global warming that has been taking place over the last 50 years.
So it is CERTAIN, 100% probability. Yet we had warming episodes in the previous 50 years that are unaccounted for, and we have 15+ years of no warming and no increase in forcing over the same time period, that are also unaccounted for, yet we are certain
Colour me unimpressed.
The other Inconsistency in the various Met Office screeds that are linked here
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/6/1/more-from-the-wrong-files-josh-224.html
In their blog post response to Keenan, they repeat the mantra that the climate was driven primarily by anthropogenic means since 1850, yet in the graphs in the accompanying PDF, the ANT part shows a mainly flatline and then ANT starts around 1960 .
The warming around 1930s is quite prominent yet shows little correlation with co2 or forcing.
Andy, this may seem a bit extreme of me, but anyone, including Rob Taylor, who quotes the ridiculous ‘97% of Climate Scientists’ or similar ‘97% fictions, gets scrubbed from my list of those I might take seriously on the basis that anyone who relies on one proven piece of nonsense in a discussion automatically reduces their own entire argument to nonsense.
Richard Tol, himself very much a part of the IPCC machine, blew SkS’s silly Cook et al paper on the 97% nonsense and proved, and showed his workings in doing so, that Cook et al should have used the figure of 98%, which their thesis came up with after Tol eliminated mistakes!
Cook and his cohort seem to get their science and their maths from ‘The Hitch-hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy’ which is, of course, both highly entertaining and totally fictitious.
As to the title of this thread, this is why I use a good quality max-min thermometer and an agricultural-quality rain guage. Both may not be entirely accurate, but much superior to guessing!
Don’t be disingenuous, Andy, your “15+ years of no warming” relies on a carefully cherry-picked interval for one of the 3 surface temperature data sets – the one with the least coverage of the Arctic, where warming has been greatest.
Remove any one of those oh-so-carefully-selected factors, and an unmistakable warming signal leaps out of the data.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998-intermediate.htm
SkS doing a bit of cherry picking of their own – no RSS or UAH in Figure 4.
An unmistakable cooling signal leaps out of this data:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/rss/from:2002/plot/rss/from:2002/trend
And this data:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/hadsst3gl/from:2002/plot/hadsst3gl/from:2002/trend
Figure 6: Average of all five data sets (GISS, NCDC, HadCRU, UAH, and RSS) with the effects of ENSO, solar irradiance, and volcanic emissions removed (Foster and Rahmstorf 2011)
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/FR11_Figure8.jpg
Their 2010 average anomaly AFTER “removing” El Nino was about +0.29 C.
Latest ENSO-NEUTRAL April 2013 UAH anomaly is +0.1, down 0.5 C from +0.6 in 2010.
http://climate4you.com/images/MSU%20UAH%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
The April 2013 UAH datapoint is about equivalent to a little less than 2005 (+0.9 = +0.29 – 0.2) on F&R11, Figure 6.
In other words, Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) is junk.
Oh dear Richard…. “Latest ENSO-NEUTRAL April 2013 UAH anomaly is +0.1, down 0.5 C from +0.6 in 2010.” So what?
In 2000 it was -3.5 on the graph you cited… did you expect an ice age to come for a year…? Would you have bet on that number to have significance? You would have lost your shirt!
When will you finally understand that short term fluctuations are meaningless noise? What is the linear trend through that graph (climate4you that you linked above)? Perhaps from -0.3 to +0.3 from 1971 to 2013 (eye balled from that graph)? Now lets see: 0.6 Deg of warming in aaah… 34 years = 0.17 Deg/decade give or take a few hundreds…. quite close to the generally projected trends isn’t it? So what was your point again?
>”Oh dear Richard…. In 2000 it was -3.5 on the graph you cited… did you expect an ice age to come for a year…? Would you have bet on that number to have significance? You would have lost your shirt!”
Err, no Thomas, it was -0.35?
http://climate4you.com/images/MSU%20UAH%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
What is the linear trend through that graph …….So what was your point again?
The point is that Foster and Rahmstorf’s 2010 trajectory AFTER “removing” ENSO (rather steeper than the “linear trend through that [UAH] graph”) has been proven to be junk by subsequent data to April 2013 in ENSO-NEUTRAL conditions. Repeating:
“The April 2013 UAH datapoint is about equivalent to a little less than 2005 (+0.9 = +0.29 – 0.2) on F&R11, Figure 6.”
Foster and Rahmstorf will have to update their analysis because their 2010 trend is waaay too steep. And their trend will progressively flatten as similar UAH/RSS etc data comes in i.e. their rationale has failed because they assumed the data would follow their “underlying anthropogenic global warming signal” after 2010 – it hasn’t.
Wrong again Rob (do you ever get it right?). According to Sks, all the temperature datasets show a lack of warming for between 15-23 yrs – both satellite and surface based records.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php
‘Data sources: GISTEMP, NOAA, HADCRUT, RSS, UAH, BEST.’
No warming trend greater than the +/- error margins from the following dates:
GISTEMP 1994
NOAA (Land/Sea) 1994
HADCRUT3 1993
HADCRUT4 1994
BEST 1998
NOAA (Land) 1997
RSS 1990
UAH 1994′
Hi rob,
Can you tell me why Hadcrut has the least coverage of the Arctic?
Why don’t they use the thermometers in the Arctic that GISS uses?
Is it perhaps that there aren’t any, and the data gets interpolated?
Andy –
The difference between the Arctic coverage of HadCru and GISS, to the best of my understanding, is that GISS infills the no-data based on trends observed in those Arctic stations that exist, and infills completely, whereas HadCru infills less completely and based on general global trends rather than the trends obvserved in the few stations that exist.
GISS and Hansen say the Arctic is the hotspot/future of the Earth, and so favour the option that increases the temps, and GISS/Hansen like to have North America dominate the Northern Hemisphere trend (in everything). HadCru favours the European dominance, which has had cold times while NAmerica has had hot times.
We all give the benefit of the doubt to the side we prefer. The difference with Hansen et al, is they give the benefit of doubt to EVERYTHING is the climate system that they can. Which is why the corrections and adjustments are so strongly warming.
For those obsessed with temp trends, go here:http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php
And choose your temp series of choice.
Of cause if you want to hide the warming trend from your eyes you could choose periods like 1998 to 2012 or other suitably cherry picked intervals. I however prefer the big picture, for example 1970 to 2012.
Try working your way backwards from 2013 Thomas, until the temperature trend is more than the +/- error margins – it shows you how long there has been no statistically significant warming.
To save everyone time I’ve already gone to the trouble as can be seen in my post above at June 3, 2013 at 6:02 pm.
GISTEMP No warming in 19 yrs
NOAA (Land/Sea) No warming in 19 yrs
HADCRUT3 No warming in 20 yrs
HADCRUT4 No warming in 19 yrs
BEST No warming in 15 yrs
NOAA (Land) No warming in 16 yrs
RSS No warming in 23 yrs
UAH No warming in 19 yrs
1970-1980 shows no statistically significant warming. There is only warming from around 1980 to a maximum of 1998 (18 yrs), followed by no warming for between 15-23 yrs (average 18.75 yrs). Only an imbecile would trust a 50% strike rate – flipping a coin is just as accurate.
PS, don’t forget to adjust the dates in the autocorrel option. Have fun.
Tell that to the North Pole Magoo…. that there was no warming in xx years. Whatever version you prefer.
And then take a dive and tell that to the Oceans, that the rising heat content is just an imagination perhaps….. and the 7×10^22 J added there are nothing really, just a statistical fluke. And Magoo knows better anyway, so we should stop looking at data from NOAA. [snipped]
Have fun on the climate escalator…..
Whilst we are on the climate escalator, the Met Office response to Keenan which we have discussed before is here
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/2/3/Statistical_Models_Climate_Change_May_2013.pdf
Figure 1 shows 20th C warming and forcing
There was a cooling period pre 1990, then a warming period to 1940 ish, then a cooling period to around 1975, then the warming period to 1998
The forcing graph on the same figure seems to have some correlation with the late 20th C warming
However, the early 20th C warming has little or no anthropogenic attribution (see Fig 2 where the inferred anthro warming component starts at 1960)
Therefore, we have a warming episode in the early 20th C not attributed to humans, yet of similar magnitude to late 20th C warming.
We attribute late 20th C warming to CO2 because we can’t find anything else to attribute it to, yet we can’t explain the early 20th C warming (or cooling)
Cheers Bob.
Just using the trend calculator that you recommended Thomas. Are you saying there is something wrong with it now, or is it because it doesn’t say what you want it to say? Why do you choose to take the temperature record from 1970?
BTW, did you ever get around to finding the evidence for positive feedback from water vapour (i.e. tropospheric hotspot) Thomas? Doesn’t matter what the North Pole and the ocean are doing if there’s no positive feedback from atmospheric water vapour does it? After all, the maximum it can warm without WV feedback is 1.2C per doubling of TOTAL CO2 levels, which is hardly a problem, let alone evidence any melting ice or warming oceans can be attributed to anthropogenic causes. No tropospheric hotspot = no evidence of positive feedback from water vapour = no amplification of the warming attributed to CO2 = no AGW, except a tiny amount due directly to CO2.
Warming is not evidence of why it has warmed. You need the tropospheric hot spot to show the anthropogenic cause.
Just to confirm what Andy wrote about the 1960s, Hansen (2005) says the following about anthropogenic GHG forcing:
In other words, the whole “since the industrial revolution” argument is nonsense, if anyone wants to use that.
Hansen (1988) then states that the trend 1958-1985 is zero, and says that the expectation is that the anthropogenic component will start to be scientifically detectable (to a 3σ level – 99%) in the 1990s, and grow until by this decade the warming will be obvious to the man in the street.
Hasn’t happened. Far from 3σ warming, over the last decade we’ve been cooling. Oops.
Thomas,
I’ve already pointed out to you that according to James Hansen, any anthropogenic warming trend cannot be distinguished from natural variation prior to the 1990s. So to use the 1970-present chart to prove anything is pointless.
Hi Bob. Do you have a source for the Hansen quote? I know it exists as I’ve seen it before on several occasions, but I can’t seem to track it down anymore (must be using the wrong search terms). Cheers.
That is seriously screwy logic.
Hansen (1988)
Thanks Bob.
Thanks for the reference. I couldn’t find the statement that anthropogenic warming trend cannot be distinguished from natural variation prior to the 1990s? Also note that the paper is 25 years old, there has been considerable refinement since then.
Simon:
He says it on numerous occasions, including in the abstract.
I’m not going to repeat myself, you can read about it here, for starters:
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2013/05/anthropogenic-ocean-heating-part-1/comment-page-1/#comment-203745
Simon:
5.2.1. Geographical distribution.
Averaged over the full decade of the 1980s, the model shows a tendency toward warming, but in most regions the decadal-mean warming is less than the interannual variability of the annual mean. In the 1990s the decadal-mean warming is comparable to the interannual variability for many regions, and by the 2010s almost the entire globe has very substantial warming, as much as several times the inter annual variability of the annual mean.’
‘5.3.2. July maps
In the 1980s the global warming is small compared to the natural variability of local monthly mean temperature; thus any given location is about as likely to be cooler than climatology as warmer than climatology, and, as shown in Plate 6, the area with cool temperatures in a given July is about as great as the area with warm temperatures. But by the year 2000 there is an obvious tendency for it to be warm in more regions, and by the year 2029 it is warm almost everywhere.’
‘We concluded earlier that the magnitude of global mean greenhouse warming should be sufficiently large for scientific identification by the 1990s’ (page 9357).
You are right about it being out of date Simon, all the models are out of date due to their dismal failure:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-global-LT-vs-UAH-and-RSS.png
If Hansen is correct, then there has been around 8 years global warming attributable to the anthropogenic CO2 forcing (1990-1998), followed by 15-23 yrs of no warming. Oops.
Hansen is talking about the period 1958-1988. That twenty year period was insufficient to say conclusively that the warming was not due to normal variability. He then goes on to predict that the warming would become statistically significant in the 1990’s. His prediction was correct. One again, you are disingeneously misinterpretating what is written. You can’t use cherry-picked short (< 30 years) time periods to make definitive statements about climate trends. Maybe I should post the Skeptical Science escalator again……
Simon:
No he doesn’t, read it again. He’s not talking about starting points, he’s talking about over the decade.
Oh boy. And you accuse me of cherry-picking.
Yes, Simon, he was correct for the 1990s. I’ve already said that. But you can’t just stop there, with a period that ended with the largest El Nino we’ve seen for ages. If that was the case we’d still be back at the year 2000.
You clearly aren’t a scientist, so let me explain how science works. Scientists develop hypotheses and use them to make predictions. The predictions are then tested to determine whether the hypotheses are valid. If the predictions fail the hypotheses fail too. This is why most credible scientists are very cautious when making their predictions.
Hansen made predictions in 1988. On the basis of those predictions the IPCC was born in the same year, and has continued to follow those predictions ever since, and the whole thing has become politicized.
This, as it turns out, was premature, since the predictions were valid for the first 10 years, but then failed for the next 15 years. Remember the prediction was not for a decade of warming followed by no warming for almost double that – it was for a decade of warming followed by ever-increasing warming.
Not a flatline.
And by the way, Simon, 1958-1988 is thirty years, not twenty. So your argument falls flat in any case.
Simon:
Re: the escalator.
According to Hansen, the skeptical science escalator shows that those who subscribe to AGW do so based purely on 8 years of warming (1990-1998). The rest of us base our beliefs on the rest of the temperature record – i.e. long term rising, but not due to anthropogenic causes.
If we refer back to the sks trend calculator again in conjunction with Hansen’s views about the anthropogenic cause of warming only being noticeable from 1990, we have the following:
GISTEMP 4 years warming due to man’s CO2 output (from 1990)
NOAA (Land/Sea) 4 years
HADCRUT3 3 years
HADCRUT4 4 years
BEST 8 years
NOAA (Land) 7 years
RSS 0 years
UAH 4 years
Average: 4.25 years warming due to mankind.
Over the last century we have seen approximately 4.25 years of warming attributable to anthropogenic CO2 output, the rest is natural.
I might just add, before I get accused of cherry-picking, that Hansen is an environmental activist who has quit his NASA job so he can take a more active part in AGW activism, and skepticalscince.conjob are unashamedly raving propagandists for the AGW cause.
Due to their activist and propaganda leanings, neither Hansen nor sks can be accused of a bias against AGW so the idea of cherry picking dates is something you’d need to take up with Hansen, skepticalscience.conjob, GISTEMP, NOAA, HADCRUT, RSS, UAH, BEST.
So only 4.5 years of this is “natural” variation?
There, fixed.
Simon:
No, not 4.5 years natural variation. According to Hansen, all of that warming in your graph EXCEPT 4.5 years is natural – only the warming from 1990 onwards is anthropogenic, which is an average of 4.5 years of warming. Bob D’s ‘fixed’ graph above shows what Hansen attributes to AGW.
You guys should be presenting this stuff at the NZ Climate Change Conference.
http://www.nzcccconference.org/programme
There’s a spot left open, after dinner entertainment.
Quite funny, I noticed this:
“Jim Salinger, Salinger Climate Services”
Climate consultant, woulda thunk it?
Ah yes, the climate change conference. Is that where they all get together and try their best to ignore the following:
Failure by all the computer models.
A total lack of warming for between 15-23 yrs.
A lack of any evidence for positive feedback from water vapour.
The missing hot spot.
Failure of the carbon markets.
Failure to renew the Kyoto protocol.
How Europe’s carbon trading schemes have resulted in a rise in CO2 emissions.
How the USA’s CO2 emission have fallen even though they didn’t sign up to Kyoto.
How to stop the decline of appearance fees for international climate lectures.
And finally, what they’re all going to be doing for a job soon when the funding for AGW research dries up. Perhaps they could take a look at James Hansen’s career direction – standing on the sidewalk in a sandwich board that reads – ‘Repent thy CO2 sins, for the end is nigh!!! (donations much appreciated)’.
“Professing to be wise, they became fools.”
Magoo – roflmao
… brilliant!
Maybe Hansen could present his own findings at the conference. Then again he might be busy organising some Greenpeace rally or something.
>”I however prefer the big picture, for example 1970 to 2012.”
Really Thomas? That’s your “bigger picture”?
Try back to 1850 for an even bigger picture:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/plot/none
Now Thomas, where does CO2 fit in that picture?
Richard: You asked for CO2 in the picture:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1960/offset:-310/scale:0.01/plot/gistemp-dts/from:1960/mean:50/plot/hadsst3gl/from:1960/mean:50/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/from:1960/mean:50/offset:-10/scale:0.5
I added ocean surface temps (hadsst3gl) and arctic sea ice index (/nsidc-seaice-n)
CO2 data in woodfortrees is available from 1960 (1958) onwards.
Scaled and off-setted to fit into the singular Y axis provided by woodfortrees.
Looks like a good fit to me. Richard should try introducing CO2 as a variable in his multi-order polynomials 🙂
>”Richard: You asked for CO2 in the picture:”
Reading comprehension problems Thomas?
The picture you’ve provided is 110 years short of the picture I asked for.
But I note HadSST3 and GISTEMP are diverging from CO2 in your (somewhat truncated) picture, why is that?
Seems to be a problem with HadSST3 1960 – 1975 too. Could it just be Thomas, that you’re mistaking natural cyclicity for anthropogenic influence?
Also, CO2 doesn’t explain 2000 – 2005 SIE. Or 2005 – 2010 SIE.
Now,about that bigger picture; the HadCRUT4 one back to 1950.
>”Richard should try introducing CO2 as a variable in his multi-order polynomials”
Good idea Simon. But I don’t think the fit will be as “good” as it “looks” to you now. Here’s the spreadsheet for HadSST2:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52688456/HadSST2.xls
First page has a polynomial fit to 30 yrs since 1982. Shows pronounced cooling since early 2000s.
The next page is more interesting and will probably get you very excited initially Simon. An EMD analysis of the same 30 year period as for the polynomial fit. The residual, at first glance, looks almost like CO2. But unfortunately no, the rising inflexion only begins 1993 – sorry.
You might take some notice of IMF 5 Simon. That would be the negative phase of natural oscillation beginning early 2000s. Climate science is just catching up with that, took them by surprise apparently.
But the crunch comes in the 162 year EMD analysis. The negative inflexion in the residual not only invalidates Dr Nicola Scafetta’s rising quadratic assumption but it is almost exactly the opposite trajectory to CO2 – sorry again.
You lose Simon (despite :-)). Isn’t it amazing how superficial appearances can be so very deceptive?
Should be – “Now,about that bigger picture; the HadCRUT4 one back to [1850]”
>”…the residual not only invalidates Dr Nicola Scafetta’s rising quadratic assumption…”
Even so, Scafetta’s quadratic LEADS carbon dioxide by some 20 – 25 years:
CO2 vs GAT
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52688456/CO2%20vs%20GAT%20R2.xls
Scafetta’s empirical forecast still making the IPCC look silly even with a dodgy basis:-
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/scafetta-forecast.png
Richard, calm down.
Here is the bigger picture back to 1850
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1850/offset:-310/scale:0.01/plot/gistemp-dts/from:1850/mean:50/plot/hadsst3gl/from:1850/mean:50/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/from:1850/mean:50/offset:-10/scale:0.5
Now what exactly was your point about the bigger picture here?
And who is that Scafetta guy? Is he putting his money on a bet that temperatures will be cooling?
Thomas, the “bigger picture” back to 1850 shows global warming yet most science institutions including the Met Office don’t attribute CO2 into the equations until post 1960s. So your “bigger picture” is worthless
Thomas, would you bet next month’s income on a weather forecast for the next ten days from now? If not, then why should NZ spend billions on global warming predictions that forecast the next 87 years? Here, I am talking about general circulation models, so don’t try to differentiate between weather and climate. If you can’t trust a climatologist’s prediction for this winter, then why trust one for a century?
Rare bets have been accepted by warmists, to their detriment. Look it up.
Perhaps the non-attribution of CO2 prior to 1960 is done out of an abundance of scientific caution?
What you would say if the Met Office was pointing to the rise of CO2 since the industrial revolution and most certainly since the start of the 20th century and attributed that to the warming trend that seems to present itself from the start of the 20th century?
But if you can not agree that CO2 these days is a causative agent of climate change, why do you bother talking about the first half of the 20th century?
Anyway don’t you get a sense of desperation here, when proclaiming that GW has stopped some 15 years or whatever ago, when you look at the bigger picture? You asked to go back to 1850, so I did.
Me thinks that the further you step away from the fine detail of the annual or decadal noise in the temp signal, the clearer the message becomes…..
And above all, remember, only a small fraction of the annual energy imbalance ends up warming the atmosphere, the vast majority warms the oceans. And there too, its pointless to bicker about this or that basin but you must look at the big picture of the integrated heat content. Earth does the integrating for you. No need to sweat over short time frames or regional symptoms….
But if you can not agree that CO2 these days is a causative agent of climate change, why do you bother talking about the first half of the 20th century?
So what caused the warming of the early 20th Century Thomas? Do your schoolchildren ask these questions of you when you are “teaching” them about AGW?
Mankind has been spitting out CO2 since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Scientists don’t tend to attribute human emitted greenhouse gases definitively to 1900-1950 warming because they are usually operating within 95% confidence intervals. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t probably (as opposed to almost certainly) having an effect.
Thomas:
‘Perhaps the non-attribution of CO2 prior to 1960 is done out of an abundance of scientific caution?’
It’s done because our CO2 levels didn’t start rising strongly until around 1960 (see figure 1 below):
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/CO2_Emissions_Levels_Knorr.gif
Ewww, I used a skepticalscience.conjob link. I better wash my hands.
Simon and Thomas,
Please stop just making stuff up as you go along. I’ve already given the peer-reviewed journal references to you several times, I’m not sure why you both keep trying to avoid this issue.
1) In Hansen (2005) he states quite clearly:
“The planetary energy imbalance in our model (Fig. 1C) did not exceed a few tenths of 1 W/m2 before the 1960s.” For this reason the effects of anthropogenic CO2 were negligible prior to 1960.
2) In Hansen (1988) he once again states quite clearly that he only expects the anthropogenic influence to be discernible (decadal mean warming greater than interannual variability) from the 1990s onward.
>”Here is the bigger picture back to 1850″
Whaaaat? Where’s CO2 before 1960?
FYI here it is (as from above AGAIN):
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52688456/CO2%20vs%20GAT%20R2.xls
What is your explanation for temperature LEADING carbon dioxide?
>”Now what exactly was your point about the bigger picture here?”
That your CO2 case falls apart and actually disproves itself in the bigger picture.
>”And who is that Scafetta guy?”
Dr Nicola Scafetta, author and co-author of numerous papers, cited by others. Don’t you read the scientific literature Thomas? And rather more of a scientist than the entire IPCC modeling community apparently.
>”Is he putting his money on a bet that temperatures will be cooling?”
No, and you obviously haven’t a clue, going by that question, where his forecast fits in to warming/stasis/cooling scenarios even after I’ve explained the flaw in his rationale.
>”Me thinks that the further you step away from the fine detail of the annual or decadal noise in the temp signal, the clearer the message becomes…..”
This far?
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/co2_temperature_historical.png
You’re right Thomas, that’s a VERY clear picture.
>”…its pointless to bicker about this or that basin”
Because it doesn’t suit your meme? “This or that basin” happens to be the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean – don’t they even rate in the warmist mind?
>”…but you must look at the big picture of the integrated heat content”
We look, but there’s no proof of anthropogenic cause and there are other factors to consider. If the posited anthropogenic forcing is not acting in a globally uniform way on either upper ocean OHC, SST or SLR, it’s not acting – period!
>”No need to sweat over short time frames or regional symptoms….”
Basin-by-basin, depth-by-depth makes you sweat does it Thomas?
Richard, no, not that far….. We had way to many significant differences hundreds of millions of years back. You know, major continental drifts, significant volcanic phases, evolution of species and very significant changes in the carbon cycle as well as solar output and many more.
However a paper in 2012 clearly implicated massive CO2 release from thawing permafrost in significant warming events some 50 million years ago:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v484/n7392/full/nature10929.html
But how about we look this far: (the last 400.000 years)
http://nordpil.com/static/images/carbon_dioxide_and_temperature_historic_trends_full.png
Oh, and don’t start again with the Temperature led CO2 mantra. Detailed analysis has given a much clearer picture on this too:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v484/n7392/full/nature10915.html
And perhaps once more the last history since 1880:
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/indicators/global-temp-and-co2-1880-2009.gif
Now as Simon already pointed out, certainly even before 1960 CO2 played a role in the overall temp development of the planet. But of cause, as Hansen pointed out, back then the temp changes were not strong enough to allow making that conclusion with the amount of confidence we have today after the warming that followed. But now, with hindsight, we can be a lot more confident about attribution of AGW to the temp trend before 1960. In fact, when removing the calculated GHG forcings natural variation remains.
You guys are really clutching at straws. Kind of desperate really.
But now, with hindsight, we can be a lot more confident about attribution of AGW to the temp trend before 1960.
References?
Looking at the Met Office response to Keenan, there is virtually no AGW attribution to CO2 before 1960.
>”You know, ………….significant volcanic phases, …………….as well as solar output and many more”
Just like the last 1000 years Thomas.
>”Oh, and don’t start again with the Temperature led CO2 mantra”
So you’re denying “the underlying anthropogenic global warming signal” LAGS temperature by 20 – 25 years over the period 1850 – present?
>”And perhaps once more the last history since 1880″
Not normalized sorry Thomas. Take a look at the spreadsheet chart for the same data in normalized form:-
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52688456/CO2%20vs%20GAT%20R2.xls
Temperature clearly LEADS carbon dioxide 1850 – present.
>”with the amount of confidence we have today after the warming that followed.”
Warmist confidence only. There’s been NO warming for over a decade.
>”But now, with hindsight, we can be a lot more confident about attribution of AGW to the temp trend before 1960.”
Are you mad Thomas? What are you smoking? Attribution of AGW ……BEFORE…… 1960?
>”In fact, when removing the calculated GHG forcings natural variation remains.”
Of course it does. What GHG forcings were there before 1960 that even come close to the warming-cooliing-warming-cooling cycle 1850 – 1960?
>”You guys are really clutching at straws. Kind of desperate really.”
Really? I suggest you take a look at this Thomas:
‘Epic Fail: 73 Climate Models Vs. Observations’
http://www.thegwpf.org/epic-fail-73-climate-models-vs-observations/
If that’s “straws”, I for one will happily clutch at them.
Richard said: “Temperature clearly LEADS carbon dioxide 1850 – present.”
I opened your table and had a look.
You need to explain how you come to the conclusion that Temperature leads CO2 1850 to present.
>”You need to explain how you come to the conclusion that Temperature leads CO2 1850 to present”
You’ve got out of your depth very quickly Thomas, I shouldn’t need to explain this.
Look along the y axis 60 ppm/0.4 C line.
“The underlying anthropogenic global warming signal” (GAT, red curve) crosses y axis 60/0.4 at 1969ish.
Carbon dioxide (CO2, blue curve) crosses y axis 60/0.4 at 1989ish.
1969 – 1989 = -20 years.
The temperature signal, as represented by Scafetta’s quadratic, LEADS carbon dioxide level by 20 years at the time anthropogenic forcing has (erroneously) been attributed to temperature rise.
Conversely, carbon dioxide level LAGS the temperature signal, as represented by Scafetta’s quadratic, at the time anthropogenic forcing has (erroneously) been attributed to temperature rise.
BTW, you might have noticed that the last decades of GAT is basically Foster and Rahmstorfs trajectory but as a curve rather than linear i.e. they could have saved themselves a lot of time and effort just by reading Scafetta’s work.
Thomas:
Reference please? He never said that.
Thomas, for an intro to latest Scafetta and co-author work that builds on earlier work:
‘Loehle and Scafetta on Climate Change Attribution’
by Craig Loehle
How do we detect the influence of humans on the climate system? Current methods based on climate models are unfortunately circular: their estimate of human effects is only valid if the models are correct, but the models make certain assumptions and also are fitted to the historical temperature record. A model-independent estimate of climate response is needed and is provided by this study.
Loehle, C. and N. Scafetta. 2011. Climate Change Attribution Using Empirical Decomposition of Historical Time Series. Open Atmospheric Science Journal 5:74-86.
The study is available free at http://benthamscience.com/open/toascj/articles/V005/74TOASCJ.htm
Continues >>>>>>>
http://judithcurry.com/2011/07/25/loehle-and-scafetta-on-climate-change-attribution/
Problem with their analysis as I’ve already identified.
Ah, Richard now I understand what you have done with your spreadsheet. Thanks for clarifying.
“The underlying anthropogenic global warming signal” (GAT, red curve) crosses y axis 60/0.4 at 1969ish.
So you looked at the shape of the curves of ppm CO2 and Temp, after shifting them so they start at zero at the same time and scaling them so both fit into the same graph and then you look where these curves cross certain horizontal lines.
I am sure that nature takes great guidance from the scaling factors on your personal graph….or the way we humans measure temperature or concentrations, units you know, …….. 😉
I will frame this and put it on my office wall. This is really good. Thanks!
>”So you looked at the shape of the curves of ppm CO2 and Temp, after shifting them…”
No “shift” Thomas. It’s called normalization. The series start date and timeframe is exactly the same for both sets of data (“zeroed” at the 1850 datapoints 0 and 0) and it is time (the x axis) that determines lead/lag.
>”….so they start at zero at the same time….”
Yes exactly, that’s what “zeroed” means. The whole point of normalization.
>”…and scaling them so both fit into the same graph…”
Yes but Excel calculates the scaling automatically depending on the settings, “Format Axis”, “Scale” is “Auto” for each series of that chart i.e. Excel charted the two series automatically from the “zeroed” start. But if you were to set “Maximum” for each y axis to the maximum of each respective series maximum (98.896896 and 0.75) the combined series y axis is no longer “zeroed” at 1850 when the chart is plotted (try it, you get -1.103104, -0.05 instead of 0,0) so it is impossible to compare the two series because x and y axis (for both series) have to be “zeroed” at 1850 in order to do so while retaining the original mathematical expressions.
Each curve is a quadratic representation of the data in each respective dataset after 1850 with the respective y axis values at each end i.e. a direct apples-for-apples comparison of quadratic expressions. Why else do you think this graphing technique is available in Excel Chart?
“….and then you look where these curves cross certain horizontal lines”
Yes Thomas but for WHEN you need to identify lead/lag. The leading curve is readily identifiable so the time lag to the lagging curve is just the time difference from each of the leading curve datapoints to the corresponding lagging curve datapoint. That is how to determine lead/lag between two curves for any start time consideration. I’ve just happened to use 1969 as an example because it was easy to demonstrate 20 year lead/lag “along the y axis 60 ppm/0.4 C line” because that was the graduation.
>”I am sure that nature takes great guidance from the scaling factors on your personal graph….or the way we humans measure temperature or concentrations, units you know, …….. ;-)”
Hopelessly wrong again Thomas. If you were to “scale” CO2 to make it lead GAT, it would no longer be the original quadratic would it? There are NO units in either quadratic, they are both mathematical expressions that could represent any two time-varying datasets, not necessarily climate data. It could be two sets of economic data being compared to see what leads what.
The only timeframe in which CO2 leads GAT is 1850 – 1906. After about 5 years or so of new data, CO2 will again lead GAT on that normalized graph at around 2015/16 but the GAT quadratic is now invalid (as revealed by the more sensitive EMD analysis – Loehle and Scafetta have yet to catch up with that) so continuing the exercise is moot.
>”I will frame this and put it on my office wall. This is really good. Thanks!”
Good idea. Study it well Thomas, your data analysis skills at this point leave a lot to be desired. I’m amazed I have to explain all this to you.
Thomas, I see that you take great exception to Dave Frame making the statement that “global warming has slowed” and that climate sensitivity has been downgraded in the Otto et al paper.
Will you write to VUW and demand that he be sacked?
From Thomas’ comment:
>”Parts of Central Europe and Eastern Germany are experiencing a 400 year flood record this year while the regions were still recovering from their 200 year floods a few years back”
I see they had to open floodgates too in places. I wonder how old those floodgates are?
And why would the Europeans have even bothered to install floodgates anyway?
Begs the question – what’s either side of each gate?
Very odd.
Carry on Richard you’r getting deeper, keep digging….
A few things:
a) You used a 4th order polynomial curve fit for your analysis (not quadratic, but details…). However the result is a nice curve. At least you accomplished ‘ironing out’ the noise. Now the shape of the temp curve and its underlying trend stares you in the eye. What do you see? No warming in the last 15 years…? (oops, that’s besides the point…)
b) Using a curve fit just gives you a nice smooth representation of the data expressed. But it does not remove the physical meaning of what you are plotting. You still plot ppm in CO2 and Deg C for the temp series as a function of time. Its your choice how to scale that plot and the units involved to fit it on one paper. In effect what you have done: Dec C / cm of plot and ppm CO2 / cm of Y axis on the plot.
c) You can look at causation only from the perspective of obvious signals on the time line, i.e. sharp changes replicated in a signal in the other curve at a different time, not by how the crossing of smoothed lines ‘look’ to you on a graph. That is the result of nothing but your personal choices of scaling to make these two data sets fit on the same paper. Clearly the temperature begins to rise in sync with the rise in CO2. So much is obvious.All other possible signals in the data which we might have been able to compare according to the time when they are imprinted in the respective data were ‘artfully’ removed by your polynomial curve fit. So much must be obvious to you.
You say: “I’m amazed I have to explain all this to you.”… Thanks Richard…. it’s an amazing and amusing dialog indeed! 😉
I will add this to my collection of misconceptions and useful examples in teaching.
Thomas, make sure you add this “misconception” to the one where Al Gore plots CO2 vs temperature in An Inconvenient Truth from the Vostok Ice Cores.
Is this included in your curriculum?
>”a) You used a 4th order polynomial curve fit for your analysis (not quadratic…”
GAT is a quadratic, CO2 is a best fit 4th order polynomial.
>”…but details…”
Sure. Page 2/962 Scafetta (2010)
Fig 1: “Global Surface Temperature (gray)….quadratic fit: 0.000029*(yr – 1850)2 – 0.42”
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/scafetta-JSTP2.pdf
That is what I used for GAT.
>”What do you see? No warming in the last 15 years…?”
The quadratic representation is invalid as I’ve shown previously. The inherent EXTRACTED signal (from EMD) has been turning down for a few years now. An externally IMPOSED polynomial trend is not sensitive enough to pick up the inflexion at this early stage.
>”Its your choice how to scale that plot and the units involved to fit it on one paper”
Actually it was Excel’s choice but that is immaterial because as I pointed out previously, new data added from 2010 (to an invalid curve mind you) will have the curves crossing around 2015/16 so that CO2 will actually lead GAT again in time (it did prior to 1906) i.e. the series can be continually updated. Doing that would be daft however, now that the GAT quadratic is so obviously not what the data signal is doing.
>”…not by how the crossing of smoothed lines ‘look’ to you on a graph”
The crossing is only part of the exercise as I’ve already described. The time lag is determined by the x axis. But consider if the series was to 2016. The two curves are obviously going to cross again then (the first in 1906).
>”That is the result of nothing but your personal choices of scaling to make these two data sets fit on the same paper”
Rubbish. There was no “personal choices” on my part, it is is an Excel charting “Auto” option. How else are you going to plot the curves? The object of the exercise is to determine which curve rises before the other and when. Those 2 characteristics are different over the entire series and will continue to be be different as more data is added (I’m talking in terms of 100s of years). I wont be adding any new data to an invalid data representation (GAT quadratic) however.
>”Clearly the temperature begins to rise in sync with the rise in CO2. So much is obvious”
Err no, that is your warmist mind filtering your perception Thomas. The GAT inflexion starts around 1880, the CO2 inflexion starts around 1940. The intersecting tangents (curve centres) are at around 1930 and 1980 respectively (GAT, CO2). Each new trajectory is in place by about 1990 and 2000 respectively (GAT, CO2).
An aside here Thomas. The curve analogy would be road/highway/motorway design from which I earned a living (among other things) when I started work years ago. Two straights are connected by a central circular arc at the apex with two Eular spiral transition curves on either side connecting each straight to the circular arc. This is also how the road centreline is laid out on site by survey. The highway curves are symmetrical of course unlike the two polynomial curves but from that design experience I “see” (as you put it) the critical points of each curve perhaps with more clarity than others such as yourself.
I suspect that when this all sinks in Thomas, you wont be so enthusiastic with the “big picture” anymore. And you certainly wont want to move on to EMD signal extraction either.
Thomas:
‘But if you can not agree that CO2 these days is a causative agent of climate change, …’
Not many people believe that which is why the term ‘climate change denier’ is wrong, but without the positive feedbacks to triple the initial warming effect of CO2 there is no AGW. The vast majority of these feedbacks are supposed to come from water vapour but there is no evidence of it:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-8-14.html
Magoo, do you need help reading the graph you linked to?
Please explain why your statement “he vast majority of these feedbacks are supposed to come from water vapour but there is no evidence of it:” is supported by the graph:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-8-14.html
Sigh. Thomas, if you read the small print under the graph you will see it is what the MODELS predict should happen – i.e. the vast majority of positive feedbacks are supposed to come from water vapour (WV). The lack of a hot spot shows that this is not happening, and there is a growing suspicion that low level clouds are having a negative feedback instead.
But the evidence of water vapor increase is there. For example:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0702872104v1.pdf
Or http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf
Or Soden: PDF Soden 2011
Thomas:
So let’s see, warming leads to water vapour increase, which DOESN’T lead to more warming.
Are you beginning to get the idea now?
Water vapour feedback is zero or negative.
Bob Said: “So let’s see, warming leads to water vapor increase, which DOESN’T lead to more warming…..” but it does. Without water vapor feedback the increase in heat content would be obviously less that it has been.
“Water vapour feedback is zero or negative.” references please!
Thomas:
So, let’s see. The warming has been zero, and without water vapour feedback this would be less, which makes it… Wow. So CO2 has a negative effect on global temperature. News flash!
Thomas:
I don’t need a reference, I’m not quoting anyone, unlike you with your own ideas attributed to Hansen.
I’m simply following a deductive process.
1) The IPCC hypothesises that CO2 increases temperatures by up to 1.2°C per doubling;
2) The warmer atmosphere from 1) hypothetically produces more water vapour in said atmosphere;
3) The increased water vapour, it is hypothesised, introduces further warming, since it’s a GHG;
4) This is a positive feedback mechanism, and will effectively double or even treble the original CO2-induced increase.
Observations over the past 16-23 years show that CO2 has increased. This should therefore have caused some warming. However, observations also show that there has been no warming. Therefore the temperature increase from CO2 must have been dramatically attenuated by the water vapour, instead of being amplified.
This is entirely consistent with the IPCC, by the way, since it acknowledges that water vapour feedback is not well understood.
I think the general idea of negative feedback is that low level clouds act as a shade and cool the surface of the Earth as a result. Dr. Roy Spencer outlines some other possibilities here:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/09/five-reasons-why-water-vapor-feedback-might-not-be-positive/
Bob, you don’t see that warming you don’t WANT to see.
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content2000m.png
And remember, what we measure as surface temp changes is small fry compared to the heat accumulation in the oceans
Your constant repetition of the mantra that there has been no warming over the last xx years is moot and not at all reflected in reality! In fact it is a blatant lie.
And once more: Atmospheric short term variations are highly unreliable as indicators for the underlying trend!
Looking at the temp series especially you – claiming to have a ‘solid grounding in statistics’ according to your ill fated attempt to abuse the court system to harass Niwa (what a debacle that was for you and those who listened to your advice…!!!) – should know better than to stare at the last 15 years or whatever of surface temps and hope they will prove anything.
Thomas,
It has been explained to you again and again that AGW heats the atmosphere (in theory), which in turn causes the ocean to retain heat in the upper 700m (Hansen, 2005). The atmosphere hasn’t warmed for 16-23 years, depending on which dataset you choose. The upper 700m hasn’t warmed either in the past decade. There is no tropospheric hot spot, implying that water vapour contribution to feedback is zero or negative.
Deep ocean heating is time-lagged, the very slight temperature increase (hundredths of a degree) you see there comes from surface warming that happened between 10 and 1,000 years ago. It wasn’t caused by AGW, at least unless you can clearly articulate how it happens that the deep ocean heats while the upper ocean doesn’t, and bearing in mind that all the incoming solar energy is absorbed in the top 200m of ocean and there is very little mixing between the upper and lower ocean layers on short timescales.
So until you answer our very simple questions regarding ocean mixing mechanisms (which you steadfastly refuse to do), your continual foot-stamping behaviour isn’t actually going to work.
Thomas:
NOAA declared that 15 years of no warming would necessarily invalidate the models at the 95% level. Take it up with them, not us.
Thomas:
In Hansen (2005) we read that only 15% of heat ends up in the deep ocean (0.11 W/m2). If 85% of the heat has disappeared, you have to explain where it went.
In Hansen (2011) we learn that even that amount is too much:
Hansen (2011), by the way, is in agreement with Douglass et al. (2006), who used real world data to calculate an effective eddy diffusion constant (mixing factor) fifty times smaller than that used in many climate models.
What is happening here is that deniers, when presented with evidence of their mistakes, have to double-down on their denial, using the standard methods: cherry-picking, lies and confusion.
All very predictable, but rather sad, really.
A good bopok on the topic is “Mistakes were made (but not by me)”, by Tavris and Aronson.
http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/0156033909/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370597902&sr=1-1
Thomas, you say:
Perhaps you are defending Rob Taylor’s statement just above, where he says:
“Your constant repetition of the mantra that there has been no warming over the last xx years is moot and not at all reflected in reality! In fact it is a blatant lie.”
When the thermometers show no warming (or minor warming only) for a sizeable chunk of time, and the five main global temperature datasets agree and the head of the IPCC agrees and the UK Met Office agrees, then, when Bob (or anyone else) also agrees, you need to explain how he (and he alone) can reasonably and fairly be accused of lying. You cannot escape having to explain, because it is simply not obvious.
>”…when presented with evidence of their mistakes”
When was that? And what were those mistakes?
>”..lies”
I think you had better be VERY specific with THIS allegation Taylor. i.e. explicit documented examples of our (individual) “lies”.
Actually, your miss-application is a classic self-deception case study in itself.
Meanwhile:
‘The Unequivocal Collapse of The Global Warming Trend’
“Despite the highest CO2 growth trend, global cooling prevails”
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c01910304e3f6970c-pi
Climate science – the CO2 “control-knob” faction at least – has clearly made a mistake.
Also, uncanny juxtaposition:
Freudian Slip?
No, that was a typo by me, for which I apologise.
Now, RC, admit you were wrong about your magical undersea volcanoes a year ago, apologise, and we’ll be even…
>”…admit you were wrong about your magical undersea volcanoes a year ago”
Quote the specific instance where I was “wrong” Rob (I have the entire thread saved to disk BTW). I didn’t bring up volcanoes – certainly not “magical” ones – you guys, immersed in your ignorance, misconstrued sea floor seismic (of the exposed magma rift kind) and hydrovent activity for something else.
For the record (once again for dummies), here’s the distinction. First the education (Caution – learning ahead):
‘Deep-Sea Geysers: Hydrothermal Vents’
Grades 6-8
Overview:
Hydrothermal vents are geysers located on the ocean floor in the deep sea. Students will learn about these vents by doing a simulation and viewing pictures of animals that live near the vents. They’ll conclude by writing letters pretending they’re divers requesting funding for a future trip to study hydrothermal vents.
Connections to the Curriculum:
Geography, earth science, life science
Connections to the National Geography Standards:
Standard 7: “The physical processes that shape the patterns of Earth’s surface”
Standard 8: “The characteristics and spatial distribution of ecosystems on Earth’s surface”
Time:
Two to three hours
Materials Required:
* Computer with Internet access
Objectives:
Students will
* read and answer questions about geysers;
* predict where hydrothermal vents might be found;
* do an online simulation to visit hydrothermal vents;
* view and take notes on four animals that live near hydrothermal vents; and
* write letters pretending they’re divers requesting funding for a future trip to study hydrothermal vents.
http://education.nationalgeographic.com/archive/xpeditions/lessons/07/g68/hydrovents.html?ar_a=1
Might take you longer than two or three hours Rob, but persevere. This, on the other hand, is what you in your present ignorance refer to:
‘Submarine Volcanoes’
“Scientists estimate that at least 80% of the world’s volcanism occurs in the oceans!”
http://www.gns.cri.nz/Home/Learning/Science-Topics/Ocean-Floor/Undersea-New-Zealand/Submarine-Volcanoes
“Magical” Rob?