I have previously written that in not so many years time weather station data will perhaps be collected more for fun, a sense of history and for site-specific information, than for serious regional and global climate statistics. In the future it will be data from satellites that is recognised as much more reliable for understanding regional and global temperature trends.
There are two internationally recognised temperature data sets based on satellite measurements known by their acronyms RSS (Remote Sensing Systems) and UAH (University of Alabama in Huntsville ). Both are based on information collected by NASA satellites.
Data from RSS for December 2008 was released yesterday – providing a complete data set for the last 29 years.
This data does not suggest dramatic global warming. Neither the warming of the late 20th century, nor the cooling since 1998, is of an unusual rate or magnitude.
****************
Chart from meteorologist Anthony Watts and reproduced here with permission.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/06/rss-is-out-for-december-down-slightly/
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
I have previously written that in not so many years time weather station data will perhaps be collected more for fun, a sense of history and for site-specific information, than for serious regional and global climate statistics. In the future it will be data from satellites that is recognised as much more reliable for understanding regional and global temperature trends.
funny, i am actually quite often interested in the SURFACE temperature.
that denialists prefer the satellite data is simply their perception, that it agrees with what they think they know already. most of this was caused by an error in the satellite data, that has been fixed long ago…
looking at the graph, i notice that temperature has regained half of what it lost in that dramatic drop at the start of 2008. isn t this worth a comment Jennifer?
This data does not suggest dramatic global warming. Neither the warming of the late 20th century, nor the cooling since 1998, is of an unusual rate or magnitude.
well, this data gives use a warming of 0.154 per decade. that sounds slightly dramatic to me!</b
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/plot/rss/trend
Sod,
As the proposal is that the earth’s atmosphere has warmed (due to CO2 from fossil fuels) to such a large degree that it is “unprecedented” and “unnatural”, I would like to draw your attention to the satellite record. It is not a biased or politically motivated data set, not a computer model, but simply a measure over time of the earth’s climate. It is evidence.
This measure shows that the earth has not warmed or cooled in any radical way over the past 29 years. Although “denialists” cannot accurately identify the source of every fluctuation on this graph, we can confidently say that these changes are “precedented”, in that they have happened before.
If there has not been “unprecedented” global warming, can we all just back off the histrionics for a while and perform some research? Or do we still have to “act now”?
Sod: “well, this data gives use a warming of 0.154 per decade. that sounds slightly dramatic to me!”
Any trend analysis of this temperature record that fails to factor in the cooling impacts of El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in 1991 is worthless. Take those out and there is little or no upward trend over the 29 years. However the cooling trend over the last 10 years (not factoring in the 1998 El Nino spike) is notable!
I have an idea Sod. You should come pay a visit here in Canada right now! I would suggest Saskatoon. Any utterance of your global warming drivel there would earn you a punch in the nose!
The AGW believers fall back on ‘bad data’ from satellites, when it is demonstrated clearly that it is the land based data that is corrupted.
Just like when the real data on ocean temperatures came in- they are flat to down- the AGW community suddenly decided that the state of the art instruments they had been touting were no longer reliable.
This is entirely in line with the non-falsifiable nature of AGW. No matter the issue, the idea of apocalypse at hand must never be denied.
0.154o is a fantasy. The instruments used and the methodlogies in use do not offer that kind of accuracy.
The weather, which is what climate is made up of, is pretty much normal.
The lack of change is causing the AGW community to grasp even harder at their desire for apocalypse.
AGW, at the end of the day, is a social moveent about fear. AGWis not about Cimate Science, any more than Eugenics was about Evolution.
Jen from your graph –
what is the warming trend (numerically)
and
what does your term “unusual” mean
Jen what rate of warming would you call dramatic?
Lets not beat around the bush – lets give a number.
Luke and David,
I rather agree with John McLean on this issue of trends – it potentially all depends on the time frame you choose. Instead of getting hung-up on the maths – afterall what did Mark Twain say about stats “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics” – let’s just read the graph and agree there has been no dramatic or unusual global warming over the last 29 years?
As regards definitions of dramatic and unusual – I suggest we go with common usage and based on our general understanding of the geological record (say the last 6 million years). But if you prefer to work from a policy-type basis and would prefer to use a shorter time frame – then please let us know your definition/policy and proposed time frame.
Jen you and John are adverse to numbers and trends.
Why can’t you give us a number – what would you find to be a dramatic trend?
Just to put the whole thing into perspective, there’s been about 0.7 degC increase over the past 160 years (assuming that these sensors next to new houses, air conditioning ducts etc are meaningful). There’s nothing unusual about this degree of increase – it’s magnitude is well below past changes. It doesn’t need precise definition.
I like to look at periods of at least 2,000 years. When I do this, the whole concept of anthropogenic climate change looks foolish.
What I can’t understand is why those who support anthropogenic change get away with only using a selective period of 1850 – 2000. Just because this is the period measured by a particular method doesn’t mean it’s the most meaningful time span. If we’d only been measuring by this method for the past 10 years, is this the data they’d quote? I think not.
Brilliant comment from Jen!!
She posts a graph and wants to talk “rate” and “magnitudes”, but doesn’t want to “get hung-up on the maths”.
Hey, why bother getting “hung-up” on the graphs, let’s just all go and read the data.
In normal circumstances this would already be in the lead for ‘Stupidest Denialist Rubbish’ of the year, but the competition is stiff already and it’s only January 8.
Jennifer,
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics” is attributed to Benjamin Disraeli.
You must be joking, right? Let’s just ‘read’ the graph and ‘agree’?
As Sod said, the rate of warming is 0.154 over the time frame you specified. Doesn’t it make more sense to use ecological time frames, rather than geological time frames?
Thomas.
R James,
“There’s nothing unusual about this degree of increase – it’s magnitude is well below past changes. It doesn’t need precise definition.”
Is this another assumption, or can you present any data to support this statement?
The rate of change is as important as the magnitude of change. Can you offer any data to show that the rate of change is below past averages?
I’m open minded on this. If there is data out there to show that there is a precedent, I’d like to see it. I’m sorry if it appears that I ask a lot of questions, but in almost every case I’ve seen so far on this blog, people make dramatic statements like the one above and pass them off as fact or common knowledge, when more often that not, there is no evidence whatsoever to support the statement. Jennifer is no exception.
Thomas
Why can’t you give us a number – what would you find to be a dramatic trend?
well if you look at the above temp chart there is a change of 1C around 1998 and nothing dramatic happened then (BTW it only happened at the equator) – so I would suggest at least double that across the whole globe may make a difference but no one really knows and anyone who says they do is up themselves.
Jen – Well there you have it – maths free science. Ducking on a trend line is come in spinner stuff. It’s 100% inconsistent to get all sciencey with Spencer’s theories yet duck on basic stuff like this.
McLean also hiding behind moving averages. Anything to avoid a regression line. Or if you pick a line do a multi-polynomial fit to capture every wiggle – and Bazza has warned you of the statistical perils of that without a core a priori mechanistic hypothesis.
In terms of periods – why not give the whole lot – why be selective.
You guys love to only do “selective” analyses or only show half the data. Frankly I’m surprised the graph started in 1980s – why not 1998 !
But your answer I suggest is that there is no climate evidence that would convince you of anything AGW. As climate has changed in the past. So that’s the answer. But what you haven’t told us with what calamity and mayhem on the world’s ecosystems and human populations.
But it’s giggle test stuff to put a trend line through those data. You could perhaps have told us if the slope was significantly greater than zero.
Time to get the ouija board out !
This measure shows that the earth has not warmed or cooled in any radical way over the past 29 years. Although “denialists” cannot accurately identify the source of every fluctuation on this graph, we can confidently say that these changes are “precedented”, in that they have happened before.
well, nearly 0.5°C over those 30 years. and ZERO evidence brought up by denialists, to support their claim that this happened before. (please name those 30 years…)
Any trend analysis of this temperature record that fails to factor in the cooling impacts of El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in 1991 is worthless. Take those out and there is little or no upward trend over the 29 years. However the cooling trend over the last 10 years (not factoring in the 1998 El Nino spike) is notable!
i doubt that you understand, how a trend line works. please give some numbers to support your claim!!!
0.154o is a fantasy. The instruments used and the methodlogies in use do not offer that kind of accuracy.
so you are contradicting Jennifer, who just wrote this article to celebrate the accuracy of satellite temperature?
all i did was add a TREND line. nothing fancy.
I rather agree with John McLean on this issue of trends – it potentially all depends on the time frame you choose. Instead of getting hung-up on the maths – afterall what did Mark Twain say about stats “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics” – let’s just read the graph and agree there has been no dramatic or unusual global warming over the last 29 years?
sorry, Jennifer, but you can t be serious about this.
you claim to do a “evidence-based approach to issues”, but you don t want statistics? when looking at such a graph, you don t think that math will help a little?
that is insane!
As regards definitions of dramatic and unusual – I suggest we go with common usage and based on our general understanding of the geological record (say the last 6 million years). But if you prefer to work from a policy-type basis and would prefer to use a shorter time frame – then please let us know your definition/policy and proposed time frame.
again, you cant be serious. you want to measure HUMAN CAUSED WARMING on a time scale of 6 million years?
basically NO change to the environment will be “significant” over such a timespan!
Michael, David,
There is no reason to get hungup on the maths – this graph does not need to be reduced to a single value.
Which ever way you look at it, there is nothing unusual about the rate or magnitude of warming and cooling over the last 29 years relative to what we know about the last 150 years and/or last 6 million years.
When I put a trend line through data in a piece for The Australian newspaper (which BTW they asked me to do after the graph was submitted) I was criticised for the time frame choosen. I detailed this criticism and considered different interpretations here:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/08/interpreting-eastern-australian-rainfall-data/
I concluded that blog piece with this advice:
“My advice to those trying to interprete data presented graphically would be to use what Professor Harry Roberts, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, has described as the world’s most powerful statistical analysis tools – your eyes. What can you see from the squiggly line.”
Luke, you borderline personality traits are showing again. You showed promise there for a while, but you have digressed to your comfort zone of abusive behavior. Tsk, tsk, mate.
Thomas, you know there is extensive data showing dramatic changes and rates of change when we review the geologic studies. But, of course, that is not a core Climate Science. When we look at there data and apply them over the geologic period for which they were done, then there is more enough evidence. Or are you now going to question these studies? Tsk Tsk, to you too.
Luke, SOD, Thomas, SJT and all the other believers visiting here, please, please understand, most of do not disagree that there is warming. Indeed we think that it is a good thing as the alternative is really, really hard on mankind and the other inhabitants of our environment.
Now understand this, most of we skeptics do not believe in the alarmist, catastrophic ennui so often espoused by you and your cohorts for GHG, and especially CO2. So, maybe especially for Thomas, could you folks point to the evidence that such catastrophic events ever occurred that were precipitated from climate change versus climate change eventuated from some catastrophe.
There is no reason to get hungup on the maths – this graph does not need to be reduced to a single value.
you do exactly that, when you simplify the graph to the message: “This data does not suggest dramatic global warming.
because a mathematical look at the graph tells you immediately, that it actually does suggest dramatic global warming of over 0.15°C per decade!
Which ever way you look at it, there is nothing unusual about the rate or magnitude of warming and cooling over the last 29 years relative to what we know about the last 150 years and/or last 6 million years.
it is not that unusual for the last 150 years, because they showed some pretty dramatic warming already. it is not unusual for longer time spans, because you don t have accurate data to compare to.
Well I’m confused. If we forget about stats and maths and just look at the graph, well it is crystal clear to me that things wiggled between -0.3 and 0.2 for a decade or so, had a massive spike in 1998, and since then settled in between 0.1 and 0.5 with a recent dip but things are right back up again.
So with no maths that is -0.15 to 0.3 average over the time of the graph = 0.45 degrees c increase in temperature
Of course the graph tells me nothing about what happened before the graph – so how could I possibly say if that was unusual or not. IN fact the exis labels are so small I’m not even sure of the timescale.
So basically, looking at that graph in isolation, with no analysis or maths, is completely useless. Great post Jen:)
MattB,
I present the news – a complete 29 year satellite record of global temperatures from RSS and I choose to present this information graphically.
You are free to make comment and interpretation on the basis of your understanding of the climate record… remembering we are each entitled to our own opinion, but not our own facts.
0.154C per decade times 100 years = a measly 1.5C.
The global warming models have more than 2.5C increase by 2109.
Someone mentioned if you take out the impact of the 1998 El Nino …, well I have done that and when you account for the ENSO and the AMO, the global warming trend for RSS falls to just 0.7C per doubling or just another 0.4C to go by 2070.
This model is only out by 0.005C in December 2008.
http://img380.imageshack.us/img380/640/rssmodeloq1.png
RSS Warming residual compared to the global warming models.
http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/2371/rsswarmingol5.png
No Jen you did not present the news graphically, you opinioned that “This data does not suggest dramatic global warming. Neither the warming of the late 20th century, nor the cooling since 1998, is of an unusual rate or magnitude.” and then told people not to get hung up on the maths.
All I did was make comment according to my eyes, as you suggested. You can not possibly draw the conclusions you made just by looking at the graph in isolation or without analysis. Yet without analysis or comparison, the graph says nothing – it is not news.
Sod,
Put a sock in it! Cripes, you alarmists are so desperate you’ll grasp at anything! At least a 0.3 degree impact from El Chichon and 0.5 from Pinatubo. Anyone with a brain can spot that in the graph. I guess that rules you and Luke out! Also, the super El Nino in 1998 would tend to bias the trend line up. Give it a few more more years until it’s in the front half of the time period and we have another major volcanic eruption. Then you crackpots won’t be so hot on an simple, unadjusted trend line.
As to what makes a significant trend? Hmmm – let’s look at Saskatoon. Typical temperatures range from the likes of -45 in winter to 35 in summer – an 80 degree differential. And you’re worried about an unadjusted trend line of 0.15 per decade? Why don’t you sit on it until you have something substantive to comment on.
Yes MattB. I presented the news and I presented some opinion. And there has been some suggestions that there is something incomplete about the news i.e. that the graph needs a trend line – I disagree.
if you MUST have a trend line – here’s one put there by the guy who created the chart
http://www.drroyspencer.com/library/pics/UAH_LT_since_1979.jpg
sod “funny, i am actually quite often interested in the SURFACE temperature.
that denialists prefer the satellite data is simply their perception, that it agrees with what they think they know already. most of this was caused by an error in the satellite data, that has been fixed long ago…”
and where do you think surface stations reside?…why it’s anywhere from 5 to 15 feet into the atmosphere. I presume you thought they stuck a thermometer in a hole in the surface. It’s the atmosphere that is of interest because AGW theory is claiming the surface is radiating IR into the atmosphere, which is supposedly warming, and reflecting the heat back to warm the surface more. That’s where the CO2 resides, not on the surface.
The graph above clearly shows the atmosphere has barely warmed, averaging about 0.25 C warmer than an average trend over the past decade. The surface has warmed 0.6 C to 1.0 C, depending on who you read. We are interested in the atmospheric temperature because it’s not possible for a cooler body (the atmosphere) to warm a warmer body (the surface), according to basic physics. It must have escaped you that certain climate scientists have modified basic physics to suit themselves. They have invented a perpetual motion machine in which heat can be recycled and which goes against the laws of thermodynamics.
With respect to the average temperature recovering, why don’t you come up here to Canada and experience our coldest winter in 20 years. We broke a record for snowfall on the west coast that has stood for 40 years. Now Europe is getting it as well.
The converted are preaching to the stupid that 2008 is still the 12th warmest year. When does an exaggeration become a lie? We’re talking in tenths of a degree warming and we’re talking a global average. In the US, 1934 is still the warmest year, surpassing even the 1998 El Nino enhanced year. Listening to AGW apologists, one would think it was 5.0 C warmer.
It seems many here do not understand how to read graphs. Compress the vertical scale to reflect the real world and the graph would appear to be flat. It’s that blindingly obvious.
It’s when something is not blindingly obvious that an attempt is made to express it numerically and for a variation in temperature anomaly within a range of 1.5 Kelvin. which is close to the instrumental accuracy, then all this fuss about trends is nothing more than trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.
Same goes for the surface temperature measurements, though how one can measure the temperature of a surface, which by definition is a 2D plane, remains to be demonstrated. They are after all measurements of an unspecified volume of air, supposedly 2m above the earth’s surface.
Lukey “Jen from your graph – what is the warming trend (numerically)”
The official trend out of UAH, earlier in 1988, was + 0.04 C over the past ten years. There has been a downward trend for the past three years.
Same old – same old
CoRev – but I think we all agree it’s warming – no we don’t ! You guys don’t believe the surface record !
Sinkers – try a population of numbers versus accuracy of a number. Try a stats course.
Robertson overturns greenhouse physics by himself. But alas doesn’t publish his new found knowledge. LOL.
A 3 year trend downwards – gee willys – WOW ! – see how many times that would have happened before only to rise again.
Thomas Moore “As Sod said, the rate of warming is 0.154 over the time frame you specified. Doesn’t it make more sense to use ecological time frames, rather than geological time frames”?
sod’s full of hot CO2. The trend is 0.04 C from 1998 to 2007. Here’s a reference:
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/01/08/musings-on-satellite-temperatures/#more-298
Near the bottom of the page is an addendum which reads in part:
“The trend in the UAH derived temperatures of the earth’s lower atmosphere for the most recent 10-year period (January 1998 though December 2007) is a positive 0.04ºC/decade (although it is not statistically significant)”.
Luke “A 3 year trend downwards – gee willys – WOW ! – see how many times that would have happened before only to rise again”.
Luke…getting a bit worried, eh? It’s not supposed to get colder over 3 years when CO2 is increasing at 0.6% per year. The trend is especially not supposed to stay flat for 10 years with all that CO2 building up in the atmosphere. Whatever could be wrong? You don’t suppose the high priests over at RC got it wrong do you? Maybe they are staring at chicken bones instead of computer screens.
Of course the graph does not need a trend line… unless you then intend to form an opinion based upon a percieved trend of course. And then to compare that percieved trend (simply from eyeballing the graph) to historical trends and form an opinion, when no historical data is presented (and none that you would consider reliable since this is the full extent of your satellites)… surely that is impossible.
Luke “Robertson overturns greenhouse physics by himself. But alas doesn’t publish his new found knowledge”.
I don’t need to…it’s been done.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.1161v3
Page 44 re Rahmstorf…contributor to realclimate.
Page 58 on radiative balance
Page 77 re Rahmstorf again. It claims, with respect to Rahmstorf’s claim that the greenhouse effect does not contradict the laws of thermodynamics,
“Rahmstorf’s reference to the second law of thermodynamics is plainly wrong. The second law is a statement about heat, not about energy. Furthermore the author introduces an obscure notion of “net energy flow”. The relevant quantity is the “net heat flow”, which, of course, is the sum of the upward and the downward heat flow within a fixed system, here the atmospheric system. It is inadmissible to apply the second law for the upward and downward heat separately redefining the thermodynamic system on the fly”.
IMHO, Rahmstorf and the other AGWers have used the Sun’s energy to heat the surface. Then the surface has heated the atmosphere, which reradiates heat to the surface. In their net energy balance equation, they have added the Sun’s heat a second time to the reradiated IR from the surface, making the atmospheric reradiation a lot warmer than it should be. That’s what breaks the second law.
Here we have two physicists claiming that a climate scientist’s theories are ‘obscure’. Don’t shoot the messenger because climate science uses corrupted physics.
“It’s not supposed to get colder over 3 years when CO2 is increasing at 0.6% per year.” – nope – says who? You’re divining chicken entrails for noise. What will you say when the temperature inevitably climbs again – move the goal posts again?
Gerlich and Tscheuschner – haahahahahaha …. next …
Louis Hissink “Compress the vertical scale to reflect the real world and the graph would appear to be flat”.
The compressed scale is here at Figure 5, which is a normalized version of figure 1 on the same page. Figure 1 is essentially Jen’s graph:
http://www.ianschumacher.com/global_warming.html
That relatively flat line is what the world is freaking out about. People forget the average world temperature is around +15 C. Most graphs you see have highly exaggerated vertical axes, in tenths of a degree, making things look 100 times worse than they are.
There are 10 x 1/10ths C per degree and 15 C would require 150 vertical graticules to show the warming in real mode. The amount of warming we have experienced would be barely preceptable on such a graph, just as turning up the heat in a room by 0.25 C would make no noticable difference.
If tons and tons of CO2 being emitted into the atmosphere can only change the atmospheric temperature by a very uncertain 2/10ths C, I sure ain’t going to worry about it in the short term (a hundred years).
John Christy, of UAH, claimed there was no warming in the atmosphere till the super-strong 1997/98 El Nino. Then it warmed for about 3 years. Since then, it has leveled off and is now cooling. Why are we hung up on CO2 as the cause and ignoring the El Nino/La Nino effect, which is right in front of our noses?
Also, why are we sucked in by a global average? Jen has already pointed to Mark Twain’s comment about statistics. The first thing you learn on any course in probability and statistics is to seriously question an average value. It can mean literally anything you want it to mean depending on the data and its manipulation. As far as world temperatures are concerned it means dick all. If the average had risen 5 C suddenly, we’d have to take a careful look at what was affecting the average. When it’s under 1 C over a century, and parts of the world have cooled as much as others have warmed, that’s not telling you much about global conditions. Here in Canada, we’re talking about the severity of the winter we are experiencing, not global temperatures.
We likely would never have noticed it had gotten slightly warmer if alarmists like Hansen, Gore, the IPCC and the media had not distorted the warming out of all proportion.
Luke “Gerlich and Tscheuschner – haahahahahaha …. next …”
It amazes me that you listen to those high preists at realclimate. They are primarily mathematicians and computer programmers who find the arrogance to belittle real physicists like G&T.
Each to his own, I’ll stick with the real physicists.
The attribution of ‘lies, damned lies and statistics’ to Disraeli was Mark Twain’s little joke. There is no record of Disraeli having said this. The credit for adapting to statisticians an aphorism that was initially applied to scientists belongs to Robert Giffen, head of the statistical department in the UK Board of Trade, who introduced his presentation on ‘International Statistical Comparisons’ to the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science meeting at Hobart in 1892 with the following anecdote:
‘An old jest runs to the effect that there are three degrees of comparison among liars. There are liars, there are outrageous liars and there are scientific experts. This has lately been adapted to throw dirt upon statistics. There are lies, there are outrageous lies, and there are statistics. Statisticians can afford to laugh at … jests at their expense … The statistics … are not lies in themselves: it is only in the handling of them that the lying takes place.’
So in the original version, the joke was about scientific experts not statisticians.
On the question of the rate of increase in global temperatures that could be labelled ‘unusual’, Professor Ian Lowe, now President of the Australian Conservation Foundation, drew on several sets of predictions that were presented at the Greenhouse 1987 conference at Monash University to make the following statement:
‘My younger son is 35 years younger than I am; by the time he is my age, it is likely that the temperature will have increased by about three degrees’ (Living in the Greenhouse, 1989, p. 40).
Professor Lowe prediction of the warming that was ‘likely’ between the late 1980s and the early 2020s represents a decadal rate of increase of over 0.85 degrees C. The estimated observed rate from 1979 to 2008 which has been discussed in this thread is less than one-fifth of that rate, with the period of overlap now extending to 20 years. To my mind, there is no question that a decadal rate of warming of 0.86 degrees C would be unusual. It is not obvious that the same can be said of a decadal rate of 0.15 degrees.
I’d just like to ask what the temp of the planet is supposed to be? Is it 14c or 13.5c or 14.5c or 15c, last time I looked the temp for 2008 was 14.30c.
So is this a bit low or a bit high because whether the urgers like it or not we’re only just recovering from the LIA, you know that pesky real historical period that had to be 1c colder than the present.
So 100 years or so after the END ( GET IT END )of this minor ice age we’ve actually pegged back .6c and suddenly this is somehow unusual, don’t worry about the extra .4c we’re left with to get back the full 1 degree c.
This is the most moronic , embecillic CON game the world has ever seen but there still seems to be plenty more weak minded fools out there always ready to play the game.
“It’s when something is not blindingly obvious that an attempt is made to express it numerically and for a variation in temperature anomaly within a range of 1.5 Kelvin. which is close to the instrumental accuracy, then all this fuss about trends is nothing more than trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.”
This is what’s bothered me all along, we are talking about an insignificant difference in temperature, even if we accept the accuracy of the measurements, and disregard ALL previous higher or lower temperatures in the earth’s history.
And on top of that, pin it all on man made CO2, it just doesn’t make sense.
What a bunch of hillbillies – what levels of temperature anomaly give you ENSO like effects that affect climate world wide. You guys are simply MORONIC> I have to say honestly I am really stunned at you level of understanding.
And you may have noticed El Nino-wise that the Walker circulation itself has decreased….
As I said Gordo – an earthworm could be do better than the uninformed drivel you guys produce.
Ian,
I was wondering if anyone would pick up on that attribution…
I read it on Wikipedia, hence it has to be true (just ask Ian Mott and Tim Curtin!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics
So by default, you must be wrong.
Thomas
but there still seems to be plenty more weak minded fools out there always ready to play the game.
yup – and they are well represented here 🙂
Actually, Thomas, it was Robyn Williams who got it wrong, in his story ‘Can you trust statistics?’ on the ABC ‘Science Show’ on 21 and 28 April 1991. Robyn claimed that ‘You won’t find the story in any earlier publication that Twain’s ‘Autobiography’ (published in 1905); that ‘Mark Twain made the whole thing up’; and that he had ‘even lied when he was talking about lies.’
In my Director’s Note published in the 2/1997 issue of the Newsletter of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, I pointed out that Robyn Williams had made an error and quoted from Giffen’s lecture at the AAAS in Hobart in January 1892. Wikipedia’s reference 3 picks up this example of earlier use, and notes several other quotes from around the same time.
Marcus,
It’s called pathological science, obsession over minute variations in some variable close to the limit of detection.
Actually I think Jim Hansen is entirely sincere in his belief that CO2 is a problem from his work on Venus all those years back. Few here understand this but it goes back to Velikovsky’s book Worlds in Collision in which Velikovsky deduced, from his interpretation of the Jewish and other historical accounts, that Venus must be very hot because it was a newly formed planet.
In the 1950’s Venus was considered our sister planet with a totally equitable climate and temperatures not different to the Earth.
Once the space probes started to collect data, Velikovsky’s deduction was verified as correct – Venus was hot, but the scientific mafia of the time could not allow this and instead Carl Sagan invented the runaway Greenhouse to explain Venus’ temperature. Hansen did a PhD on that topic, and from that basic error in explaining Venus’ temperature we have the present AGW madness. The scientific mafia won, and empirical science lost. The same mindset is behind the AGW hypothesis.
Luke: “Sinkers – try a population of numbers versus accuracy of a number. Try a stats course.”
The population of numbers are the temperatures of the thermometers, but the earth has only one temperature and it certainly is not quantified by averaging thermometer readings over imaginary spherical surfaces defined by lats and longs.
As I have oft said, you don’t understand the difference between intensive and extensive variables, and that is about as basic as the science gets.
0.154C per decade times 100 years = a measly 1.5C.
The global warming models have more than 2.5C increase by 2109.
measly 1.5°C. funny.
Luke, I see you fixated on the part of my question, “what the unwashed WE think, that you can not possibly know instead of answering the core question. So, let me ask again. Why are we concentrating on the past 150 or so years instead of using a longer geological time frame?
And the other major question: Can you folks point to the evidence that catastrophic events [runaway global warming] ever occurred that were precipitated from climate change versus climate change eventuated from some catastrophe?
BTW, most of us do question the validity of the surface station and other manually collected records of temperature. You don’t?
Luke: ‘And you may have noticed El Nino-wise that the Walker circulation itself has decreased….’ Words fail.. hahahaha!
Louis; your reference to extensive and intensive properties reminds me of my attempt to explain the Stefan-Boltzman/Pielke effect or contradiction to sod at a another thread; to recapitulate; because of the SB temperature variation on the surface there may be an increase in GMST based on averaging of regional anomalies because colder areas are increasing in temperature while the warmer areas are stable or slightly reducing; but similtaneously there will be less IR and energy available because the warming colder surfaces are still proportionately emitting and making available less IR via SB then stable or slightly cooling warmer areas are decreasing the available IR; so you have a warming [anomalous] trend with no AGW mechanism to cause it.
So with the intensive property of temperature; an intensive property is determined by the ratio of 2 relevant extensive properties, in this case, volume and energy; AGW supposes that temperature will increase because energy is increasing as an increasing ratio of volume; but if energy is not increasing the ratio is not increasing; furthermore there is an additional contradiction in AGW which predicts a rising tropopause because of the ascending layers of CO2 trapped IR and a higher CEL reaching into the stratosphere; in effect the atmospheric volume is increasing so even if total energy is increasing the AGW effect, temperature, is defeated by the decreasing ratio of the 2 relevant extensive properties.
Lazlo – well what’s funny about that mate ? Probably coz you don’t understand.
CoRev – 150 years – err coz that’s where we are now. Fascinating though the Cretaceous is.
And go look up the PETM and see what happens when you introduce shitloads of CO2 into the Earth’s atmosphere rapidly.
Or read Brian Fagan’s book “The Great Warming” to see how the circulation patterns reorganise to give mega-droughts in the most inconvenient places.
CoRev – snore – yes mate that’s why the Arctic is melting ice not reforming, and also sea level rising from thermal expansion. Of course the bloody energy is being sunk. Wake up !
Luke, now that is some deep thinking. “CoRev – 150 years – err coz that’s where we are now. ” And in my poor sepo linked thinking I wonder what the heavens is that all about? Can we discuss the meaning of “is” as we have had to do over on this side of the world, or maybe the meaning of “we” or “now”, as presented by your Lukedom? The depth and grandeur of you latest statement is just astounding.
Louis, Cohenite he’s all yours. He’s obviously way off his game, and more than just an easy target.
All mine? Now, that’s cruel and unusual punishment!
Neville,
Re: what the temp of the planet is supposed to be?
The International Standard Atmosphere model as used in aviation and some other fields says the temperature at sea level is 15deg C.
Presumably this was derived from some historical measurements as representing a useful average.
I have no idea when or how this was done.
What’s instructive is to compare the original 1989 Hansen IPCC estimates made by the know flawed computer models to what the actual measured temperature has been. Engineers would call that model validation. Alarmist call that need for reseting their zero each time the projections don’t match reality.
Another way to validate computer models is reset them for some point in the past, Say 1600 AD, a period where we have soiome modern data of unknown accuracy, and run them forward for 500 years and see how they match reality and predict what may come. My guess is you will find the same matchup as the current sunspot predictors are finding, as they blew 4 predictions in a row. Most engineers would say your models and their science, need er, ah, umm, uhhh, revisiting.
360 months = 29 years???
Thomas – you asked for evidence of past similar temperature changes. There is plenty of data around, with good agreement from different scientific sources. The link below is a typical representation, which includes the Medieval Warm Period and the Maunder period over 2,000 years. If you look at the past 150 years with this data, you can’t help but wonder how anyone could take anthropogenic climate change seriously.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/02/11/a-2000-year-global-temperature-record/
Well R James – you’ll not Fig 3 stops at 1900 ! and note the error bounds – the benefits and limitations of this analysis well discussed at Climate Audit – report back when you have something better
Typical worldclimatereport stodge
CoRev: “Louis, Cohenite he’s all yours. He’s obviously way off his game, and more than just an easy target.”
Thanks – but I am beginning to suspect our Luke, via his various personages posting here over the years, is being channelled by James Hansen.
In addition Cohenite and I have concluded SJT is a Turing Machine so combine the two and we might contemplate an addition to Ripley’s Believe it or not lsit – a Channeling bi-headed Turing machine.
Actually one of the brewing companies have just released a TV advertisement for the beer brand “Pure Blonde” – using the well known perceptions that being blonde engender. It’s a laugh once you sit through the advertisement to the end.
So maybe we have a blonde, Channeling biheaded Turing machine as the Luke-SJT combo posting here. Both seem to also have links to some QLD based enviro department in previous incarnations, so leaving Luke in our care might not be in Luke’s best interests.
Luke: ‘And you may have noticed El Nino-wise that the Walker circulation itself has decreased….’ ‘Lazlo – well what’s funny about that mate ‘
Mmm ‘has decreased’ is a strong statement – people might be fooled into thinking it is something that has been observed. It hasn’t. The only suggestions (not evidence) of any AGW impacts on Walker come from, you guessed it, NOAA climate models. Also:
“Consider Fig. 1 showing the negative of the anomaly of atmospheric pressure in Darwin, Australia and used by Trenberth and Hoar (1997) as a measure of the strength of the Walker circulation. Fig. 2 displays the sea surface temperature (SST) Niño3.4 index commonly used as a measure of the strength of El Niño. Trenberth and Hoar(1997) infer that ENSO behavior shifted after about 1970 to more frequent and larger El Niño events. (The change was interpreted as the result of global warming and to be “unprecedented” in the historical record.) Solow (2006), however, noted that their anomalous test period, 1992-mid-1995, in Fig. 1 was not independent of the earlier interval of supposedly normal behavior; he used the subsequently longer record to recalculate the probability that the nature of ENSO had changed in some significant way. His conclusion was, in contrast, that while the test period appears different from the earlier one, subsequently there was essentially no evidence that the nature of the physics had changed. The comparatively dramatic story of the original authors is thus replaced by a much more ambiguous and unexciting, but presumably more soundly-based,description of the nature of ENSO.” Carl Wunsch
Luke: ‘Or read Brian Fagan’s book “The Great Warming” to see how the circulation patterns reorganise to give mega-droughts in the most inconvenient places.’
So, was there a MWP or not? Obviously you think there was, which then leaves it to the historians to argue about the consequences. Not much agreement there if these reviews are anything to go by:
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/1596913924/ref=cm_rdphist_2?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addTwoStar
One includes the statement ‘Fagan has a tendency to make sweeping statements without proof. Some of them are clearly wrong.’ He is a self-confessed AGW believer. The book wasn’t peer-reviewed, so we can ignore it eh Luke?
Fagan’s book and peer review – fair enough – 2/3rds gave it 4-5 stars. A few comments by denialist scum who were probably paid by oil companies – but his book is extensively referenced so check yourself.
“The only suggestions (not evidence) of any AGW impacts on Walker come from, you guessed it, NOAA climate models” Pity you missed Smith and Power….
– huh !!! WTF – are you serious – well then, how can you prove anything to a ninny such as yourself? So here you have the major known mechanisms represented in a model and you’re suggesting that research is not substantive. Well better write your rebuttal mate. Nature journal is waiting for your input ROTFL !!!!!!!!!!
This is the ultimate denialist scum-baggery – I don’t believe any evidence EVER !!!
I know it’s cosmic rays – sheesh !!!
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007GL030854.shtml
http://www.gfdl.gov/reference/bibliography/2006/gav0602.pdf
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~gav/REPRINTS/VS_07_GWnCIRC.final.pdf
Luke: This is the ultimate denialist scum-baggery – I don’t believe any evidence EVER !!!
This is described as shooting one’s foot.
Oh, I just realised Luke was in one of his metaphorical moments, so I thought he was referring to himself.
Gosh, we sceptics do have problems.
Meanwhile, back at the graph. The trend may well show 0.154C increase per decade over 29 years but when we adjust for the El chichon and Mt Pinatubo cooling events it is clear that the entire increase only took place over the 4 years between 1979 and 1983, after which it has plateaued. So there has been absolutely jack $hit change over the 25 years since the last temperature jump, the top of which was obscured by El Chichon.
So where was greenhouse theory during that 25 years? On stress leave perhaps? On a valium holiday with a good lie down? In rehab with Luke? Or did the theory itself get plumb tuckered out after 0.447C of rise over just 4 years and just hang out, basking in past glory?
Once more for the cognitively challenged, 25/29ths = 86.2% of the sample period with zero change. That can only be interpreted as 0.0C decadal change over 25 years.
During which time atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa increased by12.9%, or 44ppm from 340ppm to 384ppm. That is a massive 231Gt CO2 increase with no impact whatsoever.
The only way that the climate muddles can possibly reconcile to the actual data sets is if they completely ignore major, thoroughly documented and uncontested volcanic cooling events.
And we are well overdue for the next major volcanic cooling event which will blow Al Gore’s fat butt clean off the planet.
Meanwhile, back at the graph. The trend may well show 0.154C increase per decade over 29 years but when we adjust for the El chichon and Mt Pinatubo cooling events it is clear that the entire increase only took place over the 4 years between 1979 and 1983, after which it has plateaued. So there has been absolutely jack $hit change over the 25 years since the last temperature jump, the top of which was obscured by El Chichon.
where is your graph to support this?
what relation does the 1998 spike have with volcanoes?
please provide EVIDENCE!
I think what needs to be kept in perspective is that the satellite data is coming from a low point. 1970 would normally have been a grand minima situation….but we got off this time. But it sure cooled things down a lot.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/archives/58
Motty – I can see wobbling your pink butt under the waterfall down on the prickle farm hasn’t improved your thinking skills. (BTW and off the eye gouging for a minute – is it running well?)
Back to it…
This recent analysis has all the ENSO and volcanic influence aboard. You might the spatial multiple regressions piss on your envelope.
1. Solar warming pales versus human influence
Both natural and human-induced influences have changed twentieth-century climate, but their relative roles and regional impacts are still under debate. For example, most model-based studies point to increasing human-generated greenhouse gas and aerosol concentrations as the dominant cause of global surface warming after 1967, while some empirical analyses suggest that solar variability accounts for as much as 69 percent of warming seen in the past 100 years and 25-35 percent of recent warming. To help resolve this, Lean and Rind analyze the best available estimates of both natural and human-induced climate influences and compare them with observed surface temperatures across the globe from 1889 to 2006. They find that solar forcing contributed negligible long-term warming in the past 25 years and 10 percent of the warming in the past 100 years. Additionally, in contrast with recent model results by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which estimates that anthropogenic warming has minimum values in the tropics and increases steadily from 30 degrees N to 70 degrees N, the authors find that the zonal surface temperature changes from the historical surface temperature record are more pronounced between 45 degrees S and 50 degrees N.
Title: How natural and anthropogenic influences alter global and regional surface temperatures: 1889 to 2006
Authors: Judith L. Lean: Space Science Division, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington D.C., U.S.A.;
David H. Rind: Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NASA, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Source: Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) paper 10.1029/2008GL034864, 2008; http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2008GL034864
Most interesting conclusion….
“None of the natural processes can account for the
overall warming trend in global surface temperatures. In the
100 years from 1905 to 2005, the temperature trends
produce by all three natural influences are at least an order
of magnitude smaller than the observed surface temperature
trend reported by IPCC [2007]. According to this analysis,
solar forcing contributed negligible long-term warming in
the past 25 years and 10% of the warming in the past 100
years, …..”
Get up to speed, Sod. See http://www.geocities.com/mcmgk/TempAdjust2.html?1199762345031
So if natural causes alone couldn’t cause the tiny temperature increase of 0.7 degC over 100 years, how did they manage to do it for the medieval warm period? Also, how did they do it after the Maunder period?
GISS said so? The same mob who used September figures instead of October figures for global temperature last year. Their figures were obviously wrong to everyone else but them. These days I don’t have much confidence in them. They use climate models that just don’t compare with real life.
Poor old Luke will enter any port in a storm and Lean & Rind is no exception. What a fundamentally flawed bit of work it is. For a start the models only accounted for 76% of the variance so, on average, each of the four elements measured was responsible for less than the sum of the unexplained elements.
More importantly, Lean & Rind measured only three “natural” elements, solar irradiance, ENSO and volcanic aerosols and assumed that all increases in CO2 and other forcing agents were anthropogenic. The fact that only half of any increase in CO2 actually remains in the atmosphere was ignored and this allowed them to assume that all, not half, of the increase in CO2 was anthropogenic.
Are we seriously to believe that there is no such thing as natural variation in CO2 of a scale capable of modifying temperature? Clearly no. Some of the increased CO2 absorption by oceans during the Medieval Warming period could very likely be at the end of the oceanic circulation phase and now be part of a natural cyclical release. We also know that production forests that were handed over to the spivocrats during the past three decades are now reaching the point of minimal carbon sequestration. We also know that the so-called green revolution in crop genetics has substantially altered the amount of carbon absorbed for each grain of rice or wheat and has shortened the growing (absorbing) season by about three weeks. And this has been matched by a commensurately shorter CO2 absorption phase in the Mauna Loa data set (and confirmed by Ralph Keeling in pers comm).
Add the fact that Lean & Rind continued with this highly misleading, totally outdated, Mercators projection which gives extremely false weightings for high latitude outcomes and we get yet another outwardly competent work which is essentially little more than climatista propaganda. They tried to claim that volcanic aerosol impacts were somewhat limited, ie., between 40S and 70N but if you take a good look at an actual globe, rather than a bull$hit flat Mercator Projection map, it soon becomes apparent that the impact covered more than 80% of the planet surface.
Meanwhile, back at the graph, add in the volcanic aerosol impacts and we still get a sudden jump in temperature (a rebound actually) followed by a 25 year plateau in which gullible warming was in rehab with our little mate, Luke.
What a limp wristed pissy poor critique. Mate you’ve been done like a dinner. At least have the decency to admit it. If you were good you’d write a rebuttal wouldn’t you – to GRL.
But faux secptics like you NEVER publish.
Not up to it coz you’re crap. You’d be laughed off the journal.
We know where the CO2 has gone matey boy. Don’t you remember being educated on this before.
SEVENTY SIX % of THE VARIANCE – MY GOD MAN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That’s bloody phenomenal.
Do you have any idea what a rank idiot you are making comments like that.
And they didn’t use a Mercator’s to analyse the data.
“Some of the increased CO2 absorption by oceans during the Medieval Warming period could very likely be at the end of the oceanic circulation phase and now be part of a natural cyclical release.” and what sort of halfwit frigging stupid commentary is this – INCREASED ABSORPTION – if it’s warming it would outgassing you dickhead. The solubility of carbon dioxide is a strong inverse function of seawater temperature (i.e. solubility is greater in cooler water)
Really you’re crap. Pathetic.
Luke: ‘And you may have noticed El Nino-wise that the Walker circulation itself has decreased….’ …. ‘- huh !!! WTF – are you serious – well then, how can you prove anything to a ninny such as yourself?’ … ‘http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007GL030854.shtml’
From the abstract:
“However, our results, together with results from climate models forced with increasing greenhouse gas levels, suggest that the recent apparent dominance might instead reflect a shift to a lower mean SOI value. It seems that global warming now needs to be taken into account in both the formulation of ENSO indices and in the evaluation and exploitation of statistical links between ENSO and climate variability over the globe. ”
“Suggest”…”might”…”seems” – all a lot more equivocal than your huffing and puffing. Care to have your statements peer reviewed? LoL. Then again ridiculous exageration has always been a major component of the left strategy.
Lazlo – get a grip. That fact the basis of the SOI has changed is obviously too subtle for you to understand. You obviously haven’t read it the papers – haven’t thought about it – have you? Of course not. Typical dopey denialist response. No marks for silly comments.
Another diatribe laced with half truths from the boy wonder. The increased temperature during the medieval warming would have produced outgassing in the tropics and increased absorption in the temperate zone. It is exactly the same as what is taking place at present.
Will someone explain to this moron that the rate of absorption is not solely driven by temperature. The primary driver of oceanic absorption is the amount of CO2 available FOR absorption. Ergo, even when the temperature increases, and in this case marginally, the total absorption is higher because the supply of CO2 is higher.
So we have greatly increased absorption in the temperate zone and a retarded, but still significant, rate of outgassing in the tropics as historically carbon rich upwelling water meets warmer atmoshere with higher CO2 levels. A natural, cyclical feedback.
But not a bad attempt at sidestepping Lean & Rind’s failure to differentiate between human and natural CO2 increase. So DO tell us, Luke. Why did they lump all CO2 flux together as anthropogenic in origin?
Ten hours later. Luke must be back in rehab, getting some quality time with Mr Thumb.
And still the question remains – why DID they lump all CO2 flux together as being of anthropogenic origin when the evidence indicates nothing of a sort?
Oh boy wooooonnnddeeeeeerrr?
Another interesting aspect of climatista graphical presentations is the way they never apply the sort of trend band, showing upper and lower extent of variations as is the norm in stock market charting.
When we do this with the above graph and get one line of best fit for the peaks and another line of best fit for the troughs then it becomes clear that both upper and lower variations in global temperatures have only risen by 0.2C over 28 years for a decadal change of only 0.07C.
For the bottom line we need to lift the 1983 and 1992 troughs by at least 0.3C due to volcanic aerosols and this then gives us a lower limit of the trend band that goes from -0.25C in 1981 to -0.05C in 2007, for a change of 0.2C over 26 years.
For the upper line, leaving out the anomalous 1998 figure, we get an upper limit of the trend band going from +0.2C in 1980 to +0.5C in 2006, for a change of 0.3C over 26 years.
The amplitude of the band increased from 0.45C on 1980/81 to 0.55C in 2006/07 but the change in mean trend for the band is only oin the order of 0.25C for a decadal trend of only +0.096C, not the 0.154C that is produced by a single trend line.
And when this trend is allocated between natural influences like ENSO, solar variation and natural CO2 fluxes we are left with a significantly diminished anthropogenic forcing.
Ian – “And when this trend is allocated between natural influences like ENSO, solar variation and natural CO2 fluxes we are left with a significantly diminished anthropogenic forcing.” – I disagree – we are left with other effects, one of which could be anthropogenic. What about the 5,000 known underwater volcanos? What about the huge cyclic changes over the past 500,000 years that weren’t anthropogenic for which we have no answer. There’re other influences which we aren’t considering, or even know about.
I agree, R James, but left out all the other variables because it would only confuse poor Luke and his simpleton climatista mates. Yes, underwater volcanic activity is likely to be melting ice shelves and there is also the PDO (pacific decadal oscillation) and the sleeping gorillas, clouds and cosmic radiation.
So if we look at the change in the trend band, rather than the more abstract trend line, we get a maximum of 0.096C per decade of which 24% is unexplained leaving 0.073C of loosely explained decadal change. The entirely random volcanic influences have already been adjusted for in the placement of the upper and lower trend lines so that leaves about 10% of the 0.073C caused by ENSO and SI leaving a maximum CO2 related warming of 0.066C per decade. No more than half of this is likely to be anthropogenic which leaves us with a modest likely maximum of 0.033C per decade of human induced warming.
It follows that this level of warming can be completely negated by reversals of any one of a number of natural cyclical influences, as 2008 has amply demonstrated.
I’m not even reading your drivel seriously now Mottsa – you’re just too silly to have a sensible conversation with. Try thinking about CO2 in glacial/interglacial cycles if you have a scintilla of brain power left.
As for volcanoes – if you had a brain you might find out that volcanoes have diddly squat to do with the issue. http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL034939.shtml and pity the oceans have heated top down. Barnett et al. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/309/5732/284?ck=nck
So rant at will – some dope might listen
This is par for Luke’s course when cornered. So I guess we can conclude that he has no explanation as to why all CO2 increase was treated as of human origin.
And it is not hard to understand why he would be in no hurry to discuss the temperature trend band rather than the very convenient single moving mean. Funny how the climatistas have distinct preferences for particular statistical tools and presentation formats that serve their squalid purposes.
Mercators projections were old cheese more than 50 years ago but readily get a gig in “Brother Gore’s travelling climate salvation show”. And now we have trend bands being banished for the crime of providing a new layer of meaning to temperature data.
So perhaps Luke would like to round up some of his captured statistician mates to explain to us all why the use of trend bands in temperature analysis in not kosher?
We wait with baited breath.
Luke – rather than just rely on reports, I checked on some of the known underwater volcanoes, and their flow rate. The heat capacity is relatively low, but my calculations show that it could be significant. There are over 5,000 known underwater volcanoes – who knows how many are unknown, and they’re certainly not steady state. Convection can transport the heat to the upper levels. We’re only looking for enough energy to increase air temperature by 0.7 degC over 160 years. I don’t pretend that this accounts for all the heat gain, but don’t rule this out as a possible contributor.
OK Jamesy – rack up’em up. Let’s see some numbers. When they dragged the probe over the vent of the new volcano in the Antarctic Sound it hardly registered. But all the blog scepticsd reckoned that was it. The ocean is bloody massive. The odds are from the data the Antartic Peninsula warming is simply winds and currents. But if you have some numbers on oceans in general I’m all ears.
Motty’s good at taunting me when I’m bored. So he’s just done the Back to the Future “chicken” call. Motty’s the character on the left
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=gKosmXx1gkc
Well Motty – get this up ya
http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/ppt/GCP_CarbonBudget_2007.ppt
Anthropogenic and biophysical contributions to increasing
atmospheric CO2 growth rate and airborne fraction
M. R. Raupach1, J. G. Canadell1, and C. Le Qu´er´e2,3
1Global Carbon Project, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Canberra, Australia
2School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
3British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UK
November 2008
http://www.biogeosciences.net/5/1601/2008/bg-5-1601-2008.pdf
The growth rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), the largest human contributor to human-induced climate change, is increasing rapidly. Three processes contribute to this rapid increase. Two of these processes concern emissions. Recent growth of the world economy combined with an increase in its carbon intensity have led to rapid growth in fossil fuel CO2 emissions since 2000: comparing the 1990s with 2000–2006, the emissions growth rate increased from 1.3% to 3.3% y −1. The third process is indicated by increasing evidence (P = 0.89) for a long-term (50-year) increase in the airborne fraction (AF) of CO2 emissions, implying a decline in the efficiency of CO2 sinks on land and oceans in absorbing anthropogenic emissions. Since 2000, the contributions of these three factors to the increase in the atmospheric CO2 growth rate have been ≈65 ± 16% from increasing global economic activity, 17 ± 6% from the increasing carbon intensity of the global economy, and 18 ± 15% from the increase in AF. An increasing AF is consistent with results of climate–carbon cycle models, but the magnitude of the observed signal appears larger than that estimated by models. All of these changes characterize a carbon cycle that is generating stronger-than-expected and sooner-than-expected climate forcing
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/47/18866.full
Yeah good on you Luke. Now what was that about your very own carbon hoof print?
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,24900863-5018012,00.html
Now toddle off and fart in that jar! Pahleeeze…..
Phfff… there’s always more at the source….
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece
Another sloppy sidestep from Luke and the usual multiple post to obscure his comprehension deficit.
Love the little break down of sources and sinks but you have the accounting skills of a Chimp on viagra. So lets spell this out for you nice and slowly.
An annual increase of atmospheric CO2 of 2 ppm amounts to 10.5Gt.
The gross emissions under IPCC Bull$hit accounting is 9Gt.
And according to the climate mafia only 4.2Gt (46%) remains in the atmosphere.
With landscape absorbing 2.6Gt (29%) and
Oceans absorbing 2.3Gt (25.5%).
But the above percentages are based on the IPCC accounting total emissions of 9Gt, not the 10.5Gt of measured CO2 annual increase. If only 4.2Gt of human CO2 remains in the atmosphere then it follows that this 4.2Gt only represents 40% of the total increase in CO2.
THE OTHER 60% MUST BE OF NATURAL ORIGIN.
And that means that Lean & Rind were even more in error for assuming that all CO2 was human induced when it should have been only 40%.
And that means the 25 year trend band of 0.096C per decade, less the 24% unexplained portion leaving 0.073C decadal trend, and less another 10% for ENSO and Solar leaving 0.0657C must then be multiplied by only 0.4 to get the maximum likely anthropogenic forcing of only 0.0263C per decade.
And remember that IPCC accounting grossly over estimates Land Use emissions while grossly underestimating Land Use absorption. They still regard the wood in your house as being already emitted and refuse to even recognise vegetation thickenning.
So lets state that again. The actual decadal warming due to human CO2 emissions is unlikely to be more than 0.026C which is only 1/6th of the 0.154C claimed by the CO2 Flux Klan.
Oh boring Mr Snotty – look if any CO2 comes from natural systems towards an increase it’s obviously a biosphere feedback driving it – which was caused by anthropogenic feedbacks anyway.
But like most ratbag puedo-sceptics you’ve only quoted natural sinks not sources. You’d be the sort of bloke that would have a finger on the scales at the butcher’s shop eh?
So you go away and come back with the full set of sinks and sources numbers for a simple schema like this
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/kling/carbon_cycle/carbon_cycle.jpg
or this http://www.duke.edu/web/nicholas/bio217/jmz28/GlobalCarbonCycleLG.gif
or this http://www.globe.gov/fsl/eventsimages/CCdiagram-Print.jpg
IPCC UNFCCC does count all manner of sinks – Kyoto doesn’t. If they did recognise thickening – under rules that the gonzos negotiated – the land use and forestry sector would become a net sink. So that would make it not count in the national inventory. And so all the emphasis would go back onto power and transport which are going gang-busters. You can only count tree clearing under Kyoto if the sector is a net source (don’t ask me who negotiates this stuff). It’s probably coz the Euros thought it was a diddle and fiddle by us (and it was).
As for you timber in house being not counted. If you talk to some experts in the field. Doesn’t really matter when you get into a steady state a few years on….
Anyway – where this gets to in the big international negotiations is that all this land use and forestry stuff is regarded as “sus” – so big moves to disallow ALL of it. Just too hard to keep track of – and too many argumentative buggers like you to make happy.
Correction: I must apologise to readers for my use of data supplied by Luke. In my above post I used the numbers from his link to the global carbon budget. The problem with this, like with so much output from the climate mafiosa, is that the numbers don’t stack up, or they compare apples and oranges.
For example, the so-called carbon budget provides graphics claiming to show CO2 flux but they do not post the numbers for CO2, rather, they provide the data for plain Carbon.
We are told that atmospheric CO2 has increased by 2ppm per year over the past decade and I have no issue there. The problem is that 2ppm of CO2 is an expression of parts per million by volume of the atmosphere (one millionth) of which amounts to 5.14Gt (or petagrams) of CO2 and two of them amount to 10.3Gt CO2.
So when Lukes link to the carbon budget expresses CO2 values in terms of plain Carbon they are referring to parts per million by mass. And there is approximately 1.5 ppm/m for each ppm/v. The current atmospheric CO2 level of 385ppm/v amounts to 582ppm/m.
And this is why the quoted 4.1Gt increase in atmospheric carbon did not reconcile with the 10.3Gt figure for 2ppm/v. It was chalk and cheese. Take the questionable 4.1Gt for plain Carbon and multiply it by a factor of 3.66 to convert to CO2 and we get 15Gt which, when divided by 1.5 leaves us with the 10Gt increase indicated by the Mauna Loa series.
The real problem is with years like the 1998 El Nino when there was a 3ppm jump in atmospheric CO2 when human emissions were less than half this amount, with minimal subsequent natural compensations in later years.
So please disregard the immediate above post. The previous ones on the need for trend bands rather than a single trend line still stand. A trend band that measures peak to peak and trough to trough remains the best way to eliminate volatility in a data set
So would you like to make a revised estimate on CO2 anthropogenic and natural then?
If you notice in the references I gave you ENSO makes an annual difference to the CO2 fluxes. You should also note there is a considerable effort on matters of carbon cycle.
Like this:
“The Global Carbon Project” with heaps of information.
http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/about/index.htm
The problem, Luke, is that all the adjustments for volcanic aerosols, ENSO and Solar are recognised in papers and are then averaged out over longer periods which obscure their critical impact on the temperature record at particular times.
Averaging out aerosols over 29 years will certainly produce a modest annual average impact but the key point is the way these random events have altered the shape of the temperature series. El Chichon and Pinatubo obscure the fact that the temperature series has not been a gradual increase that is consistent with the increase in CO2.
Temperature has consistently demonstrated a sequence of extended plateau punctuated by sudden rises or falls. And these sudden jumps are not consistent with greenhouse theory.
Hi Jennifer,
I thoroughly recommend a read of this paper by Roy Spencer. He actually uses words like “evidence” and “proof” – words I’ve never seen before in climate science. He claims he’s done it! What do you and your readers think?
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2008/12/an-open-challenge-to-climate-modelers-for-2009/
Rick – I think one of the main issues with the models has always been the unknown of whether negative or positive feedback is dominant. IPCC models assume, and depend on, positive feedback, but I’ve never found any evidence that backs up this assumption. Certainly the experience of the past 10 years doesn’t seem to support it.