David posted the following comment this morning at this blog:
“We know that the globe is warming very rapidly (~0.2C/decade), and that this warming has occured in the absence of any natural forcing process and is occuring about 10 times faster than the sustained warming at the end of the last ice age.”
And it reminded me of this press release from the Max Planck Institute which is only a couple of years old now.
Titled ‘The Sun is More Active Now than Over the Last 8000 Years’ it includes comment that:
“An international team of scientists has reconstructed the Sun’s activity over the last 11 millennia and forecasts decreased activity within a few decades
The activity of the Sun over the last 11,400 years, i.e., back to the end of the last ice age on Earth, has now for the first time been reconstructed quantitatively by an international group of researchers led by Sami K. Solanki from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany). The scientists have analyzed the radioactive isotopes in trees that lived thousands of years ago. As the scientists from Germany, Finland, and Switzerland report in the current issue of the science journal Nature from October 28, one needs to go back over 8,000 years in order to find a time when the Sun was, on average, as active as in the last 60 years. Based on a statistical study of earlier periods of increased solar activity, the researchers predict that the current level of high solar activity will probably continue only for a few more decades.
I was also reminded of this Max Planck media release when I read page 3 of The Australian on 27th March and a piece titled ‘Beachgoers back latest theory on brighter sun’. This story quotes a Martin Wild of the Institute of Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich, Switzerland.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
I’d like David to prove his assertion that warming has occurred “in the absence of any natural forcing process”.
Can he please define ALL natural warming porocesses and the itemise the extent of the influenece of each and every one of them over his unstated period of time ?
Numerous studies point to increase solar activity over the last 30 years. (These include magnetism and coronal mass ejections as well as solar radiation.)
Clouds affect the amount of radiation reaching earth and the influence of cosmic rays on radiation is well documented by recent studies.
Added to all this the Southern Oscillation Index has been negative in 21 of the last 31 years and when absolute values are examined the bias is very strongly towards El Nino conditions. This is another natural influence – incidentally one that NASA says influenced global temperature in 1998 and again, weakly, in 2002.
So, David, I look forward to your response to the question that I put to you above.
Just on the last few decades RC says;
Regardless of any discussion about solar irradiance in past centuries, the sunspot record and neutron monitor data (which can be compared with radionuclide records) show that solar activity has not increased since the 1950s and is therefore unlikely to be able to explain the recent warming.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=180#more-180
Not sure how this fits with what they’re saying – perhaps we’re at a flat peak in activity? But the recent warming since 1980s does not seem to be explained by solar mechanisms.
Also these two worth reading on the theme (for Detribe !!) :
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=171#more-171
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=153
Phil,
I note you are posting links to a blog – and some blogs can be really useful sources of information just like this one. 🙂
But rather than follow the links, I just wanted to follow up on your comment about no increase since the 1950s. This could be because the increase started 60 years ago – which is what the Nature paper says?
Thanks Phil for the input.
Another good source is http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/solar/solar.htm
Or in the literature, Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years, Thomas J. Crowley, Science, 2000, 289, 270-277.
The combination of solar and volcanism should have lead to approximate 0.2C decline since 1950, instead of the ~0.6C increase observed. The difference between these values (~0.8C) is the warming of the enhanced greenhouse effect.
It talks an enormous amount of energy to heat the global system by 0.2C/decade. It is not possible for us to miss the source of this energy given current earth observation systems. If it were otherwise you could be sure that science (and certainly the sceptics) would have located the missing energy by now.
David
PS
John, perhaps you have forgotten that proof is not possible in a physical system. as I said the cause could be the flapping of fairy wings.
————–
David was having trouble posting this because of my questionable content filter – sorry!
David,
Thanks for this information.
I could be cynical and just comment that you have just posted two alternative sources of information – against my link to the Max Planck study and Martin Wild?
Now I have been cynical, I will be honest and say that I find the literature on the importance of the sun at times compelling and at times obviously naive. And I haven’t chased down the links you and Phil have provided –
“The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and the sun was given power to scorch people with fire. They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify him” (Revelation 16: 8-9)
Jen – well it depends on the nature of the increase – the global temperature has kept increasing (well most us believe that! 🙂
but RC quoted papers inform us that they believe there is no change in solar output since the 1950s.
On your 60 years – was the solar increase a one-off – so why wouldn’t the Earth re-equilibrate and settle – will have to read the paper in detail.
The other links (tediously provided for you perhaps, and we know Joe also hates homework) are because you can come a statistical gutser looking at links between solar cycles and climate – many have tried and the science has not worked in the long run. i.e. given the various quasi-periodicities in the system (El Nino etc)you may think you’re onto something but it’s not really there.
Phil,
I am not interested in anything produced by the people at realclimate.org. I believe that there are NO good reasons to believe that they are impartial and unbiased but there are very good reasons to assume that they are trying to defend their own claims and reputations.
(I am sure that anyone who alleges that the fossil-fuel lobby somehow influences the results of climate studies will see that they would be inconsistent to accept Schmidt, Mann etc as unbiased.)
Do you have alternative references for your information?
Phil the Artist kindly posted links on thread previous thread to RC just for me. Thanks PD.I found them helpful. They did not cover though all the sun intensity/comic ray issues however (but they were good).
The point I’m thinking of is perhaps even different from sunpots, : that cleaner air due to less pollution is boosting sunlight effectiveness. This may even reconcile RC and Soloar radiance curves nicely put together on Phil’s links.
John – unlike your normally one-eyed stuff they provide copious references from refereed journals. You could consider reading the arguments at least – they either stack up or they don’t – not all comments to RC agree with the authors – but why bother given you know all the answers.
And John I thought we’d be on a national and global cooling trend by now from your previous cherry-picked pronouncements. What happened?
Detribe – I’m not sure where the global dimming issue is now up to. The issue being that aerosol pollution had decreased surface radiation resulting in less evaporation (in some locations).
“You could consider reading the arguments at least – they either stack up or they don’t”
I can see that being thrown back at you in the future Phil ; next time we argue about the IPA or another dreaded tentacle of the evil right wing octopus!
Phil the last thing I read global dimming has reversed and turned into global brightening because of all the effective polullution control in industrial coyntries, and is (possibly) being pointed to as a (partial) cause of the most recent boost to thermal forcing, if I understand it correctly (I could be wrong on the last bit). Certainly the sunlight is getting brighter the last few years.
(Data in my vast email inflow somewhere, the last week or so)
David says that we ‘know’ rapid global warming is occurring and that this warming has occurred in the absence of ‘any’ natural forcing process.
Six years ago the lead authors of Chapter 12 of the WGI Contribution to the IPCC TAR provided the following text for the draft statement of the Summary of Policymakers of that report:
‘From the body of evidence since IPCC (1996), we conclude that there has been a DISCERNIBLE human influence on global climate. Studies are BEGINNING to separate the contributions to observed climate change attributable to individual external influences, both anthropogenic and natural. This work SUGGESTS that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are a SUBSTANTIAL CONTRIBUTOR to the observed warming, especially over the past 30 years. However, THE ACCURACY OF THESE ESTIMATES CONTINUES TO BE LIMITED BY UNCERTAINTIES IN ESTIMATES OF INTERNAL VARIABILITY, NATURAL AND ANTHROPOGENIC FORCING, AND THE CLIMATE RESPONSE TO EXTERNAL FORCING’ (EMPHASES added).
As a non-scientist, I do not know who to believe. Accepting that climate science is advancing all of the time, is it really the case that the uncertainties in estimates of natural forcing to which the IPCC experts dreew attention in 2000 have now all been resolved, and that it is established that their influence is nil?
When Jennifer advocated abolishing the IPCC, Phil reacted with the comment: “You’re not coming with anything except anarchy. So we will have no ‘reasonably accepted’ global summary of the science. We’ll have to get someone to wander around and collect all the ‘best’ bits and compare them.”
Well, on the issue of the attribution of observed climate change, we didn’t have to wander around in 2000: the world’s leading experts agreed on a statement of less than 100 words. They did so as authors of an IPCC chapter, but that was incidental: the same group of scientists could easily have been assembled by the International Council of Science or some other non-governmental body. The only role played by the governmental organisation – the IPCC – was to cut the scientists’ draft statement down to less than half its length and to present the state of science on the attribution in much more definite terms:
‘In the light of new evidence and taking into account the REMAINING uncertainties, MOST of the observed warming over the last 50 years is LIKELY to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations’ (EMPHASES added).
Of course it suits many governments, NGOs and mainstream scientists to have this sort of declaration available to feature in their climate change promotions (and to use to marginalise the so-called sceptics and contrarians). But the contribution to this issue of the IPCC (as distinct from the scientists who produced the draft IPCC chapter and the summary thereof) was nil – indeed it was worse than useless because it gave a totally inaccurate view of the state of the science.
Incidentally, the statement in the SPM referred to “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years”, whereas the draft from the scientists referred to “a substantial contribution to the observed warming, especially over the past 30 years.” I understand that there was a downward trend in global mean temperature between 1950 and 1975 and an upward trend from 1975 to 2000 (and since).
David, are you able to say what the net ‘observed warming’ was over the entire 50-year period from 1950 to 2000? I’m interested to know the exact meaning of the statement that ‘most’ of this warming is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations. I have an uneasy suspicion that the reason that the SPM chose to focus on the 50-year span rather than the 30-year period used in the lead authors’ draft was to get to a lower warming ‘denominator’, to which the anthropogenic numerator could then be said to have contributed ‘most’. I hope that you can tell me that my suspicions are unfounded.
Phil, As you may have noticed I’m trying to engage the scientists at Real Climate. I am put off by their practice of holding up postings until they can present a patronising and often ill-informed reply. But I’ll give them one more try before sounding off on this blog about them.
Come on Ian – they agreed as a result of the extensive consultative process ongoing and the many discussions. Here we have it -another IPCC beat-up. Are contrarians being stopped – I can’t see myself for a sea of anti-AGW web sites and blogs. Newspapers continue to publish contrarian viewpoints (even though 90% are stupid and outdated.
“A totally inaccurate view of the science ” – probably too soft I agree. They should have gone in harder on the AGW. Not wussed about.
Ian you well know what the answer to the 50 year span or even the 100 year span is.
On RC – I really don’t like their font choice either. There’s nothing redeemable from you on this one Ian. Just say ” I hate the bastards”. It saves time.
We’re talking solar output here. Well we were.
Ian it’s even more galling – you have a had a marvellous run on that RC thread IMHO.
RayPierre’s last comment
“Forgive me for leading us farther astray from the topic, but I’m finding the dialog with Ian very instructive, and if not here, where else would we pursue it? ”
You have green text galore in response. You may not have gotten agreements you wanted but you gotten their respect by the end. Well Ray’s. You could do worse than continue the engagement and I hope they don’t read your comments here – or they may fear you are a dyed in the wool contrarian rather than seeker of the truth. They have hardly shut you down or censored you.
The problem with this stuff is that it is so pie in the sky. It’s as bad those those guys going around and trying to figure out tree bark and bristtle cones can accurately be used as a proxy from past climate conditions.
It can’t and neither can these studies. They are pie in the sky theories without substance.
I think the best thing to do is ensure we have accurate temp guages in strategically locations that are properly audited and not left to couple of self interested scientists. We do that for the next 20 years and lets see what that tells us.
Phil, I’m appalled by your comment that the SPM should have gone in harder on the AGW ‘and not wussed about,’ In other words, you would have liked the SPM to have gone even further away from the scientific assessment towards the political end of the spectrum.
David, Phil says that I well know what the answer to the 50 year increase in global temperature is. The simple fact is that I don’t. It’s not in the IPCC Report, but I assume that when the authors of SPM referred to ‘most of the observed warming over the past 50 years’ they knew what that warming was. The question I’ve asked does indeed seem a very simple one, but can I know the answer please?
Joe – have you been on planet Earth – we’ve just been talking about that for a week mate !
It’s called the Bureau of Meteorology reference climate station network. It’s been professionally done. HELLO !!!!
Stop thinking and tell us about palladium futures.
Phil,
Your comments aside, I see that you have refused to (or are unable to) provide other references to those of realclimate.org. This shows the weakeness of your arguments. You have this attitude that realiclimate is always correct.
Unlike you, I can produce other recently-published references, mainly in 2005 and 2006, on this subject that might be worth a read.
No, I haven’t read them all yet; I simply point them out as being probably worth a read.
John
——————
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And so you haven’t read them yet eh?
Jen do you mind if we all dump our Refworks bibliographies in here to see who has the biggest. (It’s a bloke thing).
Or perhaps a Scopus search on the subject of solar.
So do you wish to make a point John – from all this literature has solar output to the Earth increased since the 1950s? (of course perhaps the IPCC might have also looked at a few papers).
>David says that we ‘know’ rapid global warming is occurring and that this warming has occurred in the absence of ‘any’ natural forcing process.
If you want me to be precise – this is a web blog isn’t it? I would say that “the warming has occured in the absence of any known natural mechanism which could give rise to the large temperature rise we have seen”. I would not pre-empt the IPCC process, but we both can hazard a guess that the language will be stronger this time around as the knowledge gaps (such as why the MSU wasn’t warming) have closed.
David
Thanks David. Is there a readily available answer to my question about the scale of the global warming that occurred between 1950 and 2000?
Ian
linked here is the Global Absolute Mean temperature per year supplied by the National Climate Data Center of the US.
http://lhcrazyworld.blogspot.com/2006/02/absolute-global-mean-temperature.html
The decadal increase in absolute mean T is 0.05 Kelvin dervied from the linear fit to the data.
I can send you the spreadsheet with the original data to compute the period 1950 to 2000 if you need it.
Ian,
I have computed the NCDC absolute global mean temperature linear fit for the period 1950 to 2000.
The equation is T=0.0083y – 2.4053 with R2 0.54
The decadal increase is thus = 0.083 Kelvin.
This prompts one to wonder where the 0.22K per decade was derived from.
Post script – since I published the graph on my blog, the NCDC has reorganised its data delivery and storage, and adopted a new computational paradigm for data post 2005 – so links correct at the time of posting are now duds.
Milloy of junkscience.com has rescripted all the code to take these new changes and interested readers should initially check junkscience.com out first before wandering into the directories of the NCDC server.
Any one interested in the raw data till 2005 could contact me by email.
As a final comment, the yearly trend for 1950 to 2000, 0.0083 K, is at least an order of magnitude less than the instrumental precision of the devices used to measure the data, generally +/- 0.5K.
Hence the trend so computed is that produced by fitting a trend to truncated data, and is spurious.
On this we are forced to conclude, on the basis of the data, that the earth’s absolute global mean temperature has not changed since measurements started.
I will now retire for my next ritual stoning.
Louis – but if we agreed with you, your life would be meaningless – you would pine away and become melancholy.
Anyway let’s for argument’s sake agree with you .. .. (YES readers – Done agreeing with Louis)
So if the Earth is not warming – why do the MSU and radiosonde data say it’s warming. Why are species moving range worldwide and breeding earlier etc. Why are MOST glaciers in retreat. Why has Science just reported acceleration of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica and satellite observation of reducing ice pack.
And why do Australian farmers say they don’t get frosts like they used to.
It’s all a bit contra-indicative.
Phil
1. MSU and radiosonde data – warming rates?
2. Species moving range worldwide – citation?
3. Most glaciers in retreat? Evidence please.
4. Science reporting acceleration of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica and reduction of ice pack.
5. Aussie farmers and frost.
1,2 & 3. Supply evidence.
4. Accelerating glaciers? Do you mean these glaciers are now disgorging even more quantitities of ice at their distal ends than previously recorded? This is evidence of increased ice precipitation. Like the New Scientist editorial of a week or so ago, you seem unable to understand what glacial calving involves.
5. Which farmers and where.
Phil,
Louis – but if we agreed with you, your life would be meaningless – you would pine away and become melancholy.
You seem to be under the impression I created these data.
I did not, as my alleged publishing of Geoff Sherrington’s letter to the Oz.
You are, in light of these facts, a quintessential socialist.
Thanks Louis. I’ve just noticed that the posting that Jennifer made on behalf of David at 12.52 pm refers to an increase in global temperature of ~0.6C between 1950 and 2000 and to a decline of 0.2C from the combination of solar and volcanism over the same period – leading to an increase of ~0.8C from the enhanced greenhouse effect.
The yearly trend of 0.0083 that is quoted by Louis implies, as a matter of arithmetic, a temperature change over the 50-year period of 0.4 (degrees C, presumably?). If this was the IPCC’s figure the statement in the SPM would have implied that ‘most’ of the observed warming (i.e. more than 0.2C) is likely to be due to the increased concentration of GHGs.
If the IPCC’s estimate of the total increase for the 1950-2000 period was ~0.6C, then the statement in the SPM implied that the increase from the enhanced greenhouse effect was more than 0.3C.
David has quoted a figure of 0.8C for the enhanced greenhouse effect and says that we can both ‘hazard a guess that the language will be stronger this time around as the knowledge gaps (such as why the MSU wasn’t warming) have closed.’
For myself I have no idea, but accepting David’s guess about the IPCC’s conclusion this time, I’m still puzzled. I take David’s point that ‘It takes an enormous amount of energy to heat the global system by 0.2C/decade’, and that ‘It is not possible for us to miss the source of this energy given current earth observation systems.’
But on the face of it (and I can’t be sure because the TAR didn’t give a figure for the 1950-2000 period) the SPM said only that enhanced greenhouse warming accounted for more than 0.2C over the entire 50-year period, not 0.2C/decade.
I know that it’s difficult but I can’t understand why the IPCC can’t be more candid about it. There is no way for an outsider to know whether new information has led to a multiplication of the enhanced-greenhouse element of the temperature increase for the half-century by a factor of ~4 since the half-century ended, or whether much of this apparent change reflects differing estimates of the total warming for the period.
Ian,
quoting your first para:
“Thanks Louis. I’ve just noticed that the posting that Jennifer made on behalf of David at 12.52 pm refers to an increase in global temperature of ~0.6C between 1950 and 2000 and to a decline of 0.2C from the combination of solar and volcanism over the same period – leading to an increase of ~0.8C from the enhanced greenhouse effect”.
Now if we are dealing with measured temperatures, then we cannot, on one hand have “an increase in global temperature of ~0.6C between 1950 and 2000” and on the other hand “a decline of 0.2C from the combination of solar and volcanism over the same period”.
This cannot be measured – absolutely. You cannot, on one hand measure a temperature increase, and then at the same time, from the same stations, a decrease during the same sampling period.
In the mining industry we would call this simmple fraud.
These numbers are produced from computer models, and from what I gather here, sold as global temperature mean measurements.
I should add an explanatory note here as there is no way we could differentiate between solar and volcanic effects on temperature by measurement.
How can we measure the earth’s temperature soley from the input of the sun? We cannot.
I won’t deal with the rest of the issue as it is too innane to bother with – it results from the intereference of the scientifically illiterate into areas of human endeavour they have no knowledge of.
Louis – Most of what you request is all here in the climate archives. I’m not wasting my time re-assembling it for you to have to dismiss it without thinking. 3 hours for me will result in you not reading it and making a 20 second quip.
To be fair – frost frequency hasn’t probably before been listed. I’ll dig that one up.
And I’ll list the latest glacier stuff from Science in case I haven’t posted that-
******
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/089.htm
Decreasing numbers of days with freezing temperatures have been found in Australia and New Zealand over recent decades (Plummer et al., 1999; Collins et al., 2000). In addition, while increases in the frequency of warm days have been observed, decreases in the number of cool nights have been stronger. Frich et al. (2001) show a reduced number of days with frost across much of the globe
*********
doi: 10.1175/1520-0442(1996)0092.0.CO;2
Journal of Climate: Vol. 9, No. 8, pp. 1896–1909.
Frost in Northeast Australia: Trends and Influences of Phases of the Southern Oscillation
Stone, Hammer and Nicholls
A forecast method capable of estimating date of last frost and number of frosts per season in northeastern Australia some months in advance is described. Forecast “skill” is achieved using either Southern Oscillation index (SOI) patterns (phases) during the previous austral autumn or a linear discriminant approach and the SOI. When applying these systems, it is possible to provide significantly different probability distributions of day of last frost and number of frosts, depending on the SOI patterns observed during the previous season. An analysis of the time series of frost frequency and date of last frost suggests an apparent warming trend in the data, resulting in a trend toward earlier dates of last frost and fewer numbers of frosts at many of the locations analyzed. The beneficial implications of the proposed frost forecasting system for enterprises such as winter agriculture in the region are believed to be significant.
************
Editorial Science 24 March 2006
So what should the appropriate baseline be for estimating our present climate prospects? Is it the relatively recent evidence of climate change, or is it the developing knowledge from ice cores and the geologic record about past climate equilibria? The Holocene, over its 10,000-year life, has provided us with a comparatively stable period. Now we are changing an important parameter. Evidence presented in two papers, a News story, and two Perspectives in this issue demonstrates an accelerating decay of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. Given the concurrent rapid recent rise in CO2 concentration, history suggests that we should expect other changes. Will these changes return us to a climate like the Miocene or earlier? Or will we experience a repeat of the Eemian?
Nothing in the record suggests that an “equilibrium” climate model is the right standard of comparison. We are in the midst of a highly kinetic system, and in the past, dramatic climate changes have taken place in only a few decades. Our comfort in the Holocene may have heightened our sense of security, but the expectation that change is unlikely is not a reasonable position. The central question of today’s climate policy discussions centers on whether the change in average global temperature over the past century represents the result of new climate forcing or instead simply reflects natural variation.
That question invites us to examine recent statistics on climate variation and then test the current excursion for significance. But if one is interested in risks and in preparing to meet them, the more interesting question is what the deep historical record can tell us about the circumstances under which climates have changed rapidly in the past and the severity of the consequences. Considered in that way, accelerated glacial melting and larger changes in sea level (for example) should be looked at as probable events, not as hypothetical possibilities. We don’t have to abandon the short-term baseline, but the longer one may give a more realistic picture of our future.
10.1126/science.1127485
Perspectives
CLIMATE CHANGE: Greenland Rumbles Louder as Glaciers Accelerate
Ian Joughin
Science 24 March 2006: 1719-1720.
CLIMATE CHANGE: Hitting the Ice Sheets Where It Hurts
Robert Bindschadler
Science 24 March 2006: 1720-1721.
PAPERS:
Paleoclimatic Evidence for Future Ice-Sheet Instability and Rapid Sea-Level Rise
Jonathan T. Overpeck, Bette L. Otto-Bliesner, Gifford H. Miller, Daniel R. Muhs, Richard B. Alley, and Jeffrey T. Kiehl
Science 24 March 2006: 1747-1750.
Simulations of Earth’s climate 130,000 years ago, compared with warming projected to occur over the next century, imply that widespread melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet is possible.
Simulating Arctic Climate Warmth and Icefield Retreat in the Last Interglaciation
Bette L. Otto-Bliesner, Shawn J. Marshall, Jonathan T. Overpeck, Gifford H. Miller, Aixue Hu, and CAPE Last Interglacial Project members
Science 24 March 2006: 1751-1753.
Simulations of ice dynamics and climate 130,000 years ago indicate that melting of ice sheets in Greenland and the Canadian Arctic raised sea level by 2.2 to 3.4 meters.
Measurements of Time-Variable Gravity Show Mass Loss in Antarctica
Isabella Velicogna and John Wahr
Science 24 March 2006: 1754-1756.
Published online 2 March 2006 [DOI: 10.1126/science.1123785] (in Science Express Reports)
Satellite measurements of Earth’s gravity reveal that the mass of ice in Antarctica decreased from 2002 to 2005, mainly from losses in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
Seasonality and Increasing Frequency of Greenland Glacial Earthquakes
Göran Ekström, Meredith Nettles, and Victor C. Tsai
Science 24 March 2006: 1756-1758.
Greenland glacier earthquakes produced beneath ice streams and outlet glaciers occur more often in summer and have doubled in frequency over the past 5 years.
Louis, I was paraphrasing from the message that Jennifer sent on David’s behalf, and I had not read into his reference to a decline of 0.2C any implication that this had been measured. David’s actual words were ‘The combination of solar and volcanism should have lead to an approximate 0.2C decline since 1950’. The inferences that you have drawn from your assumption that ‘we are dealing with measured temperatures’ therefore seem to me to be incorrect.
I apologise to David for not quoting his words exactly, but as he said ‘this is a web blog isn’t it?’
Phil,
Greenland earthquakes?
Another of your ad hoc cutting and pasting efforts to show you understand climate?
Climate and earthquakes.
And of course you add nothing to your plagiarisms.
Louis; I met a uni chap a while back who found the mining industry a fair share of real gold in his computer models. Unfortunately he was far too busy to socialize and tell me where it all was.
Ian
I am always under the impression that all temperatures historically were from measurement.
That said, David’s statement that “‘The combination of solar and volcanism should have lead to an approximate 0.2C decline since 1950’.” can only be from assumptions.
There is a mixing of fact, and prediction here, I suspect.
Ian – the temperature graph in the IPCC report is only reproduced if you combine natural and anthropogenic forcings. These being for this purpose solar, volcanism and greenhouse. There is debate over the mid century cooling period if that is what you are getting at – argued by some to be solar, aerosols or unknown variability. Hansen I think has a paper arguing against unforced variability. However the increase in global temperature in the last 30 years can only be explained by greenhouse forcing with little change in solar output over the period. IMHO
Effects on temperature during periods of volcanism can be seen, as can the effects of El Nino and La Nina on global temperatures.
If someone wants to make a cogent argument for an alternative let’s hear it and debate it.
And Louis a cogent argument requires you to argue a case. It doesn’t go – “this is all specious science from computer models spread by greenie socialists” – or “gee I hate the IPCC” or “RC are crooks” – that’s just rhetorical bluster. No speeches about the politics/motivations implied or real – let’s talk science.
Bugger,
well bugger me,
I am beginning to wonder what Louis really knows about mining
Louis – if you don’t bother to read the papers that have gone through peer review and have been published in Science you are a complete fraud and shyster. I wasted my time assembling the information – you have done a one line quip as usual as that you’re level – glad I didn’t waste 3 hours on assembling the others. You are a shonk.
1. Measurements of temperature start from, 1850? till present
2. Temperatures prior to 1850 are not, but estimated by proxies developed from models.
As for for bugger and phil Done, I have no reply. Your own words here do that.
Louis indicating that you are and total ignoramus and galoot. You have a Masters in Geology you say? Lordy me !
Seasonality and Increasing Frequency of Greenland Glacial Earthquakes
Göran Ekström,1* Meredith Nettles,2 Victor C. Tsai1
Some glaciers and ice streams periodically lurch forward with sufficient force to generate emissions of elastic waves that are recorded on seismometers worldwide. Such glacial earthquakes on Greenland show a strong seasonality as well as a doubling of their rate of occurrence over the past 5 years. These temporal patterns suggest a link to the hydrological cycle and are indicative of a dynamic glacial response to changing climate conditions.
Phil,
Nothing to do with your previous comment.
Seismic activity associated with increased ice production.
Sure you are not now, post cyclone Lambert, more than a few bananas short of a bunch?
Phil: I would be very suprised if Louis found his masters down a mine
Bugger,
not one of the paid Bill Ludwig drones are you?
Nah mate my boss worked heads with a pick handle
Great,
I’ll tell Bill his next pickhandle is yours.
dont worry I’ve still got one
And that is that.
Barbarism ?
Well Louis as a geologist, AIG editor, and defender of the JORC code – you are duty bound to write to Science and expose the fraud ! Quickly Louis – expose the fraudsters !
Why Phil,
As I play the role of Poirot, it seems you have done so, Monsieur, all by yourself, n’est pas?
OK – if you’re not confident of your facts – wuss out.
Phil,
Me 1
You 0
We might therefore conclude that, from the data, the earth has not changed it’s absolute global mean temperture since 1860.
This leads to the next question of what Sir Phileas is blathering about.
Just keeps on coming
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/03/30/antarctic.warming.ap/index.html
Report: Air warming above Antarctica
Thursday, March 30, 2006 Posted: 1948 GMT (0348 HKT)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The air over Antarctica is warming even faster than in other parts of the world, according to an analysis of 30 years of weather balloon data.
While surface warming has been reported in parts of Antarctica, this is the first report of broad-scale climate change across the whole continent, the British Antarctic Survey says in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.
The weather balloon data show a warming of 0.9 degree to 1.3 degree Fahrenheit per decade over the last 30 years. By contrast, the average worldwide temperature has risen 0.2 degree per decade in that time, according to the paper.
Detailed records from the weather balloons launched at nine stations around the continent, including Russian records, have only recently become available, the researchers said.
The research team led by John Turner reported that they could not provide a definite cause for the warming, but added that the observed increases are what would be expected as a result of warming caused by greenhouse gases trapping heat from the sun in the atmosphere
Phil, Thanks for your last posting to me (a good way back now), but you’re missing my point. My concern is with the IPCC PROCESS.
Let me say what I think happened in the TAR. The lead authors of Chapter 12 made a carefully qualified statement that anthropogenic GHGs had made a ‘substantial contribution’ to the observed warming of the last 30 years. If the consensus of the scientists had been that MOST of the observed warming over these 30 years was attributable to GHGs, the chapter would have said so, but it didn’t.
Governments wanted a stronger-sounding finding to present in the SPM (which is supposed to be a summary of the report). The way they chose to ‘sex up’ the scientists’ finding was to change the base year of the comparison to 1950. With a smaller increase in observed temperatures between 1950 and 2000 than between 1970 and 2000, it then became possible to say with truth that MOST of the observed warming over the last 50 (repeat, 50) years was likely to have been due to GHGs.
Maybe I’m wrong. If one of the scores of Australian scientists who contributed to the TAR could answer my simple question (‘what was the trend increase in temperature between 1950 and 2000′), and that turns out to be greater than the trend increase between 1970 and 2000, I’ll be glad to agree that my suspicions were unfounded.
But if the 1950-2000 increase was smaller, I’ll still ask why the SPM said something that wasn’t in the Report. I’ll still wonder (though I think I know the answer) why the peak scientific bodies remained silent while the world’ governments played ducks and drakes with the scientists’ findings. (The reason I think I know the answer is that I worked in and near policy areas of government for 40 years).
I have no idea what AR4 will say, and it won’t relieve my concerns one little bit if the consensus of scientists NOW is that most of the observed warming of the past 30 years is attributable to anthropogenic GHGs. That’s beside the point which, if valid, goes to the heart of the IPCC process. It’s the SPMs that count, and the scientific community appear to allowed governments and other vested interests to manipulate the presentation of carefully considered scientific findings.
The IPCC describe the level of scientific understanding of solar forcing as ‘very low:’ http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/slides/06.01.htm “The IPCC’s judgement that the solar factor is negligible is based on satellite observations available since 1978 which show that the Sun’s total irradiance, though not being constant, changes only by about 0.1 percent during the course of the 11-year sunspot cycle. This argument, however, does not take into account that the Sun’s eruptional activity (energetic flares, coronal mass ejections, eruptive prominences), heavily affecting the solar wind, as well as softer solar wind contributions by coronal holes have a much stronger effect than total irradiance. The total magnetic flux leaving the Sun, dragged out by the solar wind, has risen by a factor of 2.3 since 1901 (Lockwood et al., 1999), while global temperature on earth increased by about 0.6°C. The energy in the solar flux is transferred to the near-Earth environment by magnetic reconnection and directly into the atmosphere by charged particles. Energetic flares increase the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation by at least 16 percent. Ozone in the stratosphere absorbs this excess energy which causes local warming and circulation disturbances. General circulation models developed by Haigh (1996), Shindell et al. (1999), and Balachandran et al. (1999) confirm that circulation changes, initially induced in the stratosphere, can penetrate into the troposphere and influence temperature, air pressure, Hadley circulation, and storm tracks by changing the distribution of large amounts of energy already present in the atmosphere.” The web version of the paper from which the above quote originates is here: http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/Calen/Landscheidt-1.html but the website has recently been attacked, so some figures are still missing.
Regards,
Paul Biggs
University of Birmingham, UK
http://www.bham.ac.uk/default.asp
Phil,
as Ian has noted also, you seem to miss the point – while the air warming above antarctica may well be occurring, that has nothing to do with the global absolute mean temperature trend, which as the data show, shows little to negligible warming, and what warming there is is probably related to UHI effects on the data sets.
You seem unable to comprehend the notion of a global absolute mean temperature and a local temperature.
Louis – only reporting it as interesting. Didn’t say it was AGW or relevant to the global mean temperature. Just some breaking news. And it will be published in Science which you have rejected above as a source, so don’t know why you’re even accepting it.
Ian this url
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/450.htm
represents the IPCC’s understanding of the processes in my opinion. Simulating natural variation alone goes nowhere near explaining the observed data in the last 30 (or so) years.
Thanks Phil. I also thought that that was the IPCC’s understanding of the processes. As the lead authors of Chapter 12 said, anthropogenic GHGs are ‘a substantial contributor to the observed warming, especially over the past 30 years.’ Your statement that ‘simulating natural variation alone goes nowhere near explaining the observed data in the last 30 (or so) years’ is consistent with that assessment.
But the SPM, which is supposed to be a summary of the experts’ findings, didn’t mention 30 years at all. It said that increases in GHGs were likely to have been responsible for MOST of the observed warming over the past 50 (repeat, 50) years. That statement may have been made with the approval of the lead authors, for all I know. But the bottom line is that, subject to my point being valid (and the silence from scientists about the answer to my very simple question is deafening), the IPCC changed the base year of the comparison in order to ‘sex up’ the SPM.
‘Most’ was better than ‘a substantial contribution.’ And most policymakers would have believed (wrongly) that the 1950-2000 increase was greater than the 1970-2000 increase. But the end-result is that the SPM said that GHGs have been responsible for most of X without disclosing the value of X., and in the full knowledge (again, subject to contrary advice) that most policymakers would believe that X was greater than it in fact was. This hardly stands to the credit of a body to which scientists haved devoted so much effort.
Ian – in terms of solar/GHG effect contribution and further to the thread topic on solar:
Wiki (oh no – that evil source 🙂 )has this summary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
Direct variations in solar output appear too small to have substantially affected the climate; nonetheless some researchers (e.g. [20]) have proposed that feedbacks from clouds or other processes enhance the effect.
In the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR), it was reported that volcanic and solar forcings might account for half of the temperature variations prior to 1950, but that the net effect of such natural forcings was roughly neutral since then [21]. In particular, the change in climate forcing from greenhouse gases since 1750 was estimated to be 8 times larger than the change in forcing due to increasing solar activity over the same period [22]. However, if 1700 had been chosen as the comparison date instead of 1750, the increase in solar forcing would have been twice as high and the level of scientific understanding of the variance in direct solar irradience is low.[23]
Since the TAR, various studies (Lean et al., 2002, Wang et al., 2005) have suggested that changes in irradiance since pre-industrial times are less by a factor of 3-4 than in the reconstructions used in the TAR (e.g. Hoyt and Schatten, 1993, Lean, 2000.). Stott et al. [24] estimated solar forcing to be 16% or 36% of greenhouse warming.
[edit]
Other theories
Various other hypotheses have been proposed, including but not limited to:
The warming is within the range of natural variation.
The warming is a consequence of coming out of a prior cool period — the Little Ice Age.
The warming trend itself has not been clearly established.
At present, none of these has more than a small number of supporters within the climate science community.
This doesn’t precisely answer your question on 50 years but I think illustrates what scientists think of the magnitude of the effects.
Well picked Louis, another apparatchnik buggered.
Rog we don’t want to hear about Louis’s private life.
On solar flares etc P.A.F. says
It is a valid hypothesis, but alas, one lacking any evidence. If there was some huge effect other than irradiance that was intersecting with the ozone we would see it. Instead, variations of ozone are well modelled when you just use the irradiance (spectrally discriminated to be sure). People have been looking for CME-climate or flares-climate connections for a hundred years – they just aren’t there. Note there are no direct peer-reviewed papers supporting this.
Phil,
Kindly refer to the published proof that I reject Science as a source. I was unaware I ever did.
As for your comment that it was interesting, (The Science article), no where do you say in your post that it is. We normally assume anything you post is automatically directed at the immediate preceding post, unless otherwise annotated.
And if this confusion exists, then you only have yourself to blame for it.
I think it might be high time for you to start your own blog and post all these interesting facts for public perusal, rather than using Jennifer’s blog as your notice board.
And you could invite comments too!
Louis you totally and unambiguously rejected Greenland earthquakes last night. Refer my list of Science papers provided in partial respons eto your questions 1-5.
Seasonality and Increasing Frequency of Greenland Glacial Earthquakes
Göran Ekström, Meredith Nettles, and Victor C. Tsai
Science 24 March 2006: 1756-1758.
Greenland glacier earthquakes produced beneath ice streams and outlet glaciers occur more often in summer and have doubled in frequency over the past 5 years.
Abstract also provided above later in evening.
I assume by your last comment that you prefer I paste uninteresting non-facts as by your example. I hardly ever see any peer reviewed journal substantiation of your thoughts. Indeed your thought processes appear to be unique. Perhaps you are a genius – but I don’t recommend a poll lest the cognitive dissonance become overwhelming.
I had my own blog I don’t think I would have a corralled servants’ entrance for comments as per your ongoing example. A front door would be more appropriate.
Phil, You acknowledge that your lengthy comments
Oh boo hoo Ian – just open your own boring site dedicated to IPCC bashing – I’m sure you could fill reams and reams. The reason nobody has answered if that nobody can bother. Who cares – your question is irrelevant – it does not inform us scientifically except to nitpick on IPCC failings. I’ve had a gutful of your tripe.
It’s such a pity that the whole world isn’t dedicated to Ian Castles will. It’s a problem when you’re not in charge of a whole department isn’t it?
Go back to RC and tell them what you really think of them. Don’t just bitch on here – be up front and not be such a sneak.
It is surprising, but there is as yet no discernible correlation between the 300-years of global warming since the last major cold period of the Little Ice Age (Maunder Minimum, 1645-1715) and greenhouse gas emissions. But there are compelling correlations between solar activity and climate. The Sun has been more active since 1940 than at any time during the past 8-10 ky. Overprinted on the 300-year trend is a 50-70 year cycle of cold-water upwelling in the equatorial eastern Pacific – of which the last reversals were to cooler in the mid-1940s, and to warmer in 1976/77 (Great Pacific Climate Shift). These major interchanges of angular momentum between stony Earth and mobile overcoat of ocean-atmosphere, coincide with length of day (LOD) changes. The related inflection points in LOD follow reversals in torque applied to the Sun by the giant planets. The Sun also changes its magnetic polarity at the peak of every (ca. 11-yr) solar, and Earth does not. The solar magnetic cycle is climatically influential. Finally the small inner planets (particularly Mercury) keep the Sun in a permanent state of resonance; and when planets cross any of the four resonant points (of the Dickman Cross) the Sun’s magnetic outflow sharply increases. On 6 June 2006, watch for a sharp increase in coronal mass ejections on the Sun – with the possibility of responses on Earth. Solar activity can be calculated – and it should be possible to predict the next return to increased upwelling in the Pacific (with global cooling), the next failure of the Indian Monsoon (and consequent famine), and arrival of the next Little Ice Age cold period. Fanciful? Time will tell. But the dead hand of consensus will prevent mainstream science from even looking at the available evidence. Consensus is an autonomous Earth with a self-contained climate.
Phil,
you misrepresent me – I never totally and unambigously rejected Greenland earthquakes – that rejection must be hidden in the white spaces between my words and sentences to your comments which I now discover only you seem able to read.
Gosh that is amazing!
You said:
“Seismic activity associated with increased ice production.
Sure you are not now, post cyclone Lambert, more than a few bananas short of a bunch?”
Phil,
The first sentence is somewhat simple – it is a statement. It is not a rebuttal or a rejection for I would have plainly said so.
But it has really little to do with the first sentence and a subtle attempt to counter vilificatory remarks directed at me, among other commentators on Jennifer’s blog.
The veracity of the second sentence is now beyond dispute, though the metaphor of bananas mike be construed to be in bad taste.
Correction – my last two sentences are in the wrong order – the second should be the third and the third the second.
My apologies.
So you’re happy with the decline in frosts then Louis? Or do you dispute this as a finding?
Phil,
I have to hand it to you, changing the topic to avoid the previous issue.
Frosts? First its glacial quakes now its frosts in decline, reference to which will probably be found in the deluge of abstracts and links you bombard everyone here. I have a vague recollection that someone somewhere reported a decline in frosts for a short period of time somewhere in Australia.
Scientifically I don’t see how anyone could be happy or sad over a scientific observation. Only someone a few bananas short of a bunch might proffer that concept.
To be honest Phil, I actually don’t bother reading your citations because for the simple fact that they are so numerous and from so many different sources, that there isn’t enough time outside work for me to read them. I strongly suspect you have not either, so responding to you is not an option.
And many articles so linked require subscriptions which I don’t have so I can’t read them in the first place.
Why should I dispute it? I might dispute the interpretation of those findings, not the findings themselves.
You really are a disputatious sod.
Not changing the topic on avoidance – just tired of you saying black is white.
Secondly – No no no.
You asked for the references/evidence. I provided. Now you don’t have time. Well you have to make time to play in this game or you’re just winging it.
There were only 3 sources in reference to current comments. And there’s a very good reason why you don’t want to read them – they’re usually spot on your issue – you would then have to admit you don’t know what you’re on about. And possibly reading the literature might be a tad difficult for you.
Phil,
I assert black is white?
Any evidence for that?
And I suppose, if you watched the Vicar of Dibley, your forgot to type in “Yes” after “Secondly – No no no”.
Well, quote them again, please. I would as a matter of courtesy.
Here I was thinking that I really should check back for any responses to my post and what do I find but the usual suspects making their claims, claims occasionally backed up a paper or two but with posters apparently unaware of how discredited most of the papers are.
Phil, I think you derided my posting of references to the many recent papers in reference to solar influences on climate.
I read the situation this way… If the theory was proposed and then immediately scotched by several researchers, then we could have taken the matter as decisively closed. In contrast, the sheer number of papers suggests that the theory has legs and is not being dismissed by the scientific community as it seems to have been by the “true believers” posting here.
If the scientific community cannot immediately refute the theories then this must mean that the extent of natural warming is uncertain and David’s original statement “…this warming has occured in the absence of any natural forcing process” cannot be sustained.
Of course his failure to produce the data requested by myself and Ian Castles also undermines the credibility of his assertion.
Have a good weekend.
John – most of the papers you listed were not relevant to the topic, process or period. You chose not to make a point just simply say I can do a library search with the word solar in it. That proves this: that you can do a library search with the word solar in it.
Arguments made = zero. Just the usual “true believers” rhetorical mumbo jumbo.
And as for “if the scientific community cannot immediately refute” – what arrogance. Noone has to provide answers for stupid questions from game players and shonks.
If you have a mechanism for a natural warming – advance it, explain it and support it.
Paul Biggs and Fosbob have indeed advanced some arguments. Yourself – nothing.
Have a rotten weekend.
I still can’t post to your blog.
The latest UAH global temperatures (January 2006) are here: http://climate.uah.edu/ which shows a regional warming/cooling/stasis rather than ‘global warming.’
Regards,
Paul Biggs
——————-
Sorry about the ‘questionable content’ filter – I’ve pasted the message on to the tec guys. Jennifer.
Calling non-AGW on “a” monthly anomaly map?
Maybe all the frosts moved south, now there is evidence of climate cooling in the nether regions;
“These observations reveal that over the latter part of the 20th century, i.e., the period of time that according to climate alarmists experienced the most dramatic global warming of the entire past two millennia, fully 80% of the Antarctic coastal stations with sufficiently long temperature records experienced either an intensification of cooling or a reduced rate of warming; while four coastal sites and one interior site actually shifted from warming to cooling.”
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V9/N13/EDIT.jsp
Not any more Rog – gotta keep up. Posted last night.
Significant Warming of the Antarctic Winter Troposphere
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/03/significant-warming-of-the-antarctic-winter-troposphere/
Here’s the whole paper:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/upload/2006/03/science-turner-2006.pdf
You’ll enjoy the conclusion though !! Indicating climate scientists honesty (something missing from many contrarians’ discussions).
Frosts in the wheat belt have definitely declined. Rare in Emerald now for example. Warmer minima throughout Queensland – basically your global warming – and a striking linear trend. Also borne out in discussions with farmers – don’t see frost like we used to. Also some El Nino forecasting skill there as well. (and this doesn’t mean you’ll never be a frost again)
Phil,
You say ” Noone[sic] has to provide answers for stupid questions from game players and shonks.”
Please show how the notion that solar emissions (of various kinds) affecting climate is a “stupid question from game players and shonks”. It seems that the scientific community is not so certain so could you please publish your proof of your statement and enlighten them? (Even to have you own website where you can post these proofs would be a massive step forward!)
I have a theory of natural warming – actually it is one that casts doubt upon any anthorpogenic component and it certainly shows that carbon dioxide is a consequence of warming and not a cause.
Will I say what that theory is? Not to the likes of you. I would rather publish it in a peer-reviewed publication for the wider scientific community that knows a lot more about the subject than you do. If has been reviewed and is now being revised with a view to publication later this year.
As for the paper on warming in the Antarctic atmosphere
(a) the use of only winter temperature data is mischevious. Under section 3 on my page http://mclean.ch/climate/antarctic_temps.htm you’ll find that ANNUAL average temperatures from 1958 to 2003 at Faraday shows a slight increase but at Casey, Halley and Mawson (the first two of which are in that paper) ANNUAL average temperaturs are essentially unchanged.
(b) it weighs the findings only against CGM and fails to consider any possible natural causes, one of which I show in section 6 of the above mentioned page.
(c) we have no idea of the accuracy of the GCMs to which the paper refers. If they are grossly inaccurate then the paper is meaningless. (Sadly the climate models are calibrated and fined-tuned against the very data they are verified with so we don’t know even know if accuracy over a certain period is the merely the product of “tweaking” of the paramaters in relation to the input over that time frame and that under other input, also of observational data, the results may be ridiculous.)
I am reminded of a DVD that I have of “The Greenhouse Conspiracy”, a broadcast by the UK’s Channel 4 back in 1990. Suprisingly little has changed in the way of “evidence” for anthropogenic warming, but I digress. What made me recall this DVD? In this program Stephen Schneider comments that observational data is less important than the output of models.
I often reminded of this statement when I see papers quoting the output of models.
cheers
David,
I am still waiting for answers to my questions. So is Ian.
I am starting to assume that you cannot support your claims … which makes them look like nonsense.
I did a quick search of *honesty*, ‘not found in this document.’
What I did find was
“However, because the climate model runs we examined did not reproduce the observed high-latitude changes, we are unable to attribute these changes to increasing greenhouse gas levels at this time.
The lack of a similar warming trend at the surface, the evidence that much of the ocean around the Antarctic is sea ice covered in winter, and the midtropospheric warming observed at the South Pole together make it unlikely that the ocean is playing a major role.”
Honestly!
John,
Didn’t that Antarctic paper describe balloon measurements of the atmosphere? If so the surface temp data would not be relevant, would it not?
Cheers
In the opening sentence of this thread it was stated that “We know that the globe is warming very rapidly (~0.2C/decade):.
I have shown from the NCDC data that it is ~0.05C/Decade.
So what source has David based his statement on?
We are dealing with and order of magnitude porblem here, not a simple disputation over measurement.
Apologise for grammatical errors in previous posts – 🙂
(Elmer Fudd type of Heh Heh Heh).
Look at em’ go. It was worth it.
John – your web site is an utter disgrace for its sophistry. You might try updating it every 10 years of so. The usual short trend cherry picks shows you’ve never done any stats. I don’t recommend you show any maths lecturer – you may have to sit down the back of the class. And your site not updated to 2005 – I wonder why?
Anyway don’t bother lecturing me – dazzle the lurkers with some insight. Advance a cogent argument.
I’m only blogging for the lurkers myself. Not you gimps. And without some refutation you might always believe each others nonsense.
Incidentally three new RC posts in almost 24 hours – a great weekend for me. Almost in heaven.
Actually there is one other blog that come close to the depths of nonsense. John – not even you could beat that.
Patience guys – you’ll find David sometimes blogs daily but not often weekends. Take 2 valium and check on Monday.
Oh yea – almost forgot – the paper doesn’t say it’s necessarily anything to do with climate change – thanks for playing.
>As a final comment, the yearly trend for 1950 to 2000, 0.0083 K, is at least an order of magnitude less than the instrumental precision of the devices used to measure the data, generally +/- 0.5K.
>
>Hence the trend so computed is that produced by fitting a trend to truncated data, and is spurious.
In these two paragraphs alone you have shown a rejection of both science and statistics. 0.5C is a massive warming, which will have a large biophysical signature. You then go on to compare individual observations to a trend in the average of thousands of observations. This is statistical nonsense. Go away and google the central limit theorem.
It is disappointing that the “sceptics” on this forum continue to allow such inappopriate interpretations to go uncontested.
David
>In the opening sentence of this thread it was stated that “We know that the globe is warming very rapidly (~0.2C/decade):.
>I have shown from the NCDC data that it is ~0.05C/Decade.
Louis the 30 year trend commencing around 1970 is 0.2C/decade (there are about 10 different papers which discuss this if you want to do a cite search – start with some of the recent MSU papers and work back). The second decimal place depends on your prefered dataset and your start/end date. Longer term trends are not useful for diagnosing the greenhouse signal as the great majority of anthropogenic emissions have occured post 1950.
It would be helpful to the discussion if you posted the trends for:
1900-present
1950-present
1960-present
1970-present
David
David, You say that ‘It is disappointing that the “sceptics” on this forum continue to allow such inappropriate interpretations [as one by Louis] to go uncontested.’
I don
NCDC Global Mean Absolute Temperature Trends per decade
1900 to present = 0.062 C/decade
1950 to present = 0.099 C/decade
1960 to present = 0.131 C/decade
1970 to present = 0.175 C/decade
1980 to present = 0.177 C/decade
1990 to present = 0.21 C/Decade
1940 to 1970 = -0.021C/decade
1900 to 1940 = 0.091 C/decade
NCDC use the same data sets as GISS, Jones, etc.
Thanks for those numbers Louis. I said that I hoped that my suspicions about the reason for the differences between the periods of comparison of temperature increases in various parts of the TAR were unfounded, and my reaading of these figures is that my suspicions were indeed unfounded.
Accepting that the following numbers involve spurious precision, the indicated total trend increase in temperature over 3.5 decades from 1970 to 2005 comes to .061 C, while the total trend increase over 5.5 decades from 1950 to 2005 is only marginally lower than this at .054 C. The indicative totals for the period up to 2000 would have been less, but this would not affect the comparison.
I think that it would have been better if the Report had included a table showing the trend changes over the different periods of comparison used in the text in the discussion of detection and attribution, as in your table above. But I withdraw the suggestion (which I always made clear would need to be checked against the data) that the periods of comparison may have been switched in order to enable a stronger-sounding statement to be made.
Ian Castles keeps ranting till he gets what he wants. Castles world ! Thanks for wasting our time until your next whim. But Ian given your critical faculty – why would you accept Louis’s calculations ? You really need to check yourself. You are actually prepared to check Hissink as a source but reject the IPCC on so many matters ? Have you had a personal review of Louis’s own blog. So much shouting for numbers and Castles accepts the first cab off the rank. So much for high and mighty positions about science quality.
Meanwhile the thread was about solar forcing.
Ian,
Thanks for your comments.
There is nothing really controversial with the temperature trends but as Douglas Hoyt has shown on Warwick’s blog, (and which I copied on mine a few weeks ago) the surface temperature data are extremely problematical. The warming shown here which David referred to, is more likely a computational artefact than anything else (p 18 http://www.aig.asn.au/pdf/AIGNews_Mar06.pdf) as well as an artefact from the closing of the rural stations worldwide.
As Douglas pointed out, “So what we have is 5 independent techniques showing a cooling for 1979 and 1995 and one technique (surface thermometers) showing a warming. In normal science, the single outlier is rejected because it differs from the other techniques by more than two standard deviations.” (http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=38#comment-504).
Personally I would not use the surface data sets for this reason apart from the issue that the aggregation of the data into cells is theoretically wrong, plus all the other errors and assumptions for that aggregation.
One final comment needs to be made – all the graphs in the reports use temperature anomaly representations, essentially an arbitrarily chose climate period, (1961 to 1990) as the base mean from which the yearly means are subtracted etc.
The variation in the anomalies is in the range +/- 0.5 degrees Celsius, which is also the precision limit of the devices used to measure temperature. Hence one is led to the controversial conclusion that the mean global temperature, as measured, has not changed over the measuring period and that the computed trends are actually trends fitted to truncated data sets, which always have a trend.
I don’t think this fact is well understood. It is essentially chartmanship to enhance miniscule variations in a variable. I still wonder why anomalies are the preferred means of graphical representation when the global mean should be the correct variable for display.
As for confusion with what you mentioned above, yes, I did get confused especially as one also has two Phils to consider. That resulted in some head scratching, and wondering where I got one interpretation from another.
I might see if I can get CO2 data for the same periods I listed above as well as station number data.
Personally I don’t think the report purposively manipulated the representation of the data you initially suspected, but by not understanding the science, principally because many scientists are extremely poor communicators, policy makers probably got the wrong impressions and this formed the wrong conclusions.
I personally suspect the whole Kyoto thing is a well intentioned monumental foulup. But like a supertanker, once you realise the vessel is steaming in the wrong direction and headed for shallow shoals, it takes abit of time to change course. I think the changes occurring now with PM Blair’s change in attitude to emission goals is an example of this realisation of reality.
Crucially science has not identified all the heat (energy) sources affecting the earth. Atmospheric electricty, whether as short circuits from overload conditions, to electric currents in the air are totally ignored in any GCM’s. One reason these heat sources are not contemplated is because we don’t have any physical senses to percieve them (electric currents) so as far as we are concerned, they don’t exist.
OK, sorry Phil. If Louis figures aren’t right we’re back to tors and I’ll await David’s answer to the simple question I first asked him last Thursday afternoon: ‘David, are you able to say what the net ‘observed warming’ was over the entire 50-year period from 1950 to 2000?’
If you know the answer, Phil, why didn’t you tell us? Instead, you told me that I know the answer, which I don’t. I haven’t rejected the IPCC’s findings. I just want to know what they are.
David said that it would be helpful to the discussion if Louis were to post these figures. I don’t know why David thought that they’d be helpful if we weren’t meant to take any notice of them.
David,
You have made a rather intersting non sequitor in your post above.
I assume my sentence (or paragraph as you call it) “Hence the trend so computed is that produced by fitting a trend to truncated data, and is spurious.”
Is the source of your comment “You then go on to compare individual observations to a trend in the average of thousands of observations. This is statistical nonsense. Go away and google the central limit theorem.”
No other interpretation of your post is possible.
Phil
You were surprisingly rude in your last comment. You can be as persistent as the next commentator at this blog – Ian is at least mostly polite with his persistence.
And Louis provided some numbers and a source. Unless they are incorrect, I don’t understand why you also need to attack Louis in this instance.
Louis – “There is nothing really controversial with the temperature trends but as Douglas Hoyt has shown on Warwick’s blog”
Douglas can show it on Warwick’s blog however when he tried it with real climate scientists on Real Climate he got shot down in flames. I tied him up because he cannot show that air temperature can be transferred to water in the oceans. The 5 independant things are cherry-picked to show what his conclusion is. It is short absolute rubbish. He used dodgy sources where better sources do show warming.
The 0.6 degrees of observed warming is well within the experimental error of the instruments. For gods sake do you think that the scientists involved would publish data and would not know the error of their instruments?
The problem is that if you want to believe that there is no AGW then you can find the evidence to support it if you ignore enough times and periods.
If you want to make heaps of money you can find people to say that there is too much doubt for action. Funnily enough 2 of the major players in the anti AGW case were also prominant in the case against the health problems of smoking. Anyone here want to argue for the benefits of cigarette smoke?
If you doubt AGW then of course there is doubt in the ice cores and oxygen isotopes. In short we do not know what is going to happen.
There is one huge fundamental difference between the AGW case and the contrarian case. The AGW proponents are doing active research, active modelling, and active measurement to try an alert the world to what they believe is a massive problem.
The contrarian case constists in its entirety with the negative, data cherry-picking and casting doubt on research. This activity, which is a order of magnitude easier to get over, is not contributing to the knowledge base of climate science in any way shape or form. Try to think of one prominent contrarian that is engaged in active research in the scientific community and is publishing papers with NEW findings.
Funnily enough all the new information taken as a whole is supportive of the AGW hypothesis. Evidence such as melting glaciers, reduction of sea ice in the arctic, reports of permafrost melting, sea surface temperature rises, Antartic temperature rises, increases in tropical revolving storm mean intensity, rises in sea levels, slowing of the Atlantic Themocline and finally the measured rise global average temperatures.
You can cast doubt and pick at any one of these individually however taken as a whole paints a quite bad picture of future climate. In fact most contrarian arguments are focussing on one without mentioning the others. So lets take the broader view. look at and see what the planet is telling us.
“The AGW proponents are doing active research, active modelling, and active measurement to try an alert the world to what they believe is a massive problem.”
Here is the problem – AGW’ers BELEIEVE it.
This is not science.
Louis – “Here is the problem – AGW’ers BELEIEVE it.”
And anti-AGWs also believe – this is also not science!!!!
fosbob, your post of March 31, 6.30pm seems to have been ignored in the crossfire. I am interested to find out more about the Dickman Cross. The only reference on my MSN search was this thread and another one you posted to on the egregious John Quiggin’s blog.
Could you post up some more info or a link?
Thanks.
Ender,
Wrong again – we simply reject your AGW belief which is quite different to starting with our own belief “There is no AGW”.
Most of us don’t even think about it (Non AGW) but when the zealous buttonhole us shrieking the end is nigh then we reject it when the evidence contradicts it, as it does.
Every Sunday morning I go out in the sun and meet some crowds browsing markets after church. Today I asked a simple question of a few who had the time to stop and consider our coldest dawn in months, is this place warmer than usual? as we climbed above 2C.
It was not by chance as I overheard numerous folk on previous mornings discussing how undressed they were for the past month. Now you can guess what their answer was today or try the same experiment on your average fellow in the street.
But based on the above I reckon Louis who puts up “Here is the problem – AGW’ers BELEIEVE it.-This is not science” is at best a FW in good old fashioned aussie slang.
Louis – ‘we simply reject your AGW belief”
So you believe there is not such thing as AGW?
Sounds like a belief system to me.
Ender,
People are not warming the planet up by burning coal and oil.
If you think this is a belief, then there is nothing I can do to stop you thinking that.
It was pretty cold in NSW last night with sub zero temps on the higher country – just ask any farmer.
Anyway the horses now have their winter coats, 1st March every year.
Louis – so you believe that humans are not warming the planet with anthropogenic greenhouse gases? And this is not what I think – all people have a belief system.
No Ender,
Warming the planet, all 6E24 Kilograms of it.
Riiight. OK if you insist.
Er, rog; we passed April fools day
>OK, sorry Phil. If Louis figures aren’t right we’re back to tors and I’ll await David’s answer to the simple question I first asked him last Thursday afternoon: ‘David, are you able to say what the net ‘observed warming’ was over the entire 50-year period from 1950 to 2000?’
Ian, I cannot get my hands on the data as I am out of the office and away from home. Louis analyses look in the ball park of what I would have expected. This is also partly why I haven’t responded to some of the queries… though others I simply ignore as they have been answered numerous times already on this blog on in personal emails.
Of course, we all know that trends are sensitive to start/end dates, and it is for this reason that the IPCC reports emphasis changes in temperature over periods and use time series rather than simple trend values. Still, it is telling that the most dramatic warming has occured in association with the strongest anthropogenic enhancement of the greenhouse effect, while volcanism has increased, and the sun’s radiative output shows no secular change during this time.
BTW Louis, do you believe in the Greenhouse Effect? If so, what makes you think it can’t get stronger?
David
David,
I accept the greenhouse effect insofar that it is a physical phase phenomenon of a different phase (H2O)as clouds trapping escaping heat from the earth’s surface. That is, the greenhouse effect is that of a physical obstacle to the radiation leaving the earth. Clouds are essentially suspended water (a liquid phase) which can trap heat.
The problem with the gas AGW greenhouse effect, that forming the basis of the present theory, is that no gas can, in thermal inequilibrium, store or trap heat.
A sealed glass vessel containing carbonated water will show an icreased rise in temperature compared to a similar sealed vessel containing soley water when subject to the same heat source. The common factor is the glass container which stops the energy (heat) from escaping, hence the “Greenhouse” effect. This fact is not denied. All this experiment demonstrates is the different specific heat capacity of CO2, not a greenhouse effect.
However the earth has no glass shell trapping heat but the closest thing to this are clouds.
Mars has an atmosphere of 95% CO2 which and according to the prevailing Greenhouse theory, should have an enhanced runaway Greenhouse effect; it doesn’t. But as Mars lacks water in its atmosphere, it cannot have a greenhouse effect.
Venus is assumed to be an example of the runaway Greenhouse effect but that explanation was never based on experimental data but on Carl Sagans’ need to counter Velikovksy’s heresy of a youthful Venus. I ignore Venus here because of its continued scientific controversy.
I don’t think it can get stronger because the earth with a CO2 atmosphere composition of 0.04% CO2 is warmer than Mars with one of 95% CO2.
David,
as Poirot would have averred, “the facts are inescapaple, non”
>The problem with the gas AGW greenhouse effect, that forming the basis of the present theory, is that no gas can, in thermal inequilibrium, store or trap heat.
This is, well, absurb. Heat makes no sense at the molecule level. It is a statistical property of a volume of gas – in essence a measure of its kinetic energy. The absorption of a photon by a CO2 molecule through the excitation of one of its vibrational modes raises the kinetic energy of the molecule by the same amount. Average across a volume of gas and you get a greater average kinetic energy which equalls a greater average temperature.
>I don’t think it can get stronger because the earth with a CO2 atmosphere composition of 0.04% CO2 is warmer than Mars with one of 95% CO2.
There is one simple test for this. Look at the outgoing longwave radiation spectrum. If the CO2 greenhouse effect has reached saturation there will be no measurable emission to space in its absorption bands. Of course, we all know that the CO2 bands are far from saturated. We also know that the bands are closing a rate which matches that predicted from radiation models (see the Harries paper I have previously referenced).
These issues are elementary physics which has been established for many centuries. What progress can be made on this website when even the very most basic physical properties of a gas are rejected? Who are we kidding that the scepticism being displayed is based on objective science?
David
Thanks David for your excellent posts. It’s good to read a pragmatic voice of reason and professionalism.
David – “What progress can be made on this website when even the very most basic physical properties of a gas are rejected? Who are we kidding that the scepticism being displayed is based on objective science?”
I and others have pointed out these things to Louis almost continuously for 2 years. I have now given up. There is progress however, he no longer uses the atmosphere is not made of glass so therefore it is not a greenhouse argument.
Three cheers to Ender for trying hey
Thats OK bugger, I’m sure we can make an exception for you.
David,
There is no such thing as a statistical property of a gas.
And now for a game of silly buggers!
David,
Look instead at the simple measurments of the temperature of Mars and Earth.
Oh boring. Louis has gone to ground. David got inside his cognitive perimeter and Louis panicked. Probably having a Bex and a good lie down. (Yes that was Bex Joe !).
What would be fun though is for Louis to do a guest post on “Part 1: Why CO2 isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be”, followed by Part 2: “Why anyone supporting AGW is greenie commie scum”.
>Look instead at the simple measurments of the temperature of Mars and Earth.
What about Venus and Earth – one with a very strong greenhouse effect the other with a modest one. Of course, such comparisons are simply silly, and hardly the basis for rejecting 100 years of science.
Of course, the temperature of a planet’s surface depends on the solar constant, the radiation, the planetary albedo, the atmospheric constitutes, etc etc. Prehaps, Louis, you might provide us with a reference which shows the temperature of Mars is inconsistent with the exsistence of a greenhouse effect.
David
David,
Waiting for your explanation for your comment “the statistical property of a gas”.
Louis waiting for your explanatory guest posts as requested by Phil.
Of course we could rename Part A – Moments in a dipoles life.
>Waiting for your explanation for your comment “the statistical property of a gas”.
Until you write your book or paper overturning statistical thermodynamics a response is impossible (this will be worth a Nobel prize, no doubt).
David
Gee you wouldn’t think Louis would be out of ammo this quick.
I went back on my blog to find all the unanswered questions from Louis:
1. The question is “If there was no greenhouse effect the Earth would not be about 33 degrees warmer than if it did not have an atmosphere. Explain how this warming occurs without the action of the greenhouse effect”
2. Biomarkers in oil
3. Measurements of heat flowing from the ground as Louis suggested that the present atmospheric warming was from heat from the ground.
Any answers yet?
I have also caught him saying this:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=25
“# Louis Hissink Says:
January 12th, 2006 at 12:40 am
Ender
I have never ever said the Greenhouse effect was not real. I know precisely what a greenhouse effect is.
So what Mars is further away than earth, and has a thin atmosphere that fact does not alter one whit the fact that CO2 does not trap heat. As I linked on my blog, Nasa thinks Mars has no CO2 in its atmosphere and thinking of melting the Martian Ice caps to generate CO2. But Mars already has a 95% CO2 atmosphere. So why pray tell is CO2 unable to trap the heat it gets from the sun, minimal as that is at that distance?”
Actually if you have a look at this thread David you can see Phil and I have been trying this line for a while.
Yeah Ender I seem to recall that David was present during the earlier discussions when Louis turned feral and went from insistent accusations of blind faith to socialists and genocidal maniacs. Since then Louis has learnt to retreat and keep his own wacky ideas mostly limited to his own fascist blog (unilateral communication, no comments or alternating opinions allowed) – this is safest for everyone, particularly innocent readers.
If he does do some explanatory guest posts, I’m also keen to know where we can expect to find all that abiotic oil.
“Fascist blog?”
Quick someone, brown paper bag time, stinky is hyperventilating again
So obviously ROg supports Louis’s blog .. .. hmmmm