Peter Boyer is apparently a disciple of Al Gore – one of the many who has been trained to give that famous slide show about the imminent climate crisis. Anyway, he is also a columnist for The Mercury – Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers in Tasmania. Today, in a piece entitled ‘Misleading opinion fed by misunderstood data’ he writes:
“Jennifer Marohasy told ABC Counterpoint listeners that NASA data showed Earth’s surface temperature was trending down from a high in 1998, revealing serious flaws in greenhouse theory.
If confidence and clear expression were all that counted in the climate debate, Dr Marohasy would be a winner. Listeners unfamiliar with the data she talked about may have felt she was right.
But alas, the evidence says otherwise.
Present and past global average surface temperatures are derived from painstaking assessment of countless readings all over the planet, on land and sea, together with satellite observations, corrected for local aberrations such as the urban heat island effect.”
Accompanied by a graph showing the last 120 years temperature trend Mr Boyer went on to suggest that the world is still warming.
Of course the world has been mostly warming over the last 120 years, but over the last 10 years global temperatures have not been trending up, as predicted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, despite a continual increase in carbon dioxide emissions.
The last decade of global temperatures from Satellite (UAH MSU lower troposphere) (blue) and land and ocean variance adjusted surface (Hadley CRU T3v) (rose) plotted with Scripps monthly CO2 from Mauna Loa (green) by Joe D’Aleo – former Chief Meteorologist at Weather Services International Corporation and Senior Editor of “Dr. Dewpoint” for WSI’s popular Intellicast.com website.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Wasn’t the March anomaly 0.43 for the HadCRUT3?
Your graph ends in February?
I think MSU got up higher in March too, back up to +0.094…
See there’s been warming from Jan to March…
Jennifer – “Accompanied by a graph showing the last 120 years temperature trend Mr Boyer went on to suggest that the world is still warming.”
At least he presented all the data!!
Why don’t you publish the graphs with GISS, Hadcrut3 etc for the last 120 years with the 5 year means also present??????
Presenting the yearly averages only, starting at 1998 is pretty lame.
Sigh.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23544222-12377,00.html
ok, we’re now Officially doomed…
Ender
Why don’t you get the graphs and have Jen post them here instead if you are that confident.
In any case the graph above was prepared by Joe D’Aleo, so clearly you have not done your homework, again.
By the way it is the same graph used by the 4 scientists in the previous post here. And it is the same as the one I used, (minus the 2 Feb point) on Henry Thornton on 11 April. Amazing how we show a cooling but Peter Boyer reckons it shows warming.
I tend to discount GISS because it shows the most warming of all the data sets, and we know who adjusts it.
“Present and past global average surface temperatures are derived from painstaking assessment of countless readings all over the planet, on land and sea, together with satellite observations, corrected for local aberrations such as the urban heat island effect.”
We know that this probably isn’t true, and that there is still a non-climatic influence on the near surface data, and the number of stations has fallen quite dramatically.
“See there’s been warming from Jan to March…”
But not from Jan 02 to March 08 so what she said still holds true.
OK.
Luke, where is that blog post on clouds and water vapour – I am still waiting.
Ender, you really should send me your favourite graph with an explaination.
Louis, you have also promised a blog post, something about cosmic rays at the south pole.
Gee what a slave driver. 🙂 And Jen you owe us a better review on Australian rainfall trends instead of that tired old BoM time series graphic. Here’s some help.
http://www.bom.gov.au/amm/200704/gallant_hres.pdf from the most excellent selection at http://www.bom.gov.au/amm/papers2007.shtml
The greatest indicator of trends exist in the oceans,NASA has had 3000 robots recording ocean temps since 2003 and there has been a slight decrease in mean temps while China and India pollute to their hearts content.The oceans absorb 80% of the sun’s energy and are the salient influence on climate.CO2 is a minor global warming gas as witnessed by these statistics.
We have to move away from fossil fuels by nature of their finite supply,but let’s not get too carried away with imminent global destruction.
Have two bob each way with BoM and their “Mixed temperature outlook for the June quarter”
http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/climate/ahead/20080328T.shtml
The planet is now about 0.6 degrees F cooler than this time last year, according to the 1 km satellite measurements. At the beginning of March, the variance almost vanished, but has widened again very rapidly.
How long does this have to go on before the IPCC and the governments of the world realise that the climate models they are using are useless?
As it is, starvation beckons for billions, and a possible cooling trend is only just establishing itself.
Doug,
Wrong question – follow the money trail. In Jan 2007, there were over 300 attendees at the WG1 conference in Paris. At Bali last December there were over 10,000 attendees! In Bangkok in March there were 1,200 attendees. The list goes on. If anyone did the maths, they’d probably discover that the IPCC has the biggest carbon footprint of any pressure group in the world.
If the UN/IPCC was to do as you suggest – what would they do with this wandering mob of useless articles that junket all around the world (to highly desirable toursit destinations) – usually at taxpayers’ expense? Surely you’re not suggesting that any of them are capable of doing any useful work?
We had better hope that the solar physicists are wrong and we are not facing a Dalton Minimum [or worse].
A 1.5 degree drop in planetary temperatures would devastate mid latitude agriculture, to quote David Archibald.
The world would, I suspect, be much better off if the IPCC members were permanently unemployed.
Jennifer is obviously reeling from this attack from freelance journalist Peter Boyer, who has presented workshops to Australian Association for Environmental Education (Tasmanian Chapter) on climate change and the film An Inconvenient Truth.
Last year when interviewed by the Mercury http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,21353562-5006550,00.html he claimed that Tasmania even with clean, green hydro power, was amongst the greatest polluters in the world when it comes to greenhouse gases.
Whilst he based this claim of a per capita statistic he failed to mention that in 2004 Tasmania’s emissions were only 10.7 Mt CO2 e, compared to the World total in 2000 of 41,755 MtCO2 e. Nor that the 10.7 Mt was down from the 1990 figure by 25%, a level of reduction virtually unprecedented in the rest of the developed world.
It seems hard to believe that a major newspaper would only publish one side of the Global Warming opinion; perhaps they should invite those with other views to add to their opinion columns.
They are unemployed! Just not unpaid.
Maybe Exxon is paying off God to temporarily lower temperatures.
“Peter Boyer is apparently a disciple of Al Gore”
Don’t you think that sort of comment is beneath you?
Boyer works for the f@#$&g Hobart Mercury for pity sake. He decorates fish and chip wrapping for a readership only half that of the Gold Coast Bulletin but at least it has tits on page three.
He also works for uncle Rupert who is one of the worlds biggest users of carbon in the form of newsprint. But the carbon mafia has neatly relieved him of any obligation to account for all that carbon by deeming it all to have already been emitted when the tree was cut down.
This allows all those spivs in marketing and advertising to continue pumping out megatonnes of carbon each year whilst remaining hideously smug because of their hybrid cars.
What next? Alcoholic Tupperware Rep confirms global warming? Puulleeeze.
Wasn’t the March anomaly 0.43 for the HadCRUT3?
Right you be Mr. T. But that .43 is so close to the trend line that it will not change the slope of the trend.
http://bp1.blogger.com/__VkzVMn3cHA/R-bSX5ty-BI/AAAAAAAAAA0/gxk_LwSfNx0/s1600-h/RSS+HadCrut3+10+Year.bmp
So now the carbon mafia are claiming a return to a trend line is evidence of warming. Go for it fellas.
I will pass on this one since the same ding-a-lings who fill the air with cries that 10 years cooling trend is not long enough.
Have been getting excited about a warming up in the last month and implying that global warming is BACK.Bceause it warmed up over the previous month.
LOLOLOLOLOLOL.
What’s the point? The ding-a-lings are never going to be swayed from their “One True Religion”, no matter how many mountains of data are stacked at their feet.
The only thing that will (hopefully) make any impression on them is when this “runaway train” finally crashes. A lot of so-called professional reputations – the people who are manipulating the media and generating all the hysteria – stand to be irreparably damaged as a result of the train wreck. When that happens, the important thing will be to make sure that they are all held accountable, and never have the ability to gain positions of trust again.
What cooling trend?
You guys need to read your own propaganda.
WMO (parent body of IPCC) grudgingly says:
“However, cooling was recorded over the Middle East, Turkey, Central Asia and China. Also, largely in connection with La Niña, significant parts of the central and eastern Pacific, including the domain off shore of the entire Northern American West Coast, have been dominated by sea-surface temperature cooling.
WMO reported in February that in the preceding three months, La Niña conditions had become slightly stronger, with sea surface temperatures about 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius colder than average over large parts of the central and eastern Equatorial Pacific.”
http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/info_notes/info_44_en.html
Is there any way to interptret “about 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius colder” other than cooling ?
Ivan – “Is there any way to interptret “about 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius colder” other than cooling ?”
Is there any other way to interpret “La Niña conditions had become slightly stronger” other than La Nina conditions?
What cooling TREND?
Interesting graph, Jennifer.
It shows a drop in temperature after a record El Nino. Then it shows the warming trend kicking back in. Then it shows a temperature drop when a La Nina kicked in.
What was the question again?
The ocean temperatures were dropping before the La Nina kicked in.
Anyhow, none of the computer models can apparently explain El Ninos or La Ninas. It does not seem clear whether they are cause or effect, or just random noise.
Do any of you ever read any of this nonsense you post?
According to IPCC ‘observations’, the global temperature has risen +0.74C in the last 100 years.
According to IPCC ‘projections’, it will rise by +1.1 to +6.4C in the next 100 years.
Yet the temperature above most of the Pacific Ocean DROPS by -1.5 to -2.0 degrees Celsius – in a very short period of time (causing one of the coldest winters in most of the northern hemisphere in living memory) – and what do we get? The IPCC saying “It’s not in the model, so therefore it can’t exist”.
Have we stumbled on to the set of “Alice in Wonderland” here, or what?
Jennifer
you seem to be keen on decadal temperature records.
here is an excellent graph that compares this decade to previous ones.
Pleae tell me what you think it demonstrates.
http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=11767
What it probably demonstrates is: Be very careful in basing anything on data provided by NOAA.
After all, these were the guys back in Oct 2007 who said: “Warm Winter Predicted For United States”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071010131931.htm
Only to have to turn around 5 months later and admit “Coolest Winter Since 2001 For U.S., Globe”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080314175834.htm
They can’t make accurate predictions 2 months in advance, yet they ask us to trust them on the 100+ year predictions.
SJT
Looked at the graph and it is a nonesense.