I was interviewed by journalist John Stewart on ABC TV’s Lateline program tonight.
The segment was about global warming with a focus on blogging.
Mr Stewart made the claim that the only place where the science is still debated is on the internet amongst bloggers. In fact we were accused of still “attacking” the science of global warming.
Interestingly Andrew Bolt was not described as one a News Ltd columnist but rather as a skeptic and a blogger. He was shown making the point that there has been no increase in global temperatures for ten years.
I was also as described as a blogger and also shown making the point that over the last 10 years it hasn’t got any warmer.
If Mr Stewart had gone to the trouble of checking the internationally recognised sources of real world (as opposed to computer generated) data on global temperatures he would have been able to confirm that what Mr Bolt and I said was correct: there has been no warming over the last ten years.
Monthly globally averaged lower atmospheric temperature anomaly since 1979 as measured by NOAA and NASA satellites.
With the additional mark up from gorelied.blogspot.com, with thanks.
Even James Hansen’s GISS data shows that global temperatures have plateued, if not cooled over the last ten years.
NASA GISS Monthly Mean Surface Temperature Analysis since 1998
But instead of the news program confirming our pronouncements with reference to the data (as they might on a business program), I was accused of “spreading doubt about the world getting hotter”.
Graeme Pearman was then introduced, not as a warmaholic, but as a former CSIRO scientist, with Mr Stewart explaining that he believed the data from the Hadley Centre in the UK provided no evidence that the world is getting cooler. [So does this mean the world might not be getting warmer?]
Monthly near-surface from 1850, from the Hadley Centre
Direct comment from Dr Pearman then followed in which he appeared to avoid reference to global temperatures instead making comment about temperatures in Australia – but the average viewer probably thought he was referring to global temperatures.
I did get to make two final important points: 1. that Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, should look at the global temperature data and, 2. that it was wrong for the Minister to suggest, as she did recently with the release of the green paper on emissions trading, that 12 of the last 13 years have been the warmest in history.
This is indeed an outrageous claim with the Minister ignoring much of geological history.
The Minister might have got away with saying that of the last 150 years, the last 13 have been relatively warm. But to suggest that 12 of the last 13 are the hottest ever is just plain wrong. Whatever happened to the medieval warm period, not to mention that planet earth is very old – in fact about 4,550 million years old.
Of course the earth’s climate has always changed and continents have moved, mountain ranges formed and when continents have pulled apart huge quantities of volcanic water, carbon dioxide and methane have been released into the atmosphere.
Don’t forget that just 120 million years ago Australia was at the South Pole but it wasn’t cold. Global sea levels were about 100 metres higher than at present and the sea surface temperature was 10-15C higher than now. Indeed parts of inland Australian were once covered in a shallow tropical sea.
The Lateline segment finished with John Stewart stating that we, the bloggers, aren’t going to go away. He has got that bit right.
I would have like to have made a couple of additional points, ten years is not a very long period of time, but there is now a breakdown in what was a close correlation for about 30 years between increasing levels of carbon dioxide and increasing global temperatures.
It may of course start warming again next year – but a recent paper in the journal Nature suggests global temperatures may now plateau until at least 2015 – that is there may be no more warming for a few years.
Of course it is worth remembering that there has been a general warming trend for the last 18,000 years and over this period sea levels have risen about 100 metres.
All in all I think John Stewart did a pretty good job with a difficult topic.
In fact, I’m hoping he will now become a regular reader of blogs and start checking the temperature data and pondering the difference between correlation and causation with us.
Cyclone Nargis – of course it’s easier to read a graph than a cyclone.
Update
A video clip of the segment is now here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2008/07/29/2318074.htm
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Mother Earth is a skeptic and needs to get with the program by warming up. Do we have to give it some carbon credits and a grant to cooperate?
Bloggers are just about as likely to go away as Hansen and Schmidt’s upward “adjustments” to the global temperature.
video is here http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2008/07/29/2318074.htm
i will add this to the main post
The media are not going to change their political agenda until cooling hits them right smack in the face. We’re about 0.5°C away from that happening. They know it, and that’s why they and activists are rushing to jam their climate saving programmes down our throats. If the solar activity hypotheses has legs, we should see cooling in a couple of years.
First they said we didn’t exist.
Then they said we were just very small in numbers.
Then they called us deniers.
Now we’re just bloggers who are spreading doubt.
Well, at least they seem to be admitting there’s doubt, and a debate.
What gets me is that the person crying catastrophe, doom and gloom was treated as the rational contributor whereas those saying there’s nothing to worry about, like Jennifer, are the supposed irrational.
Jennifer: “Direct comment from Dr Pearman then followed in which he appeared to avoid reference to global temperatures instead making comment about temperatures in Australia – but the average viewer probably thought he was referring to global temperatures.”
More likely, this is a case of sloppy editing. The report seems to have been made in a day or two, so it is not surprising that mistakes like that are made.
But if it was deliberate, one really has to wonder how stupid the ABC thinks their viewers are. Looking at it from Finland, which is the center of the world in this corner of the globe, Australia is a very unsuitable place to measure global temperature at.
Jennifer,
Thanks for using my marked up version of Dr. Spencer’s temperature graph that I posted here (and Mr. Bolt graciously linked to recently).
http://gorelied.blogspot.com/2008/07/global-average-temperatures-still-down.html
Could you add a link to my site? Pretty please?
Thanks,
Klockarman
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/
Good interview Jen!
Hey Klockarman,
Yes the graph is directly from your site. Much thanks.
http://gorelied.blogspot.com/2008/07/global-average-temperatures-still-down.html
It was my intention when I grabbed it in the early hours of this morning to add the link, but somehow by the time I got to the end of the post it was overlooked.
My apologies and thanks again for your blogspot!
“The media are not going to change their political agenda until cooling hits them right smack in the face.”
The media never admits its mistakes because they are accountable to no one, least of all to their audiences. If global cooling continues, AGW will simply fade away replaced by “Climate Change” demagoguery, which can be evidenced by any weather related event.
The political agenda will stay the same regardless and so will suppression of scientific data and opinion incompatible with the ABC party line.
Jennifer – “I was also as described as a blogger and also shown making the point that over the last 10 years it hasn’t got any warmer. ”
You still have not posted the graph that supports this yet. The UAH data does not have a trend line in it and starts at 1979. In fact none of your graphs include the long term trend lines.
So when are you actually going to post some evidence to support this statement of yours?
Well that Global Average Temperature 1850 – 2007 looks convincing to me that the planet has been warming since circa 1950.
I suspect we will know for sure in another 50 years. But here’s a thought – what if you are wrong and the world is heating and we spent 50 years waiting to confirm that?
Anybody who thinks at all about risk knows that you need to prepare for events which may not happen, but if they do then they may have catastrophic affects.
Just think of climate change policies and emissions reduction as an insurance policy we will heopfully never need.
There are some graphs that show that the world is the same temperature it was 50 years ago. The progression of this solar minimum means that global cooling is now inevitable, and imminent. http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/07/sun-seen-to-repeat-dalton-minimum.html
With the global temperature falling 0.7 degrees in the last year due to the La Nina, the noise in the system is more than the rate at which I think temperature will decline at.
The prediction of the two German researchers that AGW would take a breather until 2020 is just part of the AGW theology, to give the faithfull something to believe in in the face of facts that say their religion isn’t working. Much the same way that end of the world cults keep putting the date back after failed deadlines. Priests of just the right rank had to say it.
Looks like you’re grasping at straws on two fronts:
1. You select a specific, short time frame to support you argument, you ignore the long term.
2. You rely on Andrew Bolt who is self evidently an entertainer seeking an audience.
The problem for you is that you have no credibility where it matters and your only explanation for this is that there is some sort of conspiracy going on that benefits some shadowy group’s interests. I mean you only have to look at the quality of some of the attacks on this blog to realise that you attract the kind of Area 51 loons who jump at every shadow and tin foil the walls.
I’m sorry if this sounds harsh but I think you really need to get with some productive work otherwise you are in danger of developing a psychosis. Although running a sheltered workshop for Fox Mulder obsessives may have some benefit to the community, keeps them off the streets.
Insurance indeed, Justin. The business of insurance is based on detailed actuarial study of the facts to determine a range of realistic probabilities. It is not based on voodoo modelling by luddite gonzos who pluck extreme outcomes out of their bums faster than you can say hydrocarbon enema.
The IPCC has already admitted that at least half of the total warming over the past century has been the result of natural cyclical variation. But to their shame, none of their projections into the future include a natural correction of the same extent. This is quite extraordinary given that almost every past variation has been matched by a commensurate correction.
And at no time have they ever produced a graphical representation that has distinguished between what they accept as natural temperature variation and their claimed anthropogenic warming. They were quite content to allow the public and the policy process to wrongly assume that all the warming was due to AGW.
And that, sir, is the unambiguous footprint of an entrenched organisational bias combined with the modus operandi of a deliberate institutional fraudster.
Patrick B. said…Looks like you’re grasping at straws on two fronts:
1. You select a specific, short time frame to support you argument, you ignore the long term.
You’re revealing your own ignorance of global warming theory which is based entirely on computer model projections. Model theory has suggested the mid-troposphere will warm 1.3 times the surface temperature. It has also suggested that ever-increasing amounts of CO2 will warm the atmosphere. There’s no escaping those two facts of the theory and if either fails, the theory is wrong.
Furthermore, climate scientists observe climate change over decades and the time frame considered above is proper. The UAH satellite data and the Hadley data both show the warming trend has leveled off between about 1995 and 2008. In fact, 2008 is suggesting a cooling trend. The NASA GISS data sets are governed by James Hansen, a friend of Al Gore.
If the CO2/warming theory is correct, there should be no flatness in the warming trend since CO2 has been increasing between 1995 and 2008. More importantly, the UAH and RSS atmospheric temperature data is showing the atmospheric temperatures are significantly cooler than the surface temperatures. That is not possible according to the CO2/warming theory.
I don’t know what it will take for people like you to understand that you have been mislead by the IPCC, politicians and the media. The most accurate and comprehensive temperature data we have comes from the satellites. It covers the Earth from pole to pole, whereas surface temperature data sets and weather balloon data sets are local. It’s quite possible that the sateliites are giving us the actual warming in the atmosphere which is essentially zero.
The IPCC knew about the discrepancy in it’s 2001 assessment and acknowledged it. The national Academy of Science acknowledged it. Why did that information disappear in the 2007 assessment? Can’t you figure it out? The IPCC is trying to form a consensus on global warming and suppresses information that suggests otherwise.
Justin at July 30, 2008 09:32 AM
“But here’s a thought – what if you are wrong and the world is heating and we spent 50 years waiting to confirm that?”
I agreed with you in the early 1990’s. My informal risk analysis then, based on the publicly described scenarios, said that the consequence described was so high and the likelihood was high enough to justify mitigation action to reduce CO2 emissions.
However, with much more data revealed, my current risk analysis says that the likelihood has dropped significantly, the consequence has also dropped, and my assessment is that mitigation, if needed, should be done by adapting to local regional changes. Besides, even with no catastrophic Anthropogenic CO2 induced warming, climate will change naturally on a regional basis and some degree of adaptation will be required and desired any way.
I would still buy insurance, but it would consist of policies to increase energy conservation and alternate fuels and pollution reduction by taking the pollutants out of the fossil fuel combustion process, with the ideal combustion products of H2O and CO2 being the goal.
What I am really having a challenge with, though is whether we may be losing focus on when we might actually turn the corner and enter the next ice age. Is it 1000 years from now, 500 years or 50 years? From historical repetitions it is a very high likelihood and I sense the consequence as being much more catastrophic than even a 6 or 7 degrees of warming which has occurred when life was flourishing on this planet.
Besides, the lack of a clear public exposition of the mechanism by which CO2 can do such powerful things, which, given the magnitude of proposed new public and private bureaucracies and taxation, causes the flag on my smell test meter to go way up.
The flag on the smell test meter, alone, would give me pause.
Thanks. Link love is always appreciated.
Keep up the great work!
Those who support the theory that man released CO2 causes disasterous climate change believe that it is necessary to take extreme actions to limit CO2 emissions even to the extent of damaging our economy.
There is nothing in their theory to suggest that CO2 can rise independently of temperature but that is precisely what is happening.
It doesn’t matter that it gets warmer or cooler next year or that the long term trend is up or down humans will adapt and I don’t want my cost of living artificially raised for no benefit.
The tragedy is that this may do huge harm to the real environmental issues facing the human species. I just hope that the average Aussie will seperate the climate religion, when it implodes, from more practical and real issues of the environment.
Jennifer, I would expect better from a scientist. I really do wonder at your capacity for self delusion. The first graph clearly shows a steady warming. Your cherry picking goes against all scientific principles.
Justin said…But here’s a thought – what if you are wrong and the world is heating and we spent 50 years waiting to confirm that?
The problem is that we’re hanging onto one theory, based on computer model predictions which vary from a warming of 1.5 C to over 10 C in the wilder ones. There’s absolutely no observable proof that the theory on which they are based is right, so we’re going to spend huge amounts of money just in case? If you have that kind of money to throw about, could you throw some my way?
There is another approach without going into natural warming theory. In 1988, twenty years ago, James Hansen, the head of NASA GISS, started all the hysteria when he claimed CO2 was warming the planet and the warming could become catastrophic if we didn’t do something. Ten years later, he retracted that warming prediction, claiming the GCM (computer model) he had based it on was exaggerating. By 2003, he had predicted a modest warming by 2050 of about half a degree C.
About the same time, in 1988, climate scientist Patrick Michaels, was using another form of prediction. He looked at the historical record of temperatures back to the end of World War II, with the realization that man-made CO2 pumped into the atmosphere between WWII and 1988 was significant. What he found was that the warming between the end of WWII and 1988, possibly or partly due to that CO2, was about 4/10th of a degree C.
Most computer models, including those of Hansen’s were predicting at least 3 times that warming. It is apparent that the atmosphere is not nearly as sensitive to human-made CO2 as the computer modelers thought. They even tried to explain the cooler response by examining aerosols in the atmosphere which tend to reflect solar radiation but it made no sense. The Northern Hemisphere, which has by far the most aerosol emissions was warmer, not cooler.
The precautions you are suggesting are based on computer models which experts like Hansen, Trenberth and Dr. Joanne Simpson claim are not reliable. Not only that, in it’s 2001 assessment, the IPCC stated it was NOT possible to predict future climate states, that it was only possible to state ‘probabilities’ and scenarios (storylines) based on the outputs of various GCMs.
The IPCC stated in the 2001 report that the 1990’s decade was the warmest in the past millenium. The work behind that theory, called the hockey stick graph, came from Michael Mann, a geologists who got his Ph.D in 1998, while the 2001 assessment was in progress. Although the IPCC is supposed to be a super peer-review process, several major errors in his work were completely overlooked.
For example, Mann’s graph completely omitted the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, both of which were prominent in a 1995 IPCC graph. You would think one scientist at least would have noted that. Maybe several did, and maybe their points were suppressed. The lead authors have the final say, and if I am correct, Mann had a lot to say.
That graph, and the insinuation that the 1990’s were the warmest decade in the past millenium, have disappeared from the 2007 assessment without explanation. How can you base your future on a political organization that cannot admit a mistake and which ignores part of it’s mandate, which is to report uncertainties.
The IPCC does not report uncertainties and it suppresses direct evidence from satellites and weather balloons that the atmosphere is barely warming, if at all. In fact, if you read what IPCC leaders have to say, you might be shocked.
In 1991, IPCC chairman Robert Watson dismissed an observation that a 50 – 50 split existed between global warming believers and skeptics. He claimed:
“It’s not even 80-20 or 90-10 (in percentage terms). I personally believe it’s something
like 98-2 or 99-1….”
This quote came from Page 15 of Ross McKitrick’s paper on the hockey stick debate at:
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/APEC-hockey.pdf
the entire paper is worth a read since it’s a first hand accont of how McKitrick and McIntyre debunked the hockey stick.
The first question might be how Watson knew the percentage of skeptics. He obviously did not unless he had done a comprehensive poll he has not revealed. His information was coming from his personal experiences with IPCC scientists, not the scientific community as a whole. It’s that kind of hyperbole that seems to define the reports issuing from the IPCC.
I personally feel the majority of scientists who work through the IPCC were converts to the CO2/warming paradigm before they started working there. Few of them had the least intention of accepting dissenting work and there’s evidence that some we’re willing to resort to dishonesty to get their message across.
You really need to inform yourself as to how most politicians got their information and as to why so many are so lacking in character and intelligence that they jump on the bandwagon without considering the most basic of facts.
SJT: “The first graph clearly shows a steady warming.”
You clearly have a vivid imagination what is shows is no net warming since 1979 and it doesn’t show much trend either way for the past decade. It’s not so much cherry picking but showing where we are at now and I think that’s relevant but whether it is significant over the long term is another question.
From 1983 to 1985 there was a similar dip, the a return to the warming trend. To take that “cherry red” line as evidence is self delusion, nothing less.
SJT said…Your cherry picking goes against all scientific principles.
Why don’t you go back to realclimate.org where the real cherry pickers congregate? Or are you trolling on their behalf? If you can’t see a flat trend along 0.3 C, between 1998 and 2008, just by eyeballing the graph, you don’t know what a trend is. On closer examination, the trend is likely along 0.2C. Even the Hadley graph shows a flat trend.
There is actually a warming trend of about 0.01 C, which is insignificant, and not considered warming. That probably came from the 1998 El Nino, but of course, believers like you will have proof that El Ninos are due to global warming.
It astounds me that people are saying it is still warming; Schmidt attempted to prove that there was an underlying warming even allowing for natural climate variation caused by PDO’s masking it; here is lucia’s rebuttal of that;
http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/ipcc-falsifies-gavin.gif
It is beyond doubt that the slight upward temp trend over the 20thC was due primarily to there being 2 El Nino positive PDO’s and only one La Nina -ve PDO between 1940-76; plus a bit of extra insolation; the only reason that is ignored is the usual and scandalous tainting of temp records by base period fiddling (when is the media going to jump on temp manipulation by the AGW mafia?); this paper on that by McLean and Quirk still hasn’t been explained away despite the usual and ridiculous ad hom attacks;
http://mclean.ch/climate/Aust_temps_alt_view.pdf
We are now in a -ve PDO with a positive SOI, and solar cycle 24 looks like being a dud; there is compelling evidence that CO2’s role in the greenhouse is at best marginal, and at worst, a coolant, yet we still get ‘our’ ABC acting aghast at any subversion of the orthodoxy; maybe they’re just dumb.
SJT: “To take that “cherry red” line as evidence is self delusion”
Some of us, especially he old farts like me who feel the cold would prefer to live in the 1990s when it was warming however here we are in 2008 and there has been significant warming fro the past decade and it’s definitely cooler this year than when I went camping at Newnes the same time of year as in 2006. There was no ice about then. I could really dress the same as i did 2 years ago because it was too cold and it’s in the here an now that most of us live. That cherry red line actually describes the experience rather well.
Good work Jennifer. Just keep providing facts and data. A little intermittent warming is one thing, but looking at ice data, storms data, insurance data, sea temperature data and health data shows very clearly that climate change is not happening any differently from the cyclical changes seen throughout history. Making changes to industry and the economy on the basis of the existing data is profoundly irresponsible and driven purely by left wing ideology, with urging from vested interests.
SJT
You are the cherry picker – depending on which end points one choses, it could be warming or cooling, but as the magnitude of the warming or cooling is expressed in fractions of a degree Celsius, and this within the measuring accuracy of the thermometers, then its all thermal baloney.
However, since these are the datapoints which you insist validate the AGW hypothesis, we will need to use them as well – and for the last 10 years, or so, 1/3 of a climate cycle, it is cooling. Will it be still cooling in 20 years time? Who knows but I am certainly not going to base any economic grief on the opinion of some AGO functionary as your goodself. To do so would be to admit insanity.
SJT really does have a selective memory. It has been mentioned numerous times on this blog that much of the dip from 1983 to 1985 was caused by the El Chichon eruption. Lets take another look at Mark’s graph which, conspicuously, has not been challenged by the forces of darkness. http://www.geocities.com/mcmgk/TempAdjust2.html?1199762345031
What it shows is a sequence of natural rises and dips of 0.5C amplitude in a century long change of 0.7C from trough to peek, masking a much milder underlying trend.
Any port in a storm eh SJT?
cohenite said…It astounds me that people are saying it is still warming; Schmidt attempted to prove that there was an underlying warming…
From what I can gather, Schmidt is a mathematician whose speciality is computer modeling. If it’s not warming, the models are wrong, and his job is on the line. I would think Schmidt is desparate, not only with the loss of a job, but the tremendous loss of prestige he will encounter after his arrogant, bombastic tirades against real climate scientists.
The following is a link to said legitimate climate scientists:
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/01/08/musings-on-satellite-temperatures/#more-298
Patrick Michaels is probably behind this piece. He is one of the targets of the activists who they have labeled as a denier. I have read two recent books by Michaels, The Satanic Gases (2000) and Meltdown (2004). I don’t care if he is president of Exxon, his books are very well researched and it’s apparent that he is a committed scientist who loves his work. Besides, he has correctly predicted future climate based on his research of the temperature record.
In the article, it is pointed out that the UAH trend since 1998 is a positive 0.04 C, which they claim is statistically insignificant. Michaels is an expert with statistics, and if he claims it is insignificant, that’s good enough for me. He also points out that both the UAH and RSS data show a decline over the past three years.
It’s worthwhile reading through the entire http://www.worldclimatereport.com site since it gives a fair, humourous and comprehensive coverage of global warming. One of the most recent article is on Kilimanjaro and other glaciers.
“it’s definitely cooler this year”
I agree. That’s not a trend.
Ooooooh! http://www.worldclimatereport.com? That denialist cesspool of rancid tripe? Wash your mouth out with soap you nasty man, you’ll have LRON come screaming down on all our backs, stabbing, cutting, hacking, slashing, drooling, ejaculating and god knows what else. Do we need that?
SJT
How you cherry pick the end points of the period determines the trend required.
Oh that is interesting, Gavin Schmidt is a mathematician with no formal training or practical experience in earth sciences one presumes.
Justin and SJT,
it is accepted that either the sun will go nova cooking the earth or will expand and engulf the earth cooking it. I wonder about you shallow warmers who refuse to face the reality of the death of the earth to quibble about a few degrees warming.
When are you going to wake up and get on the program to LEAVE THE EARTH BEFORE IT IS KILLED BY THE SUN!!!! We Can’t wait till too late!!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Louis Hissink said…Oh that is interesting, Gavin Schmidt is a mathematician with no formal training or practical experience in earth sciences one presumes.
Until someone shows me evidence to the contrary, that’s the assumption I am making. Any resume I have seen for him lists him as a Ph.D in Mathematics and a computer modeler. I found that odd because his boss, James Hansen, is listed as a physicist on the NASA site. If Schmidt has credentials in atmospheric physics, why are they not presented?
Schmidt had a chance to debate Lindzen on youtube, and he bowed out. He said in his intro talk that he wasn’t getting into the science and if any viewer wanted anwsers, to contact realclimate, presumably so he could give his own amateur account of the climate without an expert like Lindzen being there to reveal his inadequacies.
Schmidt and a female debater stooped to rhetoric instead of presenting scientific fact. I think that was due to a lack of knowing what they were talking about. Even Richard Sommerville, the other debater on Schmidt’s team, wrapped himself arrogantly in IPCC doctrine. Lindzen has expressed disdain for realclimate, and I think old Gavin took the easy route by avoiding him.
I was interested in the comment by Stewart that only bloggers are debating the science. I wonder if those media types have any awareness whatsoever. I know of many non-blog sites where the debate is ongoing and I was going to list several before getting sidetracked. It might be a good idea for all of us to submit a few in case others haven’t encountered them.
I came across this site at the University of Alabama (UAH) which has probably been posted umpteen times over the years. Here it is again:
http://www.uah.edu/News/climatebackground.php
It explains everything an interested party would need to know, believer or skeptic. Here’s a quote from John Christy’s bio on the page, applying to both Christy and Roy Spencer:
“In 1996 they received a special award by the American Meteorological Society “for developing a global, precise record of earth’s temperature from operational polar-orbiting satellites, fundamentally advancing our ability to monitor climate.” In January 2002 Christy was inducted as a fellow of the American Meteorological Society”.
It appears that in 1996, satellite data as acquired by Christy and Spencer was deemed ‘precise’ by the AMS. There was no argument about that in the IPCC 2001 assessment report. There were discrepancies encountered in the past few years, but it is explained in this article what they were and what was done about them.
There are important points to take from this article. One is that most of the warming is taking place in the coldest, driest areas of the world. That hs been described elsewhere as ‘wintertime’ Siberia and northwestern Canada, which prompted Russian PM Putin to ask why anyone would worry about a few degrees warming in wintertime Siberia.
It claims CO2 has little effect in the tropics because the air is so moist. The air in Siberia in the winter contains hardly any water vapour, meaning essentially no warming takes place there. Reflection of sunlight by the ice compounds the lack of warming. Any CO2 in that air will have a much more profound effect than elsewhere on the globe.
Roy Spencer is the U.S. science team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite. He is an expert with those kind of devices. How many other climate scientists have that expertise?
“Ooooooh! http://www.worldclimatereport.com? That denialist cesspool of rancid tripe? Wash your mouth out with soap you nasty man, you’ll have LRON come screaming down on all our backs, stabbing, cutting, hacking, slashing, drooling, ejaculating and god knows what else. Do we need that?”
Has he got your measure?
With what? His E-meter?
Gordon; the issue of whether there is more warming in the colder parts of the Earth is a problematic one; this paper has an interesting take on it;
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/publications/pdf/R-321.pdf
Pielke et al say;
“A 1C increase in the polar latitudes in the winter, for example, would have much less of an effect on the change of the longwave emission than a 1C increase in the tropics.”
The reason is the outgoing LW radiation is proportional to T4.
Motl has also looked at this distinction in the form of the difference between the average value of the fourth power of temperature and the fourth power of the average temperature;
http://motl.blogspot.com/2008/05/average-temperature-vs-average.html
Motl calculates that a substantial energy difference exists between the 2 avearages; IMO that energy is expressed as weather as regional LTE’s maintain a dynamic balance with each other; a couple of observations; if there is more energy in the system by virtue of the enhanced GH and its energy retention lag, another -ve feedback is revealed in that the colder/warmer temp gradient will be less pronounced as the LTE balancing dynamic adjusts; as Motl shows, any slight warming in the colder parts will be matched, counterbalanced, by slight cooling in the warmer areas; emissions have not decreased therefore, they have been relocated. The concept of a global average temp is a misleading one; it has been used to infer a consistent systemic upward trend; it ignores regionalism and LTE’s, which adjust continuously. As Schmidt’s failed attempt to show natural masking of an underlying trend demonstrated (something which Philopona and Keenlyside have attempted to show in their recent papers) human efforts will be swamped by natural process, and even when the human impact is in unison with the natural trend, it will be negligible in effect.
Jennifer.
I expect no better from your scientifically- and statistically-illiterate followers than the misapprehending, self-congratulatory and inappropriately circularly-referenced fluff that they have posted on this thread, as they consistently do on others.
But really, your first graphic – what on earth were you thinking?! That appalling red ‘trendline’ makes no scientific or statistical point at all, and implies your commentary to be ideological rather than objective.
Indeed, my PhD supervisor would have called me into his office for a stripping down if I had ever presented such an effort for formal consideration, and even in a lay presentation it is an inappropriate construct. My scientific colleagues now would simply not let it me get away with it more than once before my job was on the line. Heck, even a first-year uni student would be castigated for such an inappropriate manipulation of a graph.
If you have a point to make about the time of the release of a movie, and the middle of 2008, you should do it in another fashion – a ‘trendline’ in this context is a bizarre piece of cherry-picking that diminishes you in the eyes of your scientific colleagues, even if it garners support from the uneducated or uninformed public who don’t know better.
Perhaps it is to the lay masses that you are aiming your commentary, knowing that they do not have the capacity for critical deconstruction of such misleading ‘information’, but in the long-term it can only serve to diminish your credibility, amongst the decision-makers of our society and within the scientific community, as a knowledgable commenter.
By all means pull every rabbit out of the hat to critique the state of AGW, or of any other field of knowledge, but if you are claiming scientific credibility please use scientifically credible and appropriate analyses and data-presentation.
Sadly, if AGW is to be proved wrong, it seems that it will be done in spite of efforts such as the one presented above, rather than because of them. And for those here who do not understand what I mean – well, that just proves the point.
Oh, how I ache for a truly valid sceptical argument that moves past thespeedbumps of dogma. Nothing would pleaseme more than to have real evidence that climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide is much less than the best determinations to date.
Bernard; what’s your doctorate on? Speaking of climate sensitivity to CO2, which one of these orthodox group of samples would you choose?
http://members.aol.com/bpl1960/ClimateSensitivity.html
BTW, your ache is probably due to the cold weather.
“Indeed, my PhD supervisor would have called me into his office for a stripping down if I had ever presented such an effort for formal consideration, and even in a lay presentation it is an inappropriate construct. My scientific colleagues now would simply not let it me get away with it more than once before my job was on the line. Heck, even a first-year uni student would be castigated for such an inappropriate manipulation of a graph.”
And the comments. WTF has Sundance Film Festival go to do with a temperature record?
Bernard J – the forthcoming Journal of climate paper from Spencer/Bracewell suggests climate is dominated by negative feedbacks, rather than positive, thus reducing climate sensitivity, which remains hypothetical:
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003276.html
We don’t know whether to expect warming or cooling in the future, despite rising CO2 emissions, so we should prepare for both – a bona fide ‘precautionary principle.’
Bernard J.
The first graph is a political statement showing the temperature when Gore’s movie was released and the temperature now. It shows a decline – statistically relevant? No. Politically relevant, oh yaaas marm, very relevant.
Science? AGW was never science – its foundations have never been empirically verified (Arrhenius’ 1906 paper).
“Bernard J – the forthcoming Journal of climate paper from Spencer/Bracewell suggests climate is dominated by negative feedbacks, rather than positive, thus reducing climate sensitivity, which remains hypothetical:”
I thought the Gaia idea was out?
The way forward is clear. The trend of cooling despite the on going increases in Co2 means that one of two options should be taken. Either increase manmade co2 in order to hold off the far worse effects of global cooling. Or admit that the whole AGW circus has been a cruel hoax !!
Looks like the AGW supporters have lost their cool
as the debate is about to warm up.Congrats Jennifer for having the guts to say Henny Penny is wrong.
This just might make the difference between madness and sanity. As for Dr. Graham Peachman he is just a bagman for the I.P.C.C. (Idiots Pretending to Control Climate)
Bernard here is concerned about PhDs and a red line on a temperature chart. Cripes, he sounds like the rote-learner from the yellow submarine blog … i.e. one of timmyboy’s worshipers. If he is so disturbed by the red line what about this Dr Pearman’s cunning avoidance of the global temperatures topic to promote temperatures in Australia? Does this arrogant ex CSIRO joker think people are stoooopid. This opportunistic cherry picking of bits and pieces using some regional variations to deviously slot in human CO2 emissions as the culprit can only be interpreted as dodgy pseudo-science chasing funding. This is nothing more than selecting data that suits the cause and rejected data that doesn’t. If the discussion is about global temperatures, Pearman’s response is irrelevant which exposes Mr Stewart as plainly a weak journalist by being so easily manipulated.
Because Dr Pearman so easily switched the issue we need to ask questions. Bernard may offer his thoughts as to if in his words “even a first-year uni student would be castigated for such an inappropriate manipulation of” not a graph but a question specifically about global temperatures. Like isn’t Pearman’s contempt just such as in Bernard’s words again “a bizarre piece of cherry-picking that diminishes you in the eyes of your scientific colleagues”?
Of course Pearman’s use of temperatures in Australia draws attention to the source of this data. i.e. BOM are full of tricks and this is not just my experience and it seems the excellent name of the CSIRO is put into the tricky dicky basket as well. If we wish to switch to regional temperatures then go to …
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3231
Study the Southern Hemisphere temps for example .. where we live ….. and present opinions as to why it has been trendless for thirty years. i.e. Just tell me what i’m supposed to be seeing here with these temperature graphs that should make me feel alarmed.
Well put Bernard J. Don’t come here if you are looking for a rational debate about science, or anything rational for that matter. It’s ironic that the hounds foam and froth at a palaeontologist talking about the cimate, but it’s ok for a bug catcher to do the same.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/07/30/canada.arctic.ice.ap/index.html
” A chunk of ice spreading across 18 square kilometers (seven square miles) has broken off a Canadian ice shelf in the Arctic, scientists said Tuesday.
A chunk of ice is shown drifting after it separated from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf off the coast of Ellesmere Island.
A chunk of ice is shown drifting after it separated from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf off the coast of Ellesmere Island.
Derek Mueller, a researcher at Trent University, was careful not to blame global warming, but said the event was consistent with the theory that the current Arctic climate isn’t rebuilding ice sheets.
“We’re in a different climate now,” he said. “It’s not conducive to regrowing them. It’s a one-way process.”
Mueller said the sheet broke away last week from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf off the north coast of Ellesmere Island in Canada’s far north. He said a crack in the shelf was first spotted in 2002 and a survey this spring found a network of fissures.
The sheet is the biggest piece shed by one of Canada’s six ice shelves since the Ayles shelf broke loose in 2005 from the coast of Ellesmere, about 500 miles from the North Pole.
Formed by accumulating snow and freezing meltwater, ice shelves are large platforms of thick, ancient sea ice that float on the ocean’s surface. Ellesmere Island was once entirely ringed by a single enormous ice shelf that broke up in the early 1900s.”
[“cimate” of course should be climate.]
Berbard J. Asks
“Oh, how I ache for a truly valid sceptical argument that moves past the speed bumps of dogma. Nothing would please me more than to have real evidence that climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide is much less than the best determinations to date.”
Climate sensitivity is based on the assumption (not a proven, verified scientific fact) that doubling CO2 causes some specific rise in atmospheric temperature. It is based on Arrhenius’ hypothesis of 1906 in which he proposed the greenhouse gas hypothesis to explain ice ages (reduction in atmospheric CO2 causes cooling) but inverted the burden of proof to his critics, demanding that they prove that the removal of CO2 from the earth’s atmosphere will cause no cooling, rather then he prove that it causes ice ages.
The idea was subsequently picked up by Bert Bolin and Henning Rodhe in order to use “authority” as a means of establishing the hypothesis as a theory (an experimentally verified hypothesis) via the Swedish Royal Society of Sciences. Keeling and others subsequently developed the idea into its present form as AGW.
However Arrhenius’ hypothesis has never been scientifically verified but instead is believed to be true by consensus so the argument is over its best determination to date.
As scientific theories are based on verified hypotheses and as Arrhenius’ hypothesis was never verified, it is therefore not a scientific theory and, as a consequence, no climate sceptic bothers calculating a climate sensitivity value.
There is not much sense in computing a climate sensitivity for a theory that is not scientific.
sjt; a bit of historical perspective;
http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic39-1-15.pdf
Such events are not infrequent; as to the Arctic generally;
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0442(2004)017%3C4045%3ATETWIT%3E2.0.CO%3B2
The important thing to remember is that in respect of surface ice cover, the Antarctic is 80% and Greenland is 19.99%;
Greenland;
http:www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007JD008742.shtml
East Antarctic; where 90% of the ice is;http:www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007GL032529.shtml
West Antarctic; where all the fuss has been because of some relatively small ice breaks;
http:www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007GL032529.shtml
Of course the West is underpined by active volcanoes;
http:www.wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/antarcticvolcanoes2.jpg
Good Job Jennifer.
Keep plugging away. The important thing is not so much whether it is warming or cooling… Because that is natural and normal…. The crux of the argument is whether AGW is a valid Hypothesis and what is the evidence and where is the anthropogenic CO2 warming signature…. A perfect example of some peoples confusion is Justin’s post.
[Justin at July 30, 2008 09:32 AM
“But here’s a thought – what if you are wrong and the world is heating and we spent 50 years waiting to confirm that?…..”]
Justin completely misses the point and the argument….Natural heating is impossible to stop.
However, on the other hand. If there is Significant heating from anthropogenic CO2. It should be easy to identify the signature and show that as proof of the AGW Hypothesis…. But this is not the case.
The direct opposite is the actuality…. The modeled signiture for Anthropogenic CO2’s signal in the Tropical Troposphere was not reflected in the empirical data from either Radiosondes or Satellites….
These are the points that must cross the divide.
… Once again. Good job Jennifer.
The red trendline on FIgure 1 was indeed worth the visit. Bernard is absolutely right: if my students presented data analysis like that I’d laugh them out of the room.
It’s indefensible. ‘And for those here who do not understand what I mean – well, that just proves the point.’ – how perceptive that comment proved to be.
I forgot to link Dr Evans’s “Missing Greenhouse Signature” paper…. It’s very interesting….
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/DavidEvansmissingsignature.pdf
Just been reading through…. Bernard and Nelson…. The Red trendline is a deliberate jibe at Al Gore… Do you not understand satire or irony….?
As for the Graph… It is valid. Except it does not show CO2… AGW says temp should go up with CO2… Ten years increase of CO2… No corresponding increase of temperature…. AGW Hypothesis flawed….
Seeing that you choose not to… I ask you a question then…. Do you both believe that Al Gore’s “documentary” ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, is a valid and correct representation in every respect, of the Science underlying the hypothesis of AGW? That he misrepresents nothing and presents a factual account of the effects that the Hypothesis of AGW will have?
…. Bernard, you said that you were tired of the skeptics dogma…. Well then, Defend the Hypothesis of AGW instead…. Where’s th’ AGW signature as an effect on the climate, represented and provable with empirical evidence.
Just musing… Seems to me that the Journalists want to turn this into a warming versus cooling argument…. There are benefits in this because it changes the dynamic of the argument/debate and invites a response from the otherwise unresponsive AGW proponents…. The pitfall is, it digresses from and obscures the real debate.
Which is of course, the simple and unambiguous claim of the AGW Hypothesis…
That being that, Anthropogenic sourced CO2 will measurably warm the Earth…. The addendum to this in recent times, is that they have declared this effect will be catastrophic.
Natural cooling and warming confuses the discussion and is not the point. Only the Anthropogenic signature in the climate observations as pertains to the AGW Hypothesis is.
There is a need to be careful…. Some are trying to deflect all scrutiny from that flawed Hypothesis.
You see an example in the story from lateline. The journalist, Stewart asserts a claim in a voice over… Then edits in the percieved response from Dr Pearman… But we don’t know what question Dr Pearman was really asked or in what context, because Pearman quotes Australian temps instead of Global temps…. Portion of ABC transcript below…
“JOHN STEWART: But former CSIRO scientist and adviser to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Graham Pearman says the data from Britain’s Hadley Centre provides no evidence that the world is getting cooler.
DR GRAHAM PEARMAN, THE CLIMATE INSTITUTE: For viewers if they want to, they can go and check the website of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and find the trends there for Australia. All of them show that there’s been a general warming and that most of this last decade, including the last few years, have been very warm. There’s no evidence that in fact, especially for 10 years, that we’ve actually had a decline in temperature.”
…. That whole piece by the journalist Stewart is Either deliberately misrepresentative…. Or Dr Pearman cannot find a real argument to support the AGW hypothesis.
It is disappointing that journalists cannot represent impartially, something that should be a simple exercise in fact finding… and it is equally disappointing, that a man of Dr Pearman’s calibre cannot present those facts….
>invites a response from the otherwise unresponsive AGW proponents
Just musing…but perhaps the AGW proponents are unresponsive here because they can’t be bothered participating. It is not a jibe at the AGW opponents, simply an assumption, which seems to be an acceptable way of looking at things here (that is a jibe).
J. Hansford,
Bernard J and Nelson also do not read posts here very well – I pointed out it was a political statement – but you have to be impressed with their unswerving dedication to the ‘Cause’.
“However, on the other hand. If there is Significant heating from anthropogenic CO2. It should be easy to identify the signature and show that as proof of the AGW Hypothesis…. But this is not the case.”
Why would it be easy? In terms of Kelvin, the change is miniscule, but just a few degrees change is enough to cause massive changes in our climate. Our earth’s climate is highly sensitive to changes in temperature, since the positive feedbacks can cause massive swings, from a tropical to a frozen state, in a very short period of time. You just have to look at the geological record to see that.
Travis
Glens’ question is simply an ad hominem – he is playing the man and not the argument.
Clearly AGW proponents consider science to be political – and that makes it not science.
Bernard J. said….That appalling red ‘trendline’ makes no scientific or statistical point at all…. then said…Oh, how I ache for a truly valid sceptical argument that moves past thespeedbumps of dogma.
With respect to the first comment, it is a legitimate trend line for 2008, and I’m sure that’s what Jennifer was emphasizing since she has no other trend lines on the graph.
If you want to get into graphs, why don’t you comment on that abomination of Michael Mann that shamefully passed IPCC peer-review and the refusal of the IPCC to retract it with an explanation? Jennifer’s trend line is harmless fun, but the hockey stick did more to mislead people, including you, obviously, than probably any graph published.
About the second comment. One thing I have noted about AWG types is their inability to understand basic science when it is presented to them. What don’t you understand about their being not one shred of evidence to support the CO2/warming theory? What don’t you understand about satellite data clearly demonstrating the atmosphere is barely warming? Speaking of dogma, what don’t you understand about the dogma put out by the IPCC in a pathetic attempt to shore up a theory that is plainly not there?
You are blind, my friend, and no one can help you with that. You have been conditioned to believe what you are told and you obviously don’t have the guts to see truth when it’s right in front of you.
If you want a valid skeptical argument, try presenting facts to support your position rather than using the rhetoric typical of the AWG set to get around the facts.
cohenite said…Gordon; the issue of whether there is more warming in the colder parts of the Earth is a problematic one…
Obviously I don’t know beans about it and I’m only quoting what I have read.
Several points on that question:
1)Patrick Michaels covers the subject in either The Satanic Gases (2001) or Meltdown (2004). Apparently he was involved in the research.
2)Christy is no doubt getting that information from the satellite date directly. I doubt very much that surface stations are located and maintained in Siberia. I know Mr. Claus operates one at the North Pole, but other than that, I don’t think there are all that many up there.
According to Michaels, there is very little, if any, water vapour in cold air simply because it can’t evapourate. If you have ever lived in cold climates, like the Canadian prairies, the air is very dry in the winter. Since water vapour is by far the main motivator of the greenhouse effect, it would stand to reason that low water vapour translates to low warming.
What, then, would drive warming in the dry, cold Arctic air? If CO2 is going to warm the atmosphere, it would seem to be the only warming gas in the Arctic. I’m not sold on CO2 as a warming gas but the theory seems reasonable. It seems too sparse to be effective, however.
Michaels commented in one of his books about a Canadian GCM that was predicting temperatures of 49 C in US Gulf states. That is no doubt the GCM located at the University of Victoria where the maverick Andrew Weaver resides. I get a kick out of his site, on which he claims meteorological results can’t be guaranteed for the following week, yet he’s very confident that we’re headed for climate catastrophe based on a GCM.
Anyway, Michaels claims the only way temperatures could rise that high on the Gulf of Mexico would be if it was drained and blacktopped. He points out that Rio, which is near the equator, seldom has high temperatures about 95 F (35 C). He claims that is due to the moisture in the air. When that moisture rises and condenses into precipitation, very dry air drops into the world’s desert regions, like the Sahara. I think those dry areas were mentioned as well as warming spots.
SJT said…Our earth’s climate is highly sensitive to changes in temperature, since the positive feedbacks can cause massive swings, from a tropical to a frozen state, in a very short period of time. You just have to look at the geological record to see that.
Could you, just once, back your claims up with evidence? Where is the proof that the climate is sensitive to temperature? Has any human ever witnessed such a change? No!! It has only been hypothesized based on computer model theory and proxy data. A sudden and sustained warming of 5.0 C could be problematic but that fantasy exists only in the world of computer models. Only a mathematician could come up with that scenario.
The geological record is theoretical just as the Big Bang theory is theoretical. The term ‘proxy’ means ‘in place of’. Proxy data is theoretical data that is used in place of direct observation, since no humans, who are alive today, were there to witness it.
The only evidence we have of the Big Bang is a low level warming in the universe that is theorized to be left over from the heat of the Big Bang.
Also, there are Doppler-shifts in the spectra of gases observed in stars by radiotelescopes. The shifts tell us which direction a star is moving relative to us. Some wags have infered the entire universe is what we see from the Earth and from that they have concluded the universe is expanding from a central point. From that scanty evidence, some scientists talk as if the Big Bang definitely happened.
The only evidence of glaciation is scarring on rock faces that are thought to come from ice. Also, glaciers tend to leave U-shaped valleys as opposed to the steeper sharper valleys carved by water. Ice core samples are supsect as well since there’s no telling what has affected the isotopes along the way. Trmendous pressure deep in ice could have affected them as well as infiltration by plain water. That came form Jaworowsky, an expert in ice cores. There’s a possibility even the drilling equipment is adding a bias.
We don’t have a clue what happened in the Earth’s history, we can only hypothesize. I personally find it a little difficult to accept North America was covered by 300 feet of ice, but each to his own. With respect to modern warming, I don’t see the need to look back more than 50 years. We have increased CO2 production dramatically in that time and the Earth has warmed under half a degree C. That could easily be a natural variation. There’s no sign of rising oceans or melting ice caps. As far as storms and drought are concerned, it’s business as usual.
The climate theory you are spouting came from James Hansen, Gavin Schmidt’s boss at NASA GISS. He’s the same guy who has already made a major error in predictions, based on a GCM he admitted was exaggerating. He claimed no harm had been done since it scared people onside.
I can forgive him that error but I can’t forgive him for continuing with the cataclysmic rhetoric. He admitted in 2003 that we should expect no more than modest warming by 2003, yet he continues to preach sudden melting of ice caps. I think his problem is Al Gore, who funded NASA and backed Hansen’s rhetoric. Now he’s in too deep to get out while saving face.
I’m sure you get all your information from realclimate, but where do you think Gavin Schmidt gets it? He’s a mathematician. He obviously gets it from Hansen, or straight from his climate guru, Al Gore.
Correction…in my previous post I wrote. “we should expect no more than modest warming by 2003…”. That year should be 2050.
“Correction…in my previous post I wrote. “we should expect no more than modest warming by 2003…”. That year should be 2050.”
You were right the first time anyway there has only been modest warming the entire preceding century.
Gordon; no aspersions intended; I enjoy your posts; your point about the scarcity of H2O in the colder areas, in warmer deserts too, points to a number of issues making the rounds; the first is the Spencer sponsored idea of negative feedback from H2O; now this seems a bit of a mixed bag with an increase of atmospheric H2O, specific humidity, being a positive feedback to temp; but, as we appear to be seeing, that positive feedback shifts gears when the H2O converts to clouds or rain, at which time negative feedback, of a stochastic nature, according to Spencer, starts occuring; certaintly NOAA data shows a decline in relative humidity since the late 40’s, which I suppose is a measure of how the negative feedback aspect of H2O kicks in very soon after the initial increase in SH. Monckton has looked at this in his recent APS paper which was subject to so much angst at RC and Deltoid; I note Monckton has made a reply to his critics;
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/monckton/chuck_it_again_schmidt.pdf
Cohenite, thanks for posting the Christopher Monckton reply to his critics. I note in his intelligent response that he makes mention …. ” Another blogger commenting at FalseClimate on Schmidt’s attack on me was John Mashey, who appears very frequently as a commentator on another tendentious blog, funded by a convicted internet- gaming fraudster who owns a solar-energy corporation and accordingly has a financial vested interest in promoting the “global warming” scare. ”
“Charming” people these alarmist AGW theologians with their proselytizing schemes in the media. I regard this Mashey as a real shocker who has his brain all twisted up in mind control techniques with his comments on timmyboy’s worship blog like “killfiling them before replying even once”. For him it has never been how best to present the truth to the public but instead it is spin and how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving this group more money or more power.
cohenite…no aspersions taken 🙂
Spencer made the observations directly with instrumentation, the kind of science I like.
I still remember high school theory, although I don’t know why, about warm, moist air rising, condensing and losing it’s moisture as precipitation. I learned later, studying a thermodynamics course, how heat transfer is initiated in such a process, although I’ve forgotten most of it.
Spencer points out that the warming is a complex system involving those cycles and that computer modelers seem to be making assumptions regarding feedback that are not accurate. I’m glad he has come up with the observations that might bring some sanity to the debate. I’d also like to see Lindzen’s iris theory validated. He deserves it.
You should read what Dr. Joanne Simpson has to say about models. She was the first person to ever get a Ph.D in meteorology and she did it in the midst of extreme chauvinism while raising a child as a single mother. This is a woman who has flown into clouds to examine them directly and she has expertise in cloud theory and cloud modeling. When she retired from NASA recently she expressed her skepticism about the ability of models to replicate the climate.
Monckton seems fired up about Schmidt, although I see no reason why he should defend himself.
“The only evidence of glaciation is scarring on rock faces that are thought to come from ice. Also, glaciers tend to leave U-shaped valleys as opposed to the steeper sharper valleys carved by water. Ice core samples are supsect as well since there’s no telling what has affected the isotopes along the way. Trmendous pressure deep in ice could have affected them as well as infiltration by plain water. That came form Jaworowsky, an expert in ice cores. There’s a possibility even the drilling equipment is adding a bias.”
Obviously due to the earth being only 6,000 years old, I guess.
Website comment boards bring out the inner vulgarian.
“Despite its power to inform and connect people across cultures and time zones, the Internet all too often discourages, or coarsens, a healthy civic discussion.”
From Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-onthemedia31-2008jul31,0,3001043.story?track=ntothtml
Just want to amplify the comments by J. Hansford. I found that video clip quite depressing, in the focus having somehow been sidetracked onto whether temperatures are increasing or decreasing. This is tangential, and means very little unless part of an examination of the evidence for the causes of whatever changes are being detected, and a discussion of the applicablility of proposed social and political responses.
I know Jennifer was doing her best, but I’m sorry to say that I don’t think the segment furthered the rationalist cause.
Interesting, wasn’t it, to also see it portrayed as a battle between the bloggers and the scientists. Sheesh, so scientists that are not part of the Chicken Little brigade are not real scientists?
I really don’t like the mainstream media. We have to recognise this as a form of entertainment, with little to contribute to the process of social or scientific progress.
Birdie,
In case you are unfamiliar withe the LAT, it’s notorious for suppressing a healthy civic discussion, and as its readership declines, as it has been for a decade now, the LAT has a vested interested in dissing the Internet, its chief rival.
The inner vulgarian in you is the part that is blind to the conflict of interest the LAT has with the Internet.
I doubt the hardcopy LAT will survive the decade.
‘AGW says temp should go up with CO2… Ten years increase of CO2… No corresponding increase of temperature…. AGW Hypothesis flawed….’
This is the misunderstanding we need to tackle.
The forcing changes and hence warming from anthropogenic CO2 (itself just one of many variables) are subtle and far, far smaller than interannual variation. If you want to extract a small signal from noisy data, you must avoid statistical butchery with short periods of data c.f. Figure 1, c.f. Jennifer’s comment that ‘even James Hansen’s GISS data shows that global temperatures have plateued, if not cooled over the last ten years.’
Statistical significance is the key test. Bother to do proper trend analysis and you find that those data are entirely consistent with global warming still occurring – entirely unabated – over the past decade. Remember: it’s noisy data superimposed on a small signal, so you will find periods of 10 years of apparent temperature stasis. It doesn’t mean global warming has stopped.
Nelson; the myth that the increasing temp trend just keeps on plugging along underneath the antics of natural variation is quite wrong; it was given a dust-uo here;
http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/ipcc-falsifies-gavin.gif
The notion is also in papers by such people as Philopona and Keenlyside with the quaint idea that warming is on holiday while a cool period courtesy of either a -ve PDO or reduced insolation takes over for a decade or 2; if a trend is defeated by contrary natural variation and swamped when in unison how can that movement be called a trend; saying it reduces the contrary natural variation and enhances the sympathetic ignores the stochastic ‘error bars’ of nature; that is, just because there is a correlation at one time with an anthropogenic effect and a reduced or enhanced natural variable doesn’t mean the same set of circumstances are prevailing at another time; lucia’s experiment shows that; CO2 is still going up, the natural variable of ENSO has been removed, but temp is still going down; where’s the global warming there?
Re: Louis Hissink at July 31, 2008 07:57am.
Louis, it seems to be you that does not read very well – I myself pointed out that the infamous red line was a political statement, when I used the term ‘ideological’.
I’ve done the regression myself, and the red line is NOT a trendline for the period covered. However its presentation is that of a trendline, the protestations of Gordon Robertson notwithstanding. It certainly would fool most of the (many) scientifically-illiterate people who grasp at the ‘facts’ that are implied by the graph, and it would indicate some (inexplicable) ‘relevance’ to anyone who was not educated in appropriate data analysis.
I repeat: if a point is to be made about the two times which are linked by this line, then a line is not the appropriate tool with which to do this.
Further, Gordon’s ‘concept’ of a ‘legitimate trend line for 2008’ is meaningless in the extreme, and if he does not understand why then the point in my earlier post is sadly proved again.
Oh, and Gordon – I am neither ‘blind’, nor ‘conditioned’. I know what the evidence tells me, and after many years working as a scientist I understand how to assess a time series at different scales, and I very much know how misinterpreted at the hands of such as yourself are the last hundred years of global temperature.
I also know that between you and Louis, with your respective ideas on paleo-glaciology and Arrhenius’ work on carbon dioxide, there is a black hole of stupid and ignorance here that threatens to suck the whole blog in. Seriously, do yourselves a big favour and pick up a couple of physics and geology texts, or go seek a university education in these disciplines, so that you might understand the embarrassingly wrong-headed ideas that you hold.
It’s not that difficult should you really want to enlighten yourselves. Heck, I’m a biologist (just like Jennifer), but I managed to study both physics and geology at university, so I am sure that your good selves could do so too. A word of warning though – when you learn enough to understand why your respective comments above are bigger loads of bollocks than those that swing under the tails of rutting bull elephants, the humiliation might be too much to bear.
Nelson said…Statistical significance is the key test. Bother to do proper trend analysis and you find that those data are entirely consistent with global warming still occurring – entirely unabated – over the past decade. Remember: it’s noisy data superimposed on a small signal, so you will find periods of 10 years of apparent temperature stasis. It doesn’t mean global warming has stopped.
Do you remember the quote of Mark Twain? He said there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. Your lie varies between damned lies and statistics.
You don’t need statistics to plot real satellite data on a graph and look at it. Look at the graph at the top of the page. If you average from 1998 to 2008 with your eye, you can plainly see no net warming. Proper trend analysis was done for that period. The warming trend was about 0.04 C for the decade, a statistically insignificant figure.
Who said warming had stopped? The point was that CO2 increased significantly over the decade described and warming did not. That flies in the face of the theory.
The arguement many of us are making is that CO2 is not causing the warming, in which case there is nothing we can do about it.
Gordon Robertson seems to believe that causation necessarily requires absolute corelation. If only the real world were that simple.
Heck, then we wouldn’t ever need statistics…
Please explain to us Gordon why the multiple factors that influence climate would not modify temperature trajectories under an AGW scenario. Most particularly, please present your primary references that justify your stance that temperature must always be in lock-step with carbon dioxide under an AGW scenario.
If that’s a bit extreme even for you, then please provide your nugget of reference wisdom that determines the maximum length of time during which temperature trends and carbon dioxide levels might not be absolutely synchronised, and still describe an AGW scenario.
These are not trick questions. I really would like you to answer them.
Bernard, you tried to engage me on Timmyboy’s worship blog, but as you know my comments were systematically deemed heretical and were devoweled. However if you claim to have the skill set then critique these temp charts and try to put forward honest personal thoughts.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3231
Study the Southern Hemisphere temps for example .. where we live ….. and present opinions as to why it has been trendless for thirty years. i.e. Just tell me what i’m supposed to be seeing here with these temperature graphs that should make me feel alarmed.
I must say that a good starting point is to somehow always look at the bigger picture experience outside your cosy confined playpen. When we speak of “experience,” the “ex” refers to “external” or “outside,” which is what science is best at. Scientists define truth as to how well an idea survives under an interaction with what you would only understand as the “outside world”. Of course to step out into the real world must be terrifying for many worshippers and dare i say this is where terrorism originates.
“Monckton seems fired up about Schmidt, although I see no reason why he should defend himself. (Gordon Robertson at July 31, 2008 03:50pm)”
Um, is the fact that Monckton is flat-out WRONG on so many points in his quest to deny AGW that there’s almost nothing left to be correct on, a reason? He’s really not a person one should want batting for one’s team.
http://www.altenergyaction.org/Monckton.html
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/07/once-more-unto-the-bray/
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/07/moncktons_triple_counting.php
http://duoquartuncia.blogspot.com/2008/07/aps-and-global-warming-what-were-they.html
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2008/07/lord-voldemort-bleats-we-have-become.html
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2008/07/biter-bit-arthur-smith-has-had-quite.html
http://helicity.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/whats_in_a_rebuttal/
http://www.desmogblog.com/moncktongoes-postal-over-realscience-riposte
http://atmoz.org/blog/2008/07/30/monckton-schmidt-and-mcintyre-2008/
Of course, if facts aren’t an inconvenience to you then heck, why not, let Monckton carry on as he is wont to do.
Doesn’t change the bottom line though…
Monckton is a distorter of facts, a scientific-illiterate, and a mendacious teller of untruths.
Keiran.
Paul Klemencic says it neatly in the dialogue on Monckton’s poor science at RealClimate.
In particular he makes some good points about trends, damned trends, and statistics that could be usefully taken on board before swallowing the Climate Audit cherries, stones and all.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/07/once-more-unto-the-bray/#comment-94275
Note that to understand Paul Klemencic’s comments fully, one need’s to read all of Rod B’s prior posts, and the repeated responses to them.
Believe me when I say that if the data show, with statistical significance, that there is REAL cooling, the world’s scientific consensus will not hesitate to admit it. Contrary to the Denialists conspiracy theories, (the majority of) scientists do not want to push a barrow that doesn’t have wheels. To date the wheel is still firmly on the AGW barrow.
That there is a body of people who can’t accept the current scientific evidence FOR AGW is simply an indication more of their ideological inclinations than their scientific ones.
Oh, and I am sure that you are always welcome at Deltoid to ask such questions, as long as they are of an easily-reached standard. If I recall correctly Tim disemvowelled you for repeated sniping at the men, rather than at the science. Until Tim tells you that you’re banned, and he has only ever banned two or three people, each of your posts will stand on its own merits.
There is no need to hide here, if you truly seek to engage in a meaningful discussion.
Bernard, with your claim to have the skill set, I asked you for your honest personal thoughts on a 30 year trendless Southern Hemisphere temperature chart where the data came from UAH. You do not seem able to do this critique without using a lazybrained, gee wiz reference to a statistician. Do you think people are completely stooopid like yourself. i.e. How did your hero Michael Mann co founder of your favourite UNrealclimate and to your favored “inhouse peer review process” measure up to an auditor and a statistician?
Look, just study the Southern Hemisphere temps for example .. where we live ….. and present your own opinions as to why it has been trendless with statistical significance, for thirty years. i.e. Just tell me what i’m supposed to be seeing here with these temperature graphs that should make me feel alarmed.
‘Your lie varies between damned lies and statistics.’ – and then you go on to say ‘if you average from 1998 to 2008 with your eye’. Ouch. That ain’t stats.
You need to apply rigorous analysis before making claims about trends (which implicitly means statistical significance.)
In Excel, generate a background global warming signal of the appropriate amplitude and superimpose on that some noise to mimic that in the temperature record.
Noise dominates – it’s much larger than the global warming signal, after all. But you know that small signal is there – _you_ created the data set!. Note also the periods of (cough) ‘cooling’ or ‘plateaus’ – these are a feature of the noise and a mathematical inevitability. They are not statistically significant, just as this ‘cooling/stasis since 1998’ (nice to see that cherry-pick in the open again) isn’t.
Bernard
It’s just a red line joining to temperature levels – the latest being somewhat lower than the earlier one. It is not a trendline either.
I reread your post in which you use the word ideologiocal but from what I see intimated Jennifer’s use of the graph seemed ideological.
Correct – it is very much an ideological issue.
Bernard J. said…”Please explain to us Gordon why the multiple factors that influence climate would not modify temperature trajectories under an AGW scenario”.
Sorry I haven’t been able to reply sooner. I have considered your question in the meantime and I’m having difficulty understanding it. If you look at the first graph in the article, between 1998 and 2008, you can see various swings in the temperature trajectories, as you call them. I call them curves. Some of them, such as the big swing in 1998 can be explained by an uncommonly warm El Nino, and others can be explained the same way and by La Nina’s.
Those oscillations, and other factors, have been in effect during the warming from 1970 to 1995, and the warming trend line was positive. That’s the basic reason we have the AWG theory since many scientists are not willing to consider alternative explanations for the warming, such as natural warming. That upward trend leveled off around 1995.
Unless Gavin Schmidt and his cohorts have moved the goalposts, the model theory should still claim that increasing amounts of CO2 will result in a positive warming trend. I don’t keep up with Schmidt but since he claimed that cooling in Antarctica was predicted by the models I’m sure he is now claiming that a flat 10 year trend was predicted by them as well. If so, I have no interest in that kind of nonsense from a mathematician.
As far as temperatures being required to be in step with rising CO2 levels, try this site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming#cite_note-74
Check the graph titled ‘Global Warming Projection’. It shows projections from 8 different GCM’s, all showing a relatively linear increase in temperature for increasing CO2. There are no 10 or 20 year flat trends, which would be noticeable discontinuities.
Note the caveat thrown in later in the page from May 2008, that claims warming is on hold till 2015.
Come on Bernard, it’s time to call a spade a spade. What model predicted 20 years without warming or the influence of natural forces in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific? The models are wrong and so is the theory.
Read this article:
http://thoolou.tblog.com/post/1969988202
Even realclimate is hemming and hawing over that one, claiming models don’t make predictions, they create scenarios. What utter hogwash. The IPCC came up with the scenario (storyline) thing and realclimate et al jumped all over it to create hysteria.
The IPCC did not predict a flat trend and that proves the famous 2500 can be wrong. They claimed it was most liekly the atmosphere would continue to warm.
I don’t know what it will take to make people like you open your eyes.
‘The IPCC did not predict a flat trend’
But it’s not a *trend* until it reaches statistical significance! Until that happens, any claims of ‘global warming stopped in 1998/2001/2003’ are meaningless.
Let this argument die in peace. Tamino explains why with a clarity far better than I can offer:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/12/16/wiggles/
I can see no hope in the latest few years data that the long term trend of the last 100 or so years has turned down. The pause that might very well be visible in the graph does not presage much when you look at the long term trend. The pause in the 1940’s was much deeper, but it still turned up quickly in the 50’s. The increase in the steepness of the curve in the last 30 years indicates we are accelerating. See the BOM web site for the global graph…http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/g_timeseries.cgi?variable=global_t®ion=global&season=0112.
I am afraid I cannot agree with you Jennifer that it is all a big hoax. The science appears too strong. Try this quote from a better person than I that basically puts a clear argument:
“There has been a fairly steep rise in average temperature in the last 3 to 4 decades. The heat content of the ocean’s upper layers has increased over this same time period. Mountain glaciers, nearly everywhere have been shrinking at increasing rates,and arctic sea ice is melting, also at an accelerating pace. Greenland’s ice cap is doing the same. The diurnal temperature range is decreasing due to a quicker increase in night time over day time temperatures. Hurricane intensity is increasing (see http:wind.mit.edu/~emanuel/papers_data_graphics.htm). Flora and fauna have been migrating to higher latitudes and to higher elevations. The average temperature of the globe has increased about 0.7C over the last century or so. These phenomena are based on observations.
A well established principle of physics states that climate results in a balance between incoming solar energy and the amount of heat that the planet radiates away to space. An atmosphere can absorb some of that outgoing energy, altering the energy balance which would keep that planet warmer than it would otherwise be- the greenhouse effect. These gases, primarily H2O and CO2 makes Earth about 33C warmer than if these gases weren’t present. Changes in the amounts of these gases will change this number, and carefully measured values of CO2 show that this gas has increased significantly since the dawn of
the industrial age.
For the last 250 years or so we’ve been burning fossil fuels which releases carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, CO2. About half of that carbon remains in the atmosphere resulting in an increase of about 115 ppmv of C02 since the start of the industrial revolution (from 270 to 385). From an examination of ice core data, this number is higher than it has been in at least the last half million years. Deforestation and land use practices also affect climate. These factors have to be taken into account to explain the recent changes in climate, described above.”
We can argue about the detail, but when its boiled down, there is too much going on to refute the general understanding that we are over-polluting our atmosphere and have to stop. If we don’t our descendants will suffer.
Neslon: “Tamino explains why with a clarity far better than I can offer:”
so what about the 1000 -1500 year wiggles like the Dansgaard/Oeschger events and their interglacial cousins the bond events.
Under those circumstances anything less than a 2000 year trend is like to be insignificant.
Nelson said “Tamino explains why with a clarity far better than I can offer”
Tamino seems to have enrolled in the Gavin Schmidt school of statistical bombast. Why is he talking all that drivel about statistical noise, the language of mathematicians? Doesn’t he know how to read a graph?
The graph we are talking about comes from the top of this page. It is ACTUAL satellite data, not statistical inference. I’m not interested in fools who try to twist actual data with mathematics. The noise has already been removed.
That graph was created from data sets made from the actual temperatures measured in the atmosphere by satellites. The data sets were made by John Christy and Roy Spencer, two real climate scientists who were trained for at least 7 years each in atmospheric physics. How much training does Tamil have in that discipline?
Christy and Spencer are experts in creating data sets. They are both Ph.D’s and they know all about what is noise and what is signal. Spencer is an expert in satellite instrumentation.
Why are you wasting your time reading what Tamil thinks when you can get the information first hand from two of the leading climate scientists in the world?
Ricki said…”The science appears too strong”.
Ricki…there is no science, that’s what the arguement is about. Global warming computer model theory is in its infancy and is an imprecise science. Models can do a backward prediction of ‘known’ temperature history but they have to be tweaked to get agreement. If you know what you’re looking for it’s a lot easier to get there.
Computer model theory is responsible for the focus on CO2 warming because the models are based on a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere. They have predicted increasing global warming from increasing CO2 densities, and they have predicted the mid-troposphere will warm about 1.3 times the surface temperature. That has not happened, the models are wrong.
Then you said: “There has been a fairly steep rise in average temperature in the last 3 to 4 decades”.
You’ve been looking at those doctored IPCC hockey stick graphs, haven’t you? Do you call 4/10ths of a degree C a ‘fairly sharp’ increase? How is that going to cause the problems you mention? The models predicted three times that warming, at least. You need to put a little more trust in Mother Nature. She seems to know a lot more about this than we do.
Then you said: “These gases, primarily H2O and CO2 makes Earth about 33C warmer than if these gases weren’t present…”
No, no no…you have to stop reading that propaganda. The greenhouse gases (GHG’s) are not primarily H2O and CO2, it’s pretty well ALL H20. CO2 is so insignificant it’s ridiculous. Water vapour accounts for about 1% of all atmospheric gases, including nitrogen, oxygen, etc., while CO2 is about 0.03%. There are only 38 molecules of CO2 in 100,000 molecules of air (380 cups CO2 in 1 million cups of air).
H2O (vapour, that is) accounts for over 97% of the greenhouse effect. Man-made CO2 accounts for less than 3% of all CO2 in the atmosphere. That’s right, over 97% of the CO2 in the atmosphere is from natural sources, not only that, 98% of the CO2 is reabsorbed by vegetation, the land and oceans. According to Roy Spencer, the human contribution to the atmosphere is 1 molecule of CO2 in 100,000 molecules of air every five years.
Ricki…you’ve really got to stop getting your information from realclimate or desmogblog. Your theory about the last 250 years is represented perfectly on those sites. Has it never occured to you that your theory is a little too cute, and maybe the atmosphere and environment is a whole lot more complex? That’s what the satellite data is telling us.
‘Why is he talking all that drivel about statistical noise, the language of mathematicians? Doesn’t he know how to read a graph?’
I think you’re out of your depth. Please, read Tamino’s blog: I’ve probably been a bit casual throwing the term ‘noise’ around, but my point stands. The global warming signal is small, much less than normal interannual variation. Consequently you entirely expect periods of apparent temperature stasis – underlying warming is simply (temporarily) obscured. It’s a simple concept!
http://tamino.wordpress.com/
It’s a great resource for laymen like us.
Remember noise goes in both directions. Will you suddenly agree with Tamino when there’s a spike in the data that appears to show powerful warming? Then will you finally understand the importance of statistical significance when analysing any data series?
Your casual dismissal of rigorous trend analysis by a professional statistician in favour of, uhm, eyeballing is very scary indeed. I hope you don’t invest money by just eyeballing.
‘There are only 38 molecules of CO2 in 100,000 molecules of air’
This is another fundamental and ugly misunderstanding. Where on Earth do you get your science from? You have to consider potency! Would you be content breathing in nerve gas at 380 ppm, for instance? It’s only 38 molecules per 100000…
‘Man-made CO2 accounts for less than 3% of all CO2 in the atmosphere.’
Wrong again. Atmopsheric CO2 has increased by 30% since the Industrial Revolution. It’s increasing by 3ppm per year. That there is a huge natural carbon cycle is irrelevant: anthropogenic CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere (and if you dispute this, you’re plumbing new depths of denialism). And CO2 – so ‘insignificant it’s ridiculous’? It’s responsible for 9-26% of the total greenhouse effect.
If the choice is between Realclimate and whatever blogs you visit, I think I know where to get real science from.
Thanks for the support Nelson.
My worry is that those who are ignorant of the real facts will read opinions like those expressed by Gordon above and believe them. Mis-information is what it is and we don’t realy have the time to refute it.
As I said above, we are heading into uncharted territory with rises in sea levels and changing rainfall/temperature patterns which will wreak havoc to the worlds population. The potential loss of species diversity is frightening. If our inaction adds anything to the loss of the Koala, then Australia must hang her head in shame.
These things are likely to happen anyway as we already have enormous volumes in the atmosphere, even if we take firm action now (including in the international arena). We are going to see the effects well within our own lifetime. So sober up and accept the evidence and help us get on with it.
Prof Dick Thoenes of Holland and I worked together in the 1970s. He was one of the authors of the New York Heartland Report at the start of 2008. He now writes to me that –
“I believe the situation in Europe is rather frightening and quite complex.There seems to be a huge and powerful coalition. All politicians of all parties in all countries agree that global warming is a serious problem that requires huge funds, for them to spend. Then there is a powerful group of scientists who proclaim the IPCC gospel, since their research funds depend completely on it. Our national weather bureau belongs to this group. There are also a huge commercial interests involved, especially the wind turbine industry. The media only cite the believers. There is no newspaper or TV station in Europe that I know of that openly contradicts them. Sceptics are ignored completely. They are considered village idiots, particularly in England and the Netherlands.
The worst is that democracy appears to have been lost in the battle. There is in fact no free press any more, and it is only Big Brother that you hear.
To me it is unbelievable that this situation has prevailed in Europe for more than twenty years. Indeed, the politicians and the media ignore what happens elesewhere in the world.
The small group of sceptics in this country that occasionaly publish their papers on websites and in obscure journals appeart to have no influence at all. I have more confidence in the American NIPCC and the Canadian ISPM.”
So, if you think Australia is in the grip of extremists…..
Just came across this blog. What are you guys talking about? As a scientist with no horse in this race I look at the “GoreLied” graph and say of course there is a warming trend in that graph. Any statistician, anyone familiar with reading a graph can see that. Don’t believe me? Cover the part of the graph below the zero line and look at the volume under the graph above the line. Then compare it to the volume below the line. Of course there is a warming trend. What the graph shows is that while there are ups and downs every year, the trend shows warming over an alarmingly short 30 year period; 10E-9 % of the age of the earth.