Global warming
This thread is for comment and discussion on any aspect of global warming not covered by other threads.
Climate Conversation Group
Taking the heat out of global warming
For the first time in history, people shouting “the end is nigh” are somehow
For the first time in history, people shouting “the end is nigh” are somehow
the sane ones, while those of us who say it is not are now the lunatics.
Latest climate models v. reality
As the models continue to leave actual temperature readings in their dust, sizeable warming halted about 1995 — although it might resume at any time. It must hasten to have any hope of catching up with the predictions.
If you claim warming continues, we want evidence of continued warming — eminently reasonable. Making us wait for 17 years for that evidence invites us to doubt you.
Claiming that warming hasn't stopped is the same as claiming it has — and both are ridiculous, for nobody knows the future. The best you can do is describe the past.
Click graph for larger version.
2009 Scientific Consensus : El Nino To Become Permanent
Posted on October 30, 2011 by Steven Goddard
ENSO has been negative continuously since May, 2010 – and has been negative for 38 out of the last 52 months.
Link should be:-
PHOTOS: Five Global Warming “Tipping Points”
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/03/photogalleries/tipping-points-climate-change/photo4.html
The Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, and tropics have all cooled substantially, consistent with the onset of another La Nina, with the tropics now back below the 1981-2010 average.
WHAT MIGHT THIS MEAN FOR CLIMATE CHANGE?
…taking a line from our IPCC brethren… While any single month’s drop in global temperatures cannot be blamed on climate change, it is still the kind of behavior we expect to see more often in a cooling world [Smiley face]
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/11/uah-global-temperature-update-for-october-2011-0-11-deg-c/
Richard Betts, head of climate impacts at the UK Met Office, writing at Bishop Hill
Most climate scientists* do not subscribe to the 2 degrees “Dangerous Climate Change” meme (I know I don’t). “Dangerous” is a value judgement, and the relationship between any particular level of global mean temperature rise and impacts on society are fraught with uncertainties, including the nature of regional climate responses and the vulnerability/resilience of society…..
read more:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/11/9/dangerous-climate-change.html
Quite a good comment from RIchard Tol in that thread:
The worrying thing is of course that when the 2K warming comes to pass (e.g., when you move from Dublin to Brighton) and nothing terribly bad happens, people lose confidence
Comprehensive article in Forbes by Peter Ferrara:-
Salvaging The Mythology Of Man-Caused Global Warming
If you read this column completely and carefully today, you will learn about the true state of the scientific debate over global warming. You will not get the truth about that from the Washington Post, the New York Times, or the rest of the self-regarded “establishment” media. They are devoted to the fun and games of play acting as if there is no legitimate scientific debate over whether mankind’s use of low cost, reliable energy from oil, coal and natural gas portends catastrophic global warming that threatens life on the planet as we know it.
>>>>>>>>>
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2011/12/01/salvaging-the-mythology-of-man-caused-global-warming/
Global warming nonsense gets a true cold shoulder
* by: Andrew Bolt
* From: The Daily Telegraph
* February 01, 2012 12:00AM
LET’S take stock of the great global warming scare and see how it’s panning out.
First, the planet hasn’t actually warmed for a decade – or even 15 years – according to new temperature data released by Britain’s Met Office.
Hmm. That’s not what global warming scientists predicted.
Look out of your window. The rain that Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery said in 2007 “isn’t actually going to fill our dams and river systems” any more has just flooded NSW and Queensland yet again.
The Bureau of Meteorology – which three years ago warned “we are just not going to have that sort of good rain again” – now admits last year was our third wettest on record.
The snowfalls that the University of East Anglia in 2000 said would soon become “a very rare and exciting event” are falling as hard as ever.
The monster hurricanes we were told to expect by Nobel Prize winner Al Gore are coming no more often.
The massive coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef that warmist Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg predicted would occur every second year from 2010 has not been seen in years.
Wherever you look it’s the same wake-up-to-yourself story. Sea levels have recently dipped, the oceans have lately cooled, Arctic ice has not retreated since 2007, polar bears are increasing in numbers, global crop yields keep rising and now some solar scientists warn not of global warming, but cooling — a far deadlier threat.
So what was that warming scare all about?
And how do the warming activists respond to this increasing evidence contradicting their theory that our carbon dioxide is heating the world dangerously?
Simple – they close their eyes in denial.
>>>>>>>>
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/global-warming-nonsense-gets-a-true-cold-shoulder/story-e6frezz0-1226258756363
One can only surmise that the warmists must be feeling a tad embattled at the moment, what with everything turning against them: the climate; the atmosphere; the ocean; the sun; the astrophysicists; the media; the politicians; the public; the growing body of scientists now willing to speak out and refute CAGW.
Normally in these situations I try to make an effort to resist the temptation to succumb to schadenfreude but in the case of CAGW adherents I think I will make an exception.
Natural Climate Change
The Debate on Global Warming
Throughout the last decade, the debate has moved beyond the question of the existence of global warming to understanding the nature, extent, and predictability of these dynamic global climate changes that we are now experiencing first hand. Although considerable attention and resources have been dedicated to advocates of the greenhouse gasses theory, particularly those adherents who tend to emphasize man’s contribution to increased atmospheric CO2, many fundamental questions about global warming remain unanswered. For example:
NCC has identified two main camps within the global warming debate:
These are links to articles of interest within each side of the debate. The purpose is to present scientifically grounded arguments in support of each camp in order to help you determine the relative merits and future direction of this ongoing debate. The opinions reflected in these articles of interest are not necessarily representative of NCC’s views.
AN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF THE DEBATE – AN OCEAN ORIENTATION
Are Anthropogenic Greenhouse Gases or Natural Geophysical Forcings the Cause of Climate Change? – The Real Story Behind Global Warming:
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Precedent Geo-Magnetic Jerks, Earthquakes, Episodic Hydrothermal Venting/Ocean Warming:
>>>>>>>>
CASE STUDIES OF EPISODIC HYDROTHERMAL VENTING AS AN APPARENT DRIVER OF CLIMATE CHANGE
>>>>>>>>
http://naturalclimatechange.com/thedebate.html
Described as “an incredibly detailed analysis” by AJStrata – I’m inclined to agree.
Update To The Geothermal Basis For ENSO
Published by AJStrata
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/18096
University of Auckland has had its head in the clouds
Published: 6:15AM Wednesday February 22, 2012 Source: ONE News
The University of Auckland has had its head in the clouds, and its conclusion is they are getting lower.
The university looked at ten years of data from Nasa’s terra telescope to discover the average cloud height decresed by 1% over the past decade.
The telescope showed fewer clouds were occuring at higher altitudes.
Researchers believe a significant reduction in cloud height would lead to reducing the surface temperature of the planet and slowing global warming.
http://tvnz.co.nz/technology-news/university-auckland-has-had-its-head-in-clouds-4736355
Repentance required for climate change ‘shrug culture’ say UK church leaders
Posted on February 22, 2012 by Steve Milloy
“The threat of runaway climate change is the most significant moral question facing us today.”
Ekklesia reports:
http://junkscience.com/2012/02/22/repentance-required-for-climate-change-shrug-culture-say-uk-church-leaders/
What’s the second-most significant moral question facing us today?
David Suzuki – “Lets’ suppose the world’s legitimate scientific institutions and academies, climate scientists, and most of the world’s governments are wrong.”
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Environment/Suzuki/2012/03/07/19470401.html
OK by me David
Suzuki’s still stuck with that Big Oil conspiracy.
They just won’t let it go.
New theory: CO2 makes you fat
March 11, 2012 – 02:02
Danish researchers have announced a rather wild hypothesis: Perhaps we are getting fatter and fatter because of the increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
http://sciencenordic.com/new-theory-co2-makes-you-fat
“We breathe more CO2, which makes our blood more acidic; this affects our brain, so we want to eat more”
Yikes! Blood acidification.
What happens when the tipping point is reached – crowd crush at McDonalds?
I’ve heard (second hand) that smoking marijuana has a similar effect.
It is good to see that the ODT is finally publishing sceptical voices.
http://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/opinion/217521/its-getting-colder-not-warmer
There was a rather curious comment from Mike Palin on that article stating that the BEST project confirmed the hockey stick graph.
David Evens’ opinion article has made it to the Stuff website:-
Global warming science tackled
http://www.stuff.co.nz/science/7400061/Climate-change-science-tackled
Excellent concise synopsis and comments are open.
Also in SMH titled:-
Climate change science is a load of hot air and warmists are wrong
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/climate-change-science-is-a-load-of-hot-air-and-warmists-are-wrong-20120801-23fdv.html#ixzz22Lg8iAuG
60 comments there but now closed.
The trolls are out on the Stuff website
Gareth has posted about the Stuff article by Evans
Vacuous from Gareth except this:-
He then links to AR4 showing an OCEAN-ONLY TPW graph from 2005 with a very unscientific linear trend slapped on it:-
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3s3-4-2-1.html
The AR4 graph is here http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/fig/figure3-20.jpeg
Problem for Gareth (and modelers) is that time has moved on and new papers on TPW (a very uncertain area) are coming out, latest being Vonder Haar et al 2012 covered at WUWT:-
New paper on Global Water Vapor puts climate modelers in a bind
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/new-paper-on-global-water-vapor-puts-climate-modelers-in-a-bind/
The Vonder Haar Global Monthly Average TPW Series looks a lot different to the AR4 ocean-only series and only a one eyed warmist wearing blinkers would dare to apply a linear trend to it. If anything, the series at 2010 is back where it was in 1988.
Cindy seems a bit upset. However, in the interests of balance, it’s worth noting that Greenpeace are running their Polar Bear in London piece on TV3 and 4 this month (so rumour has it anyway)
Certainly raised some hackles – Cindy’s really upset:-
What she is experiencing (albeit ignorantly) is what sceptics have been facing in the media for yonks.
Rob Painting’s trotting out his usual rubbish:-
Apparently that’s the IPCC’s greatest problem too.
John Russel has the same misunderstanding as Gareth:-
All very well understood by scientists, engineers, chemists, HVAC and refrigeration specialists, and probably a number of other disciplines too but not by Gareth and John.
The Clausius-Clapeyron relationship does have a meteorological application and even climatological but Gareth and John Russel assume that the atmosphere will just keep on holding extra water vapour as temperature (that they also assume) keeps on rising irrespective of the pressure input.
That is rubbish, water vapour condenses and precipitates out in the right conditions and pressure is critical to that process of cloud formation and thence rain. There’s a change of phase line between triple point and critical point where water vapour changes to liquid dependent on temperature and pressure in the phase diagram for water (blue line):-
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/34/Phase-diag2.svg/300px-Phase-diag2.svg.png
From Wiki Clausius–Clapeyron relation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clausius%E2%80%93Clapeyron_relation
Needless to say, the empirical observations of Vonder Haar 2012 do not reveal any accumulation of atmospheric water vapour – it’s a self regulating system without the “additional warming” (positive feedback) that John Russel and Gareth Renowden imagine.
A Cool-Headed Climate Conversation With Aerospace Legend Burt Rutan:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/09/09/a-cool-headed-climate-conversation-with-aerospace-legend-burt-rutan/
Worth a read
Richard Courtney has a potted history of the Global Warming Scare at Tallblokes
SkS shoots themselves in the foot here I think:-
New research from last week 37/2012
Local growing season length has increased globally almost a day per decade since 1901
Multidecadal variability in local growing season during 1901–2009 – Xia et al. (2012) [FULL TEXT]
Abstract: “Global warming exerts a lengthening effect on the growing season, with observational evidences emerging from different regions over the world…”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/new_research_37_2012.html
Goodness! Global warming has benefits – who knew?
NZCSC member and avid letter writer Joe Fone has just published a book, available soon from Amazon
http://www.amazon.ca/Climate-Change-Man-made-Joe-Fone/dp/1906768951
Record low temperatures in Bangladesh
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Jan. 9 (UPI) — Bangladesh has recorded its lowest temperatures in nearly 60 years, an unexpected result of global warming, scientists said.
In the capital of Dhaka and elsewhere in the country the temperature dropped to 37.7 degrees F Wednesday, the lowest temperature in the last 57 years,
[...]
Experts are blaming the cold temperatures on more intense cold fronts resulting from global warming melting polar ice.
“Extreme events are on the rise throughout the world and they will continue to increase further due to global warming,” said Aninun Nishat, an environment specialist.
“We’re part of the world. So, we’re also feeling here the pinch of the global warming.”
Read more: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2013/01/09/Record-low-temperatures-in-Bangladesh/UPI-16051357767641/#ixzz2HhmPQj4o
Global warming stopped 16 years ago, Met Office report reveals: MoS got it right about warming… so who are the ‘deniers’ now?
By David Rose
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2261577/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-Met-Office-report-reveals-MoS-got-right-warming–deniers-now.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
“We all get things wrong, and by definition futurology is a risky business. But behind all this lies something much more pernicious than a revised decadal forecast. The problem is not the difficulty of predicting something as chaotic as the Earth’s climate, but the almost Stalinist way the Green Establishment tries to stifle dissent.
There is, for example, the odious term ‘denier’. This is applied to anyone who questions the new orthodoxy about global warming. It doesn’t matter if one states that yes, CO2 does warm the planet, but the critical issues we need to address are how fast and how much: if one doesn’t anticipate catastrophe, one must be vilified, and equated with those who deny the Holocaust.
Yet the real deniers are those who don’t just claim that the pause is insignificant, but that it doesn’t exist at all. Such deniers also still insist that the ‘science is settled’. The truth is that the unexpected pause has triggered a new spate of research, in which many supposed ‘consensus’ conclusions are being questioned.”
David Bellamy: ‘I was shunned. They didn’t want to hear’
The botanist, 80 this week, says the end of his TV career was caused by his views on climate change. Paul Cahalan meets David Bellamy
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/david-bellamy-i-was-shunned-they-didnt-want-to-hear-8449307.html
Global Temperature Update Through 2012
15 January 2013
J. Hansen, M. Sato, R. Ruedy
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2013/20130115_Temperature2012.pdf
Concedes “Global Warming Standstill.” (pg 4)
Discounts solar forcing but doesn’t consider oceanic thermal inertia (pg 4). But offers “the great thermal inertia of the ocean” as a reason for planetary energy imbalance (pg 5).
Along with UKMO, discovers different ENSO conditions predominate from time to time but “We conclude that background global warming is continuing” (pg 6). “Background global warming” is the warming you have to imagine BTW (just to be clear).
The largest forcing is GHGs apparently, but makes things very confusing with what must be a typo (pg 5):-
“The annual increment in the greenhouse gas forcing (Fig. 5) has declined from about 0.05 W/m2 in the 1980s to about 0.35 W/m2 in recent years8″
There were 3 of them to self-check this document but none of them could see that.
And that synopsis is just from a quick skim folks.
On aerosols:
and then
So aerosols are the second most important human “forcing”, it is an educated guess, we had one satellite mission to measure it but it was lost in a launch failure and the are no plans for a replacement
I am just speechless
Other than the typos it does seem a fairly honest piece of writing in that they acknowledge the uncertainties and makes better reading than some of the activist material on the “hiatus” in warming.
I agree, although I’ve yet to read word-for-word. There’s not so much of the “settled science” stuff and they offer an insight into some very unsettled thinking and uncertain processes.
It’s the fall-back to “background global warming” that gets me (otherwise known as “the true global warming signal”). This is the notion pushed by Foster and Rahmstorf, SkS, et al, that “exogenous” factors can be “taken out” but I call bogus (and got sent to The Twilight Zone for doing so at Hot Topic). That all started here at SkS I think:-
http://skepticalscience.com/foster-and-rahmstorf-measure-global-warming-signal.html
Hansen, Ruedy and Sato don’t actually present their rationale for “background” warming in terms of an F&R-style “measure”, they just “conclude” hand waving-style in the report.
The problem with the F&R methodology is that when the “exogenous” energy is left in as climate models of course do, the upwards F&R trajectory from 2010 is not maintained and as the UKMO revision demonstrates, a flat trajectory is projected instead:-
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/shift-in-british-climate-analysis-blunts-governments-short-term-warming-forecast/
Effectively as I see the situation, the UKMO (HadGEM3) and Russian Academy of Sciences (INM-CM4) are now completely at odds with Hansen, Ruedy and Sato at NASA GISS and Foster, Rahmstorf and Cazenave at SKS (not that they’re an institution) in the context of the vaunted “background” trend/signal meme.
The F&R approach will come back to bite them because they will also have to “remove” any future El Nino to be consistent. Given that all warmists – notably Hansen and Renowden here locally – are eagerly anticipating the next big El Nino to get warming back on track, they”ll tie themselves in knots trying to self-validate keeping El Nino in on one hand and taking it out on the other.
The “background” warming trend/signal meme only has a year or two to survive I think so we’ll have to suffer it a while yet but given all the natural cycles and new improved projections I’m sure it will be buried by the end of this 5 yr prediction period.
Conversely, compare Hansen’s handwaving and uncertainty with this piece from Slate
and concluding
That first “sticky bunk” snippet could equally be applied as a “case in point” to the “true background signal” touting (and recourse to SkS for it in that article too of course).
As could the conclusion “when they have to manipulate the data to support their point, then what they’re doing isn’t science”.
Phil Plait overdoes the angst a tad, he’ll blow a fuse if he keeps that up.
Re aerosols:-
‘A bit of a bombshell from the AGU IGBR: Black carbon is a larger cause of climate change than previously assessed’
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/15/a-bit-of-a-bombshell-from-the-agu-igbr-black-carbon-is-a-larger-cause-of-climate-change-than-previously-assessed/
“The landmark study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres today says the direct influence of black carbon, or soot, on warming the climate could be about twice previous estimates. Accounting for all of the ways it can affect climate, black carbon is believed to have a warming effect of about 1.1 Watts per square meter (W/m2), approximately two thirds of the effect of the largest man made contributor to global warming, carbon dioxide.”
“In addition, the report finds black carbon is a significant cause of the rapid warming in the Northern Hemisphere at mid to high latitudes, including the northern United States, Canada, northern Europe and northern Asia. Its impacts can also be felt farther south, inducing changes in rainfall patterns from the Asian Monsoon. This demonstrates that curbing black carbon emissions could have significant impact on reducing regional climate change while having a positive impact on human health.”
# # #
Think Beijing air pollution. This (BC) along with LULUC is the about the only aspect of climate change that I think is worthwhile examining and following up on because it is about air/water/land quality and stewardship but more importantly human health.
I got the impression that Christchurch’s regulations in respect to air quality were a bit heavy-handed (e.g. modern wood/coal burners) but I don’t really know the issues there well enough to make an assessment. In any event, those are far more sensible and realistic mitigation measures even if heavy-handed than the undoubted excessively heavy-handed long-term guess-based Kapiti Coast sea level regulations in my view.
Christchurch smog used to be really bad (I used to smell like a bonfire after a 10km bike ride to work, when i would regularly have to wear a face mask)
I think it is a bit better now, but the regulations on no wood burners for new houses is crazy in my view as wood burners are quite clean these days.
I’d really like to hear about the black carbon emissions from places like Drax in the UK now that they are proposing to move to biomass. I suspect that most of the worst is from places like China.
I remember that WUWT article about carbon in Greenland, and I saw that Jason Box was trying to raise money for a project to investigate this over at HT
http://hot-topic.co.nz/wildfire-smoke-bad-news-for-greenlands-ice-dark-snow-project-needs-your-money/
So not only does there appear to be no funding for this kind of research, there is no satellite to measure airborne aerosols. All the money is in CO2
I wonder why…?
Researchers Puzzled About Global Warming Standstill
by Axel Bojanowski,
How dramatically is global warming really? NASA researchers have shown that the temperature rise has taken a break for 15 years. There are plenty of plausible explanations for why global warming has stalled. However, the number of guesses also shows how little the climate is understood.
>>>>>>>>
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=10989
Lot’s of speculation and tenuous explanation including the same line spun by Hansen, Sato and Ruedy:-
Yeah right. There was only one La Niña event overlapping both 2011 and 2012 but 2012 also had a complete El Niño event. The previous 3 La Niña’s don’t show a rising trend either.
German media waking up? Another paper raising questions, on front page no less:-
Major German Daily Carries Front-Page Headline: “Global Warming Keeps Us Waiting…CO2 Over-Estimated?”
http://notrickszone.com/2013/01/21/major-german-daily-front-page-headline-global-warming-keeps-us-waiting-co2-over-estimated/
“Is carbon dioxide being over-estimated? British scientists announce: the temperature increase stopped already 15 years ago.”
Whatever happened to global warming?
Margaret Wente
The Globe and Mail [Canada]
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/whatever-happened-to-global-warming/article7725145/
“In other words, climate change is very, very complicated. Greenhouse gases emitted by burning fossil fuels are just one of many factors that affect the climate. Other factors – ocean temperatures, soot, clouds, solar radiation etc. – turn out to be a lot more important than we thought and aren’t so easily captured by computer models.”
Global Warming: Anthropogenic or Not?
AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW FROM DOWN UNDER
Professor Robert (Bob) Carter
Geologist & environmental scientist
Katharine Hayhoe, PhD, who wrote the December AITSE piece “Climate Change: Anthropogenic or Not?”, is an atmospheric scientist and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. She is senior author of the book “A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions”.
I am a senior research geologist who has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers on palaeo-environmental and palaeo-climatic topics and also author of the book, “Climate: the Counter Consensus”.
Quite clearly, Dr. Hayhoe and I are both credible professional scientists. Given our training and research specializations, we are therefore competent to assess the evidence regarding the dangerous global warming that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) alleges is being caused by industrial carbon dioxide emissions.
Yet at the end of her article Dr. Hayhoe recommends for further reading the websites RealClimate.org and SkepticalScience.com, whereas here at the outset of writing my own article I recommend the websites wattsupwiththat.com and http://www.thegwpf.org (Global Warming Policy Foundation). To knowledgeable readers, this immediately signals that Dr. Hayhoe and I have diametrically opposing views on the global warming issue.
The general public finds it very hard to understand how such strong disagreement can exist between two equally qualified persons on a scientific topic, a disagreement that is manifest also on the wider scene by the existence of equivalent groups of scientists who either support or oppose the views of the IPCC about dangerous anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming (DAGW).
In this article I shall try to summarize what the essential disagreement is between these two groups of scientists, and show how it has come to be misrepresented in the public domain.
>>>>>>>>
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/30/global-warming-anthropogenic-or-not/#more-78404
“The reality is, then, that no scientist on the planet can tell you with credible probability whether the climate in 2030 will be cooler or warmer than today. In such circumstances the only rational conclusion to draw is that we need to be prepared to react to either warming or cooling over the next several decades, depending upon what Nature chooses to serve up to us.”
This article, from WUWT, is one of the best “aha” moments I have had for a couple of years. It discusses the idea of black-and-white thinking in the CAGW debate. Well worth the read imho.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/05/categorical-thinking-and-the-climate-debate/#more-81272
And this rather long comment about the article is well worth the time to read also:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/05/categorical-thinking-and-the-climate-debate/#comment-1239201
>”I think that linguistics has a very real part to play in the Climate change debate”
As soon as you go from detail to abstract the debate changes fundamentally – if it can even be continued point-for-point. See the ‘Skeptical Science’ thread (link below) where I resurrected a comment (deleted by Mods) from Tom Curtis at SkS who “taught” me AGW using a reservoir and tap analogy full of assumptions.
I’m not sure if he was intentionally condescending or genuinely trying to clarify a concept but why didn’t he just go with all the conventional terminology without recourse to an analogy? I’m inclined to think he used the simple abstract concept because he assumed I would understand AGW as he did by his reduction because in his view it is all so simple. I find these types have difficulty putting together a detailed argument using conventional terms.
Observations render his analogy moot of course. And the SkS Mods removed his carefully compiled comment from view, poor guy. See:-
http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/open-threads/climate/controversy-and-scandal/skeptical-science/#comment-177596
THE GLOBAL WARMING STANDSTILL
Dr David Whitehouse
http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2013/03/Whitehouse-GT_Standstill.pdf
Ian Wishart has run with the Whitehouse report:-
‘Global warming stopped in 1997 – new study’
http://www.investigatemagazine.co.nz/Investigate/?p=3389
Turned up in Google News ‘Science’ but not in ‘Climate Science’
The new Mini Ice Age is upon us!
Piers Corban
“MIA fingerprint now overwhelming”
● World cooling is now ‘locked-in’
“The CO2 story is over. It has been pointing the world in the wrong direction for too long. The
serious implications of the developing MIA to agriculture and the world economy through the
next 25 to 35 years must be addressed.”
http://climaterealists.com/attachments/ftp/WANews13No5_The_new_Mini_Ice_Age_is_upon_us_IdesMarch.pdf
Unless I misread Dave Frames comment, his view is that agricultural emissions of methane is a non problem.
http://hot-topic.co.nz/why-is-federated-farmers-promoting-climate-denial-during-a-major-drought/#comment-37254
James Hansen, Pushker Kharecha and Makiko Sato have stirred up a hornets nest (if you read past the anti-coal spin):-
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.nz/2013/03/hansens-mea-culpa-says-man-made-global.html
Food for thought for Dave Frame re methane Andy?
The methane issue keeps coming back ( as it should because NZ is very exposed to this via a potential ETS on methane)
Neil Henderson’s comments in the HT thread are pretty much my views too. I don’t know if he got the numbers wrong as DF claims, but the fact is that if methane emissions from cattle will cause 0.2 degrees of warming globally, according to IPCC scenarios, then the contribution for NZ will be absolutely miniscule, and we will be the only ones doing it.
Many farmers around my way are living a subsidence lifestyle. A tax on methane will bury them
Ian Wishart: Global warming – did we get it wrong?
“The essence of the “ice age” warning stems from some Russian research suggesting we are going to get colder. Tie that in with a massive drop in sunspots and solar magnetic activity in what NASA scientists are comparing to the cold spell of the Dalton Minimum, and confirmation by the UN IPCC climate change convenor Rajendra Pachauri (reported in The Briefing) that there has been no significant global warming since the 1990s, and you can see why some are seeing a frigid future.”
“In themselves, the graphs show that the rise of modern temperatures may have far more to do with Earth coming back into balance from the Little Ice Age than CO2 emissions, but the question now is why have the temperature increases stopped? Is it the drop in solar activity? What happens if the cold feeds on itself as it has in the past in just a short space of time and if so, are we about to be plunged back into a new, cold, dark age?”
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=11406
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Thing is in those cold periods, it’s not cold ALL of the time. Just that when it’s cold it’s really cold and prolonged, crops fail, people and animals die. There’s a glimpse of this right now in Europe and wider Northern Hemisphere vs heat in the Southern Hemisphere but the current situation is only a harbinger and not conditions directly comparable to a solar minimum (we’re currently just past a maximum).
The real conditions that will develop for the coming solar minimum – whether similar to Sporer, Dalton, Maunder etc – will be very different to the current climate regime and the only way to know what to expect from the respective scenarios is to study what was historically documented for each of them and relate that to current cold weather events in order to get a handle on what each scenario would produce in the decades to come. The link between sunspot numbers and wheat prices has been known since William Hershel in 1802 for example.
I just don’t see these risk scenarios factored in to policy planning anywhere. Every risk is a continued warming scenario of some degree, In terms of risk and preparedness this is highly negligent on the part of planners because the repercussions of prevailing cold in the spectrum of solar minimum scenarios ranges from agricultural producer and production price difficulties, similar energy supply, domestic product and basic living condition difficulties, to horrendous international food commodity market upheaval and producer/production failure, inability to survive energy supply breakdown, famine, and widespread death of people and animals.
I think it is high time everyone stopped fixating only on the warming scenario argument (will it just be a little warmer or much hotter?) and started presenting the full spectrum of future climate possibilities with the respective attendant mitigation and adaption strategies. The solar downturn commenced in 2013 so there is now no escaping a change of climate regime to one of the past minimums as a result, The minimum is predicted for 2042 and thereabouts so there is less than 30 yrs to prepare. Question is: how long will it take for the people that matter to acknowledge the risk?
The precautionary principle – if is to be invoked for this application – works both ways,
RichardC
I’ve just read that the BEST temperature records show that 30% of the earth’s land surface experienced an overall cooling trend during the 20th century (despite aggregate warming of 0.8°C), and that Britain was one of the countries in that cooling group.
With your energy and talent for researching tasty web morsels, I wondered whether you could discover whether New Zealand or Australia were also amongst BEST’s cooling areas?
Hello Barry, your question:-
>”I wondered whether you could discover whether New Zealand or Australia were also amongst BEST’s cooling areas?”
Neither appear to be. See ‘List of Countries’ index:-
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/country-list/
Regional Climate Change: New Zealand
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/regions/new-zealand
Regional Climate Change: Australia
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/regions/australia
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>”Britain was one of the countries in that cooling group”
Not from this BEST UK series:-
Regional Climate Change: United Kingdom
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/regions/united-kingdom
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HadCET has taken a dive in the 21st century, now below 1659 levels:-
http://junksciencearchive.com/MSU_Temps/HadCET_an.png
I think that’s where items about UK cooling come from along with some of the recent UK winter comparisons.
Mike Jowsey posted this re UK:-
An interesting comment on long term temperature trends in the UK
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/27/a-sea-change-on-climate-sensitivity-at-the-economist/#comment-1258741
“Statistics from the Met Office Central England Temperature Record from the year 2000 onwards show: 2000 – 2012 annual trend figures: -0.7°C. This is equivalent to almost all the agreed global warming since 1850.”
Barry, the cooling trends are station-specific, not region-specific i.e. the cooling stations are interspersed among warming stations. See:-
‘Influence of Urban Heating on the Global Temperature Land Average Using Rural Sites Identified from MODIS Classifications’
Charlotte Wickham1, Judith Curry2, Don Groom3, Robert Jacobsen3,4, Richard Muller3,4, Saul Perlmutter3,4, Robert Rohde5, Arthur Rosenfeld3, Jonathan Wurtele3,4
http://berkeleyearth.org/pdf/berkeley-earth-uhi.pdf
Page 7,
“67% of the slopes are positive, i.e. there are about twice as many warming stations as cooling stations. The dispersion is larger in the records of short duration, but even in the stations with records longer than 30 years, 23% have negative trends.”
Page 8,
Figure 3 Temperature trends. A histogram of the trends
Page 10,
Figure 4. Map of stations in and near the United States with at least 70 years of measurements; red stations are those with positive trends and blue stations are those with negative trends.
Histogram, global trends
http://s.mcateer.id.au/images/dist.jpg
Map, US trends
http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Caryl1.gif
Thanks, Richard.
The BEST graph bears no resemblance at all to the Salinger graph, with a burst of heating in 1910-18 and mild changes around 1950. Do they get these wildly divergent slopes by throwing darts?
It’s also interesting that BEST thinks NZ warmed more slowly than either the global or the SH averages – until 1990 –when we took off, leaving the rest of the SH in the dust.
I’ve no idea what significance should be given to their various figures and graphs.
Barry I decided after looking at BEST’s NZ series from 1840 -1860 that it was garbage unrelated to actual NZ conditions.
But re the 21st century end, did you notice the discrepancy between the typical 21st century absolute values of mean temperature implied by the BEST series and recent values by NIWA e.g.
11.5 C BEST (moving average)
12.5 C NIWA (for 2012 and little ENSO activity – 2010 El Nino yr was 13.1)
Now plot 12.5 C on BEST’s NZ series:-
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Regional/TAVG/Figures/new-zealand-TAVG-Trend.png
I’m sure you will see what I’m getting at.
Right. But I’m afraid that tends to confirm your assessment that the BEST record is garbage. NZ has never had an average absolute temp as low as 11.5°C.
The 1868 composite recorded at Turnbull library shows 13.2°C as the earliest available national average. That was the highest of the several published series, but even the lowest was above 12°C.
>”The 1868 composite recorded at Turnbull library shows 13.2°C”
BEST has 1868 at just above 10.5°C – a 2.5°C mismatch.
So that proves it. We must be feeling warmer by now.
Ocean Cooling Contributed to Mid-20th Century Global Warming Hiatus
Sep. 23, 2010 — The hiatus of global warming in the Northern Hemisphere during the mid-20th century may have been due to an abrupt cooling event centered over the North Atlantic around 1970, rather than the cooling effects of tropospheric pollution, according to a new paper appearing Sept. 22 in Nature.
David W. J. Thompson, an atmospheric science professor at Colorado State University, is the lead author on the paper. Other authors are John M. Wallace at the University of Washington, and John J. Kennedy at the Met Office and Phil D. Jones of the University of East Anglia, both in the United Kingdom.
The international team of scientists discovered an unexpectedly abrupt cooling event that occurred between roughly 1968 and 1972 in Northern Hemisphere ocean temperatures. The research indicates that the cooling played a key role in the different rates of warming seen in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres in the middle 20th century.
“We knew that the Northern Hemisphere oceans cooled during the mid-20th century, but the sudden nature of that cooling surprised us,” Thompson said.
While the temperature drop was evident in data from all Northern Hemisphere oceans, it was most pronounced in the northern North Atlantic, a region of the world ocean thought to be climatically dynamic.
More>>>>>>
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100922132002.htm
Global Cooling – Methods and Testable Decadal Predictions
Posted on April 2, 2013 by Guest Blogger
Guest post by Dr. Norman Page
1. Methods and Premises
[...]
4.The present analysis which looks ahead to 2042 and 2106 is based on a few simple ideas and empirical observations..
a) There has been no net warming since 1997 with CO2 up 8+% .Global Temperatures have been declining since 2003-4 The period from 2003- 2005 represents a peak in both the 60 year PDO cycle and in a millennial solar cycle.
b) Because of the thermal inertia of the oceans and the more extreme regional high frequency variability of the land data the Global SST data are the most useful representation of the overall global climate trend.
[...]
3. Summary
1. Significant temperature drop at about 2016-17
2. Possible unusual cold snap 2021-22
3. Built in cooling trend until at least 2024
4. Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2035 – 0.15
5. Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2100 – 0.5
6. General Conclusion – by 2100 all the 20th century temperature rise will have been reversed,
7. By 2650 earth could possibly be back to the depths of the little ice age.
8. The effect of increasing CO2 emissions will be minor but beneficial – they may slightly ameliorate the forecast cooling and help maintain crop yields .
9. Warning !! There are some signs in the Livingston and Penn Solar data that a sudden drop to the Maunder Minimum Little Ice Age temperatures could be imminent – with a much more rapid and economically disruptive cooling than that forecast above which may turn out to be a best case scenario.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/02/global-cooling-methods-and-testable-decadal-predictions/
Global warming: time to rein back on doom and gloom?
Climate change scientists acknowledge that the decline in rapid temperature increases is a positive sign
By Geoffrey Lean, 05 Apr 2013, 451 Comments
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/9974397/Global-warming-time-to-rein-back-on-doom-and-gloom.html
“Besides, a broader problem remains: on present policies, atmospheric CO2 levels will not stop rising when they reach the doubling point, but go on soaring past it – meaning that the world will still reach the danger point, even if more slowly.”
Unless of course the rising CO2 levels are primarily a natural lagged effect of solar-driven rising temperature rather than being due to fossil fuel emissions (the lessor factor by far) in which case CO2 will not “go on soaring” when temperatures fall as they inevitably will now solar input is falling.