World on course for hottest year since 1880

reply to post by Athink


No, its about Cap and Trade and billions of dollars. The Earth is just fine.

reply to post by Nathan-D

"Approximately 5% of the respondents were climate scientists." Ergo, 95% of the respondents weren't specialists in the respected field.

I think this is actually a case of the opposite thing happening. "Climate scientist" is kind of an ambiguous term, and many people who contribute to such a wide ranging field have particular expertise in something more acute. Thus someone who studies heat content in the ocean would probably list themselves as an oceanographer before saying they were a "climate scientist".

You can see in the following line of that report that the number of active publishers on climate change - hence people still quite qualified in "climate science" - goes up from 5% to 8.5%, so merely basing it on titles alone doesn't add up. Now although 8.5% might still seem like a small number, that's simply the amount of people who devote more than half of their papers to climate change. I would still think someone contributing even 5% of their work would have to know a thing or two about the subject.

But regardless the point of all that was to show how, as the level of focus specifically on climate change goes up, so does the consensus. Obviously as this focus gets narrower, so will the sample size.

I think that scientists like Svensmark, Willie Soon, Roy Spencer, Bernard Bond and Friis-Christensen have come up with good evidence that the climate over the last century is due to natural forcings (PDO, cosmic rays, solar activity, El Nino's, etc).

Well first off - I'm assuming you meant Gerard Bond and I don't know how his work applies to Global Warming since he discovered evidence of a cooling cycle, unless you mean to imply we're simply recovering from one? Now for every one of those other scientists theories - I have seen rebuttals/debunkings/inconsistencies in their work that cast their ideas into much more serious doubt than anything related to the case for anthropogenic CO2. Some examples:

Svensmark and Friis-Christensen:
www.skepticalscience.com...
www.skepticalscience.com...

Willie Soon:
en.wikipedia.org...
holocene.meteo.psu.edu... (The rebuttal from 13 climate scientists who claimed Soon had misrepresented their work)

Roy Spencer:
www.skepticalscience.com...

It was only 0.7C, which is well-within, established long-term climate trends and much of that 0.7C has been lost in the last decade as temperatures have been in a steady decline. According to the Central England Temperature Record, during the early 1700s temperature rose by 2.2C in just 36 years, which puts the warming last century in perspective.

Temperatures have not been in a steady decline over the last decade, as this thread will attest to. 2010 is on pace to be the warmest year on record, 2009 was the second warmest. There is of course some year to year variability over short sample times - but the growing linear trend is still quite apparent, probably more so than ever.

And yes I would classify 0.7C as extreme - it is first of all a global average, which makes it much more significant than any local anomaly. We are also only in the beginning stages still, and it would be utterly foolish to simply ignore all the mathematical evidence that predicted this trend in the first place over 100 years ago, that says it's only going to get much much worse, that so far has not even come close to being resolutely debunked, let alone even cast into any sort of reasonable doubt - all because some Corporate funded "free-market" shills are trying to tell us to forget it - to just keep shopping, spending and consuming, and to continue making them all very rich

You sure about that? Have you read Svensmark et al 2007 and Soon et al 2009?

Yup, see above. Don't know anything about Soon's 2009 work, but I'm guessing based on his previous record of manipulating data while taking cheques from Exxon, I won't be too impressed.

Of about 30,000 signatories they were only able to cite about a dozen whose authenticity might be suspect.

Do you have a link (preferably from an unbiased source) validating this claim? Arthur Robinson who began circulating the petition admitted they take no measures to verify the names. The link I showed you before gave numerous examples of blatantly fake ones. Desmogblog investigated and found a handful of sketchy examples in the "A's" alone. I would really love to see the evidence that 29,988 names on this petition are authentic and reputable sources on the topic of climate change.

What do think they meant when they said "hide the decline" then? Seems pretty much self-explanatory to me.

That's the whole point of this sort of soundbite propaganda. They bank on the fact that it "seems" so self-explanatory that you won't even bother to question it.

As was explained in the link I left you in my last post - the "decline" refers to the validity of tree-ring data after 1960. Tree-rings are considered a pretty reliable temperature proxy indicator up until around 1960 when the relationship between tree growth and temperature change began to break down.

There are a number of theories on why this has happened. In my opinion the most likely reason is the advent of the Jet age, contrails and global dimming. While the Earth has continued to warm (as verified in all other temperature records such as thermometers), tree growth has actually begun to decline. This is likely due to the fact less sunlight is hitting the trees thanks to global dimming. In any case, this "divergence problem" has been well known in climate science for years and has not been hidden from anyone.

The whole "trick" they used was simply for aesthetic reasons to create a nice cohesive graphic for the cover of this report. They wanted to illustrate the temperature record for the last 1000 years. There was no thermometer record 1000 years ago so they used proxy tree data from before 1960 (which correlates with thermometer data from 1880-1960) but then switched it out for "real" (aka thermometer) data after. This "decline" is much more reflective of the problems associated with recent tree ring data then it is with actual temperatures.

If the guys over at the CRU aren't frauds, then they're terrible scientists, because when they were faced with FOIA requests to release their data in which their computer model projections were based, they conveniently 'lost' the raw data.

They did not lose the raw data. This is more propaganda that was pushed out by right-wing media. I also left you this information in my last post:

Conservative media hype misleading report suggesting CRU destroyed raw climate data

Originally posted by Blaine91555
Game on! The news will be full of this. We get a little bit of a heat wave and they think the whole world will forget how cold its been and the revelation that the earths temperature has been dropping for over a decade.

Number one, a single decade is getting down a statistically insignificant time period when you're dealing with climate change. Number two, 1998 was an anomalously warm year. To pick that as a starting point is called "cherry picking."

At any rate, the decade mean combined land and sea temperature anomaly has gone up every decade since the 1960s.

Originally posted by Nathan-D

Originally posted by Aristophrenia
Yes they have done surveys - thousands - you probably missed them like all the other research which has put the issue at a probability of 97% certainty - consider that they put the sun coming up tomorrow at around 90% certainty I think we can say its a sure thing.

If I've missed them, do you mind naming any of these mass surveys? And I don't think you'll get many people agreeing with you that the science behind AGW is a 97% certainty. If it was such an open and shut case as you'd like to have people believe, there wouldn't be 30,000 scientists, 9000 with PhDs challenging the theory, together with a massive 750 peer-reviewed papers. I can tell you one thing for nothing - over here in the UK support for AGW has waned since ClimateGate.

When you quote from the chain letter email which has proven to be the most embarrassing fraud to debunkers there is - you make yourself look like and ass monkey. There are not 750 peer reviewed papers debunking climate change - thats umittigated crap. There have been two investigations into the leaked papers, and when they were leaked even the most simple minded could see that there was nothing controversial in what was leaked unless it was deliberately taken out of context and distorted - or simply not understood - two inquiries have supported this.

Originally posted by mc_squared
reply to post by Nathan-D

 

"Approximately 5% of the respondents were climate scientists." Ergo, 95% of the respondents weren't specialists in the respected field.

I think this is actually a case of the opposite thing happening. "Climate scientist" is kind of an ambiguous term, and many people who contribute to such a wide ranging field have particular expertise in something more acute. Thus someone who studies heat content in the ocean would probably list themselves as an oceanographer before saying they were a "climate scientist".

First off great to have someone else around here who can remember all the facts - I tend to read book after book after book and the facts tend to just become a given. Anyway would like to suggest that james Hansen (best book so far IMO) is a Planetologist - studies planets. Not too many of these guys as you can imagine.

I'm sure there was a lot of manipulation, distortion, and deletion of data to come up with this one!

I haven't got the time or truthfully the inclination to address every single one of your points. You're quite the dedicated type, I can see that.

Well first off - I'm assuming you meant Gerard Bond and I don't know how his work applies to Global Warming since he discovered evidence of a cooling cycle, unless you mean to imply we're simply recovering from one?

His paper regarding cosmic rays and temperature correlation going back 10,000 years using beryllium-10 isotopes.

Svensmark and Friis-Christensen: www.skepticalscience.com.

Lockwood didn't debunk Svensmarks studies - Lockwood used surface temperatures instead of atmospheric ones. Big no no. The relationship between cosmic rays and weather balloons is strong, but surface-based stations, like the ones NASA (GISS) and NOAA uses, have failed simple standard tests, regarding the accuracy of the results because they were too close to manmade heat sources (i.e. air conditioners, car parks and asphalt). The only thing that Lockwood proved is that there is no relationship between cosmic rays and air conditioners. Here are some examples of the poor state of US land-based thermometers: www.surfacestations.org...

Temperatures have not been in a steady decline over the last decade, as this thread will attest to.

Statistically speaking, they have. If you look at the satellite data (UAH and RSS). It's a downward trend. GISS data on the other hand contiunes to break records.

And yes I would classify 0.7C as extreme - it is first of all a global average, which makes it much more significant than any local anomaly.

Global temperature record-keeping only really goes back about a hundred years. That's not very long. Temperatures have been significantly higher in the past, as ice core data attests to (i.e. the Minoan Warming, the Roman Warming, the Medieval Warming, and in fact the last three interglaciations, and all of these warming periods have one thing in common, they all occurred when atmospheric-concentrations of CO2 were considerably lower, which kind of puts the kybosh on the AGW theory, doesn't it?). In fact, there's no correlation between CO2 and temperature going back 600 million years: csccc.fcpp.org... and the correlation over the last 15,00 years is equally as tenuous: www.palisad.com...

Originally posted by Nathan-D
His paper regarding cosmic rays and temperature correlation going back 10,000 years using beryllium-10 isotopes.

Cosmic radiation does not correlate with global temperatures over the last 30 years.


Reconstructed cosmic radiation (solid line before 1952) and directly observed cosmic radiation (solid line after 1952) compared to global temperature (dotted line). All curves have been smoothed by an 11 year running mean (Krivova 2003).

Originally posted by Nathan-D
Lockwood didn't debunk Svensmarks studies - Lockwood used surface temperatures instead of atmospheric ones. Big no no. The relationship between cosmic rays and weather balloons is strong, but surface-based stations, like the ones NASA (GISS) and NOAA uses, have failed simple standard tests, regarding the accuracy of the results because they were too close to manmade heat sources (i.e. air conditioners, car parks and asphalt).

Interestingly, poorly sited stations show bias on the cool side.


Annual average maximum and minimum unadjusted temperature change calculated using (c) maximum and (d) minimum temperatures from good and poor exposure sites (Menne 2010).

Originally posted by Nathan-D If you look at the satellite data (UAH and RSS). It's a downward trend. GISS data on the other hand contiunes to break records.

Actually, for UAH, the decadal trend is upwards. I'm not sure how you could see a downward trend in the highlighted area in the graph below (12/99 to 12/09):

Just so some people dont think i ran away...

www.nytimes.com...

There is a NYT article on the emails...

Here is a USA today article about the record breaking low temperatures we had this past winter.

www.usatoday.com...

Earth cycles...I dont know much about the science but its the theory that makes much more sense to me than burps and farts theory...

And to the very strange people who say "Stop using fossil fuels" I say "you first"

Originally posted by BingeBob
Here is a USA today article about the record breaking low temperatures we had this past winter.

www.usatoday.com...

The thing about global warming is that it's global. The US is but a small portion of the globe. If you look at the actual temperature anomaly for, say, February 2010, you will see that while it was colder than normal in the US, it was warmer than normal in Canada.

reply to post by Nathan-D

You're quite the dedicated type, I can see that.

The only way to get to the truth in such a complicated subject is to be dedicated and thorough. This means looking at the whole story, and not just the parts that fit one side or the other.

So with that in mind -

The connection to cosmic rays: I would not be the least bit surprised if there was a very strong correlation between cosmic rays and global temperatures over the last 10,000 years. After all a large chunk of them come from the Sun anyway, and in the absence of human influence obviously any sort of major outside forcings like this are going to be the main drivers of climate change.

But since humans have started pumping hydrocarbons into the air the game has completely changed. And to simply think you can deny our involvement by pointing to the way things were before we changed it...well...that's like telling Smokey the Bear you couldn't possibly start a forest fire because only lightning strikes caused them 10,000 years ago (or before whenever the heck man invented fire if you want to get technical).

So if you want to prove cosmic rays are driving climate now - you have to prove they are driving climate now.

That link I gave you didn't just debunk Svensmark using Lockwood's work - it pointed out at least 5 other papers/professional opinions which contradict his findings. Not the least of which is the analysis of Krikova/Solanki and Laut that show various ways the relationship between cosmic rays and global temps and/or cloud cover has completely broken down over the last 15-25 years.

If you look at the satellite data (UAH and RSS).

Ok

Let's do that.


Here's the most recent UAH data right from Roy Spencer's own website:



Here's up to date RSS data for the lower troposphere (each tick at the bottom is a year):


middle troposphere:


heck, let's even look at the upper troposphere (where the trend for the last 25 years has been relatively flat):


Note where the year 2000 is in each of those.

So the last decade shows a downward trend??
...maybe to someone experiencing a severe case of vertigo, or anyone who likes to read graphs from right to left.


...
As for the "poor state of U.S. land-based thermometers":
Yes, this is Anthony Watts' bread and butter. He is so dedicated to the truth and nothing but the truth he even has a book to sell telling you all about it** - and it's published by the freedom-fightin' Heartland Institute no less! Also if you watch the video I linked before (a video Watts tried, and failed, to have banned from Youtube by the way) you can learn more about his tireless exploits to expose the underlying "scam" surrounding surface weather station data.

There's one problem though. The people in charge of these stations (USHCN/NOAA) actually decided to address his concerns, and see if they had any merit. They compared the data garnered from all 1221 of their possibly biased weather stations to that coming from 70 sites specifically identified by Watts and his surfacestations.org team as "reliable". They found absolutely NO difference. And as nataylor already pointed out above - a more recent study Menne et al (2010) concluded that, if anything, some of the weather stations in fact contain a cooling bias.

Other papers have addressed concerns like the infamous Urban Heat Island issue, both within the U.S. and abroad, and found no noticeable effect.

So fortunately Anthony Watts' concerns have proven to be appreciated but ultimately unnecessary. Curiously though this information hasn't stopped him from continuing to try and sell his book, charge people to listen to him speak, and publish all sorts of lies and bad science on his ludicrous blog. So yeah...Watts Up With That?

(Sorry, couldn't resist )

As for the rest of your claims about CO2 not having any correlation to past warming...well...I'm getting tired of all this typing so once again I'm going to just pass the ball over to skepticalscience.com, please have a look:
Does high levels of CO2 in the past contradict the warming effect of CO2?
CO2 is not the only driver of climate
CO2 lags temperature - what does it mean?

In fact, if there's any more commonly bounced around climate denier myths you want to lob over this way - maybe have a read through skeptical science's entire list of arguments and see if they haven't already been debunked.

I'll bet you a dollar they already have.




**edit to note apparently Watts is giving his little book away for free download, which only makes sense since it's not worth the paper it's printed on.

[edit on 28-7-2010 by mc_squared]

reply to post by nataylor


Well Canada is also pretty small...YOu know whats not small???

Pretty much all of ASIA AND EUROPE!!!

Originally posted by BingeBob
reply to post by nataylor

 

Well Canada is also pretty small...YOu know whats not small???

Pretty much all of ASIA AND EUROPE!!!

Sorry, but the average global temperature anomaly for February 2010 was +0.63 degrees C, so it wasn't colder than normal. Just because it was colder were YOU are doesn't mean the globe as a whole was coler.

Originally posted by BingeBob
Just so some people dont think i ran away...

www.nytimes.com...

There is a NYT article on the emails...

OK and here's a much more recent editorial from the NYTimes, where they explain that:

Perhaps now we can put the manufactured controversy known as Climategate behind us and turn to the task of actually doing something about global warming.

and

Some of the e-mail messages, purloined last November, were mean-spirited, others were dismissive of contrarian views, and others revealed a timid reluctance to share data. Climate skeptics pounced on them as evidence of a conspiracy to manipulate research to support predetermined ideas about global warming.

The panel found no such conspiracy. It complained mildly about one poorly explained temperature chart discussed in the e-mail, but otherwise found no reason to dispute the scientists’ “rigor and honesty.”

as well as

There have since been several reports upholding the U.N.’s basic findings, including a major assessment in May from the National Academy of Sciences. This assessment not only confirmed the relationship between climate change and human activities but warned of growing risks — sea level rise, drought, disease — that must swiftly be addressed by firm action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

Originally posted by nataylor

Originally posted by BingeBob
reply to post by nataylor

 

Well Canada is also pretty small...YOu know whats not small???

Pretty much all of ASIA AND EUROPE!!!

Sorry, but the average global temperature anomaly for February 2010 was +0.63 degrees C, so it wasn't colder than normal. Just because it was colder were YOU are doesn't mean the globe as a whole was coler.

That map you posted was more blue than it was red...I took blue as being cold and red being hot...

So the quote in the email (paraphrasing) "Id rather destroy information than let i leak out..." doesnt stand out to you as being a reason to question someones integrity???

Originally posted by BingeBob
That map you posted was more blue than it was red...I took blue as being cold and red being hot...

So the quote in the email (paraphrasing) "Id rather destroy information than let i leak out..." doesnt stand out to you as being a reason to question someones integrity???

There's actually more red than blue. The map projection distorts the land areas.

And no, saying in a personal email that you'd rather delete something than release it to someone who's been harassing you doesn't seem that odd to me. What a shock... scientists are real people and get frustrated.

reply to post by Athink


So,
It was hotter 130 years ago than it is now?

Do we call it "Global Rewarming" now?

Place Earth on rack in the center of oven. Set oven for same temp as it was in 1880. Pull back foil to expose tater tots.........

Originally posted by badgerprints
reply to post by Athink

 

So,
It was hotter 130 years ago than it is now?

Do we call it "Global Rewarming" now?

Place Earth on rack in the center of oven. Set oven for same temp as it was in 1880. Pull back foil to expose tater tots.........

1880 was the date they started recording this sorta stuff.

Ah,
Gotcha.

I'm in Iraq and its around 120 every day here so I've got to make jokes or I'll go nuts. I think I may be suffering from heat stroke right now.

As for 1880 , Not much in the way of measuring devices before then I guess. I understand that the Chinese were recording weather patterns and how severe the seasons were thousands of years ago but no real means of gauging temperature.


Still liked my tater tots line though.