Hi Alison, all the indications are for cooler wetter weather in the pacific this year as El Nina takes hold:

"The World Meteorological Organisation's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Niña would continue into the summer. This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory."

"La Niña is the cooling phase of what's called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which affects the sea surface in the central and eastern Equatorial Pacific. Niña alternates with El Nino, which raises temperatures. We're entering the Niña phase. Global temperatures have been static from their 1998 peak, when El Nino peaked."

So global temps have been static for ten years and now they are about to fall according to this very interesting paper:
http://www.schulphysik.de/klima/landscheidt/iceage.htm

If Theodor is right, we are heading for a very cold snap over the next 40 years or so with a nadir in 2030 which could be as cold as the Maunder minimum of the C17th when ice fairs were held on the Thames and Rhein.

The paper is not easy reading but rewards careful study. here's a taster:



Fig. 11: Time series of the unsmoothed extrema in the change of the sun's orbital rotary force dT/dt for the years 1000 – 2250. Each time when the amplitude of a negative extremum goes below a low threshold, indicated by a dashed horizontal line, a period of exceptionally weak solar activity is observed. Two consecutive negative extrema transgressing the threshold indicate grand minima like the Maunder minimum (around 1670), the Spoerer minimum (around 1490), the Wolf minimum (around 1320), and the Norman minimum (around 1010), whereas a single extremum below the threshold goes along with events of the Dalton minimum type (around 1810 and 1170) not as severe as grand minima. So the Gleissberg minima around 2030 and 2200 should be of the Maunder minimum type. As climate is closely linked to the sun's activity, conditions around 2030 and 2200 should approach those of the nadir of the Little Ice Age around 1670. As explained in the text, the IPCC's hypothesis of man-made global warming is not in the way of this forecast exclusively based on the sun's eruptional activity. Outstanding positive extrema have a similar function as to exceptionally warm periods like the Medieval Optimum and the modern warm period.

All of which means your local sea levels should be ok for 50 years or so at least. ;-)

Also in the paper, Theodor tells us that la Nina events will be more frequent and stronger than El Nino events over the next few decades. He successfully predicted the consecutive El Nino's of the late '90's among other climatic events using this solar activity analysis technique so he's worth more than the General Circulation Models so beloved of man made global warming enthusiasts. No doubt someone will be along soon to tell us he's a crank who didn't get published or reviewed by the currently fashionable publications and his work should therefore be summarily dismissed. Bet they won't make a proper effort to address the science though.

Time will tell...

Edited by tallbloke on 04/15/2008 01:13:16 MDT.

Pretty good debate so far.

Here is a chart I saw today that is non-scientific, but interesting...

Edited by gmatthews on 04/16/2008 10:02:00 MDT.

Sorry it took me so long to get back. i was out having a life for a change...

Rog wrote:
"I believe I referred to antarctic ice, not arctic ice."

Wups. My bad. But I still don't see how you can claim both:
A: There is no global warming, and yet...
B: Global warming is caused by solar activity, not greenhouse gases.

You seem to argue two contradictory things at different times. Either there is global warming or there isn't. Pick one, Dude.

Rog wrote:
"A couple of posts ago you asked me to provide a properly referenced source for an anti man made global warming paper, which I did above. Perhaps you could provide the source for this data you refer to, since it is at variance with NASA's satellite data, and the weather balloon data."

Here you go:

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter9.pdf

It's on page 674. And here is the data:



By the way, a lot of the people who support the solar theory about global warming love to cite Stott's paper:

http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/StottEtAl.pdf

The paper strongly supports a solar cause of temperature variance in the first half of the 20th century. Some of the links you've made cite it in the bibliographies. The problem is that the authors' conclusions state that increases in global temperature changes in the latter half of the 20th century are NOT explainable by solar activity, and are probably due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

A LOT of the papers that the solar-forcing crowd like to cite are taken out of context, as a matter of fact. I encourage anyone who is interested in this debate to invest the time in reading these papers, so that they aren't fooled.

Rog wrote:
"Heres another up to date one for the minority then."

Yep. The MINORITY. I can find papers that support human inhabitation of the western hemisphere 50,000 years ago if I try, but it would still be a minority position.

You have often dropped graphic data into your posts variously denying that global warming exists or endorsing that it exists but is a natural phenomenon. So, here is some random data, some of it redundant, all of it contradicting something you have said (mostly from Wikipedia, because it is so bloody easy to find the graphs):



That's a rather impressive spike up there at the end, isn't it?



Note how well the observed temperatures match the ones that were predicted by the model that assumes a large influence by greenhouse gasses.



My big point here its the change in the latter half of the 20th century.



Compare to the previous graph, and note how temperatures have climbed steadily despite the variations in solar activity.



I acknowledge that there are a (very) few individual glaciers that are advancing due to microclimate effects instead of retreating, but the majority are receding.



An important public service announcement.

I return to my basic point: we can go back and forth forever. No matter what, your position is greatly in the minority. Sure, you can find other RARE positions in concurrence with yours, but it is still the MINORITY. Instead of producing more fringe papers, try proving to me that they aren't the minority.

For instance, you still haven't addressed that long list of national and international scientific bodies supporting global warming caused by greenhouse gases. I merely endured a rather pathetic ad hominem attack on my source, i.e. Wikipedia. (For the record, I don't think it was you who initially tried the ad hominem.) I reiterate that I agree that Wikipedia is far from a authoritiative reference, and I only used it as a very convenient source for that list of organizations. (And, a few graphs since then.) But I also checked the sources, and the list is accurate.

So, instead of dismissing the list, address it. Ad hominem attacks are not very convincing. It's like saying "Eating a balanced diet is bad, because the Nazi's endorsed a balanced diet." (In addition to violating Godwin's Law.) I'm not talking about scientific data directly, after all- in such cases you obviously must consider the authority of the source. I'm just listing organizations that have a certain position.

Find me a dissenting organization of appropriate stature with a good reputation. (I.e. not suborned by the petroleum lobby.)

I'm going back to my life now. I think I'll stack blocks with my daughter...

Edited by acrosome on 04/18/2008 07:01:33 MDT.

>Here is a chart I saw today that is non-scientific, but interesting...

Hi George,

good point in the debate to raise this issue. Your graph shows that co2 output from "the big five" has risen from around 12.2 billion tonnes in 1998 when global temperatures peaked to around 15.4 billion tonnes in 2005.

If as Dean believes, the increases in global average temperature we saw in the second half of the last century are "probably due to anthropogenic sources" we have to wonder why global temperatures have been static for the last ten years while anthropogenic co2 output has risen 20%, and are at the same level they were in the early part of the C20th since this recent fall.

http://tinyurl.com/ysb7xo

"All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out most of the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down."

Here's the *up to date* graph of global average temperature.

Edited by tallbloke on 04/19/2008 06:02:40 MDT.

Dean writes:
>Rog wrote:
"I believe I referred to antarctic ice, not arctic ice."

Wups. My bad. But I still don't see how you can claim both:
A: There is no global warming, and yet...
B: Global warming is caused by solar activity, not greenhouse gases.

You seem to argue two contradictory things at different times. Either there is global warming or there isn't. Pick one, Dude.

You're at it again! :-)

What I actually said (in response to Arapiles back on page 1 of this debate) was:

I dont deny that there was a period in the second half of the C20th/start of the C21st when the global average temperature rose 0.6C or so. I just doubt that it has much to do with human activity. The increase of CO2 in the atmosphere doesnt correlate particularly well with temperature for one thing, whereas it correlates very closely with sunspot activity. I will dig out the graphs on my pc when I get home.

And here are the graphs to prove my point:



A very good correlation which doesn't leave very much room for another climate forcing factor.

And here are the CO2 figures from Mauna loa from 1958-2004:



This curve will obviously steepen as the major countries which are levying us for our cheap airflights continue to provide the technological expertise to help the Chinese open a new coal fired power station at the rate of one a fortnight, see Georges graph. Meantime, global average temperatures have been pretty much static for the last decade and are now on a downward trend.

Your graph of solar cycle variations correctly shows that irradiance varies around 0.1% over the sunspot cycle, and this eleven year signature can be seen in the global temperatures graph you precede it with, which unfortunately (or conveniently??) stops plotting the red line about 8 years ago (See my up to date graph above). If you were to continue the red line through the average of the blue points you'd see the temp has levelled out and started to drop since 2000.

This is also evidenced by the *up to date* lower troposphere graph (surface to 8KM):



What your solar graph doesn't show is the 16% increase in UV put out by the sun over the C20th or the total magnetic flux leaving the Sun, dragged out by the solar wind, which has risen by 230% since 1901 (Lockwood et al., 1999), while global temperature on earth increased by about 0.6°C. The precise nature of the coupling between these factors and climate is as the IPCC admit, at a low level of scientific understanding currently. Lets hope some of the $3billion global warming research honeypot gets diverted to working on a better understanding of the enormous enigmatic yellow elephant which dances daily across the firmament rather than spending it all on studying the mouses fart which is the human contribution to atmospheric co2 (3.4% of 0.039% of the atmosphere), a 'greenhouse gas' which is hundreds of times weaker than the water vapour in clouds.

In answer to your challenge to cite organisations and individual scientists which disagree with the global warming orthodoxy I'll offer the following for you to shoot down in flames ;-)

http://www.globalwarming.org/node/1521
http://www.globalwarmingheartland.org/expert.cfm
http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?ide=11
http://www.oism.org/pproject/
http://www.climatescienceinternational.org

Please note that I do not necessarily agree with or endorse the standpoints taken by these websites, organisations or individuals. I merely offer them in response to your query.

In answer to your challenge concerning your list of august organisations which don't disagree with the global warming orthodoxy I ask:

Where do these organisations get their funding from?

And in response to your assertion that 'the majority' of scientists don't disagree with global warming theory orthodoxy I ask:

Where do they get their research funding from?

He who pays the piper calls the tune. And the song is:

"Lets grab all the tax money before the public cottons on"

Anyway, I'm less interested in the murky reasons why we are being pedalled the IPCC 'storyline' (their phrase not mine), than I am in appraising the *actual scientific evidence* for both sides of the debate.

Just to put it all in a bigger perspective, I'll round off with a longterm graph of global temperature over the last 12 thousand years or so.

Edited by tallbloke on 04/19/2008 11:35:17 MDT.

quid pro quo

There are many players. Let me pick on one...

=======
Mr. Gore doing well...

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/al-gore-joins-the-vc-game-as-kleiner-perkins-partner/


http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/117/features-gore.html

Edited by gmatthews on 04/20/2008 18:07:54 MDT.

Hey George,

Fun articles, and now we can guess where Gore got the $300 million from to peddle his propaganda with in his new ad campaign. Good old John Doerr at Google.

35 Inconvenient Truths
The errors in Al Gore’s movie
A spokesman for Al Gore has issued a questionable response to the news that in October 2007 the High Court in London had identified nine “errors” in his movie An Inconvenient Truth.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html

Edited by tallbloke on 04/21/2008 01:04:44 MDT.

Please.

The last argument anthropogenic-climate change deniers want to embrace is the profit-motive trope. Whatever resources and clout fat, fat, mansion-dwelling, jet-plane-flyin', macarena-dancin' al gore and his robot climatologist minions can accumulate are essentially nothing in the face of the wealth and political heft wielded by those in opposition.

The traditional Bad Boy of energy and the preserving ye olde way, Exxon Mobil, in 2007 *earned* $40.6 billion on revenues of $404.5 billion. Industry profits were reportedly $123 billion. These numbers are sure to plunge in '08 so $18 billion of US oil and gas tax subsidies remain in place because, well, they need it doggonit. How do any of those figures compare with worldwide climate research funding? (I have not even considered the coal industry here, although Rio Tinto grossed $29.7B last year.)

Anyone, Bueller?

How about those wacky hedge fund managers? I know, let's check the 2007 numbers! John Paulson of Paulson and Company made $3.7 billion last year. That's not what his company made, that's what *he* made--one man took home the GDP of Tajikistan (you can look it up).

Whatever suspicions you may have of the motivations of those advocating reducing carbon use, profit is clearly not one. So move along and stop embarrassing yourselves.

Hi Rick,
I thought subprime mortgage levering hedge fund managers were more worried about the economy cooling than the planet heating. :-)

Rick said:
>Whatever suspicions you may have of the motivations of those advocating reducing carbon use, profit is clearly not one. So move along and stop embarrassing yourselves.

Article posted by George said:
>As part of the arrangement, Mr. Gore will donate his salary as a Kleiner Perkins partner to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit advocacy group he founded. Mr. Doerr will in turn join the board of Generation Investment Management, a $1 billion investment firm Mr. Gore founded with David Blood, a former Goldman Sachs partner...Kleiner Perkins, based in Menlo Park, Calif., last year earmarked $100 million of its $600 million investment fund to startups that work on reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The firm expects to dedicate one-third of new funding to clean tech by 2009.

Gore is making a big show of donating his salary (to his own foundation), will he I wonder, be deriving any payment from whatever profits are made by the clean tech startups (funded by Kliener Perkins) seeking to profit from "global warming by CO2 alarm" sparked by the heavily promoted and heavily flawed Gore movie?

Here in the UK our Government decided global warming and it's "probable anthropogenic cause" is a sufficiently urgent issue to have Gore's movie distributed to every school in the land for *cumpulsory* viewing.

The government got taken to the high court by a lorry driver who didn't want his children force fed Gore's porkies and the judge said that if the UK Government had not agreed to send to every secondary school in England a corrected guidance note making clear the mainstream scientific position on these nine “errors” (Moncktons article elucidates a further 26 the court "did not have the time to consider"), he would have made a finding that the Government’s distribution of the film to all English secondary schools had been an unlawful contravention of an Act of Parliament prohibiting the political indoctrination of children.

Anyway, never mind them and the oil companies, as I said in the preceding post, I'm more interested in appraising the *actual scientific evidence* around the global warming debate than the ephemera of who is funding the opposing factions.

What about the 35 errors in Gores movie elucidated by Lord Monckton that I linked? Or will they and he just be dismissed with the usual non-examination of his article and it's many references to properly peer reviewed papers written by real scientists?

I have another question for you which none of the proponents of man made global warming seem willing to tackle.

If increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from human emissions causes the global temperature to rise, how come the world's temperature has been static and then falling for the last ten years while human emissions of CO2 have risen 20%?

Surely the IPCC has a ready answer to this, given their "90% certainty" of their quantified figures for the anthropogenic contribution to global warming.

Seems to me it would be a lot more embarassing for them if they haven't got an answer than it would be for me to be raising the question.

Edited by tallbloke on 04/20/2008 03:51:15 MDT.

Hi Rog, Roger,

Here is a bit more information on the topic of S. Hemisphere temps. I understand that you know much of this, but I thought that some might find the background helpful. I don't mean for it to sound pedantic.

Below is a link to three graphs from the Hadley Center in East Anglia, England. Part of the Met Office, The Met Office Hadley Center “provides a focus in the UK for the scientific issues associated with climate change.” These graphs are from the Hadley web pages.

The graphs chart global temperature data from 1850 to the present,and show temperatures of the Northern and Southern Hemisphere, (land plus ocean surface), as well as global, land plus ocean surface.

In all three graphs, the last century’s upward trend is obvious. Also obvious is the difference between the N. Hemisphere/S. Hemisphere trends. The ocean is much slower to show a temperature increase because it absorbs and dissipates incoming energy. Land surfaces warm at a faster rate, and the difference in the NH/SH trends is due largely to the greater amount of ocean in the SH. With its larger percentage of land, the NH warms faster.

In this larger graph, without error bars, it is also apparent, especially in the SH and the combined global graphs, that recent annual temperatures are cooler. This downturn, however, does not mean that the climatic warming trend has stopped. Only time will tell if the recent Hadley data turns out to be a cooling trend, but the recent ten-year period is the warmest (globally) decade in the 167 year Hadley record.

As Rog pointed out, the influence of an El Nino or La Nina can have a large impact on short-term global temperatures. As seen in this graph from NASA, the relatively strong 1997-98 El Nino had a large influence on the 1998 spike in global temperatures. But the influence was short term. In the same way, the graph shows that the current mature La Nina is having a pronounced downward effect on global temperatures. A representative from Hadley estimates the downward temperature effect of the current La Nina as high as 1.5C. (The wording of that estimate could be clearer, however, and the 1.5 C number may be in error.) But, at any rate, La Ninos and El Ninas transport a large amount of energy between the climates sub systems.

The sun is also currently near the minimum of the 10-11 year solar cycle. The effect of this solar cycle on earth temperature is estimated to be about .1 C over the range of the cycle, but the energy does not accumulate. The small signal, in either the rising or falling phase,is difficult to disentangle from other causes of global temperature changes, but the sun is currently near the bottom of the cycle.

Another temperature record is available from the Goddard Institute at NASA. GISS (Click on the top right "Graphs" and scroll) does not graph combined land and ocean temperatures for the individual hemispheres, but GISS does separate land-based temperatures by hemisphere. Again, because land temperatures warm and cool faster than ocean, the “land temperature only” charts will show a stronger trend than the Hadley graph above that showed land plus ocean temperatures. The Hadley and GISS data for land based Southern and Northern Hemisphere temperatures can be compared. In the Hadley data the last number on the right is the annual anomaly. The annual anomaly in the GISS data is identified.

Hadley NH land based temperatures
GISS NH land based temperatures
Hadley SH land based temperatures
GISS SH land based temperatures

There are small differences in the Hadley and GISS temperature record output, and there are small differences in the data collected, and how the data is interpreted. The treatment of the Arctic is one of the larger differences. The Hadley record does not include much of the Arctic latitudes, but GISS interpolates areas of the Arctic waters from adjacent temperature stations. Since the Arctic latitudes warm more than mid and tropical, and have recently experienced pronounced temperature increases, the different methods of data treatment would be expected to influence results in the Hadley and GISS records, and they do.

Another difference in the Hadley/GISS series is the period on which the records are based. GISS temperature anomalies (temperature measurements above or below the base period norm) are calculated against the years 1951 to 1981. Hadley calculates its anomalies based on temperatures between 1961 and 1990. Since 1961-1990 was a warmer period, the Hadley anomalies are lower numerically. A comparison of the two records requires a conversion to a common base. When this is done the records are remarkably similar, although Hadley numbers are slightly and consistently lower. Nevertheless, and perhaps more importantly, with a few exceptions, the two records move in nearly parallel fashion.

Unlike the references above which link directly to Hadley and GISS, the following graph is taken from the website Open Mind. The host, or moderator of this site, Tamino, is a mathmatician who often posts on climate issues. Tamino recently converted GISS, HadCRU, (Hadley), and the NCDC (National Climate Data Center) temperature records to a common base and charted the curves. The generally cooler HadCRU temperatures are apparent, as well as HadCRU’s relatively high anomaly for 1998. HadCRU’s 2005 and 2007 anomaly is also lower than GISS or NCDC. Consequently, the HadCRU record, is often the record used as evidence that global warming "stopped" in 1998. With a lower 1998 anomaly and higher anomalies in 2005 and 2007 the GISS record is not as compatible with this argument. Through calculations of regression-line fit and residual computations, Tamino concludes that none of the three temperature records provide statistical evidence that the recent warming trend, that began in 1975, has stopped. Only more time and data will tell. The brief analysis is an interesting read.

This page also includes sea surface temperatures and some documentation and explanation of Hadley’s temperature data and its treatment.

Finally, climate data are best sampled over at least twenty-thirty years, and even this time period seems paltry when considering earth’s climate history. If the warming trend since 1975 continues statistically, the GISS graph above, charting the static annual global temperatures over the last decade is worth a second look. The graph clearly shows the annual variability in global temperature, and the potential of El Nino or La Nina to drive short-term internal variation. But this variability is statistical noise, or weather, rather than climate. And like this graph of static but high annual temperatures, the Hadley data also point to a very warm first eight years of the twenty-first century. For example, using the three data sets, HadSST, (Sea surface), HadCRUT3, (Land and sea combined) and CRUTEM3, (Land only) for the Southern Hemisphere; a comparison of the sum of the eight annual temperature anomalies 2000 through 2007, with the sum of the ten temperature anomalies 1990 through 1999, reveals that the eight anomalies from this uncompleted decade, add to a higher positive sum than the ten anomalies from the full decade of the nineties; in all three data sets. Through eight years of this decade, SH oceans, SH land, and SH land and ocean combined, are, in sum, warmer than the full decade of the nineties. The same is true for global temperatures, but I didn’t check the N. Hemisphere.

I apologize for the long post. I tried to keep it narrow.

Is this what you're referencing?

http://www.desmogblog.com/getting-cooler-what-the-world-meteorological-organization-actually-said

Looks like a case of selective reading on the part of some media types to me. The full text was here, and does little to reinforce the idea that temps of the last decade indicate a static condition.

http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/info_notes/info_44_en.html

By the same token it's hard not to find evidence, dramatic and subtle, that change is occurring everywhere.

Here in California precipitation patterns are already changing, which has profound implications for the state's future and the nation's food supply. Much of our surface water supply is accumulated and stored in the form of winter snow, and we're trending to less snow and more rain, and an earlier meltoff, paired with lower overall precipitation. The American West and Southwest are locked in a multi-year drought, as is a good swath of the Southeast.

To add to a probable era of reduced supply, the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force just advised the governor to plan for a 55-inch[!] ocean rise by year 2100 (16 inches by 2050), which would force salt water well inland into the Delta and halt freshwater exports to the south, eliminating much of the state's agricultural and urban water supplies. A mere fraction of that rise will threaten flooding across wide swaths of central California, forcing massive public works projects and/or relocation of hundreds of thousands.

If that's what the US's wealthiest state faces, what about Bangladesh? Pack up and move to India?

My "skin in the game," more important than living practically at the epicenter of all this, is my six-year-old whose future depends on what the grownups do today, not in 2025. "We still don't know" and "We can't do anything about it" are unacceptable responses. It is not mankind's nature to shirk difficult challenges, no matter how entrenched and powerful the status quo.

>>>> The last argument anthropogenic-climate change deniers want to embrace is the profit-motive trope <<<

I'm neither a denier nor a cheerleader for anthropogenic-climate change. I have read convincing info from both sides of the debate. The conclusion that I've reached is: I don't know.

I was just pointing which countries account for most of the carbon and also noting that big bucks are and will be made by some of the cheerleaders in addition to the GE's, etc. The science of global warming does not reside in an isolated lab, but dwells in the squaller of politics and economics like everything else.

>>>> John Paulson of Paulson and Company made $3.7 billion last year.

Bad example.

Paulson did his thing by betting against the herd. He did not believe the calm talk from experts that everything was going to be OK. He gambled that they were wrong, and made a fortune without hurting anybody. Tax dollars did not have to bail him out like some of those in the herd who actually did hurt many.

Rick,
I'm assuming your latest post is in reply to someone elses post that I can't see on my computer since it has nothing to do with anything I wrote in mine. If you do feel like replying to Christopher Monckton's critique of Al Gore's movie here's the link again.

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html

The WMO statement you link to contains this:

"the global average surface temperature has risen by 0.74C since the beginning of the 20th Century."

I'm looking at the datasets and finding it hard to reconcile the *actual data* with this statement. Maybe skots can help?

HadCRUT3v data runs up to March 2008.


Edited to add: Ah I see. They are talking about the rise since 1900 not 2000, though how helpful this is in a debate about what has happened to rapid global warming since 2000 I'm not sure. Maybe it's just taking a breather. I'd still like to know if anyone has an explaination for how the temperature has started to decline during the last decade while human emissions of CO2 have risen 20% though. Anyone?

Incidentally, in England from 1695 to 1733, the annual mean temperature rose from 7.25 °C to 10.47 °C, a temperature climb of ~3.25 °C in under 4 decades, at a time when there was negligible change in atmospheric CO2. Go Figure.

>we're trending to less snow and more rain, and an earlier meltoff, paired with lower overall precipitation. The American West and Southwest are locked in a multi-year drought, as is a good swath of the Southeast.

I'm sorry to hear about that, but to be fair, this is a debate about *climate*, and what you are describing is *weather*. Weather within a 30 year warming climate trend that looks like it peaked a few years ago to be sure, but weather nonetheless. In contrast, China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile......

While we're on the subjet of weather, Monckton points out:

"Gore says Hurricane Katrina, that devastated New Orleans in 2005, was caused by “global warming.” It was not. It was caused by the failure of Gore’s party, in the administration of New Orleans, to heed 30 years of warnings by the Corps of Engineers that the levees – dams that kept New Orleans dry – could not stand a direct hit by a hurricane. Katrina was only Category 3 when it struck the levees. They failed, as the Engineers had said they would. Gore’s party, not “global warming,” was to blame for the consequent death and destruction.... the number of Atlantic hurricanes shows no trend over the past half century; the number of typhoons has fallen throughout the past 30 years; the number of tornadoes has risen only because of better detection systems for smaller tornadoes; but the number of larger tornadoes in the US has fallen."

And he backs this up with references to properly peer reviewed papers by real scientists. In contrast, the website Gore promotes his alarmist propaganda with has a subsection entitled 'The Science'. It contains two references.

>the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force just advised the governor to plan for a 55-inch[!] ocean rise by year 2100 (16 inches by 2050)

Did they read the latest IPCC report? Maybe they thought it was in inches not centimetres. ;-)

I don't mean to make light of what california faces, lucky you have such a charismatic and forward thinking governor on the case I reckon. Arnie will sort it all out, he can change an entire planetary atmosphere's balance of oxygen and nasty unbreathable gases in a matter of seconds, just watch 'Total Recall'. maybe he and fantasy disaster-movie director Al Gore should team up to make a sequel: 'Total B_llcr*p'. Still, sea levels elsewhere don't seem to be rising so dramatically.
From the Monckton article:

"There have been no mass evacuations of populations of islanders as suggested by Gore, though some residents of Tuvalu have asked to be moved to New Zealand, even though the tide-gauges maintained until recently by the National Tidal Facility of Australia show a mean annual sea-level rise over the past half-century equivalent to the thickness of a human hair. The problem with the Carteret Islands, mentioned by Ms. Kreider (Gore's spokeslady at the court case in the UK), arose not because of rising sea levels but because of imprudent dynamiting of the reefs by local fishermen.

In the Maldives, a detailed recent study showed that sea levels were unchanged today compared with 1250 years ago, though they have been higher in much of the intervening period, and have very seldom been lower.


“The IPCC estimates that 150 million environmental refugees could exist by the year 2050, due mainly to the effects of coastal flooding, shoreline erosion and agricultural disruption.” However, the IPCC cannot be basing its estimate on sea-level rise, since even its maximum projected rise of just 30 cm (1 ft) by 2050 would not cause significant coastal flooding or shoreline erosion. There are several coastlines (the east coast of England, for instance) where the land is sinking as a consequence of post-ice-age isostatic recovery, or where (as in Bangladesh) tectonic subduction is similarly causing the land to sink. But such natural causes owe nothing to sea-level rise."

By the way, I'd just like to thank Skots for his measured and informative contribution to the debate, it's great to have someone who is clearly well informed as to the available empirical data who is prepared to spend time and effort to help us access these data resources.

Skots: If you check the latest entries from contributors on 'open mind's' blog, and his responses, you may get the impression he's not quite so open minded as the blog title suggests. ;-)

Edited by tallbloke on 04/22/2008 00:44:03 MDT.

"A well-established tree very close to the Maldivian shoreline and only inches above sea level was recently uprooted by Australian environmentalists anxious to destroy this visible proof that sea level cannot have risen very far."

Rigghttt .... so environmentalists (which group?) who are Australian (how was this known - did they show everyone their passports?) went to the Maldives from Australia specifically to uproot a tree (and after all, destroying trees is generally what Australian environmentalists do) because they wanted to destroy visible proof that sea levels have not risen (query - what is the link between the tree and sea levels? Did the tree use to be closer to the water and now it's further away and this damns all evidence to the contrary that there'a such a thing as global warming?)

Pretty hard to convince any Australian at the moment - suffering from what looks at least in Victoria to be a permanent drought - that there's no such thing as climate change.

And for the record, the effects of climate change are that some places will get colder and some will get warmer and some will be wetter and some will be drier. We in Melbourne drew the "drier" short straw.

Edited by Arapiles on 04/21/2008 06:53:46 MDT.

Hi, Rog,

The global land and ocean data sets from GISS or Hadley,(3V), will support the .74C rise, but the low 2007 Hadley anomaly requires the "right choice of year" from the early part of the 1900's. Support is clearly easier with GISS record. The greater influence of the Arctic in the GISS record may provide the current difference between the two records.

The year to year change in annual temperatures, seen in the data, points to the logic of using multi year averages. The last ten years, for example, include the influence of the end of a very powerful El Nino in 98, a mild La Nina during the next couple of years, a short strong El Nino during the Winter of 06 and a current strong La Nino. (I didn't look at the actual record.) The GISS anomaly for Jan 07 was .86 the warmest in record history. The Jan 08 anomaly was .12, the coolest since 1989. The precipitous drop follows the powerful, short-term ENSO influence, but will eventually be buried in a near linear thirty plus year trend line. An increase in global temps in the next several years would pull the existing end of the five year averaged trend line up. This decade, 2000 - 2009, of static or downward "annual" temperatures, depending on record, will most likely be the warmest decade in the modern record.

The Open Mind site, rather than individual graphs only, was referenced for clarity. The host is not long on patients, but criticism of his actual analysis is rare. His graph, referenced above, of the current residuals is helpful to me in understanding how current temperatures are within the 1975 - onward trend.

When I originally posted, I neglected to thank you for the compliment above. My apologies and thanks, Rog.

Edited by skots on 04/21/2008 18:42:50 MDT.

Deity, Rog, if you didn't have a long record of posting in this forum I would suspect that you were some 13-year-old troll just trying to twist everyone's knickers. ;-)

You keep referring to the *actual data*, which you seem to define as *your data*. I have posted *actual data* that contradicts yours in every way. Don't try to pass *your data* off as the *actual data* any more. It's a pretty effective debate technique, and something I would expect out of a politician, but I'm going to call you on it this time.

And, yes, you are still trying to simultaneously deny that global warming is happening (witness your insistence that global temps are stable or dropping in the last decade- why else mention it?) AND blaming global warming on solar phenomenon (a concept that you keep defending). At least you admit that short-term trends over a decade or so tell us nothing. It kind of sinks your whole argument about the temperature drop in the last decade, though, doesn't it? And, note my last graphs above- they contradict you. Again. Do we really want to play battling graphs?

So, not to back you against a wall or anything, but I'm going to back you against a wall: Are global temperatures up over the last half century or not? Let's start with that.

I'm in the process of evaluating your links to organizations with opinions on global warming. So far it doesn't look good. But then, you knew that when you posted it, didn't you? It's just fun to make me work, right? :-P

The website for the first one is a subsidiary of the Competetive Enterprise Institute, a 20-man think-tank that is funded by big business. Not exactly a "scientific organization of at least national stature," eh?

And, The Heartland Institute?!? Come on! Another big-business sponsored think-tank who's basic position is that environmental initiatives hurt the economy and impact profits. It's board of directors include executives from Exxon-Mobil, Philip Morris, and General Motors.

This from the guy who's trying to say that big money is behind the environmental lobby? Now THAT is high farce.

Friends of Science, I will admit, is a private group. It is also composed of a massive horde of five people. I can find you a website run by five guys who claim that space-aliens took Elvis and are secretly running both Hollywood and the CIA.

Ah, yes, the Seitz petition, aka the Oregon Scientific petition, IIRC. That had to come up eventually. Seitz claims that all of the 20,000 signatories are qualified scientists with "technical training suitable for the evaluation of the relevant research data." Which is a bald lie. Check them. To sign the petition you have to fill out a card where you claim to have at least a bachelor's degree. Wow, that's certainly authoritative. And EVEN THEN, only 86% of signatories ever bothered to list any degree. So, exactly what kind of people are forging- er, signing this thing? Until it was pointed out to Seitz the list included a Spice Girl, for the love of God. There's elite fact-checking for you. Likewise, CORPORATE NAMES were listed until critics called him on it! (I will admit that this was probably vandalism, but it nonetheless points out the nonexistant verification of credentials.) And a good chunk of the signatures are total fabrication: Scientific American reviewed the petition, and said this:

"Scientific American took a sample of 30 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science. Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases, 11 said they still agreed with the petition —- one was an active climate researcher, two others had relevant expertise, and eight signed based on an informal evaluation. Six said they would not sign the petition today, three did not remember any such petition, one had died, and five did not answer repeated messages. Crudely extrapolating, the petition supporters include a core of about 200 climate researchers – a respectable number, though rather a small fraction of the climatological community."

For that matter, the petition only mentions "catastrophic heating" (i.e. a runaway greenhouse) not "global warming." So, the petition isn't even about what everyone says it is, in addition to being signed by a bunch of amateurs even less qualified than me. :)

Back on track...
The ICSC? 25 guys. Well, 25 scientists, and a bunch of economists and policy wonks. And three of them are members of Friends of Science, so you only get credit for 22. But, hell, at least they're free-software users. And at least they're smart enough not to list links to their corporate sponsors, like the first two think-tanks. I actually have to work for this one.

Let's see, so far that's two corporate think-tanks, one joke of a petition, and maybe 27 scientists (assuming that ICSC isn't an Exxon front, too). Well, maybe 28 scientists if you include Seitz, who is dead.
So again, you have a (short) list of individual opinions or statements from incredibly tiny or incredibly biased groups. Not a terribly convincing response.

But at least your list of "organizations" reveals your sources. Interesting websites.

Contrast your list with mine again:

Joint Science Academy
Interacademy Council
European Academy of Sciences and Arts
Network of African Science Academies
U.S. National Research Council
American Meteorological Society
Royal Meteorological Society (UK)
World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Physics
American Astronomical Society
American Physical Society
Federal Climate Change Science Program
National Center for Atmospheric Research
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London
American Quaternary Association
Geological Society of America
American Chemical Society
Federation of American Scientists
Engineers Australia
Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
European Geosciences Union
International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
International Union of Geological Sciences
International Council for Science
European Science Foundation

Hmm. Not a piker among them, eh? Though I'll accept criticism of the engineering organizations, if it makes you feel better. :D

And by the way, your Global Lower Troposphere chart is moot. The model that I was referring to made predictions on stratospheric temperatures, not tropospheric.

We are really at the point where you are grasping at minority opinions and fringe data, like some conspiracy theorist. Like the conspiracy theorist it is impossible to convince you otherwise. Look at the vast preponderance of the evidence, not the odd stuff.

Isn't this fun? At least we're slinging mud off of the regular forums, so the layeity aren't offended.

Edited by acrosome on 04/22/2008 01:58:00 MDT.

Arapiles:
offending passage removed pending clarification from Christopher Monckton.

Update: 4/24

http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/Calen7/MornerEng.html

quick way to find relevant passage; search the page for 'prison island' about halfway down.

"There came an Australian sea-level team, which was for the IPCC and against me. Then the stu-dents pulled down the tree by hand! They destroyed the evidence. What kind of people are those? ... And I heard from the locals that they had seen the people who had pulled it down."

On the subject of old trees:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/04/17/eatree117.xml

Edited by tallbloke on 04/24/2008 04:33:16 MDT.

Hi Skots,

>The GISS anomaly for Jan 07 was .86 the warmest in record history. The Jan 08 anomaly was .12, the coolest since 1989. The precipitous drop follows the powerful, short-term ENSO influence, but will eventually be buried in a near linear thirty plus year trend line. An increase in global temps in the next several years would pull the existing end of the five year averaged trend line up. This decade, 2000 - 2009, of static or downward "annual" temperatures, depending on record, will most likely be the warmest decade in the modern record.

Near linear barring the obvious ~11 year wiggles ;-)

Conversely a downturn in global temps would leave the high point in '05 as the high water mark of the modern warm period. Place bets now! My prediction is that we'll see a cool start to solar cycle 24 followed by a slight upturn around 2011 which will be followed by a series of weak el Nino's and stronger la Ninas pulling temps downwards fairly rapidly. I'll make a more definite forecast when I've improved the model so it hindcasts with greater accuracy. :-)

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/10jan_solarcycle24.htm

I guess your professional standing may discourage you from entering into speculation, but I'd be interested to hear your views on the relative importance of atmospheric and solar forcings at different timeframe resolutions.

Are you familiar with Judith Lean's work at the NOAA Paleoclimatology Program?




Not a perfect match, but interesting how irradiance has varied over the long term, with minima coinciding with the Maunder (little ice age) and Dalton minimums, and the maxima coinciding with the modern warm period.
Look how sunspot activity virtually flatlines during the Maunder minimum. Scary ain't it?

Lets have a closer look at the modern period.



An obvious divergence in the postwar period. Possible influence of increased dust and other aerosols due to postwar construction alongside old power generation tech, coupled with nuclear testing and vulcanism? Modern agriculture practices and consequent changing planetary albedo?

Edited by tallbloke on 04/22/2008 03:33:22 MDT.

Hi Dean,

>And, note my last graphs above- they contradict you. Again. Do we really want to play battling graphs?

They don't contradict me. I have been placing an emphasis on using *up to date* data though, and your wikpedia artists impressions seem to run out of peak to get excited about around 1998. I prefer the less cluttered look of the GISS and hadCRUT data, it's straight from the horses mouth, and it doesn't superimpose other data with improbable choices of vertical axis scales designed to lead the eye up the garden path. I'm capable of appraising correlations and divergences myself without having to chew someone elses agenda at the same time.

>Are global temperatures up over the last half century or not? Let's start with that.

Now who's playing politician's rhetoric games? I've answered this twice, go back and look.

>But at least your list of "organizations" reveals your sources.

I googled those sites for you because you insisted, twice, that I should provide examples of countervailing viewpoints. I have not used any of them as sources. I am an independent reseasrcher and thinker, and it matters not a tinkers fart to me whether I'm 'in with the in-crowd' or 'out with the outcasts'. :-)

I'm interested in the science of climatology, not the posturing of opposing factions or commentators.

>Conspiracy theorist
>Piker

Yawn.

>Look at the vast preponderance of the evidence, not the odd stuff.

Good suggestion, why don't you follow your own advice?