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Comments 125401 to 125450:

125401. Berényi Péter at 10:50 AM on 21 January 2010
        Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
        chris, the McCarthy at al. paper is outrageous. One simply does not use such a convoluted series of ad hoc data "enhancement" techniques. Never. It is horrible, worse than guesswork. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7598/is_20091115/ai_n42654412/?tag=content;col1 The first thing to do, as I have already mentioned, is to identify the instrument type used for each measurement, then correct for deterministic errors using experimentally established instrument profiles. It is a plain engineering job, it has nothing to do with climate science. All else comes later. However, McCarthy et al. are trying to do it the other way around. With a flawed method like this one cannot even reject the underlying null hypothesis that planetary constellations determine human fate. "(v) In the meantime the requirement for detailed analysis of the upper tropsophere is being met through the use of satellites carrying instrumentation designed for determining (amongst other things) upper tropospheric humidity and temperature." No, they were not designed to do that. Satellites detect IR radiation in certain narrow frequency bands. One can apply an inverse transformation to get upper troposphere RH and temperature values from these measurements, but only relative to a fairly detailed atmospheric model. The values themselves depend both on model and the radiation measured. The particular radiation transfer model used is also crucial. Even with these caveats the vertical resolution is rather poor and error bars are huge due to the much larger lower troposphere specific humidity background. It fails completely if clouds are present. Riccardo, Trenberth at. al 2005 consider the total integrated water vapor column indeed, which has no relation to the radiation balance at TOA. It is upper troposphere moisture we are talking about, a tiny portion of total integrated water vapor column, but this is the level where thermal radiation emitted by vapor has a chance to escape to space. Of course they discuss radiosonde relative humidity measurement problems, but only vaguely. They refer to problems with satellites as well. I would also rather leave political comments out and concentrate on the scientific contents if it were possible. It is not. An anonymous referee of the Journal of Climate on the Paltridge paper: "the only object I can see for this paper is for the authors to get something in the peer-reviewed literature which the ignorant can cite as supporting lower climate sensitivity than the standard IPCC range". It is unbelievable. I know of no other branch of science where peer review is allowed to venture this far. Alas, this particular guy was not disqualified by the editor.
125402. HumanityRules at 10:41 AM on 21 January 2010
        2009 - 2nd hottest year on record while sun is coolest in a century
        Riccardo, I get that ENSO doesn't produce energy only redistributes it but this manifests itself as an increase in global temp which is the measurement we are comparing these things to. Although the potential to alter water vapour in the atmosphere would You're also asking me to fit ENSO to temp increase, something I agree you can't do well but then as I keep saying the graph of CO2 increase doesn't fit well to temp either. Why would you start the analysis at 1970 when you have data back to 1950?
125403. Tom Dayton at 10:25 AM on 21 January 2010
        There is no consensus
        decliner, your complete dismissal of Kuhn's knowledge of philosophy of science belies your claim that you know philosophy of science "rather good" [sic].
125404. decliner at 05:57 AM on 21 January 2010
        There is no consensus
        "one of the earliest people who did the most to get widespread recognition of that fact." I know, I just think it's obvious that Kuhn got it wrong. You're absolutely right, I'm not a scientist, but I know philosophy of science rather good. To say Kuhn is an expert in that field would be like saying Justin Timberlake is one of the great modern Artists. Happily the ubiquitous misunderstanding of philosophy of science by some scientists doesn't harm the quality of their work. I basically agree about consensus being important. But still, consensus isn't the reason why science tells me there is AGW, it's the other way round, there is consensus because of the scientists understanding of the facts. "It certainly is fair!" Oh, yes, it is. My bad. Still the foia-emails show the peer-system somewhat being corrupted. "require human judgment" Yes, but that human judgement is not achieved by consensus. consensus is achieved by human judgement. human judgement being a diffuse term for the application of rational reasoning leading to prove. "the best way to find out is to have a motley gang of experts try their damnedest with motley approaches to show it is wrong." While this is true, I don't think this was at every time the attitude of leading climate scientiest. One doesn't need to be a sceptic to be concerned about how Mann and others reacted to criticism, wouldn't you agree? "That is off-topic for this thread" Every single sentence i wrote on this thread could be labeled off-topic. :) But thank you. I will post there.
125405. chris at 05:22 AM on 21 January 2010
        Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
        re #70/71; Peter your arguments are not very pertinent to the matter at hand. There are a couple of "bottom line" conclusions that we can make. (i) There's no question that it is accepted that radiosonde data on high altitude temperature and humidity are not sufficiently accurate as they stand to make strong conclusions about the validity of expected/simulated parameters in the upper troposphere. (ii) That's simply a fact of life. The radiosondes were not designed for high precision measurements of the sort that are required to address long term trends in upper tropospheric parameters; they were designed to supply networks for numerical prediction of weather. (iii) The very paper that you've brought to our attention here incorporates this essential proviso that the data may well be a result of "problems with the instrumentation and operation of the global radiosonde network". It's not obvious why you choose to pretend that this proviso is not an important part of Paltridge's paper. (iv) None of this is a reflection on the excellent work that those involved in the radiosonde network for atmospheric analysis and weather prediction have put in over the years. Unfortunately, the requirement for rather more detailed analysis of upper tropospheric parameters is not met by the radiosonde network, particularly as it existed in the earlier decades required for establishing longer term trends. (v) In the meantime the requirement for detailed analysis of the upper tropsophere is being met through the use of satellites carrying instrumentation designed for determining (amongst other things) upper tropospheric humidity and temperature. In general these data are rather consistent with expectations from enhanced greenhouse warming in terms of upper tropospheric temperatures and humidty. (vi) We certainly don't know the whole story yet. However it would be foolish to attempt to reconcile expectations/predictions from theoretical understanding/simulations with radiosonde data on upper tropospheric humidity, when there is a significant question about the accuracy of the radiosonde measurements. (vii) In the meantime a recent very detailed analysis of radiosonde data indicates that tropospheric humidity has increased much as expected from models [*]. That’s not the whole story either. However I’m inclined to consider the large number of studies on tropospheric water vapour trends from radiosonde reanalysis and satellite measures that show tropospheric water vapour increasing much as expected from theoretical understanding of the response to atmospheric warming, over a single weak paper which restates what everyone already knows, and that carries the repeated proviso that the results presented may be a result of "problems with the instrumentation and operation of the global radiosonde network". At the very least the null hypothesis that tropospheric water vapour concentrations are increasing as expected from our understanding of the response to tropospheric warming, isn’t disproven by the single weak analysis you brought to our attention. [*] M. P. McCarthy et al. (2009) An Analysis of Tropospheric Humidity Trends from Radiosondes Journal of Climate 22, 5820-5838 http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F2009JCLI2879.1
125406. Tom Dayton at 04:50 AM on 21 January 2010
        There is no consensus
        decliner wrote "did you realize that Naomi Oreske used an image taken from climate audit? Climate audit states that this graph was made by data which was lost, so its validity can't be controlled. Isn't it strange that someone would take this into a pdf as a prove?" That is off-topic for this thread, but if you can find the place where ClimateAudit makes that claim (I couldn't find it in the mere 10 seconds I looked), you might post a question about it in the SkepticalScience post Can you make a hockey stick without tree rings? if the purportedly lost data are temperature data, or in There’s no correlation between CO2 and temperature if the purportedly lost data are CO2 data.
125407. Tom Dayton at 04:35 AM on 21 January 2010
        There is no consensus
        decliner, Sometimes you'll see someone respond to deniers' claim that science requires proof rather than consensus, with the response "Proof is used in math, not in science." But even that response is not correct, because mathematicians also rely heavily on consensus. They, too, rely on peer review, because they, too, require human judgment of whether a purported proof is correct.
125408. chris at 04:32 AM on 21 January 2010
        2009 - 2nd hottest year on record while sun is coolest in a century
        To extend Riccardo's answer: You really need to understand what the ENSO Index is, HumanityRules, before attempting to use it to assess its contribution/response to surface temperatures under the influence of external forcing. There are two main problems with your analysis: (i) Yes, linear regression of the MEI Index gives a slope of 0.0136 yr-1. However the Index is just an Index. If one wants to consider its contribution (if any) to the surface temperature trend, one would (at least) have to normalize the index with respect to temperature. One way one to do this might be to observe that the very strong El Nino of 1997/1998 lifted the 1998 surface temperature around 0.2 oC above the long term temperature trend. Thus we could scale the Index (crudely) by estimating that an Index value of 1.5 is equivalent to 0.2 oC of surface temperature. This would give a very crudely "temperature-normalized" trend of 0.018 oC per decade (compared with a surface temperature trend 0.11 oC). (ii) However that analysis still overestimates the contribution of ENSO to any trend since one of the parameters of the multivariate analysis that yields MEI is sea surface temperature. This is increasing in a warming world as a result of enhanced radiative forcing. In fact it is considered that as the earth warms we will expect to shift ENSO towards more frequent El Nino states, tending perhaps to permanent El Nino states. Since the MEI Index has a sea surface temperature componewnt, the ENSO Index must rise in time unless there are compensating components of the Index that decrease in a warming world. So it is the latter effect that is likely the cause of any apparent trend in ENSO as determined by linear regression of the MEI Index. As Riccardo says, ENSO can't generate heat, it largely redistributes this within the ocean. (iii) Obviously the best means of attributing contributions to surface temperature is to assess the individual contributions and combine these to reconstruct the record of temporal temperature variation in response to internal/external forcings and any oscillatory contributions, rather as is done here (see Figure in post #8): http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-does-Solar-Cycle-Length-tell-us-about-the-sun-role-in-global-warming.html One would find that while ENSO makes essentially no contribution to the trends, it accounts for a substantial part of the variability around the trend (as Riccardo also said!).
125409. Tom Dayton at 04:27 AM on 21 January 2010
        There is no consensus
        decliner #194 wrote "Also the argument 'The contrarian claims are the ones that fail peer review' ain't fair." It certainly is fair! Peer review is phase 1 of scientists' "battering" on conclusions, that I mentioned in my previous comment. That's one of the things Gavin was commenting on, in his quote that I included at the end of my previous comment. The issue is not just any given submission's failure to make it into one given journal. In all scientific fields, a fair number of papers that eventually turn out to be correct and highly valuable are rejected by several journals before finally being accepted by one. That is frustrating (to say the least!) for those authors, but we (working scientists) don't consequently dismiss the entire scientific publication system as a consequence, because we very much value the quality filtering that usually works well, and because we know that conclusions that are correct eventually will make it through peer review. What's telling about AGW deniers' "work" is that it fails to pass peer review ever. It consistently fails to pass the very first quality filter.
125410. Tom Dayton at 04:13 AM on 21 January 2010
        There is no consensus
        decliner #194: Naomi Oreske is a "she," not a "he." Oreske was not referencing Kuhn as argument from authority to support her contention that science includes application of community standards. Instead she was: (1) Tipping her hat to him as one of the earliest people who did the most to get widespread recognition of that fact. (2) Shortening her presentation and preventing it from diverging from its overall purpose, by using "Kuhn" and "community" as shorthand for a large body of literature--certainly not all written by Kuhn. (3) Pointing to a path for anyone who wants to learn more or even disagree with that particular point. For example, you can simply search the internet for "science Kuhn community standards" to find a large number of discussions such as, oh, just for instance the second hit from Google: a paper by Duffy Hutcheon. Those three purposes of Oreske's reference to Kuhn are standard in scientific writing. So your blanket dismissal of her reference to Kuhn is inappropriate. But no harm, no foul, since you aren't a working scientist, you wouldn't have known that. You don't need to invoke Kuhn to support the importance of consensus in science. The history of scientific practice shows unequivocally that convincing other scientists is a core part of what working scientists actually do. And "science is what scientists do." (Search the internet for that phrase.) The reason is that science is about making decisions, and human judgment is needed to make those decisions. Most AGW deniers who object to consensus being important, have gotten their idea of science from lower-level classes (even introductory college classes have this problem, it's sad to say) that focus on narrow, purely experimental, methods that are used to address narrow hypotheses, rather than on all the research methods that are used (e.g., quasi-experimentation), and ignoring the theories and theoretical frameworks in the large. Thus the deniers' focus on narrow interpretations of falsification in the context of pure experiments. No matter how foolproof a conclusion seems, it might be wrong, and the best way to find out is to have a motley gang of experts try their damnedest with motley approaches to show it is wrong. The survival of that conclusion despite that battering is good evidence for its soundness. It is an incontrovertible fact that this is how scientists actually work. Go to a conference and see the arguments in the halls (and especially the bars afterward!). Read the articles and notice how common the disagreements are. Look behind the journal editorial curtain to see the drama and contention over article submissions' consideration for publication. Contention is good for science; contention is one of the core aspects of what scientists do, and therefore of science. That's why scientists encourage contention. An example is Gavin Schmidt's remark about the recent Lindzen and Choi paper:

        LC09 was not a nonsense paper -- that is, it didn't have completely obvious flaws that should have been caught by peer review (unlike say, McLean et al, 2009 or Douglass et al, 2008). Even if it now turns out that the analysis was not robust, it was not that the analysis was not worth trying, and the work being done to re-examine these questions is a useful contribution to the literature--even if the conclusion is that this approach to the analysis is flawed. More generally, this episode underlines the danger in reading too much into single papers. For papers that appear to go against the mainstream (in either direction), the likelihood is that the conclusions will not stand up for long, but sometimes it takes a while for this to be clear. Research at the cutting edge -- where you are pushing the limits of the data or theory -- is like that. If the answers were obvious, we wouldn't need to do the research.

125411. Riccardo at 03:37 AM on 21 January 2010
        2009 - 2nd hottest year on record while sun is coolest in a century
        HumanityRules, i forgot to mention one more step you should take even if you do not understand the meaning of the MEI index. Try to fit the temperature trend with the MEI index alone (scaled by some factor) instead of just say they are both increasing. You won't be successful. Try instead a straight line plus the MEI index and you'll account for both the trend and a great part of the short term variability, at least in the period after 1970.
125412. Riccardo at 03:26 AM on 21 January 2010
        2009 - 2nd hottest year on record while sun is coolest in a century
        HumanityRules, ENSO, by definition, cannot create energy, it's just a redistribution of energy through the climate system. If we were able to calculate the energy fluxes they _must_ average to zero unless there's something else providing the energy. The MEI index is more complicated in what it includes other parameters, six overall including surface air temperature. Your comparison is then misleading. The MEI index is useful to account for short term global temperature variability but not for long term trends.
125413. From Peru at 03:23 AM on 21 January 2010
        Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
        John Cook: About early XX century warming (1910s-1940s): Given that: -TSI peaked in the 1960s. -Major volacnic eruptions began in the 1960s with Mount Agung. -NASA GISS estimates that TOTAL FORCING peaked in the 1950s at near 0,5 W/m^2. But temperatures peaked in the 1940s, then slight cooling began until the 1970s (while the forcing continued to grow up until the 1950s-1960s) Any idea why temperatures peaked ONE DECADE BEFORE (the 1940s) the total forcings (according to NASA GISS) peaked in the 1950s?
        Response: Perhaps part of the effect you're looking at is explained by problems with sea surface temperature measurements in the 1940s. When all forcings are considered (the pink bar in the figure below), they show a close match with land temperature. The forcing does seem to reverse slightly after temperature reverses but is within uncertainty bounds. However, in the 1940s, the ocean temperature falls well outside model uncertainty bounds. The paper A large discontinuity in the mid-twentieth century in observed global-mean surface temperature (Thompson 2008) explains that this is due to a change in the method of measuring ocean temperature in the 1940s which caused a spurious warming signal. As far as I know, the global temperature record still hasn't been updated to adjust for this effect.
        
        
        
125414. HumanityRules at 02:07 AM on 21 January 2010
        2009 - 2nd hottest year on record while sun is coolest in a century
        #40 reply So I read " impact of El Nino on long term climate trends here..." and this jumped out at me "The Southern Oscillation Index shows no long term trend (hence the term Oscillation)",. Which seemed to conradict what I said earlier. So i got to thinking if you got an oscillation and you only examine a short section of it then what you've got is a trend (eg the up slope only or the downslope only). So I dug out the ERSL MEI data and the GISS temp anomoly data (thank god for jet lag). http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/klaus.wolter/MEI/table.html And I plotted annual average data for 1950-2009 (full extent of MEI data). And I added a linear trend line. Both have a positive trend (MEI slope +0.0136 and temp anomoly +0.0109). Seems Riccardo understands each La Nina and El Nino as an isolated event. Can you not understand this as an on going process with additive effect?
125415. Paz at 00:15 AM on 21 January 2010
        Scientists can't even predict weather
        John Russell: great analogy, thanks a lot!
125416. Riccardo at 00:08 AM on 21 January 2010
        2009 - 2nd hottest year on record while sun is coolest in a century
        HumanityRules, if i want to describe the ascent to Mt. Everest i do not start from the airoport where i live; i will start from the base camp at 5000 m. So, a _general_ description of the climate is one thing, pointing to the effect of CO2 is another. For the latter, i'd start when it is more clearly visible, not when the signal is low and confused by other effects. No one is trying to "take a single effect"; on the contrary, because there are many and i want to describe as clearly as possible just one, i'd just use part of the data. If i want to show the effect of ENSO, i'll use a period around 1998 where the ENSO signal is more evident. Wouldn't you? And as for ENSO, once and again, while it is a good part of climate variability it does nothing to the long term trend. It makes no sense keep saying that it has a huge effect on climate ... You know, in 2008 we had the effect of La Nina and the temperature was relatively low, last year we had El Nino and the temperature increased. Put the numbers, an anomaly (GISS) of 0.43 °C in 2008, 0.57 in 2009; an increase of 0.14 °C. The big one, 1998 was 0.56 °C, 1999 was 0.32, a decrease of 0.23 °C. Can you see what the numbers tell us?
125417. HumanityRules at 23:14 PM on 20 January 2010
        2009 - 2nd hottest year on record while sun is coolest in a century
        Riccardo the fallacy is to take a single effector of climate and plot it against global mean temperature and then say "hey presto" the relationship breaks down here. That seems true whether you're a sceptic or a believer. And to completely contradict my point heres something thats been bugging me a while. Looks at this graph of ENSO index http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/oceanography-book/Images/elninoindex.gif There are many other variations of this on the web if you want to search for them. Look around 1978 there seems to be a general shift. Before mainly blue (negative) after mainly red (positive). This is also the time when the most recent period of temperature increase also kicked in. If El nino and La nina can have dramatic affects on global temperature measurements, and if we see a resumption of increased temperature change around this period, can this not be an explanation of late 20th century temperature increase. John accepts that the radiative forcing of CO2 took a back seat in the mid-century cooling to another factor then why not that it's taking a back seat (along with TSI) to ENSO in heating in late 20th century.
        Response: Let me be clear about the point being made in the comparison between sun and global temperatures. I am not saying the sun doesn't change climate. I'm just making the simple point that during the last few decades of global warming, the sun has been going in the opposite direction. So any contribution the sun has made to global warming is actually a cooling effect.
        
        But like I say all the time, and I think the point you're trying to make - we need to look at the broader picture and take into account all the forcings that drive climate.
        
        BTW, we examine the impact of El Nino on long term climate trends here...
125418. Riccardo at 20:03 PM on 20 January 2010
        Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
        Berényi Péter, i would leave political comments out and think of the scientific weakness of Paltridge paper instead. In 2005, well before Paltridge et al. paper, a much more extensive analysis of water vapour datasets had been published; Trenberth at. al 2005 compared four different reanalisys (two versions of NCEP, NVAP and ERA-40) and SSM/1 satellite data. Although they considered the total integrated water vapour column, the problems with both NCEP and NVAP were clearly noticed. Paltridge et al. didn't even refer to Trenberth et al. work; honestly, i'm not that surprised that it has been rejected on J. Clim. This does not mean that those datasets should be thrown away, but the caution in using them is required, for _scientific_ reasons.
125419. Philippe Chantreau at 19:17 PM on 20 January 2010
        Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
        H.R.there is no lack of consensus among scientist on the climatological effects of volcanic activity.
125420. Riccardo at 18:23 PM on 20 January 2010
        2009 - 2nd hottest year on record while sun is coolest in a century
        HumanityRules, nobody, as well, is suggesting that John is infallable. But, as he himself just explained, there's a logical fallacy in your request; showing what yout asked to show is usually done just to fool people.
125421. Berényi Péter at 18:08 PM on 20 January 2010
        Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
        Riccardo at 06:21 AM on 17 January, 2010: "the authors themselves are much more prudent" The Paltridge paper was submitted to the Journal of Climate in March 2008. Prudent or not, it was rejected on plainly _political_ grounds. It got published almost a year later in February 2009 by Theoretical and Applied Climatology.
125422. decliner at 17:29 PM on 20 January 2010
        There is no consensus
        Tom: Ah, yes, it's adressed in the pdf. "Opposite is true: Science is precisely about consensus, because consensus is the result of the application of community standards." By community standards he seems to refer to Thomas Kuhn, (someone I wouldn't cite if I wanted to be taken seriously). Still the sentence doesn't make much sense to me. the counter-argument would go more like: "the fact that there is consensus is just an answer to those sceptics arguing that there is no consensus. It was the sceptic side that brought up the subject." btw. did you realize that Naomi Oreske used an image taken from climate audit? Climate audit states that this graph was made by data which was lost, so its validity can't be controlled. Isn't it strange that someone would take this into a pdf as a prove? Also the argument "The contrarianclaims are the ones that fail peer review" ain't fair.
125423. From Peru at 16:36 PM on 20 January 2010
        Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
        How can I post IMAGES? I have some beautiful graphs, but when I tried to "cut and paste" (that is, to "paste" the graph in the comment) the graph didn't appeared. What should I do to post graphs or any other image?
        Response: I would suggest uploading them to a free image website (does Flickr let you do that kind of thing) then use the HTML IMG tag <img src=http://www.otherwebsite.com/image.jpg> to display the image in your comment.
125424. decliner at 16:12 PM on 20 January 2010
        There is no consensus
        Tom Dayton: Thank you. Please don't get me wrong - it's not an argument which i endorse (While a consensus doesn't prove something the existence of it doesn't prove its opposite). I just stumbled across it several times reading conservative authors (like the guy who got parodised on southpark recently), so I think it would deserve its own page. :)
125425. decliner at 16:00 PM on 20 January 2010
        It's the sun
        Wow, thanks for the fast reply. It has been a while since I've seen the propagandistic "great global warming swindle" but it look like you're quite right about them hiding the decline. even tough it seems to me they at least didn't substitute it with instrumental data (i guess the red curve is the one for solar activity?) - but it's bad enough anyway. if the factor which is influencing tree ring growth is profoundly understood then it should be possible to correct for that influence, wouldn't it? Will read your page on that subject now.
125426. Tom Dayton at 15:58 PM on 20 January 2010
        There is no consensus
        Decliner, the role of consensus is addressed in Naomi Oreskes's "Consensus in Science: How Do We Know We're Not Wrong?".
125427. HumanityRules at 15:32 PM on 20 January 2010
        Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
        This is similar to the TSI article earlier. We have multiple factors affecting global temperatures. If you try to take one of those factors such as volcanism or CO2 concentration and find a perfect relationship with global temperatures your going to fail. At certain time periods the relationship will breakdown and that can be highlighted to rubbish any connection. Do we believe that volcano activity has an overall affect on global temperature? It must do something (positive, negative or no overall affect). To highlight the lack of consensus on exactly what volcanos do is to just show how we need to improve our knowledge on this subject. Can we be concrete on our understanding of CO2 affect on global temps when we can't control for all the of factors affecting temp.
        Response: I wasn't highlighting the lack of consensus among scientists - I was pointing out the lack of consensus among skeptics. Skeptic arguments may contradict each other but they all have one thing in common - sow doubt so as to delay action on cutting carbon emissions.
        
        We do have a fairly high degree of understanding of how volcanoes affect climate. This was demonstrated when Mount Pinutabo erupted. It gave climate scientists the opportunity to predict how global temperatures would respond to the injection of sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere. Hansen 2007 compares the model predictions to actual observations, shown below. The model results also confirmed the climate's net positive feedback - as temperatures cooled, water vapour in the atmosphere lessened which amplified cooling.
        
        
        
125428. decliner at 15:12 PM on 20 January 2010
        There is no consensus
        While I agree that there is consensus I have another argument (used by several guys) for you to debunk: Science is not about consensus.
125429. decliner at 15:07 PM on 20 January 2010
        It's the sun
        This solar graph has some resemblance to the tree ring proxy graph where mike's nature trick was applied to - to hide the decline. So couldn't you just use the trick as well? Then it would fit the instrumental data better. (This is not meant as a mocking, a serious reply would be appreciated.)
        Response: It's funny you should mention that. I'd not thought of it that way before but "hide the decline" is exactly what the Great Global Warming Swindle did when comparing sun to climate. They deliberately cut off solar levels at 1975. And as if this graphs wasn't misleading enough, they also "hide the incline" of temperature rise in 1980 - global temperatures actually go off the chart if you extend them to current temperatures:
        
        
        
        As for "Mike's Nature trick", that situation is the case where the decline is not a decline in temperatures but a decline in tree ring growth's response to temperature. So it's entirely appropriate to not use tree rings as a proxy for temperature after 1960 when some other factor is clearly influencing tree ring growth. More on tree ring divergence...
125430. HumanityRules at 14:45 PM on 20 January 2010
        2009 - 2nd hottest year on record while sun is coolest in a century
        #34 response EXACTLY!! It does appear though that in your article you are dismissing solar variance because the relationship breaks down after 1975. There is nothing in this article any stronger or weaker than the "issue of mid-century cooling" by the skeptics. For that reason you should dismiss it. Riccardo Nobody suggested John was trying to fool us. But there is no reason to believe, like the rest of us mortals, that he's infallable. David Horton I have looked at the graph it starts lower and ends higher. If you put a single linear trend line through it I'm fairly sure that the slope would be positive. If you look at some of the links John has provided or google it you'll see that there is an upward trend since records began in the 1600's
        Response: Mid-century cooling is a good example of the logic used in this article. In recent decades, the sun has been cooling. Therefore, the logical conclusion is that the sun is not contributing any warming over this period.
        
        The same logic applies to mid-century cooling. At that time, CO2 levels were rising. Therefore, the logical conclusion is that CO2 was not contributing any cooling over this period.
        
        CO2 did not cause mid-century cooling. Other forcings must have been responsible.
        
        The sun is not causing current global warming. Other forcings must be responsible.
125431. David Horton at 13:09 PM on 20 January 2010
        2009 - 2nd hottest year on record while sun is coolest in a century
        #35 "TSI going up since 1880" - have you actually looked at the graphs?
125432. Philippe Chantreau at 10:33 AM on 20 January 2010
        Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
        All the various factions arguing about action keep on repeating that we need more "studies" and more evidence on AGW. Seems to me they're the one wanting more work for climatologists...
125433. Marcus at 09:26 AM on 20 January 2010
        Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
        There is no logical flaw RSVP, for these reasons: 1. If CO2 were not the culprit, then knowing the real culprit-& how it changes the climate-could reveal a means of counteracting it. 2. By understanding the cause, we might also get insight into future effects-thus making adaptation much more successful. So you see, plenty of work for climatologists, regardless of whether CO2 is to blame. My other point is that *of course* we need to deal with overpopulation, resource depletion & general environmental degradation but (a) last time I checked, we were quite capable of "walking & chewing gum at the same time", as it were & (b) tackling many of the above problems dovetails very nicely with tackling rising CO2 emissions. e.g. reducing urban sprawl will allow more land to be maintained as forest or re-vegetated & will significantly decrease our consumption of a significant non-renewable resource-oil-both of which just happen to be outcomes which will result in REDUCED EMISSIONS OF CO2. Unfortunately, those who are most stridently opposed to the concept of AGW are also those pushing for ever greater population growth-because the ultimate outcome is the same-MORE PROFIT. If you want to understand the motives of the die-hard denialists, RSVP, you need only "follow the money".
125434. Riccardo at 07:14 AM on 20 January 2010
        2009 - 2nd hottest year on record while sun is coolest in a century
        The short and obvious answer to both comments is that John is not trying to fool people.
125435. Klaus Flemløse at 07:01 AM on 20 January 2010
        Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
        Thanks to Chris for post nr 7. From the link you gave, I have found that the Tephra Voulumen is about 100 times larger for Pinatubo than for St Helens. This explains the lack of fingerprints from St Helenesin the carbon emission.
125436. Doug Bostrom at 06:24 AM on 20 January 2010
        Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
        RSVP Sorry, can't help it: "If it is anthropogenic, it is because there are just too many anthropoids!" then "If we all did just stay in bed, maybe the environment would have had a chance. " Separate beds, presumably.
125437. Ned at 05:30 AM on 20 January 2010
        Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
        RSVP writes: There appears to be a small flaw in your reasoning #28. If global warming [is] NOT anthropogenic, it would suggest there is not a lot we can do about it. Yes, we can prepare for it, but we [can't] change it. Well, as amply documented on this very site, anthropogenic CO2 (plus CFCs, N2O, etc.) are changing the climate. So I don't see much point in arguing over a counterfactual. It's as if I said "Since much of Nevada is arid or semi-arid, water conservation is important" and you replied "Well, if it started raining a lot in Nevada, it would suggest that they didn't have to worry about water conservation." That may be a logically true statement, but it's not relevant to our world and it would be exceptionally foolish to accept that kind of reasoning as justification for stopping all water conservation efforts in the Great Basin tomorrow.
125438. HumanityRules at 05:04 AM on 20 January 2010
        2009 - 2nd hottest year on record while sun is coolest in a century
        " Of more significance is the long term trend " Why didn't you just put single trend line for the whole time period for both temp and TSI (I've seen it done for temp before). That would show TSI going up since 1880 and temp going up since 1880. What could we draw from that?
125439. HumanityRules at 04:58 AM on 20 January 2010
        2009 - 2nd hottest year on record while sun is coolest in a century
        Skeptics have long pointed out that atmospheric CO2 rise is a near perfect linear rise over the century while global temperatures have seen periods of rise, leveling and decline (as seen on your graph). If you also posted CO2 levels on the graph in figure 1 you could just as easily argue that the CO2 and global temperature graphs look unrelated in the period of 1940-1970 when temperatures where declining or steady.
        Response: The issue of mid-century cooling is addressed here. The basic point is there is not a single driver of climate - you need to take into account all forcings: sun, volcanoes, CO2, sulfate aerosols, etc. The same point applies to this page - sun is the not the only driver of climate and that becomes apparent when global temperatures rise during a period of cooling sun. Obviously some other forcing other than solar variations is driving the warming.
125440. Berényi Péter at 03:13 AM on 20 January 2010
        Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
        Listen. If instrument quality is in doubt, the first thing a sane person does is to check the instruments themselves (as opposed to the arcane statistical properties of datasets collected by these instruments). The WMO intercomparision did exactly that. First in the lab, then there was also an extensive field test involving balloons. The important lesson learned is NOT "you get large variabilities". It is the exact nature of the variability that counts. They have found that below the 300 hPa level (for sure below 400 hPa) the humidity response of each instrument was consistently monotonic with a low enough random noise. Not necessarily linear, but monotonic. The large (up to 10%) variability was observed between different instrument types, not in the performance of a single instrument. The other issue was the different and temperaure dependent relaxation times of various types of instruments. But it was measured, documented and it is also deterministic. Now, if you have the description of instrument behaviour for each type along with time stamps, pressure and temperature data (even better to have the values for both ascent and descent), these errors are easy to eliminate. One does not even have to be a climate scientist to do that. I myself could perform the correction. I just do not know if the job was done or not. If it was done, there still remains some uncertainity. You have reffered to it as "when you actually fly a baloon there's much more than that". Actually not much more. There may be solar radiation acting on the case, water or ice can get inside due to precipitation and/or condensation, finally some random noise which is always present in any measurement. However, all these combined have much less effect than the difference between instrument classes, certainly less than the magnitude of the three decade trend. Moreover, these effects can not possibly have a definite trend over a multi decadal time scale. When I have drawn my conclusion, I assumed the trivial recalibration job I have described above is already done. If it is not, now, that's travesty.
125441. RSVP at 02:20 AM on 20 January 2010
        Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
        Ned. Your post 25 is one of the best, as it actually points to the way forward. If we all did just stay in bed, maybe the environment would have hald a chance.
125442. RSVP at 01:06 AM on 20 January 2010
        Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
        Marcus, There appears to be a small flaw in your reasoning #28. If global warming in NOT anthropogenic, it would suggest there is not a lot we can do about it. Yes, we can prepare for it, but we cant change it. One of the most irresponsible notions I have seen on this website come from those who are not willing to place the blame on overpopulation, especially when they support the theory that global warming is anthropogenic. If it is anthropogenic, it is because there are just too many anthropoids!
125443. Paz at 00:11 AM on 20 January 2010
        Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
        Thanks a lot, Chris. Very helpful.
125444. Marcus at 23:27 PM on 19 January 2010
        Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
        Another point, RSVP, is that if CO2 is not the real culprit, then this actually provides a whole new mystery for climate scientists to solve, thus giving them *loads* to do-both in determining the real culprit & trying to model the impacts of this new cause on future climate change. Indeed, a new culprit for climate change might require *more* scientists, not less, to pore over all the existing literature to try & get a handle on the real culprit. Second to this is that climate scientists existed before global warming became an issue, & would still exist if the whole thing proved to be a furphy, so your whole argument is really quite weak!
125445. Marcus at 23:21 PM on 19 January 2010
        Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
        By the same token, RSVP, if CO2 is the real culprit (as all the evidence seems to suggest), then reducing CO2 emissions will require significant cuts in our use of fossil fuels-which will in turn hurt the profits of the companies that mine & refine these fossil fuels. Is it any wonder, then, that a great deal of the anti-AGW bias is coming from individuals & groups with such strong links to the fossil fuel industry?
125446. RSVP at 22:56 PM on 19 January 2010
        Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
        Ned, Actually what you are trying to say is that if CO2 is no the real culprit, climate scientists have nothing to do. And therein lies the bias.
125447. Ned at 22:26 PM on 19 January 2010
        Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
        RSVP writes: Even if the current trend in global warming is actually anthropogenic, (and due solely to CO2 emissions), all it takes is one huge natural disturbance, or change on the part of nature to make anthropogenic forcing completely irrelevant (at least for a time). So? Even if you've saved up scrupulously for retirement, a large comet hitting the Earth would wreck the economy and eliminate your retirement savings. So there's no point in saving for retirement. Seriously, what is your point? As far as I can tell, every single one of your dozens of posts here consists of rather transparent attempts to justify not doing anything serious about reducing our impact on the climate system. But this one just seems ridiculous. We shouldn't bother doing anything to reduce our CO2 emissions because some mysterious catastrophe could happen suddenly and render all our work irrelevant? That logic could be used to argue against doing anything about anything. Why bother getting out of bed in the morning, when you could be hit by a streetcar on the way to work?
125448. Riccardo at 21:13 PM on 19 January 2010
        Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
        Berényi Péter, the WMO intercomparison pubblication you quote is a lab test of different sensors, not field data. It assess the difficulties of the humidity readings even in controlled conditions and still you get large variabilities especially at low temperatures. When you actually fly a baloon there's much more than that. I don't want to mean that we have to discard radiosonde data, they are a piece of the puzzle. But given the large uncertainties, the small trend (a few percent) and the disagreement with satellite data, I (with Paltridge et al.) would not draw any strong conclusion, let alone claims like "Water vapor feedback in terrestrial photosphere is negative. It is as simple as that."
125449. RSVP at 20:26 PM on 19 January 2010
        Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
        Even if the current trend in global warming is actually anthropogenic, (and due solely to CO2 emissions), all it takes is one huge natural disturbance, or change on the part of nature to make anthropogenic forcing completely irrelevant (at least for a time). Or is this not conceivable? On the other hand, as per chris #22, even if the Earths temperature did rise 10 degrees for 500 years due to a comet, you would still have to baseline the problem from the new mean, and consider only extra forcings due to CO2 and sunlight. In other words, Paz, it doesnt matter how much heat is coming from the bottom of the sea due to hotspots and fissures.
        Response: Man-made warming is not due to CO2 emissions only - there are also warming contributions from ozone, methane, contrails, nitrous oxide, CFCs. But the warming from CO2 is both the strongest forcing and the fastest rising.
125450. Berényi Péter at 11:53 AM on 19 January 2010
        Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
        Riccardo at 22:56 PM on 17 January, 2010: "You will easily find a lot of papers on the dry bias and possible recalibration of radiosonde data" No, not easily. I have fond something though. INSTRUMENTS AND OBSERVING METHODS REPORT No. 85 WMO RADIOSONDE HUMIDITY SENSOR INTERCOMPARISON PHASE I: Laboratory Test Central Aerological Observatory Dolgoprudny, Russian Federation June 1995 - June 1997 A. Balagurov, A. Kats, N. Krestyannikova (Russian Federation) PHASE II: Field Test NASA Wallops Flight Facility Virginia, United States 8 - 26 September 1995 F. Schmidlin (United States) WMO/TD-No. 1305 2006 http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/www/IMOP/publications/IOM-85_RSO-RH-Phase_I-II/IOM-85_RsoHumiditySensors_Phase-I-II.pdf The analysis is thorough. And it was performed in 1995-97. More than ten years ago. I don't quite understand why was it published only in 2006. It should be enough to do the instrument recalibration job up to the 300 hPa level, verifying the long term humidity trend up there this way. I can see the NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis is going on. http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/guide/Data/ncep-ncar_reanalysis.html However, I was not able to find reference to the WMO Radiosonde Humidity Sensor Intercomparision, which would be an absolute must. It may be my fault, a briefing would be welcome. So the NCEP reanalysis dataset is either uncorrected for known instrumental biases or Paltridge, Arking & Pook have revealed a gaping hole in current theory which is based on constant RH above 850 hPa. In the first case your statement "many scientists around the world are still working on this issue" lacks credibility. A job like this taking more than ten years to be done properly is flagrancy itself. Otherwise the average climate model is falsified. Water vapor feedback in terrestrial photosphere is negative. It is as simple as that. As for surfacestations.org. You know full well the quality of individual stations (or the lack of it) is not documented nearly as well in reanalysis studies as by those volunteers. One would wish for such a check on a global scale. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/ "The vision of the USCRN program is to maintain a sustainable high-quality climate observation network that 50 years from now can with the highest degree of confidence answer the question: How has the climate of the nation changed over the past 50 years?" "Fifty years from now". Rather forty three in 2010, as the US Climate Reference Network (with some long term quality control) was started in 2003. Need say more? Surfacestations is checking USHCN (United States Historical Climatology Network), which is an entirely different beast. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html NCDC guys are cross-checking neighboring station data, read (incomplete) station history files and do all kinds of statistical tricks, but no one goes there to have a look for the sake of good old reality check.

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