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Comments 27351 to 27400:
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tatelyle at 00:28 AM on 6 October 2015CO2 lags temperature
Actually, I would like to take back that 6.5 wm2 that I calculated above.
Spreading the summer Milankovitch forcing all over the winter period makes no sense whatsoever. The ice-sheets are in perpetual lock-down for the winter, and nothing happens, so the ambient temperature is irrellevant. It is only the summer melt that is meaningful. And when I was doing research on the Himalayan glaciers, melting only occurred during sunny days, while during cloudy days and nights the glacier remained frozen.
And if we erase the winter dilution that was suggested, the Milankovitch forcing on Ice Ages is more like 16 wm2. And it may well be more than that, for I see no reason for spreading this forcing around the whole northern hemisphere. It is sunny days that cause most melting on a glacier, rather than raised ambient temperatures. We were in shorts and singlets during sunny days, even at 18,000 ft. So I think that this 16 wm2 should be doubled to something more like 32 wm2, to take into account the local or regional aspect of this melting process. That is the true increase in forcing of Milankovitch cycles on northern ice-sheets over the whole Interglacial warming cycle - 30 to 40 wm2.
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CBDunkerson at 21:43 PM on 5 October 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #40
I was going to point out that 'rejectors' would inevitably be shortened to 'rejects', but... already there.
The problem I have with 'doubters' is that it is inaccurate for some of them. The people at Exxon who examined the problem, confirmed that global warming is real, and then spent decades telling the public that it wasn't are not 'doubters'. They know full well that global warming is real. 'Doubters and deceivers' would be accurate, but 'deniers' covers that in one word.
Still, 'doubters' is better than 'skeptics' in that it is only an inaccurate description of some, while 'skeptics' was inaccurate for nearly all.
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tatelyle at 19:46 PM on 5 October 2015CO2 lags temperature
Thank you again for your replies, but they are still not making complete sense. You said:
>> feedback would be balanced by opposite feedbacks because the
>>changes in global annually averaged insolation balance out.But that is not true is it? - because as you said the NH and SH are very different, and so there is no 'balance' or equivalence between them.
And I can prove this to you because in the graph in post 479, the Interglacial temperature rise closely follows northern hemisphere Milankovitch forcing, and not the southern hemisphere forcing (which would happen 12,800 years later). So although the Ice Age becomes a global phenomina, it is triggered and forced by northern hemisphere Milankovitch forcing and only by northern hemisphere forcing. That is an indisputable fact. So Interglacial forcing and warming is asymmetric and regional, not global.
So there is no 'balance' as you call it. Ice Ages are caused by NH conditions, and so your spreading out the NH forcing across the globe, and thereby reducing it to just 2 wm2 is completely erroneous. Firstly, the NH summer melt is 40% of the year, as you know. And secondly, the SH is completely irrelevant, as we has just been demonstrated. So the Milankovitch forcing is actually 6.5 wm2, before any feedbacks have been added.
So why would CO2 be important in this process?
Your assertion that CO2's influence is significant is based upon a doubling of CO2, or 3.7 wm2. But that assertion is completely erroneous and misleading. The initial CO2 increase at the beginning of the Interglacial warming is about 20 ppm, and this equates to less than 1 wm2. And why would less than 1 wm2 have any influence on world temperature? So what will be the primary driver - 6.5 wm2 of Milankovitch warming, or less than 1 wm2 of CO2? And since a warmer NH summer during an Ice Age is going to produce melt, exposing dirty old ice, the primary feedback is more likely to be reducing albedo than increasing CO2.
>>Citing denier blogs lends the opposite of credibility.
What a silly comment. Why are comments like this tolerated on a serious blog? I did not cite anything, I borrowed a standard graph that is present on hundreds of web pages. So do you have an issue with that graph? Do you consider it incorrect or misleading in any way? And if not, then why the silly comment?
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uncletimrob at 18:59 PM on 5 October 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #40
@ubrew12, Sadly while I agreee with you, it is probably a loaded description rather than one that refleects their grasp of the science.
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ranyl at 18:48 PM on 5 October 2015Emphasizing co-benefits motivates people to take action on climate change
"even for those unconvinced climate change is real."
There are also those those who HAARP on and others who behold the creator's hand as the reality of things.
Wonder what would convince the oil producing countries, companies and ISIL to stop selling fossil fuels?
What army would or could war or protect without fossil fuels?
Holy war with promised salvation versus eating local produce, using as little power as possible and sharing for those around you etc......?
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ubrew12 at 15:35 PM on 5 October 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #40
Jonas@1. Great idea. However, in the interest of brevity, how about just call them 'rejects'?
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Nate12674 at 09:37 AM on 5 October 2015Was Broecker really the first to use the term Global Warming?
There is a book published in 1971 called 'Energy' by John Holdren (yeah that guy) and Phillip Herrera, which is sort of a textbbook. In it I was quite amazed to see a couple of pages discussing future global warming due to the CO2 greenhouse effect. It gives a suprisingly accurate estimate of the warming expected by the year 2000, of 0.8C. And it accounts for the trends of the previous 70 years in a way more or less similarl with today's explanation. It further explains that this small warming could cause sea level rise and changes in the global circulation patterns that would impact agriculture, etc.
The book cites a 1970 workshopat Williams college on "Man's Impact on the Global Environment" as a source (MIT press).
Whether or not they had coined the term by then, it is impressive how much the experts knew was coming by 1970.
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Tom Curtis at 08:52 AM on 5 October 2015CO2 lags temperature
tatelyle @487:
"I understand all your arguments, that overall insolation cannot change much. However, the critical season and region for Ice Age modulation is the NH summer at northerly latitudes, because of the large NH landmass, as you say. It is this insolation that will decide whether the winter ice sheets melt, and so it is this region that will modulate Ice Ages."
Causing "winter ice sheets" to melt is a feedback. Further, it is a seaonal and regional feedback. If the seasonal and regional feedbacks in all areas and seasons were equally strong, then that feedback would be balanced by other, opposite feedbacks because the changes in global annually averaged insolation balance out (for all intents and purposes). It would follow that there would be no net change in GMST. That is the point of the arguments above. Ergo, when you say "I understand all your arguments" but "feedback", which is essentially what you have said, you clearly do not understand the arguments at all.
"And as that Milkanovitch graph shows, the critical summer NH insolation can change by up to 25% during the Milankovitch cycle. Not a few wm2 here or there, but a whopping 90 wm2. So why would the 4 wm2 provided by CO2 be significant, in comparison to the 90 wm2 of the Milankovitch cycle?"
The Earth has 46 million kilometers squared of area North of 55 North, out of a total of 510 million kilometers squared. That represents 9% of the Earth's total surface area. Further, Summer constitutes just 25% of the year. Ergo, your 90 W/m^2 at 65 North in Summer is equivalent to 2 W/m^2, globally averaged. So why would the 3.7 W/m^2 globally averaged forcing from a doubling of CO2 by more significant than the 2 W/m^2 globally averaged milankovitch forcing when we ignore everything but the milankovitch forcing in Summer in the high NH? Or the less than 0.4 W/m^2 globally averaged forcing if we include the full milankovitch forcing?
Your original question was why do we need to infer strong feedbacks given that the seasonal/regional milankovitch forcing was strong. Even only considering that forcing (ie, ignoring the opposite milankovitch forcings in other regions or seasons), the globally averaged mean annual temperature would only change by 0.65 C without feedbacks. In practise it changed by about 5 C. Further, the SH temperature changes have the same sign, and approximately match the size of the NH temperature changes. That would be impossible unless at least one of the feedbacks was necessarilly global in nature, and quite strong (to counteract the opposite signed local milankovitch forcings in the SH).
Moderator Response:[PS] rate matters too. The change of forcing at 65N only per century is about 2 orders of a magnitude smaller than rate of change of in CO2 forcing globally.
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Daniel Bailey at 07:45 AM on 5 October 2015CO2 lags temperature
Citing denier blogs lends the opposite of credibility.
Moderator Response:[PS] debunking such nonsense however is however largely what this site is about.
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tatelyle at 01:57 AM on 5 October 2015CO2 lags temperature
Thank you for your explanations. However:
>>Milankovitch cycles require feedbacks.
I understand all your arguments, that overall insolation cannot change much. However, the critical season and region for Ice Age modulation is the NH summer at northerly latitudes, because of the large NH landmass, as you say. It is this insolation that will decide whether the winter ice sheets melt, and so it is this region that will modulate Ice Ages.
Thus obliquity, precession and eccentricity must ALL effect ice sheet extent. Obliquity will obviously increase summer warming at high latitudes. Precession will also increase summer warming at high latitudes, when synchronised with obliquity. And it is the NH summer melt that is important, rather than the global energy budget. And therefore it is high latitude NH insolation and albedo that are important.
And as that Milkanovitch graph shows, the critical summer NH insolation can change by up to 25% during the Milankovitch cycle. Not a few wm2 here or there, but a whopping 90 wm2. So why would the 4 wm2 provided by CO2 be significant, in comparison to the 90 wm2 of the Milankovitch cycle?
>>Once that ocean carbon store is exhausted, no
>>more extra CO2 is reaching the atmosphere.
Thank you, but I do not follow that argument. CO2 solubility can proceed all the way up to 60oc, so why would the 'CO2 store' be exhausted at say 20oc? If the average southern ocean temperature in an Ice Age is 10oc, then the reducing solubility of CO2 in the ocean should continue at almost the same rate all the way to 20oc or more. So why would the outgassing of CO2 stop during an Interglacial, just because the southern ocean has reached its current 15oc temperature?
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/_res/CO2-06.jpg
Thank you,
Moderator Response:[Rob P] - "Thank you, but I do not follow that argument."
Read the links I provided to you earlier, particularly the recent Watson et al (2015) paper. Here's the abstract:
"Atmospheric CO2 concentrations over glacial–interglacial cycles closely correspond to Antarctic temperature patterns. These are distinct from temperature variations in the mid to northern latitudes, so this suggests that the Southern Ocean is pivotal in controlling natural CO2 concentrations. Here we assess the sensitivity of atmospheric CO2 concentrations to glacial–interglacial changes in the ocean’s meridional overturning circulation using a circulation model for upwelling and eddy transport in the Southern Ocean coupled with a simple biogeochemical description. Under glacial conditions, a broader region of surface buoyancy loss results in upwelling farther to the north, relative to interglacials. The northern location of upwelling results in reduced CO2 outgassing and stronger carbon sequestration in the deep ocean: we calculate that the shift to this glacial-style circulation can draw down 30 to 60 ppm of atmospheric CO2. We therefore suggest that the direct effect of temperatures on Southern Ocean buoyancy forcing, and hence the residual overturning circulation, explains much of the strong correlation between Antarctic temperature variations and atmospheric CO2 concentrations over glacial–interglacial cycles."
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Jonas at 23:09 PM on 4 October 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #40
Referring to the AP article on "deniers" -> "doubters".Why not call them "rejectors" in the headline and at first occasion in the text define as "those who reject the mainstream scientific consensus" ?
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denisaf at 14:47 PM on 4 October 2015Emphasizing co-benefits motivates people to take action on climate change
The simple fact is that irreversible rapid climate disruption and ocean acidification and warming is under way because of the the contribution of emissions from past fossil fuel usage to operate the vast industrial infrastructure. The most poeple can possibly do is make sound decisions about the use of the infrastructure as that will contribute to slightly slowing down this misuse of natural forces.
Saying that measures can be adopted to cure climate change is grossly misleading as it can encourage the adoption of ineffective amelioration measures when the rational approach is to adopt measures to cope with the inevitable consequences of climate change, such as sea level rise.
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grindupBaker at 12:55 PM on 4 October 2015Satellites show no warming in the troposphere
David Arthur @ 17 "Water molecules absorb sensible energy at the surface when they evaporate, and re-release that energy at whatever tropospheric height when they re-condense. That is, intensification of the water cycle results in energy "bypassing" tropospheric greenhouse gases as it departs earth." is incorrect per the following table. Note that the *current* increasing greenhouse gas effect is mostly above the point at which 90% of water vapour resides (<~4km altitude) so there's lots of that +CO2 at 4km-~16km altitude to send some radiation back down. (the tabs didn't work out, figure it out yourself):
alti- air air
tude tempe- density --— atmospheric ppmv --
km rature g/m3 CO2 water vapour
0 16 1,290 400 14,000
0.5 12 1,235 399 11,000 **84% already caught and shimmering around**
1 9 1,180 398 8,500
1.5 5 1,130 398 6,400
2 2 1,075 397 4,900
3 -6 965 395 2,900
4 -13 860 394 1,700
5 -20 750 392 1,000
6 -27 680 390 600
** zone above approx. this height has more CO2 than H2O **
** zone above approx. this height is not "saturated" with GHGs **
** zone above approx. this height produces most +CO2 & +CH4 warming **
7 -34 610 389 350
8 -42 540 387 200
9 -49 470 386 120
10 -56 420 384 70
11 -56 370 384 40
12 -56 320 381 25
15 -56 200 376 10 ** 37.6x as much CO2 as H2O **
** not much +CO2 & +CH4 warming above approx. this height, air too thin **
20 -56 90 368 8
25 -52 40 360 8
30 -47 20 352 8
40 -25 5 344 8
50 -3 1 336 7
60 -18 0.39 328 7
70 -50 0.125 320 5.5 to 6.5
80 -83 0.027 312 2.5 avge (2 to 4.5) -
Tom Dayton at 09:25 AM on 4 October 2015Examining Hansen's prediction about the West Side Highway
Willis Eschenbach on WTF just repeated this myth about James Hansen's "prediction" of the West Side Highway being covered by now.
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grindupBaker at 08:57 AM on 4 October 2015Was Broecker really the first to use the term Global Warming?
It would have been gooder if a few scientists had gotten together some decades ago and provided a definition of "global warming". The present eclectic mix of alleged definitions that I've seen are poor quality with a few having some hilarity aspect, and a waste of time in debate. Anthropogenic global warming is surface warming caused by humans that's mostly caused by humans as I understand it.
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r.pauli at 01:45 AM on 4 October 2015Emphasizing co-benefits motivates people to take action on climate change
Gosh golly, sounds like a call for people to band together and form, um, gulp, "governments".... better yet, a global government!
Thanks for calling attention to this study. I read the summary as academic language expressing a common rule of business "Nothing will change unless there is money to be made or money to be lost" It is almost as if the Ideology of capitalism is blackmailing the future by saying to the world "We refuse to act until we see a balance sheet reason that can dictate an action"
Preferable is a modicom of prudent foresight based on science. Understand science or not. Better put: "Change or die" -
Neither Benevolence nor Development can exist in an over-heated world. Shouldn't we be past these two approaches? It is more like the choice to avoid chaos and suffering or accept it. The convincing will come from the real world - either from now risk or from future risk.
How much energy do we put into convincing Ideologues? Promising economic development is a tough sale. Adaptation sells itself and there will be plenty of business opportunity in building walls against rising sea levels and selling water and food. Oh and security and military.
Mitigation, however should be our only goal - yet even with full devotion of resources - results will be invisible for at least 40 years - then must continue for a thousand. Isn't it important to see the harsh reality?
"Prepare to join the Mitgation world government army!, Resistence is futile" - we are the Borg - er, make that the GORB (Government of Realistic Beings)
thanx for all you do
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kar at 18:25 PM on 3 October 2015OA not OK part 3: Wherever I lay my shell, that's my home
There seams to be several minor errors with wrong loading carbonate ions as well?
CO3- and not CO3--
Moderator Response:[Rob P] - Thanks for pointing out those typos. Hopefully someone who has access will correct them in due course.
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kar at 17:58 PM on 3 October 2015OA not OK part 3: Wherever I lay my shell, that's my home
A small typo to correct on this page - search for: will dissolve will dissolve
... and remove two words ...
;-)
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Tom Curtis at 11:43 AM on 3 October 2015CO2 lags temperature
It is usual, when discussing Milankovitch cycles, to dismiss any effect of obliquity on global, annual mean insolation based on the fact that the Earth is a sphere. I did it myself @481. As the Earth is an oblate spheroid, however, it is not strictly accurate. In particular, on the equinoxes, the Earth presents its minimum aspect to the Sun, showing an eclipsed area of 1.2737 x 1014 m2 to the Sun. As the Earth moves to the solstice (either winter or summer) it presents its maximum aspect, showing an eclipsed area of 1.2744 x 1014 m2. That represents a difference of 0.05% in recieved sunlight, or approximately 0.12 W/m2. That seasonal variation is much less than the 6.8% (16.2 W/m2) seasonal variation due to the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit.
As obliquity changes, the maximum eclipsed area (ie the insolation at the solstice) also changes, although the minimum eclipsed area (ie, insolation at the equinoxes) does not. Just as the variation due to the Milankovitch cycle for eccentricity (~0.175%) is much smaller than the seasonal variation, so also is the variation due to the Milankovitch cycle in obliquity much smaller than the seasonal variation. Specifically, it represents only a 0.01% variation in the solstice insolation. As the equinoctial insolation does not change, the variation in global, annually averaged insolation due to changes in obliquity will be much less than 0.01%.
For perspective, these factors are also less than the difference of treating the Earth as a perfect oblate spheroid, or allowing for the additional interception of sunlight due to continents, mountains and, of course, the atmosphere.
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billev at 01:09 AM on 3 October 2015It's a natural cycle
Tom, I want to thank you for your responses to my comments. We apparently do not agree but at least you showed enough interest to reply. I made the same comments on the site Watts Up With That and got no response. I was the man who wasn't there. My purpose in making the comments was to see if there was any acknowledgement of what I see as a possible pattern of stepped warming caused by more or less regular pauses in the overall warming trend. I think the current emphasis on man- made warming may be akin to the worry over an impending ice age that was propounded during the period of the Time magazine article I quoted. And there were more of that type of article at the time. I get the feeling we are getting a politically based bums rush about man-made climate change and too many scientists are being carried along. If there is, in fact, a pattern to the warming then I think it will be obvious by the end of the current century. Maybe we will then begin wondering why such a pattern should occur. I shudder to think of the money that will have been wasted before then on uneeded or ineffective measures to control the climate. I am 83 years old so it won't be my worry.
Moderator Response:[TD] billev, I'm going to take a chance by assuming you are sincere. You are blind to how rude you have been to everyone who has taken the (sometimes considerable) time to respond to you. "Rude" because you have ignored the content of every single response. The most recent example is your failure to even acknowledge any of the content of the "Ice Age was Predicted in the 70s" post that you have been pointed to multiple times. Instead, in your most recent comment you merely repeated your initial, incorrect, assertion. If you want to continue commenting on the Skeptical Science site, you'll need to respond substantively to the original posts and to other commenters' responses to you. In other words, you must engage in conversation. Otherwise you are merely sloganeering, which is prohibited by this site's comments policy.
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PhilippeChantreau at 23:24 PM on 2 October 2015It's a natural cycle
We've been down that road countless times before. The claim that "scientists predicted an ice age" has no basis in the scientific litterature. Billev tried to exploit the miserably inaccurate Time article to show that "scientists" showed a decrease in temperature and increase in sea ice in the 70's and such conclusions were completely absent from the scientific litterature, once again. Mass media wildly speculative and sensationalistic pieces pass as "scientists said" for the convenience of scoring rethorical points. Yawn.
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MA Rodger at 21:53 PM on 2 October 2015Ice age predicted in the 70s
The "most cited" 1970's article heading this SkS post does contain a grown-up bit of referencing that I don't see discussed in the comment thread here. The 1975 Newsweek article "The Cooling World" quotes from "a recent report by the National Acadamy of Sciences" which is the 1975 report by the Panel on Climatic Variation "Understanding Climatic Change: A Program for Action". This long report (a transcript of sorts here) is certainly not about global cooling but about the threat from any form of climate change.
Beyond that basic conclusion, the report does strangely pull its punches when it comes to CO2 emissions, even though CO2 is the first man-made impact to be listed and its impacts are then enumerated.
The corresponding changes of mean atmospheric temperature due to C0 2 [as calculated by Manabe (1971) on the assumption of constant relative humidity and fixed cloudiness] are about 0.3 °C per 10 percent change of C0 2 and appear capable of accounting for only a fraction of the observed warming of the earth between 1880 and 1940. They could, however, conceivably aggregate to a further warming of about 0.5 °C between now and the end of the century.
Yet the message that CO2 presents a threat is somehow lost, with the 'Program for Action' calling for research into climate rather than a reduction of CO2 emissions. Somehow the stark message of the Charney Report just four years later is absent, such conclusions overwhelmed by talk of other human impacts. The report gets bogged down with the likes of the theoretical potential of aerosol cooling (that "cannot be reliably determined from present information") becoming more important in future:-
Of the two forms of pollution, the carbon dioxide increase is probably the more influential at the present time in changing temperatures near the earth's surface (Mitchell, 1973a). If both the C0 2 and particulate inputs to the atmosphere grow at equal rates in the future, the widely differing atmospheric residence times of the two pollutants means that the particulate effect will grow in importance relative to that of C0 2 .
And the impact of waste heat (which logically could be a big problem if fossil fuels were replaced by thermally inefficient nuclear power) is considered along with other various albedo effects, all competing with the CO2 message.
Yet, there are certainly no predictions of a "cooling world", no ice age being predicted here. Rather, the message is that climate change is dangerous.
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Daniel Bailey at 20:52 PM on 2 October 2015It's a natural cycle
I read it the same way, Tom.
Additionally, one can also look at the warming of the Arctic over the past century+, too:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/arctic-was-warmer-in-1940.htm
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bozzza at 14:36 PM on 2 October 2015Is the fossil fuel industry, like the tobacco industry, guilty of racketeering?
@ 6,
Tobacco is regulated so that children don't have to breathe the smoke, for example. Commerical entities are given licence to participate in the economy and that licence can be taken away.
Commerical entites aren't born with the right to do what they want: governments rule! It's called mixed-market economies and commerical entities are employed to provide goods and services to the people: they are granted licence to do this with profit the incentive but that licence can be revoked.
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Tom Curtis at 12:37 PM on 2 October 2015It's a natural cycle
With respect to the moderator, I do not believe billev has quoted that article to argue that the majority of climatologists in the 1970s predicted global cooling, but rather to argue that they understood global temperaures to have declined since the mid-1940s. That is, he intends it as a distraction from the fact of his clear double standard with regard to evidence, as shown @13. Rhetorically, unable to rebut the statistics @13, he wishes both to distract from the 1910-1945 period, to dismiss the relevance of statistics in favour of popular reports and ancedotes (hence the dismissive comment about the "numbers guy"), and (apparently) to assert that the period from 1945 to 1974 consituted not just a pause, as he has previously argued, but an actual decline in global mean surface temperature. Given this, I will address those points here, leaving out any discussion of climatologists predictions in the 1970s as off topic.
What I will note is that the Time Magazine article no more accurately reflected climatologists understanding of then trends than it reflected their predictions as to future trends. In particular, it claims that "Since the 1940's the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7 degrees F" (my emphasis). 2.7 F is 1.5 C, an astonishing reduction. Indeed, it is 60% greater than the trend increase from 1880-2014 (Gistemp). The Time Magazine in effect claimed that by 1974, Global Means Surface Temperature (GMST) had dropped substantially below the temperature found in 1880.
Nor can I find any justification for such a claim in the scientific literature. Moran (1974) stated,
"The current cooling trend in global mean temperature has amounted only to about 0.1 Co per decade since its initiation in the mid-1940s."
Lamb (1974) shows a graph illustrating a similar decline:
Schneider and Kellog (1973), appearing as Chapter 5 in Rasool, Chemistry of the Lower Atmosphere, show a graph with temperature change by latitude band which supports a similar trend (also being based on Mitchell's work).
In short, Time Magazine exagerated the then understood trend by a factor of five.
Since then, significant improvements in methodology, a vast increase in the available stations, and the inclusion of marine data have greatly improved estimates of global temperatures. As a result, only 1 out of 7 Global or Land/Ocean (ie, global less polar regions) temperature indices shows a negative trend over that period (HadCRUT4 -0.002 +/- 0.059 C/decade).
With regard to the anecdotal data, the sea ice claim by Time Magazine, in particular, is deceptive. This is not because there was not thicker winter sea ice near Iceland (there was), but because that was more than compensated by sea ice losses in less accessible areas so that overall sea ice extent declined in that period (albeit, slowly):
So, not only is billev rhetorical distraction beside the point - he finds himself rellying on an extremely inaccurate report of out of date science to make it.
Moderator Response:[PS] My point was that the accuracy of the Time article is discussed on that topic, as well as what was the reasoning behind the source. If billev wishes to discuss the accuracy the Time article or the degree to which the article represented scientific opinion at the time, it should be on that topic.
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barry1487 at 12:22 PM on 2 October 2015Was Broecker really the first to use the term Global Warming?
This of course addresses the false claims that global warming was supposedly switched to climate change in 2000s.
Pointing out that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established in 1988 doesn't do the trick?
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billev at 07:15 AM on 2 October 2015It's a natural cycle
From Time Magazine, June 24, 1974: " As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may well be the harbinger of another ice age.
Telltale signs are everywhere - from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest. Since the 1940's the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7 degrees F. Although that figure is an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data." And to think, all these people had to do is talk to a "numbers guy" and he would have convinced them that what they were experiencing wasn't really what they were experiencing.
Moderator Response:[PS] Please see "ice age predicted in 1970s" and comment there if you wish to dispute the article. No follow up responses to this particular comment on this thread please.
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boba10960 at 04:32 AM on 2 October 2015Was Broecker really the first to use the term Global Warming?
Ari Jokimäki comment 8: I'm afraid my sense of time isn't as good as I wish it were. If I recall correctly, the question came up around the time that one of Broecker's books on climate change was released, but I don't recall which book. I believe it occurred before 2008, but I can't be certain.
What I do recall more clearly is that Broecker was not concerned at that time about being credited with coining the term "global warming." In fact, at the time that he was querying his colleagues about the term's origin he was pretty certain that the term had been used previously, but he was unsure of its source. His priority has always been to inform policy makers about the urgency of dealing with warming, as illustrated so well in his "angry beast" metaphor.
More important than the terminology, in my opinion, is that Broecker's 1975 paper presented the view of global warming held by the best informed scientists at the time. One often sees "skeptics" say that climate scientists have done a 180-degree flip-flop in their "alarmism," warning of a pending ice age in the 70's before switching to global warming in the 80's. My response to anyone who raises this flip-flop issue is to point them to Broecker's 1975 paper as evidence of the mainstream view at the time.
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Dcrickett at 03:13 AM on 2 October 2015Was Broecker really the first to use the term Global Warming?
There is an unavoidable confusion in use of the term "warming" which can mean "increase in temperature" and also "addition of thermal energy". It appears to me, from personal experience and from the fascinating discussions here, that Global "Warming" refers to increasing temperature. Myself, I am becoming more fond of the addition of heat, which, among other things, renders the "Global Warming Hiatus" meaningless.
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r.pauli at 01:44 AM on 2 October 2015Was Broecker really the first to use the term Global Warming?
What a great discussion of history. Unique and dynamic times require the invention of new terms. Language as significant, heroic action.
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Ari Jokimäki at 00:22 AM on 2 October 2015Was Broecker really the first to use the term Global Warming?
Thanks for the insider information, boba10960. I have cited a NASA page from 2008 making the claim that Broecker was the first, but did the things you describe happen before that? I'm just wondering what is the route of this becoming a popular thing to say that Broecker was the first to use the term.
Tor B, thanks for the elaboration. I quickly checked 1959 and 1958 results from Google books for the "global warming" and didn't see much else than books with wrong publication year in Google database. So perhaps there actually are no late 1950s books using the term.
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CBDunkerson at 00:03 AM on 2 October 2015Is the fossil fuel industry, like the tobacco industry, guilty of racketeering?
David Lewis, while Exxon could certainly argue that they didn't know exactly what would happen (as there was indeed still scientific debate) they could not (truthfully) argue that they didn't know the disinformation they were funding was false. After all, the campaign wasn't just, 'We do not know how bad it will get'... there was outright denial that atmospheric CO2 levels were rising, that fossil fuels were causing it, that CO2 even CAN warm the atmosphere, et cetera. Countless claims that they knew from their research were blatantly and ridiculously false.
Indeed, the uncertainty on the science just deepens the similarity to the tobacco industry. At the time they were doing their research, it wasn't known how smoking caused cancer or how many people who got cancer did so because of smoking... just that smoking significantly increased the likelihood of cancer. Which the tobacco companies then publicly lied about.
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Tor B at 00:00 AM on 2 October 2015Was Broecker really the first to use the term Global Warming?
For the record, I used Google's Ngram (1st comment above), and discounted small numbers and 'early' blips of larger ones (and therefore my using the phrase "showing up regularly" and terms suggesting "about"). The link I attempted to include that was removed identified this source. [Sorry, Rob, for creating the problem.] Removing the small numbered hits was my lazy method of attempting to avoid chance hits such as Ari notes in Comment #8.
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MA Rodger at 23:09 PM on 1 October 2015CO2 lags temperature
Tom Curtis @484.
I would say your 0.2% is sound. Another person calculating this value is Tamino who arrives at 0.18% and 0.61Wm-2 for obliquity ranging "between a minimum of near zero, and a maximum of slightly less than 0.06" and prior to albedo considerations. My take on the www.climatedata.info is that they calculated the discal forcing (as graphed in their fig 3 that you show) but then they forgot to divide by 4 when they applied that as a global forcing to calculate the percentage, which should therefore be 0.175%.
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boba10960 at 22:41 PM on 1 October 2015Was Broecker really the first to use the term Global Warming?
Just to be clear, Wally Broecker did not promote himself initially as the person who coined the term “global warming”. Years ago he was asked by a reporter if his 1975 paper, quoted in this article, was the first use of the term. He was unsure, so he asked several of his colleagues, including me, if anyone was aware of a prior use of the term. As far as I know, no one did a rigorous search like that performed by Ari Jokimäki, but none of the people queried by Broecker was aware of prior use of the term. Nevertheless, largely as a consequence of Broecker’s query, it became conventional to ascribe the coinage of the term “global warming” to Broecker’s 1975 paper. I’ve been guilty of that myself. Now, thanks to this post, I won’t make that mistake again.
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Tom Curtis at 21:26 PM on 1 October 2015CO2 lags temperature
MA Rodger @483, thank you for drawing my attention to this graph:
That shows an approximate 2 W/m^2 total range of fluctuation, but is calculated for TOA insolation. Converting for current albedo brings that down to 1.4 W/m^2, or approx three times my calculated range. The key point is that is still a tiny forcing. If total anthropogenic forcing since the pre-industrial could be limited to 1.4 W/m^2, global warming would not be a problem. Conversely, if we asssume that the temperature differences between glacial and interglacial were due to a feedback on the global annual average value (calculated as 1.4 W/m^2), then the climate sensitivity would be approximately 13 C per doubling of CO2.
Setting that aside, however, I notice that Chis Colose calculates a similar value to mine:
"Eccentricity is the only Milankovitch cycle that alters the annual-mean global solar insolation (i.e., the total energy the planet receives from the sun at the top of the atmosphere). For the mathematically inclined, the annually-averaged insolation changes in proportion to 1/(1-e2)0.5, so the solar insolation increases with higher eccentricity. This is a very small effect though, amounting to less than 0.2% change in solar insolation, equivalent to a radiative forcing of ~0.45 W/m2 (assuming present-day albedo). This is much less than the total anthropogenic forcing over the 20th century. However, eccentircity does modulate the precessional cycle, as we shall see."
John Baez finds only a 0.167% range (or 0.4 W/m^2 with current albedo):
"Now, the first important thing to realize is this: it's not obvious that Milankovitch cycles can cause glacial cycles. During a glacial period, the Earth is about 5°C cooler than it is now. But the Milankovitch cycles barely affect the overall annual amount of solar radiation hitting the Earth!
This fact is clear for precession or changes in obliquity, since these just involve the tilt of the Earth's axis, and the Earth is nearly a sphere. The amount of Sun hitting a sphere doesn't depend on how the sphere is 'tilted'.
For changes in the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit, this fact is a bit less obvious. After all, when the orbit is more eccentric, the Earth gets closer to the Sun sometimes, but farther at other times. So you need to actually sit down and do some math to figure out the net effect. Luckily, Greg Egan did this for us—I'll show you his calculation at the end of this article. It turns out that when the Earth's orbit is at its most eccentric, it gets very, very slightly more energy from the Sun each year: 0.167% more than when its orbit is at its least eccentric."
Baez also shows the derivation of the result.
Even the Washington Edu slide you link to gets the percentage change about right (0.18%), but messes up in calculating the change in forcing that results.
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MA Rodger at 19:38 PM on 1 October 2015CO2 lags temperature
Tom Curtis @481.
The figures I have read elsewhere do conform with your calculated 0.2% for the global annual insolation variation (resulting from obliquity which is varying from roughly zero to a little above 0.06). Mind, the graphic tatelyle was linking to above (as @479) originates from the web-page here that for some reason gives the figure for global annual insolation variation a lot higher at 0.7% although the graphic they show for this (their fig 3) does look to be the right shape. Still, they aren't the only folk to get their numbers wrong on this matter. This Washington Edu slide show manages to miss off the decimal point in their insolation figure, twice, giving a 0.18% change in insolation from obliquity as a rather toasty 5Wm-2.
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ryland at 19:28 PM on 1 October 2015Is the fossil fuel industry, like the tobacco industry, guilty of racketeering?
You're quite correct KR I am misinterpreting (once again) in Bizzaro fashion by typing CO2 instead of NoX. My error for not cxhecking what I had written.
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Ari Jokimäki at 17:07 PM on 1 October 2015Was Broecker really the first to use the term Global Warming?
That 1890 case sensitive hit is "The Sanitarian" by Agrippa Nelson Bell. It contains the search phrase only once, and it is this:
"Cholera in Persia, 60. Civic Cleanliness, Coleman, 3. Climate, Change of, 356. Clothing in its Relations to Hygiene, Hibberd, 139. Cocaine Poisoning, Ammonia in, 87. Codeine, 380. Coffin Nails, 147. Colds, Acute and How to Treat them, 382."
This is one bad aspect of Google searches, the exact phrase search matches also those phrases that have punctuation marks in them.
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denisaf at 16:35 PM on 1 October 2015Is the fossil fuel industry, like the tobacco industry, guilty of racketeering?
There is no doubt that fosil fuel industry have employedsome mal practices to ensure their profitability by maintaining demand. But the consuming public provide the demand so they can enjoy their materialistic life style. What will cause the masses to stop driving their cars and flying hither and thither? What wiil get them to turn off their TVs, airconditioning and heating?
Moderator Response:[Rob P] This is the logical fallacy known as a False Dichotomy, or Black or White fallacy.
A technologically-advanced society requires energy, but there is no requirement that this be derived from fossil fuels. That a truly advanced society would eschew fossil fuels, given the ultimate consequences of burning them (global warming & ocean acidification), is a persuasive argument.
If you wish to engage in a genuine discussion, then please do so. Further trolling will likely result in your comment being moderated. -
Tom Curtis at 16:28 PM on 1 October 2015It's a natural cycle
billev @12, what you "still see" has little bearing on what the data shows. It is fairly plain that you are applying a double standard. Elsewhere, you said the GISS data "... also could be indicating another pause beginning about 2000 ...". If we look at that data using the Skeptical Science trend calculator we find the following trends:
1970- 0.174 +/- 0.029 C/decade
2000- 0.132 +/- 0.124 C/decade
If we take the difference, and add the uncertainties in quadrature, we find the difference in the trend, and the uncertainty of that difference:
Difference: 0.042 +/- 0.127 C/decade (0.66 σ)
As you can see, the difference in the trend is much smaller than uncertainty, meaning there is minimal evidence supporting your view that the data "could be indicating" another pause. However poor the evidence, however, it sets a benchmark of what you consider sufficient evidence to entertain that possibility.
In the same post, you also said the data "shows me a pause in temperature rise from ... from the mid 1940's until about the mid 1970's". Again, we find the trends and uncertainties for the relevant periods:
1910-1945 0.136 +/- 0.045 C/decade
1910-1970 0.06 +/- 0.022 C/decade
1945-1970 0.008 +/- 0.07 C/decade
Again, taking the difference and summing uncertainties in quadrature, we find:
Difference ('10-'45): 0.128 +/- 0.083 C/decade (3.08 σ)
Difference ('10-'70): 0.052 +/- 0.073 C/decade (0.84 σ)
The 3.08 standard deviation difference in trend is certainly sufficient to infer a change in trend, given that we accept those trends as being the underlying trends. That, however, is in dispute, and it is dubious that the 0.84 standard deviation difference between the 1910-1970 trend and the 1945-1970 trend is sufficient to infer a difference in trend. The important point here, however, is that you do infer a change in trend. Ergo, you consider that 0.84 standard deviation difference to be sufficient to infer that there is a change in trend. You certainly consider the 3.08 standard deviation differenc to be sufficient to make that inference.
Being fair, you may think that difference between the 1910-1945 and the 1910-1970 trends is sufficient to infer a different slope for the shorter period. So, again checking the trends, taking the difference and adding uncertainties in quadrature we get:
1910-1945 0.136 +/- 0.045 C/decade
1910-1970 0.06 +/- 0.022 C/decade
Difference: 0.076 +/- 0.05 C/decade (3.03 σ)
So, a 3.03 standard deviation difference, which we again can use as a benchmark for justifying your argument. Note, however, that if you use this reasoning, you have to accept that just one leg exceeding 2 standard deviations is sufficient to break a longer trend into two shorter trends in your analysis.
So, what then of the argument that the trend from 1910-1945 should be broken into two shorter periods, the first with a flatter and the second with a steeper trend. Again, data and differences are calculated:
1910-1945 0.136 +/- 0.045 C/decade
1933-1945 0.421 +/- 0.165 C/decade
Difference ('10-'45): 0.285 +/- 0.171 (3.33 σ)
Difference ('10-'33): 0.329 +/- 0.185 (3.56 σ)
Quite clearly, the trend from 1933-1945 is statistically significant. More importantly, the difference in trend between 1933-1945 and either 1910-1945 or 1910-1933 is larger than any other difference considered above. Further, it is larger, measured in standard deviations, than any of the trends considered above. Ergo, for you to consider there to be pause from 1945-1970 but not insist that the period from 1910-1945 to be composed of two shorter periods having two different trends applies a double standard. Specifically, you consider evidence stronger than that which convinces you of the 1945-1970 pause to be insufficient to convince you that the period 1910-1945 should not be modelled as one continuous trend.
The case for a downward trend from 1945 is not as strong, primarilly due to the short period (1945-1950). Despite that, the trend verges on statistical significance (see below), and the trend difference is the largest yet examined. Somebody who considers that the post 2000 data "could indicate another pause" has no basis on which to consistently reject that downward plunge. Nor can anybody insisting on a distinct 1945-1970 trend consistently insist on a requirement of statistical significance for both the upward and downward trends for the 1940s spike. The data shows that the 1945-1970 and the 1950-1970 trends are stastically indistinguishable from the 1910-1970 trend; and that the 1933-1945 trend is statistically distinguishable from all preceding and following trends. The most economic way to parse that data is to assume a persistent background trend over the first three quarters of the twentieth century interupted by a sharp upward trend from the mid 30s to mid 4s, after which temperatures relaxed back to the background trend value.
1945-1970 0.008 +/- 0.07 C/decade
1950-1970 0.031 +/- 0.099 C/decade
1945-1950 -0.514 +/- 0.559 C/decade
Difference ('45-'70): -0.522 +/- 0.563 C/decade (1.85 σ)
Difference ('50-'70): -0.545 +/- 0.568 C/decade (1.92 σ)
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Tom Curtis at 16:14 PM on 1 October 2015Was Broecker really the first to use the term Global Warming?
Treesong2 @4, the term "global warming" only appears in the title of Broecker's article. In the abstract, he writes:
"If man-made dust is unimportant as a major cause of climatic change, then a strong case can be made that the present cooling trend will, within a decade or so, give way to a pronounced warming induced by carbon dioxide. By analogy with similar events in the past, the natural climatic cooling which, since 1940, has more than compensated for the carbon dioxide effect, will soon bottom out. Once this happens, the exponential rise in the atmospheric carbon dioxide content will tend to become a significant factor and by early in the next century will have driven the mean planetary temperature beyond the limits experienced during the last 1000 years."
Clearly he is happy to use "a pronounced warming" and "global warming" synomomously. That being the case, your argument applies as much to his article as to any prior. The fact is that terms in a language are very rarely introduced by definition. Rather, a standard usage will get frequent application to a particular context, and by familiarity come to name the phenomenon in that context specifically. Thus, we will have a large number of instances of people referring to the "global (warming trend)" that currently exists, and is induced anthropogenic factors. As a result, people will come to understand by "global warming" the current warming trend induced by anthropogenic factors, ie, "Global Warming". Without that later linguistic development, we would interpret Broecker's use as "global (warming trend)" no less than any of the others. It follows that the others have a greater claim to "first use of the term" even though they did not use it with its current meaning.
Note that if we insist the "first use" be a use which clearly uses the modern sense, then a sorites paradox arises as usage will gradually shift from the earlier to the later.
With regard to the n-gram, using a case sensitive filter, the first appearance of "Global Warming" is in 1890. It occurs again in 1961, 1969, and 1975, occuring every year thereafter. It becomes common in 1989, but remains a distinct minority usage relative to "global warming". Arguable, any capitalization of the term other then in titles represents a modern usage.
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Ari Jokimäki at 15:54 PM on 1 October 2015Was Broecker really the first to use the term Global Warming?
The 1776 "climate change" hits in Tom Curtis' search at first look seem to be genuine, excellent!
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David Lewis at 15:51 PM on 1 October 2015Is the fossil fuel industry, like the tobacco industry, guilty of racketeering?
Just because Exxon scientists describe their own climate research as "in accord with the scientific consensus" of the time, it doesn't mean that "the world's largest oil company accepted and concurred with the scientific consensus on human caused global warming". There needs to be evidence that indicates what the senior executives thought.
Besides, the "scientific consensus" then wasn't as solid as it is now.
The Exxon scientists summed things up like this:
"a general consensus regarding the likelihood and implications of a CO2 induced greenhouse effect will not be reached until such time as a significant temperature increase can be detected".
That this was true in 1982 was clearly shown by Hansen in 1988 when he made his big splash on front pages all over the world over his statement to Congress that he was 99% certain that the greenhouse was here.
The debate in 1982 was far less potent than it is today.
Consider this article. Hansen himself has been circulating this recently, i.e. in a July 2015 communication.
In the article it is made clear that there were a number of prominent climate scientists unwilling to back Hansen in public on this even as late as 1988.
Its one thing to build a case that Exxon contributed heavily to the campaign to minimize public understanding of what climate scientists have discovered. But why claim Exxon knew what would happen way back when, when, way back then, a significant number of climate scientists themselves were reluctant to take a such a position in public?
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Ari Jokimäki at 15:48 PM on 1 October 2015Was Broecker really the first to use the term Global Warming?
Some time ago I did the same analysis for "climate change" and "climatic change". First genuine use of "climate change" that I could find was by Willis (1925):
Willis R (1925) Physiography of the California coast ranges. GSA Bulletin 36(4):641–678. doi:10.1130/GSAB-36-641.
First genuine use of "climatic change" that I could find was by Mayer(1856):
Mayer B (1856) Observations on Mexican history and archaeology: With a special notice of Zapotec remains, as delineated in JG Sawkins’s drawings of Mitla 9(4), Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC.
I checked the Google book search Tom Curtis mentioned, and the 1869 book mentioning global warming seems to be faulty finding. I repeated the Google book search only for the year 1869 and I get a book by Sir Norman Lockyer which indeed seems to be from 1869. However, when you look at the actual findings from the text, you see that global warming has been found from somewhere that clearly is more modern text. I cannot check further as the search results don't give you an option to open the findings further. So, it seems to me that Google book search returns an 1869 book based on search hits from some other book which is more modern.
This is the same thing I noticed when I was digging on this with Google Scholar: you don't usually find the truth simply by looking search hit numbers, you have to dig the search results to see which hits are genuine and which hits are not (I wrote an article on this a while back).
That being said, it would be interesting to see what are the late 1950s books in Tor B's search results. Also, what was the search engine as the resulting numbers agree quite well with my numbers? I know that there are more accurate search engines than Google, but for scientific searches those engines usually require subsription and are limited in their historical paper content.
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Is the fossil fuel industry, like the tobacco industry, guilty of racketeering?
Ryland - Note that CO2 emissions are directly tied to mileage, and that the deceptive VW software emphasized mileage over emissions when not being directly tested. They did find on mileage but are horrible polluters with other gases.
The software scamming resulted in greatly increased nitrous oxide and particulates, not increased CO2. You seem to (again) be misinterpreting in Bizzaro fashion.
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Treesong2 at 12:49 PM on 1 October 2015Was Broecker really the first to use the term Global Warming?
I would argue that the examples in all the pre-1971 quotations except for Fletcher (1969) should be parsed as global (warming trend), not (global warming) trend, so 'global warming' as a term, rather than an incidental collocation, only goes back to 1969. The Google hits mentioned by Tom Curtis may take it back further, of course.
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ryland at 11:35 AM on 1 October 2015Is the fossil fuel industry, like the tobacco industry, guilty of racketeering?
Add to the list the automotive industry. It seems that since 2008 the fall in CO2 emissions from vehicles is about 50% less than has been claimed. Scamming the numbers just adds more to the negative aspects of the climate change debate.
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billev at 08:54 AM on 1 October 2015It's a natural cycle
Sorry, Tom. I still see a pause in warming from about the mid 1940's until the mid 1970's regardless of the addition of a yellow trend line from GISS. I assume that a chart of the type of the NOAA and GISS charts is designed to give the viewer information in an easy to understand format. That format shows me the break in warming I just mentioned.
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Tom Curtis at 06:48 AM on 1 October 2015CO2 lags temperature
tatelyle @478, from the wording of your comment, I assume you are making the error discussed here. For what it is worth, a feedback is positive if its incremental gain (g) is positive. Because feedbacks are iterative, ie, they respond to temperature increases resulting from feedbacks just as much as they respond to those from forcings, the final response of a feedback (f) is given by the formula, f=F/(1-g), where F is the Forcing, and f and g have already been defined. A simple look at that formula tells you that feedbacks do not "runaway" unless g is greater than or equal to 1, which is not the case.
You may, however, by raising the issue that atmospheric CO2 concentration can be a feedback on temperature, and temperature is a feedback on atmospheric CO2. Independent of the factors discussed by Rob P, CO2 concentration increases as a linear function of temperature, all else being equal. In contrast, global temperature increases with the log of CO2. That means that, all else being equal, the CO2 increase loop will quickly self damp. You would require the CO2 concentration to increase exponentially with temperature to get a runawy effect (until oceanic CO2 was effectively exhausted).
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