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One Planet Only Forever at 01:49 AM on 11 November 2014New study questions the accuracy of satellite atmospheric temperature estimates
WRyan,
I understand that when you referred to the 21 year averages in the satellite data up to 2004 you meant the mid-point of the latest 21 year period ending in 2014. However, it may be clearer to refer to it as the average of 21 years ending in 2014, especially if you speculate about trend over the 'past decade'. You really are speculating about the trend that will be seen in the data through the 'coming decade' And looking at the trend of averages of shorter durations in the more recent data, as some may be tempted to do to see what is happening ion the 'recent past decade' does not indicate what the longer term averages will be. The data sets are filled with rather random rapid short-term changes.
Even the 21 year average you used to get a reasonable length for the trend in the satellite data may be a short duration. A more rigorous evaluation of the 30 year averages in the satellite data would probably alos indicate a rate cloase to 0.15 C per decade. I tried to make my simple assessment deliberately conservative.
p.s. The preferred standard for establishing regional climate expectations by the WMO member organisations has been the evaluation of the most recent 30 years of observations. However, they have been learning that rapid climate change requires different evaluations. What happened over the past 30 years in any region is no longer as reliable as it used to be for determining what to expect in the near future.
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New study questions the accuracy of satellite atmospheric temperature estimates
CBDunkerson - The paper you mention is by Cowtan and Way (not Wray). The sheer variety of misspellings of the author names here and there has been amusing, but it's important to give proper credit.
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Tristan at 00:46 AM on 11 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
Ashton, you weren't piling on (there's only one of you). It was a reminder to those responding to you that 'one at a time' tends to make for better conversation :)
Groupthink tends to occur in groups that share some ideological base. SkS is a 'broad church'. Some confuse the fact that most commenters here agree on the basics of the science (not necessarily the finer details) with the notion that we're a bunch of anti-market socialists. John Cook was not motivated by liberalism to create this website, but by his Christian ethos and feelings of personal responsibility towards his daughter.
Dissidence is not treated with contempt in science, it's celebrated. What is not celebrated is one-sided skepticism and refusal to acknowledge information contrary to one's position. -
Ashton at 23:50 PM on 10 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
Thanks scaddenp for your very civil reply at 46. It was much appreciated. I didn't think answering your question was "piling on" but perhaps I gave too much detail . I wonder if the moderators at Skeptical Science are in favour of epistemological homogeneity? I hope not as institutions are diminished when the conventional wisdom becomes entrenched, groupthink takes hold and dissident voices are treated with contempt. (quote is from Nick Cater in today's Australian).
Moderator Response:[JH] My friendly reminder about the prohibition against piling on was directed at the commenters who are responding to your posts.
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CBDunkerson at 23:09 PM on 10 November 2014New study questions the accuracy of satellite atmospheric temperature estimates
Tristan, I was thinking of that Cowtan and Wray paper you link to also. I suspect you were referring to the fact that Cowtan & Wray used a kriging method (similar to what BEST did over land) to fill in the gaps between measured temperatures and that found that past SST records were biased low.
However, they also attempted to use satellite data to help fill in the gaps from surface measurements. What is interesting in relation to the new paper is that Cowtan & Wray found that combining the satellite and thermometer records worked well over land and ice... but not the oceans. When they tried it with the oceans they got significant mismatches. It would be interesting to see if the adjusted satellite calculations from Weng & co prove a better match if/when run through Cowtan & Wray's methodology... and/or how closely they line up with the results Cowtan & Wray got using kriging on surface readings.
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Tristan at 21:27 PM on 10 November 2014New study questions the accuracy of satellite atmospheric temperature estimates
WRyan - I agree that the majority of the disparity in trends disappears once ENSO is accounted for, which, if the paper is correct, would lead to a rather scary conclusion. The SST records are biased low.
This is not a new idea I might add.
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WRyan at 20:23 PM on 10 November 2014New study questions the accuracy of satellite atmospheric temperature estimates
The long term trends of the RSS and UAH global temperature records for the TLT altitude is basically the same as the long-term trend in the NOAA and GISS surface temperature records since the mid-1970s.
The 21-year running averages of all 4 data sets give pretty much identical warming trends of 0.14-0.15 C degrees per decade up until 2004. If that trend has continued over the past decade, then all 4 data sets are showing that the 2014 global temperature value will be pretty much on the trend line, which is what you would expect for an ENSO-neutral year.
The only real difference in the data sets is that the satellite monthly temperature data shows an exaggerated escalator effect. This results from the satellite measurements have a much larger (by about a factor of 2) response to El Nino and La Nina variations than the surface temperature data sets.
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One Planet Only Forever at 12:54 PM on 10 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45C
wili @1,
The recent rapid rise of the global average surface temperature is likely to have made 'historical climate system patterns' less relevant ways of anticipating what is coming in the near future. That is one of the more unnerving aspects of the rapid changes being created by human activity. Historical pattern based information processing, like short term forecasting, may indeed struggle to accurately predict what will happen in the near future. Of course, climate models are built to reasonably predict the larger time scale trends, not what will happen next year. A significantly more complex model with far more detailed starting point data would be required to reasonably predict next year's regional climate system behaviours, and a lot more would need to be understood about the details of how the ocean circulation patterns change.
So, as for next year's El Nino, I would say it is 'wait and see'. As for a generally warmer global average surface temperature a few decades from now with even less certainty about the regional climate conditions to expect, that unfortunately seems to be a far more certain thing even though there will be increased understanding of the total integrated planetary climate system.
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scaddenp at 11:51 AM on 10 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
Ashton - it looks like your response to me got deleted for offtopic. However, you can think of AGW much like Dr. You suspect the diagnosis, so run a huge battery of tests (eg does the outgoing LW have right signature for amount of CO2. You measure increased LW radiation at surface and does it match the spectrum and amplitude for CO2-induced radiation. Does the ocean warm at rate you would expect? You performs test against other possible causes - is incoming solar changing; is aerosols decreasing maybe; could it come from oceans (which would result in OHC loss) etc. Does it have the fingerprints of GHG warming?)
Like in medicine, you get the conformation from your tests but also like in medicine, you get those who dont like the answers (HIV deniers), want to make money (quack providers).
And in medicine, you get treatments offered which most certainly are not "beyond reasonable doubt" but for which the potential benefits outweigh the risks. In the current Ebola epidemic, you are seeing things tried which are not even shown to be safe, let alone effective.
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Tristan at 05:01 AM on 10 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45C
Billion = 10^9 all over AFAIK.
In Australia and the UK at least, we changed from 10^12 to 10^9 in the 90s. -
ubrew12 at 02:41 AM on 10 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45C
I think the purpose of fossil-fuel bought elections is to give the American people a Congress that 'cares' about Global Warming, as the people do, but regrettably can't do anything about it, for a variety of reasons ('Terrorism' always works, 'Jobs and the Economy', 'China', 'Space Aliens', whatever works).
People like Inhofe are now instructed to keep their climate denial on the 'down low', hence the ubiquitous 'I am not a Scientist' when asked the inevitable question. The proper follow up to that response is 'Why do you need to be a Scientist to do policy? The Science has already spoken, its time for policy, and you're a policy-maker'.
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ajki at 01:24 AM on 10 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45C
@Tristan, 4: "world GDP is 70 trillion"
I don't think that Lord Stern used Euro conversions at all. He spoke of Dollars in US-metrics. It was presumably phys.org that added a Euro conversion - but still in US-metrics (1 trillion = 1012).
A Central-european would use another metric when counting his or her Euros. So the actual GDP 2013 in Euro would be something around 60 billion Euro (1 billion = 1012). 60 trillion Euro (1 trillion = 1018) would actually mean something completely different. There is a slight difference between 1012 and 1018 ;-)
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John Hartz at 00:40 AM on 10 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
[JH] Moderator's Comment
A friendly reminder: The SkS Commets Policy prohibits "piling on."
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Firgoose at 21:48 PM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
Ashton: But I don't think the AGW proponents have proved their case beyond reasonable doubt.
Tom Curtis: "Beyond reasonable doubt" is a legal standard, not a scientific standard. It is certainly not in general a policy relevant standard. [.. Applied to] driving, it means we would not slow if we saw a vague, child like shape in the fog ahead of us.
Tom provides an interesting and compelling image. In this viewpoint, the reasonable doubt about the truth of "It is a child" provides justification for not taking action.
But if we change the statement to "It is not a child" then there's reasonable doubt about that and therefore cause to take avoiding action.
AGW is similar. For some it's not actually that vague, for others there's no fog, but surely nobody can say that it's not at least a vague, child-like shape in the fog ahead.
It's therefore not enough to claim that AGW proponents have not proved their case beyond reasonable doubt. As a doubter, you need to prove beyond reasonable doubt that AGW is not a collision in the fog ahead.
Ashton, do you accept that your reasonable doubt argument cuts both ways? Assuming that you are fair enough to say yes, do you then have sufficient scientific evidence to declare that the road ahead is clear - beyond reasonable doubt?
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Tristan at 21:18 PM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
It's hard to tell the difference between willful and genuine ignorance, and hard to tell the level with which someone experiences cognitive dissonance. In any given debate, passionate proponents may knowingly disseminate dubious information, because they believe their opposition is doing the same thing.
It's not really possible to access a person's level of intellectual honesty, and not usually relelvant either. Misinformation is misinformation, regardless of intent. Accusations of dishonesty are, by-and-large unproductive.
I prefer to give people benefit of the doubt, and believe Upton Sinclair hit the nail when he said:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
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Tristan at 20:47 PM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45C
World investment in infrastructure over 15 years would indeed constitute a real awful amount of money. Consider that world GDP is 70 trillion right now, over the next 15 years we're talking over a quadrillion dollars of economic activity worldwide, with the expectation that 7% or so is spent on infrastructure.
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ajki at 18:03 PM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45C
re.: "Climate economics expert urges "critical" investment shift", Phys.org, Nov 6, 2014
In the linked article:
"Stern estimated .... amount to some $90 trillion (73 trillion euros),..."
I think this should in fact be: "... $90 trillion (73 billion euros), ...". Otherwise it would be a real awful lot of money.
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scaddenp at 16:19 PM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
Ashton, I do not claim that everything posted at WUWT may be nonsense but I would bet everything is a distortion of the truth. It obviously works since apparently you believe things that are not true ("it based on computer programming") and appear base your skepticism on it. The low integrity at WUWT to me would be a reason to avoid on principle. (How do feel about cyber-stalking of scientists blogging under pseudonyms while allow your own authors to post under pseudonyms?). Reading Jo Nova and Bishop Hill as well? Have you no respect for truth at all?
Troy Masters is example a true skeptic in my opinion, and I dont think Roy Spencer would make claims he knew we false even if I disagree with him. Jeff Id and Lucia's Blackboard are also passable in my opinion. Do yourself a favour and it might make the debate better informed.
I would be interested to know whether you only take actions suggested by your Dr if proved "beyond reasonable doubt". (Though I frankly think AGW is even if the precise climate sensitivity remains annoyingly hard to pin down).
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Tom Curtis at 16:10 PM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
Two corrections for my post @43. First, when looking up the temperature difference between 1950 and 2010, I accidentally clicked on HadCRUT3 rather than HadCRUT4. The temperature difference should be 0.73 C for individual years, compared to the 0.6 C trend difference used by the IPCC. Second, when checking the trend difference in the SOI, I found it to have a very slight positive influence on temperature (0.7 Standard Deviations of the inverted 6 month lagged SOI index), which is approximately equivalent to a temperature differential of 0.07 C. Overall, temperature influences of major ocean oscillations are still demonstrably negligible so it makes not difference to the overall argument.
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Tom Curtis at 10:29 AM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
Ashton @37:
1)
"But I don't think the AGW proponents have proved their case beyond reasonable doubt."
"Beyond reasonable doubt" is a legal standard, not a scientific standard. It is certainly not in general a policy relevant standard. "Beyond reasonable doubt" applied to tobacco smoke means we would still allow smoking in bars and restaurants. To driving, it means we would not slow if we saw a vague, child like shape in the fog ahead of us. It means the captains of ships would not attempt to evade icebergs until it was beyond reasonable doubt that they would hit it if they did not, and hence almost certain that they would hit it regardless if they did.
For policy decisions, governments act on balance of probability (when they do not act based on ideological blinkers). That is, in IPCC parlance, they act on evidence which is more likely than not. Nearly all IPCC conclusions are proved far more rigorously than that standard.
Having said that, the critics of the IPCC have had the hardest time coming up with reasonable doubts.
"A reasonable doubt is not an imaginary or frivolous doubt. It must not be based upon sympathy or prejudice. Rather, it is based on reason and common sense. It is logically derived from the evidence or absence of evidence have raised doubts by ignoring"
But the doubts raised by the pseudo-skeptics have been based on cherry picking data, ignoring the evidence and in general making every use of shyster tricks they can imagine to raise unreasonable doubts among those who find the thought of global warming to much to allow into their conception of the world.
An example of this is Ashton, who raises an unreasonable standard, and then applies it to all aspects of the theory of AGW without distinction.
2)
"This suggests natural forces do have an impact on global temperature. Who is right? Sci Am or SkS?"
And here Ashton gives an example of "unreasonable doubts". The Scientific American article did not say that natural forces have no impact on global temperatures. Only that those impacts summed to zero (or were indistinguishable from zero) for the period 1950-2010. In that they follow the IPCC exactly, who state (WG1 Chapter 10, Executive summary):
"GHGs contributed a global mean surface warming likely to be
between 0.5°C and 1.3°C over the period 1951–2010, with the
contributions from other anthropogenic forcings likely to be
between –0.6°C and 0.1°C, from natural forcings likely to be
between –0.1°C and 0.1°C, and from internal variability likely
to be between –0.1°C and 0.1°C."Note, "likely" (ie, 66% or greater probability), not "beyond reasonable doubt". The IPCC also states:
"It is extremely likely [95% or greater] that human activities caused more than half of the observed increase in GMST from 1951 to 2010."
And here is the actual Probability Density Function of that attribution based on Fig 10.5:
The reason this can be seen in an indicator of the major source of internal variability in temperature, the inverted SOI:
It must be born in that the IPCC is comparing differences in multi year averages of temperatures, not individual years. That is why they take the difference between 1950 and 2010 to be 0.6 C, not the actual (according to HadCRUT4) 1.01 C. And with that in mind, it is clear that the net ENSO effect on temperature differences between the two periods has been negative.
At the same time, the effects of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation have been neutral between 1950-2010:
So, the Scientific American article, and the IPCC findings on which it is based do not assume that internal variability has no effect on temperature. Only that that effect between 1950 to 2010 (trend figures) are neglibly different from neutral.
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michael sweet at 09:39 AM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
Ashton,
2014 was (perhaps?) the 15th warmest in England. For the entire Globe (we call it Global Warming) it was the warmest summer ever. See the August report of the Naitonal Climate Data Center. They say:
"The combined average global land and ocean surface temperature for the June–August period was also record high for this period, at 0.71°C (1.28°F) above the 20th century average of 16.4°C (61.5°F), beating the previous record set in 1998." (August was also the hottest ever recorded)
Since you did not qualify your claim it appeared you were claiming the Globe was 15th warmest. That claim is completely false.
WUWT is not an accurate source of information. I did not look to see what the temperature was in England.
We are also concerned with world grain harvests, not England alone. Yields will obviously be more negatively affected in warmer areas than in areas that are currently cold.
Comments like this indicate that you are very selective with the data you present. You are earning a reputation here. If you want to convince people your position is correct you need to get better citations.
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billthefrog at 08:45 AM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
DSL @39 "He's got a message for you in the first sentence."
Tamino has also got an equally short and pithy message in the closing sentence of the article to which you refer!
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Tom Dayton at 08:34 AM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
Ashton, further to one of Rob's points: Global warming from anthropogenic CO2 was projected long before computers were available, and long before it was even technologically possible to measure global temperature. SkS has a summary, and for details see physicist and science historian Spencer Weart's The Discovery of Global Warming.
The fanciness in the models merely fine tunes the simple and robust projections. Sufficiently scary projections can be made by hand calculating--as they were done before computers existed--and even many of the refinements can be done quickly with merely a spreadsheet to prevent hand cramps from penciling it all out. Just two examples are Tamino's "Not Computer Models" and its followup "Once is Not Enough". For more examples, borrow or buy the short textbook by David Archer, "Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast".
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DSL at 08:25 AM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
Ashton, over the last forty years, what is the net effect of El Nino/La Nina on global mean surface temperature?
Who are you arguing with? No one has claimed that natural variation doesn't have an effect on GMST. IPCC AR5 has pages upon pages summarizing the research into natural variation. You should Foster & Rahmstorf 2011. Foster = tamino. The link is to his discussion of his paper. He's got a message for you in the first sentence.
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Rob Honeycutt at 08:19 AM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
Ashton... "But I don't think the AGW proponents have proved their case beyond reasonable doubt."
Then how do you think that so many National Academies and scientific organization have come to that conclusion? (Wikipedia)
"My major hangup on anthropogenic warming is that this concept is based primarily on computer programming..."
I do not know how people ever come to the conclusion that this is only about computer programming, because that is certainly a wild fallacy.
"But this is what SkS said about the strong El Nino in 1997-1998 'In 1998, an abnormally strong El Nino caused heat transfer from the Pacific Ocean to the atmosphere.'"
Surely you can understand that the ENSO cycle is a function of short term variability and is not a forcing. The 1998 El Nino is merely the ocean and the atmosphere "balancing the books" so to say.
The point being made is that, in the absence of man-made greenhouse gas emissions over the past century, the planet would likely have seen a mild cooling trend. Thus, the warming from the past 50 years is likely all due to human contribution.
As for you list of websites, I can see why you're getting so much wrong. You're frequenting a list of sites (WUWT, CA, JC and BH) that specialize in misinforming people about the science.
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sylas at 07:52 AM on 9 November 2014New study questions the accuracy of satellite atmospheric temperature estimates
The most curious thing about the lower troposphere temperature data from satellites is that there is a large systematic difference between the results given by UAH and by RSS; even though both are using the same raw data. The UAH group (the one Roy Spencer works on) shows much MORE warming. It is the RSS group which shows basically flat.
Has anyone looked into this difference?
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Ashton at 07:51 AM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
scaddenp @36 You asdk "how many articles at WUWT would we have to demonstrate as complete and utter nonsense and/or malicious distortions of the truth before you decided that that reading it was a bad idea?"
I really don't know. The post which is being debated, includes pieces from the Guardian stating that crop yield has increased in 2014. That doesn't seem to be complete and utter nonsense or malicious distortions of the truth but a matter of fact. In that piece Watts states that the summer of 2014 is the 15th warmest on record and again, that doesn't seem complete and utter nonsense or a malicious distortion of the truth. Agreed this is not the same as the warmest ever year but it is relevant. He also states "With three of the last four years being the coldest since 1996 in the UK, this year’s warm weather has been just that – weather. No month this year has been the warmest on record. It is simply that nine out of ten months this year have been above average" and "But with the Met Office projecting milder, wetter winters and sunny, dry summers, it seems clear that climate change will bring significant benefits to the UK." Once again that doesn't seem to be complete and utter nonsense or malicious distortions of the truth but a matter of fact. It would be unrealistic to trawl through WUWT looking for pieces that are complete and utter nonsense etc but like any good scientist and I am a scientist, a biochemist, I read around a topic. I have no hopes that there will be "news there (sic) was both reliable and in conformity with what you hope to be true?"
I don't "hope" that anything will be true, that would be very unscientific indeed. But I don't think the AGW proponents have proved their case beyond reasonable doubt. My major hangup on anthropogenic warming is that this concept is based primarily on computer programming with all the inherent errors and biases that that can be subject to. And please don't give me chapter and verse on Arrhenius and pCO2 etc I am well aware of those. Let's look at the "29 bullets" piece in Sci Am which states
"Since 1950 human activities have led to virtually all temperature rise. Natural forces have caused virtually none of the temperature rise"
But this is what SkS said about the strong El Nino in 1997-1998 "In 1998, an abnormally strong El Nino caused heat transfer from the Pacific Ocean to the atmosphere. Consequently, we experienced above average surface temperatures. Conversely, the last few years have seen moderate La Nina conditions which had a cooling effect on global temperatures"
This suggests natural forces do have an impact on global temperature. Who is right? Sci Am or SkS? This is what Tamino had to say on Open Mind "We can also see some some sizeable ups and downs, like the cooling for a few years around 1992 caused by the Mt. Pinatubo explosion, and the strong warming in 1998 caused by el Nino"
So dp natural forces affect global temperatures or don't they?
As for "better" blogs than WUWT, as well as WUWT I read SkS, Real Climate , JoNova, Climate Audit and till it disappeared Open Mind. Occasionally I look at Judith Curry and Bishop Hill.
Apologies for length I hope this post isn't deleted.
Moderator Response:[JH] This is the most recent in a long string of Gish Gallops that you have posted on SkS. Any future Gish Gallops posted by you will be summarily deleted.
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bjchip at 07:40 AM on 9 November 2014New study questions the accuracy of satellite atmospheric temperature estimates
"Simply put, when you eliminate the effect of clouds, the atmosphere is warming faster"
....mmm wouldn't you want to be more specific? Say instead
Simply put, when you eliminate the effect of clouds on the satellite readings, the atmosphere is warming faster...
For there is also the effect of clouds on the actual temperature we are attempting to measure. This is a nasty bit of parsing because the effects of clouds appear in so many places and the quote miners are SO ....
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nigelj at 07:35 AM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45C
The large drought in Brazil is concerning. Maybe the planet will experience ever more droughts, and then suddenly everyone will wake up and ask why didn't someone do something? Fingers will point at people like Senator Inhofe, but of couse it will all be too late. We are slaves to our own complacency, climate denialism, and human failings.
Regarding el nino. When I look at the climate record for the last 100 years you have many smaller or mid sized el ninos, then the 1998 el nino really stands out as a large one. This el nino is also at the peak of a warming trend since about 1970. This makes me think that warming oceans are altering the el nino cycle, and we might get fewer but larger el ninos. The cycle has therefore possibly changed, so may be hard to predict until a new pattern emerges. -
DSL at 07:29 AM on 9 November 2014Sea level rise is exaggerated
Holdean wrote "There have been four periods where atmospheric temperatures and CO2 levels have been as high or higher than presently in the last 400,000 years (Source: http://www.grida.no/publications/vg/climate/page/3057.aspx) Mankind was obviously not the cause of any of these occurrences."
This is incorrect. Present is 2014 with an atmospheric concentration of ~400ppm. In the ice core record, "present" is 1950. We are currently 100ppm higher than any point in that record. -
Antarctica is gaining ice
Expert or not, Dr. Steele's credentials _do not automatically make him correct _. That is the basis of the fallacy of arguing from authority.
As has been pointed out on this thread, Steele has made some rather elementary and invalidating errors. Science stands or falls based on content, on whether or not it fits the evidence. Steele's hypothesis fails that test.
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Tom Dayton at 07:00 AM on 9 November 2014Sea level rise is exaggerated
Holdean wrote "There have been four periods where atmospheric temperatures and CO2 levels have been as high or higher than presently in the last 400,000 years (Source: http://www.grida.no/publications/vg/climate/page/3057.aspx) Mankind was obviously not the cause of any of these occurrences."
Yes, obviously, but that would be relevant to the current temperature increase only if we had no idea what controls temperature. In fact, we do know. See:
- Climate Has Changed Before
- CO2 Is Not The Only Driver of Climate
- The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide In Earth's Climate History
Holdean wrote "The 'mini ice age' lasted from the 1300s to about 1850 and that is when the glaciers and sea ice reached their peaks. As that water becomes available again, sea levels rise."
But the "mini ice age" (a.k.a. the Little Ice Age) was not in any way an "ice age" (we currently are in an ice age and have been for a long time), nor a glacial period within an ice age (currently we are in an interglacial period). Nor was the "mini ice age" global, and "it" was not even a single event. Instead, there were some isolated periods of strictly regional cooling separated by as much as hundreds of years. So the very existence of a global Little Ice Age is a myth. Those cooler periods loomed large in the minds of people who were living in those regions, and the cultural prominence of the opinions and writings of those people made those cooler periods seem singular, severe, and global.
See also "We're Coming Out of the Little Ice Age."
In all Skeptical Science posts, be sure to read not just the Basic tabbed pane, but the Intermediate and Advanced ones if they exist.
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wili at 06:21 AM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45C
On the on-again-off-again El Nino story: The latest graphs now show an increasing likelihood of a super El Nino (again) for the middle of next year. Any chance that this will fizzle again, just at this year's predictions did, and as they did a couple years ago? Has something fundamentally shifted that has made these much harder to predict? Or has prediction always been dicy when it comes to El Ninos/La Ninas?
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scaddenp at 05:40 AM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
Ashton, as a matter of curiousity, how many articles at WUWT would we have to demonstrate as complete and utter nonsense and/or malicious distortions of the truth before you decided that that reading it was a bad idea? 10?, 100?, 1000?
Or would you continue to read it no matter what in the hope that one day there might be news there was both reliable and in conformity with what you hope to be true?
Frankly there are better places to go if you want climate skeptic discussion which have more integrity.
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Dikran Marsupial at 04:48 AM on 9 November 2014Sea level rise is exaggerated
Holdean, Pevensey is an area that used to be a marsh, and the reason that the castle is now a mile inland is because the marsh silted up (c.f. the medieval shipyard at smallhythe that is also used to make similar arguments). There are numerous medieval (or older) villages and towns along the Sussex coast, which would have been underwater had sea levels been significantly higher prior to the little ice age. It doesn't take much basic fact checking to find that out. The plural of anecdote is not data.
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Ashton at 04:48 AM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
I will attempt to make the deleted comments more anodyne in the hope I can communicate with MA Rodger.
Fair enough. I don't read the comments at WUWT as I find them uncritical and often banal. Having read some to try and find the commenter to whom you refer I can't see any reason to change my opinion. I had no idea the quote I used had been previously published, although is that really significant? As you can see from some of my comments here I almost always use quotation marks at the start and finish of quotes from others. With regard to TinyURL I often use these for conciseness,
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Rob Honeycutt at 04:43 AM on 9 November 2014Sea level rise is exaggerated
Holdean... SLR is merely one piece of the larger picture related to man-made climate change and is fully consistent with all the other science on the issue. So, no, it's not "doubtful" in the least.
I don't know where you get the idea that "the current period of climate change [...] started approx 18k years ago." That's just not the case. The planet came out of a glacial into a new interglacial starting about 18k years ago. Since ~6000 years ago the planet had started into a neoglaciation that was abruptly ended with the start of the industrial revolution (See Miller 2010, Section 12.2).
No one rejects that there have been periods of higher temp and higher CO2 levels. That's not the problem. The issue is with the rate of change that natural systems, as well as human civilization, will be unlikely be able to adapt quickly enough to. Past rapid rapid climate change events are marked by mass extinctions such as the End Permian.
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Holdean at 04:28 AM on 9 November 2014Sea level rise is exaggerated
I think that a lot of you are missing the point, including the contributing author. Are sea levels rising? It would seem so. Is mankind in some way causing this phenomenon? Doubtful. The current period of climate change with accompanying measuements of atmospheric temperature and CO2 levels started approximately 18,000 years ago. There have been four periods where atmospheric temperatures and CO2 levels have been as high or higher than presently in the last 400,000 years (Source: http://www.grida.no/publications/vg/climate/page/3057.aspx) Mankind was obviously not the cause of any of these occurrences. The graph showing the rise in sea levels in the article posted here shows steadily rising sea levels since the 1870s. That should be expected when you consider that the "mini ice age" lasted from the 1300s to about 1850 and that is when the glaciers and sea ice reached their peaks. As that water becomes available again, sea levels rise. A way to look at it would be to look at Pevensey Castle, which was on England's South coast in 1066. Pevensey Castle is now a mile inland! (Source:http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/02/history-falsifies-climate-alarmist-sea-level-claims/)
Moderator Response:[Rob P] - Please note that WUWT is a spoof climate science site. For an understanding of the historical context of sea level rise since the last glacial maximum see these SkS posts:
2. Sea Level Isn't Level: This Elastic Earth.
3. Sea Level Isn't Level: Ocean Siphoning, Levered Continents and the Holocene Sea Level Highstand.
Note that these SkS posts are based upon actual research by experts in the relevant scientific disciplines. I think that the main point is that non-expert expectations of sea level response are incredibly naive - you need to understand all the factors that affect relative sea level at any particular site. Why else do you think that specific site was chosen, and the 'big picture' blithely ignored?
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Rob Honeycutt at 03:45 AM on 9 November 2014Antarctica is gaining ice
"Dr Steel is a world expert on astrophysics."
But that doesn't make him an expert on climate. Changes in insolation and their radiative effects on climate are understood by climate scientists. It's well understood as a very slow and minor forcing, whereas we are witnessing a large and rapid change in climate today that is consistent with the large radiative forcing of man-made greenhouse gases.
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John Hartz at 03:28 AM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
[JH] Moderator's Comment
Ashton's two recent posts were argumentative and therefore were deleted.
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PhilippeChantreau at 03:08 AM on 9 November 2014Antarctica is gaining ice
"If they are reluctant, then I think it is reasonable to discard their opinions as complete rubbish."
That is the most stupid thing I have read in a while. (-snip-) It amounts to a blanket argument from authority. Not to mention we're not talking about opinions but specific criticisms that can be adressed in methodical fashion. It is hard to understand how someone with as much alphabet soup as Karly claims can have such a lapse in rational thinking. The argument can obviously be turned on its head to say that, if Dr Steel has no training in atmospheric sciences whatsoever, his opinion on climate should be dismissed as complete rubbish.
Now, how about discussing that albedo problem?
Moderator Response:[RH] Let's check the tone here.
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Firgoose at 02:41 AM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
Lol. Thanks, guys. Now I'm wondering why I hadn't noticed before. Call myself observant? ;o)
@MA Rodger: From the last time I Joe90'd the time sections of the Wiki, I seem to remember there being a difference betwen GMT and Universal (should be Queen's Universal Empire) Time that maybe I'd notice at the molecular level or something. More importantly, thanks for the further insight into the use of "rail". That's a meaning that I've not seen much but it's quite apt here. :-)
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Dikran Marsupial at 02:06 AM on 9 November 2014Antarctica is gaining ice
karly wrote "Good on you. I have an Honours BSc, a PhD, an MSc, and a DSc. I have also published over 150 peer reviewed journal articles. Did you think you were going to intimidate me?"
No, it was you that questioned the qualifications of those posting criticisms of Dr Steel's work here, I was merey indulging your curiosity. I also made it clear that qualifications mean nothing in scientific discussions, what matters is whether the argument is correct. That would be an odd thing to write if I was trying to intimidate somebody. My reason for mentioning this was to point out that questioning qualifications is an ad-hominem attack.
". It seems only fair that tthose criticising him should acknowledge their own expertise."
why should anybody do that, given that your response to me indulging your curiosity on this point was a personal attack?
I note that karly is trying very hard to avoid discussing the actual content of Dr Steel's argument, which seems pretty odd for an academic such high apparent calibre.
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Tristan at 01:50 AM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
Specifically, SkS is Queensland time (EST), we've got our own timezone because we don't understand the merit of Daylight Savings (the list of things Queenslanders don't understand is long). :)
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MA Rodger at 01:35 AM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
Ashton @28. Au contraire. The exact quote is there on Wattsupia, complete with your leading quotation mark which is absent from the Yahoo original. It was posted on the Wattsupian page in question by some denizen commenter about 5 hours before you pasted it here. The URL @23 is, of course, a tinyURL.com link so not the Wattsupia link but an indirect one, created by you perhaps?
Ashton @29. As Firgoose @30 sort-of explains, with The Daily Rail I was referring to Lord Rothermere's little rag, and, as I do, making play on its name and the fact that it gets so many of its readers regularly railing against this modern world we all live it.
Firgoose @30. SkepticalScience time = Oz time. Apparently proper British time, railway time (hey, didn't we invent proper time, Greenwich meridian and all that? Or was it just the railways we invented?), it works so badly when you cross the channel or the Atlantic that it tends not to be used out there. But just to prevent bruising British jingoism too much with this shocking home-truth, be aware that good old GMT has also been fitted up with the fancy name of Universal Time. And now the railways actually do cross the channel...
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Firgoose at 00:21 AM on 9 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
@Ashton: Where truthful reporting about the climate (and quite a number of other topics) is concerned, Phil could have called it the Daily deRail or perhaps the Daily Maul. I imagine that it's because Phil, like me, prefers to avoid posting direct, searchable reference to sources like that newspaper and to sites like WattsUpIsCrap. For me, at least, it's a minor form of protest. Does that give you a sufficient clue? ;-)
@SkS: This was posted at 14:21pm British time in response to a post timestamped at 23:56pm. Has the server's clock eaten something bad?
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Ashton at 23:56 PM on 8 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
My apologies, I should have remebered to ask again what the Daily Rail is as I've never seen it and a, very, quick Google search gave no information that semed appropriate.
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Ashton at 23:53 PM on 8 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
I don't usually read what is on WUWT, just quickly scan through. As you commented " Wattsupia page that also had your exact quote" I did go back and read more carefully. I think you'll find that quote was only partially given on WUWT which gave only the last two sentences of the quote I used @23. I got the quote from the URL I gave @ 23 which I got from WUWT and which contained quite a lot more material than that which I quoted.
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MA Rodger at 23:27 PM on 8 November 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #45B
Ashton @26.
Would that be the "couple of articles from the Guardian" (the Farming story & the Environment story) that, along with your link @23 to Yahoo news, are all linked on that Wattsupia page that also had your exact quote @23?
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MA Rodger at 23:03 PM on 8 November 2014Antarctica is gaining ice
"I have read [karly's contribution down] this thread with sheer astonishment." For someone to proclaim "I have an Honours BSc, a PhD, an MSc, and a DSc." Full stop. That is strange enough to raise questions as to why it would be said truthfully.
And for that same person to also state that which is now erased by the moderators, that raises little doubt as to the answer to that question.
Karly, even though I don't hold a DSc., trust me when I tell you that holders of multiple degrees almost always act with a certain humility (although that doesn't stop them behaving with extreme 'robustness' when the occasion calls for it, and may times when it isn't). It is not at all necessary for clever people to tell the world that they are clever. Their abilities speaks for themselves.
And why is it necessary to know the qualifications of a commenter? Why would you say "If they are reluctant, then I think it is reasonable to discard their opinions as complete rubbish"? Somebody capable of post-graduate qualification should be able to judge the veracity of a commenter here by what they say alone. Or if not, the comment can be checked by a little research on this wonderful interweb the world is now blessed with. I thus would suggest to you that this thought @358, as you relate it to us, it is actually very "unreasonable."
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