HtL on winter temperatures

Haunting the Library has dug out a wonderful statement from NASA back in 1999:

Why are winters warming up so much faster over Northern Hemisphere continents than over the rest of the globe? A new study by NASA researchers in the June 3 issue of the journal Nature is the first to link the well-documented large degree of North America and Eurasia winter warming and the associated wind changes to rising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.

Do read the whole thing. And when you are done, take a look at this rather wonderful article on the Fox News website, which revisits a number of alarmist claims from the past. I particularly liked this one:

By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people ... If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."

Ehrlich, Speech at British Institute For Biology, September 1971.

Comments

[Atomic Hairdryer]

Re ZDB

If, as already suggested by Legjoints, you look over decades, which is much more sensible, then temperatures are still on the rise.

And if you look over millenia, temperatures are in decline. The joy of trends. You can make them say pretty much whatever you want and much of the time they're meaningless.

[Breath of fresh air]

If, as already suggested by Legjoints, you look over decades, which is much more sensible, then temperatures are still on the rise.

Yes since the end of the Little Ice Age which finished before the industrial revolution.

30 years up followed by 30 years lower over hundreds of years with the increases being higher than the decreases, so how does this warming be caused by CO2 when it started before the increase in CO2.

Jones in his interview with the BBC agreed that the last warming period is not different than the 2 previous warming periods.

[Peter Whale]

Zed how about contrarians, questioners, co2 defenders, AGW anti warmists, or correctionists.
sorry got to go the wife's calling me to new years eve dinner.

[legjoints]

Don Pablo de la Sierra

Right now, the entire northern hemisphere is buried in snow.

Right now London is relatively mild, though we did have a lot of snow a week or so ago. It is winter in the northern hemisphere, and though the UK has had some unusually cold weather, other parts of the northern hemisphere have had some unusually warm weather. What's important as far as climate change goes is the global picture, and globally 2010 looks like being one of the warmest years ever recorded, coming right after the warmest decade ever recorded (which beat the record set by the previous decade (which beat the record set by the decade before that)). Whatever the weather might be doing in your particular corner of the world, the fact that the planet is warming is undeniable.

[Shub]

zeds,
Your discombobulations over the supposed 'consensus' - a concept you introduced into this thread, are painful to watch.

"Global average temperatures are rising, but it is yet unclear to what this will actually mean in terms of the weather people experience in several places over the world" - which sceptic/denier/contrarian/mit's would have had any problem with such a statement.

We know the game has gone well past that, zeds, and to not acknowledge this or to pretend otherwise, carries with it not but the merest touch of hypocrisy.

[legjoints]

Atomic Hairdryer

if you look over millenia, temperatures are in decline

If it weren't for anthropogenic emissions we would expect global temperatures to be falling, though very very slowly, as we move towards another ice age (several thousand years away). This is due to the Milankovitch Cycles, shifts of the earth in its orbit and on its axis.

[legjoints]

Atomic Hairdryer

Sceptic is good. Also quite like truthseeker.

Who wouldn't? As for sceptic, as the Skeptical Science website says:

Scientific skepticism is healthy. Scientists should always challenge themselves to expand their knowledge and improve their understanding. Yet this isn't what happens in global warming skepticism. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports man-made global warming and yet uncritically embrace any argument, op-ed piece, blog or study that refutes global warming.

[bob]

There's a funny bit in the movie "Men Who Stare at Goats", it went like this:

Lyn -- "There's a story that Wong Wifu, the great Chinese martial artist, had a fight with a guy
and beat him. Then the guy gave him this light tap. Wong looked at him and the guy just nodded. That was it. He had given him the death touch [Dim Mak]. Wong died."

Bob -- "Then and there?"

Lyn -- "No. About eighteen years later. That's the thing about the Dim Mak. You never know when it's gonna take effect".

As I read Ehrlich's recent comments about how his predictions are still correct and its just the time scale that was wrong, I couldn't help but smile. It's the classic con of a fortune teller. "I see death in your future", is a prediction that will always come true. Ehrlich says, "there will be a drought in 10 years due global warming". Then there were no droughts. So Ehrlich waited for 20 years, when there was a drought in some part of the world, he proclaims, "see, I was right". How can anyone take this guy seriously.

[Phillip Bratby]

If I had a tenner for every time a politician has told us lowly scientists that the science is settled, I'd be in the Bahamas right now.

And I don't accept the concept of a geenhouse gas. Gases cannot trap heat - end of discussion.

[Mike Post]

Instead of using the word “deniers”, how about replacing it with, “properly-educated scientists, statisticians, mathematicians and engineers”? Clumsy, I acknowledge, but accurate, in my experience. Happy New Year!

[Sam the Skeptic]

You got there ahead of me, Phillip. The 'greenhouse' explanation is about as useful for explaining the atmosphere and climate as shamrock was for explaining the Holy Trinity. It works up to a point and then falls apart.
The trouble is that since CO2 is the main enemy for the rabid greenies they and their friends in the NGOs have been only too delighted to latch onto the whole concept of AGW as an excuse to take us several steps back in time. Even the IPCC is not as dedicated or as forthright as the committed trolls like Zed and legjoint.
Incidentally, lj,

Over 100 years ago Svante Arrhenius predicted that continued burning of fossil fuels would lead to rises in global temperatures.

and he then backed away from that belief pretty quickly. Now either you know that in which case you are deliberately trying to mislead in which case you are a knave or you didn't know it in which case you are a fool.
My other quote of the day (which I think should be posted on every climate realist's blog masthead) is

COP-16 is actually one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War…
One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.
[In fact, it has] almost nothing to do with the environmental policy. Its real purpose is redistributing the world’s wealth and natural resources.

IPCC Working Group III co-chair Ottmar Edenhofer 
So Z and the rest can argue the science till they're blue in the face. It's not and never was about the science, at least not once the UN got its dirty fingers on it. Which is why the Summary for Policymakers is the important document and everything else is made to fit.

[Don Pablo de la Sierra]

legjoints

Whatever the weather might be doing in your particular corner of the world, the fact that the planet is warming is undeniable.

Right now, we are having the worst winter in the entire northern hemisphere in about 40 years, and that is what is not deniable. You can believe what you want. I doubt many others believe your view of the world, weather, climate or whatever as they are too busy digging out of the snow.

As for the current "mild weather" in London -- wait a few days. Michael Gallagher says it will get cold again and he as a pretty damn good record for the last four years.

[GaryM]

Paul Ehrlich quoted in the Fox News article: ""Scientists don't live by the opinion of Rush Limbaugh and Palin and George W. They live by the support of their colleagues, and I've had full support of my colleagues continuously."

Glad to hear it. In two years we should have a President Palin/Pawlenty/Jindahl (or whomever), and a Senate Majority Leader McConnell to join Speaker of the House Boehner. Then Ehrlich and his climate clergy cohorts can look to each other to replace the government funding of CAGW research that should disappear when conservatives control the U.S. government.

We in the U.S. have some of the dumbest smart people in the history of the planet.

[Pharos]

legjoints

A shame that you must resort to Wiki particular regarding this subject. That site has had persistent problems from extremists. I hope your confidence that the next glaciation is thousands of years away is well founded. For as you suspect, but is seldom emphasised, a cooling shift is as disasterous as a warming one is beneficial.

[dougieh]

ZDB

as a (Scottish) lurker mostly I take this site & contributors like a virtual pub.

Bishop being the barman, regulars sat round the bar, rest listening & commenting occasionally from the back.

you go straight to the bar & claim their talking rubbish, ok, have a seat & they will talk about it.
leave preconceived ideas outside the pub for best discussions.

[dougieh]

ps.

happy new year to you Bishop & all posters/readers.

have one on me (kidding) :-)

[Martin Brumby]

Well, nice to see almost everyone on here is full of New Year bonhomie.

Even the Bish wants us to play nice and not upset the trolls.

I fully understand that many skeptics find the use of the term "denier" offensive. Understandable because that is precisely what is intended. Goes with "death trains", "death factories" and all the rest.

For myself I don't care too much about being called a denier. Taking the term at face value (which usually pisses them off), I go along with Richard Lindzen when he points out that, to be a skeptic, there needs to be a plausible hypothesis to be sceptical about. And a belief that CO2 is a major driver of climate (let alone THE major driver of climate) isn't just implausible, it is preposterous. As also all the subsidiary beliefs involving glaciers, polar bears, biodiversity, ocean acidification and all the long boring litany of shroudwaving nonsense.

Meanwhile, millions lack proper drinking water, education, affordable energy. Whilst we offer BigWind and similar nonsense.

As to the whines of the pseudonymous trolls, many no doubt with snouts deeply in the gravy trough, I care not a fig. They are beneath my contempt.

Happy New Year!

[Shub]

Though no single mega-storm is the fault of climate change, scientists agree that weather - including snow patterns - will become more intense as the planet's ecosystem is transformed by human-produced pollution.

The Voice of the Consensus.

But with New York still resembling the ice planet Hoth, it's clear Mother Nature can't be spun, and even more clear that conservative economic ideology will probably deliver similar results all over America during future weather-related catastrophes.

The Voice of Reason?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/31/EDDO1H1SI3.DTL&type=politics

[Robinson]

ZDB: If, as already suggested by Legjoints, you look over decades, which is much more sensible, then temperatures are still on the rise.

So what? Instead of looking at decades, why not look at centuries, or millenia? I'm guessing the reason is because on a decadal level, the trend looks compelling. Whereas on a centential or millenial level, our current temperatures are well within the bounds of natural variation.

Again, this isn't science, is it?

[Peter Whale]

Hi Zed found an article about the 97% of climate scientists. Not quite what you stated.

Lawrence Solomon December 30, 2010 – 2:35 pm

How do we know there’s a scientific consensus on climate change? Pundits and the press tell us so. And how do the pundits and the press know? Until recently, they typically pointed to the number 2500 – that’s the number of scientists associated with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Those 2500, the pundits and the press believed, had endorsed the IPCC position.

To their embarrassment, most of the pundits and press discovered that they were mistaken – those 2500 scientists hadn’t endorsed the IPCC’s conclusions, they had merely reviewed some part or other of the IPCC’s mammoth studies. To add to their embarrassment, many of those reviewers from within the IPCC establishment actually disagreed with the IPCC’s conclusions, sometimes vehemently.

The upshot? The punditry looked for and recently found an alternate number to tout — “97% of the world’s climate scientists” accept the consensus, articles in the Washington Post and elsewhere have begun to claim.

This number will prove a new embarrassment to the pundits and press who use it. The number stems from a 2009 online survey of 10,257 earth scientists, conducted by two researchers at the University of Illinois. The survey results must have deeply disappointed the researchers – in the end, they chose to highlight the views of a subgroup of just 77 scientists, 75 of whom thought humans contributed to climate change. The ratio 75/77 produces the 97% figure that pundits now

Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/12/30/lawrence-solomon-75-climate-scientists-think-humans-contribute-to-global-warming/#ixzz19mQBhb4V

[legjoints]

Robinson

Instead of looking at decades, why not look at centuries, or millenia?

They do. Proxy temperature studies enable scientists to reconstruct temperatures prior to the instrumental records which started about 150 years ago, though of course, the further back in time you go the less accurate these reconstructions become. This page on the NOAA website outlines paleoclimate data for the past 2000 years. It concludes:

The similarity of characteristics among the different paleoclimatic reconstructions provides confidence in the following important conclusions:

* Dramatic warming has occurred since the 19th century.
* The recent record warm temperatures in the last 15 years are indeed the warmest temperatures the Earth has seen in at least the last 1000 years, and possibly in the last 2000 years.

[legjoints]

1998 is listed as the record year, so if no year since then has beaten it then how can temps be increasing

This is a commonly stated fallacy that is dealt with here.

[Breath of fresh air]

Only a member of the faithfull would agree with that link, 1998 was a La Nina and was a record year, 2010 was also a La Nina year and cannot match 1998 (except maybe GISS but they use some odd methods best ignored) result no warming.

[Breath of fresh air]

This is a peer reviewed paper showing warming is much exaggerated and confirming since 2000 temps have stopped climbing.

http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/news-stories/article/global-warming-temperature-rise-may-be-lower-than-predicted.html

[legjoints]

1998 was a La Nina and was a record year, 2010 was also a La Nina year and cannot match 1998

"NASA satellite observations of the 1998 El Niño–the strongest ever recorded" - NASA

"The 1997-98 El Niño was the strongest on record" - NOAA

"Previously, the warmest year of the century was 1998, when a strong El Nino, a warm water event in the eastern Pacific Ocean, added warmth to global temperatures. However, what's significant, regardless of whether 2005 is first or second warmest, is that global warmth has returned to about the level of 1998 without the help of an El Nino." - NASA

[Breath of fresh air]

2010 was as 1998 La Nino wise but it still did not beat it, 12 years no increase.

Try using an up to date NASA data, thats before 2010.