Tuesday
Dec022014
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Benny at the Senate
Dec 2, 2014 Climate: Parliament Benny Peiser's testimony at the US Senate is now available on YouTube.
Dec 2, 2014 Climate: Parliament 
Buy
Books
Click images for more details
Currently discussing
-
Dec 28 - derreg
on
Curiosidade na Madrugada -
Dec 28 - kekuss
on
Rushed Office Relocation!
Links
A few sites I've stumbled across recently....
-
Science blogs
-
Political blogs
-
Other blogs
Subscribe
Copyright © 2006-2013, Bishop Hill All rights reserved.
Reader Comments (108)
Peiser is an expert on energy policy, which is what he was talking about.
Mosher, of course, knows more about everything than anyone, and from a higher plane of intelligence at that.
Dec 3, 2014 at 11:13 AM | Unregistered CommenterMonty
Monty
There is a fundamental difference between the science of GHE theory and radiative transfer, and that of policy response to a claim that rising CO2 leads to warming/climate change.
I would accept that only a scientist is properly qualified to discuss the science behind GHE theory & radiative transfer, although almost anyone is able to discuss the policy response to the fear of CO2 emissions, since the latter is merely commonsense.
My gripe with the politicians is not that they ail to understand the science, although they should have enough nouse to know that science is never settled, the debate has never taken place, still less that the debate is over, and should appreciate some of the more glaring errors/inadequacies with data sets and over exagerated claims. My gripe is with the politicians not understanding the glaring failings behind the policy response and the dishonesty surrounding the economic impacts with the policy response that they have set in motion.
Any polictician should readily appreciate that neither wind, nor solar results in the significant reduction in CO2 emissions because of the intermittent nature of wind/solar and the need for 1005 back up generation by conventinally fired fossil fuel generators. Almost everyone drives a car, and knows that urban fuel consumption is the worst. Even though a car may only be doing about an average of 12mph around towns, its consumption is far worse than when driving alonga a motorway at 60 to 70mph. The reasons is the start/stop, ramp up/ramp down nature of town driving. The same is so of the use of back up generation. although wind produces on average about 25% of its nameplate capacity, it does not result in a 23% reduction in CO2 emissions. All but no reduction is achieved since the conventionally powered back up which on average produces about 77% fill in capacity has to be used not at steady base load mode, but rather ramp up/ramp down mode. With the balancing of the grid with emergency small pack diesel generators, there is no reduction in CO2.
The only reason for wind and/or solar is the reduction of CO2, but it is a complete fail on this ground. Green energy does nothing to add to security due to its intermitent nature, ditto, it has no engineering advantage. Indeed, from an engineering perspective it is a fail in that it is at its least efficient (blocking highs on cold winter nights) just when demand is at its peak. Wind/solar is not cheaper, and there will never be any efficiency savings in scale since each wind turbine is an individual one off structure that requires its own concrete footing and needs to be kept well apart from its neighbour to prevent wind blocking. It is not like a transistor and the IC chip.
The effect of rolling out wind is to provide less realiable and more expensive energy. Anyone who possesses commonsense is qualified to speak on the madness of the UK Government energy policy. Indeed, I would expect a school child of 13 to construct a convincing case against the use of wind and the economic madness of an energy policy reliant upon wind power for its generation and it simplication for industry and jobs.
The problem the UK has is that politicians have no experience of the real world, and they are not accountable for their actions. Not only should there be a substantial reduction in the number of MPs, it should be a requirement that MPs have at least 15 years experience in a real job (not PR, not a consultant, policy advisior, NGO campainer etc), and there should be a new offence created making MPs personally responsible for (crass) negligence in public office. To give it teeth, liability should extend to assets under blind trusts, and/or held in family names. Until MPs are held accountable for their decision making, we will never get good government and good decisions.
Richard Verney says "I would accept that only a scientist is properly qualified to discuss the science behind GHE theory & radiative transfer...."
I completely agree with you, although that hasn't stopped Delingpole, Booker, Monckton, Lawson, Peiser, plus dozens of commentators on BH, WUWT etc pontificating on the science of CC. I hope that you accept this and will criticize this when you see it.
You may be right about renewables (i'm not an expert in this to tell) and maybe nuclear is the way to go. But now that it's pretty clear that the temperature in 2014 will probably break the record we need to do something. BTW I wonder what meme the so-called skeptics will latch on to now that they can't use the 'earth is cooling' argument? Perhaps they'll all turn into 'lukewarmers"?
In relation to Richard Verney's observations on the ( lack of) accountability of UK Politicians and in particular the Minister and the Department of Energy and Climate Change I am reminded of the question Chancellor von Bethman Hollweg asked of Field Marshal von Falkeynhayn in 1916:-
" Where does incompetence end and crime begin?"
Monty
"But now that it's pretty clear that the temperature in 2014 will probably break the record we need to do something."
What record will the 2014 temperature probably break?
Why should "we" " do something" ?
What should we do ?
How will be able we tell if what we do will "work" ?
What has the billions ( perhaps trillions) of €'s, £'s,$'s spent "doing something" achieved so far?
I wonder who " Monty " is - he reads like the Monoblot!
In his testimony Benny referenced European warnings of systemic industrial massacure as a result of green policies.
From Ambrose Evans-Pritchard:
""We face a systemic industrial massacre," said Antonio Tajani, the European industry commissioner.
"Mr Tajani warned that Europe's quixotic dash for renewables was pushing electricity costs to untenable levels, leaving Europe struggling to compete as America's shale revolution cuts US natural gas prices by 80pc."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/10295045/Brussels-fears-European-industrial-massacre-sparked-by-energy-costs.html
Monty: by your logic, if all the swan scientists in the world were to declare that all the swans in the world were white, I (not being a swan scientist) should not be able to say, “But, I have seen a black swan.” Not being qualified in a subject does not remove your right to pass comment on that subject; indeed, it may even be the case that the unqualified (like, say, a patents clerk), can offer insights that the qualified have been blinded to.
Is it? Says who? Oh – the BBC! And you trust them, especially when they use emotive words such as “hottest”, when “warmest” would have been more honest? Remember the summer – it certainly was not a scorcher, by any means (certainly not like 1976!), though it was pleasant; spring was mild, and the autumn has been mild, so far. It has been a pleasant year, for a change, unlike the dire summers of the recent past. I am sure most of us a quite pleased that we have not had to put the heating on, thus saving ourselves money, and – coincidentally – reducing the output of CO2; yet you seem to complain about this? Also, why not wait until the year is over; December has turned decidedly chilly, and might bring the “record” down a bit.BTW, who has mooted that the Earth is cooling? Most of us fear that prospect; you only have to look at how Europe suffered under the recent Little Ice Age to see that it is not a good option. Few of us see any problem with the Earth warming gently, as it has done (thankfully) for the past 200 years, or so; almost certainly, none of us can see any threat to it warming even more.
Apart from that, what “needs to be done”? If this is part of a natural cycle (and there has been no evidence to suggest that it is not), then how are mere humans going to stop it? You have a rather exaggerated belief in the power of humans. Let’s put it in context: it is said that more energy falls on a square mile of the Earth’s surface at the equator in one hour of daylight that the entire human population can use in a year. In other words, what humans put into the system is but a drop in the ocean. Indeed, if it is a natural cycle, what dangers could there be in interfering with it?
Rodent: unless December is very cold 2014 will be the warmest year in the instrumental record, even with few signs of an El Nino. If the latter develops fully in 2015 then we will have another hot year (despite a 'cool' sun).
I confidently predict that the "it's not been warming' meme put out by so-called 'skeptics" will quietly be dropped.
The next meme of course will be "of course we all accepted the science behind AGW, and we accept it's warming, but we think warming is going to be low/good (delete as applicable)".
Then when warming is high (because low ECS is inconsistent with the paleo record) and the effects are bad, then all the so-called 'skeptics' will quietly pretend they were never skeptical at all!
That's what I predict.
2014 is "on course" to be the warmest year since 1772 in the Central England Temperature record — a record that goes back to 1659.
When I talk about the 1930s being the warmest decade on record in the US, all obedient little warmists tell me that the US only accounts for about 2.5% of the earth and what about the other 97.5%. Same argument applies here.
Please note the way in which Monty — a latecomer but a contender for Troll of the Year — neatly sideslips his previous comments about Peiser, decides not to answer my question about whether he considers Davey qualified to comment on anything outside the field of Politics, Philosophy and Economics, and ignores my request to let us know what his area of expertise is so we can see whether he is a genuine contributor, a hypocrite or simply a pain in the backside.
Nothing that happens in any one individual year can alter the fact that warming has at least paused for the last 15 years or more and "it's not been warming" is not a meme; it is a fact unless the climastrologists have been wrong to go rushing round looking for (at the last count about 53) reasons to explain it.
Most sceptics have long accepted that warming is part of what the climate does (as is cooling, so watch your step) and have also agreed that it would be rather odd if humanity did not have some effect on the environment (think Urban Heat Islands) but whether a raised CO2 level or a degree or two more warmth will be detrimental has yet to be proved but recent research suggests not.
No Mike you are wrong. 2014 is on course to being the warmest year globally.
Thanks.
Monty: at least you are using the more honest term, “warmest”. But, as almost everyone in the UK will vouch, that does not mean that there has been a particularly hot summer, more that the spring and autumn were both not as cold as normal. This is the thing about averages; a raised average temperature does not necessarily mean that the high temperatures have been higher; it could mean that the low temperatures were not quite as low.
While you might want to take this as a cause to panic, and spend a few more billion on stupid ideas, I look on it as a boon, and look forward to not wrapping up like an Eskimo for several months of the year. (A point that many in North America would like to consider, too, I suppose – but, hey, who cares about them, eh?)
Another interesting point: you look on this record being broken in triumph – yet more proof of AGW, perhaps – neatly overlooking that it is but one year, while you refuse to countenance the significance of the “pause” as it is but 18 years. Please, maintain some uniformity; if 18 years is not a long enough sample-size, then how on God’s good Earth can 1 year be?
Rodent: as you will be aware it does not matter how warm the UK, US or any other small area on the globe is when we are talking about global temperature.
There has been a hiatus in surface temperature over the past decade or so but what does that prove when OHC observations show that the oceans continued to warm and ice continued to melt. With El Nino all we expect is higher air temps, and that (rightly or wrongly) is what policy makers and the public seem to understand by 'global warming'.
Just as we don't expect every day after mid-winter to be warmer than the next until summer, so the global air temperature is similarly noisy. But just as we still have summers warmer than winters, so will we have a generally rising trend as we emit more GHG.
Monty
In the period following the end Eemian Interglacial warm period the temperature ( as measured in the Vostok ice core) declined, from a temperature anomaly equivalent to 0.6ºC ( ie equivalent to the GAT anomaly as of around now) by 5.4º C over a period of 11,000 years . During this period of time the average temperature of each millennium was lower than that of the preceding millennium.
Nevertheless during the period from 116,500 ya to 115,000 ya the temperature ROSE by 2ºC while the average temperature for that millennium was 0.5ºC LOWER than the average of the preceding millennium. In the 175 year period from 118,225- 118,050 ya the average temperature rose 2.3ºC from - 0.9 to +1.4ºC . That is in excess of the total warming measured in the last 150 years and it happened while the temperature was in long term decline. .
In the NORTHGRIP ice core the average temperature in each millennium since 4,000 ya has been LOWER than that of the preceding millennium, including the Millennium 1000 ya to 2000 CE.
The possibility that GAT in 2014 may be the highest estimated since 1772 is not significant on the time scale of Pleistocene and Holocene temperature change. It is also virtually irrelevant on the time scale of temperature variation during the last 4000 years during which there have been nine periods of a century or more each with AVERAGE temperatures higher than 2014 may attain but NOT A SINGLE century with temperatures LOWER than the coldest century in this millennium ( 1400- 1500 CE) - since the 8.2ky event of extreme cold.
A few warm years, or even a warm century or two, in a sequence of millennia of declining temperatures does not have the significance you appear to ascribe to it evidently as a result of unfamiliarity with the variation of atmospheric average temperature in geologically recent Paleoclimate history.
If you have further interest in this topic you might find it of interest to consult the World Data Center for Paleoclimatology and the NOAA Paleoclimatology Program.
Monty uses the term "Global temperature" WTF is that? And to how many decimal places does it run? And just how significant is any one of those fantastical, computer-generated decimal places? GAT is meaningless. But it helps the catastrophists to feel triumphant in their wet dream of a baking world and mass deaths.
RR is right: they claim a great triumph with the remote possibility - and pointless claim - that 2014 will be the hottest one year trend in an 18 year peak. Well, unless Monty is still at school (a possibility) he has probably grown as tall as he ever will. However, a trend could be made (modelled?) of his growth that will say he will be ten feet tall in two years' time. When you get to ten feet, Monty, I'll believe your rubbish about CAGW.
Hi Harry
Shame you don't make any sense. I'll try again: 2014 is likely to be the warmest year in the instrumental record. One year does not make a trend. And the other warmest years include 2005, 2010 and 2007.
If you'd like to question the instrumental record then I look forward to your ground breaking paper on the subject (sarc). All datasets show warming. Even though it might be an Inconvenient Truth for you (great name for a film BTW), the consensus is that it's warming and elevated GHG are largely responsible (just as 200 years of atmospheric physics predicted).
You may not like it but you and friends are being left behind in this debate. Sad but true.
Thanks.
I feel I need to wade in for Monty.
The science of global warming is largely sorted. Of course uncertainties remain and if you were a credible bunch I'd list where I think areas still need looking at. But guess what - that happens in all areas of physics/chemistry/biology but we get by. Problems with the models? Really? If you worried about that level of uncertainty you would never get in a plane again per the same logic...
Yet you guys keep coming back with nothing. Zero. I've asked here before for evidence of your bias. I don't expect many of you are paid so it really must be an exercise in delusion.
Where is your equivalent of the Michael Mann hockey stick papers (and no don't quote Montford's story of M&M's discredited attack)?
Where are your equivalent Hansen papers? Nothing.
On what basis is the first order approx provided by the physics negated? Adding CO2 will warm the planet. If you guys n gals are correct there should be something. But all we get is un-peer reviewed handwaving. Sunspots. Natural cycles.
Welcome Monty but do as I do. Don't lurk here long (was given this advice by Whack a Mole but noticed he could not resist swatting a few flies) but occasionally have a look at the freak show that is BH. And its inmates.
And no that BP in a rational world should not be anywhere near the senate. So he does Policy for an organisation funded by goodness knows who. However given the very few credible scientists who deny global warming I guess the deniers don't have much choice. I do pity you having to scrape at the bottom of the barrel and unearthing this clown although I guess it could be worse and you having to settle for say Lawson or Delingpole....
Adieu.
HP
no people who believe in AGW are not picking 2014 as a single date no more than 1998 (a significant El Nino year) is picked on by deniers. If you read anything outside of BH or other denier sites you will see that decadal averages are taken; trends are emphasized, observation paid attention to....it goes on.
Monty: you still seem to insist that a “hottest year on record” and perhaps a brief rise in temperatures that an expected el Nino might give us as proof that the hated “pause” is over, and the "normal" rise will continue. If rising CO2 causes rising temperatures, why did the global temperatures fall for so long after WWII (the commonly accepted time when CO2 levels started to rise with a vengeance)? Certainly, it was long enough to create a panic of an oncoming ice age. Or do you now not consider 30 years to be an acceptably long enough term? If not, why do you consider the 23-year rise to be acceptable? What will you say if, in a year’s time, the headlines read along the lines of: “Last year is proving to be the coldest year on record!”? Methinks you will dismiss it as merely “weather”, yet you come on here and crow about the record “warmest”! Do you not see a certain dissonance in your logic?
RR - what hated pause? Only if you cherry pick. Try something a tad more robust. Look at the trend. What temperatures are you measuring? Land? Ocean? Little bit of advice for you...temperatures will dip occasionally, especially regionally. However reasonable to assume that in the absence of any dramatic natural changes (planet/sun - all of which happen very slowly by the way) then the only rational way to explain the warming trend is to look at the obvious addition of a new forcing agent.
What you would need to measure is the entropic increase. And that has been huge.
You guys really are the taliban of climate change.
Monty: Not ten feet tall yet then. You wilfully misunderstand and/or misconstrue. But I'm used to that from - what does your mate say? - 'you lot'.
Anyway, let me put to you a thought experiment: I can run a statistical analysis of all the (UK) lottery numbers over the last 20 years and get myself a Global Average Ticket (GAT) number. Do you think I would predict a winning ticket? Would the GAT be meaningful in any way?
Onbyaccident: You say:
Have you actually read AM or MMc's take-down of the stick? Or are you one of these people who are so high and mighty in their self-belief that you don't have a wide range of reading? As it is, my take on Mann's stick is that he had a pretty plausible study of dendro proxies - up until he substituted them for actual temps. If he'd left his paper to reflect only dendro - which he had set such store in, and which showed a dive in temps after 1960 - it would have been a decent paper about the study of proxies. But he was needed to support the UN's power drive and was corrupted by that power. Meanwhile, your hero Gore's film was well dismissed by a Judge: how many errors of fact were there? NINE? Oh dear.onbyaccident (off by design)
Well, it beats being a 'deni@r', I guess. But the main thing is, it beats by a long way the best entry for the 2014 OTT comment on BH. (Then again, old Lew would have a field day with the subliminal connotations of that epithet: Do you fear the Taliban, onby.....?)Onbyaccident:
Have you not got that the wrong way round? Surely, we should be asking you for the evidence of our bias?And who is denying global warming, on here? Very few of us, I would say; most accept that it has happened, on and off, since the Little Ice Age. I would even moot that most are actually glad of a warming world; far more pleasant than a freezing one, I am sure you should agree? Climate change is a reality, too, and there is evidence that it has been ongoing for the past… oooh, 4.5 billion years, or so. Why is this particular change any different?
I am sorry your personal bigotry will not allow you reasonable discussion about a complex problem.
HP
ok time to fess up. Yes read the MM blogs but not the AM blog of that. You might want to take a look at this as well though - not sure what your background is but is mostly accessible (tbh don't know why they use PCA as the trend is obvious in the raw data sets but that's another story..)
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/the-montford-delusion/
Interested to hear your thoughts (no honest - no sarc intended).
Night.
RR
ok will be more specific - replace with the phrase "who deny AGW" but you knew I meant that non?
To be fair there are still amongst you a certain number of the swivel eyed variety who deny even warming (one guy on here went on about his evidence being derived from looking out of a window and not seeing anything of concern). However my correction stands.
Things gotten warmer and colder in the past? Absolutely - when did the scientific community ever deny that (not sure there is evidence going back 4.5bn years - about the age of the planet - though as that is beyond what has been directly or indirectly observed but I've no doubt it did before any of the records). And it happened even without added CO2. Fully accord that back then climate change was largely driven by natural cycles with intermittent volcanoes, etc. Have a look at the rate it happened at though. Anything to deduce?
Bigot? Maybe we have a different definition. Offensive maybe a better description. :-)
Night again.
Monty and Onbyaccident, resorting to epithets, such as "denier", "inmates" and "taliban", to progress your CAGW views is by definition immature. It leaves the impression of both your bad manners and a deficit of reason. Moreover basing your arguments on 2014 being the hottest year since records began is premature (not all the records are in) and pointless (one year is weather).
Not supporting CAGW anymore? Hmmm, since when? Oh, you never did? So, only AGW then? And natural cooling (or warming)? Or did that conveniently stop in 1980? Well, if either of you are a climate scientist then how about telling our politicians to stop wasting many £billions of our money based on the story that man made CO2 will cause global warming catastrophe when it won't.
Perhaps I do you a disservice, and you both still believe in Catastrophic AGW? Fine, then you won't mind explaining why the models failed to predict (as in: foretold) the halt (pause, hiatus, significant reduction in the rate) of global warming, since you implicitly use them to "foretell" our catastrophically hot future.
Onby: A slight typo in my last comment. I meant, have you read Steve McIntyre's work on MM's stick; and have you read AM's Hockey stick illusion?
I've been to Real climate a few times but find it's naked proganda and cult personality too much. There are far better blogs around - like one that has over 200,000,000 views to its credit.
Onbyaccident: you do have a remarkable ability of leaping to ill-founded conclusions based upon very little evidence; not very scientific, I would have thought. (Good example of a bigot, though.) Can you give an example of the “swivel-eye variety” who deny global warming has occurred that you think are on this site?
What is wrong with basing your conclusions on your personal observations? It is the basis of most science; the metric being that others can repeat your observations and get the same or similar results. This is, in effect, what Michael Mann did with his tree-rings; a sample of a dozen trees in small area of an isolated region, and – ta-dah! – a hockey stick! That no-one else can come up with the same result surely should indicate that there could be flaws in the hypothesis? And you expect the whole world to be altered to your way of thinking based upon that?
Back now. And good to have Onbyaccident here to bring a little commonsense into the debate.
For all the 'skeptics' who go on about CAGW. No scientist uses this term in the way that you mean it. Of course some climate change will be 'catastrophic' for some people and ecosystems, but to use it as a generic term makes no sense.
Simple risk management approach would say that increasing emissions of GHG will increase the likelihood of unpleasant climate change....and the poorest people and ecosystems are likely to be the first sufferers. Given we can't predict the actual evolution of the climate in detail, then the best approach is to reduce the risk. We do this all the time as people. I'm guessing you all have car and house and medical insurance?
Ask yourselves why you have this when you can't predict when/if you are going to have a car accident.....
Try being a bit skeptical!
Monty says:
Say what?! Calling sceptics 'Taliban' is 'common sense'? Get real.There's no 'risk management' going on, Monty. It's Precautionary Principle all the way down. And do tell us Taliban, where has the scientific theory grown up that 'increasing emissions' (is that the new word for Carbon, aka CO2?) will make for an 'unpleasant climate change'? Why should it be unpleasant? I guarantee that if - when - it goes colder over the next few decades you will see worse consequences for 'the poor' than if it warmed. Furthermore, those 'poor' will be all the poorer because they have been subsidising your stupid bloody wind mills and solar farms.I’m not too sure what you do in your world, Monty, but in mine, I prefer the idea of looking at what happened in similar situations in history, and expecting similar results this time; for about 4.5 billion years, whenever the Earth has warmed, things became nice and warm and cosy, life was created, developed and flourished, and, when humans came along, civilisations grew. History does show that the reverse (which seems to be what you want) is not so pleasant, as glaciers ploughed down towns and villages, engulfed grazing land, crushed forests, and generally made a lot of wildlife suffer. The cold dips in recent human history gave us the Dark Ages and the Little Ice Age, when huge numbers of Europeans perished miserably. The odd thing is with this “terrible” climate change is that almost everybody and everything is benefitting – even the deserts are becoming greener!
In a sense, the last winter, and how the present one seems to be shaping up, in North America (which might be considered an epicentre of the CAGW scam) are helpful reminders for people to know just what cold is, and all the suffering that it can bring. Perhaps someone could give Mother Earth a nudge, and have her remind Europe.
Good grief. I go away for a day and after expressing annoyance at waffle and hand-waving all I come back to is ...err waffle and hand-waving. Where to begin…
RR
“What is wrong with basing your conclusions on your personal observations?”
Nothing if you believe that is sufficient evidence. I can observe that putting my hand into a fire is not good. Problem understood.
I think we should be able to agree though that the physics of the planet may need a little more than sitting one of you folks in front of a window with a notepad and pen.
“10.15am – getting a little chilly. Need to find my cardigan. There - where are those cursed AGW’ers when I have conclusive evidence…”
RR & HP – many comments around the theme of “ok ok it’s warming but wouldn’t it be lovely”. Well an overall warming planet could have diversely different outcomes for different regions. The north polar regions have warmed significantly more than the rest of the planet (Q: anyone here care guess/know why?).
In its extreme though this could result in diminishing the temperatures over the mid latitudes (although scientists put this now more of an outlier). Another example is the recent erratic behavior of the jet stream – weakened significantly which is likely a large cause of the severe cold weather in the USA.
Thanks Monty for taking on the ridiculous terminology re CAGW – I never see that on science sites. Why would I?
Oh and RR – so MM only used tree ring data? Suggest you read the paper again (or read for the first time).
Which brings me to Budgie. I care not a fig about your sensitivity re my labels for you. However you quote
"Moreover basing your arguments on 2014 being the hottest year since records began is premature (not all the records are in) and pointless (one year is weather)."
Really? My and Monty’s whole argument predicated on 2014 record temperatures? You wish. Oh and 1998 wasn't just weather as well for you deniers?
Again I expect evidence. Refer me to a paper. Please. Something. Not an article by Delingpole. Not some notes written by RR sitting by his magic window of the world. Maybe it’s just my scientific bias; maybe I should throw out decades of training of actually having something genuine to read and assess before I believe something.
Look if you guys really were skeptics in the true sense of the word you would be able to explain to me why so. However all myself and Monty get is a wall of silence in that direction. Only feeble “that nasty warming man has called me an inmate” paragraphs.
Which is telling. Don’t worry though – at least its getting warmer….luvly
Anyway I’m off out to start enjoying my weekend. Better take my coat as it is a tad nippy out there (doh!)….
Ps – welcome back Monty. Don’t say I didn’t warm you though…;-)
Why, thank you, Onbyaccident. My point quite comprehensively proven. What you might find strange, though, is that I do not view that with jubilation, but sadness; sadness that someone can be so thoroughly entrenched in their beliefs that they can only heap scorn and derision of those who do not hold those beliefs. And you label us “Taliban”!
Willard in the house?
Monty
The possibility that 2014 may turn out to be the warmest since 1772, and that global average temperature has probably risen by 0.6ºC between 1850and 2013 ( 163 years) must be interpreted in the context of well documented temperature variation over longer periods of time in which anthropogenic emissions of CO2 have not been significant.
For example there was a 2.3ºC rise in the 175 year period 118,225-118,050 ya during a period in which GAT ( as recorded in the EPICA ice core) fell in every successive millennium for 11,000 years. This almost 300% larger than the rise of 0.6ºC over a similar period from 1850 to 1998 and occurred during a prolonged episode of global cooling.
More recently temperature rises of the same magnitude ( 0.35ºC) per century have been recorded ( in the Holocene portion of the NORTHGRIP ice core) over similar periods of one to three centuries while GAT has declined in the last four successive millennia. During that period of temperature decline there have been recorded five periods of +/- century with average temperatures higher than recorded in the Century 1913- 2013.
In the last 4,000 years there have also been (recorded in the same ice core) ten separate periods in which GAT has been lower than at any time since the extreme cold period ( referred to as the 8.2 kyr event). The most recent of these was the so called Little Ice Age centred around 1650.
None of these warming or cooling episodes can be attributed to variation in atmospheric CO2 concentration resulting from anthropogenic fossil fuel combustion. The late 20th century warming and the recent warm years fall well within the range of non anthropogenically forced temperature variation.
While there are certainly several human activities which likely affect climate, and they include CO2 emissions, the recent temperature variations are comparable to those recorded in the past and do not demand a CO2 driven causation mechanism.
ref : World Data Center for Paleoclimatology and NOAA Paleoclimatology Program
Glebekinvara
Shame you don't seem to understand how the Earth's climate system works. These climate changes were mostly regional or hemispherical. Try reading about bi-polar seesaws before you get into this debate.
BTW. No paleoclimatologist argues that climate change in the past hasn't been significant. No climatologist would argue that present GHG emissions aren't driving recent warming. And I'm glad you brought up paleo studies, because these all suggest high ECS don't they.
A bit inconvenient for you lot!!
Thanks.
Monty
At this time NOBODY KNOWS how the climate system works in its entirety and certainly not yourself.
Monty: "Simple risk management approach would say that increasing emissions of GHG will increase the likelihood of unpleasant climate change....and the poorest people and ecosystems are likely to be the first sufferers."
The problems of' 'the poorest people' arise, primarily, from lack of money - resulting in a lack of cheap energy, among other things. So you need to be very sure of your sums before you slow down development and industrial growth by making energy more expensive. You are making the poor pay in advance - to avoid disasters: "I know not what But they shall be the terror of the earth".
Glebekinvara
You didn't answer my question. A variable hockey stick handle would suggest high (rather than low) ECS wouldn't it?
I know this is an inconvenient truth for you because 'skeptics' have tried for years to attack Mann and others for not showing global LIA and MWP. Of course, if these WERE global than ECS would be high wouldn't it?
No doubt as a 'skeptic' you will deny this as you appear to be able to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time!
Thanks.
Monty
From the perspective of the Paleoclimate temperature record the relationship between a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration and a corresponding, and hypothesised consequent, rise in atmospheric temperature is difficult to determine in view of the presence of other influences on the temperature, the effects of which are apparently significant, although in most cases difficult to accurately quantify.
The relationship between atmospheric temperatures and CO2 concentration in the large databases of ice core, speleothem and ocean sediment measurements, extending back to the base of the Pleistocene has a large envelope of variability. This implies that the effect of other influences on climate have been, at least over the last 2.3 my, sufficiently large as to create a “noise envelope large enough obscure the value of ECS.
The relationship - atmospheric temperature : atmospheric CO2 concentration - over Phanerozoic time, and accepting that the measures of both have large error envelopes, suggests that there is an assymptotic relationship for periods of time when both CO2 concentration and temperature are low ie temperatures below about 20ºC and CO2 concentrations below about 1000ppmv. At concentrations of CO2 above 1000 ppmv the relationship appears to disappear and temperatures seem to have generally remained in the range of 20- 22 ºC irrespective of CO2 concentration varying upwards to several thousand ppmv, although there have been excursions - such as occurred for example at the PETM.
The direction of causality is not determinate for nearly all of Phanerozoic time. In the Pleistocene, for which period there are reasonably credible temperature proxies and reasonably credible CO2 estimates, it is appears that CO2 concentration lags temperature change ( in both directions) which , if true, raises issues as to the usefulness of the ECS concept.
I trust you can find it possible to respond without sneering superciliousness. If you find this impossible I will leave you to maintain whatever views you may hold.
@ Monthy (Dec 4, 2014 at 9:37 PM )
You say: "But now that it's pretty clear that the temperature in 2014 will probably break the record we need to do something."
The first ten months of 2014 (January–October) were the warmest such period since record keeping began in 1880, with a combined global land and ocean average surface temperature 0.68°C (1.22°F) above the 20th century average of 14.1°C (57.4°F), surpassing the previous record set in 1998 and tied in 2010 by 0.02°C (0.04°F). 2014 is currently on track to be the warmest year on record. (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/)
+0.02C OMG You're right. This is out of control!
And I wont even mention the making up of data, for remote areas without any real measurements, where most of the warming is fabricated.
Glebekinvara
Amazing. You criticize the likes of Mann for not clearly establishing the relationships between proxies and temp. yet you uncritically accept highly uncertain relationships between Phanerozoic CO2 and temperature, when climate proxy resolutions are in the order of 10s of thousands of years in the early part of the record! It would appear that you have no clue about paleoclimatology. Your failure to understand CO2 as a feedback and forcing in Pleistocene times is particularly telling.
Predictably, you have failed to answer my centarl question....you do accept that a variable past climate does imply high levels of ECS?
As a 'skeptic' you are clearly not very skeptical are you. Maybe it's ideological?
@ Monthy
To prove my point of making up data:
NCDC determined that 2014 is the hottest year on record, by simply making up hot temperatures for entire countries where they have no data. (See graph!)
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/12/06/voodoo-at-ncdc/
Scarface. I see...once 2014 is shown to be the warmest year (or one of them) in the instrumental record the new "skeptic" meme will be "they are making up data".
Sadly, only a dwindling group of people still accept the 'skeptic' nonsense. I don't know if you have registered this yet, but almost everyone has left you behind. The idea of AGW has been the scientific consensus for decades, and is now accepted by the vast majority of policymakers and business people in all the industrialized nations. And almost certainly by those in the developing nations too.
You (and the rest of BH and WUWT) are lone voices crying in the wilderness....and very few sensible people are listening to you.
Thanks.
Watching the interchange between Monty, Glebekinvara and Onlybyaccident over the last few days I am puzzled , as was Sherlock Holmes by "The Dog that did not Bark" . Where is Entropic Man when you need him? (unless of course Monty and/or Onlybyaccident is/are aka Entropic Man).
Of course they don’t make things up, Scarface. They make “adjustments”, based on some arcane knowledge that only they have, and no-one else, whereby past temperatures were obviously too high, so are lowered (“How convenient,” the cynics might say – but you, or course, are above that). They are also quite keen to move goalposts: two days ago, we were told by the BBC weatherman that we were a few days into winter, now. Earlier this year, however, “Winter” was the interval between the solstice and the equinox, thus, January to March was the wettest winter “evah” – thus conveniently body-swerving past the three months of mid-November – mid-February, 1929, which actually was the wettest three months on record.
Interestingly, as there were few hot-spots around the world, this year, but the spring and autumn were warmer (apart from over North America), one could argue that this year has been not so much been the “hottest” on record as the least cool on record.
Despite the clamourings of the scaremongers on the mainstream media, the world is waking up to the reality that a self-inflicted doom is not soon about to descend upon us, and is getting on with their general lives.
I am not sure you are right, Kiome. Entropic Mann might be as annoying as these characters, but he does not have their bile. Monty is displaying signatures I recognise under another moniker, but I cannot place it, yet, but that might be coincidence. I do wonder, though, if they are part of an orchestrated group, intent upon disrupting threads – as they have done on this one.
RR
I'm not disrupting threads. Just pointing out some inconvenient truths for all you 'skeptics'. 2014 is very likely to be the warmest year on record, and if we have the predicted El Nino in 2015 then that year will be unusually warm too. So the idea of a 'pause' will have gone (not that it had much currency anyway given the continued rise in OHC and ice melt).
What will you all do then? All you will have is a low ECS argument....and that won't work because the paleo record doesn't allow it.
By then you will have all joined the consensus! Job done.
Let's wait for all the figures, shall we? Wouldn't want anyone to look silly (on either side).
And where is this continued ice melt? Not in the Arctic, by the look of it
Mike Jackson. Nice cherry picks!
I replotted your graphs as least square regression lines.,added them to your data, and included the latest figures from 2014
Interesting to note two things.
1) There is a long term warming trend.
2) The 2014 data for both datasets sit squarely on the long term trend. Pause, what pause?