Been there, done that, wore out the t-shirt...

Well, Dr. Richard Muller, who had previously expressed doubts about the validity of the global temperature record, has come to realize that climate-scientists had it right all along.

From http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/o...imate-change-skeptic.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all (which may or may not be behind a "registration wall" -- I'm registered with the NY Times, so I can't tell whether or not others will be able to see Muller's piece).

So basically, Dr. Muller confirmed what climate-scientists have known for many years. Like I said (in the title of this thread), "Been there, done that, wore out the t-shirt."

And as it turns out, it's really not very hard for a "citizen scientist" with programming skills to do much of what Dr. Muller's team did (albeit with much less sophisticated processing techniques) -- i.e. confirm that UHI and "data homogenization" just aren't significant factors in global-average temperature calculations.

For those lurkers who haven't seen this yet, here's a link to some interesting results that I got when I crunched the GHCN raw data: http://tinyurl.com/globaltemperatureresultsV2

Basically, I was able to confirm the NASA results by processing raw data from fewer than 70 rural stations scattered around the world (out of thousands of stations in the GHCN network). You will see how similar the official NASA and the (unofficial) "fewer than 70 rural stations" results are to each other, and you will see (via Google-Earth image snapshots) just how incredibly sparsely you can sample the global temperature network and still confirm the official NASA global temperature results.

So if you haven't seen this yet, take a look -- there's a README file that explains exactly how I produced my results. And if you have, go ahead and take another look (I updated the README file to clarify a few things). And then share the link with skeptical co-workers/friends/family.

And like I said, this stuff is all "old hat" as far as climate-scientists are concerned. It's high time that this became "old hat" for the lay public as well.

 

Thanks for that old chap = what I would really like to see is one of the sceptics here to actually do the same thing

 

Well, most of them have retreated to the "It's a natural cycle!" stupidity, though not a single one of them will tell us what's causing this supposed "natural cycle". They all seem to think they can mindlessly wave their hands around, scream "natural cycle!", and then declare victory and skeedaddle.

After that position becomes too obviously stupid to defend (it's almost there), they'll fall back to "okay, it's not natural, but it's not so bad!". Some of them are already initializing their position construction there, with this idiot "But CO2 helps trees! Don't you like trees!" babbling.

And after that indefensible position crumbles, they'll retreat to their final "Yeah, it's real bad, but it costs money to fix, and that would inconvenience me in some slight way, so screw everyone but me" position, which is the one they've obviously held all along. One just wonders why they think it's not obvious.

 

Based on flawed research.

Muller wrote:

"We carefully studied issues raised by skeptics: biases from urban heating (we duplicated our results using rural data alone)"

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT. Fail. The problem is not just "urban heating," but all the human activities that affect temperature readings, rural as well as urban. In particular, AGW ninnies have claimed that a larger temperature increase at night is a "signature" of CO2 warming. In fact, of course, it is just a signature that human activities do not produce any measurable warming in the daytime compared to the sun, but they produce a very substantial amount of warming at night compared to the moon, stars and planets.

"Rural" temperature readings that are claimed to be free of local human influences may be taken at rural airports, where concrete or asphalt runways and aircraft operations raise temperatures: add a runway, and temperature goes up; replace a grass airstrip with gravel, and temperature goes up. Replace gravel with asphalt or concrete, and temperature goes up again. "Rural" temperature readings may be taken on farms, where plowed fields are warmer than natural vegetation, and where outbuildings, barns, silos, etc. often produce a great deal of local warming. Do you think someone raising chickens, hogs, etc. lets them freeze in the winter? "Rural" temperature readings may be taken in forested areas -- or rather, areas that used to be forested, and have since been clear-cut, raising temperatures. They may be taken in resort areas where buildings, pavements, etc. produce a lot of heating, especially at night. They may be taken in areas that were forested or grassland when the readings began, and are now desert because of deforestation, overgrazing, irresponsible farming practices, irrigation with saline water, etc.

The notion that the local heating effects of increasing human activities over the last 50 years have been accounted for in temperature data merely by extracting "urban heat island" data is naive at best, and absurd and dishonest at worst.

 

Folks, Roy L has posted an interesting hypothesis. He's claiming that human activities unrelated to CO2 emissions are responsible for surface warming. So the obvious way to test this hypothesis would be to compare the patterns of warming over the globe with patterns of population growth. If his hypothesis is correct, then we should see regional warming strongly correlated with regional population growth. Is that the case? Well, if Roy wants to make a credible case for his hypothesis, then he's going to have to do the research and/or analysis legwork to back it up. Will he do that?

 

The "cause" of a natural cycle does not require explanation except by those who first want to claim that we aren't in one. Part of their problem is that they don't fully understand the uncertainty in the system. Without that, all the models in the world get shot down by the same premise...without knowledge of how the natural cycle works and the variability within it works, no one can claim that what we are seeing today is anything any different than those. It is how science works, claims of it being "settled" (by those who obviously don't know what it is) to the contrary.

 

Even if this were correct - and it is a long way from that - it sort of says that man IS having an effect on the global temperature - sort of OUR point do you not think?

What like this one??



And there have been several investigations into this and the results are always the same - the dataset is robust because you are talking about only a few temperature stations out of thousands WORLD WIDE

Reckon there is an "urban heat island effect" happening here? LOLS!!

 

Fine - ANY time that you want to elaborate on exactly WHAT is causing the observed change in average global temperature please let us know

 

Oh, it's definitely correct. It's even obvious.

No, because it says the effect is more on temperature READINGS than on actual average global atmospheric temperature.

I don't know. What did it look like when they put the instruments there? What activities go on there? What does it look like at night?

I have never seen a report of any investigation that actually addressed the issue I have identified.

I don't know what kind of human activities could be affecting readings there. See as above.

 

No, I'm saying such activities have not been ruled out as a principal cause of higher surface temperature READINGS.

Nope. That's a typical naive and/or dishonest AGW oversimplification. Population growth has been highest in poor countries where land use patterns haven't changed as much as in richer countries that are paving things over. Deforestation is another confounding variable: in some places it goes along with population growth, other places it doesn't.

Nope. Economic growth would be a better indicator, but even that might be a very tenuous relationship. It's hard to say what a good proxy would be. Maybe total energy consumption? That would certainly get at the relationship with night-time heating.

Not me. I'm just supplying the logical acuity that AGW ninnies lack.

 

In rough order of effect:

1. The millennial climate (probably solar) variation cycle that also gave us the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.

2. Non-CO2-related human activities, both those that preferentially affect temperature readings and those that actually affect average global atmospheric temperatures, like CH4 emissions.

3. Shorter natural temperature/climate/circulation cycles like the PDO.

4. Anthropogenic CO2.

Just my sense of the likely scale of their effects.

 

Roy - do you think that scientists are so dumb that they have not studied the solar impact on climate?? That we have not seen that despite the lowest sunspot cycle in ages - the temperature continued to rise

but just look at how long scientists have been investigating the correlation between the sun and the climate http://www.aip.org/history/climate/solar.htm/



Ch4 - methane - you DO realise don't you that methane in the atmosphere oxides to Carbon Dioxide don't you??

http://co2now.org/Know-GHGs/Methane-|-CH4/methane-and-climate-science.html

Just think of the singular event - the introduction of ruminants to Australia - a whole continent whose fauna produced not methane but nitrogen was suddenly populated with millions of animals producing methane..............


PDO does not explain a rise like that seen on the graph above

And finally - yes anthropogenic CO2

 

One of the things which affects global temperatures is the positioning of the continents. Biologic activity (you do realize that the global environment has been affected by plants before, right?), solar activity, the tides, volcanic activity, hell, there are so many OTHER things which can, and have, changed the global climate that it seems a bit egotistic for humans for figure everything must revolve around them.

And because all of them acting together, or against each other, can create untold combinations of heating, and cooling, it becomes more than critical to understand them, rather than simply grabbing onto the first model cooked up by someone to get their PhD and proclaiming the end of the world. Hansen himself back in the late 80's was predicting far higher temperatures nowadays than we actually have registered. Oops. More science on the systems involved, less hysterical arm waving and proclamations of "science is settled!", a statement which itself proves that the speaker of such doesn't know anything about science.

 

No, I think that unlike you, they are not so dumb that they claim they understand it.

Lie. YOUR OWN GRAPH shows that temperature leveled off and then began to drop, coinciding with the recent sunspot low:



Do you really think you can get away with claims that YOUR OWN GRAPH refutes?

<sigh> You do realize that CH4 is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, and unlike CO2 is not saturated, don't you? And unlike CO2, which continues its exponential rise, CH4 has leveled off since the 1990s -- just as temperatures have leveled off.

You just have to refuse to know such facts.

It explains the fact that the average rate of rise has roughly followed a PDO-like 60-year cycle.

 

Then stop doing that.

We see _direct_ evidence to support AGW theory in a couple ways.

1. Decreasing outgoing IR flux to space in the greenhouse gas bands.
2. Increasing longwave radiation back down to earth.
3. Changes in heat balance. Goesin > Goesout, which means warming.

It's not enough to do some speculatory and unsupported handwaving about magically convenient natural cycles. You also need to somehow disprove or discredit the direct evidence for current AGW theory. We see the atmosphere behaving as AGW theory predicts, retaining more heat. We see the world warming as expected when the atmosphere retains more heat. In order to have any validity, your handwaving needs to explain why scientists getting it all right means they really got it all wrong.

 

Can you back up your unicorn-and-rainbows sunspot theory with anything more than your usual frantic handwaving and cursing? For example, tell us exactly what the sunspot theory predicts. Inform us of the exact lag between sunspot cycles and temperatures, the magnitude of the temperature change based on sunspot numbers, things like that.

If you've got an actual theory instead of mindless handwaving, that shouldn't be a problem for you. And if you do make such a prediction, you'll be the first, given that denialists are a notoriously craven lot when it comes to doing science. You know, proposing a theory and making predictions based on that theory. The mainstream scientists have done it over and over and been proven correct, hence they have credibility. Your pack o' weasels won't even try, but that's because they're political cultists as opposed to scientists. Svensmark was about the only one who tried, and his theory failed when temps went the opposite way of what his cosmic ray theory predicted.

Oh my. Your really are that clueless about the physics at play here. "CO2 is saturated!". I'll be chuckling about that one all day. Have one of the grownups explain it to you.

Curve matching is not science, no matter how loudly you declare it is. I know that fact bothers you, being that curve matching is all most denialists are capable of. So, after that curve match falls to pieces, just like your sunspot curve matching fell to pieces, what's the next bit of cherrypicking you're going to fall back on?

 

And can you please tell us what those measurements were during the Medieval warming period, that we may compare them?

The wonders of modern technology, like thermometers, have been around for what, 150 years? So over the past few ice ages, say the last 450,000 years or so, mankind has data on 0.033% of that timeframe. To equate that to periods people might understand better, it would be like trying to guess at the high temperature of the day, using 28 seconds of temperature during the day. Tell me, how well of an estimate do you think you can do for a days high, or low, temperature, from 28 seconds of temperature data? Try it sometime, collect 28 seconds of temperature data, one point every 1/4 second perhaps, and then ignore the weather, the resolution of the instruments you are using, whether or not the temperature is being collected in the open or an enclosed area, and (if you are a modern climate modeler) draw a line through the points and proclaim (alternately) hell on earth, or the next ice age.

Uncertainty in the system is not understood, and the people least interested in understanding are those collecting research money or grants to arrive at an expected conclusion.

 

Dumb question on several levels. First, we know what those measurements would have been, as we know the greenhouse gas levels. Second, because it's going on about a local warmup as if it were a global average. Third, it's because it's such an obvious evasion of the current physical data, data that inconveniently shows AGW theory is correct.

Again, dumb on several levels. Ignorance of temperature proxies, irrelevent statistical handwaving, confusion between climate and weather. And when I keep pointing out how denialism is a political cult, you should probably avoid proving that point with a conspiracy theory about how most of the scientists in the world are lying for money.

Eventually, you might get around to addressing why the direct physical evidence supports AGW theory. If you think it's just a coincidence, then propose a counter-theory that reveals the real warming source, show the physical data for that, and show why the observed atmospheric effects aren't the real warming cause. Then, based on that theory, make a testable prediction. No one has even tried yet, so it will win you a Nobel Prize for sure.

 

What makes you think all of those other issues have not been investigated? Have you ever used google scholar to find out?

But let us just take ONE of your items - the tides and I have to say WTF?? Tides can and do affect weather but CLIMATE?? Climate is the tracking of trends across time - how on this Earth or the next can tides have a trended effect?

 

What refutation?? The graph shows a rise - just because that rise is not a smooth line does not belie the fact it IS a rise - as for "Levelling off" - no-one claimed that there was NO impact of a decreased solar cycle - and if you look at the entire graph you will see that there is in fact a BIG drop in solar activity - with only a minor drop in temperature - something to be concerned about since we are predicting an increase again in solar activity.

What? Posting three Furphies for the price of one??

a) CO2 "saturation" - I see Mamooth has responded on that one
b) temps have "levelled off" - nope try again
c) CH4 has "levelled off" - you made a funny!! You mean suddenly all those peat bogs in Siberia that are defrosting and sending CH4 into the atmosphere have stopped doing so for no reason??

And finally claiming that the PDO (which stands for DECAL oscillation) is behind the temperature rise is like claiming the tides are doing it, The "cycle" should return to baseline each time not continue to increase

PS - I will post links to validate what I am averring when you do

 

No. You don't. And the reason why you don't, is because you didn't have the technology there to measure it. What you can MAKE, is a model which includes various assumptions, designed to imitate what you THINK should have been happening. There is a reason why climate modelers cannot accurately predict why ice ages start. Or end. This is one of them.

Certainly that is what the "modeling uber alles" gang wants us to believe...too bad they didn't some more understanding of other systems (and other scientists) before sticking foot firmly in mouth. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 325-326 (2012). When the Medieval warming reaches the pennisulas of Antarctica, it isn't local. Sorry.

You can't show it is correct without knowing what the natural variability is. Otherwise...it can just be the same-old same-old uncertainty within the climate systems...the same kinds of variability which the modelers can't reproduce back through time.

 

Once upon a time, the moon was closer to the earth. Are you seriously saying that higher tides, operating on the bottoms of glacial sheets once so common across North America, wouldn't be affected in the same way, and very possibly a stronger way, than tides and wave action are having now on the Antarctic sheets?

You do realize that man was on this planet when the country of Canada was covered in ice, right? And that the next round of warming (someone remind me how many coal fired power plants the American paleo-Indian built to melt all that ice?) was quite beneficial to an entire country.

Change is not necessarily bad, and our climate has been changing for quite some time, and humans have profited quite nicely from it. But just imagine how much (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)ing those paleo-Indians must have done, as the ice sheets retreated north and they were left with....Manhattan. Montreal. The Great Lakes. What a (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)! All they wanted was the fresh water run off from the sheets, and they got stuck with...New England!

 

You are not seriously suggesting that the CURRENT increase in global temperatures are because the moon is further away??

 

No but we have the technology now and the means to extract data - ever heard of "ice cores"

But did it reach there at the same time as the rest of the world - bet not!!

BTW can you do better than your reference there - which you got from "Wottsupmybutt" I bet and when I click on the link there (will not reproduce the snapshot here because of copyright) http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/22/more-evidence-the-medieval-warm-period-was-global/

We see that the investigators themselves could not pinpoint time lines - everything we have found so far suggests that the southern hemisphere DID have a MWP but it was at least 50 years out of step with the rest of the world

Actually they can - that is how they test the models

http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm

 

No. My perspective is a bit more macro than that, otherwise I obviously wouldn't have included continental drift in my prior list of important factors.

What I am suggesting is that those focused on "highest ever!" or "most records ever!" and whatnot are examining a mere 28 seconds in a day and trying to guess what the high temperature (or low) for the day might be.