Global Warming - Scientific evidence

[pjclarke]

Whats Up With That?

Over such a short trend as 5-6 years, the satellite and surface station data will show divergence, simply because they are measuring diffrent physical quantites. Satellites measure the temperature of the lower troposphere, surface stations... well the clue is in the name. Nonetheless, over time we can expect that if both quantitites are subject to the same influences, then over a long enough period, they will exhibit similar trends, which is eactly what we do see http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/off...rom:1979/trend

Watts is a respected climate sceptic

ROFL! You notice his wiki entry is 'blogger' as opposed to say, oh, I dunno maybe 'scientist'. The IPCC Working Group 1 which reported on the physical basis of climate change consists over 700 practising climate scientists. Watts, by contrast, is a college dropout without even a graduate level degree. While his site has cornered the market in those who have a predisposition, for whatever personal, psychological or political reasons, to disbelieve the science, his own scientific understanding is woeful. For example, there are 4 major indicies of global temperature. These report using an anomaly method, that is, they report the current temperature compared to a baseline rather than an absolute value. However, each index uses a different baseline and so when comparing the indices this has to be taken into account. Anthony Watts (specialist subject - global temperatures) was not aware of this basic fact and made of series of posts with direct comparisons of the indices. This is analogous to comparing your height to mine, while I am standing on a box.

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/03/...-up-with-that/

And we should believe this guy because ....?

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/03/...e-data-part-1/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/03/...ata-part-deux/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/04/...e-data-part-3/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/04/...anthony-watts/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/dropouts/

[Doggy Styles]

Recently I've become very sceptical, me.

It sounds like these man-made climate change people have confused solar cycles with CO2-effect and have been caught with their trousers down.

Anyway, we'd run out of things to burn long before their Armagedon scenario.

[Doggy Styles]

I've just been looking up some stats of my own.

The world is obviously cooling down in line with solar activity because we've started winning winter Olympic gold medals again, after years of warmer weather that peaked in 1998. The previous warm period (Dixon and Nash was an aberration) eventually came to an end as well.

2010: Brrr! Amy Williams, skeleton
2002: Brrr! Women's curlers
1998: Phew! Too warm for gold medals
1994: Phew! Too warm for gold medals
1992: Phew! Too warm for gold medals
1988: Phew! Too warm for gold medals
1984: Brrr! Torville & Dean, figure skating
1980: Brrr! Robin Cousins, figure skating, scientists even predict a new ice age
1976: Brrr! John Curry, figure skating
1972: Phew! Too warm for gold medals
1968: Phew! Too warm for gold medals
1964: Phew! Although Dixon & Nash, bobsleigh won gold but only after borrowing bob-sleigh bits from the Italians
1960: Phew! Too warm for gold medals, never mind the ice caps - we even had submarines surface at north pole
1956: Phew! Too warm for gold medals
1952: Brrr! Jeanette Altwegg, figure skating
1936: Brrr! Men's ice hockey
1924: Brrr! Men's curlers

I rest my case.

[BlasterBates]

Over such a short trend as 5-6 years, the satellite and surface station data will show divergence, simply because they are measuring diffrent physical quantites. Satellites measure the temperature of the lower troposphere, surface stations... well the clue is in the name. Nonetheless, over time we can expect that if both quantitites are subject to the same influences, then over a long enough period, they will exhibit similar trends, which is eactly what we do see http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/off...rom:1979/trend

Watts is a respected climate sceptic

ROFL! You notice his wiki entry is 'blogger' as opposed to say, oh, I dunno maybe 'scientist'. The IPCC Working Group 1 which reported on the physical basis of climate change consists over 700 practising climate scientists. Watts, by contrast, is a college dropout without even a graduate level degree. While his site has cornered the market in those who have a predisposition, for whatever personal, psychological or political reasons, to disbelieve the science, his own scientific understanding is woeful. For example, there are 4 major indicies of global temperature. These report using an anomaly method, that is, they report the current temperature compared to a baseline rather than an absolute value. However, each index uses a different baseline and so when comparing the indices this has to be taken into account. Anthony Watts (specialist subject - global temperatures) was not aware of this basic fact and made of series of posts with direct comparisons of the indices. This is analogous to comparing your height to mine, while I am standing on a box.

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/03/...-up-with-that/

And we should believe this guy because ....?

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/03/...e-data-part-1/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/03/...ata-part-deux/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/04/...e-data-part-3/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/04/...anthony-watts/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/dropouts/

Well indeed you maybe right on that point. But when you look at the sloppy methods the CRU's use, losing raw data, cr*ppy programs with fudge factors, you can understand why people should be sceptical.

but I would suggest you check this view out from a sceptical scientist

CO2 and temp

Now you may criticise Watts, but Professor Easterbrook is beyond that form of criticism. He is an eminent professor.

Check out the first report. That shows a global warming phase not much different to the 1910-1940, and now we're in a cooling phase. The snow and frozen Baltic sea probably wasn't a coincidence, may be the cool Atlantic had an effect. The current warm El Nino will subside to reveal a continuing cooling cycle.

There's a true story about a biology student who noticed mushrooms growing faster at different times of the day. This was contrary to what was known. He noticed they grew fastest in the evening and the morning. So he did a PhD project on it, and demonstrated this. After 3 years hard work he finally submitted his thesis, in the viva the examiner asked him whether he'd taken into account the central heating switching on and off....

hmm kind of reminds me of these climatologists

[pjclarke]

The CRU have not lost any raw data, the 'fudge factor' and other programmer's comments came from 'Harry's READ ME' file. Harry is Ian Harris, who was working on a completely separate project to the widely-quoted flagship HADCRUT temperature series used by the IPCC.

Don Easterbrook is indeed a distinguished Professor of Geology. However he has not published anything (in the sense of in an academic journal) on his theory of global cooling caused by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

Josh Willis, on the other hand is a professional oceanographer :-

Josh Willis , who tracks ocean changes in relation to climate at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, sent an email rejecting Dr. Easterbrook's forecast for three decades of cooling because of a shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or PDO. It's posted here:

The short answer is that global warming is here, sea level rise is accelerating and the PDO is not going save us by putting all of that on hold for 10 or 20 years. Its true that the PDO has brought cooler than normal temperatures to a big chunk of the Pacific off and on for most of the last 10 years. But the PDO is not just a big see-saw that rocks back and forth, cooling and then warming the whole planet every 20 years. Sometimes it flips back after just 5 years and sometimes it stays pretty much the same for 25 or so. Furthermore, the so-called "cold phase" of the PDO is not exclusively cold. It also involves warmer than normal waters in the western and northern parts of the Pacific. So the effect of the PDO on global temperatures is not nearly as clear as it is for its smaller and better known cousins, El Nino and La Nina.

Needless to say, it's a pretty wild statement to claim that the PDO data shows conclusively that global cooling will occur for the next 10 years. I'd say we have a better chance of seeing unemployment drop to 5% next month than we do of seeing 10 years of cooling.

Cheers,
Josh

Josh Willis, Ph.D.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/20...ut-energy-gap/
http://science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/Willis/

[RichardCranium]

Having scraped the ice off the car, I did the weekly commute this morning with a hot water bottle on my lap.

Where's MY global warming, you selfish bastards!

[BlasterBates]

The CRU have not lost any raw data, the 'fudge factor' and other programmer's comments came from 'Harry's READ ME' file. Harry is Ian Harris, who was working on a completely separate project to the widely-quoted flagship HADCRUT temperature series used by the IPCC.

Don Easterbrook is indeed a distinguished Professor of Geology. However he has not published anything (in the sense of in an academic journal) on his theory of global cooling caused by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

Josh Willis, on the other hand is a professional oceanographer :-

Josh Willis , who tracks ocean changes in relation to climate at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, sent an email rejecting Dr. Easterbrook's forecast for three decades of cooling because of a shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or PDO. It's posted here:

The short answer is that global warming is here, sea level rise is accelerating and the PDO is not going save us by putting all of that on hold for 10 or 20 years. Its true that the PDO has brought cooler than normal temperatures to a big chunk of the Pacific off and on for most of the last 10 years. But the PDO is not just a big see-saw that rocks back and forth, cooling and then warming the whole planet every 20 years. Sometimes it flips back after just 5 years and sometimes it stays pretty much the same for 25 or so. Furthermore, the so-called "cold phase" of the PDO is not exclusively cold. It also involves warmer than normal waters in the western and northern parts of the Pacific. So the effect of the PDO on global temperatures is not nearly as clear as it is for its smaller and better known cousins, El Nino and La Nina.

Needless to say, it's a pretty wild statement to claim that the PDO data shows conclusively that global cooling will occur for the next 10 years. I'd say we have a better chance of seeing unemployment drop to 5% next month than we do of seeing 10 years of cooling.

Cheers,
Josh

Josh Willis, Ph.D.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/20...ut-energy-gap/
http://science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/Willis/

Don't see why an Oceanographer is better placed to comment on climate change than a glaciologist, it is one of Easterbrook's research areas, and he does have a paper on it from 2005.

But we will see. He points out the cooling since 1998, and you just need to simply look at the temperature trends from any temperature record.

Even Phil Jones admits no warming since 1995. That does not contradict Easterbrook at all (warming till 1998-cooling 1998 onwards). No dispute there really, kind of contradicts the above view on the PDO not negating warming. What was the warming effect 0.18 degrees per decade. Explain the lack of 0.3 degrees warming over 15 years. That is significant is it not?

The CO2 theorists didn't predict a cooling, and it is happening they can't ignore it ... and there is a definite trend of the snow line moving southwards over the last few years. Interesting times.

[sasguru]

But we will see. He points out the cooling since 1998, and you just need to simply look at the temperature trends from any temperature record.



.

I think the statisticians in the following blind trial did:

http://getenergysmartnow.com/2009/10...ns-blind-test/

HTH

[shaunbhoy]

I think the statisticians in the following blind trial did:

http://getenergysmartnow.com/2009/10...ns-blind-test/

HTH

And all of that from the impartial blog of some "sustainable energy promoting" experts!!
FFS.............KUATB Jellyhead!!

[Ardesco]

Maybe you would care to explain why CO2 is the problem, and H2O is not?

The IR absorbtion spectrum for H2O is much greater than for CO2 and there is a hell of a lot of water vapour in the atmosphere. Why do we need to reduce CO2, surely it would be better to remove water vapour from the atmosphere?

Instead we have muppets suggesting we should be pumping more water vapour into the air to help absorb CO2 because that will obviously reduce global temperatures...

(Just to be clear I firmly belive that all this climate mumbo jumbo is balls, it's just that most pro climate change fanatics refuse to have an answer for why CO2 is bad and H20 is good)