Reply to: Yet another cold Winter

[BlasterBates]

Of course the planet has been warmer before, for example in the Eemian (when Hippopotamuses roamed England and when sea levels were 5-7m higher), however civilisation, agriculture and our infratructure developed during the Holocene, a period of remarkable climatic stability. To quote Jim Hansen, writing in the Philosophical Journals of the Royal Society

I notice that you have yet again ignored the the evidence on Swiss alpine glaciers being further back 1000 years ago, that is somewhat later than when the hippos were roaming Britain.

You don't really have an answer to that one.

But it isn't just the Swiss glaciers, the ice cores in Greenland and in Antarctica, and glaciers elsewhere exhibit similar variation, just check the literature it's all in there.

[Paddy]

BBC News - Met Office says 2010 'among hottest on record'

Strange that they choose to say this when it snows, they did the same last time it snowed!

This year is heading to be the hottest or second hottest on record, according to the Met Office.

It says the past 12 months are the warmest recorded

The Met Office says it is very confident that man-made global warming is forcing up temperatures.

[pjclarke]

I would also like one thing to be clarified. Pachuri was rightfully villified for claiming that the Himalayan glaciers would melt in 35 years. He accepted the error but has not told us when they will actually go into melt down. Maybe you can tell us ?

Or maybe you guys aren't interested now that it's not a useful tool to terrify the general populace.

Well, the error went un-noticed and unremarked for over 2 years so terror levels were presuambly manageable, were you aware of this prediction before this year? Be honest now.

In a regional chapter on Asia in Volume 2, written by authors from the region, it was erroneously stated that 80% of Himalayan glacier area would very likely be gone by 2035. This is of course not the proper IPCC projection of future glacier decline, which is found in Volume 1 of the report. There we find a 45-page, perfectly valid chapter on glaciers, snow and ice (Chapter 4), with the authors including leading glacier experts (such as our colleague Georg Kaser from Austria, who first discovered the Himalaya error in the WG2 report). There are also several pages on future glacier decline in Chapter 10 (“Global Climate Projections”), where the proper projections are used e.g. to estimate future sea level rise. So the problem here is not that the IPCC’s glacier experts made an incorrect prediction. The problem is that a WG2 chapter, instead of relying on the proper IPCC projections from their WG1 colleagues, cited an unreliable outside source in one place. Fixing this error involves deleting two sentences on page 493 of the WG2 report.

If you're really interested in the glaciers, the actual picture is complicated but see here and here :-

Or you might prefer David Bellamy's considered thoughts.

[pjclarke]

I notice how 1998 is the hottest year, and we seem to be climbing back down again.

Hardly ...

This year is so far tied for the hottest year in a record dating back to 1850 in a new sign of a warming trend, the three major institutes which calculate global warming estimates told Reuters. ... "I would not be surprised if most or all groups found that 2010 was tied for the warmest year," said Nasa's Dr James Hansen

.

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The globe has warmed before...how else do you explain glacial variations, an argument you pointedly ignore because you have no answer.

Of course the planet has been warmer before, for example in the Eemian (when Hippopotamuses roamed England and when sea levels were 5-7m higher), however civilisation, agriculture and our infratructure developed during the Holocene, a period of remarkable climatic stability. To quote Jim Hansen, writing in the Philosophical Journals of the Royal Society

Earth's climate is remarkably sensitive to forcings, i.e. imposed changes of the planet's energy balance. Both fast and slow feedbacks turn out to be predominately positive. As a result, our climate has the potential for large rapid fluctuations. Indeed, the Earth, and the creatures struggling to exist on the planet, have been repeatedly whipsawed between climate states. No doubt this rough ride has driven progression of life via changing stresses, extinctions and species evolution. But civilization developed, and constructed extensive infrastructure, during a period of unusual climate stability, the Holocene, now almost 12 000 years in duration. That period is about to end.

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Why don't you check out the evidence pointed out by Easterbrook pointing to warmer temperatures in the middle ages.

Because life is too short; there is more than enough interesting material from reliable sources to keep me occupied before turning to the likes of widely-debunked Don Easterbrook. As I have pointed out many times he fabricates evidence and manipulates graphs.

Easterbrook’s analysis is hopelessly flawed, and one is left to wonder just why he would intentionally shoot down his own credibility with such sloppiness. Any support of this work on internet sources is not a support of any actual science or data, but an appeal to authority.

Source Click Click

[DimPrawn]

There's another month to go before [6 months of] winter starts too.

True, but then we can look forward to the barbeque summer.

[TimberWolf]

There's another month to go before [6 months of] winter starts too.

[EternalOptimist]

Why? Every decade since the sixties has been warmer than the last, fourteen of the fifteen warmest years in the series occurred in the past fourteen years (1995-2009). The planet is now half a degree warmer than it was in the Seventies (and that is a LOT of extra heat in the system).



What possible difference will two more years make?

Why look at temperatures over then next couple of years ???
the answer is blindingly obvious. We need to track the actual recorded temperatures, to see if they match the predictions made by the IPCC and the models.

I would also like one thing to be clarified. Pachuri was rightfully villified for claiming that the Himalayan glaciers would melt in 35 years. He accepted the error but has not told us when they will actually go into melt down. Maybe you can tell us ?

Or maybe you guys aren't interested now that it's not a useful tool to terrify the general populace.

[BlasterBates]

Why? Every decade since the sixties has been warmer than the last, fourteen of the fifteen warmest years in the series occurred in the past fourteen years (1995-2009). The planet is now half a degree warmer than it was in the Seventies (and that is a LOT of extra heat in the system).



What possible difference will two more years make?

I notice how 1998 is the hottest year, and we seem to be climbing back down again.

The globe has warmed before...how else do you explain glacial variations, an argument you pointedly ignore because you have no answer.

Your graph just confirms it showing the later years creeping back down again.

Why don't you check out the evidence pointed out by Easterbrook pointing to warmer temperatures in the middle ages.

Why were the glaciers further back then?

There are cycles the go on for hundreds of years, which your graph just goes to support.

Amazing that climate twerps actually produce a graph that refutes their own hypothesis.

[pjclarke]

Straw Man.

What we were told was cosmic rays have no impact at all on climate

Told by who? Not the IPCC. If this were the case then CERN would not be spending millions researching the link. But they are so this is just a straw man argument.

[TimberWolf]

The bloody fan on my computer is driving me nuts. For some reason it comes on when the temperature drops below about 10 degrees. I thought cold was good for computers.

[BlasterBates]

Well it's a change of tune isn't it?

What we were told was cosmic rays have no impact at all on climate, and now it was a major driver over the last 1000 years, where glaciers were further back than they are today.

http://climateaudit.org/2005/11/18/a...swiss-glacier/

What else have the AGW also got completely wrong then?

...and meanwhile the temperature plunges globally, and more cold temperature records are broken:

AMSU-A Temperatures Trends from NOAA-15

http://globalfreeze.wordpress.com/20...gas-shortages/

Blistering cold cracks records | Calgary & Alberta | News | Calgary Sun

Lets see where the global temperature go in the next couple of years.

But it certainly looks like AGW is in it's death throes.

[EternalOptimist]

The usual test for the statistical significance of a trend calculation is 95%. In plain English, if there there is a greater than 1-in-20 chance that the calculated trend may be a result of noise, or an artifact of the calculation, then the trend fails to achieve statistical significance.

Thats right. so the temperature record falls withing the bounds of natural variability, which is what the sceptics have been saying all along.

[BlasterBates]

I like how you need to mention things are peer-reviewed, the implication being most anti-GW papers are unsubstantiated drivel.

Also, a LOT of crap papers get put out there, it doesn't mean they're worth anything... just read scientific american for crackpot theories on physics and cosmology.

...talking of unsubstantiated drivel, that reminds me

In an interview with the science journal Nature, Phil Jones, the head of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University East Anglia, admitted it was "not acceptable" that records underpinning a 1990 global warming study have been lost.

The missing records make it impossible to verify claims that rural weather stations in developing China were not significantly moved, as it states in the 1990 paper, which was published in Nature. "It's not acceptable ... [it's] not best practice," Jones said.

He acknowledged that the stations "probably did move" but insisted he did not know this when he wrote the 1990 paper.

[EternalOptimist]

I like how you need to mention things are peer-reviewed, the implication being most anti-GW papers are unsubstantiated drivel.

Also, a LOT of crap papers get put out there, it doesn't mean they're worth anything... just read scientific american for crackpot theories on physics and cosmology.

Tis true. There is a lot of tripe out there on both sides of the debate. Some of the sceptic blogs are cringe making. I think that as being a sceptic becomes respectable we are suffering from our own brand of bandwagon jumpers, and its not nice.

To give him his due, pj has made one promise, he will join the ranks of the sceptics if the recorded temperatures fall outside the IPCC forecasts for a significant period of time
cant say fairer than that

[d000hg]

Warming was caused by cosmic rays.

New peer reviewed research, hot off the press:

http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/10...10941-2010.pdf

I like how you need to mention things are peer-reviewed, the implication being most anti-GW papers are unsubstantiated drivel.

Also, a LOT of crap papers get put out there, it doesn't mean they're worth anything... just read scientific american for crackpot theories on physics and cosmology.