Arctic (Non) Warming Since 1958

13 05 2009
Guest Post by Steven Goddard
From time to time we hear that various places on earth have been “warming much faster than the rest of the planet – as predicted by “the models.”  One of the places commonly mentioned in that list is the Arctic, based largely on 30 years of satellite data.  Fortunately though, we are not limited by 30 years of satellite data, as the Danish Meteorological Institute has records going back to 1958 and GISSTEMP has even longer records.
Below is a visual comparison of DMI 1958 Arctic temperatures vs. 2009, showing that temperatures have hardly changed since the start of their record.

2009 Daily Mean Temperatures North of 80 degrees

Below is an overlay directly showing that 2009 temperatures (green) are similar to 1958 (red) and close to the mean.  Blue is mean temperature for the 41 year record.
So if the Arctic has warmed since 1979, how can it be the about same as 1958?  The answer can be seen in the GISSTEMP graph below of Godthab, Greenland.
Temperatures have warmed since the start of the satellite record, but they cooled even more between 1940 and 1980.
Everyone (including NSIDC) quietly acknowledges that most of the Arctic was warmer in the 1940s than now – so they shift the warming argument to the Alaska side.  However, that argument also has problems.  Alaska temperatures rose at the positive PDO shift in 1977, and have cooled again with the recent negative PDO shift – as seen below.   2008 was notable in that Alaska glaciers started to increase in size.
If you look at only one leg of a cycle, you will come to the wrong conclusion about the shape of the graph.  Thus I would argue that Dr. Spencer’s fourth order curves are much more meaningful than the nearly meaningless linear fits being used by most prominent climate scientists.  Climate is primarily cyclical, as every good climate scientist should know.
File:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png

Vostok Ice Core Temperature Records



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193 responses

13 05 2009
ginckgo

oh great, more visual statistics.

13 05 2009
Jeff B.

Good to see some real science whilst the Hockey Team prattles on with a fish analogy.

13 05 2009
steptoe fan

still, the CO2 crowd can just ignore such data and with their media help, this information rarely makes the light of day to the general public .

here in Seattle, the U of Washington’s “climate” center, or whatever its called, continues to churn out PHD candidates who, for their dissertations, do work such as crafting computer models that suggest that the Cascade mountain range will be likely more snow free in the future. obscure local researchers print press releases claiming that global warming is going to be responsible for increasing allergic reactions due to pollen. the local TV media, needing to fill time, lap it up and regurgitate it.

the Seattle times, grabs such stupidity and prints it as the gospel – to the cheers of the greenies who blast those who question, as conservative, oil/coal company owners.

and if you post current science, you are immediately labeled a fool that believes just because its on the internet it must be true.

the democratic politicians in this state are ” past the science ” !

13 05 2009
Mike Bryant

This is the perfect companion piece to “Watching the 2007 historic low sea ice flow out of the Arctic Sea”
Thanks,
Mike…

13 05 2009
Jeff Id

This is interesting, I suppose after spending so much time looking at the Antarctic, this is the next logical step. The lack of warming is a surprise, the fourth figure from the top is interesting too because of it’s length.

The link http://data.giss.nasa.gov/work/gistemp/STATIONS//tmp.431042500000.1.1/station.gif
Isn’t working for me.

I’ve completed a summary of the Antarctic reconstructions for those who are interested.

http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/antarcti-summary-part-1-a-trend-of-trends/

Between a group of us, we’ve completed nearly a hundred different reconstructions using Steig’s methods with modifications. Guess which has the highest warming trend?

13 05 2009
DJA

Jeff
“Guess which has the highest warming trend?”
A $ to a peanut that Steig’s has the most.

13 05 2009
Leon Brozyna

Damn!

Another inconvenient truth. That’s okay; Al knows no shame and will feel no embarrassment.

A very true statement – “Climate is primarily cyclical, as every good climate scientist should know.” What makes it such a hard concept to get a handle on is that it’s not just a simple cycle; it’s cycles on top of longer cycles on top of still longer cycles. I suspect that we’ve already peaked on this latest 100,000+ year cycle; a thousand or a few thousand years in the future, our progeny will shake their heads in wonder at the presumptive folly of imagining that mankind can really impact the climate in any truly fundamental way.

14 05 2009
TonyS

These very steep downwards slopes of the Vostok ice-core graph frighten me. I can now understand why people were afraid of a new ice-age coming.

14 05 2009
David Ball

Once again, we clearly see that we are well within natural variability. Kudos to Mr. Goddard and friends.

14 05 2009
Jurinko

@jeff, It seems to be some tmp file generated.. go to http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/ and click somewhere on Arctic area and select a station. Ostrov Dikson is even better ;)

14 05 2009
rbateman

With increased glaciation in Alaska, the ice will build and flow faster to the sea, in much the same way as it careened out of the Alps in the Little Ice Age.
You know what the news will be, though.
More evidence of catastrophic warming.
Soon to be on the endangered species list: Carbonated drinks.

14 05 2009
Pieter F

This is all great data and analysis that will continue to chip away at the AGW dogma as ranks of moderate, logical thinkers move away from the fear mongering.

BTW OT: The Catlin Expedition made it to ABC’s Nightline this evening. Amongst the wow-factor of the cold (-84° below freezing) and difficulties, the report slipped in a prediction from someone at the University of Washington(?) that the Arctic could be ice-free as early as 2010 – 2016!

14 05 2009
Flanagan

Why take only one day, or why consider the trend of one station only? Don’t you all see this is cherry picking at its best?

This is what one gets when considering the whole arctic anomaly, as compared to the global anomaly
http://i37.tinypic.com/2lrxtu.jpg
Arctic in 2008 had an anomaly which was almost 1 centigrade higher than in the rest of the world.

14 05 2009
14 05 2009
Lubos Motl

Well, the temperatures are widely oscillating – the noise is clearly more important than any possible trends integrated over 50 years. But the graphs don’t really show there was “no warming” since 1958: look at the accuracy.

For example, the third graph shows the red and green curves coincide plus minus 2 degrees Celsius. That still doesn’t exclude a more than 1 deg C warming of the annual averages. Again, it is likely that relatively to the weather, the warming can’t possibly influence anything we care about. On the other hand, it can still exist and be statistically detectable (which is a much weaker type of influence than an actual influence on real lives).

14 05 2009
Lance

I may be OT or not, but the google ad ( right before the comments) is selling the book “the god who wasn’t there” This could come across wrongly as an anti Christian sentiment that might be shared on this site.
I’ve seen this ad on other sites that have alterer “political” motives and pegged them as not creditable to a clean link.

Even scientific truths dispensed with an agenda are not science. IMO

In reality, of course, this is revenue for this site and I’m thinking in the abstract, someone who might be visiting this site for the first time.
This could possibly foster the belief/connection to non/anti new testament believer conspiracy sites like similar to pharyngula http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/

Believer or not, it muddies credibility.

And on that note, I’ve been clicking on the top google ads and suggest others have a look at them. See what’s paying for this site, what constitutes and sells itself as REAL science .

(snip?)

14 05 2009
Alan the Brit

Maybe it is just little old me, but graphs 1 & 4 seem similar as I draw a visual mean curve thro’ the blue squigles, although a shade flatter. Nevertheless, this info does not surprise me. Nothing tends to these days. Anyhow this will all change once the Catlin scientifically gathered data is added into the equation, you know, the one that says all the observations are incorrect & the model is right!

14 05 2009
PaulM

Steven, that’s a great summary of some real data and some real facts.

I am surprised that Jeff Id is surprised by the Greenland picture. This ought to be more well known. Go to
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
and click on the map somewhere round Canada, Greenland or Iceland. Then select a station that has a long record (unfortunatley, not very many).
You will see that it is a similar picture at many stations (Steven has not been cherrypicking), for example Clyde, NWT, Angmagssalik (Greenland), Akureyri (Iceland). The temperatures now are no higher than in the 1940s. There are also several scientific papers confirming this (look for papers by Jason Box on Greenland and Iceland) .

Meanwhile, the BBC continues with its arctic propaganda following the end of the failed Catlin survey (equipment didnt work and they only got half way), falsely claiming that their data supports the idea that the ice will vanish soon.
Time for another WUWT post on this, please guys?

14 05 2009
Manfred

is the planned reduction of the bbc’s science stuff related to the poor quality of their reports ?

14 05 2009
Lucy Skywalker

Reflections…

BTW any newcomer here wanting to get an overview of the skeptical Climate Science story, click my name

When I first “converted” out of AGW I thought a skeptics’ climate science wiki would be a brilliant idea. A good way to channel frustration into something of value to bequeathe our children, to bypass Connolley’s diktat at Wikipedia. At present it’s not the work I’ve got to do, but I still think it would be good at all levels.

I’d like to add to that, we really need a DUMMIES’ / IDIOTS’ GUIDE TO BASIC SCIENCE w.r.t. Climate Science. Something to hold alongside Ian Plimer. Something that an eight-year-old can understand and enjoy. With pictures. Anyone up for starting the project, perhaps together with other disaffected and knowledgeable posters here?

I ache each time I read another knowledgeable poster’s frustration with the current state of scientific knowledge. I would love to see that energy channelled constructively. Maggie Thatcher started the whole collapse, by using her science degree to push Global Warming research and freeze all other research. Al Gore brought the nonsense to its present pitch by using his science knowledge as a gag to gain Presidency of the United States of Science.

We could do a lot with just a very little good knowledge…

14 05 2009
John Finn

Despit the general impression given, the arctic is actually a weakness in the AGW argument.

Between 1910 and 1940 the arctic warmed by ~1.5 degrees. Why? CO2 was only ~300ppm in 1910. Maybe it was the sun? possibly – but then why did it suddenly start to cool in the ~1940s.

Between 1940 and 1970 the arctic cooled by ~1 degree. Why was this? Industrial (tropospheric) aerosols is the widely accepted reason. But the effect of industrial aerosols is “regionally specific” (Mann &Jones). The majority of the aerosols in the 1940-1970 period came from the NH mid-latitude regions. The arctic cooled ~4 times as much as mid-latitude bands (24N-44N & 44N-64N; see GISS zonal record) Aerosols are short-lived in the atmosphere. Most get washed out of the air by rain/snow within a few days or weeks. The cooling effect of aerosols is supposedly twofold, i.e. (i) they reflect solar radiation and (ii) they promote cloud formation. But, the reflective properties of aerosols can only operate for 6 months of the year in the arctic, while clouds in the arctic results in warmer temperatures. Many studies show that the effect of aerosols in the arctic is warming via the phenomenon known as ‘arctic haze’ (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Haze ) which includes the statement: “The aerosols contain about 90% sulfur and the rest is carbon, which makes the haze reddish in color. This pollution is helping the Arctic warm up faster than any other region on Earth”

Since the ~1970s the arctic has warmed ~1.5 degrees or about the same as during the 1910-1940 period (again see GISS zonal record). Arctic warming/cooling is a significant contributor to the overall trend at the time, but there is clearly doubt about what is responsible for it’s rapid climate shifts.

The IPCC claims that it can explain the earth’s temperature fluctuations over the past century, but that it is only by including the increase in greenhouse gases can it to explain the late 20th century warming. The uncertainty (I would say serious doubts) regarding the assumed contributory factors suggest this is nonsense.

It is on issues such as this, that the AGW argument needs to be challenged

When Leif Svalgaard raises doubts about the sun’s role in climate change or I (not that I should be compared with LS **) defend the GISS temperature record, it does not necessarily mean that we support the CO2-induced warming cause. Note that in the above comments the GISS record and lack of the sun’s role have both been used to cast serious doubts on basic IPCC tenets.

** I’m sure he’s much older :-)

14 05 2009
bluegrue

I have made a blinker image of the DMI data, comparing the 8-year periods 1958-1965 and 2000-2007 (8 years as my graphics program only averages 2 images at a time, only up to 2007 as the image format changed afterwards).

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2qmkqdj&s=5

7 pixels in the image vertically correspond to 1°C. I would estimate that on average temperatures have gone down by about 0.5°C during melt season (about day 150-240) and gone up by 3-4°C during wintertime (days 0 to 80) and autumn (days 280-365)

It would be interesting to see the data as monthly anomalies.

14 05 2009
Cold Englishman

This is what we got last night on the BBC news. ‘Gruelling’ Arctic mission ends.
Regarding the Catlin Mission:-
Peter Wadhams, head of the polar ocean physics group at the University of Cambridge has brought forward his estimate for the demise of summer sea-ice in the Arctic
“By 2013, we will see a much smaller area in summertime than now; and certainly by about 2020, I can imagine that only one area will remain in summer.”

I doubt that I shall make 2020, but I hope that some of you younger ones, hold these idiots to acccount for their stupidity.

14 05 2009
MattN

Anthony, If this doesn’t get your name taken in vain on RC, nothing posted here will.

Figures don’t lie, but liars sure can figure….

REPLY: Heh, they’ve already allowed comments that refer to WUWT as “Watts Up Your Ass” so I doubt they can say much worse, but they are certainly creative so maybe I’ll be wrong.

Gavin doesn’t police for decorum. – Anthony

14 05 2009
Konrad

John Finn (02:13:01
Defend GISS? After all the hard work Anthony and his many hard working volunteers have done?
I could see a use for the GISS product, [snip - lets leave those comparisons outside of WUWT, Anthony]

14 05 2009
DennisA

There are some excellent references at the Alaska Climate Research Centre, although they have been virtually hidden from view as younger staff have arrived on the scene. The first one is on the same page as Steve Goddard’s post and the commentary is virtually identical to 2004. The graphic presentation has changed to a Hadley style chart. The other references are no longer visible on the site.

“The period 1949 to 1975 was substantially colder than the period from 1977 to 2008, however since 1977 little additional warming has occurred in Alaska with the exception of Barrow and a few other locations. The stepwise shift appearing in the temperature data in 1976 corresponds to a phase shift of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation from a negative phase to a positive phase. Synoptic conditions with the positive phase tend to consist of increased southerly flow and warm air advection into Alaska during the winter, resulting in positive temperature anomalies. ” Alaska Climate Research Centre: http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/ClimTrends/Change/TempChange.html

Understanding Alaska’s Climate Variation:
“The last two complete phases of the PDO were 1947-1976 (–ve PDO) and 1977-1996 (+ve PDO). Temperatures are cooler than normal during –ve PDO and warmer than normal during +ve PDO. These anomalies are not for the most part large, but considering they are for periods of 30 and 20 years respectively, they are significant”. John Papineau PhD, National Weather Service: http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/climvar/climate-paper.html

The FANB (Fairbanks, Anchorage, Nome, Barrow) temperature record:
“the mean annual temperature from 1977 through 1998 never dropped as low as the average from 1954 through 1976, even in the Pinatubo year, and only one year prior to 1977 was as warm as the average since the 1976-77 winter. The actual change seems to have occurred late in 1976. Although 1999 was below the 1954-76 average, the FANB average rebounded in 2000 in spite of a cool fall. http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/Bowling/FANB.html

Problems with the Use of Climatological Data to Detect Climatic Change at High Latitudes. Sue Ann Bowling Ph.D:
http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/Bowling/AKchange.html
“This paper deals with three examples of local variations or apparent “climate changes” probably due to urban effects, plus one possible real variation in Alaskan climate.

The Fairbanks area is subject to strong urban heat island effects (measured to be as much as 13 °C) when skies are clear in winter (Bowling and Benson, 1978). Summer heat islands have hardly been looked at, but they now appear likely to have more effect on recorded climate than do the large winter ones, which are masked by large year-to-year variability in winter and seem to be more confined to the city core.”

“Why doesn’t Anchorage show a similar effect? The most probable culprit is the Good Friday Earthquake of 1964. The earthquake leveled the Control Tower, which required that the instruments be relocated. The max/min thermometers were at Point Campbell, farther from pavement and nearer the waters of Cook Inlet, by 1971, but there is apparently no published record of their location during the intervening period.”

The Misplaced Move and the Encroaching City:
“Recorded station moves are not necessarily consistent among different sources, nor are the dates always accurate. Take the case of the downhill move at the University Experiment Station. The station list in Climatological Data, Alaska shows an elevation change from 500 feet to 475 feet in the summer of 1947. Was it real, or the result of re-surveying the area? With known current winter inversion strengths in the University area, such a move could have produced a decrease of a few degrees in recorded winter temperatures. Comparison of the University record for December and January with the Fairbanks record from Weeks Field (near where the Borough Library is now located) did indeed show either a decrease in University temperature or an increase in the Weeks Field temperature, but suggested a change in the summer of 1946 rather than 1947. The actual station history for the University Experiment Station confirms that the move was real, but it took place in 1933, 15 years before it was finally brought up to date in Climatological Data.”

The 1976 temperature step: a real change?
The 1976-77 winter in Alaska was astonishingly warm. At Fairbanks, pussy willows bloomed in November (author’s observation) and daily average temperatures never reached -30°F. Subsequent winters followed the same trend to a lesser degree, with degree days below -40°F showing a reduction quite noticable to long-term residents. An average of four Alaskan stations with good, continuous records, Anchorage, Barrow, Fairbanks, and Nome, show what appears to be a change in mean annual temperatures at around this time

A similar step change occurred in the UK CET record in 1988/9. In 1987 CET was 9.05 deg C, in 1989 it was 10.5 and in 1990 it was 10.63, a temperature which has been exceeded only once since, in 2006. (In 1949 it was 10.62). In the 22 year period from 1987 to 2008, M. Loa CO2 increased by almost 36 ppmv.

Great warming effect…..

14 05 2009
Bernie

Flanagan:
What is the actual source of your chart?

14 05 2009
Peter Taylor

Cold Englishman: Well, I certainly hope to be around in 2020, but I think we will prevail much sooner. The Arctic heat-wave of 1920-1940 is of course well-known to real Arctic climate scientists. I reviewed 32 temperature data sets for Arctic stations to 2004 some with very long records – In 2006 I could find only one with higher temperatures in 2004 than in the late 1930s or early 1940s – that was on the eastern coast of Greenland. Since then I have reviewed dozens of papers on surface air temperature, sea surface temperatures, ice-mass, glacier speeds and sea-ice, and all show a clear CYCLIC pattern of roughly 70 years. Some Greenland and Alaskan temperatures peaked in 2006-2008, but the pattern looks set to repeat.

The latest Arctic heat wave is not identical to the last – firstly it is higher, by maybe 20% in some places, and secondly, the hot-spots are different. But one thing is clear – it is driven by two distinctive factors – a 14% increase in clouds over the North Pole and Beaufort Sea between 1980-2000, and the incursion of warm Atlantic water under the ice and into the Beaufort Gyre. The rapid summer ice loss is due to melting from above (infra red from the clouds) and below (warm Atlantic water).

The strength of the Beaufort Gyre determines how far Atlantic water penetrates the Arctic – when the PDO is warm and Alaskan Shelf winds are low, the gyre weakens and may reverse flow; when cold (since late 2006), the Alaskan interior cools, the winds strengthen and the gyre strengthens accordingly – there is a lag of a few years.

Thus, this domino effect from the Pacific will eventually reach the area between Greenland and Norway and summer sea-ice ought to return to the long-term norm (unless there really IS a strong greenhouse element – which I can’t see it greater than the difference between this warm period and the last – ie about 20%) and unless there is an even steeper decline in global temperatures due to the quiet sun effect.

On the latter – there is a body of evidence that during quiet solar periods, the jetstream is shifted along with Arctic pressure systems that lead to blocking high pressure over Iceland – sending the jetstream further south and cooling western Europe. The eastern seaboard of the USA gets a little warmer, but the mid-West suffers late springs, dry summers, and bitter winters – not good for the breadbasket of the world!

We should get to see this play out over the next five years.

14 05 2009
Allan M R MacRae

This is true – I made similar statements one year ago, on a global basis.

“No Global Warming Since 1940″

http://www.iberica2000.org/Es/Articulo.asp?Id=3774

Excerpts:

The best data shows no significant warming since ~1940. The lack of significant warming is evident in UAH Lower Troposphere temperature data from ~1980 to end April 2008, and Hadcrut3 Surface Temperature data from ~1940 to ~1980.

Furthermore, it is clear that CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales, from ice core data spanning thousands of years to sub-decadal trends – the latter as stated in my paper**, and previously by Kuo (1990) and Keeling (1995) .

Finally, humanmade CO2 emissions have increased almost 800% since 1940.
CO2 data from CDIAC: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp030/global.1751_2004.ems

This data consistently suggests that the sensitivity of global temperature to increased atmospheric CO2 is near-zero, and thus there is no humanmade catastrophic global warming crisis.

_____________________________________

14 05 2009
PapyJako

Hi Steven, Hello from France

Thanks for this update. By the way, the link (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/work/gistemp/STATIONS//tmp.431042500000.1.1/station.gif) given for “Godthab Nuuk” station does not work. Here is a link that works:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=431042500000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

14 05 2009
old construction worker

Flanagan, I’ll give you 1-100 odds that the Artic will not be ice free in five years and I’ll give you 1-50 odds that the North Pole will not be ice free in five years.

14 05 2009
Bob Tisdale

Steven Goddard: It’s difficult to see year-to-year variations of a few tenths of a deg k when the scale on the graph is 45 deg K. So…

Here are three time-series graphs of ERA40 Surface Temperature (and anomaly) data for the same Arctic area (80N-90N). The ERA40 data should be the same dataset used by the Danish Meteorological Institute for your daily mean temperature graphs above. I downloaded the data through the KNMI Climate Explorer website. The anomaly data has been smoothed with a 12-month running-average filter. Unfortunately, the KNMI data hasn’t been updated since 2002, but, if you’re interested in investigating the ERA40 data further, you could send Geert Jan at KNMI an email and ask him to update it.

Here’s the Arctic (80N-90N) Surface Temperature graph in deg K. The peaks and valleys are suppressed in this presentation because the data is monthly mean, where the DMI graphs are daily mean temps. As you can see, it’s tough to really visualize what’s going on from year to year:
http://i43.tinypic.com/66vgw4.jpg

And here’s the same data in deg C:
http://i42.tinypic.com/n316iv.jpg

And the anomaly data:
http://i44.tinypic.com/jr7mns.jpg

14 05 2009
TonyB

Steven Goddard

I live close to Pen Haddow in Devon. This is the headline story in todays Western Morning News. that covers our region

‘POLAR ICE CAP AT CRITICAL POINT’

http://www.thisiswesternmorningnews.co.uk/news/POLAR-ICE-CAP-CRITICAL-POINT/article-991466-detail/article.html

Despite mind numbing temperatures, the fact that ice melts in summer, that they mistakenly set off across first year ice, that they didnt make their objective because of severe weather, this is being portrayed as a huge success and proof that the ice could melt this summer. Sheer propaganda.

It is about time we were more proactive as a collective organisation of sceptics, instead of making our individual complaints within forums that agree with our own view point.

Can we develop the mechaniosm (without the right wing or BIg Oil connotations) whereby we despatch our own press releases- based on facts and science- and sent them to the thirty or so key media (many of the rest pick it up from these sources)

We are currently being marginalised by the media who believe what they are being told and rarely know the real facts.

Tonyb

14 05 2009
14 05 2009
Neville

@Lucy

The book you are looking for came extremely highly recommended by Professor Bob Carter the other day, who said if there’s only one book you read this year it should be Ian Wishart’s new book Air Con. I don’t think he was dissing anyone else, it’s just that Air Con is so comprehensive but so easy to read.

The book is similar to Plimer’s in its coverage, but as a journalist Wishart writes on a level that’s easy for anyone to understand but without sacrificing any of the science or the significance.

I’ve read it now, it’s a fantastic book, and I see someone else has given it five stars on Amazon so presumably others share my opinion.

There’s a preview been released which will give you some idea of his writing style:

http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/05/air-con-book-debuts-at-1-on-bestseller-list.html

From memory, Aussie Joanne Nova has also done a little skeptic’s guide booklet that kids could read, so there’s two titles worth exploring.

14 05 2009
bill-tb

They use the “it’s warming faster than anyone ever knew” because they are out of time. It’s over for the hoax. Even the OMB knows the science isn’t there. It’s been a carbon TAX and RATION scam from the beginning. Bill Clinton tried a straight carbon tax and was defeated way back in 1992.

Does this mean they won’t TAX carbon anyway, the urge is strong, so who knows.

BUT — This will go down in history as a huge black mark for science in the public’s eyes. The real problem with doing science by government grant. I note Steve is now doing everything in the open, I would encourage others to follow his lead. Software, methods, results, conclusions — make it all open.

14 05 2009
Claude Harvey

The version of the Vostok Ice Core Temperature Record presented here clearly shows CO2 variations trailing the temperature variations, particularly on the upticks. Other versions of the chart, with its 450,000 year scale, do not consistently show this visual effect, with the explanation by skeptics being that the lag was only 800 years (ocean effect) which would not be apparent on such a scale. That leads me to suspect the chart presented here has been tampered with for dramatic effect. Explanation?

14 05 2009
PaulHClark

Flanagan (00:52:50) :

I just checked all the stations in Greenland with data from the 1920’s up to present and there is a similar picture – therefore it is somewhat disingenuous to say that the data is cherry picked.

14 05 2009
Steven Goddard

TonyB,

That Hadow interview was hilarious and will be remembered – thanks.

Pen Hadow and his team have revealed alarming new evidence that the shrinking ice cap has reached a critical point – heightening fears that global warming is spiralling out of control.

……

During the expedition, they worked in temperatures of minus-46C with a wind chill factor on occasions down to minus-70C.

“I think the abiding memory of this expedition has been the desperate struggle and effort required,” said Mr Hadow.

14 05 2009
Steven Goddard
14 05 2009
Bob Tisdale

Flanagan: You wrote, “This is what one gets when considering the whole arctic anomaly, as compared to the global anomaly.”

And you linked one of my graphs:
http://i37.tinypic.com/2lrxtu.jpg

The graph is Figure 5 from my post “Polar Amplification and Arctic Warming”:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/07/polar-amplification-and-arctic-warming.html

Please list the source of my graphs when you use them. A link would be nice, too.

Thanks.

14 05 2009
Bob Tisdale

Bernie: You asked Flanagan for the source of the graph he linked. As noted in my comment to him above, it’s one of mine. Here’s another link to that post:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/07/polar-amplification-and-arctic-warming.html

Regards

14 05 2009
Steven Goddard

Dr. Walt Meier from NSIDC wrote this on WUWT a few months ago.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/09/21/nsidc-s-dr-walt-meier-answers-10-questions/

The current Greenland warming, while not yet quite matching the temperatures of 70 years ago, is part of a global warming signal that for the foreseeable future will continue to increase temperatures (with of course occasional short-term fluctuations), in Greenland and around the world. This will eventually, over the coming centuries, lead to significant melting of the Greenland ice sheet and sea level rise with accompanying impacts on coastal regions.

This GISSTEMP derived map shows that most of the Arctic was warmer 70 years ago.
http://docs.google.com/File?id=ddw82wws_20d886qwcz_b
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/16/nsidcs-dr-walt-meier-answers-reader-questions-on-sea-ice/

14 05 2009
Shawn Whelan

The Hudson Bay company has extensive records of the climate in the Canadian north. Conveniently ignored.

The first long-term studies of climate change took place along the coast of Hudson Bay at places like Churchill and York Factory. They are part of the longest and most comprehensive set of weather observations in North America, if not the world.

As part of daily activities at any Hudson’s Bay Company trading post, weather patterns, rainfall, and casual observations were recorded and eventually archived by the company. In fact during the early 1800s, there were at least three times as many weather stations in Northern Manitoba as there are today. There is even evidence that a weather station was planned for Cape Merry in the mid-1700s.

Weather records for York Factory and Churchill date all the way back to 1714 and 1718, respectively. The Hudson’s Bay Company kept accurate records to assist in their business decisions regarding the fur trade. Their archives contain journals from over two hundred trading posts throughout the Canadian northwest.
snip

We seem to be running in roughly forty year cycles of warming and cooling – within a longer term warm period. This century has been marked by a warming period (1910-1940) followed by a cooler period through to the 1970s. The latest warming trend began in the late 70s, early 80s.

http://www.polarbearalley.com/hudson-bay-post-climate-change.html

14 05 2009
Adolfo Giurfa

Bob Tisdale (04:24:45) : The graphs of this post must be complemented with the graphs in the links you give.
Nothing has changed! Surprising indeed. (Except…some wallets..and bellies :-) )

14 05 2009
pyromancer76

TonyB (04:36:16) : “It is about time we were more proactive as a collective organisation of sceptics, instead of making our individual complaints within forums that agree with our own view point.

Can we develop the mechanism (without the right wing or BIg Oil connotations) whereby we despatch our own press releases- based on facts and science- and sent them to the thirty or so key media (many of the rest pick it up from these sources) ”

I think this is an important purpose, although any such effort will be maligned. As a non-scientist/engineer/computer-model specialist, I can’t be much help, but whatever I could do….Steven Goddard’s post (and thank you), many of the posts from WUWT, could form a basis for the effort. However, anything like this organized in a competent fashion would be expensive in many ways. Just listen to Anthony about how much this blog alone has “cost” him. Lucy Skywalker’s efforts and Nevelle’s assistance to build a bibliography are very important, too. Ideas from these could be sent to school districts. And so on, and so on. It ain’t easy.

I personally believe big-money from the left — wherever that is located — has bought mass media, many academic institutions, most “scientific” publications and is trying to ensconse itself in government in a permanent fashion. Corporations simply buy onto/into any trend they believe will bring them profits. Cap-and-trade seems to be the chosen vehicle at present. All efforts to the contrary are essential.

Knowledge about both Arctic and Antarctic, if it could be disseminated widely, couldn’t hurt, especially on a blow-by-blow basis; each false report is immediately followed by the truth in similar specificity. And this “organization of skeptics” would need its spokespersons to personalize the science. Steven Goddard, are you ready for the BBC?

14 05 2009
Richard M

Flanagan,

If the Arctic is truly 1C warmer now I imagine the Caitlin crew is extremely thankful. Just imagine if they had to suffer through -41C temps instead of the pleasant -40C temps they encountered.

14 05 2009
Ed Scott

Al Gore 1984

[snip -video removed - I don't want this sort of hype on the blog, sorry. - Anthony]

Can Big Brother be green? Absolutely. If carbon dioxide were the planetary poison that global warming alarmists claim, then every aspect of our lives would be fair game for government control: the homes we build, the cars we drive, the light bulbs we use. Even the number of children we have—because lets face it; any reduction in CO2 that we achieve will be more than offset by the households our kids will create when they grow up.

There are already proposals in Congress and federal agencies to vastly increase taxes and regulations in order to address the so-called global warming crisis. But as a growing number of scientists are openly declaring, there is no crisis.

14 05 2009
GW

Two things of interest from the graphs, if someone would care to address :

1) Why have the Alaskan glaciers grown this past season, whereas they did not back in 1999 ? Or did they, and it went undocumented or unreported ?

2) From the Vostok Ice Core Graph, it appears that climate and ice ages are predominantly governed by the amount of atmospheric dust. Is it documented whether the dust was volcanic in origin, or surface – from the huge Asian and African deserts, kicked up by atmospheric wind patterns ? Any correlations with significant asteroid impacts ?

14 05 2009
TonyB

steve

Glad you enjoyed the newspaper article.

You responded to a post from Flanagan with a link to:

Dr. Walt Meier from NSIDC wrote this on WUWT a few months ago.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/09/21/nsidc-s-dr-walt-meier-answers-10-questions/

This shows a map with dots whereby some temperatures are warmer than 70 years ago-some the same.

As a Brit I trend to think of Alaska as cold-with some parts very cold
so I was intrigued to compare this map with

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/13/90-of-the-last-million-years-the-normal-state-of-the-earths-climate-has-been-an-ice-age/

So the warm South West of england seems to shatre something with most of Alaska-it didnt glaciate during the last ice age. In other words some parts of Alaska are historicaly and currently warmer than intuition might indicate.

Have you-or anyone-an explanation for this? Height? Affect from a current? Micro climate?

Thanks

tonyb

14 05 2009
TonyB

Steve

Sorry, it was the second link on your reply I should have referenced

http://docs.google.com/File?id=ddw82wws_20d886qwcz_b
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/16/nsidcs-dr-walt-meier-answers-reader-questions-on-sea-ice/

I will be away from a computer for next few days so hope you can reply before I go, otherwise I will be pondering this all weekend!

TonyB

14 05 2009
Steven Goddard

TonyB,

Western Alaska temperatures are moderated by it’s proximity to the Pacific Ocean. During the last ice age, sea level was low and people were able to migrate to North America by walking across the Bering Strait.

14 05 2009
Bob Tisdale

Steven Goddard: If you can find the up-to-date anomaly data for the ERA surface temperature data North of 80N, it will most likely rise some more from 2002 to 2005, then decrease to present. But present anomalies, most likely, will not have dropped anywhere close to 1959 levels. Here’s a comparative graph of the ERA40 Surface Temperature data from 1957 to 2002 and UAH MSU TLT for the same Polar area, 80N-90N, from 1979 to present. Mind you, I realize that the UAH data is interpolated up at those latitudes, but it provides a ballpark. Also, the ERA40 data is a reconstruction, but I don’t know anything more about it.
http://i43.tinypic.com/2d1wzfs.jpg

14 05 2009
Jari

More on the Arctic

In 2006 Michael Mann and Phil Jones wrote on RealClimate about Artic temperatures and especially about Svalbard temperature records for 2006:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/05/more-on-the-arctic/langswitch_lang/zh

Referring to the 2006 April Svalbard temperature of 0.0 C they said “Under the assumption of stationary ‘normal’ statistics, such an event is considered astronomically improbable (< 1 in 10E6)”.

The Svalbard Luft station has only been working since 1977. During that time the temperatures have gone up and down. However, the April 2009 GISS temperature was -15.9 C which is -15.9 C colder than April 2006. This is 5.6 C colder than the average April (as compared to 1978-2008 period for which measured data exists). The April has been colder on in 1988 and 1979.

So it does not look too bad for the Arctic temperatures and ice.

14 05 2009
Mark Hugo

Steve:

Could we get the data set for this?

I’d like to do some curve fits in Excel.

Looks to me that after a 2nd or 3rd order fit, you’d have a nice SD type
comparison and you could say, “NO statistically significant difference.”

Of course some of the folks in the AGW crowd would probably need a remedial statistics course to understand what that means.

14 05 2009
VG

Anthony When are we going to get some useful feedback on this situation?
1. http://eva.nersc.no/vhost/arctic-roos.org/doc/observations/images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
2. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
3. etc…

REPLY:
From your tone, are you suggesting that I should drop everything I’m currently doing to answer your specific question? Check comments first. – Anthony

14 05 2009
Perry Debell

Expedition Leader Pen Hadow revealed that initial Survey results show the average ice thickness in the region to be 1.774m. The data collected will now be delivered to “scientists to interpret”.

I prefer the term “spin doctors to spin”, as being more accurate.
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/latestfromtheice

14 05 2009
Rhys Jaggar

Interesting stuff.

I can’t remember: was 1958 at solar maximum or solar minimum?

Would this have any implications for your interpretation?

And now we have had, horror of horrors, two days of 74s in the key radition measurement during solar cycles, is the remainder of 2009 likely to shoot ahead or stay close to the 1958 curve?

Questions as I am ignorant and have no knowledge!!!

14 05 2009
VG

Anthony this was certainly not directed at you or the site which I admire ad infinitum!. I think we need to a bit skeptical due to past events? (the sites). There is also of course this issue
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.5.14.2009.gif
versus
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
why is the meditterenean SST consistently cooler in one and not the other? Just asking I hope thats OK.

14 05 2009
KBK

I gotta admit that if the current 390 ppm CO2 were plotted on the Vostok chart, it would be quite striking compared to previous peaks. WUWT?

14 05 2009
KipHansen

Here Comes the Sun?

Nature today publishes:

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090513/full/459152f.html

“Quiet Sun enters new sunspot cycle
NASA
After a prolonged lull in activity, sunspots, and their associated solar storms, are on the rise again.”

Cycle 24 or not?

14 05 2009
John S.

Polar regions rely upon chaotic transport from lower latitudes rather than upon direct insolation as the source of heat. The natural variability of temperatures thus rises with latitude. Without taking this factor into account, the fact that absolute anomalies have been higher recently in the Arctic than globally is quite meaningless.

14 05 2009
ralph ellis

>>Meanwhile, the BBC continues with its arctic propaganda …
>>falsely claiming that their data supports the idea that the
>> ice will vanish soon.

Hilarious BBC report, this one. The Catlin team found a slice of pressure-induced open water that had obviously RE-FROZEN with a thin layer of ice (about 10 cms), and said this was evidence of Arctic melting.

The BBC is about as trustworthy, nowadays, as the old Soviet Pravda. It is a shame they are not the laughing-stock of the media, but unfortunately most of the media plays along.

.

14 05 2009
Ed Scott

Global warming: been there, done that

Australian geologist Ian Plimer says that the planet has warmed and cooled many times before. And humans aren’t to blame.

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/global_warming_been_there_done_that/

That’s why I welcomed the chance this week to interview Australian geologist Ian Plimer about his latest book, Heaven and earth: global warming, the missing science. Plimer is Australia’s best-known geologist and a professor at the University of Adelaide. His book has created quite a stir in the media. Leading journalists have lumped him together with anti-Semitic nutters as a climate change “denialist” and colleagues are shredding his claims in the letters pages.

Plimer makes two simple and challenging points. First, climate is always changing. In the past, the earth has been both much colder and much warmer than it is today. It is exceedingly difficult to understand, let alone what causes these changes. Second, the sun is the single greatest cause of fluctuations in the heat of the earth. Very small changes in solar output have a profound effect upon temperatures. The sun is the single greatest agent in climate change, not CO2, he maintains.

As he wrote in a recent newspaper article:

In the past, climate change has never been driven by CO2. Why should it be now driven by CO2 when the atmospheric CO2 content is low? The main greenhouse gas has always been water vapour. Once there is natural global warming, then CO2 in the atmosphere increases. CO2 is plant food, it is not a pollutant and it is misleading non-scientific spin to talk of carbon pollution. If we had carbon pollution, the skies would be black with fine particles of carbon. We couldn’t see or breathe.

What about criticism from colleagues? Plimer isn’t worried. “You can count the number of scientists who are critical of me on a sawmiller’s hand,” he told me, and nearly all geologists will agree with him. I sensed a certain professional scorn for anaemic nerds who massage computer models of climate under fluorescent lights instead of getting sweaty and sunburned fossicking for strange rocks.

14 05 2009
Adolfo Giurfa

Runner up to “Best Quote of the week”:

I sensed a certain professional scorn for anaemic nerds who massage computer models of climate under fluorescent lights instead of getting sweaty and sunburned fossicking for strange rocks.
Ian Plimer

As quoted by Ed Scott (08:36:18) :

14 05 2009
Steven Goddard

KBK,

Here is a good one for you – during the Ordovician, there was an ice age with CO2 levels 10X current values at 4,000 PPM
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/2005-08-18/dioxide_files/image002.gif

WUWT?

14 05 2009
nix

Plimer makes two simple and challenging points. First, climate is always changing. In the past, the earth has been both much colder and much warmer than it is today. It is exceedingly difficult to understand, let alone what causes these changes. Second, the sun is the single greatest cause of fluctuations in the heat of the earth. Very small changes in solar output have a profound effect upon temperatures. The sun is the single greatest agent in climate change, not CO2, he maintains.
Web Hosting

14 05 2009
Pearland Aggie

OT, but I guess that large plage area finally managed to develop a few sunspecks…and it’s a stretch to call them specks! LOL

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/1024/latest.html

14 05 2009
Garrett

Anthony, it’s off-topic (well, kinda) but the NSIDC might be having technical difficulties again according to them huge chunks of ice are dissipating and their graph and taken quite an increasingly steep and swift downturn….I smells data-altering…..but that could just be me and my inner conspiracy theorist. :)

14 05 2009
Antonio San

Frankly, there is very little surprising in these posts for someone who has read “Global Warming: Myth or Reality, the erring ways of climatology by Professor Marcel Leroux, Springer Praxis 2005″. Everything one needs to know to debunk the fake announcements, the fake warmist science and understand why certain melting occurs in some places and go way past the statistical meteorology PDO, El-Nino type is in this book: this is the best present one can offer anyone needing answers and insight into meteorology and climatology. It can virtually change your life.

14 05 2009
Antonio San

OT: Anthony is climateaudit down?

14 05 2009
Alan Chappell

Welcome back Flanagan,
on again, off again, flan agan, hope you enjoyed your trip to Planet X
missed your off-world comments

14 05 2009
Barry Foster

BBC are saying that Catlin Muppeteers “completed their epic trek across the Arctic”!!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8049403.stm

14 05 2009
Henry Galt

TonyB (04:36:16) :

“It is about time we were more proactive as a collective organisation of sceptics, instead of making our individual complaints within forums that agree with our own view point.

Can we develop the mechaniosm (without the right wing or BIg Oil connotations) whereby we despatch our own press releases- based on facts and science- and sent them to the thirty or so key media (many of the rest pick it up from these sources)

We are currently being marginalised by the media who believe what they are being told and rarely know the real facts.

Tonyb”

OK. Here is what we should all do. Every day.

Digg.com

Digg a post on WUWT. Maybe co-ordinated. (Maybe Anthony could put a link on each post to simplify this)

iComment.com

An empowering tool (for Firefox and IE) that allows you to comment on any webpage. Of course only other users of iComment can see those comments but the userbase is increasing daily (over 660,000 at last look).

Every day I put at least one on; The BBC, CNN, USA.gov, Sciencemag, Wikipedia etc.

It gives satisfaction and, surprise, surprise, the top 3 comments (half way down) the home page are sympathetic to our cause.

It is beyond time to get proactive.

14 05 2009
Flanagan

Bob: I actually found the picture somewhere else – sorry not to have mentioned your blog.

Garrett: it obviously is your inner conspiracy theory: all the indicatirs show a now very rapidly decreasing sea ice – for example the JAXA you can see on the right panel of this very site.

14 05 2009
Frank Lansner

OT

One of Russia biggest papers writes big article about “THE ILLUSION” of man made global warming.

ISVESTIA 27 april 2009
http://www.finiz.ru/economic/article1254881

A short translated resumé:
*************************
The Crisis ended the “Global Warming” financing

-Human contribution to the CO2 emissions is max 10%.
-The relationship of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, etc.) with the warming of the atmosphere is just a hypothesis, not proven. In general, what is so fiercely fought for by the progressive community, is proved to be an illusion.
-Is it implicated for material or political interests?

-One cannot argue that the planet has experienced warming.
-Russian geophysicist Oleg Sorohtin believes that in this case simply confused cause and effect between CO2 in atmosphere and warming.
-A cause of global warming is likely to be increase in solar activity – and this has happened before in the history of Earth’s glacial periods alternated with warming. So believes Member of RAS Andrei Kapitsa and many scientists in the world.

But even if you agree with advocates of the theory of the greenhouse, the role of humans is greatly exaggerated.

-Recently the French geologists have shown that the earlier estimates of the number of carbon dioxide, emitted during volcanic eruptions, it is to low. In fact, the greatest amount of this gas to the atmosphere due to the decomposition of carbonate rocks (Not directly from gasses), When warmed by lava.

-Almost at the same time, scientists from the University of Arizona have proven that we are wrong in estimates of CO2 from wildfires. It turns out these fires also emit into the atmosphere much more carbon dioxide than believed.

Andrei Kapitsa, Corresponding Member of Russian Academy of Sciences:
From analysing Antarctic ice cores it turned out that raise in carbon dioxide does not precede warming, but takes place after warming, which is quite understandable: 90% of carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans, and the process of removal of carbon dioxide from the water is endless. If you just warm the ocean half a degree Kelvin, it just throws a lot of carbon dioxide in the air. And in the case of cooling the oceans can easily absorb carbon dioxide.

-But when you think … Is it really bad to create this illusion? For economy, it is important to sell more and more new cars, while the old were no good anyway …

*************************

14 05 2009
George E. Smith

“”" Claude Harvey (04:56:22) :

The version of the Vostok Ice Core Temperature Record presented here clearly shows CO2 variations trailing the temperature variations, particularly on the upticks. Other versions of the chart, with its 450,000 year scale, do not consistently show this visual effect, with the explanation by skeptics being that the lag was only 800 years (ocean effect) which would not be apparent on such a scale. That leads me to suspect the chart presented here has been tampered with for dramatic effect. Explanation? “”"

Well Claude, the explanations I have seen say that the 800 year number is the time delay of the temperature curve that results in the highest crosscorrelation coefficient with the CO2 data; but that actual delays for individual events can be as much as 3500 years.
In looking at the curves as presented by climate genius AlGore in his “Inconvenient Truth ” book, pages 66/67, i have suggested that one should do two separate correlations, one for generally increasing data, and one for generally decreasing events, and I bleieve such processes would show that the delay for rising edges is less than 800 years, whilke that for falling edges is greater than 800 years; for best correlation. One can see visually, that the fall time of CO2 changes is very much slower than for the temperature falling edges, and is a lot slower that the CO2 rise times.

If ocean outgassing and uptake were a big factor, one can see that 100% of the ocean surface is in contact with the atmopshere, so outgassed CO2 goes immediately into the air; but the converse is not true, 100% of the atmosphere is not in contact with the oceans, so when the oceans start to uptake CO2 upon cooling, there is a propagation delay for a good bit of the atmosphere that is not directly in contact with the ocean; so the CO2 has to migrate to the ocean first, before it can dissolve. If CO2 residence times were 200 years as they claim (I don’t believe it) then the CO2 removal by the ocean could be a lot slower.
But I think there are a lot of processes going on besides ocean uptake.

In any case the CO2 delay varies widely about that 800 years.

George

14 05 2009
markinaustin

i prefer watching :

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm

but maybe just because it still has 2009 as the highest year?

14 05 2009
tallbloke

Thanks to Steven for this post, and to Peter Taylor for his expert analysis.

Global warming propaganda has clearly reached to point of critical mess.

14 05 2009
George E. Smith

“”" Rhys Jaggar (07:33:28) :

Interesting stuff.

I can’t remember: was 1958 at solar maximum or solar minimum?

Would this have any implications for your interpretation?

And now we have had, horror of horrors, two days of 74s in the key radition measurement during solar cycles, is the remainder of 2009 likely to shoot ahead or stay close to the 1958 curve?

Questions as I am ignorant and have no knowledge!!! “”"

Rhys, 1957/58 was specifically chosen for the IGY (International Geophysical Year) because they knew it was going to be a solar Maximum, and the previous several sunspot pekas had been steadily increasing.
Specifically the 1905/6 peak was about 60, 1917 was around 100; 1928 was about 75; 191938 was 110 ; 1947-48 was around 150, so people were interested in the 57/58 coming peak.

What they never predicted was that the 1957/58 sunspot peak would be around 190, and be the all time sunspot peak in recorded history.

then foloowed peaks about 100, 150, 150, and then whatever cycle 23 was.

So basically we came out of the 60-70s range since around 1875 through the 1928 peak at 75, followed by the climb upt to the 150 range that has persisted ever since the IGY; and not surprisingly encompassing the recent period of “global warming”.

The Dalton minimum of about 1795-1823 had peaks below the 50s.

My numbers are stolen fair and square from Dr Willie Soon’s wonderful book; “The Maunder Minimum, and the Variable Sun-Earth Connection” and Willie attributes the data to David Hathaway at NASA/MSFC; whatever that agency is.

George

14 05 2009
KBK

@ Steven Goddard (09:03:41) :

Yup, agree. Still, why is the current peak so much higher?

Perphaps there were similar spikes previously but they are too short to be seen in the record?

The Vostok record suggests strong positive feedback when entering and, especially, coming out of an ice age. In the depths of the ice age, things are cold, dry, and dusty. One possibllity I’ve seen mentioned is that the dust accumulates on the ice and triggers melting.

But what is the feedback mechanism causing the end of the interglacial? Could a CO2 spike trigger it somehow?

14 05 2009
Basil

Lance (01:18:56) :

I may be OT or not, but the google ad ( right before the comments) is selling the book “the god who wasn’t there” This could come across wrongly as an anti Christian sentiment that might be shared on this site.
I’ve seen this ad on other sites that have alterer “political” motives and pegged them as not creditable to a clean link.

I don’t think we all see the same links. It uses information it has about end users to tailor the adds that appear. So I’m guessing that you are seeing this add because of something specific about your browsing history, the contents of your email, if you have gmail, or some such. The adds you see may say more about you, than about this site.

14 05 2009
Manfred

“The Vostok record suggests strong positive feedback when entering and, especially, coming out of an ice age”

the vosotk record suggests strong positive feedbackbetween the ice age andcurrent temperatures. current stage and ice ages are long term stable, suggesting negative or feeback.

temperatures never flipped to a higher temperature state above the interglacials,suggesting there negative feedback even for higher temperatures than present.

14 05 2009
Smokey

Henry Galt (09:37:45),

Excellent suggestions, which I am going to follow starting today.

14 05 2009
Carl

This is a bad post. Instead of showing Arctic Temp or SST data (which we have stretching well back), we’re given two cherry-picked years and one surface station in Greenland. The fact is that the Arctic should be warming rapidly, regardless of the cause of the warming, as energy is transported from low to high latitudes.

14 05 2009
Steven Goddard

CO2 is high because of the burning of fossil fuels. The deficit is high because of the spending of the US Congress. Teen pregnancies are high because there are a lot of teens having sex. Manchester United is at the top of the tables, because they have a lot of AIG bailout money to spend on salaries.
http://news.softpedia.com/images/news2/Manchester-United-Mobile-Game-Announced-for-April-2.jpg

There are all kinds of numbers you could correlate against global temperature, which may or may not have a significant causal relationship.

14 05 2009
Retired Engineer

Perry Debell (07:28:15) :

“Expedition Leader Pen Hadow revealed that initial Survey results show the average ice thickness in the region to be 1.774m.”

Meaning that was the thinnest ice they could find to drill through? Why did so many photos show them climbing over ridges and things so much bigger then “1.774m.”? (and how in the snip do they get three decimal places with a fabric tape measure calibrated in inches or centimeters?)

The NP could well be ice free sometime in the next 5 years. Happened before. If we have any submarines left, one might surface and photograph it.

14 05 2009
storky

Perform an experiment. Fill a pot on a stove with water and ice cubes. Place a thermometer in that pot then turn up the heat.

Those of you who have performed this experiment as school children will remember that the temperature of water remained a steady 32°F (0°C) until all of the ice had melted.
The same is true of the arctic. Once the ice goes, the temperature will rocket upward.

14 05 2009
Ray

A good article in The Australian by Ian Plimer: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25429080-11949,00.html

14 05 2009
dot forward

I don’t truly believe any data on either side of the debate until there is a temperature monitoring system in place that I can trust. There needs to be a temperature monitoring grid setup equidistance of every 5 or 10 miles across the whole planet ( including the oceans ). They should take snapshots of the tempature at the same moment in time, say 3-4 times/day. Also, prefereably, they could be stacked upward into the atmosphere. I realize this is probably unfeasible at this point, but until something better is put into place I’m skeptical of everything.

14 05 2009
oms

George E. Smith (09:48:57) :

If ocean outgassing and uptake were a big factor, one can see that 100% of the ocean surface is in contact with the atmopshere, so outgassed CO2 goes immediately into the air; but the converse is not true, 100% of the atmosphere is not in contact with the oceans, so when the oceans start to uptake CO2 upon cooling, there is a propagation delay for a good bit of the atmosphere that is not directly in contact with the ocean; so the CO2 has to migrate to the ocean first, before it can dissolve.

You’re comparing apples to apple skins. The amount of the ocean volume in contact with the atmosphere over scales of a few years is certainly much less than 100%.

14 05 2009
Peter Plail

Almost unelievable – or are the BBC reacting to yesterday’s complaints?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/climatechange/2009/05/catlin_arctic_survey_success.html

A questioning of the “science conducted by the Catlin team.

Excerpts:

are we learning anything

‘reporting bias’ due to the fact that the team’s journey over the ice was dictated by what it was possible to cross

Going to the Pole this time of the year is a bit stupid and you put a lot of people’s lives at risk.’

and finally

this year the sea ice ‘decline rate for the month of April was the third slowest on record’.

14 05 2009
Brian in Alaska

Just a few minutes ago I chatted with a co-worker who lives in Barrow, AK, as he has for his whole life. He was complaining that he didn’t get any fresh muktuk the last time he was home (less than a week ago), so I asked how the spring whaling season was going. He told me that the Barrow hunters haven’t really had a chance to hunt yet, because there’s no open water to speak of.

I asked him how late the season is this year due to the ice and he told me “a month.” He said that there’ll be an opening in the ice for a day, then it closes back up for a week. The man wants his muktuk.

14 05 2009
hunter

storky,
Tell your experiment to the IPCC, Hansen, Gore, the WWF, etc.
They are the ones who think the temps are skyrocketing now.

14 05 2009
S.E.Hendriksen

@Lubos Motl (01:00:57) :

It’s NOT observed temperatures, but calculated by modelling (see note on the left side of the DMI site.)
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

The most interesting periode is from day 100 – 250, the melting season. When the temperature goes below the green average line, heat are sucked out of the atmosphere (due melting) the temp is above the average line it indicate freesing (due freezing and heat-enery released to the atmosphere).

See the high-summer (above 273.15 K) most of the time the temperature is below avarage (due max. melting)

The trend seems to be the same since 1958 with small fluctuations

14 05 2009
Peter Plail

But on the main BBC news tonight more taditional BBC coverage of Catlin team’s abandonment of their expedition. No coverage on their web site yet, but from memory they claimed they were measuring, not the thickness of the ice, but the decline in thickness (a special tool required to measure the decline in one visit?).

Hadow also surprised at the lack of snow (mostly they had to fix their tents with ice anchors because of lack of snow). Does this have any significance?

14 05 2009
Mike Bryant

Brian in Alaska,
Here’s the Barrow webcam:

http://www.gi.alaska.edu/snowice/sea-lake-ice/barrow_webcam.html

14 05 2009
Dave

In my country, the newspaper posted an article about the Catlin on their website…
They say the ice is going to melt very early this summer, and that they hear cracks in the ice, so they can’t go further because of too dangereous.

It’s really sad, because they don’t speak about all the misery and the failure (in my eyes) of this expedition.

But yeah, that’s media for sure :P

14 05 2009
Tatil

Very cool statistic

14 05 2009
M White

“Alaska’s Hubbard Glacier is advancing at the rate of seven feet per day”

http://www.cdapress.com/articles/2009/05/11/columns/columns06.prt

From http://icecap.us/

“The Corp is involved because ‘when’ and ‘if’ the Hubbard Glacier eventually closes the Russell Fjord, the fjord will fill with fresh water, becoming a 30-mile-long lake creating a new 40,000-cubic-feet-per-second river system. This will have an extremely ‘negative’ economic impact on Yakutat and the surrounding regions. It’s possible that at the shocking rate of seven feet per day in its advancement, the Hubbard Glacier could close the fjord by later this summer, or even prior to that time, if the current rate of advancement speeds up, say to perhaps 10 or 12 feet per day.”

Interesting

14 05 2009
Ray

Brian in Alaska… Muktuk has been found to be a good source of vitamin C containing up to 38 mg/100g. Who need oranges with that sort of concentration in vitamin C?

14 05 2009
Steven Goddard

Peter,

Thanks for the link – looks like someone at the BBC is reading WUWT.

14 05 2009
Ray

Brian in Alaska… do they say there: “a muktuk a day keeps the doctor away?

14 05 2009
TonyB

Henry Galt 09 37 45

Thanks for your great reply to my (04:36:16) when I wrote:

“It is about time we were more proactive as a collective organisation of sceptics, instead of making our individual complaints within forums that agree with our own view point.

Can we develop the mechanism (without the right wing or BIg Oil connotations) whereby we despatch our own press releases- based on facts and science- and send them to the thirty or so key media (many of the rest pick it up from these sources)

We are currently being marginalised by the media who believe what they are being told and rarely know the real facts. ”

Obviously some people -such as Henry and Smokey-agree with my sentiments, but despite the great efforts of this blog our message is not being widely, consistently and frequently heard in the media.

I know Christopher Booker of the UK Daily Telegraph sometimes drops by, but for every journalist like him there are a hundred media that just believe what they are being told in press releases. I have posted a link to the numerous reports in the UK today about the huge Catlin survey ’success’. We need to counter this sort of thing.

Comments from other people would be welcomed. As Henry says;

“It is beyond time to get proactive”.

Tonyb

14 05 2009
Ray

“Alaska’s Hubbard Glacier is advancing at the rate of seven feet per day!” http://www.cdapress.com/articles/2009/05/11/columns/columns06.prt

According to my doomsday model, which uses the same sort of linear extrapolation based on only a few years of observations showing a positive slope, Hubbard Glacier might run into Hawaii in about 2 million years. Maybe we should start moving them away right now…

14 05 2009
3x2

Flanagan (00:52:50) :
Arctic in 2008 had an anomaly which was almost 1 centigrade higher than in the rest of the world.

OK, Elves (Santa type) make Arctic warming (everyone knows that because at Elf school we all learned that -50°C with a 1°C anomaly comes to … -49°C), the Catlin expedition was science, the Arctic will be gone in five years and we will all surely die of “global warming” if we don’t build an Ark.

Oh yea, I remember… positive feedbacks only apply to future man made warming not to past or even present warming. Now where did I leave that Mid Tropospheric Warming Anomaly? Oh.. there it is right next to Big Al’s Vostok Ice Core graph being dried out by the hidden heat being radiated from The Hansen Deep Ocean …

Unicorns will once again gallop on fields of Green … hopefully not breaking their necks while tripping over that grade one North American surface monitoring network that clearly illustrates 0.6/Century warming (+/- 0.001C) ..
.
Data for sale … get your data …. models… I’m giving them away … Mannomatics.. black is white … Government Grant futures .. your children will live in paradise at these prices … Carbon Tax .. Carbon Tax… Get your Carbon Tax refund … closing down sale .. everything has to go …

14 05 2009
NoAstronomer

George E. Smith:

My numbers are stolen fair and square from Dr Willie Soon’s wonderful book; “The Maunder Minimum, and the Variable Sun-Earth Connection”

Always good to see someone cite their sources!

14 05 2009
Greg

A little off topic but I sitting in Munich right now and of course have limited US media options. On the BBC tonight it broadcast (orgy) live the pick up of the nuts (my opinion only) of the Catlin group attempting to reach the North Pole and along the way doing “important” data gathering. Per the broadcast quote “all artic ice will be gone in 20-30 years” which will break Al’s heart and there was “no snow”. Of course it mentioned the frost bite and rationing of food due to poor weather condition. (How would have thought this time of year?”) Of course they were surprised at how thin the ice was (ironically from reading this site the ice expanse is larger and thicker than originally thought. The BBC broadcast “we had to carrry extra gas to pick the explorers up due to large cracks in the ice which forced the explorers to abandon their quest” and “that should answer a question at the roof of the world – how long the ice has left”.

14 05 2009
John S.

The basic unsolved question is through what mechanisms does the Earth flip in and out of ice ages. This question will never be convincingly answered by would-be climate scientists who harbor misguided, unquantified notions of “feedback.”

Feedback in any scientific/analytic sense (i.e., the return of the system output signal for algebraic addition to the input) is even more difficult to find in the climate system than muktuk in Barrow last April. This abuse of this concept in “climate science” is staggering. Climate operates as a feed-through system, with SW insolation as input and planetary LW radiation as output. There simply are no operational amplifiers in the system to effect any increase in power as is implied by “positive feedback,” or any diminution of the input–”negative feedback.” There’s only spatial and temporal redistribution of the thermal energy produced by insolation. All else is an empty conceit.

14 05 2009
Ron de Haan

Jeff Id (23:22:53) :

This is interesting, I suppose after spending so much time looking at the Antarctic, this is the next logical step. The lack of warming is a surprise, the fourth figure from the top is interesting too because of it’s length.

The link http://data.giss.nasa.gov/work/gistemp/STATIONS//tmp.431042500000.1.1/station.gif
Isn’t working for me.

I’ve completed a summary of the Antarctic reconstructions for those who are interested.

http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/antarcti-summary-part-1-a-trend-of-trends/

Between a group of us, we’ve completed nearly a hundred different reconstructions using Steig’s methods with modifications. Guess which has the highest warming trend?”

Jeff,
Great job, well done.

14 05 2009
Steve Goddard

The same is true of the arctic. Once the ice goes, the temperature will rocket upward.

Very thoughtful quote. The Catlin crew were early victims of some of those “rocketing” -50C temperatures.

14 05 2009
Ron de Haan

hunter (11:00:12) :

“storky,
Tell your experiment to the IPCC, Hansen, Gore, the WWF, etc.
They are the ones who think the temps are skyrocketing now”.

hunter,
A small correction please: They want to make us believe the temps are skyrocketing now. Non of them believe their own bogus.

14 05 2009
Ray

Storky, ol’body. You decided to join the sensible minds at WUWT? For those of you that don’t know storky, he is a faith follower and defender of RealClimate.Org.

You might have had a point with your little experiment if the temperature at the maximum of the plot (i.e. above melt) was higherthan the average and increasing year after year. But it is not the case, so I guess it is not over heating like your climate appologists want you to beleive.

14 05 2009
bill

Peter Plail (10:49:42) :
Almost unelievable – or are the BBC reacting to yesterday’s complaints?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/climatechange/2009/05/catlin_arctic_survey_success.html
Going to the Pole this time of the year is a bit stupid and you put a lot of people’s lives at risk.’

Hmmm That comment refers to hadows 2003 expedition (follow the link in the blog). The worrding in the blog leaves a lot to be desired on this point and clearly implies the catlin expedition was at the receiving end of that comment.

14 05 2009
storky

Ray old P.A.L.,

Faith follower? RealClimate?

Limit your discussion to things you do know . . . oh, never mind . . . you’d be left with nothing to talk about.

When we discuss GLOBAL temperature rise, that refers to the aggregate of tens-of-thousands of readings from around the globe. One can find individual locations that buck the warming trend, but because the aggregate is rising, wherever those exist, somewhere else much higher temperature compensates significantly for the renegade value.

14 05 2009
3x2

Steven Goddard (10:21:05) :

CO2 is high because of the burning of fossil fuels. The deficit is high because of the spending of the US Congress. Teen pregnancies are high because there are a lot of teens having sex. Manchester United is at the top of the tables (…)

Now, Mr Goddard, I was with you right to the point where you blame Manchester United for MMGW. My model demonstrates quite clearly that Champions League victories over Italian and Spanish teams in finals cause warming and not MU success per se. My model does however project that negative Arctic ice extent is clearly due to anything involving Liverpool.

14 05 2009
Brian in Alaska

Mike Bryant (11:04:01)
I’d say that webcam pretty much confirms what the muktuk lover said. Thanks for the link.

Ray (11:34:52)
I don’t care if muktuk is high in vitamin C and Bombay Sapphire, I ain’t eating it.

14 05 2009
Ron de Haan

As many articles and publications like this debunk warmist semi science based propaganda.

Hans Schreuder once again takes a frontal attack on the Greenhouse concept and the role of water vapor and CO2.
Here you can download his latest report from May 13th, stating that the sun heats the land and our oceans and the land and the oceans heat our atmosphere, not the other way around as a PDF.
http://ilovecarbondioxide.com/2009/05/sun-heats-earth-earth-heats-atmosphere.html

14 05 2009
3x2

Storky : Place a thermometer in that pot then turn up the heat.

In atmospheric terms the “heat” would have to be turned up quite a lot to turn -50 into 0+. Perhaps what we are looking for here involves pouring
“hot” liquid onto the ice (or at least under it). There was a very nice Arctic video posted here some weeks ago. I can’t find it ATM but I’m sure someone will be along with the link soon.

14 05 2009
storky

2X3,

“Perhaps what we are looking for here involves pouring ‘hot’ liquid onto the ice (or at least under it).”

As you noted, it’s not atmospheric heat, but warm oceanic currents that are working their way through the ice caps.

14 05 2009
John W.

Ray (11:50:30) :

According to my doomsday model, which uses the same sort of linear extrapolation based on only a few years of observations showing a positive slope, Hubbard Glacier might run into Hawaii in about 2 million years. Maybe we should start moving them away right now…

Ray, I’m really disappointed in you. You clearly haven’t accounted for the positive feedback of holes in the ozone layer resulting in increased UV, which in turn causes the ice to increase due to inverse thermodynamics. Nor have you accounted for the forcing due to reduced albedo. Now, go start running your model, adjusting parameters and data until you can demonstrate that we may, possibly, potentially be facing a Snowball Earth by 2100, with a tipping point in 5 years.

;^)

14 05 2009
Steven Goddard

3×2,

So how come global temperatures have been going down since Beckham left?

14 05 2009
Mike Borgelt

John S. (12:26:21)

Thank you for putting that so well. That about sums up the conclusion we came to while discussing the whole climate business with a colleague yesterday.

14 05 2009
Mick

Ref. Tony B and Lucy Skywalker

I’ve been visiting this blog for just under a year and during this time there has been posted, much information from many knowledgeable people in the science arena, clearly and explicitly disproving AGW. Surely with all this accumulated science it is time to ‘get the message out’ to a public who are being mislead into supporting actions that are not necessary and caused to worry about things that are plainly untrue.
This blog is a focus for the promotion of good science gathering but all I see ‘outside’ this place is blinkered science falsehoods being institutionally enforced by governments and the mass media of tv and newspapers with a few lone ‘deniers’ being treated as isolated extremists.
Is it time to publicly attempt to counteract this debarkle?
Some suggestions…donations from people here into a central advertising fund to promote printed posters in places such as newspapers local and national (cost!), public buildings such as libraries and work places. Downloadable window graphics. Tee-shirt promo’s. Online signed petitions promoted and sent to appropriate media organisations. Concise, counteracting, easy-to-understand documentation to give out to our own personal contacts. I promote this blog to all people I come in contact with. This is a good but slow process.
I’m sure there are others here who can come up with good promo ideas that we could all support and be involved with.
Surely, if we know or believe AGW is bad science or even a hoax and people are being tricked, en masse, we should be doing something about it now!

14 05 2009
Ray

John W. (14:21:39) :

Oh, Sorry John W., I forgot to include my error bars. So, let’s say 2 million years plus-or-minus 800 million years… just to make sure I can claim that my model includes past, present and future climate events.

14 05 2009
Ray

Speaking of Snowball earth, if the majority of the water was frozen and that the planet was at about (some claim) -40 C, and at the temperature we can basically say that water vapour was a trace element in the atmosphere, how much CO2 would it takes to rise the temperature above 0 C, in order to trigger the Big Melt (according to their theory)?

14 05 2009
Ray

I found this little gem of article from Dr. Hathaway http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast22jul99_1.htm

Were they more humble by the science at that time? What has changed? Here are few nice quotes:

14 05 2009
Tom

Steven,

whenever you show the Vostok ice core data for CO2 and temperature, it is very instructive to also show the changing insolation pattern. This just makes it clear the bulk of the change from glacial to interglacial is driven by insolation, not by CO2.

Best Regards,
Tom
ClimateSanity

14 05 2009
Ray

Sorry… here are the quotes:

“Although sunspots are cooler areas on the solar surface, the Sun is actually hotter when sunspots appear and cooler when they are absent. Scientists believe that a long period of solar inactivity may correspond with colder temperatures on Earth. From 1645 to 1715, astronomers observed very little solar activity. This time period coincides with an era known as the Little Ice Age, when rivers and lakes throughout Europe (and perhaps the world) froze.”

and

“We don’t understand well enough why the sun does this to be able to predict like a meteorologist does.”

14 05 2009
John F. Hultquist

storky (10:27:59) Flanagan (09:41:49) : and a few others

Will one of you folks that seem so distraught about the possibility of the Arctic Ocean having iceless patches or even ice free weeks explain what all the fuss is about? It is not like this hasn’t happened before. Then Earth did not tip into whatever you folks seem sure it will do this time.

Ice also acts as an insulator and open water will transfer energy to the atmosphere. I don’t know the numbers for this but hope you can provide estimates to global warming/cooling if there are variations in ice cover, say for zero ice, 15%, 33%, 50%, 75%, and 100%. I expect the % cover to vary by month but if you use a spreadsheet and post it for all of us to see as suggested by bill_tb:
“I note Steve is now doing everything in the open, I would encourage others to follow his lead. Software, methods, results, conclusions — make it all open.” (04:56:16)

14 05 2009
Robin Flockton

I would be happy to help Lucy Skywalker with “Dummies Guide to (Climate) Science”. I am retired, have time and share her frustrations.

14 05 2009
George E. Smith

“”" Ray (15:13:12) :

Speaking of Snowball earth, if the majority of the water was frozen and that the planet was at about (some claim) -40 C, and at the temperature we can basically say that water vapour was a trace element in the atmosphere, how much CO2 would it takes to rise the temperature above 0 C, in order to trigger the Big Melt (according to their theory)? “”"

Well that is an interesting mental exercise Ray; and one that I have often posed. Given that water vapor also absorbs a considerable amount of incoming solar energy starting around 750 nm, comprising about 20% of the total solar radiation, without water vapor you would have a huge radiative “forcing” (hate that word) due to extra ground level insolation about which CO2 can do nothing; so an atmosphere without water vapor; would give a whole lot more warming than CO2 ever could; and that warming would produce evaporation and eventually water vapor in the atmsopehre; even if there was not a jot of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Eventually youe would get clouds and precipitation which would lower the insolation and stop runaway heating, so a atable temperature would be reached.

It is also interesting to contemplate the opposite where the earth temperature rises to say 99 deg C, so you would have so much water vapor in the atmosphere you would have cloud cover all over the earth from the ground on up. Of course under those conditions, there would be no solar insolation reaching the surface, and with the high albedo, there isn’t enough incoming to maintain that temperature, so the ground must cool, which will start precipitation; it will rain and snow for 40 days and 40 nights, and pretty soon you would get breaks in the clouds, and sunlight could start to reach the ground and stop the whole place from freezing, and eventually a new stable temperature would be reached with a certain amount of cloud cover and water vapor.

So starting from either end of the temperature range; the earth would eventually reach a stable condition.

The big question is are those two stable conditions different or are they the same stable state. If they are two stable states, a hot state, and a cold state,t he region between them would be one of positive feedback instability, and if the eqaarth were in between, it would be driven by feedback to one or the other states.
Well actually you ould have multiple stable states instead of just two, and they would be separated by regions of positive and negative feedback, and the climate would gravitate to one or other of the nearest stable states.

So are we in the cold state now, so that “global warming could trigger us to transition to the hot state; or are we already in the hot state, and a little cooling could push us over the hump to a colder climate regime.

I’m not aware of any Physics which can explain multiple stable temperature states in our atmosphere; I believe the hot state and the cold state are one and the same; and there is no tripping point that can flip us to a Venus condition (given we have pretty much the present orbital parameters and solar constant). Of course major orbital or solar changes can change the conditions to something more drastic; but I believe we currently are in a stable feedback controlled temperature regime that is maintained by water vapor/cloud cover and the oceans.

So long as those things persist, we couldn’t change this planet’s temperature significantly even if we wanted to; and if we wanted to; where would you set the thermostat.

Things like CO2, aerosols, Volcanoes, cosmic rays, whatever, can produce minot perturbations of our climate; remember we already cover the gamut from -90C to +60 C thereabouts and all at the same time; so I don’t think a little temperature change is going to hurt anybody.

Predictions of ocean rise when the west Antarctic ice sheet all slides into the southern ocean one night; always seem to assume that evaporation and precipitation patterns won’t change one iota, and all that extra water will just pile up around the United States. The thought that you could get massive precipitation of ice and snow in other places just never seems to make it into the playstation models.

George

14 05 2009
VG

Interesting… NSIDC ice now showing a trend versus 2007
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
(not parallel)
that is different to DMI
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
(parallel). Maybe my eyes are deciving me or
maybe different satellites/measurements etc.

14 05 2009
George E. Smith

“”" oms (10:49:40) :

George E. Smith (09:48:57) :

If ocean outgassing and uptake were a big factor, one can see that 100% of the ocean surface is in contact with the atmopshere, so outgassed CO2 goes immediately into the air; but the converse is not true, 100% of the atmosphere is not in contact with the oceans, so when the oceans start to uptake CO2 upon cooling, there is a propagation delay for a good bit of the atmosphere that is not directly in contact with the ocean; so the CO2 has to migrate to the ocean first, before it can dissolve.

You’re comparing apples to apple skins. The amount of the ocean volume in contact with the atmosphere over scales of a few years is certainly much less than 100%. “”"

I do believe I said surface. I see land and water and atmosphere; and we were talking about CO2 exchange between the water and the atmosphere.

So we have water in contact with land over some mutual surface; water in contact with atmosphere over some mutual surface, and atmosphere in contact with land over some mutual surface.
Presumably CO2 exchanges occur across each of those three interfaces. The exchange between the oceans and the land across their common interface is not known to produce any greenhouse effect.
The CO2 exiting the ocean through the common surface with the atmosphere, all goes into the atmosphere. However CO2 in the atmosphere is exchanged between both the ocean and the land; so not all the excess CO2 in the atmosphere retuyrns to the oceans when conditions change, because the land also reacts with it; and CO2 over the land can’t dissolve in the oceans until it reaches their common interface.

In any case a lot of the CO2 in the oceans is sequestered there because of biological processes, and never returns to the atmosphere at least in the standard 30 year time base of climate studies. The CO2 exchanged between the oceans and the atmospheremust be near the ocean surface; because the higher solubility of CO2 in deeper colder waters creates a driving force feeding CO2 from the surface to deeper waters thus depleting the surface CO2 (to be replaced from the atmosphere).. So long as the ocean retains its vertical temperature gradient; it will rob CO2 from warmer surface waters; even without any biological uptake.

14 05 2009
Indiana Bones

Science Journal now says the ANTArctic ice sheets will NOT melt as catastrophically as they hoped…er, thought. Lead author of West Antarctic study now claims melting will not cause sea level rise as predicted. And this from the BBC no less! In (fact) the sea level rise will only be half what the study claimed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8050094.stm

More repositioning for the end of AGW at the mightiest of once-scientific levels.

14 05 2009
Steven Hill

I bet Pelosi will be stating that the Science Journal and Bush missled her on these facts. Tomorrow at noon, Antarctic Ice not melting as thought, Bush is to blame.

14 05 2009
KBK

@ John S. (12:26:21)

“Feedback in any scientific/analytic sense (i.e., the return of the system output signal for algebraic addition to the input) is even more difficult to find in the climate system than muktuk….”

Perhaps you are correct about feedback. My intuition says you aren’t.

I’m thinking about non-electronic examples of natural systems wherein small energy input changes result in large output changes and where some of the output can be applied in phase to the input. The system would need a third input – raw energy, of course – that would be the sun.

I haven’t come up with anything convincing yet, but I’ll wager there are a number of people here who can. Snowball earth is a possibility – as the oceans freeze, the earth’s albedo increases, accelerating the effect until we get the stable snowball. I’m not sure that qualifies as ‘feedback’, though.

Maybe ‘tipping point’ is a more useful concept for glacial cycles. Consider a semi-trailer a third full of gravel balanced on a central pivot. The location of the gravel corresponds to temperature. The changes are abrupt. What is driving the see-saw?

14 05 2009
ineverthoughtofthat

Global Warming is a fraud to push legislation for cap and trade policies which translate into very high taxes. They have convinced people the globe actually is warming.

14 05 2009
oms

George E. Smith (18:04:15) :

In any case a lot of the CO2 in the oceans is sequestered there because of biological processes, and never returns to the atmosphere at least in the standard 30 year time base of climate studies.

Presumably processes which occur over LONGER timescales than 30 years are the ones that show up in 30 year moving averages.

The CO2 exchanged between the oceans and the atmospheremust be near the ocean surface; because the higher solubility of CO2 in deeper colder waters creates a driving force feeding CO2 from the surface to deeper waters thus depleting the surface CO2 (to be replaced from the atmosphere).. So long as the ocean retains its vertical temperature gradient; it will rob CO2 from warmer surface waters; even without any biological uptake.

I think it would be safe to say that CO2 concentration equalizes more easily in the atmosphere than in the ocean.

Molecular diffusion processes in the ocean are much slower (for almost any tracer) than turbulent mixing and circulation (one of your own subjects of interest).

14 05 2009
Just Want Truth...

” MattN (03:08:27) : “..Gavin doesn’t police for decorum. – Anthony” ”

I didn’t know that. A lot of people didn’t know that since not many visit there.

14 05 2009
Just Want Truth...

” Steven Goddard (11:36:25) :..looks like someone at the BBC is reading WUWT. ”

They can handle the truth?

14 05 2009
Just Want Truth...

2009 showing divergence (in this data set) from 2008. Alarmists must be feeling uncomfortable about their Arctic ice predictions.

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php

14 05 2009
Mike Bryant

VG,
The NSIDC does show 2009 converging on 2007 as of May 13:

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/daily.html

While JAXA shows the two years parallel:

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm

Has NSIDC now become an out and out outlier?

14 05 2009
Just Want Truth...

” Mike Bryant (20:39:06) : While JAXA shows the two years parallel:”

JAXA shows divergence. Look again :

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm

14 05 2009
Just Want Truth...

Have a look at NSIDC data for the Southern Hemisphere!

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images//daily_images/S_timeseries.png

(I know this is an OT from Northern Hemisphere ice, sorry, but it is interesting!)

14 05 2009
Just Want Truth...

“(I know this is an OT from Northern Hemisphere ice…”

Opps, should have said Arctic temperature

15 05 2009
M White

“It is also interesting to contemplate the opposite where the earth temperature rises to say 99 deg C, so you would have so much water vapor in the atmosphere you would have cloud cover all over the earth from the ground on up”

99 deg C, a very hot sauna. You don’t get clouds at that temperature just water vapour, a colourless odourless gas.

15 05 2009
Paul

Couldn’t find anywhere sensible to post this, so this seems as relevant as anywhere.

Your favourite Keystone Cops of the Arctic Circle, the Catlin Crew, have obtained some good publicity for their crusade, I mean research expedition.

Apparently the ice is thinner than expected. Go figure. What Pen Hadow doesn’t say is how thin he expected it to be so his statements remain a little ambiguous.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthpicturegalleries/5323888/The-Catlin-Arctic-Survey-led-by-Pen-Hadow-finds-the-polar-ice-cap-is-thinner.html

15 05 2009
15 05 2009
Steve (Paris)

Western Antarctic was ice-free during interglacials – Geological data signal dynamic developments of the ice shield three to five million years ago

http://www.awi.de/en/news/press_releases/detail/item/andrill/?cHash=0296c43087

But its never been hotter than now, ever…

15 05 2009
storky

Steven Goddard (14:26:58) :

“So how come global temperatures have been going down since Beckham left?”

Where is the data indicating a decrease in global temperatures and if this is a trend, how many years has this trend continued?

15 05 2009
Smokey

storky: click

15 05 2009
lwtc247

I wanted CO2 to be the cause of supposed global warming so that some restrictions would be put on the rather nasty global enslav.. errm corporations. I used to imagine those restrictions would involve a package of measures to do something about the terrible pollution then pump out.

But the arguements first, against CO2 and then Global warming just kept winning the day, so I leant that way.
Secondly, the output of the Sun is incredible. Any alterations in it are by intuition alone, going to have a major effect on the worlds climate. Just how I don’t think is flly known yet. But the Sun is far more likely to influence climate than a piddly 33% increase in CO2. The other aspects of industrialisation and capitalism produce far more serious effects such as radioactve waste and GM food etc.
Lastly the restrictions on megacorp are NOT going gto happen either from CO2 ‘footprints’ or about pollution – its the little folk that will CONTINUE to pay.

I suspect a lot of people are stuck with the initial desire I had (stated in 1st paragraph).

Well done for this site. Let the science speak and the spin cease.

15 05 2009
Mr Lynn

TonyB (04:36:16) :
Steven Goddard
I live close to Pen Haddow in Devon. This is the headline story in todays Western Morning News. that covers our region
‘POLAR ICE CAP AT CRITICAL POINT’
http://www.thisiswesternmorningnews.co.uk/news/POLAR-ICE-CAP-CRITICAL-POINT/article-991466-detail/article.html
Despite mind numbing temperatures, the fact that ice melts in summer, that they mistakenly set off across first year ice, that they didnt make their objective because of severe weather, this is being portrayed as a huge success and proof that the ice could melt this summer. Sheer propaganda.
It is about time we were more proactive as a collective organisation of sceptics, instead of making our individual complaints within forums that agree with our own view point.
Can we develop the mechanism (without the right wing or BIg Oil connotations) whereby we despatch our own press releases- based on facts and science- and sent them to the thirty or so key media (many of the rest pick it up from these sources)
We are currently being marginalised by the media who believe what they are being told and rarely know the real facts.
Tonyb

All it takes to start is a few people with a fax machine and Internet access. Give the outfit an imposing name, e.g. “Scientists for Responsible Public Policy,” or “World Environmental Resource Group.” Then develop a contact list in the media (print, radio, TV, cable) and the blogosphere (including Drudge, Yahoo News, Brietbart, etc.).

Every time there is a climate-related news item, send out a press release with comments from Realist scientists. When sites like Icecap or WUWT post new developments, issue press releases trumpeting them as ‘Earth-shattering’, ’startling’, ‘revealing’, ‘casting doubt’. “Not Melting? Scientist Says Arctic Has Not Warmed Since 1958!”

None of this would take very much money, though it would require time. Ideally the group should have a professionally-designed website, which will cost something, and a Board of Directors (preferably names not known to the average reporter as ‘deniers’, i.e. not Fred Singer or Lord Monckton, but folks with impressive and unimpeachable credentials).

TonyB is right; it’s time to take the offensive.

/Mr Lynn

15 05 2009
Steven Goddard

storky,

Beckham’s departure from MU in 2003 correlates exactly with the recent period of global cooling. Proof positive that his presence in the Premiership was the primary cause of global warming.

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2003/plot/uah/from:2003/trend

15 05 2009
storky

Smokey:
I asked for evidence regarding “decrease in global temperatures”

That chart looks like this. The upward trend peaked in 2005, but a substantial downward trend has yet to be established.

The first three months of this year rank as the 9th, 8th and 10th warmest since 1880

15 05 2009
storky

Hey, Steven Goddard (07:58:55)

That graphing system is a great toy. I especially like the way linear means make the data look more impressive. And of course, if one cherry picks data like you did from the lower troposphere, instead of land and sea combined, one can make some assertions than mean relatively little.

Here’s a chart I built:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1959/plot/gistemp/from:1959/trend

15 05 2009
John S.

KBK (19:18:39):

As you seem to recognize, the crux is that an independent power source is necessary to effect true feedback. There simply are no power sources or power-multiplying mechanisms naturally available on Earth. That is not to say that its dynamic response to insolation is neatly predictable. It is chaotic. And, of course, with the workings of the hydrological cycle and the biosphere, the Earth is an time-varying, adaptive system. There indeed may be dynamic “attractors” that tip the response toward one mode or another. Nevertheless, everything derives its power from the Sun. My entire objection is to the misapplication of the concepts (and formulae) of feedback systems in trying to explain the complexities of climate by speciously multiplying the available power.

15 05 2009
Smokey

Well, storky me boy, notice in the chart you provided @10:30:19 that for several years temps have been going down. Thanx for verifying that fact for everyone.

You can see what’s happening from several different points of view:

click1

click2

click3

click4

click5

Got lots more if you want ‘em.

15 05 2009
Indiana Bones

lwtc247 (04:53:12) :

“I wanted CO2 to be the cause of supposed global warming so that some restrictions would be put on the rather nasty global enslav.. errm corporations.”

Which goes to show that fabricated science cannot replace legislation. Real pollutants, particulates, CO, SO4, etc must be regulated. Where the AGWs went way wrong was to assume they could bamboozle the public (and honest science) into accepting that man-made CO2 would cause a climate catastrophe. That was hubris on a global scale.

We still need restrictions on the rather nasty global enslav..errm guv’mnet.

15 05 2009
Steve Goddard

storky,

You seem a bit confused. You asked about the downwards trend since 2003 (which I provided) then you decided you didn’t like that, so you pulled out the upwards adjusted Gistemp map since 1950.

We all know that Hansen wants us to believe the world is heating out of control. You don’t need graphs to demonstrate his belief system, and you shouldn’t keep changing the subject.

15 05 2009
KBK

@ John S. (10:52:37)

Consider a climate system whose output is temperature, and where the output is a function of input temperature but with multiple weighted time delays relative to the input. Some with short delays, e.g. cloud formation due to evaporation and some with very long delays, e.g. carbonate rock formed by organisms finally subducted, decomposed, and returned to the atmosphere via volcanic action.

Solar energy is the energy source for this system, but it’s not the input.

15 05 2009
geo

And in tangentially related events, it appears possible the “second year ice” phenom is starting to kick in abit from NSIDC and IJIS the last couple days. Still likely to be significantly less severe than “first year ice” falloff, but it is likely 2.5 more months before we can say that for sure.

I also happened to notice today that NSIDC’s main page is touting their April 4th booga-booga, but oddly enough the May 5 “slow start to melt season” article did not make the front page.

15 05 2009
Vincent

“The first three months of this year rank as the 9th, 8th and 10th warmest since 1880″
Erm . . 8th, 9th, 10th warmest? Sounds like a cooling to me.

15 05 2009
storky

Woops, I should clarify my statement of (10:30:19) : “The first three months of this year rank as the 9th, 8th and 10th warmest since 1880″

it should read:

The first three months of this year rank as the 7th warmest January, 9th warmest February and 8th warmest March since 1880.

15 05 2009
Steve Goddard

Anyway, why stop at 1959? 1790 was the warmest winter on record along the East Coast of the US.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/25/philadelphias-climate-in-the-early-days/

15 05 2009
Ray

Steve Goddard (12:02:44) :

To add to this, I’d say why do we stop at the 20th century? Why not 100, 200, 400 and 500 million years ago when it was on average 10 C hotter and thousands of ppm of CO2 in the atmsphere? Funny how, even with all that CO2 there were still ice ages periods. Moreover, even with rises in CO2, there were still cooling.

15 05 2009
Ray

I should have put a link for the graph: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1644060/posts

15 05 2009
storky

“storky, You seem a bit confused.”

Hardly.

“You asked about the downwards trend since 2003 (which I provided) then you decided you didn’t like that. . .”

“If you’re claiming that Lower Tropospheric satellite data is representative of “GLOBAL” temperatures, you’re full of crap”

“so you pulled out the upwards adjusted Gistemp map since 1950.”

. . . Since 1959, 50 years of data placed with a linear mean. I stated that “linear means make the data look more impressive” and demonstrated it by selected the full range of combined land and sea data available from that source which is more representative of global values.

We all know that Hansen wants us to believe the world is heating out of control. You don’t need graphs to demonstrate his belief system,

You’re funny! You cherry-pick data to make a point contrary to scientific consensus and accuse me of devotion to superstitious beliefs. So what is the theory for this “global cooling” and what is the forecast for the next 50 years. You can’t have a scientific theory without predicted outcomes! So what are they?

“. . . and you shouldn’t keep changing the subject.”

I get to pursue whatever tangent topics are presented by your replies. If you want me to stick to the topic, do so yourselves.

15 05 2009
Indiana Bones

“TonyB is right; it’s time to take the offensive.

/Mr Lynn”

Some impartial funding would help. From a non-aligned educational source would be best, e.g. Sloan Foundation. Other suggestions?

15 05 2009
storky

“Anyway, why stop at 1959? 1790 was the warmest winter on record along the East Coast of the US.”

Because statistical data analysis requires that data must be gathered using similar means.

In industrial statistical process control we have an adage: 3M – meaning Man, Machine, Method. Change any one of those in the production process and subsequent data can no longer be evaluated with that gathered previously – the previous data chart ends and a new one begins. No legacy data can be included or evaluated in combination with the new statistical analysis charts.

That is why modern weather data only goes back to 1879. That was when measuring instruments calibrated against global standards were first established for recording weather data.

That is also why little satellite weather data predates 1979. Though there have been several weather satellites launched earlier, 1979 was the year the first three GOES satellites became fully operational and data from one could be compared for accuracy against the other two.

15 05 2009
a jones

Yes 1790 was very warm in Philadelphia and in the early 1800’s the Arctic ice retreated dramatically suggesting the North West passage might open: but alas it all froze up again before the Royal Navy could explore it. Other demands on the service.

The trouble was the Artic ice is only open for some ten to fifteen years at a time for reasons unknown and back then it took a while, years, to appreciate from reports what was happening and organise an expedition: by which time it was too late. The ice had closed again.

Only in the 20th century between 1920 and 1940 was it possible to get more accurate reports of what was happening. This time round the reports are more detailed and quicker.

But we still don’t really know what is going on.

Kindest Regards

15 05 2009
Ray

storky (12:55:17) :

So basically what you are saying is to forget the climate events of all the past Earth history because we didn’t have instruments to measure the temperatures back then. Yet, you accept Mann’s Hockey stick graph derived from proxy data and questionable statistical manipulation? Un[self-snip]ably unbelievable!!!

15 05 2009
storky

“So basically what you are saying is to forget the climate events of all the past Earth history because we didn’t have instruments to measure the temperatures back then.”

No, Ray, that’s not what I’m saying. I must state, however, you’re quite adept at employing logical fallacies. That one being the non-sequitur.

Yet, you accept Mann’s Hockey stick graph derived from proxy data and questionable statistical manipulation?

Yep, especially when the error margin and confidence intervals reflect the aggregated data sources.

Meanwhile, the guys that told you the Mann-Bradley-Hughes’ “Hockey stick” graph was wrong, McIntyre and McKitrick, have had 3 out of 4 of their data reconstructions deemed statistically invalid.

Un[self-snip]ably unbelievable!!!

Belief has got nothing to do with it.

15 05 2009
storky

Whoops, again I forgot to include the point of my reply.

When gathering data using similar means the error margins are small and the confidence intervals are very high. When aggregating data using multiple methods, you pay a penalty in both the margin of error and confidence interval. As long as the trend demonstrably and significantly outperforms the margin of error, then the study is valid and useful.

15 05 2009
Steven Goddard

storky,

I’m guessing that the freezing point of water has changed since 1790, but I haven’t submitted that controversial idea for peer-review yet. The Delaware outside Philadelphia was frozen solid in January, 2009.

JANUARY 1790 The average or medium temperature of this month was 44 degrees This is the mildest month of January on record. Fogs prevailed very much in the morning but a hot sun soon dispersed them and the mercury often ran up to 70 in the shade at mid day. Boys were often seen swimming in the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. There were frequent showers as in April some of which were accompanied by thunder and lightning The uncommon mildness of the weather continued until the 7th of February.

15 05 2009
Ray

storky (14:49:47) :

Your little reference has been shown to be anything but independant and is plainly fraudulent.

I invite you to read the story behind this whole Ammann vs McIntyre. It does not pass the smell test…. and no, circular peer-reviewed papers don’t count.

http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html

15 05 2009
John S.

KBK (11:22:27):

Temperature is an intensive property of bodies, indicating their internal energy. So when you say that both system input and output is temperature, the question arises of what and where and maintained by what power source? Any rigorous approach to climate as a planetary system can only have the solar power source as input–rather than some unspecified temperature– and radiated power into space as output. Everything else, including all capacitance (storage) effects with their attendant delays is just internal internal redistribution of energy within the system. So, where’s the feedback?

Let’s not pursue this OT topic too far.

15 05 2009
Smokey

storky:

“Meanwhile, the guys that told you the Mann-Bradley-Hughes’ ‘Hockey stick’ graph was wrong, McIntyre and McKitrick, have had 3 out of 4 of their data reconstructions deemed statistically invalid.”

That link is [snip]. The claim that MBH is valid was written by none other than the odious Caspar Amman — hardly an unbiased source.

Amman comes across as a thoroughly disreputable person, as Ray makes clear in his link: click

Those who haven’t yet read Bishop Hill’s “Caspar and the Jesus Paper” are in for a treat. Storky should read it, too. Can’t hurt. Might help.

[And for those interested in another view: click]

15 05 2009
storky

[snip]

Reply: Try again. Be respectful or post elsewhere. Other posts may simply be deleted with no notice. ~ charles the moderator

15 05 2009
Smokey

Poor storky. He tires of “anti-AGW articles that fail to gather their own data, perform their own analysis…” etc.

Well, here is the Wegman Report To Congress, in which Prof. Wegman et al. provide plenty of data and perform their own analyses: click

Prof. Wegman shows conclusively that the climate peer review process is rigged. The deck is stacked. The fix is in. Don’t think so? Read the report.

Calling those who don’t share storky’s views “spoiled-sport cry-babies” shows how little confidence he has in his position.

15 05 2009
Mike Bryant

As the line graph of NH ice extent gets further from the 1979-2000 average,
The ice representation of NH extent increasingly fills the 1979-2000 median marked with the orange line.

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/daily.html

15 05 2009
storky

Moderator,

You stripped my entire post? There were clearly no curses, harsh or crass language. Others receive surgical snips of offensive words. What was so offensive that it merited the removal of my entire post?

Reply: Tone, and I didn’t feel like an editorial rewrite. I’m not going to get into a back and forth on this.~ charles the moderator

15 05 2009
storky

Prof. Wegman shows conclusively that the climate peer review process is rigged. The deck is stacked. The fix is in.

Now you’re reduced to conspiracy. I’d forgotten how effective a method that is in proving hypotheses.

16 05 2009
KBK

@ John S. (17:27:03)

“Temperature is an intensive property of bodies, indicating their internal energy. So when you say that both system input and output is temperature, the question arises of what and where and maintained by what power source?”

We have already agreed that the sun is the energy source. You can choose the temperature of the troposphere or the upper ocean, your choice.

“Any rigorous approach to climate as a planetary system can only have the solar power source as input–rather than some unspecified temperature– and radiated power into space as output. Everything else, including all capacitance (storage) effects with their attendant delays is just internal internal redistribution of energy within the system.”

So, by this point of view, the temperature of the troposphere is coming to equilibrium. Except it’s not.

“So, where’s the feedback?”

I gave you two examples. The system is non-linear because of the delays. The feedback is nearly 100%, but the system in the box is continuously evolving. Some oscillations of the output are repeated in time, some are not. The insolation changes somewhat with time, also. The unanswered question is whether change in insolation is the primary driver of long-term climate, or whether other effects, e.g. albedo changes due to outside causes, dominate.

16 05 2009
John S.

KBK (9:13:56)

Redistribution of energy within the system need not come to steady-state equilibrium and I never implied anything resembling the straw-man arguments you’re now putting up. Yes, small changes in one internal variable may lead to big changes in another (stores of energy may discharge), but energy is conserved in one form or another until it is eventually radiated into space. The fundamental issue is where the power is coming from to maintain energy levels in all operations and where it’s going. Power cannot be reused or amplified; it needs to be generated.

From statements such as “the system is non-linear, because of the delays” and the obscure “the feedback is nearly 100%” it’s evident that rigorous system analysis is not your field. After taking pains to explain some basics, I leave you to your own devices. Have a good weekend.

16 05 2009
Rob H

That does it. I’m reporting you to the Global Warming Police. The science is in. I don’t care if Florida ends up covered by an ice sheet, there is human caused global warming and you are going to jail for denying it.

16 05 2009
KBK

@ John S. (11:10:46)

“After taking pains to explain some basics, I leave you to your own devices. Have a good weekend.”

Thank you for your patience and courtesy.

17 05 2009
3x2

Steven Goddard (14:26:58) :

3×2,
So how come global temperatures have been going down since Beckham left?

Silly Moose, temperatures haven’t gone down it’s just that the heat has been in hiding. Temperatures will rise once more upon his return to the Temple.

17 05 2009
VG

This posted on CA 14th May….

May 14th, 2009 at 12:01 pm

“William Chapman replied to my email about the recent lack of updates at Cryosphere Today. Apparently a server upgrade broke their graphing software. They expect to have it fixed within the week. Then I’ll have to interpolate all the missing data. Groan.”
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
This happened before.. so it wasn’t the satellite after all……..I won’t say anything about what will happen now but you can guess. All records of changes are now been kept here for posterity..
http://mikelm.blogspot.com/2007/09/left-image-was-downloaded-from.html

3 07 2009
Mavi Yolculuk

Thanks to Steven for this post, and to Peter Taylor for his expert analysis.

Global warming propaganda has clearly reached to point of critical mess.

29 07 2009
Tony Surfleet

Last night (28/7/09) a BBC news programme posited that the glaciers on Greenland are melting with alarming rapidity and it was all a result of ‘Man-made Global Warming’. The interviewer on the programme asked local Inuit people what they thought about it. The response was portrayed as very positive as they can now grow salads and vegetables unheard of a few years ago. Is this a true representation of how things are? Where is the evidence that their new-found market garden skills are the result of something ‘manmade’? Of, course it might just have some teensy-weensy something to do with the Sun. As for ‘Global Warming’ in the UK….we have yet another typical ‘English’ summer. One or two warm days interspersed with many torrential downpours. The weather (apart from notable exceptions, ie 1976) continues in the same dreary way. Much the same as I remember as a kid, and I’m now 62. Where is this ‘global warming’ as far a Britain is concerned? Ah, now don’t tell me. Let me guess. They’re going to tell us that the UK is special in this regard. They’re going to tell us that the UK is Eden after all, when the rest of the planet has gone to buggery.

We were led to believe in the UK that we would have a ‘Barbecue summer’ this year. I type this as the rain pitter-patters against my window on 28/7/09. Just what computer models does the Meteorolical Office use? The same as those used to predict global temperatures 80 years hence? Enough said. It is time to inject some reality and more importantly inject some cash into double blind research about so-called ‘climate change. Call me a cynic, but as long as scientific research follows the money, we’re never going to get a true picture. I call for all governments to fund blindly, independent research which is not looking over its shoulder for finance for the next project to examine so-called ‘Man-made global warming’. It is worth doing. If such research results should show that it is our fault, then we have to do something. If such results would show that other factors come into play and that politics is a prime factor, then we have to do something.

In the UK weather forecasting is something closely associated with the ‘black arts’. It is not science, though some would wish it were. Weather computer models repeatedly fail to deliver true forecasts. It would be interesting and enlightening to know whether (excuse the pun) other countries’ forecasters are any more accurate. (A research project there for someone?).

Meanwhile, some people called climatologists claim to have a greater insight into the workings of much wider (global) weather patterns. How is this? Climatology, like weather forecasting, is at best a ‘black science’. People are making what they think are inspired guesses about the future of our planet based on flawed computer models. The truth is: nobody ‘knows’. I call again for double blind research. It’s the only likely way we are going to get any where near the truth in investigating ‘climate change’.

Tony Surfleet

31 07 2009
commonsense

The data , when carefully analysed, show instead a strong (but nonlinear) warming pattern:

1) In the first graph (1958 vs 2009) is evident that 2009 was hotter than 1958 : the 2009 graph is almost always over the median temperature line , the 1958 one instead fluctuates above and below that line.

2)In the second graph there is the result of JUST ONE STATION, NOT THE WHOLE ARCTIC. If you want compare temperatures, you MUST use the median of the whole arctic. If you had such a graphic, you will find:

a) Fast warming between 1890 and 1950
b) Fast cooling between 1950 and 1970 ( after the post-war economic boom, that liberated huge quantities of cooling sulfate aerosols)
c) Fast warming between 1970 and 1990 (after the sulfate emissions reductions in Europe to prevent smog and acid rain)
d) Explosive warming between 1990 and 2009 ( after the collapse of Soviet Agriculture System that lead to massive agricultural fires every spring to clear land , emmitting huge amounts of black carbon. Also , from 2005 began the “arctic amplification” feedback loop )

3) Finally, in the last graphic it is not shown the modern ( last 200 years , almost vertical) spike in CO2 concentrations, equal to the diference between glaciar and interglaciar periods. In the last 2 million years, C02 was never above 300 ppm. Now we are near 400 ppm.