Althouse: "Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released..."

October 14, 2012

"Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released..."

"[T]he ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years."

182 comments:

ndspinelli said...: "Don't look @ that man behind the curtain!"; 10/14/12, 2:45 PM
Expat(ish) said...: I have trouble believing that data as much I did the earlier.

-XC; 10/14/12, 2:48 PM
edutcher said...: Now there's an admission that's a day late and a dollar short.; 10/14/12, 2:49 PM
jr565 said...: You don't say!; 10/14/12, 2:55 PM
campy said...: Unexpectedly!; 10/14/12, 2:56 PM
Lyle said...: More climate confusion.; 10/14/12, 2:57 PM
Automatic_Wing said...: Not to worry, the climate boffins can just run a few "adjustments" on the raw temperature data and global warming will be back, bigger and badder than ever.; 10/14/12, 3:00 PM
jimspice said...: Well if the MAIL says it.; 10/14/12, 3:02 PM
Kev said...: (the other kev)

Damn! That Al Gore works miracles! He went back in time and stopped it in its tracks!; 10/14/12, 3:03 PM
MadisonMan said...: It bugs me that they report on an report released to the internet and then do not link to it. All the 'traditional' media outlets seem to do this.

Link, people! It's not that hard.; 10/14/12, 3:07 PM
Paddy O said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/14/12, 3:10 PM
Gabriel Hanna said...: The Met Office report does not say that global warming stopped sixteen years ago--that is the interpretation that the Daily Mail has chosen to put on it.

People who are interested in what the Met Office actually said are welcome to look here.

Notice already that commenters are coming away with "They've admitted global warming isn't happening". That is exactly the impression the Daily Mail carefully chose their words to create.; 10/14/12, 3:11 PM
sakredkow said...: The Mail Online. Another great place to get your information.; 10/14/12, 3:12 PM
TWM said...: How about "Global Warming Has Taken a 16 Year Break" as a heading?; 10/14/12, 3:18 PM
madAsHell said...: They obviously don't know the difference between climate and weather.; 10/14/12, 3:19 PM
YoungHegelian said...: @phx,

The Mail Online. Another great place to get your information

And where, exactly, should we get our information?

From data sets where the original, umassaged data sets are "lost"?

From computer models that have code that doesn't even compile much less link & run?

From scientists who, in their own words, conspired to silence those in the scientific community who disagreed with them?

In case you missed it, where one gets their information is at the center of the dissidents' complaints, and the problem goes way deeper than the Mail or the Globe or the Guardian.; 10/14/12, 3:22 PM
Richard said...: We did it!!! Good job everyone!; 10/14/12, 3:22 PM
MadisonMan said...: From computer models that have code that doesn't even compile much less link & run?

Why is it a problem if code does not link/run on a particular operating system? (I AM assuming the model does run somewhere).

I can see it is a problem if you're providing support for, say, hpux, and it runs on aix and solaris86 and windows. But it you don't need to support hpux, does it matter if it doesn't run on it?; 10/14/12, 3:25 PM
SteveR said...: Once American Politico shuts up we'll drop immediately into an ice age; 10/14/12, 3:26 PM
Anonymous said...: Gore: Earth on the Balance, ice age coming! Another Nobel for me. Dupes!; 10/14/12, 3:27 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: I agree with phx. Even if I was a climate skeptic, the Daily Mail would not be my go to source for scientific information.

There is little doubt that the world has gotten warmer over the last century. Reasonable people can disagree on why this is, but the basic phenomena is not really in dispute.; 10/14/12, 3:29 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: So all that polar ice just melted for the hell of it. It didn't even need to happen. Good to know!; 10/14/12, 3:30 PM
YoungHegelian said...: @Madison Man,

Why is it a problem if code does not link/run on a particular operating system? (I AM assuming the model does run somewhere).

Uhhhm, MadMan, since we are talking about climate scientists here who are not only computer literate, but also have IT staffers as part of their organizations to help them, we can assume that they're not so stupid as to be struggling with an OS mismatch.

And, since the AGW crowd is asking the world to take a huge hit in standard of living based on their work, it behooves them to release not only their data sets, but also their code with cross platform builds just like there are now tens of thousands of Open Source programs available online with with cross-platform builds.; 10/14/12, 3:33 PM
Unknown said...: Oh I get it now. Ice melts faster when it gets colder or the temperature stays the same. That explains it.

Of course we failed to note the term "aggregate" in referring to temperatures and leave out the resetting of the climate after the coincidental volcanic activity.

Please Ann, if you are pandering for page reads for your adsense account payoff, just don't waste time and toss some Obama is a socialist stuff up to bring in the braindead.; 10/14/12, 3:38 PM
SteveR said...: too bad for the pro AGW/pro Neo Luddites that your source of scientific credibility turned out to be frauds. Hide the decline. oohh The Mail is bogus. You guys didn't much care about good science when you liked the answer.; 10/14/12, 3:40 PM
Seeing Red said...: Hiding the decline?

PHX -there's a reason a lot of the climate stuff comes out in the British papers

East Anglia.

The BBC & the gov't whitewashed their bogus research.; 10/14/12, 3:41 PM
TmjUtah said...: RACISTS!; 10/14/12, 3:42 PM
Seeing Red said...: This came out of the Toronto Sun:

Green ‘drivel’ exposed
The godfather of global warming lowers the boom on climate change hysteria

...Having observed that global temperatures since the turn of the millennium have not gone up in the way computer-based climate models predicted, Lovelock acknowledged, “the problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago.” Now, Lovelock has given a follow-up interview to the UK’s Guardian newspaper in which he delivers more bombshells sure to anger the global green movement, which for years worshipped his Gaia theory and apocalyptic predictions that billions would die from man-made climate change by the end of this century.

Lovelock still believes anthropogenic global warming is occurring and that mankind must lower its greenhouse gas emissions, but says it’s now clear the doomsday predictions, including his own (and Al Gore’s) were incorrect.....; 10/14/12, 3:44 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Of course I'm going to take Lynn Meadows word before a peer reviewed scientific report.; 10/14/12, 3:45 PM
Seeing Red said...: Isn't Mann still fighting hard to to keep his work secret?

Another reason my kid won't apply to U of Penn.; 10/14/12, 3:47 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: When the data doesn't support a theory... you double down.

Thats the scientific method.; 10/14/12, 3:47 PM
rhhardin said...: There is no data and no theory.

Other than that, it's great science.; 10/14/12, 3:48 PM
MadisonMan said...: @YoungH, if the code doesn't link and run, how do they use it?; 10/14/12, 3:48 PM
Seeing Red said...: And the best part:

...(4) Finally, about claims “the science is settled” on global warming: “One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don’t know it.”; 10/14/12, 3:48 PM
Original Mike said...: Whether or not the temperature has flatlined in the last 16 years, isn't it the case that the temperature has not gone up as much as the models predicted?; 10/14/12, 3:50 PM
Seeing Red said...: They get the BBC & British gov't to cover up?; 10/14/12, 3:50 PM
MadisonMan said...: I've never had a problem using code on one platform that doesn't compile on another. My assumption is that if it works, it works -- even if it doesn't work someplace else in a different OS.

Multi-platform builds are the bane of my existence in one of my jobs. That and os "upgrades".; 10/14/12, 3:50 PM
Seeing Red said...: Ohhh, the Bishop Hill blog is coming out with a new book:

The Sequel to the Hocky Stick Illusion

Hiding the Decline

A History of the ClimateGate Affair

It'll be available on Kindle.; 10/14/12, 3:55 PM
YoungHegelian said...: @MadMan,

I'm assuming by "they" you mean the guys out of NASA/Greenbelt who originally released the "defective" code.

Well, they claimed it worked for them, but they then released to the scientists who asked for their models code that wouldn't compile as written.

It's really not that difficult to get a grad student in CS to put together & test a cross-platform Make file. That the NASA scientists released such a shoddy piece of work to their critics doesn't reflect well on them.; 10/14/12, 3:55 PM
Seeing Red said...: James Hansen? NASA? Made $$$$ from this I don't think he declared it on taxes, either, did he?; 10/14/12, 3:57 PM
Original Mike said...: @Seeing Red: That's exciting. "The Hockey Stick Illusion" was a real eye-opener for me.; 10/14/12, 3:58 PM
Wince said...: Lynn Meadows said...
Oh I get it now. Ice melts faster when it gets colder or the temperature stays the same. That explains it.

On the one hand...
NASA: Satellites See Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt

On the other hand...
Skeptics put the freeze on NASA 'hot air' about Greenland ice

"Ice cores from Summit station [Greenland’s coldest and highest] show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time," said Lora Koenig, a Goddard glaciologist and a member of the research team analyzing the satellite data.

But rather than a regular 150-year planetary cycle, the new NASA report calls the melt “unprecedented,” the result of a recent strong ridge of warm air, or a heat dome, over Greenland -- one of a series that has dominated Greenland's weather since the end of May.

"Each successive ridge has been stronger than the previous one," said Thomas Mote, a climatologist at the University of Georgia. This latest heat dome started to move over Greenland on July 8, and then parked itself over the ice sheet about three days later. By July 16, it had begun to dissipate, along with the ice, NASA said.

Climate skeptics said the NASA report itself was the only “unprecedented” item.; 10/14/12, 3:59 PM
MikeR said...: OriginalMike is correct. The models are having something of a problem right now because the current plateau is below the margin of error that (most of) the models are predicting. It is not overwhelming, though; there have been other plateau (or decline) periods in the last century, actually about a third of the time. The temperature tends to rise on the average, but there's a lot of variation.

It is a matter of current dispute among climate scientists as to exactly how long a plateau would force them to change their estimate of the climate sensitivity. The models seem to be biased high.

I really think that the Your Team/My Team attitude of both sides isn't helpful.; 10/14/12, 4:00 PM
Original Mike said...: I think we should replace all the climate scientists with new ones and start over.; 10/14/12, 4:04 PM
virgil xenophon said...: Mam-made "Global Warming" is the greatest scientific hoax since the Piltdown man..

FAR WORSE, even, as the Piltdown hoax didn't degrade the standard of living for billions of the planet's citizens due to dysfunctional government policies put in place the world over by deluded Chicken Little politicians totally ignorant of real science as opposed to the crap they swallowed hook, line, and sinker from these computer modeler "climate scientists" posing as real scientists--"scientists" many of whom furthermore had very real totalitarian hidden agendas to push and found "climate change" a convenient vehicle to push their theories of social control..

Someday "Climate Science" as espoused by the AGW crowd MIGHTreach the disciplinary level of certitude and predictive "accuracy" that the so-called "science" of Economics now enjoys--maybe--but don't hold your breath..; 10/14/12, 4:07 PM
YoungHegelian said...: I really think that the Your Team/My Team attitude of both sides isn't helpful.

I honestly don't know the answer to what's happening with AGW. How could I? The science is far outside of my domain.

What I do see, however, is

1) Serious professional malfeasance on the part of some of the big names in AGW research.

2) Pro-AGW true believers who have absolutely no idea that there is even another side to the question worth considering, much less being familiar with the details of the skeptics.

I was amazed that the guys who proposed that neutrinos may go faster than light (a REAL apple cart upsetter, if true) were treated with a bemused well-let's-see-where-this-goes attitude vs the contempt visited on the AGW skeptics.; 10/14/12, 4:07 PM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Seeing Red said...

Another reason my kid won't apply to U of Penn.

Mann is at Pennsylvania State University ( Penn State ), not the University of Pennsylvania ( U of Penn. ); 10/14/12, 4:07 PM
Automatic_Wing said...: Oh I get it now. Ice melts faster when it gets colder or the temperature stays the same. That explains it.

Haha, do you really believe the Arctic ocean has warmed up to the extent that all that ice just melted? You oughta go up there and take a dip sometime, that'd change your thinking real fast.; 10/14/12, 4:08 PM
AndyN said...: Seeing Red said...

Isn't Mann still fighting hard to to keep his work secret?

Another reason my kid won't apply to U of Penn.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that if your kid, like you, can't tell the difference between an Ivy League university and an ag school/football factory that happen to have the same state in their name, neither would be likely to admit him anyway.; 10/14/12, 4:10 PM
Levi Starks said...: "Yet in 2009, when the plateau was already becoming apparent and being discussed by scientists, he told a colleague in one of the Climategate emails: ‘Bottom line: the “no upward trend” has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried."

Warming doesn't worry them, Not warming worries them.; 10/14/12, 4:11 PM
Crimso said...: "Whether or not the temperature has flatlined in the last 16 years, isn't it the case that the temperature has not gone up as much as the models predicted?"

Unless the Mail made it up, they quoted Jones as saying: "We don’t fully understand how to input things like changes in the oceans, and because we don’t fully understand it you could say that natural variability is now working to suppress the warming. We don’t know what natural variability is doing."

Now read that again.

"...you could say that natural variability is now working to suppress the warming. We don’t know what natural variability is doing."

I'll again point out that the argument that the models, while clearly flawed, are the best we have and so we should go with them is utterly idiotic.

If we're talking about going with models that have no other use than to try to get better models, fine. But people (some of whom should know better) are trying to make MAJOR changes to the way human civilization functions based on these models.

If your models of the aircraft you're designing result in aircraft that crash, you don't shrug your shoulders and say "build it anyway, it's the best we can do for now."; 10/14/12, 4:13 PM
Hagar said...: Ummm, Young Hegelian,

You can of course assume that, but it would be prudent to verify your assumptions before you go any farther.; 10/14/12, 4:14 PM
YoungHegelian said...: @Hagar,

Would you mind specifying which of my assumptions you're talking about or do you just enjoy cryptic postings?; 10/14/12, 4:17 PM
Wince said...: Mann is at Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), not the University of Pennsylvania (U of Penn.)

How about the state pen with Jerry Sandusky?; 10/14/12, 4:18 PM
Seeing Red said...: 1 of them is cheaper, I'll let you figure it out.; 10/14/12, 4:20 PM
YoungHegelian said...: Mann is indeed at Penn State, which cleared him of any malfeasance in an internal investigation.

Because, we all know how good Penn State is at doing internal investigations of any possible malfeasance of their staff & faculty.

Right?; 10/14/12, 4:20 PM
Seeing Red said...: Either way, staying clear of Penn schools.; 10/14/12, 4:21 PM
wildswan said...: I've always thought that the whole climate change idea is a scam based on an observed natural trend in global warming which is unrelated to human activity. We know that eleven thousand years ago the glacier filling Lake Michigan began to retreat as it had done several times over the last hundred thousand years but this time the retreat did not stop at the head of Lake Michigan. It continued all the way across Canada to the present Arctic Circle. If this trend continues, as it has several times in the last several million years then the edge of the ice will move even further north. Or maybe the ice will start forward again next year. Ice goes back and forward without our help and won't stop what it is doing no matter what we do. And, really, why do we think that human activity since 1870 is causing a warming trend which we know has been in existence for the last 11,000 years?; 10/14/12, 4:21 PM
Jaq said...: The utter ignorance on both sides of the debate is so deep and convoluted that I hate to indulge anymore... yet I will.

One of the sure signs that any warming is human caused is stratospheric cooling, heat gets trapped in troposphere, stratosphere cools.

That has not happened for a couple of decades either.; 10/14/12, 4:22 PM
Jaq said...: BTW, I seriously doubt that changing the CO2 content of the atmosphere is without consequences, but it seems pretty clear that the consequences have been overblown.; 10/14/12, 4:25 PM
Roger J. said...: Good to know my personal efforts to reduce AGW might have been successful. I took it upon myself to exhale half as much as used to and and reduced my flatulence considerably by avoiding certain foods. Where may I apply for my Nobel Peace Prize?; 10/14/12, 4:26 PM
Seeing Red said...: BTW, not there yet for colleges, so I don't make it a point to know the ins & outs of every US school.

Get a grip.; 10/14/12, 4:26 PM
Spiros Pappas said...: The science behind the greenhouse effect is inescapable. Carbon dioxide causes solar radiation to be trapped near the surface of the earth. Burning fossil fuels means more CO2, which means more global warming. People, even smart people, believe and know this (in the same way comments at this site believe and know that Obama is the anti-Christ). Anything else is junk science (who knows maybe the Koch brothers financed this garbage study - just like BP insists that the Gulf of Mexico is now cleaner).
Why do conservatives insist that the earth is cooling or that scientists are blinded to reality by some sort of political agenda. What's so great about filthy oil purchased from tin pot dictators and terrorists.; 10/14/12, 4:27 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: MikeR said...
I really think that the Your Team/My Team attitude of both sides isn't helpful.

Politicization of science is always bad news for science, scientists and the community that relies on unbiased scientific results to make informed decisions.

Although there is fault on both sides, in this particular case, where large industrial financial interests are at stake, climate change deniers have driven the controversy over the existence of global warming.

There is no doubt that the earth has warmed over the last century. No one seriously disputes this.

Models, which predict future outcomes from preexisting data, are notoriously inexact. The default hypothesis should be that the earth will continue to warm at much the same rate as it has over the last century. Many climate scientists are at fault for abandoning this common sense position in the absence of really compelling evidence to the contrary. This being said, continuation of current trends will still be problematic in the long run.; 10/14/12, 4:27 PM
Anonymous said...: How long must we tolerate this unholy alliance of grant-chasing pseudoscientists, tax-hungry politicians, and power-hungry left-wing social engineers? 90 billion dollars of our tax money has been blown on this fraud, dwarfing the money from the oil industry, and all for nothing.

These witch doctors are enemies of humanity. I want to see them face punishment for the crimes they have perpetrated on the public.; 10/14/12, 4:27 PM
dreams said...: "A Courier-Journal Special Report"

"Louisville prepares for a warming planet"

Today in the liberal Courier-Journal.

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage; 10/14/12, 4:29 PM
John Burgess said...: @Seeing Red: Mann is at Penn State, not U Penn. You know, Penn State... Sandusky, Paterno, other evil beings.

You'll have to find another excuse to keep your kids out of U Penn. Maybe the cost?; 10/14/12, 4:30 PM
Seeing Red said...: Green ‘drivel’ exposed 1130
The godfather of global warming lowers the boom on climate change hysteria

...(2) Lovelock blasted greens for treating global warming like a religion.

“It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion,” Lovelock observed. “I don’t think people have noticed that, but it’s got all the sort of terms that religions use … The greens use guilt. That just shows how religious greens are. You can’t win people round by saying they are guilty for putting (carbon dioxide) in the air....”; 10/14/12, 4:30 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Skookum John said...
How long must we tolerate this unholy alliance of grant-chasing pseudoscientists, tax-hungry politicians, and power-hungry left-wing social engineers?
These witch doctors are enemies of humanity. I want to see them face punishment for the crimes they have perpetrated on the public.

This is paranoid nonsense.; 10/14/12, 4:31 PM
Seeing Red said...: So they were both at the same school, and I just got them mixed up.

OK. Thx. I thought they were at the same school.

I don't pay attn to college football.........; 10/14/12, 4:31 PM
Levi Starks said...: All this technical talk makes my head hurt,
It just breaks my heart to think about those poor polar bears having to swim 50 miles between ice chunks, and missing their regular baby snow seal meals.; 10/14/12, 4:31 PM
Seeing Red said...: Via Powerline:

...A] new book, Die Kalte Sonne, written by Prof Dr Fritz Vahrenholt and geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning, has caused a sensation even in advance of its official publication yesterday. For Prof. Vahrenholt, a renewable energy expert, was one of the fathers of the modern German green movement and believed everything preached by the IPCC. But according to Focus magazine, he is now a far sadder and wiser man:

‘Doubt came two years ago when he was an expert reviewer of an IPCC report on renewable energy. “I discovered numerous errors and asked myself if the other IPCC reports on climate were similarly sloppy.”

‘In his book he explains how he dug into the IPCC climate report and was horrified by what he had found. Then add the 10 years of stagnant temperatures, failed predictions, Climategate e-mails, and discussions he had with dozens of other skeptical elite scientists. That was more than enough. FOCUS quotes: “I couldn’t take it any more. I had to write this book....”’; 10/14/12, 4:33 PM
Hagar said...: OK, Young Hegelian,

The ITs helping out may know about OS matches, but not necessarily about the science.

As for the "scientists" (a very indefinite term as used in the MSM), you should not take it for granted that they are any kind of computer literate at all, nor that they are scientifically competent to model anything as complex as the global climate to start with. I do not see how any one person could be with all the different disciplines involved, so the opportunities for errors getting imbedded without anyone noticing are legion.

And that is with everyone on the up and up, which does not seem to be quite the case where AGW faith and apostasy are involved!; 10/14/12, 4:34 PM
Lawyer Mom said...: Watts has a good analysis of this report.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/13/report-global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago/#more-72353; 10/14/12, 4:37 PM
McTriumph said...: On climate change the science has always been settled, the political science of the left.; 10/14/12, 4:37 PM
Steven said...: The default hypothesis should be that the earth will continue to warm at much the same rate as it has over the last century.

Why? Why "the last century" instead of "the last decade" or "the last ten centuries"? What's special about the last hundred years that should privilege its trend as the default hypothesis?; 10/14/12, 4:40 PM
LilyBart said...: We should have discussions and debates about what is going on with our planet. Problem is, they didn't want to discuss via the usual scientific method - they wanted us to shut up and accept what they TOLD us. And the 'fix' was, of course, turn over money and power to the governments and severely downgrade our lifes. They also didn't want to discuss the harsh economic consequences of that downgrade in our lifes.; 10/14/12, 4:41 PM
Jaq said...: "The default hypothesis should be that the earth will continue to warm at much the same rate as it has over the last century."

Why? We were coming out of the Little ice Age.

The default hypothesis should be that CO2 causes 1.2 degrees warming per doubling, the same as it has always done. The only way to get higher numbers is to assume that this time it will be different, despite the fact that it has been warmer than today in historical tiems, Minoan Warm Period, Roman Warm Period, Medieval Warm Period (roughly the same as the current warming)

Each of those was followed by a cooling which has followed an 8 thousand year cooling trend. Unless the Koch Bros somehow have mucked around with the ice cores.; 10/14/12, 4:41 PM
MadisonMan said...: As for the "scientists" (a very indefinite term as used in the MSM), you should not take it for granted that they are any kind of computer literate at all, nor that they are scientifically competent to model anything as complex as the global climate to start with.

Most of the climate scientists I know are code bangers. Whether or not that means they are computer literate is a different story. For example, how well do they know the ins and outs of a compiling system?

It is not an insurmountable task to break down the different components of modeling into something that is feasible.

Salient (sort of) quote I heard this past week here in Madison: The revolutionary changes in weather forecasting in the past 50 years is one of the top intellectual achievements of the 20th Century. (Note: Weather, not climate). It's hard to argue against that statement. (I might say 60 or 70 years rather than 50).; 10/14/12, 4:42 PM
MadisonMan said...: Watts has a good analysis of this report.

Do they? It looks like they repost the report, and then there's a discussion. At least at the link you give.; 10/14/12, 4:45 PM
Seeing Red said...: The Grauniad from 2011:

How much do 'carbon professionals' earn?Second annual carbon salary survey published recently shows 4% wage increase in past 12 months

...Salaries in the sector have jumped 4% year on year with 75% of the respondents reporting they are satisfied with their jobs, bucking the wider trend of salary deflation in many countries and job insecurity. And we know that there is a strong correlation between satisfaction and productivity, so employers should be pleased.....; 10/14/12, 4:47 PM
Automatic_Wing said...: The science behind the greenhouse effect is inescapable. Carbon dioxide causes solar radiation to be trapped near the surface of the earth. Burning fossil fuels means more CO2, which means more global warming. People, even smart people, believe and know this (in the same way comments at this site believe and know that Obama is the anti-Christ). Anything else is junk science (who knows maybe the Koch brothers financed this garbage study - just like BP insists that the Gulf of Mexico is now cleaner).

CO2 traps radiation, yes, but keep in mind that its effect is logarithmic and not linear. In other words, each successive increase in atmospheric CO2 levels produces a smaller heat-trapping effect, so you can't get from where we are today to a catastrophically warmed planet from the direct effects of CO2 radiative forcing alone. That's why the alarmist climate models all feature strongly positive feedback loops to take a modest amount of CO2-derived warming and amplify it into various end of the world scenarios.; 10/14/12, 4:47 PM
Jaq said...: "It is not an insurmountable task to break down the different components of modeling into something that is feasible." - Madison Man

Here is a paper by Naomi Oreskes, yes, the author of Merchants of Doubt, that makes the case that modeling of a chaotic natural system is not a tractable problem.; 10/14/12, 4:50 PM
Crimso said...: "It is not an insurmountable task to break down the different components of modeling into something that is feasible."

I would agree, so long as one of the components is labeled "unknown factors." And we know they're affecting the models. Jones admitted it.; 10/14/12, 4:50 PM
Seeing Red said...: From The Daily Mail, 2012:

Tree-rings prove climate was WARMER in Roman and Medieval times than it is now - and world has been cooling for 2,000 years
Study of semi-fossilised trees gives accurate climate reading back to 138BC
World was warmer in Roman and Medieval times than it is now
By Science Reporter
PUBLISHED: 07:22 EST, 11 July 2012; 10/14/12, 4:51 PM
Crimso said...: How many of you would be willing to take a pharmaceutical drug that has never been tested, but looks great in computer models?; 10/14/12, 4:52 PM
YoungHegelian said...: @Hagar,

The ability to put together a functional Make file requires no knowledge of what an application actually does. The app may produce garbage, but at least the syntax is correct.

I also disagree about the AGW scientists not knowing their models at the code level. I mean, if you're hanging your career on a computer model, you better know that model right, left, and out the ass. I may give them too much credit, but I am assuming at least that much competence.

I also use the term "scientists" because the GW world has a motley crew of physicists, meteorologists, climatologists, even some life sciences guys! I can't think of another generic term; 10/14/12, 4:57 PM
Seeing Red said...: Posted on Saturday 13 October 2012 by Administrator On Monday, Germany announced that it is about to be hit by a huge hike in electricity prices. Under the new rates, German consumers can expect to pay nearly $26 billion in surcharges on their electric bills next year in order to promote renewable energy. The program wasn’t supposed to increase costs for the average consumer, but now green energy surcharges have gone up by fifty percent.

Yet even after pocketing huge sums from consumers, Germany is still struggling to develop a renewable energy sector that can stand on its own two feet. Much of the money raised by these new surcharges is wasted on programs of dubious value, Der Spiegel reports:

The central question in all of this is whether the money coming from electricity consumers is being spent wisely. If the federal government wants to have all of Germany’s nuclear power plants phased out by 2022, why is it doing so little to ensure that the project will succeed?

Billions are currently being spent on the unchecked expansion of solar energy—a technology that contributes the least to a reliable power supply in Germany, which isn’t exactly famous for abundant sunshine. The comparatively efficient building renovation programs, on the other, have come to a standstill because the federal and state governments have been quarreling over funding for more than a year now. There is far too little storage capacity to serve as a buffer against the fluctuating supply of wind and solar energy. In addition, there are no conventional replacement power plants in the works.; 10/14/12, 4:58 PM
exhelodrvr1 said...: Thank God for President Obama - he stopped the oceans from rising, and he stopped global warming!!; 10/14/12, 5:00 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: tim in vermont said...
"The default hypothesis should be that the earth will continue to warm at much the same rate as it has over the last century."

Why?

Because this will always be the default hypothesis in the absence of really compelling evidence to the contrary, which you fail to provide. Climate is complex. On that point everyone seems to agree. Given this, it seems very unlikely that any single factor is driving the system, as you attempt to imply. I agree that some skepticism should be applied to the more extreme predictions of the models but blanket statements like yours are equally unlikely to reflect reality.

As you yourself noted earlier:
I seriously doubt that changing the CO2 content of the atmosphere is without consequences .

To imply that you fully understand those consequence requires a leap of faith. Not unreasonably, I am unwilling to take that leap.

It would be good if the rational center could agree that a) the earth is warming and b) changing the composition of the atmosphere will have effects that are difficult to predict, at least at this point in time.; 10/14/12, 5:07 PM
Dante said...: The models are having something of a problem right now because the current plateau is below the margin of error that (most of) the models are predicting.

The models do not have error bars. That's one of the neat tricks with the AGW scientists. The climate is merely more complex than what has been modeled.

However, the big news here is simple. C02 cannot be the only driver of the climate, because C02 has increased its exponential rise across the globe, which would result in the continued linear rise in temperatures. Temperatures have not risen, so there are other factors at least as powerful as C02.; 10/14/12, 5:08 PM
Seeing Red said...: Heads up - Blue on Blue may be starting, Wretchard wonders if there's a bigger shoe about to drop.; 10/14/12, 5:12 PM
Seeing Red said...: That's not what's being sold, AR.

It's whether humans are responsible.; 10/14/12, 5:14 PM
Dante said...: It just breaks my heart to think about those poor polar bears having to swim 50 miles between ice chunks, and missing their regular baby snow seal meals

It's animal cruelty, you see.

However, that whole "Polar Bear" thing was debunked. I think you are being sarcastic, but it's hard to tell. This could easily be seen as a bona fide statement from some.

Now, here is some fun. Al Gore has been making money off of you the Taxpayer with those polar bears. Apparently, he net worth increased from $2M to $100M by investing in Green Energy company, largely paid for by taxpayers and the productivity of future generations.; 10/14/12, 5:16 PM
Jaq said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/14/12, 5:16 PM
Hagar said...: Young Hegelian,

That is not how things work in the bureaucracy, and anyway, they do not know the earth "out their ass."

Do any of these models include Crazy Mike Milankovich's cycles?

Why do the earth change its magnetic polarity at odd times?

And Madison Man, the improved weather forecasting does not come from improved science, but real time satellite photography. Lots of engineering and manufacturing make that possible, the science is still iffy.; 10/14/12, 5:21 PM
Paul Kirchner said...: NPR's "On The Media" program recently had a show examining accusations that NPR is liberal. (One of those "Is the pope Catholic?" type questions.)

Of course, NPR absolved itself of all liberal bias. One of the arguments they put forth is that some questions have been settled and it is not longer necessary to present opposing views. The example they gave was global warming.; 10/14/12, 5:26 PM
Unknown said...: very interesting comments here. who do i see if you are wrong?

what possible difference can it make to reduce greenhouse gases and get everyone to address the issue?

oh. i get it. Greehouse OMG Gas. GOP.; 10/14/12, 5:29 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: tim in vermont said...
ReasonableMan,
You claim to be reasonable, but you reject both my points:

That, by itself, does not make me unreasonable in any one's mind other than your own.

- The wide climate variation that have characterized this current interglacial, and that we are coming out of the coldest period in the past thousand years.

This is a straw man. No one is arguing that there are factors other than CO2 that afffect climate. Since you quite evidently do not know what those factors are you cannot now claim that they account entirely for recent changes in global temperature.; 10/14/12, 5:31 PM
Dante said...: The science behind the greenhouse effect is inescapable. Carbon dioxide causes solar radiation to be trapped near the surface of the earth.

It's more complicated than that. However, that effect yields only a modest increase in temperatures. And furthermore, that model states the increase in temperatures increases with the logarithm of C02 increases. For each doubling of C02, temperatures increase a fixed amount. And C02 levels continue to increase exponentially.

However, the amount is so small from the effect you describe, that Climate Scientists have to come up with something scary. This is where feedbacks come into play. The models include increases in water vapor with the small increases of C02. This factor, depending on the model, doubles or triples the temperature increase. It's called "climate sensitivity."

If there is no climate sensitivity, then we can stop worrying about global warming. The increase is fairly small. But with high climate sensitivity numbers, the "Seas will Rise", "Pestilence and Plague will rule the earth". "Wars will break out." And all that old testament claptrap Al Gore threw out to the eager leftist and moderate believers.

As an aside, it's odd how this scientific question seems to split on political affiliation. I conclude the draw to leftists and moderates for a defining issue governments, even a world government, must manage is too good to pass up.; 10/14/12, 5:31 PM
Hagar said...: What were the CO2 (and O2) levels when the great belts of limestone were laid down across the Midwest, and the vegetation grew to support herds of 80-ton dinosaurs?

In earlier times still, there were dragonflies with 2 ft wingspans. What were the conditions to make that possible, and what brought them about?

What were the changes to make the world we see today and what caused them?; 10/14/12, 5:31 PM
Unknown said...: Paul Kirchner said...
"Of course, NPR absolved itself of all liberal bias. One of the arguments they put forth is that some questions have been settled and it is not longer necessary to present opposing views. The example they gave was global warming."

why is global warming a liberal thing? is the stone age a conservative thing? how about ignorance generally...? yup.

noted.; 10/14/12, 5:31 PM
Jaq said...: "what possible difference can it make to reduce greenhouse gases and get everyone to address the issue?"

I am all for nuclear and natural gas, that would do a lot to reduce CO2 ouput at a minimal cost to the economy.; 10/14/12, 5:33 PM
Diogenes of Sinope said...: The belief in man made global warming is more religion than science. So, facts will be disregarded by the faithful as many religious people do when there is a conflict between their religion and science. For many these denials are a way to prove their faith.; 10/14/12, 5:33 PM
Unknown said...: Hagar said...
In earlier times still, there were dragonflies with 2 ft wingspans. What were the conditions to make that possible, and what brought them about? What were the changes to make the world we see today and what caused them?

a. a good old fashion Christian God
b. a good old fashion Jewish Yaweh?
c. a good old fashion guy wandering around the Salt Lake?
d. Mitt Romney?; 10/14/12, 5:33 PM
wildswan said...: The earth HAS been warming doesn't really equal the earth IS warming or the earth WILL CONTINUE warming. Plus, I think that focusing on hundred-year trends overlooks the possibility that they are a temporary reversal of a trend which might run in another direction on a hundred-thousand year timeline. That's why I think people should look at the history of the last glaciation and the one before that.; 10/14/12, 5:35 PM
Unknown said...: Diogenes of Sinope said...
The belief in man made global warming is more religion than science."

The disbelief of global warming is more wishful thinking than religion....pass the séance someone.; 10/14/12, 5:35 PM
Seeing Red said...: Lynn- it's not about global warming, it's about man-made global warming.

It's like talking about stem cells v. embryonic stem cells.

Can't control the sun, can't control global warming.

But if it's man-made..........; 10/14/12, 5:37 PM
YoungHegelian said...: @Lynn,

Do you always jump into reasonable, kinda-scientific (just how technical can one get in a blog comment?) discussions and spout snarky, asinine shit?

Is that what passes for rationality on your planet?; 10/14/12, 5:39 PM
Jaq said...: I guess Mitt Romney and the Koch Bros are responsible for the UK Met Office findings.

I guess that the increase in ice in the Antarctic doesn't mean anything but smaller decrease in ice in the Arctic does.

Everything is so simple when viewed through a political lens though.; 10/14/12, 5:39 PM
Original Mike said...: "what possible difference can it make to reduce greenhouse gases and get everyone to address the issue?"

What possible difference? Are you new to this issue? The problem is that it requires a massive CO2 reduction, with all that entails for the economy (nay, civilization) to make a dent in projected warming.; 10/14/12, 5:40 PM
Gideon7 said...: Below is line of IDL source code from the leaked CRU codebase:

valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,- 0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor

The comment after the semicolon ('fudge factor') is in the original source code. Notice how the later time periods are adjusted upward. If you input random noise into this code you would get a hockey-stick graph.

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1447

Now, there could be a benign reason for the 'fudge factor'. Maybe there is an a known error in the source data? Maybe CRU needed to correct some other systematic bias? Who knows? But unless the reason is clearly documented, explained, and justified in the published research, it's going to look damn suspicious.; 10/14/12, 5:40 PM
gadfly said...: Don't tell the Democrats! They will only call you a liar.

I'll bet they would think that you would lie about Social Security and Medicare also.; 10/14/12, 5:40 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Paul Kirchner said...
NPR's "On The Media" program recently had a show examining accusations that NPR is liberal.
NPR absolved itself of all liberal bias. One of the arguments they put forth is that some questions have been settled and it is not longer necessary to present opposing views. The example they gave was global warming.

But, the fact of global warming is settled. No one seriously questions this. The argument is about the causes.

I generally find NPR pretty hard to listen to, other than "All things considered", "Marketplace" and "Echoes". They are unquestionably liberal on social issues. Social issues are pretty much a fact-free zone so no doubt you could find plenty of examples of liberal bias in this area since it is all largely unsubstantiated opinion, on both sides.

Their science reporting reflects the general scientific consensus pretty accurately.; 10/14/12, 5:45 PM
Fred Drinkwater said...: re: various comments about Gaia and
Lovelock -

Go back to Lovelock's original hypothesis. The basic idea was that a complex evolved (eco)system might display homeostasis; that is, a tendency to regulate the effect of external inputs in order to maintain the viability of the system.
In other words, the basic Gaia theory is directly opposed to the shouting and arm-waving of the AGW crowd.
The only reason the Gaia hypothesis is worshiped in certain circles is the NAME itself.; 10/14/12, 5:46 PM
Dante said...: What possible difference? Are you new to this issue? The problem is that it requires a massive CO2 reduction, with all that entails for the economy (nay, civilization) to make a dent in projected warming.

First, there is no way the Chinese, world's largest C02 producer, are going to stop. Second, really large volcanoes do cool the earth.

While it would require study, if temperatures really do start banging upward, due to C02 or other factors, a stop-gap measure could be put in place by pumping sulfates into the atmosphere.

This will give us time to migrate to thorium based reactors, whose fuel is essentially limitless. Or breeder reactors that produce plutonium, like in France, but people are scared of those.; 10/14/12, 5:47 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "Please Ann, if you are pandering for page reads for your adsense account payoff, just don't waste time and toss some Obama is a socialist stuff up to bring in the braindead."

Speaking of dumb, do you see any Adsense ads on my site?; 10/14/12, 5:51 PM
Dante said...: But, the fact of global warming is settled. No one seriously questions this. The argument is about the causes.

That's my read as well. However, I'll add a few more questions:

"How much is the earth warming"

and

"What can you do about it, if we take C02 as the likely and sole cause."

This last one is interesting. I think it means to leftists that you grow government control (despite that US's C02 production has decreased to 1992 levels with on account of natural gas).

In this case, Jerry brown wants to spend roughly $60B to migrate 30% of CA's electric generation to renewables, at a cost of about $60B.; 10/14/12, 5:54 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Dante said...
As an aside, it's odd how this scientific question seems to split on political affiliation. I conclude the draw to leftists and moderates for a defining issue governments, even a world government, must manage is too good to pass up.

Alternatively, reasonable people, when faced with a situation with a high uncertainty level, not unreasonably consider that some caution is warranted.

There are many people on the right of the political spectrum who recognize there are some limits to the earth's capacity to cope with humans, even if we don't fully understand what those limits are. Personally I am more worried about the abundance and quality of our drinking water, but I come from a very dry place and now live in a pretty cold place, well above sea level.; 10/14/12, 5:54 PM
Dante said...: Ann:

Speaking of dumb, do you see any Adsense ads on my site?

I love this response! It's better than watching Joe Biden take it to Paul Ryan.; 10/14/12, 5:56 PM
Dante said...: Alternatively, reasonable people, when faced with a situation with a high uncertainty level, not unreasonably consider that some caution is warranted.

OK, conservatives are reckless. But what are you going to do about China? Since temperatures increase with the exponent of C02 production, and the US is not increasing, but China is increasing hugely in its C02 outputs, all this green energy nonsense is simply massively expensive and borrowed from our kids. Makes no sense.

Personally, I would rather have seen that $800B in stimulus going towards nuclear power plants. They generate energy relatively cheaply, and there's your caution thing. Instead, leftists banked on expensive green energy.; 10/14/12, 6:00 PM
Original Mike said...: "Personally, I would rather have seen that $800B in stimulus going towards nuclear power plants."

Stimulus dollars to employ people to build things? How quaint.

Better to spend it on food stamps.; 10/14/12, 6:06 PM
MadisonMan said...: Here is a paper by Naomi Oreskes, yes, the author of Merchants of Doubt, that makes the case that modeling of a chaotic natural system is not a tractable problem.

I wonder if Ms. Oreskes ignores all forecasts and just wings it, weather preparation wise, because weather forecasts are modeling a chaotic natural system.

Friday was the 50th anniversary of the Big Blow in the Pacific NW. Horribly forecast, 50 years ago. Today, no way would something like that surprise people.; 10/14/12, 6:08 PM
Original Mike said...: "...because weather forecasts are modeling a chaotic natural system."

And, a few days out, they're not so good.; 10/14/12, 6:12 PM
Dante said...: They also didn't want to discuss the harsh economic consequences of that downgrade in our lifes.

There are cheaper solutions than wasting money on Solyndras, like Nuclear and Natural Gas.

But these don't fit the "Green Vision." Al Gore said, about 8 years ago, we could have an all electric fleet in 10 years, but it would take too long to do anything with nuclear. And then there is Jane Fonda, the Sierra club, etc. It would be too painful to admit nuclear might be a good thing. Rather than that, let us take the extremely expensive solutions, and borrow from our kids to pay for them.; 10/14/12, 6:13 PM
Gideon7 said...: Back in late 1980s when I was an CS undergrad at UMN and later a CS grad student at UIUC, I worked quite bit with researchers to fix up their Fortran simulations, doing optmization for models run on Cray supercomputers and TMC Connection Machines at the MN Supercomputer Center and NCSA at UIUC.

In those days all the big federal granting agencies (National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, etc) required that any computer source code created or funded using federal research money must be made available to any US citizen on request. I spent plenty of time at the copy machine killing trees and spinning tapes for these requests.

Some time after I left (not sure when) the federal research agencies quietly changed the rules. The requirement for public disclosure was dropped. Today AGW the reseachers like Michael Mann at Penn State are generally not releasing their source code or raw data.

Some AGW skeptics are trying to use FOI to get at the code and data, however Michael Mann and the other AGW proponents are fightning it tooth and nail in the federal court system.

As a Fortran programmer I know a million ways to fudge datasets in ways that would be absolutely undetectible without the source code (which I never did BTW).

We need to go back to the old rules from the 1980s: if you get federal money to publish your research, then the raw data and source code must be made public under an Open Source license.

It's that simple.; 10/14/12, 6:18 PM
Automatic_Wing said...: Friday was the 50th anniversary of the Big Blow in the Pacific NW. Horribly forecast, 50 years ago. Today, no way would something like that surprise people.

Yeah, but is that because we really understand all the underlying factors that drive the weather or because we have stuff like weather radar and satellite imaging, you know, stuff that won't help us predict what the weather will be like in 50 or 100 years?; 10/14/12, 6:22 PM
Levi Starks said...: I'm getting worried,
First you take God away from me, Now you're going to take Global warming away too?
Don't you realize how empty my life will be if I have nothing to believe in?; 10/14/12, 6:26 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Fred Drinkwater said...
Go back to Lovelock's original hypothesis. The basic idea was that a complex evolved (eco)system might display homeostasis;

This is a particularly stupid idea. In fact the composition of the earth's atmosphere has changed dramatically over the course of its history, largely due to the activity of living things. The atmosphere originally lacked significant amounts of oxygen. If the planet has some intrinsic self-regulating capacity we would all be dead (or more accurately never alive).

The dramatic changes in atmospheric gas content in the past raise a question about the stability of the whole system in the present. Dumping a large fraction of the biological carbon content stored over a more than billion year period into the atmosphere within a relatively brief period of one or two centuries, clearly has the potential to be destabilizing. How much is the question.

I have very little doubt we will find out. It is clear that humans will not rest until the last drop of oil and the last nugget of coal have been burnt.; 10/14/12, 6:32 PM
Paul said...: Damn... Al Gore's pants just fell down. Bet he worries about all his 'Green' stock investments now.

You know there is not much difference from Gore's shtick and Obama's really.

Same fakeness. I truly believe most LIBERAL Democrats see nothing wrong with twisting the data to fit the narrative. To them the ends do justify the means, even if the ends turn out to go nowhere.; 10/14/12, 6:34 PM
Jaq said...: We are borrowing the money to waste on "green" energy from people who are earning it by burning coal.; 10/14/12, 6:42 PM
MadisonMan said...: And, a few days out, they're not so good.

I disagree. The storm for this weekend was well-predicted on Monday. Even 10 days out most ensemble members were converging to the correct solution. There are periods when predictability isn't quite so good. But statistical modeling in the 8-14 day time range will be giving excellent results in the near future; it is the next huge breakthrough in Weather prediction.

This, of course, has nothing to do with climate simulations. :) I only offered up the example to puncture that blowhard Oreskes' balloon. Nothing is more insufferable than a "scientist" who makes blanket statements.

Irony intended, of course.; 10/14/12, 6:46 PM
Original Mike said...: " There are periods when predictability isn't quite so good."

Like pretty much every time I want to go camping.; 10/14/12, 6:55 PM
Crimso said...: "The atmosphere originally lacked significant amounts of oxygen. If the planet has some intrinsic self-regulating capacity we would all be dead (or more accurately never alive)."

I wouldn't extrapolate from "the planet didn't withstand EVERY disruption" to it having no "intrinsic self-regulating capacity." Events such as the emergence of photosynthetic organisms or extinction-level asteroid strikes are the exceptions, not the rule.

Le Chatelier's principle alone implies that changes in CO2 should be buffered against, as the system should tend toward regaining its equilibrium. You may fairly raise at least two objections to applying Le Chatelier's principle here: 1) the system in question is not at equilibrium; and 2) the system in question (if it could be considered at equilibrium) is not as simple as something like a vapor-liquid equilibrium (there are many more factors).

Both objections leave you with the conclusion that the system is too complicated to apply simple principles to. This not only casts serious doubts on whether the models are even close to accurate, but also militates against appplying the well-known spectroscopic experimental demonstration of the "greenhouse effect" (i.e., if we can't use Le Chatelier's principle writ large, neither can we necessarily use the spectroscopic characteristics of CO2 writ large).; 10/14/12, 6:59 PM
Steven said...: Because this will always be the default hypothesis in the absence of really compelling evidence to the contrary

No, sir, there is nothing 'default' about picking "the last century" instead of "the last decade" or "the last millennium" or "the last π^π years". There is nothing in nature that makes a hundred years specially privileged; nature has no special preference for the number of human fingers multiplied by itself. Picking out "the last century" requires a reason in order to be anything but arbitrary irrationality.; 10/14/12, 7:29 PM
Hagar said...: MM,
They look at satellite pictures of the North Pacific and try to reemember what happened the last time the cloud patterns looked like that.; 10/14/12, 7:38 PM
effinayright said...: I wonder if Michael Mann and his wife engage in (wink wink) "Hide the Decline".; 10/14/12, 7:48 PM
Original Mike said...: "They look at satellite pictures of the North Pacific and try to reemember what happened the last time the cloud patterns looked like that."

That's how we do science. Nothing wrong with that.; 10/14/12, 7:54 PM
MadisonMan said...: They look at satellite pictures of the North Pacific and try to remember what happened the last time the cloud patterns looked like that.

Analog forecasts don't work that great. But they do give clues as to what will happen. In fact, the National Weather Association just gave a prize to a prof/grad student from -- SLU? -- that created a searchable database of past "events", and you compare the model forecasts to the past to get an idea of what something that looked sort of like the forecast in the past did. It does pretty nicely with strong thunderstorm outbreaks.; 10/14/12, 7:57 PM
MadisonMan said...: Oof, what tangled syntax.

Compare the pressure fields in the forecast to those from the historical database. Find the days that match. What happened on those days? It does well for very strong events, not so well for mediocre events.; 10/14/12, 7:58 PM
Peter Pitchford said...: The Met Office has rigorously denounced David Rose's Article in their blog; 10/14/12, 8:01 PM
Crimso said...: They vigorously denied it, not rigorously. I could quibble with each of their answers, but what really stands out is the graph at the bottom. The numbers don't "add up." The average of the readings from 1961-1990 should be 0.0 (according to the scale on the graph). It doesn't look like that's the case. It looks higher. Just look at the green and the yellow on the graph, and since the green bars don't all fall within the 1961-1990 range, look at the lower ones (regardless of year). That should give a conservative estimate of the average and it sure looks like it's above 0.0.; 10/14/12, 8:30 PM
Seeing Red said...: Via Rantburg:

A Danish wind turbine company whose subsidiaries received over $50 million in U.S. stimulus dollars announced on Friday it has cut more than 800 jobs in the United States and Canada this year and may be forced to lay off another 800 employees in North America.; 10/14/12, 8:58 PM
MadisonMan said...: Crimso, not all the 1961-1990 years are in the blown-up part of the graph. That graphic leaves a LOT to be desired.

But at least the response explains why the dailymail article doesn't link -- the 'report' apparently doesn't exist.; 10/14/12, 9:05 PM
bagoh20 said...: Does this mean PBS and the History Channel are going dark. It seems they don't have anything else to talk about. For years now they have found a way to weave global warming into every program, no matter what the subject. How am I suppose to unlearn all that bullshit now? Time for a class action suit. We are all mal-educated idiots now and I want a settlement. I could have been really smart by now if they hadn't done that. It's just pure luck that my idiot brain did NOT vote for Obama. I have to credit that one correct decision to the 5 minutes I spent watching CNBC one day.; 10/14/12, 9:06 PM
Cedarford said...: I remain a skeptic to both extreme sides of the argument.
I am not willing to swallow the Green Nazi agenda and impoverish America because some liberal arts rejects think we can get the rest of the world to abandon fuel but solar and wind or heavily tax what fossil is allowed but only if the UN redistributes the money from the West.
Or their making Green into a religion that cannot be challenged and 3rd world fairness and Mother Gaia trump the interests of the people of the West.

I am not willing to accept the ignorant people on the Right either. That denounce all "smarty-pants science geeks". The goobers that think Jesus gave us unlimited resources accessible and the way to handle all wastes with "new miracle technology driven by the God-fearing Free Market of Freedom Lovers". That think 8 billion people, most in countries that are no longer able to feed themselves without charity, is great! And 22 billion will be even better!

CO2 continues to rise. It is not in equilibrium. Human populations continue to rise and "high tech!! solutions" have failed to keep up with their increased numbers. Before "global warming" is a problem, other resources like food, fresh water, resources for fertilizer , the final doors shutting to overbreeding "refugees" are constraining.

The choices are Malthus or Management. Let the free market just go after certain energy sources like we did whales..until it is almost gone - or plan a 60 year transition off fossil and keep the remaining stocks for petrochemicals and certain apps the absolutely need high energy oil-based fuel (jet planes, etc.); 10/14/12, 9:07 PM
Seeing Red said...: Hmmm learned a new word albedo. From Rantburg, the SH ice is reflecting back into space instead of warming the ocean, this is a positive cooling feedback.; 10/14/12, 9:08 PM
Crimso said...: Thanks for the clarification, MM. I should have spotted that.; 10/14/12, 9:20 PM
Tim said...: The part I love is how when the Ross ice shelf in Antarctica was in danger of breaking off, that was global warming. Now that we know the ice is actually growing in Antarctica, THAT is global warming.

Simple truth: We don't have any idea, and we don't have enough data to make good guesses.

Anectdotally, the earth seems to have warmed up quite a bit since the Little Ice Age, and is not yet as warm as the Medieval Warm Period.

The data are not accurate enough to KNOW either of those things however.

And the warmists are busy corrupting what data we have. So we may never know.; 10/14/12, 9:27 PM
bagoh20 said...: Since the result of being wrong in either direction is pretty bad, how the novel approach of using science until we know the answer. Anyone who does not want to settle for that should be considered dangerous.

Concentrate on developing irreproachable methodology, and reward that with grants and attention, rather than those who find data that supports one hypothesis. At this point the models and predictions are so suspect that we shouldn't even be using them for anything other than testing their accuracy.; 10/14/12, 9:43 PM
Original Mike said...: Discount Doublecheck!; 10/14/12, 9:55 PM
Original Mike said...: DISCOUNT DOUBLECHECK, BABY!!!; 10/14/12, 10:03 PM
William said...: The most accurate body temperature is taken rectally. We should just measure the temperature in Hollywood and be done with all these aggregate totals and averages. They're just confusing and contradictory.; 10/14/12, 10:04 PM
Synova said...: There are things to do that don't require destroying the economy or funneling money to charlatans and political favorites or *even* convincing everyone that we're destroying the world.

Everyone wants CLEAN because everyone breathes. It's a simple decision to oppose pollution and to push nuclear power and everyone can get on board with that.

But we can know by peoples clear actions what their true priorities are, and it's not saving the world.; 10/14/12, 10:27 PM
weh said...: You know, almost all of the "smoke" in the 5th picture in the article(not counting the chart) is really water vapor from cooling towers. The two actual smokestacks are emitting only a small amount of smoke and have scrubbers installed.; 10/14/12, 11:10 PM
weh said...: You know, the "smoke" in the picture captioned "Damage:..." is water vapor from the cooling towers. The two smokestacks are omitting only a small amount of smoke, and have scrubbers installed. If this were only the 1000th time this has happened...; 10/14/12, 11:14 PM
Anonymous said...: Judith Curry, the rather stern-looking climate scientist quoted and misquoted in the Daily Mail, has her own blog, "Climate Etc." She responds to the DM article here.

I've read Dr. Curry for coverage on climate since it began after the Climategate scandal. She provides balanced coverage. I highly recommend her to those interested in the climate debate.; 10/14/12, 11:24 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: Everyone wants CLEAN because everyone breathes. It's a simple decision to oppose pollution and to push nuclear power and everyone can get on board with that.

Problem here, with the theory of CO2 based AGW is that, despite the EPA's finding to the contrary, CO2 is not a pollutant. It is an essential component of the cycle of life - necessary for the plant side of the cycle. Without CO2, Photosynthesis doesn't work. Plants take CO2 and water (H2O), along with solar energy, and produce simple sugars (C6H12O6) and O2. Animals reverse that, recovering that energy by breaking down the sugars and using the O2 to generate CO2 and H2O. Eliminate CO2, and plants will no longer be able to create the sugars that we need to survive.; 10/15/12, 2:09 AM
Unknown said...: Ann Althouse said...
"Speaking of dumb, do you see any Adsense ads on my site?"

ahhh so after you had your adsense account to link into amazon you discontinued the adsense ads and went to a direct paypal pandering.

noted.; 10/15/12, 5:32 AM
Unknown said...: Dante said...
They also didn't want to discuss the harsh economic consequences of that downgrade in our lifes...."

Well fire up that SUV and go tell someone.; 10/15/12, 5:34 AM
Nomennovum said...: Lindsey Meadows, like most women and all porn stars, you are not funny. Your "quips" are nothing more than stupid adolescent sarcasm, masquerading as wit. It is quite lame.

The least you can do is show us some of your more interesting pictures when you comment. Then, all will be forgiven.; 10/15/12, 6:47 AM
Rusty said...: tim in vermont said...
"It is not an insurmountable task to break down the different components of modeling into something that is feasible." - Madison Man

Here is a paper by Naomi Oreskes, yes, the author of Merchants of Doubt, that makes the case that modeling of a chaotic natural system is not a tractable problem.

Ouch. That's inconvenient.; 10/15/12, 7:12 AM
Rusty said...: Lynn Meadows said...
very interesting comments here. who do i see if you are wrong?

what possible difference can it make to reduce greenhouse gases and get everyone to address the issue?

The difference between steak and Ramen noodles.
The cost component is far larger than any perceived benefit.; 10/15/12, 7:19 AM
jr565 said...: Crimso wrote:
Unless the Mail made it up, they quoted Jones as saying: "We don’t fully understand how to input things like changes in the oceans, and because we don’t fully understand it you could say that natural variability is now working to suppress the warming. We don’t know what natural variability is doing."

there are so many complicated systems at work in climate that we can't really input it makes a mockery of the idea that we are able to track let alone predict accurately where the climate will go with any certainty.
If you can't input changes in oceans into a mathematical formula then how accurate are your models.
When the temperature doesn't change noticeably for 16 years, why then temperature isn't climate. When it does go up or down though, temperature becomes an accurate reflection of climate change. Malarkey.; 10/15/12, 8:35 AM
Dante said...: Concentrate on developing irreproachable methodology, and reward that with grants and attention, rather than those who find data that supports one hypothesis.

It turns out the climate system is pretty complicated. So what are you asking for is also quite expensive.

Like I said, the caution part of me would have used the $800B stimulus for investing in Nuclear. I mean, either Nuclear or AGW catastrophe has to be more terrible, and if it's nuclear, then AGW ain't so bad.

Then when China continues to use Coal, AGW catastrophe turns out to be as bad as Al Gore says and his beachfront property is all underwater, we can tell them "Told you so." At least Al Gore won't keep getting more massively rich of the taxpayer.; 10/15/12, 8:48 AM
Unknown said...: LOL:):):- Impact of global warming is increasing every year then how can people are saying that global warming was stopped 16 years ago. Most of the experts are saying that the greenland ice melt is also because of global warming; 10/15/12, 8:56 AM
Curious George said...: "Richard said...
We did it!!! Good job everyone!"

Hahaha!; 10/15/12, 9:11 AM
Dante said...: Lynn:
Well fire up that SUV and go tell someone.

First, those are not my words, though I think they are correct.

Second, the line you have above shows how manipulated you are.

A) US Autos produce around 1/5th of the C02 output of the US (1000 million metric tons of 5.3 million metric tons). See here.

B) C02 relates to temperature in a logarithmic scale (each doubling yields a linear increase in temperature).

This means that if the US continues to produce C02 at the same rate it has been, US Cars continue at the same rate, and China continues its increase as they have been, India increases as they have been and are expected, the temperature increase attributable to cars becomes tiny. And its even smaller as one looks to future contributions.

These are merely facts. There is a great youtube put out by Dr. Richard Muller. Look it up, and stop being a tool.

Or continue trying to make people feel guilty. I suggest you start by talking to the city planners who continue to contribute to idling cars on freeways, by not making free-flowing roads. Idling cars produce much more C02 per mile, and the start stop wastes gas. Also, all that traffic wastes huge amounts of people time.; 10/15/12, 9:14 AM
jr565 said...: What caused the earlier ice ages? What caused the earlier warming periods. The fact that we had both prior to us using any electricity suggests that our imput on this question is quite small. And that thee is no constancy of weather/climate. Ther are, rather, cyclical trends where the earth warms and the earth cools. Much of it is tied into the sun, and the oceans, the atmosphere, natural events (like vacancies eruptions) and weather patterns that are completely non predictive. How you think we could
Somehow create accurate formulas taking into account all the unknown and not understood variables is beyond me. But even if we could accurately predict these variables, they are beyond our control. Can we stop the sun, the ocean, volcanos or El Niño?; 10/15/12, 9:18 AM
jr565 said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/15/12, 9:31 AM
jr565 said...: I love how Lynn goes after the sUV drivers on a chat board on the Internet. A chat board on a server that I guarantee you is not running on windmill power. Using her computer which is plugged in at her house most likely and the power needed to power or recharge her computer is most assuredly not running on windmill power. The point being Lynne, your actions are as big a driver of man made global warming as an SUV driver, and all you're doing is posting snarky comments. Shouldn't the Luddites put their money where their mouths are and not waste our resources on trivial like posting on chat boards when the polar bears are suffering forOur crimes.
Perhaps those pushing the Man made global
Warming theories shouldn't be relying on so
Much carbon based energy to get the message out. Go lower tech. Use carrier pigeons, or here's a novel idea, fewer websites and books going over the same details. How about tuning in and dropping out and
Living on a commune with fellow Luddites where you aren't on the Internet and you aren't using dirty coal or
Gas In endeavors that dont require such expenditures.; 10/15/12, 9:41 AM
Unknown said...: Hagar said...
In earlier times still, there were dragonflies with 2 ft wingspans. What were the conditions to make that possible, and what brought them about? What were the changes to make the world we see today and what caused them?"

Evolution? Just a thought. Might run that baby up the flagpole and see who salutes.; 10/15/12, 11:17 AM
jr565 said...: Lynn wrote:
Evolution? Just a thought. Might run that baby up the flagpole and see who salutes.

Did evolution cause the ice age?; 10/15/12, 12:00 PM
Hagar said...: Living things evolve by adapting to changed conditions.
Dragonflies with 2 ft wingspans existed then because conditions allowed them to exist and perhaps flourish for a while.
And I suspect that those conditions may have involved much larger percentages of CO2 and O2 in the atmosphere than we see today.; 10/15/12, 12:43 PM
Nomennovum said...: "Evolution? Just a thought. Might run that baby up the flagpole and see who salutes." - Lindsey "Lynn" Meadows.

The ever-sarcastic starlet is right. Evolution -- the same thing that gave us big enough brains to fly to the moon, build SUVs, and make and star in porn videos that can be watched by billions for free. Evolution.; 10/15/12, 1:41 PM
Nomennovum said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/15/12, 1:55 PM
jimspice said...: Hey JR565, the maple tree in my back yard has a long history of regular cycles as well -- growing buds in spring, maturing leaves in summer, shedding its colored coat in fall, and sleeping nude in winter -- I know because I've been here long enough to witness it over and over. Well last summer and this, about mid-season, the tree's leaves have developed brown spots and dried up. I didn't know why. Well, just yesterday, in taking down some of the affected limbs, I discovered the cause: the wood was riddled with little burrows, plugged up with some pulpy substance, at the end of each, a little larvae of some sort. Creepy little buggers -- sort of waspy. Looks like I'll have to take the whole tree down.

My point? A system that has been stable and regular for long periods CAN become influenced by NEW factors, so much so that they might even overwhelm the old influences (what happened to the cooling we should have seen due to low sunspot activity over the past decade?). We are those wasps. Let's just hope it's not too late to save the tree.; 10/15/12, 2:32 PM
Synova said...: "What caused the earlier ice ages? What caused the earlier warming periods."

I realize that NO ONE is here but whatever.

We're in an ice house period that consists of ice ages and warm periods but is, overall, millions of years of winter. Which is where we are now.

What swings individual warming and cooling variations during that is probably solar and orbital cyclical variations (and possibly CO2 and Methane from human activities).

What causes the overall "ice house" (where we are now) and "green house" (dinosaurs) periods on the Earth is the rate of tectonic plate spread at mid-ocean ridges.; 10/15/12, 3:49 PM
traditionalguy said...: The Great Warming Hoax was a Big Lie within a Big Lie.

The warming never happened except a few outlier years such as 1997. The Graphs showing a trend were ALL from doctored and falsified data sets.

The warming if it had been happening happening had only good aspects for men living on this earth. It is cooling that kills and destroys men on this earth.; 10/15/12, 3:55 PM
eddie willers said...: is the rate of tectonic plate spread at mid-ocean ridges.

I'm old enough to remember when anyone mentioning tectonic plates were hooted at as going against the scientific consensus.; 10/15/12, 5:07 PM
Synova said...: "I'm old enough to remember when anyone mentioning tectonic plates were hooted at as going against the scientific consensus."

It wasn't that long ago. I think that the main proofs are post space-age when we could get some better pictures and data while looking down at the planet. That means late 1960's. I don't think we could even measure the rate of plate movement before then.; 10/15/12, 6:56 PM
Unknown said...: motorised curtain tracks
remote controlled curtains; 12/3/12, 4:35 AM