shoggoth

Well ok lets see what happens, I think it would be fairly easy for the temp rise 2001-2021 to average at about 0.2C/decade without requiring much difference in year to year global temperature than has been observed in the recent past.

You tell me to learn some statistics and then post something totally statistically wrong. A 10C rise in 10 years with the first year rising 0.1C: 0.1C, 2C, 3C, 4C, 5C, 6C, 7C, 8C, 9C, 10C Compaible with a trend of 10C/decade despite the first year being a 0.1C rise. A prediction of 0.2C/decade does not necessarily predict the rise of any *specific* decade, only the average over a suitible time period. One decade could be 0.15C rise while another is 0.25C. The overall period would be 0.2C/decade. We know the rise in temp over the last 30 years is about 0.2C/decade not because we base that on some arbitary 10 year period (1981-1991 certainly wouldn't give you 0.2C for example), but because 0.2C/decade is about the average for the last 30 years. If you are assuming 2C/century means temps must rise 0.2C between 2001 and 2011 then that is very wrong indeed.

Total ice mass of Antarctica in decline: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/200...a-ais022806.php

That isn't a problem, because as you admit 10 years is too short a timescale. If temp had gone up year on year over the last 20 years until 1998 you'd have a point. But it hasn't. You cannot assume a trend taken over any 10 year timescale of global temperature (or any data) provides a statistically meaningful test of the background warming trend. There is evidence in the past record that 10 years is too short a timescale: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Global-war...ed-in-1981.html There is simply no significant 11-year cycle visible in the global temperature records, which means the cooling due to a solar cycle minimum and warming due to a solar maximum is slight. Pure chance. If Jan 2007 wasn't so anomolously warm this one year drop (jan 2007 - jan 2008) wouldn't have been the biggest. An argument of massive cooling in 12 months cannot be hinged on whether the first month is anomolously warm or not, that would make no sense. Because 1998 was a strong el nino year and was inflated for that reason, just as temp is being deflated by the current la nina now. For that reason a trend started in 1998, or indeed ending in 2008, is telling us more about enso than any background trend of global temperature (which is what global warming is all about). This is illustrated by the fact that if you start the same trend in 1996 or 2000 rather than 1998 you get a warming trend. When the trend direction can alter just by taking the trend 2 years earlier or later that just shows you cannot assign meaning to a trend as small as 10 years fullstop. What causes 5 heads in a row sometimes in a coin toss? Chance. A long enough long term trend of ~0.2C a decade with enough noise will occasionally contain such periods of flatness by chance. Again refer to http://www.skepticalscience.com/Global-war...ed-in-1981.html

What is there to pay attention to? I notice Morano totally misrepresents the paper by Charles D. Camp and Ka Kit Tung. It actually supports the solar forcing levels used by climate models and the ones in the latest IPCC report. To imply that it is an "inconvenient scientific developments for proponents of catastrophic man-made global warming" is just nonsense. A lot more nonsense exists in the article than just that (the Bob Carter "global warming stopped in 1998" nonsense argument is rehashed too), but this is just a taster. The article is good old fashioned propaganda.

You presume their study has any merit. You'll find funding dries up if you produce inferior work, it doesn't have to be some kind of conspiracy.

The paper is incorrect and doesn't form the current view on the subject. Chemical methods might be accurate to 3%, but you won't get correct measurements if you are measuring in an area not representative of atmospheric co2 levels. Measuring in cities or downwind from cities can contain air more than 100ppm higher in co2, and it's very difficult to find areas that are not contaminated in such a way to perform measurements from. That's why pre-mauna loa co2 measurements suffered from such wild swings. Just look at Beck's graph and ask yourself if it makes sense that co2 wildly fluctuated from year to year until right at the moment mauna loa measurements came online and since then it's been a perfect smooth upwards curve. Did co2 somehow change behavior when new measurement methods started being used in the 1950s, as if co2 somehow knew it was being looked at? Or is it more likely that prior measurements using unreliable methodology and certainly weren't within 3% of actual atmospheric content?

1998 was so warm because of a strong el nino. Recent years without strong el ninos are getting closer to that mark which indicates there has been warming since 1998. Something those contrarian op-ed authors won't tell you.

The realclimate article was a short summary of mistaken assumptions about the surface record in general. It wasn't specifically about the issue you seem to think it is. The title of the article made it quite clear there would be talking about the urban heat island effect. And how can they be clouding the issue when they make the distinction crystal clear at the beginning? Look how clear it is made: The new focus of attention is the placement of the temperature sensors and other potential 'micro-site' effects that might influence the readings. There is a possibility that these effects may change over time, putting in artifacts or jumps in the record and then directly afterwards they say: This is slightly different from the more often discussed 'Urban Heat Island' effect which is a function of the wider area (and so could be present even in a perfectly set up urban station). RealClimate bring up Urban Heat Island Effect precisely because it's "more often discussed" (It's the longer running hobby-horse for those trying to discredit the surface record - see http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/UHIE.htm and http://www.warwickhughes.com/climate/fairbanks.htm for examples). They are addressing misconceptions about the surface record in general. RealClimate mention Observant readers will have noticed a renewed assault upon the meteorological station data that underpin some conclusions about recent warming trends for this reason. Which is fair enough for those who genuinely think like that. But in my opinion a good deal of the people in this are ones who want the surface record to be discredited by it just as they want it to be discredited by satellites or urban heat island effect or whatever they can use. It's quite clear the mistaken assumption RealClimate is answering regards the urban heat island effect, not the issue of microsite effects, they mention: "The new focus of attention is the placement of the temperature sensors and other potential 'micro-site' effects that might influence the readings. There is a possibility that these effects may change over time, putting in artifacts or jumps in the record"

The start of the the RealClimate article includes this: The new focus of attention is the placement of the temperature sensors and other potential 'micro-site' effects that might influence the readings. This is slightly different from the more often discussed 'Urban Heat Island' effect which is a function of the wider area (and so could be present even in a perfectly set up urban station) So perhaps you didn't read the link?

No. It's because there's been a cycle between Ice Ages and Interglacial periods. Those cycles are not man made. The little ice age has nothing to do with interglacial and glacial periods, it was a period of cooler temperatures a few hundred years back, it wasn't an actual ice age

This issue is addressed here http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archi...an-heat-island/ As for satellite data, there have been many periods of 4 years in which temperature hasn't risen in the satellite record. Natural variation is enough that the rise isn't year on year, and you can get multiple years in which temperature doesn't appear to increase, followed by a few years of large increase. It's not a smooth line. Besides the satellite data does show warming in the last 3 decades, so do ocean surface measurements and boreholes.

What is the difference between "warming" and "temperature rise"? I mean't to say "there's not enough recent warming to explain the recent co2 rise"

That isn't actually a reason. The little ice age is defined as a period of cooler temperatures, so all you are effectively saying is that the reason the temp has risen so much in the last 100 years is because it's risen.

There's not enough recent warming to explain the recent temperature rise, and there's a lag of hundreds of years for co2 to start rising after temperature. The current co2 rise is due to human emissions.

Natural disasterous climate changes are very infrequent, and by the time one actually happens it's very likely that our technology will have progressed enough to deal with it easily. Perhaps by then we would have abandoned living on the planet surface altogether and will be living in space. A more likely threat of climate disaster is one caused by ourselves before we have the technology to deal with it.

While co2 is just one variable I think the focus is on it because levels are increasing rapidly which has given it the potential to be a large warming factor in recent and coming decades. I don't think we can reduce co2 output and will have to just wait and see what happens.

Seems to have gone down in the last few days. Here's another graph of sunspot counts showing the lack of increase since 1950 http://newsletter.carterobservatory.org/ap...nspots_full.png The point is how do sunspot trends explain the warming in the last 30 years when sunspots have not gone up?

No increase in sunspots in last 50 years vs Rising temperature over last 30 years

imo bush's idea of technology as a solution is a much better idea than an unworkable plan of emission cuts - which is what kyoto II or whatever they want to call it will be.

I read it. I think it's cherrypicking problem issues in the real science and are exagerating them and omitting the possibility that the problem could be minor, or that it's been resolved. It's automatically considered to be such a huge problem to nullify the theory before they even begin. There is an urban heat island effect, it's a real phenomenon which these skeptic sites exagerate and sensationalize. In the case of the urban heat island effect, statistical analysis of the surface record has not found it has caused significant bias in the global surface record. I don't find anything to make me think otherwise. Just because there is a problem doesn't mean noone can figure out how much of a problem it is, or that it is so large as to blow the theory up. In all scientific areas there are problems, and it's very easy for sites who wants to imply the science is false to go along cherrypicking these various problems and overexagerating and sensationalize them - effectively turning what is actually a trivial problem requiring some study to overcome into a "theory killer". Lots of creationists sites emply the same tactic against mainstream geology when they cherrypick various problems with radiodating techniques, exagerating them from slight issues that can be overcome into fully blown falsifications of modern geology (eg here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v...radiodating.asp). All the time implying that these problems are being ignored by fraudulent scientists. 1998 was a very warm year due to a strong el nino and resulted in an extreme warm a blip, so that's why he starts off in 1998. Technically it's not lying to say temperature has gone down since 1998, but it is incorrect to claim global warming has stopped since 1998. Global warming is a long term upward decadal trend, and such an upward trend exists in the records (surface and satellite) through and since 1998. Can't tell who you refer to here, but Bob Carter says what he used: This is the record he's talking about: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/nhshgl.gif

It is continuing to go up, look at the black trendline: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/nhshgl.gif Those are not considered reliable and here's why. http://www.john-daly.com/cause/cause.htm It's very easy to just assume that like mr john daly has done, by cherrypicking certain stations and making claims that are not backed up while omitting relevant studies that have found no statistical basis for urban heat island explaining the changes. But the science says otherwise http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/wmo/ccl/rural-urban.pdf Also nice diversion trick. The argument put forward was "Then why has the worlds temperature level been near zero up or down since 1998?" which is false. Now you're both doing a 180 and saying "ah it hasn't warmed much since 1998". No appealing to the satellite records doesn't help because those too show warming since 1998 (another thing: dont trust satellite graphs on skeptics sites like john-daly.com - go and look up the actual UAH data from their own website) BTW the ridiculous article in the Telegraph by Bob Carter that started off all this "temperature hasn't risen since 1998" nonsense (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jh...4/09/do0907.xml) used the CRU surface record as the example! I wonder why he used that if it is so obviously inaccurate and unreliable? Contrarians have a habit of picking and choosing what data to use to exclude as "unreliable" if it doesn't support their argument.

No it hasn't. This issue has been looked at thoroughly by scientists and they have not found any statistical basis for any significant bias in the surface temperature. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/wmo/ccl/rural-urban.pdf Satellite data is no more reliable. Depending on the methodology used to combine different satellite records, correcting for drift and callibration problems you can get very different results. UAH shows warming of about 0.14C per decade and RSS shows warming in the satellite record of over 0.18C per decade. Even using the lower UAH record, the satellite trend shows warming of about 0.13C since 1998, which isn't far behind the co2 increase in that time of about 4.5%. It is however far behind the sunspot trends (which are really not going up - unlike temperature), and solar irradiance. It's not possible to pay them all attention, there will always be errors in the data, but not necessarily enough to bias the whole record significantly. If it did bias the record significantly this should be picked up statistically, yet statistical tests show there is no significant bias (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/wmo/ccl/rural-urban.pdf) Coming up with a theory that paint has significantly biased the record is a hypothesis that needs to be tested. It's not sufficient to just assume it has done so.

It is called the logarithmic trend.This is known physics. This was long ago aknowledged by the IPCC. So why continue the farce? The part above which I have bolded is incorrect. The doubling of co2 from 560ppm to 1120ppm would result in the same increase in temperature as the doubling from 280ppm to 560ppm. That there is the logarithmic relationship - a constant temperature increase for each doubling of co2. Also their <1C value for the constant is taken from the plain direct forcing from increasing co2 alone and doesn't take into account any feedbacks, which is why it differs from the mainstream range.

It is continuing to go up, look at the black trendline: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/nhshgl.gif