Later

Time to focus on some other stuff for awhile.

Bleg: Which Contrarian Predicted Warming in 1975?

For something I'm working on, I'm interested to know of any contarians who predicted, circa 1975, the 0.6-0.7°C of global warming that has transpired up to now.

And why.

Lindzen, Michaels, etc? Anyone?

Or who, of today's contrarians -- Anthony Horsepower? -- would have made that prediction back in 1975? And why.

Can We Talk About Warmgasms?

Someone wrote to me complaining about what he called Kevin Trenberth's "warmgasm" -- his purported delight in the possible appearance of an El Niño later this year, and with it still warmer global temperatures.

That's reading an awful lot into a half sentence of his: "Trenberth said this El Nino may even push the globe out of a decade-long slowdown in temperature increase, 'so suddenly global warming kicks into a whole new level.'"

To me it sounds like more of a warning.

However...I can understand myself, how an El Niño and its higher surface temperatures will be...interesting...from a scientific perspective.

Climate scientists spend their entire lives trying to understand the climate system, working very hard to do the very best science they can do, for which now they mostly get a lot of shit and abuse from deniers, politicians, ideologues, etc. -- the likes of Marc Morano, Mark Steyn, James "Jimmy" Inhofe, Anthony Watts Horsepowers, and all the anti-scientific bloggerdicks out there.

So there can certainly be a certain scientific satisfaction in seeing the predictions and expections of AGW being verified (yet again!). Especially if it turns the conversation from the unscientific focus on the "pause" and puts your enemies on the defensive. That's just human nature.

Not that their position will change. Data never changes their minds. They crowed over the decline in sea level in 2010, when scientists said it was just temporary and sea level rise would resume. When it did, did you see any of them admit they were wrong, let alone analyze why they were wrong?

No, I didn't either.

There will never be an end to climate denial, ever. It will go on for decades, with ever more clever, distorted, and misleading reasons advanced by the climate clowns for why AGW is false, despite the immense amount of science already behind it, despite ever higher temperatures.

The world is going to warm, just like it has been for decades now. Physics says it has to. An El Niño will (again) show that. That's bad for the planet, but, in its way, good for science.

--
P.S. I am sure this post will be miscontrued and improperly cited by the evildoers among us. But then, don't they always?

PPS: I am still curious to know of any contarian who would have, in 1975, predicted/expected 0.6-0.7 C of warming by 2014. And why. 

March 19 Webcast -- "Tracking Carbon In A Warming World"

Upcoming webcast announcement - Tracking Carbon In A Warming World
Reporting, commentary, and analysis on climate change. (View thru a browser)
[ Visit our youtube channel | Follow on twitter | Like on facebook ]

Upcoming Webcast Ralph Keeling Britton Stephens Tracking Carbon In A Warming World March 19, 2014 3:00 pm ET / 12:00 pm PT The "Keeling curve" image of rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations is one of the most iconic in the climate science literature, with a potentially strong message as average concentrations exceed the 400 parts per million threshold. But a challenging funding environment might soon leave the historic monitoring program in its wake. In that case, how will we track CO2 concentrations in the future? And what would the loss of the Mauna Loa record mean for scientists' ability to track our changing climate? Tune in on March 19 with climate scientists Ralph Keeling from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., and Britton Stephens from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., on these important topics. You can submit questions now! [Get More Details] In Case You Missed It "The Challenges of Climate Change Communication" "2014: The Year Ahead in Climate Change News" visit our youtube channel | follow on twitter | like on facebook The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media is published by Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 195 Prospect St., New Haven, CT 06511. Copyright © 2014 Yale University School of Forestry & Environmental Studies All rights reserved.

50% Chance of El Niño Later This Year

NOAA's Climate Prediction Center puts the chance of an El Niño this summer or fall at "about 50%."

You know what that means?

If it happens it means that contrarians will suddenly understand the need to correct for ENSOs when figuring out the underlying temperature trend.

Also, it will mean the accuracy of surface stations will again be disputed. Isn't it funny how during "the pause" the surface station record has been just fine? Anthony Watts in 2009:

"The reliability of data used to document temperature trends is of great importance in this debate. We can't know for sure if global warming is a problem if we can't trust the data."
 — Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?, 2009

Added:
In a Huffington Post story about the forecast, Kevin Trenberth says:

"This could be a substantial event and I think we're due. And I think it could have major consequences....

Trenberth said this El Nino may even push the globe out of a decade-long slowdown in temperature increase, "so suddenly global warming kicks into a whole new level."

The article also notes that an El Nino could bring much needed rain to California and the American southwest.

WUWT, Physics-Deprived

Pity the poor souls at WUWT, physics-deprived, innocent of the concept of absolute temperatures, unable to understand the concept of an anomaly, led around by a scientific weakling:

A few more months like that, and we'll be down in the domain of Kamerlingh Onnes.

Update:
Looks like someone got though the thick WUWT skull -- his headline has been changed to

Note that the post's URL still shows the basic error:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/05/uah-global-temperature-down-40-in-february/

My bet is that he still doesn't understand the difference.

Physics Rules

The Lesser of Two Pauses

Really, they ought to be called "slowdowns," not pauses:

See here for more about the Cowtan & Way dataset of average monthly global surface temperatures. (Error bars are ±2σ via OLS, no autocorrelation.)

When Freeman Dyson Suggested a Carbon Tax

This 1977 paper by Freeman Dyson is interesting. It's titled "Can We Control the Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere?" and appeared in the journal Energy.

From the first section, "Statement of the Problem":

There exists a huge literature attempting to assess or to prognosticate the effects of the increasing atmospheric CO2 on the climate of the earth. Such attempts are useful and necessary, but they run into formidable technical difficulties. Even the mean global temperature rise caused by a given quantity of CO2 is subject to great uncertainty: and the effects of CO2 on local and  time-variable phenomena (which may be crucially important to agriculture and other human activities) are more uncertain still. It is possible that the rise in CO2 will be on balance beneficial to mankind, especially in reducing climatic extremes in very cold and very dry regions. The prevailing opinion is that the dangers greatly outweigh the benefits. But in spite of various dire warnings, it seems inevitable that we shall continue for many decades to burn fossil fuels and to increase the level of atmospheric CO2, without knowing with any degree of certainty the consequences of our actions.

and from the "Conclusions" section:

There seems to be no law of physics or of ecology that would prevent us from taking action to halt or reverse the growth of atmospheric CO2 within a few years if this should become necessary. Two methods of withdrawing carbon from the atmosphere have been described, among many possible alternatives. One is to plant fast-growing trees on a massive scale on marginal land; the other is to grow and harvest swamp-plants and convert them into humus or peat. The possible scale and speed of these operations appear to be limited by the availability of fertilizer rather than by land or financial costs. The establishment of such a “carbon bank” in the form of trees or peat is not to be regarded as a permanent solution of the CO2 problem. It is a stop-gap measure to hold the atmospheric CO, level down for a few decades and buy time in  which a permanent shift from reliance on fossil fuels to renewable photosynthetic (or nuclear) fuels can be completed.

On the last page Dyson proposes a tax on carbon sufficient to accomplish all this tree-planting and peat-converting. He imagines eliminating 5 gigatonnes of carbon a year at a cost of $25 billion, presumably in 1977 dollars. Today that would be almost $20 per tonne of carbon in current dollars.

He calls the cost estimates "exceedingly crude," and they do seem a little low compared to what's tossed around today, but just slightly below Australian's rate when they had one. But at least then he seemed open to the possibility that action to control carbon might be necessary. Not so much today.

But Dyson did write in his book Disturbing the Universe:

“We are scientists second and human beings first. We become politically involved because knowledge implies responsibility.” 

Rise Up

We Have a Winner

for

"When May I Shoot a Student?" by Greg Hampikian in the New York Times.

Hadley Centre: 7th-warmest January

Shadow off Mt. Ranier

The Hadley Centre found January to be the 7th-warmest January since 1849, +0.506°C warmer than the 1961-1990 average. (GISS found it to be the 4th-warmest.)

The 30-year trend is +0.17 °C/decade.

The 15-year trend is +0.07 °C/decade (but has a large uncertainty, of course; see this nice plot by Tamino).

The trend since last weekend is....sure to be quoted by some blogger somewhere or other as "proof" climate change isn't happening. Probably Patrick Moore.

Who is Patrick Moore?

Well, he's not a co-founder of Greenpeace, as you often hear (and I mistakenly repeated two days ago). Just an early member.

Greenpeace wrote a statement on the issue:

Patrick Moore frequently portrays himself as a founder or co-founder of Greenpeace, and many news outlets have repeated this characterization. Although Mr. Moore played a significant role in Greenpeace Canada for several years, he did not found Greenpeace. Phil Cotes, Irving Stowe, and Jim Bohlen founded Greenpeace in 1970. Patrick Moore applied for a berth on the Phyllis Cormack in March, 1971 after the organization had already been in existence for a year. A copy of his application letter and Greenpeace's response are available here (PDF). [Greenpeace, 12/7/10]

Media Matters has more about Patrick Moore, writing:

Patrick Moore founded Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. in 1991, a communications strategy firm that promotes energy-intensive industries including "mining, energy, forestry, aquaculture, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and manufacturing," and supports "environmentally sound oil extraction, like is being done in the Canadian oil sands."

He's also pro-nuclear power, though I can't fault him for that. But Greenpeace suggests he sold-out, having said before he became a "consultant":

"It should be remembered that there are employed in the nuclear industry some very high-powered public relations organizations. One can no more trust them to tell the truth about nuclear power than about which brand of toothpaste will result in the sexiest smile,"(9) he wrote before becoming a spokesman for polluters.

Here's his recent testimony before Congress. Try not to gag. But it's alright to laugh (how can you not at this scientific charlatan?)

The Pause That Ain't

Tamino has been making a strong case that the trend of surface temperatures isn't any different than it has been since 1975, except for some ordinary fluctuations about the trend. He's giving away his graphs for free, and they're worth reproducing.

Here, in 5 short steps, is his proof that there is no pause.

First, take the Cowtan & Way data for surface temperatures, which is HadCRUT4 infilled by kriging. (This is a nice introduction to kriging, if you're looking for one.)

Plot the annual anomaly value from 1975 to 2000:

Determine the linear trend:

and the uncertainty of that trend:

In this chart, the first dashed line on either side of the trendline (which is the solid line) is the 1-standard deviation value, and the second dashed line outside it is the 2-standard deviation value.

Project these trend lines to the present:

Add in the annual Cowtan & Way anomalies up to 2013:

What you see is that the present (last) anomaly is not even one standard deviation below the 1975-2000 trend. No different than it's often been before.

It's hard to make it more clear than this. By calculating the trend only "since 1998" or only "for the last 17 years" or the like, with nonkriged data, you're only presenting a piece of the picture -- a highly selected piece -- a picture where the early data is above the long-term trendline, and the later data is below the long-term trendline. (And not even below it by that much.) It's the SkS escalator graph but looking just at the last step.

By the way, the C&W trend since 1975 is 0.17 ± 0.02 °C/decade (1-sigma, OLS uncertainty, R² = 0.83). Tamino's value for sigma includes autocorrelation, which is why it's larger than the one here.

As he wrote, "If that’s what you call a pause,' then it’s not a very impressive one."

Return of an Ice Spike

Another ice spike showed up in my refrigerator freezer, the first one since last May. I almost feel honored.

How Much Warming Since 1950? This Much.

From last week's Science magazine, from Gabi Hegerl and Peter Stott:

This says that internal variability, which Judith Curry likes to emphasize, is only about 1 part in 6.

Dr. Patrick Moore Just Misled Congress

Patrick Moore

Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore just testified before Congress, and purposely misled them about carbon dioxide. (Correction 2/28: No, he really isn't a founder of Greenpeace.)

He said, among other misleading statements:

Then an Ice Age occurred 450 million years ago when CO2 was 10 times higher than today.' 

How do I know Moore purposely misled Congress? Because I corrected him on exactly this point on Twitter a few months ago. And he simply ignored all that science.

--

It is true that an ice age occurred about 450 million years ago -- the Ordovician–Silurian ice age.

But little is known about CO2 levels at that time -- as I pointed out to Moore on Twitter -- and what's even more significant is that the Sun was weaker than by about 4%. And the continents were in different places, meaning the planet's albedo was very different from today.

Moore ignored all this in order to pretend that the O-S ice age means CO2 is an insignificant greenhouse gas.

The Sun's irradiance increases by about 1% every 110 million years. (See the top equation on page 4 here, or Pierrehumbert's textbook pg 12 equation 1.1.) So 450 million years ago there was about 54 W/m² less sunlight impinging on the top of Earth's atmosphere.

That's a huge amount. By comparison, recall that anthropogenic CO2's radiative forcing is now only about 1.9 W/m².

The continents were in places nothing like where they are today. The Earth's albedo (reflectance) would have been signficantly different.

But if the Earth's albedo then was the same as today's, 0.3, it would have taken lots of CO2 just to counteract the weaker Sun. You can calculate this easily:

(1-albedo)*ΔS/4 = CO2's RF = 5.35*ln(CO2/today's baseline CO2)

or CO2 = 1640 ppm. That's with no albedo change (unlikely), just to get the same average global temperature as today (which includes our ice sheets).

Even worse, we really don't know what CO2 levels were back then. On Twitter Moore casually tossed around the cartoon to the right:

The problem is, there is very little data from back then -- proxy data points are about 10 million years apart -- and these curves come from carbon cycle models, which are much more uncertain than, say, today's climate models.

(Carbon cycle modeling is an integral part of climate models, but also their biggest uncertainty.)

This excellent review article by Dana L. Royer of Wesleyan covers CO2-forcing during the Phanerozoic -- the last 541 million years of Earth's history.

From Royer, Geochimica (2006).
Today is at the far right of the horizontal axis;
 intervals are 100 M yrs backwards.

Royer writes (pg 5666), about long-term carbon models:

The best-regarded model of this class that predicts CO2 for the full Phanerozoic is GEOCARB, which has a time-step of 10 my (Berner and Kothavala, 2001); this means that CO2 fluctuations operating at timescales shorter than 10 my may not influence GEOCARB.

10 million years between time steps. A huge amount can happen in 10 million years. Look how much CO2 changed during the PETM, and that was only about 200,000 years.

By the way, the O-S ice age lasted only 0.5 M yrs.

In fact, Royer says that 4% lower sunshine means the glaciation threshold rises from 500 ppm today to 3000 ppm then. Dr. Patrick Moore completely ignored that knowledge.

So the cartoon is very misleading, without error bars in either the vertical or (especially) the horizontal direction.

Moore ignored all this. He wanted to paint a certain picture -- that CO2 is not very relevant -- and he was doing to do that with or without science.

In this case, mostly without.

These are the kind of rogues we have testifying before Congress on the most important issue of our day.

Update: SkS wrote about the O-S ice period here.

NEW: Western UK's Winter of Weather Discontent Featured in Yale Forum Video

Western U.K.'s Winter of Weather Discontent Featured in New Video (Feb 25 2014)

Reporting, commentary, and analysis on climate change. (View thru a browser)

WHAT'S NEW(s)   Western U.K.'s Winter of Weather Discontent Featured in New Video (Peter Sinclair video) New video produced for The Yale Forum points to historic storms ripping through much of southwestern coast of United Kingdom virtually since the start of 2014 and suggests slim odds they occurred naturally. [Watch the video]   OTHER RECENT ARTICLES Strange Bedfellows ... and Fear of Broad Impacts of Mann/UVa Court Ruling (John Wihbey) Six Climate Freelancers Seeking Support Base of 800 Subscribers (Bud Ward) Thoughts on Abrupt Climate Change, As In 30 Years, not 100 (Peter Sinclair Video) Reviewing Impacts of Historic Drought Facing California and the West (Bruce Lieberman) Thinking Appropriately About Climate Change (Paul C. Stern) Key Facts, Issues and Next Steps on Keystone XL Pipeline (John Wihbey)   visit our youtube channel | follow on twitter | like on facebook   The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media is published by Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 195 Prospect St., New Haven, CT 06511. Copyright © 2014 Yale University School of Forestry & Environmental Studies All rights reserved.

Mann v. Ball Still On

Steve McIntyre says he checked with Tim Ball, and Mann's lawsuit against him is still going on:

Steve McIntyre (Comment #124923)
February 21st, 2014 at 3:46 pm
"I checked with Tim Ball and the Ball lawsuit has not been dismissed. They have outstanding discovery requests, but to go from mere delay to succeed in a motion for dismissal is a large step and one that has not been taken."

http://rankexploits.com/musings/2014/comments-on-mann-continued/#comment-12492

If "fraudulent" Isn't An Accusation of Fraud, What Is?

At the legal blog Popehat (?), Ken White writes:

My view of the case is unchanged. I think the statements Mann attacks are best viewed as opinions expressed through vivid rhetoric and hyperbole, rather than statements of literal fact susceptible to defamation analysis. That view is strengthened by the steady progress of the law since 2012 in cases like Cox v. Obsidian Finance, which I discussed last month.1 The tone and rhetorical flair of the statements, the places they were published, and their entire tenor strongly suggest they were argumentative opinions rather than falsifiable statements of fact. Therefore, they ought to be absolutely protected by the First Amendment.

(My emphasis.) So if calling Mann et al's work "fraudulent" is just "vivid rhetoric and hyperbole," what would you have to call it if in fact you thought it really was fraudulent?

I think that's a good question.

By the way, I found yet another instance where Mark Steyn called Mann et al's work fraud or fraudulent, also in the National Review:

Confronted by serious questions from Stephen McIntyre, the dogged Ontario retiree whose Climate Audit website exposed the fraud of Dr. Mann’s global-warming “hockey stick” graph)....

So that makes three: in 2006 in The Australian, in 2009 in National Review, and in 2012 in NR.