Forgetting that the planet has seasons, climate denialists for months have been hoo-hooing about snowfalls and cold weather. Some of the more serious propagandists among them claim that the Earth is now in a cooling cycle, and that temperatures have been falling since the record hot year of 1998.
Really?
Head on over to Open Mind, and take a look at the facts.
NASA GISS [Goddard Institute for Space Studies] has released the estimated monthly temperature for December 2009, which closes out the year 2009, which closes out the decade of the 2000s. The result: 2005 is still the hottest calendar year, 2009 is the 2nd-hottest year ever, although it’s really in a statistical tie with 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, and 2007.
They’ve confused weather with climate. They’ve failed to keep score. Perhaps they’ve spent wasted their time hacking e-mails instead of measuring climate.
RealClimate carries the news in a post by some of NASA’s top scientists, including James Hansen:
The past year, 2009, tied as the second warmest year in the 130 years of global instrumental temperature records, in the surface temperature analysis of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). The Southern Hemisphere set a record as the warmest year for that half of the world. Global mean temperature, as shown in Figure 1a, was 0.57°C (1.0°F) warmer than climatology (the 1951-1980 base period). Southern Hemisphere mean temperature, as shown in Figure 1b, was 0.49°C (0.88°F) warmer than in the period of climatology.
How will the critics treat this news? And, what were they doing during the past decade when all those warm days rolled into weeks, rolled into months and years, and finally, to the warmest decade ever?
Caption from RealClimate: Figure 1. (a) GISS analysis of global surface temperature change. Green vertical bar is estimated 95 percent confidence range (two standard deviations) for annual temperature change. (b) Hemispheric temperature change in GISS analysis. (Base period is 1951-1980. This base period is fixed consistently in GISS temperature analysis papers. . . Base period 1961-1990 is used for comparison with published HadCRUT analyses in Figures 3 and 4.)
Heat things up a bit, and spread the alarm:
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Greenhouse effect is the gradual warming of the air surrounding the earth as a result of heat being trapped by environmental pollution.
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bloody hell, that was way longer than i’d anticipated. sorry about that. please feel free to ask if you’d like me to tl;dr it :-)
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Sorry if I jumped the gun, but I’ve seen all too many cases of people arguing that, since CO_2 is a trace gas, it cannot have an effect on climate. So apologies for the snark.
I still don’t see why you took issue with my describing the increase as “huge”, bearing in mind I immediately qualified it. and considering it’s the specifically the relative increase that’s the key point, I stand by my decision to use a percentage increase.
But yes, you’re right, the increase has been from about 280ppm to 380ppm since pre-industrial levels. Whichever way it’s couched, it’s going up, and we’re responsible.
We seem to be arguing across purposes here. My point was not that we can’t explain what affects the climate, but rather that it’s immensely difficult to identify with any great certainty what caused a given climate fluctuation thousands of years ago. Climatologists do have a good understanding of what forcings affect climate. See this graphic, for instance: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-2-1-figure-2.html (there are a few more that we know about, such as milankovitch cycles, that don’t apply on human time-scales and hence aren’t included).
There seem to be favoured theories for most of them, and there’s plenty of work being carried out in this field (understanding how the climate has reacted in the past gives useful information on how it’ll react in the future). But the overall relevance to our understanding of the causes of recent climate change is minimal, since we can *measure* what is affecting the climate at the moment.
Re-reading your post from January 22, 2010 at 9:31 pm, your main issue with AGW seems to be about how the concept was developed (please correct me if I’ve misunderstood).
I can assure you that it *wasn’t* derived from correlation between global temperatures and atmospheric CO_2. It’s simply a consequence of the radiative properties of GHGs.
The greenhouse effect is a well understood physical process, and was hypothesised decades before anyone seriously considered that human emissions might be a problem (Arrhenius estimated in 1894 that it would take on the order of 3000 years for CO_2 levels to double. Turns out he underestimated how much we’d enjoy burning fossil fuels :-)
(Quick aside: if you’ve not done so already, I heartily recommend “The Discovery of Global Warming”, by Spencer Weart of the American institute of physics: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html . I found the “summary of the history of climate change science” in particular gives a very readable overview of how we’ve come to understand what we do today.)
Anyway, the implication of this is that adding greenhouse gasses will inevitably change the atmospheric radiation balance (ie. the net difference between energy acquired from the sun, and the energy radiated back into space), causing warming.
It also makes a number of other predictions, that have since been validated:
* Tropospheric warming coupled with stratospheric cooling — due to the energy imbalance, less heat is reaching the upper layers of the atmosphere.
* Increasing downward longwave radiation, and a corresponding decrease in outgoing longwave radiation (the greatest changes corresponding to the absorption spectra of CO_2, CH_4 and, to a lesser extent, other GHGs). These wavelengths are being trapped more than would otherwise be expected.
* Greater warming observed at night and at high latitudes than during the day and in the tropics.
“I think it is interesting that explaining previous warming and cooling is considered to be my burden, not yours.”
I didn’t mean to imply that in any way. But I do think you need to provide evidence that current warming isn’t due to anthropogenic causes, if you want to argue otherwise.
“Many scientists decided to abandon objectivity and the scientific method.”
Would you mind naming some of them, and explaining what they’ve done wrong? I can think of a few names, but I imagine they’re not the ones you’re thinking of ;-)
“Absolutes started appearing in every argument for anthropogenic global warming.”
I don’t see any scientists operating in absolutes; certainly the IPCC reports don’t. Which is not surprising, since science cannot provide absolute proof of anything. The evidence for AGW is extremely strong though.
I can see how it might appear that way though. as I’m sure you’re aware, neither the media nor politicians are known for their nuanced approach to ideas.
“Words like “denier” and “consensus” started being used.”
To put it bluntly, if someone blindly dismisses scientific evidence, or applies a critical eye to one side of the argument only, they don’t deserve to be described as a sceptic.
As for the consensus, I agree that it’s not scientific evidence, but it’s a very good *proxy* for scientific evidence. The fact it needs to be invoked at all is primarily due to the politicisation of the issue — there has been a concerted attempt to persuade the public that the evidence is all up in the air, that even the scientists aren’t sure (any resemblance to the Discovery Institute’s “wedge strategy” is purely coincidental, natch…).
But that’s just blatantly untrue: a survey a couple of years back showed that ~90% of earth scientists and ~97% of climatologists agree that human emissions are the primary driver of current warming. Dozens of scientific bodies have been sufficiently convinced by the evidence that they’re prepared to publish statements in support; none have come out against. That’s not quite cell theory or thermodynamics levels of agreement, but it’s up there with the best.
That there is a consensus doesn’t mean that no more evidence will be accepted, or that no-one is allowed to question it. What it *does* imply is that the evidence in favour is extremely strong, and people shouldn’t be dismissing it unless they have read and understood all the background. Anything less just smacks of epic amounts of hubris.
The takeaway message here shouldn’t be that “almost all scientists agree about this, therefore they are obviously right”, but rather “almost all scientists agree about this, so their conclusion should be seriously considered”.
“Skeptics were dismissed, harshly, on flimsy grounds.”
Do you mean sceptics, or the aforementioned “deniers”? I disagree about the former — scientists sceptical of the consensus position, such as Richard Lindzen, don’t seem to have much trouble getting papers published. There is absolutely no evidence that scientists putting forward well constructed alternative theories in the peer reviewed journals are being stamped on.
As for people who dismiss science without evidence, I don’t see why anyone should give them the time of day, let alone scientists. They are cranks, plain and simple.
On the other hand, there are a lot of people who seem quite happy to throw baseless accusations of fraud at climatologists, at every opportunity and without any evidence.
“The consequences of non-action were grossly exaggerated.”
The plain, unvarnished truth looks serious enough, without any need for exaggeration. And arguing that scientists are exaggerating the consequences seems a little strange when you immediately announce that we’re all doomed anyway.
I don’t think we’re beyond hope. We do need to start acting very soon, both to limit warming and to mitigate against the inevitable effects. But our actions over the next decade will likely make a critical difference in the extent of the damage, and the cost of dealing with it.
******
I’ve glossed over several things in a (futile) attempt to keep my post from getting too long. Please do point out anything you want me to clarify or expand on, and i’d be happy to do so.
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Are you old enough to remember?
That’s exactly what was said about the ozone holes and CFCs. No reason to worry, they can’t be controlled, and if they could be, the Saudis, or Chinese, or someone, would keep using CFCs and sink the planet.
Have you heard much carping about the problem lately?
Sometimes solutions work better than we expect.
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I note that you once again muck about refuting arguments I did not advance. It is interesting that you immediately assume that because I insist on using real numbers as opposed to percentages and unspecific descriptors (“huge”) I must be making an invalid argument. Is real data an anathema to you?
“The earth has indeed warmed and cooled naturally in the past. This doesn’t mean that human emissions can’t cause the climate to warm or cool.”
I completely agree with that statement. Of course, the inverse is also true, perhaps more so. If we don’t know why the Earth warmed and cooled in the past, why do you assume those mechanisms are inoperative today? How do we know that the current warming is related to anthropogenic carbon dioxide concentrations and not something else entirely?
Here is a simple question – what is the “normal” temperature for the Earth? And please, don’t confuse normal with preferred.
Let’s try another quick thought problem – perhaps the Earth is actually cooling due to these other mechanisms, but because of anthropogenic carbon dioxide we are not cooling, but warming. Therefore, if we stopped releasing these gases, we would start an ice age.
You see, without understanding the natural forces at work here, how can we make a logical decision regarding what to do about it? Is anthropogenic carbon dioxide a non-issue, big problem, small problem, benefit, or what?
“You may as well argue that, since people have died of natural causes in the past, murder is impossible. claiming that we cannot allocate blame for current warming until we can also identify the causes of every other climate fluctuation is equally nonsensical.”
Very funny. The argument I’m making, in your terms, is that most people die of natural causes rather than murder. So, simply from a statistical standpoint, in any given instance, it is much more likely to be natural causes than murder. So…barring additional data we should assume natural causes. That should in fact be our default position. Once we understand better all the details of how people die from natural causes, then we can evaluate the situation better. But let’s make damn sure of our facts before we hang someone.
Your position is – well we know next to nothing about how people die naturally, but murder is a terrible thing, so let’s assume it is murder anyway and get on with hanging someone.
I think it is interesting that explaining previous warming and cooling is considered to be my burden, not yours. Usually the guy walking around with the “The End Is Near” sign is required to prove that the end really is near. The rest of us just assume that the since the end wasn’t yesterday, it is unlikely to be tomorrow. Our assumptions better fit the available data.
“We have plenty of evidence that the currently observed warming can only be fully accounted for by including the increase in anthropogenic GHGs.” How can this statement possibly be correct? If we don’t know what caused past warming and cooling, how can we possibly have data showing GHGs are solely the cause of current warming?
Do I know the mechanism for past climate change? Of course not, but then again, obviously, neither do you. Which is the crux of the problem, so to speak.
Let me plainly speak the truth. What has happened here is that good, honest scientists developed a rational theory which, if true, could result in catastrophic problems for the human race. To avoid the problem we must make rapid, disruptive, expensive changes to our society. There may not be sufficient time to study the issue, or know for certain if the theory is true.
What to do? If scientists properly represented the uncertainty regarding the theory, people would balk at the expense of protecting ourselves. Therefore…to save humanity from a possible threat, many scientists decided to abandon objectivity and the scientific method. Absolutes started appearing in every argument for anthropogenic global warming. Words like “denier” and “consensus” started being used. Skeptics were dismissed, harshly, on flimsy grounds. The consequences of non-action were grossly exaggerated. Hangers-on and pretenders then came into the mix – those that know nothing little of the science, but want the theory to be true so they can push other agendas, or to gain money or power.
I understand why this has happened. But let me assuage you, here and now. Run the numbers. Whether anthropogenic global warming is true or not, there is nothing we can do about it. Nothing. There is no amount of money or political will can stop it at this point. The U.S. and Europe could emit zero carbon dioxide tomorrow, and it wouldn’t change a thing – The Saudis will still pump oil, China and India, and the rest of the developing world will burn it. Neither has any rational choice in the matter. Carbon dioxide concentrations will increase well beyond any hope of reversal. It is a demographic, scientific, political, and economic certainty. Actually, the whole thing was quixotic exercise from day one.
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Geoman:
the huge increases in CO_2 are relative to pre-industrial levels, of course. and percentages are a perfectly reasonable scientific technique, used in thousands of papers in respectable journals every year. wait…you’re not going for the good old “CO_2 is a trace gas, it can’t have any effect!” canard, by any chance?
the earth has indeed warmed and cooled naturally in the past. this doesn’t mean that human emissions can’t cause the climate to warm or cool. you may as well argue that, since people have died of natural causes in the past, murder is impossible. claiming that we cannot allocate blame for current warming until we can also identify the causes of every other climate fluctuation is equally nonsensical.
we have plenty of evidence that the currently observed warming can only be fully accounted for by including the increase in anthropogenic GHGs. the evidence is inconsistent with any other proposed hypothesis. claiming that it cannot be down to human GHG emissions, and instead is due to some unknown, unspecified other cause is just a cop-out.
it’s only a valid scientific argument if you can give a good reason why the CO_2 we have added to the atmosphere isn’t causing the expected warming, or give some alternative hypothesis that explains observations more effectively. preferably both.
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Geoman, speaking of straw man arguments, as you do, I wonder where you got the idea I think that. I didn’t say that, I don’t think that, and it’s not close enough to accurate to let it pass.
Moreover, none of the planning to reduce warming is based on that notion. Take a look at EPA’s recent set of regulations for a good, rational example of how to deal with what we know about the science.
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In one post you manage to touch on every cynical, dismissive, illogical, and snide argument for global warming that I can imagine. The arguments you use, and your method of arguing, are exactly what fills me with doubt.
First off, the point of my post was not to deny most of the facts you present. I agree with many of them. You spend most of your time constructing strawman, then stomping them into the earth with childish glee.
Simply put, the theory is that greenhouse gases cause warming. We produce greenhouse gases. It is warming. We are causing warming.
That is NOT a scientific theory as I understand it, but a mix of facts and conjectures that may or may not have anything to do with each other. You are looking into the sky and seeing a group of stars that look like a lion, and then insisting it might bite us all while we sleep.
Greenhouse gases cause warming. Yes I agree. The Earth is warmer for it. Well proven science. We are producing greenhouse gases (though I would dispute the “huge” comment. Huge compared to…what exactly?). I would note the trick you have already pulled here. Greenhouse gases cause warming, we are producing lots of carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas. The hidden lie in that statement is that carbon dioxide does not cause most of greenhouse effect on Earth. Water vapor does. Indisputably I might add.
Forward. Carbon dioxide concentrations have increased 30% (percentages are the last refuge of scientific hucksters. Let’s just say that carbon dioxide has increased from around 280 to 380 parts per million). All good so far. More or less a factual argument, and one that I do not dispute in any way.
The leap you make, which is entirely unvalidated, is that all the current global warming we have seen is solely due to anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.
If this were true, then historic carbon dioxide concentrations, especially those linked to humans, should be closely correlated to historic global temperatures over time. Unfortunately this does not conform to any known facts.
Most graphs by global warming advocates stop at the 1940s. The reason for this is if you look at data from before the 1940s the correlation entirely disappears. The same data you rely on to “prove” global warming shows the climate to have been much warmer and much cooler than it is today, entirely irrespective of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide contributions. The obvious conclusion is that other processes have profound impacts on the global temperature.
Global warming advocates, such as yourself, seem to consistently miss this fallacy. Why did the Earth warm and cool in the past? Honestly, as scientists, we are not all that sure. Orbital oscillations, volcanic eruptions, sunspots, changes to oceanic circulation, surface vegetation, all have been proposed with varying levels of supporting data.
The bigger point is that the climate has, in the recent past, varied more from these natural forces than what we are seeing today during the period of our “huge” greenhouse gas emissions. This suggests forces other than the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions have a more profound and frequent effect on our climate.
I would postulate further, if we do not NOT understand these forces, which must exist to explain past climate oscillations, then how can we possibly, absolutely, conclude that the current warming is occurring solely due to anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions?
Simply, and without snark, explain to me the causes of the Holocene climatic optimum, the Roman warm period, the dark ages cold period, the medieval warm period, and the little ice age. Then please pause a moment and consider that the current warming trend may not be related to anthropogenic carbon dioxide, but perhaps to something else.
Do YOU dismiss scientific evidence out of hand just because you don’t like it’s implications? You seem to be willfully ignoring my basic objection to anthropogenic global warming, while feverishly beavering away at strawman arguments.
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Further to Ligne’s last reply, Sagan discussed the possibility of Global Warming towards the end of “Cosmos” back in 1981 (I can’t give you the chapter as I don’t have my copy with me).
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Geoman: that’s complete nonsense.
We know that (a) gasses such as CO_2 cause the greenhouse effect and (b) we have been producing huge amounts of these greenhouse gasses (for instance, CO_2 levels are now about 30% higher than they were a couple of centuries ago). The greenhouse effect is basic and extremely well validated physics, and has been since the 19th century. It’s the reason the earth isn’t 30K colder than it is.
You’re right that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. In this case, the extraordinary claim is yours: that more or less everything we think we understand about radiation physics is wrong. So I trust you have a sensible alternative theory that can account for all the known evidence, as well as a good reason why it’s better than what we have at the moment. That’s the sceptical way. (Incidentally, I look forward to your paper in Nature.)
Or did you just dismiss the scientific evidence out of hand because you don’t like its implications? Cos that’s not scepticism, that’s being a crank.
Incidentally, here’s another Sagan quote I like: “They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
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Stop using the term “denialist”. It was coined to criticize those who denied the holocaust. It has no business being used in a scientific discussion. It’s use negates any potentially objectivity in your posts, and makes me suspect bias (and amateurish science) on your part.
“Skeptic” is the proper term to use in any scientific discussion. In regards to science, all proper scientists should be skeptics. As Carl Sagen once noted, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof”. So the claim that anthropogenic carbon dioxide will cause global temperatures to rise should be greeted skeptically, and require extraordinary levels of proof.
“Consensus” is another term that no real scientist would ever use. There once was a consensus that the sun revolved around the Earth, and that the Zeus threw down lightning bolts. A consensus is what 4 out of 5 dentists think about toothpaste, and has no meaning in the realms of science.
You criticize people for confusing weather with climate, but you (and others like you) continually confuse cause with effect. The substance of the scientific theory is not if the climate is warmer, or cooler, but if warming is caused by the release of anthropogenic carbon dioxide.
Carbon dioxide concentrations are increasing, that is a demonstrable fact, and is not denied by any reputable scientist. And the climate may be warming (there is some cause for skepticism here, but I’ll let it pass). Here is what must then be proved:
1) The carbon dioxide increase is due to humans.
2) The anthropogenic carbon dioxide is the cause of the observed warming.
#1 – is it possible that the increase in carbon dioxide is caused by the warming of the climate, rather than the cause of the warming? Certainly there is ample evidence in the historic record that increases in carbon dioxide concentrations followed warming, rather than preceded it.
#2 can be examined in by looking at the longer historical record, not just the last 200 years. We are talking about climate, right? Looking back, there is ample evidence of global warming, and global cooling, to much greater extremes than we are currently experiencing. Classic examples are the
Medieval warm period and the Little Ice Age.
That brings us to the obvious fact that climate change on Earth is always occurring, and is profoundly influenced by many things. Among these may be anthropogenic carbon dioxide.
But you see, there is ample reason for skepticism over the relative influence of carbon dioxide. I’d quite reasonably argue that given the extremes of climate over the last 100,000 years, it would appear that anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions have negligible effect on climate. Other, more profound, forces appear to be at work.
But back to the start – Arguing over the issue of 2009 being the warmest year ever, or just the third warmest, entirely misses the point. 2010 could be the warmest year of the last thousand, and from a scientific stand point you have proven exactly nothing.
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hey hattip! care to answer my question over there? https://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/annals-of-global-warming-research-isnt-the-road-to-riches/#comments
to wit: do you think that biochemists, astrophysicists or evolutionary biologists are guilty of scientific fraud to further their careers or make money? if not, why do you think that climate scientists are particularly prone to corruption in aid of these same aims?
by the way, what is it with you and straw men? sounds like Freud would have a field-day with you…
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But they’re not skeptical at all — they accept wild and crazy claims from anti-science without any skeptical inquiry or thought.
They deny the facts.
Can you think of something that would be appropriate, and not overly laudatory to qualities they do not exhibit?
That’s what I’m calling for, yes.
The studies have in no way been compromised. When a thief steals the purse from an old lady, that doesn’t make the old lady incompetent at balancing her checkbook, nor does it call into question any other virtue of the old lady. The stolen e-mails reflect on the bad character of the hackers who stole them; in no way, shape or form do they reflect on the character of the scientists doing the science.
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Good heavens, more straw men out of you. You just cannot stop this, can you?
1) Stop calling people who call this these fakers on their bad science “denialists”. You would do better to call them “rational, educated people who can think for themselves”, but if you are not capable of being this honest with yourself, have the decency to call them “skeptics”. To call them “denialist” is just in engaging in vile and low ad hominen fallacies and agitprop techniques, neither of which have any place in this sort of discussion.
I might add a that this bizarre appropriation of, and irrelevant association with, the Holocaust in a profoundly immoral use of the suffering and memories of those people. You should be ashamed of yourself here.
2) Not all people who you would so disrespectfully term as”denialists” have touted “global cooling”. My guess is that it is a small minority of them. In any event, those that are advocating it would appear not to be making such grandiose claims as the AGW crowd in kind or extent as are the AGW, nor are they blaming human progress for it. Neither are they advocating undoing that progress in order to push some hideous elisest Marxist agenda. I will add that the AGW crowd are well aware of the precariousness of their reliance on “warming”; this is why they engaged in the legerdemain of switching the name of this contrived “crisis” from “Global Warming” to “Climate Change”.
You misspeak here, and in several ways. You do so intentionally. Again, shame on you.
3) Stop conflating climate with weather. Stop confusing localized conditions,in either time or space, with historical and global Climate change.
4) these very atudies themselves have been comprised as have their models and their creators. Stop cherry picking form dubious data set.
You really need to get over the AGW con. The hustlers and the hucksters have been found out. You are making a fool of yourself
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