This is a continuation of a remarkable thread that has now received 10,000 comments running to well over a million words. Unfortunately its size has become a problem and this is the reason for the move.
The history of the New Statesman thread goes back to December 2007 when Dr David Whitehouse wrote a very influential article for that publication posing the question Has Global Warming Stopped? Later, Mark Lynas, the magazine’s environment correspondent, wrote a furious reply, Has Global Warming Really Stopped?
By the time the New Statesman closed the blogs associated with these articles they had received just over 3000 comments, many from people who had become regular contributors to a wide-ranging discussion of the evidence for anthropogenic climate change, its implications for public policy and the economy. At that stage I provided a new home for the discussion at Harmless Sky.
Comments are now closed on the old thread. If you want to refer to comments there then it is easy to do so by left-clicking on the comment number, selecting ‘Copy Link Location’ and then setting up a link in the normal way.
Here’s to the next 10,000 comments.
Useful links:
Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with 1289 comments.
Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.
The original Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs thread is here with 10,000 comments.
Hi Max, Reur 1913 & 1916/7, Spencer & clouds
I agree that your graph in #1916 certainly shows an encouraging correlation with the PDO index plus CO2. However although it uses some empirical satellite data, in total it seems to me to be rather conceptual.
I’ve had a quick read of the Spencer paper you cited, without yet looking at its various links, and am quite surprised at the amount of modelling involved, which of course involves some estimations/assumptions. For instance, I’m not comfortable that the PDO index can be added to CO2 without some assumed weighting.
Nevertheless, the assumptions seem to be far more reasonable than in the IPCC models.
I had a quick Google around on ‘PDO index‘, and all sources seem to measure the index in degrees C, for example here is NOAA’s:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/forecasts/sstlim/for1pdo.html
I’m thus currently struggling to understand this quote from Spencer’s paper:
I’ll read it again, and perhaps it will come to me whilst in the shower tomorrow morning.
Interestingly, our friend David B Benson over at RC was strong on the PDO as being the cause of the apparent ~60 year cycle in the T record, but without making the linkage to cloud cover forcing variation.
BTW, the PDO graphs in Spencer’s figures 2 & 3 appear to contradict each other in the last few decades.
Re: The Hockeystick Illusion by Montford:
To all those whom read the book.
I was a tad surprised to read that the learned professor reached this conclusion.
I’ve just flicked through my copy of the book, which seems to confirm my memory of it being devoted to issues around the Hockeystick, and not at all with issues on the cause of global warming. Is my memory failing me, or could it be that Joyner has not actually read the book, or has distorted it in some way?
Spencer is really just talking about cause and effect. All this about being 90 deg out of phase – I’m not really sure if that’s right.
But, if it is, then a simple analogy would be a someone measuring the AC current in wires connected to a capacitor. If you were simple minded you’d say that the current to the capacitor wasn’t caused by the AC voltage, because the voltage lags the current by 90 degs.
Bob_FJ, I think your memory serves you well re The Hockey Stick Illusion and Professor Joyner’s review – here’s a link to the review (and comments!) on the Prospect Magazine website. Most negative reviews of The Hockey Stick Illusion that I’ve read seem to fit this general pattern and denigrate the author rather than state why the reviewer found the contents of the book inaccurate or the author’s style of writing bad. The cream of the crop, as negative reviews of HSI go, are I think the one by Tamino and another by John M Sully on Amazon, which actually go beyond personal attacks, but the points they raise (valid or not) are more I think about McIntyre’s use of statistics than they are about Montford’s writing. In my experience so far, they are the exceptions, and when reviewers have attempted to find fault with Montford’s writing and character, they have tended to come off badly, as we have seen with Bob Ward. As with Prof Joyner’s review, they say far more about the reviewer than the book itself.
You weren’t saying this sort of thing a few years ago when it looked like temperatures had levelled:
“More, from various climate scientists, on why the global temperature record is worthless”
You’ve obviously all decided the answer to the question of “Has Global Warming Really Stopped?” is “Well maybe not!”
PeterM
Ahrrgh! Another silly analogy that makes no sense.
Spencer’s paper makes a lot of sense. Read it.
Max
PeterM
If you go back, you will see that I have always been skeptical of the validity of the surface temperature record, for the many fairly obvious reasons listed by TonyB and many others here.
But I have also said that this record is all we have (at least up to 1979, when we got a “reality check” with the satellite record).
Both the surface (HadCRUT) and satellite (UAH) records show a cooling trend in atmospheric temperature after 2000 and the upper ocean (ARGO) record also shows a cooling trend since it started in 2003.
I’d say that this is enough evidence based on actual physical observations to support the notion of most recent overall cooling of our planet.
Kevin Trenberth also recognized this, and called it a “travesty”.
MetOffice also recognized the cooling, attributing it to “natural variability”.
At the same time the Mauna Loa readings tell us that atmospheric CO2 has risen at pretty much the same compounded annual rate as has been observed since the record started.
These are observed data.
What you wish to conclude from them is your business.
I conclude that it directly falsifies the “hidden in the pipeline” postulation of Hansen et al. and raises serious doubts regarding the IPCC hypothesis that CO2 is a major driver of our climate.
Max
Bob_FJ
From the Internet I see that Richard Joyner is chairman of the Save British Science Society and emeritus professor of physical chemistry at Nottingham Trent University, so one could conclude that he should be a serious scientist, who is also engaged in the politics of science.
However, having read both Montford’s book and Joyner’s review, I can only conclude that Joyner may have browsed through Montford’s book superficially looking for snags and, having found none, wrote his superficial critique including the meaningless off-the-cuff comment you cited, which attacks Montford but does not even address the subject matter of the book.
I’d agree with Alex Cull that Joyner’s critique tells us more about Joyner than about the book he is supposedly reviewing.
Looks like he let the “politics” get ahead of the “science”.
Max
Max,
RE: Spencer
What I would do would be to start with an untainted temperature record as Tonyb has done, determine if there is an “average” trend amongst them and then attempt to attribute a cause……..because, as far as I’m concerned, using Hansen’s/Hadley’s fraudulent data as a standard undermines the experiment from the very start…………the assumption being that there is a inclining temperature trend (which may or may not be the case).
But, the people that I work for require facts and results…………they don’t want to hear from theories and fairy tales………… which is why I’m in the business that I’m in and guys like Hansen get paid for producing nothing but garbage.
Bob_FJ
I believe Spencer’s statement below makes sense, when he refers to the PDO as a forcing:
If I understand this, it tells us that the PDO swings cause an acceleration or deceleration in the rate of temperature change, rather than being directly related to the absolute temperature at any time. (Tell me if you think I’ve got this wrong.)
This is similar to the discussion I have had in the past with Peter, where he argues that it is not cooling today, because the temperatures per se over the 2000s are higher than those over the 1990s. My argument is that the record shows that temperatures show a cooling trend since the end of 2000, and it is the trend which is important, not the temperatures per se.
The warming trend in the 1990s was at a greater rate (0.2C per decade) than the cooling trend of the 2000s (0.07C per decade), so the average temperatures per se in the 1990s were lower than those in the 2000s.
This is similar to the sharp warming from 1910 to 1944, followed by the much slower cooling to around 1976.
According to GH theory, changes in atmospheric CO2 are supposed to logarithmically affect the change in temperature.
dT ~ ln (C2 / C1) where C = CO2 concentration
This has not occurred since 2000.
BTW, this is also the weak spot in the AGWers’ claim that CO2 levels lagging temperatures in the 450,000-year ice core record does not preclude CO2 being the “driver” of temperature change.
A closer look at the record shows that temperature started a cooling trend at times when CO2 levels were high and still rising, while at other times temperature started a warming trend when CO2 levels were low and falling.
In other words, the (reconstructed) observation does not support the hypothesis that CO2 is a major diver of our climate as postulated by the GH theory.
Of course, most everyone would agree that CO2 is GH gas, and that increased GH gases do cause an increase in LW absorption, which should theoretically contribute to warming of our planet (all other things being equal), but the open question is how large is this impact and are there other much more significant natural forcing factors, which really drive our climate.
Spencer argues fairly compellingly, in my opinion, that the recent record shows that the PDO could be a good candidate.
Max
Brute
Your approach of starting with a clean record sounds logical. But this clean record is hard to find.
The AGW “conflict” has been one of political ideologies, for sure.
But there are many who believe that it is more a part of the age-old conflict between “ivory tower” theoretical scientists (and their computer jockeys today) who deliberate and develop abstract hypotheses on one hand and “hands on” practical scientists and engineers who rely on physical observations to confirm these hypotheses, which they then use to achieve a practical result, on the other hand.
Then you’ve got the “money trail”, of course.
As long as politicians are providing (taxpayer) funding to the scientists that give them the theoretical answers and hypothetical projections they want for their own political agendas, you will have scientists bowing to this pressure; as we have seen, “inbreeding” of “supporters of the paradigm” magnifies this problem.
Engineers (on the other hand) have got to “earn a crust” by achieving some tangible and measurable result (building, producing or selling something other than simply theoretical paperwork).
Maybe you have another take on this, but to me this explains why so many engineers are rationally skeptical of the “disastrous AGW” postulation, while a majority of the theoretical scientists (whether they are climatologists or not) embrace it.
Max
Max,
Yep, I’d have been out of a job long ago if I came up with the bunk that Phil Jones and Hansen publish……any other field and they’d be kicked down the stairs……nothing but Shysters, both of them.
Reminds me of an interview a while back………
A little known 20 year old climate change prediction by Dr. James Hansen
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/22/a-little-known-but-failed-20-year-old-climate-change-prediction-by-dr-james-hansen/
Brute
You are right.
Hansen’s model-derived disaster predictions were rubbish 20 years ago (as the physically observed facts since then have clearly shown) and his apocalyptic predictions of today (based on the same GIGO models) are certain to be rubbish again.
He is an AGW-activist trying to sell a message of doom and gloom, not a serious impartial scientist.
Yet he is in charge of one of the records by which our planet’s temperature is supposedly being measured and your tax dollars are supporting this flake.
They got rid of Phil Jones in the UK (who had the same basic problem of trying to “sell” his preconceived personal notion rather than providing an impartial record of what is going on).
Get Hansen replaced by a serious scientist, who does not have a personal axe to grind, like John Christy for example.
Max
Cancel all your European travel and vacation plans – carbon trading extortion is here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/27/cancel-all-your-european-travel-and-vacation-plans-carbon-trading-extortion-is-here/#more-25456
Max, Reur 1939, (Spencer /clouds)
Unfortunately, I’m still trying to understand what Spencer wrote in total. Meanwhile:
The first problem I have is that the PDO index is expressed in degrees C, (not a forcing like in Watts/M^2), and is derived mathematically from the varying gridded SST’s in key areas in the basin for particular POINTS in time. (It is a multi-dimensional T index, with no lags or rates of change involved)
There is much debate about what are the forcings that result in the PDO, and Spencer has an hypothesis that it is cloud cover related. I feel that this is reasonable providing that he has not fallen into the trap of most climate scientists in asserting single causes, when there may well be complex multiple causes of speculative weightings. Consequently, his highly modelled good fit MIGHT be a question of convenient weightings, or luck. However, I’d regard his modelling as certainly superior to the IPCC’s.
Secondly, I feel that there MUST BE multiple causes for the PDO, and intriguingly, it almost seems to be “telecommunicated“ to the ENSO, as illustrated below.
If no image click: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4092/5034304449_b0ab8bde58_b.jpg
It would seem that the ENSO is driven by forcings arising from ocean circulations that are much shorter (and more volatile) than the PDO. However, if smoothed, these shorter oscillations seem to follow the ~60-year cycle of the PDO. Thus one might think that the PDO could possibly be driven by the ENSO. The first suspect driver could be an atmospheric mode from the SH to the NH. On the other hand, one might also expect a lag, but comparison of HADCRUT by hemispheres as illustrated below does not seem to show a lag. Note in particular the 1998 “super El Nino“ in the NH. (although there is a reduction in magnitude, which is no surprise)
If no image click: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4112/5034304199_78427c1d5c.jpg
As Japanese engineers do say when faced with “impossible“ ask: “not easy”
One problem with films such as Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” was they didn’t give any time scales to their images of flooding and rising sea levels.
So, some ten years later when not much seems to have changed, lay people like Brute jump up and down with glee saying “I told you there was no problem.”!
However, 10 or 20 years is much too short a timescale. It took thousands of years for sea levels to rise and stabilise after a five or six degree warming after the last glacial maximum.
Wattsupwiththat actually reference their arguments on sea level to the Uni of Colorado’s website:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_ib_ns_global.jpg
So I hope the above graph is a credible enough reference for all concerned. Sea level rose in the 19th century by 6cm. In the 20th century by 18cm. If I had to make a prediction, I’d say it will triple again to 54cm this century which will be serious but manageable. However, it isn’t going to stop there. If as seems likely the rate of sea water expansion and ice melting is approximately proportional to temperature rise we’ll get another tripling in the 22nd century. So its only then, when none of us will be around, that cities like London and New York will need to be evacuated.
Should we care?
Max, as a footnote to my 1944 (Spencer /clouds)
It is not always clear on various time-series graphs around the place whether the numbered years start at 1 January, or end at 31 December, or even centred on mid year. In the case of the ENSO graph in #1944 it is clearly for 1 January since they are showing part of 2010. In the case of the PDO graph, to 2009, this is not obvious without perhaps some more research, so it remains possible that the two graphs are out of phase in date by one year.
It seems that the dendro’s (at least) go for mid year, because they use smoothings of 30, 40 or 50 years around the year mid point, whereas for most time-series it would need to be 31, 41, or 51 years around the start or end of each target year.
However, whilst the PDO versus ENSO graphs MIGHT be a unit out of phase in year date, the HADCRUT hemisphere comparisons cannot have this potential problem. (They show no hemispherical lag)
OH, BTW, according to HADCRUT, there is no lag between SST’s and (SST + Land air T’s), which also kind of surprises me. (See thin blue vertical construction line, ‘tween the two)
Click if no image: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4131/5035157015_682aeedeea_b.jpg
PeterM
You put up a graph showing the Topex/Jason satellite altimetry sea level record from 1993 to today and added:
Sorry, Peter. TonyB has already told you in great detail why this graph is not “credible enough”.
The NOAA scientists involved with satellite altimetry have also pointed out why this record is not “credible enough”.
http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU04/05276/EGU04-J-05276.pdf
When the guys doing the measurements themselves tell us “mishaps or drifts in the altimeter instruments, errors in the data processing or instabilities in the ancillary data that result in rates of change that easily exceed the formal error estimate, if not the rate estimate itself”, I would not say that this record is “credible enough” to tell us much of anything.
Go back to tide gauges (Holgate 2007):
With all their “warts and blemishes” (which TonyB has pointed out) they tell us that the most recent rate of sea level rise has been around 1.6 mm/year (around half of the rate shown in your graph), compared with a 1904-1953 rate of 2.0 mm/year and a 1954-2003 rate of 1.4 mm/year (average over period 1904-2003 of 1.7 mm/year), so no increase in rate over the 20th century.
This is also the average rate we have seen since the tide gauge record started back in the 19th century.
Here is a graph with references (which I have posted before) that makes it all easier to visualize than your (not “credible enough”) short-term graph, keeping in mind the caveats raised by TonyB.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3206/3144596227_545227fbae_b.jpg
Max
Max,
Well I’m only going on what “wattsupwiththat are saying” :-)
I was looking up the source of what James Hansen is supposed to have predicted:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/22/a-little-known-but-failed-20-year-old-climate-change-prediction-by-dr-james-hansen/
and they recommend “the University of Colorado interactive sea level plotting tool” and link to their website.
Maybe you need to have a word with Anthony Watts and warn him about some dodgy stuff on the website he’s linking to!
Peter
We have posted ad infinitum on the subject of sea levels. The sources themselves recognise the huge inaccuracies inherent in the methods of calculating levels and rates of change and as you can see in the IPCC report the original figures were fudged.
Its much easier to know sea levels retrospectvely-as they leave marks and evidence which can be seen through observations. From these we know we are still up to 30/50cm lower than in the MWP and slightly less than the Roman optimum.
You have been forwarded dozens of links on this subject-in particular the extraordinary assumptions of data from incomplete tide gauges- yet still you simply refuse to either read or accept them.
Thanks to your previous insistence on not facing the facts I brought forward my article on ‘historic variations in sea levels’ which I am currently working on.
There is simply no evidence to suggest that sea levels have accelerated or will accelerate to the amounts suggested.
tonyb
PeterM
You quote some strange statistics of sea level rise (1945), which you erroneously claim has been accelerating over the centuries.
I’ve covered the observed 20th century trend in my earlier post (no acceleration observed).
The 19th century data from the University of Colorado tells me that there has been no change since then, either (the longest record shows 1.6 mm/year on average).
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/tidegauges.php
For a bit more detail on the divergence between tide gauges and satellites on the recent sea level trend, see the graph below (data to 2008).
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3104/3150686392_05d1c88f47_b.jpg
This shows that the satellite trend is around twice that observed from the tide gauges (3.2 mm/year versus 1.6 mm/year).
As I pointed out to you several times, IPCC’s changing (starting in 1993, with a “fine print footnote”) from one method (tide gauges) to another (satellite altimetery), covering a different scope of measurement, i.e. the entire ocean except polar and coastal areas (which cannot be measured by satellite) versus sea level at selected coastlines (where it directly affects us land dwellers), to compare one time period with another to claim acceleration is BAD SCIENCE at best and outright SKULLDUGGERY at worst (caps for emphasis).
So we have the following information based on physical observations:
The rate of sea level rise over the 19th century was around 1.6 mm/year
Over the first half of the 20th century it was 2.0 mm/year
Over the second half of the 20th century it was 1.4 mm/year
Over the most recent 15 years or so it was 1.6 mm/year
All measured using the same methodology and scope!
Not much change there, Peter, so you can forget your doomsday fairy tale that “cities like London and New York will need to be evacuated in the 22nd century”.
And even if sea level does continue rising as it has since the tide gauge records started, follow the example of the Dutch – build a dike!
Max
PeterM
Don’t think I need to follow your silly advice (1948) to educate Anthony Watts when it comes to climate.
After all, unlike you or me, that’s his business as a meteorologist.
Max
PeterM and Brute
Hansen apparently sticks with his predictions made in the 1980s (just shifting the date by 30 years).
Reminds me of the days (several years ago) when I had a sales manager working for me.
When he didn’t meet his sales plan he would rationalize: “the forecast was right, it’s just the year that wasn’t”
Duh!
Max
Erroneously claiming an acceleration? Well you should know better than to claim I just make this stuff up.
Unlike you guys I do try to follow the scientific method! The reference for “sea level rose by 6 cm
during the 19th century and 19 cm in the 20th century” is:
http://www.psmsl.org/products/reconstructions/2008GL033611.pdf
Bob_FJ
Thanks for your posts 1944 and 1946.
Your graphs showing links between PDO and ENSO trends with NH and SH temperatures are interesting.
We all know that the “super El Niño” you mention was a primary cause for the unusually warm year 1998 (still the warmest in the modern record). At the time, it was attributed by IPCC to AGW, of course, but now that it hasn’t gotten any warmer for over 10 years, IPCC concedes that 1998 was an outlier with ENSO playing a major role.
The NCDC issued a paper a few years ago pointing out the El Niño impact on sea surface temperatures over the 20th century
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/1998/enso/10elnino.html
If you take the temperature impact times the number of months of each episode over the entire record and plot these in Excel, you come up with a calculated El Niño impact on temperature as follows (HadCRUT anomaly, linear warming rate 1976-2000):
+0.147 C/decade = HadCRUT (unadjusted for El Niño)
+0.084 C/decade = HadCRUT (adjusted to remove El Niño impact)
+0.063 C/decade = El Niño impact
Realize that this is just a rough statistical approximation, based on the data from NCDC, but it does tell me that the unusually high incidence of long-duration El Niño events in the end of the 20th century was a significant contributor to the observed warming.
In other word, short-term “weather” fluctuations caused by short-term ENSO events can affect the long-term “climate” (i.e. temperature trend).
To your other point, it is hard for me to see how Spencer could “back calculate” a net “forcing” from PDO (or possibly related ENSO) changes in W/m^2, rather than simply show the observed raw data in temperature changes.
The fact that the 60-year PDO cycles are long enough to cover the entire IPCC “poster period” of 1976-2005 (deemed by IPCC to be long enough to constitute “climate” instead of just “weather”), plus the El Niño example cited above, lead me to the conclusion that these cycles not only result in short-term “natural variability” of the “weather” (which can be “written off as irrelevant”) but also in longer-term “natural forcing” of the “climate”, as Spencer postulates.
His observations that PDO and clouds follow similar trends provides a mechanism, and therefore makes the premise of natural forcing of climate from cloud changes resulting from PDO swings more compelling.
The fact that the correlation to observed temperature changes is much stronger than that between atmospheric CO2 and temperature (see graph) lends even more credibility to Spencer’s postulation.
His simple model shows that PDO cloud changes could have caused two-thirds of the observed 20th century warming with CO2 assumed to have caused the rest (difference in 2005 between the dashed and solid curve). This would represent a 2xCO2 climate sensitivity of around 0.6C (as compared to the much higher IPCC model range of 2.0 to 4.5C). [All of above with caveat from Brute about the validity of the temperature record itself.]
These are simply my thoughts on this, Bob, and I know you have studied it more extensively than I have.
Max