Possum has a cracker of a post up on Andrew Bolt’s infamous climate change graphs.
Go read, as they say.
He also pings the blurring of the opinion/analysis distinction at the ABC, where Bolt seems to wear two hats – as some sort of putative student of climate science and as ballast for the famous right wing balance.
Which begs the question – if Bolt is so easily fooled, why does the ABC or any media outfit attempting to be informative use him? Tabloids I can understand – they’re rubbish from arsehole to breakfast time in the serious debate stakes, it’s entertainment not serious news and analysis. But the ABC?
It’s not only a sad indictment on what passes for quality debate on public affairs in the MSM in Australia, but it’s also a massive slap in the face to the intelligent conservatives and those from the intellectual right who end up having their political views represented in the public sphere by what amounts to a form of mediocrity. A result, mind you, that was always going to be inevitable when the pursuit of “political balance” on these programs transformed into a lazy affirmative action program for pundits with conservative leanings.
Conservatives and those on the right deserve better from our flagship current affairs programs – it’s not like we have a shortage of professionally skilled, media friendly folks from the right. A quick look through the halls of the IPA and CIS demonstrates that pretty clearly.
Poor Bolta. The performing seal of Right Wing Loonyworld theme park. He flaps his flippers and barks and yelps, while the crowd throws kippers.
To really understand what’s going on with global climate, we need to take a long-term view. Looking at the 4.5 billion-year moving average, Earth has cooled from its initial state of ~4500 degrees Kelvin to its present ~294 degrees Kelvin. The globe has been cooling since 4.5 billion years BC, despite the fact that the Sun’s output has increased 25% over the period. At this rate, we only have about 1 billion years before we hit absolute zero. I demand that scientists get off the AGW gravy train and get serious about Heat Death and reversing the Second Law of Thermodynamics!
So, Dr Roy Spencer has changed the moving average – big woop.
I would actually think that it was a good article if they were able to scientifically argue what are the best movign average period to use and which time period is the best to use as the base average for the anomly calculation. That would actually be worth reading.
So, he um …. plagiarises material he doesn’t understand?
Watching the intensity of argument over one type of data, caused me to pause and reflect on the various other types of data available to validate that global warming is a reality…. There are somewhere in the range of 30,000 peer reviewed scientific papers on topics ranging from biology, epidemiology to climatology.
According to New Scientist-
“Canada’s Inuit see it in disappearing Arctic ice and permafrost. The shantytown dwellers of Latin America and Southern Asia see it in lethal storms and floods. Europeans see it in disappearing glaciers, forest fires and fatal heat waves.
Scientists see it in tree rings, ancient coral and bubbles trapped in ice cores. These reveal that the world has not been as warm as it is now for a millennium or more. The three warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998; 19 of the warmest 20 since 1980. And Earth has probably never warmed as fast as in the past 30 years – a period when natural influences on global temperatures, such as solar cycles and volcanoes should have cooled us down. Studies of the thermal inertia of the oceans suggest that there is more warming in the pipeline.”
“A major Antarctic glacier has passed its tipping point, according to a new modelling study. After losing increasing amounts of ice over the past decades, it is poised to collapse in a catastrophe that could raise global sea levels by 24 centimetres. Pine Island glacier (PIG) is one of many at the fringes of the West Antarctic ice sheet. In 2004, satellite observations showed that it had started to thin, and that ice was flowing into the Amundsen Sea 25 per cent faster than it had 30 years before.”
For over a century it has been well established that the CO2 ( & other greenhouse gases such as methane and CFCs) trap the Sun’s radiation within the troposphere, the lower atmosphere. It is also easy to establish that CO2 levles are rising (NASA GISS data)
As Arctic sea ice melts faster than anyone predicted each year, we may well shutdown of the ocean currents that ushering in an ice age for Europe,which is kept warm for its lattitude by currents of warm waters from the tropics.
There is a strong ocean warming trend from the 1990s onwards.
Biologists are talking of shifts in species occurring at the north pole, spring is comming days and weeks earlier… I know there is much much more….
How is it possible to be so blinkered by ideology that you cast the magic wand of mathematics over a graph and think it makes the meticulous work of thousands of scientists in various fields miraculously dissapear?
Most disenchanting to me is that there is minimal coverage of the science at all… even on the ABC.
“quick look through the halls of the IPA and CIS demonstrates that pretty clearly”
Demonstrates what, that these to bodies are generators of ready made opinion pieces for the Australian? You can’t say that they actually conduct any research.
I think what he’s getting at, PatrickB (although I don’t agree with him completely) is that the CIS and IPA have a bunch of qualified, intelligent and articulate conservatives who (at least occasionally) adopt an evidence-based position.
At the very least, they aren’t as shrill and obviously unhinged as the Bolta.
Cute post by Possum – thanks, Mark! And a very impressively amusing Flying Monkey as frist comment-maker on Possum’s post…
I have managed to convince myself that AGW is real and serious action is necessary. (Basis Vostock ice core data, Brian’s senate submission, various articles in places like Realclimate However, this doesn’t mean that I am not skeptical about much that is coming from both sides of the debate including the climate modelling. Graphs are part of the problem. Both sides are guilty of selecting periods that are supportive of their argument.
We had Fielding waving around a graph that had only the last few years to support his argument. We have the AGW graphs that conveniently start after the end of the medieval warming period. We have the example quoted here that changed from a 13 month smoothing period to 25 months because the 13 month smoothing no longer supported the argument. As possum said the change should have been explained not slipped in quietly so that few would notice, particularly if they are flashed up on TV.
We also have problems with the data. Global warming trends are coming out different for different data sets which sometimes are giving different answers. I would be more convinced by acknowledgments of the variation rather than presenting one set of data as “the facts.”
We have also got the problem that “explanations” only seem to be offered when trends aren’t supporting the argument. There was a period when one side of the debate was arguing that sunspots were the reason for inconvenient data. However, they seem to have gone quiet on this issue now they think that the data is less inconvenient.
There are no magic answers to this issue given the dearth of disinterested experts. All we can do is take Possums lead and run a sensitive bullshit detector over graphs that are supposed to prove something.
“At the very least, they aren’t as shrill”
You haven’t read/heard much much John Roskam have you? How about Jen Marohasy or John Humphries? My point is that whenever these people are asked for an opinion they inevitably give just that, their ideologically driven opinion and we’re expected to swallow it because they come from the aforementioned institutes. At least with Bolta you know (and I think he knows) that he’s a clown. I wouldn’t be giving the IPA or CIS any room to move. Next you’ll be saying that the Sydney Institute does some really fine work.
I’ve been moderated! Don’t tell that slighting Henderson’s Heuristic Hothouse is a hanging offence.
Razor @ 2, the time-period discussion been done to death. Analysing climate over periods shorter than thirty years, and with moving averages below 11 years, is generally considered to be a waste of time. That’s what’s so amusing about Bolt’s pathetic attempts to use 13- and 24-month moving averages to talk about the last 7-11 of “global climate”. All you get from those sort of measurements is noise. Those time periods are well within the range of one standard-dev variability around a rising long-term trend.
Since I don’t owe you an education, you can look up the details yourself. If you can’t be naffed, please don’t waste your time and ours in the discussion.
I believe the IPA have let Our Jennifer go, PatrickB. I haven’t heard the other two you mentioned in full spittle-flecked flight, so I can’t really judge. I have heard a couple of their people who sounded almost reasonable (although, of course, wrong), though.
I agree with you that they’re mostly space-wasting shills, btw, and the Sydney Institute is a joke.
@12
Yes DI(nr) JM hit the road apparently. Still at least she did have an actual scientific qualification. I think they do a lot of recruiting out of Catallaxy actually. And I think you’re being a bit unfair on our Gerard, apparently his front room is quite small. It’s a real bugger when Joe Hockey and Kim Beazley turn up for a talk.
On the IPA/CIS thing – I’d raise a Chris Berg (IPA) or an Andrew Norton (CIS) over just about any of the usual conservative fluff-pundits we see from the conservative media, anyday.
You don’t have to agree with them, but they are first class minds that approach issues from an evidence based foundation.
If you look through the two lists of the orgs and who is currently working for each of them – there’s some muppets, but there’s some rock solid intellects as well.
http://www.cis.org.au/aboutcis/research_staff.html
http://www.cis.org.au/aboutcis/research_staff.html
John D,
if you can find systematic bias in the published science on climate modelling please speak up. Advocacy one way or the other should not alter what’s there.
I appreciate the you’ve made to find information on climate change, but seem to be judging the science according to what the advocates are saying. The IPCC reports have looked at pretty much all the data, the good, bad and the ugly. By the time you get to the policymakers summary it’s pretty distilled but it’s there in the report. Each new report builds on the older ones, so it would take an expert to say which older material has been superseded and which remains relevant. I do think the Synthesis Report of the IPCC Fourth Assessment is worth a look. Some of the recent UN material prepared for Copenhagen is not as rigorous as it should be, but the Copenhagen Diagnosis is pretty good.
Re using climate modelling – there’s a great deal of knowledge and skill required to know how to use the numbers – they cannot be applied in a naive fashion, which is what many try to do (it requires a working knowledge of how to manage multiple sources of uncertainty). But it’s good not to put too much weight on any particular results because of the large uncertainties. The models are actually much more useful for diagnosing how the climate works, rather than what they can predict, for instance.
The global warming graphs start when useable data becomes available. The MWP is largely a northern hemisphere phenomenon and is pre-instrumental. Poor quality instrumental data starts in the mid 1700s – this was new technology not cherry-picking, it just happens to start in a cool period. But there’s little or no evidence of the MWP in southern latitudes for instance. The hockey stick is a diversion of limited relevance.
The point is not to be disinterested, the point is to know how to combine scientific information with normative, or value-based opinion. For instance, everytime we deal with risk we combine some objective information about the events with our subjective opinion of what happens if…
It takes some skepticism and skill not to talk up likelihood or consequence if one thinks a risk absolutely needs to be avoided, but it is possible with practise and presence of mind. In the case of AGW, there’s no need to overcook the evidence, because it’s serious enough. There are no magic answers because there are no magic answers.
I think the skill most needed is to know how to use evidence to assess risk, while not letting one’s values distort how the evidence is used. This is useful for all agents involved in the climate issue, whether they are communicating information, setting policy, changing their own behaviour, lobbying or whatever.
A few points:
1 – Possum is right, the IPA and CIS at least have a few people on their staff that know their way around data and take data seriously. Andrew Norton for example writes very well reasoned pieces about higher education in Australia, whether you agree with his conclusions or not.
2 – Razor, give it up. Not only is the use of 13 or 25 month moving averages ridiculous given the short-term variablity of the climate, but switching between the two when the former no longer suits your point is unforgivable. The dumbest thing about Bolt’s use of those graphs is that it is extremely short-sighted in that his own argument has become hostage to a dubious methodology that is now, given recent temperature increases working against him.
I thought the debate was all about risk mitigation anyway. Quibbling about this graph or that is not what anyone wants – not business, not activists. The science has been established and no about of niggling or skepticism is going to change that. Risk mitigation is the whole reason why the Stern Report was such a game-changer: it completely invalidates the whole idea that a few holes in this academic paper or that graph in a policy document makes the case for a return to apathy on carbon emissions, global warming, pollution etc.
What has to happen is to make the case that Bolt/ Minchin/ Monckton/ Plimer/ whomever are so confident of their position that they will personally indemnify anyone – people living in pricey waterfront real estate in Sydney, the entire nation of Tuvalu, anyone – who might suffer damage traceable to anthropogenic global warming. Rather than just saying “no no no no” and reiterating his position, what you want is to put some responsibility back onto Bolt and watch him crumble. When he was facing the prospect of charges over a leaked intelligence briefing that Downer had allegedly received back in the day, did you see him squirm? Journos who can face prison time while refusing to reveal their sources can draw on traditions of their profession and support that comes with that – lacking that support and tradition, Bolt came very close to cracking up. Hopefully he thinks he’s untouchable: if so the hour of hubris then is surely at hand.
As to Monckton, put it this way: he advised Margaret Thatcher for many years – and she came out in favour of global warming. Margaret Thatcher was UK PM toward the end of the Cold War, she knows what a communist threat looks like. Consider the sheer depth of conservative failure here: Margaret Thatcher has listened carefully to what you’ve said over many years, and she’s come to the opposite conclusion. Either Monckton isn’t a conservative, or Thatcher isn’t.
Businesses who are big carbon emitters are looking for risk mitigation. The public policy response (and hence the most sensible activism, whether as suits behind closed doors or protesting in the streets) has to be about risk mitigation. The lack of a risk mitigation framework is the real threat to this country, and hence the real political failure, on this issue.
Yes and no Andrew. Let’s say in a hypothetical world that sceptics were genuinely poking significant holes in the theory and empirics of anthropogenic climate change (they aren’t but let us say they are for the sake of argument). From a risk mitigation perspective, significantly greater doubt about climate change would imply taking out less insurance against its potential impact. Think about it this way – compare two worlds – one where an atmospheric concentration of GHG of 550ppm CO2e implied a 95% probability of long-term welfare losses equivalent to 20% of GDP in today’s dollars – the other where there was just a 5% probability of losses on the same scale. As a policymaker, would you set the same targets under the two scenarios?
Although most sceptics don’t frame things in those terms, you can think of their actions as, at least in part, an attempt to create enough doubt in the public’s mind that the public will be less willing to support policies that lead to deep cuts in emissions, even if the public were to think in risk management terms.
Indeed, this is why the lies perpetrated by the likes of Bolt are potentially so dangerous and why it is important for the likes of Possum to shoot them down.
Thanks for the sermon Roger. However, I understand the difficulties of obtaining and interpreting climate data. I also understand the difficulty of separating cause and effect in an area where most experts would admit that greenhouse gases are just one of the factors that affect average temperatures for any particular year. I also understand the difficulty of accurately modeling the effect of CO2 on future temperatures. Assumptions have to be made, short cuts have to be taken.
Which is all a long winded way of saying that, just because the magic 1000 scientists say the temperature in 2050 will be X unless we do something doesn’t mean it is right anymore than the babbling of the skeptics makes some alternative right.
What I object to is that the argument has become something like a high school debate – One of those things where you think of all the arguments that might help you win the debate rather than a disinterested assessment of the available data and ideas. I appreciate that you can argue that medieval temperatures are less reliable than more recent measurements because they cannot be directly measured however, the same can also be said that 19th century measurements are less reliable because of the paucity of world wide data. However, this doesn’t stop me being skeptical of graphs that conveniently start at one of the coldest times for at least the last 1000 yrs.
LO,
Spot on. And let’s consider that in the policy environment and the debate that surrounds it, turn on three interacting areas of risk.
One is climate risk. The science is suggesting many more vulnerable areas than previously thought, pointing towards lower concentrations as a target to minimise those risks. For example, the last time the world was at current concentrations of CO2 for a long period, the sea level was 25m higher.
The second is the risk of action. For many with vested interests in an economy that moves lots of heavy objects around with coal-fired power, they face a direct short term risk from a carbon price and regulation. In Australia the big end of town has a lot of pull politically and conservative labor has always listened. Interestingly, there are just as many business interests who want to get on with it and some who see great opportunity in a new economy. The estimated costs of getting to 450 ppm for example have shrunk in the past ten years, quite high in 1995 (IPCC 2nd assessment), to 3-4% of GDP in 2050 (two year’s foregone growth – IPCC 2001) to 1±1% now, less in Stern, positive in some studies. These numbers are a great deal for avoided damages, which are much higher. I think the numbers globally are primed for action (having worked on them), a bit more problematic for Australia, but hey, we’re rich. The long-term return on investment looks excellent. By 2050, the costs won’t matter because the economy will be different. We don’t built economic models of the horse drawn economy or the slave trade for comparison with today, do we?
The third area is political risk. Say the Lib/Nat coalition has ? denialists, ? fence sitters and ? who accept the science. This is a much higher proportion of non-acceptance than in general society, and is only echoed in the US and Canadian legislatures (maybe NZ, now). Most other developed countries have bipartisanship on the science and are debating how fast to go. Polling on climate change see some softening compared to two years ago. Mainly on the back of the GFC and also because the public are soft on carbon costs. They don’t understand it, because there’s been too much FUD about the science and it hasn’t been explained. So anything in Australia has to get through Senate, in the US through Senate. A very small group of unrepresentative swill, perhaps, in both houses. The party that brought in the GST is calling it a new tax. Much of the denial is about the perception of sovereign risk, individual rights, property as a moral right and fear of organised governance. It is a particular meme of western English speaking societies and the science, and what it represents, is a threat. Asia, for example, doesn’t have this problem.
The denialist lobby has done a terrific job over the past few years. Some of it is the sowing of public uncertainty, some is backdoor lobbying in Canberra, Washington, Ottawa etc. The internet has globalised organised ignorance, the MSM has dumbed down, particularly on the conservative side where it has become stridently anti-science. It is much more difficult to communicate a nuanced view of a complex problem than it is to cast doubt on the same problem with a glib 10 second sound bite, particularly if it is on the national broadcaster in the name of balance. One bad restaurant review can trump a month’s worth of fine dining.
The last area is the big risk for Australia, that of doing too little. Australia is a policy taker. Let’s say China quietly develop their plans for making the transition to a fast growing, low carbon economy. They undertake to sell zero CO2 products to the rest of the world. They want to import zero CO2 commodities. How will carbon-intensive products sell in that type of economy? That plan is being worked on at the moment. We just won’t hear too much about it until it passes proof of concept.
Sorry everyone for the long op-ed, but it’s been brewing for a couple of weeks and the thread got to the right spot.
Is there an economic term for the fact of extant interest groups being more influential than nascent interest groups, even if they are more-or-less equivalent in worth? The other example that springs to mind is publicans complaining that all their customers would stay home, not thinking enough of the customers they haven’t met.
John D,
So can you find where 1,000 or so scientists say it will be X in 2050? I’ve only seen ranges or at best conditional probabilities of exceedance.
I apologise for the sermon but your recollections of what the science says doesn’t fit with what I recall reading in major papers and reports. Am happy to be put straight.
The graphs of the instrumental data start in a cold period because that’s when they invented bloody thermometers (presumably to keep warm). The HadCRU dataset and others also have uncertainty bands that expand the further back you go, reflecting the more sparse data and different instruments.
Roger @ 20, your comment about China quietly developing “plans for making the transition to a fast growing, low carbon economy” is fascinating.
John D, didn’t know my Senate submission had such an impact!
I’ve never bothered much about the shape of the handle of the hockey stick. It’s the business end that bothers me. Most graphs I see start from about 1850 or 1880 which is important because we started to get more or less reliable thermometers and we started emitting. Actually we started emitting in earnest about mid last century, but by that time CO2 levels were already high enough to cause us grief if they stayed there for a long time.
BTW Joe Romm at Climate Progress recently posted an image of three temperature series superimposed with the error bar for HadCRUT3.
For a smoothed trend the Copenhagen Diagnosis -pdf Figure 3 (which Roger linked to) gives Hadley and GISS superimposed with substantial agreement. One of the best I’ve seen is the 11-year averages provided in Fawcett and Jones (three sources) with other graphic goodies.
While on the ABC Bolt has a regular gig, and Plimer and the like get the occasional ‘appearance’
The CIS is a shill factory for merchant bankers. http://www.cis.org.au/aboutcis/board_dir.html
Chris Berg is the archetypal one-dimensional man.
His writings, and editorship of the IPA Review are pathetic.
Have you ever read any of the opinion pieces he writes in the Sunday Age.
You will find more informed intelligence in Mad Magazine.
Off topic. Here are some graphs to put in the useful information folder for future discussions.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6126
Tim Lambert has just reminded us that Roy Spencer (the source of Bolt’s dishonest graphic) was, until mocked mercilessly, using a 4th order polynomial fit to the same data series.
Bilb: Your Chinese data link makes it a bit hard to convince ourselves that emissions will start dropping soon. Then again, autocratic technocracies can do things our pollies would be afraid to think about – Think one child policy.
Mercurius – you prove my point. It is a realy crap article because it doesn’t even come close to addressing the reasoning that you give – short-term fluctuations mean bugger all, so whether or not a 13 month or 25 month moving average is used doesn’t mean shit.
That said, the “human induced climate change” supporters are quick to jump on any evidence of short-term fluctuation in weather in their favour as evidence of humans’ and capitalism’s dastardliness – even the current extreme cold in the northern hemisphere is being held out by some as a result of human caused climate change. Danny Glover, that well known climatologist and some time Die Hard actor, has been able to scientifically prove that the Haitian Earthquake is caused by human caused climate change. So you can understand why there is a bit of push back.
Razor, that’s just bullshit, and you know it is.
What has been said is that the extreme events are consistent with, and explainable by, climate change, which is completely different from what you’ve written.
Razor@30: There is no difference between CO2 pollution from a capitalist US factory or a communist Chinese factory.
Don’t get sucked in by Minchin’s deluded conspiracy that AGW is a ruse to destroy capitalism.
Capitalist countries will reduce CO2 pollution without changing their political system.
“short-term fluctuations mean bugger all, so whether or not a 13 month or 25 month moving average is used doesn’t mean shit”
Changing from using a 13-month average (which showed a sharp uptick in the last few years) to a 25-month one (which didn’t) and not attempting any explanation about why he has done so, invites the interpretation that Spencer has done so only for that reason.
So yes, it’s irrelevant for the field of climate science (like everything Spencer has ever done – surprise surprise), but it shows his mendacity and hypocrisy in jumping all over the Climategate data manipulation.
FDB: The problem is that having caught Bolte/Spencer out it will prompt a “bullshit!” response to future output. The skeptics are starting to run the “you don’t show the medieval warming” line. The data is available from ice cores and the like and I remember Brian linking to some graphs that did show as far back as this.
There is an element of truth in the thermometer argument, but, to a technical person trying to make their mind up it is a damn sight easier to evaluate the data when it goes back far enough to see the last 150 yrs in the context of longer term cycling.
Possum Comitatus@14
On the IPA/CIS thing – I’d raise a Chris Berg (IPA) or an Andrew Norton (CIS) over just about any of the usual conservative fluff-pundits we see from the conservative media, anyday.
You don’t have to agree with them, but they are first class minds that approach issues from an evidence based foundation.
How about the ABC promoting an intellectual who does not slavishly conform to the prevailing post-modern liberal consensus? The public ideological spectrum ranges from Left-liberal to Right-liberal. Whoopdee do.
There are precious few public intellectuals prepared to criticise the “boring liberal consensus” from a non-liberal perspective. Some one who can provide a coherent conditional defence of conservative authoritarian principles of social organization. The ideological climate of Australia appears to be inhospitable to the flourishing of this species, perhaps thankfully.
The trouble with Berg or Norton is not their intellectual acuity or moral nicety – they are undoubtedly “first class minds”. Its their ideological conformity to the prevailing post-modern liberal consensus. They are Right-liberals who are sufficiently tolerant of post-modernism to give the antics of financial markets a free pass and to never question social constructivist anthropology.
Even Bolt and Tim Blair are still Right-liberals, like Berg and Norton. Except occasionally they let their feelings and fellowships wander off the liberal ideological reservation. Which can occasionally get ugly admittedly, but at least it provides ideological diversity.
Lets celebrate diversity, for once.
John D @ 34, two points.
First why stop at 1000 years? To understand the real pattern you have to look at the whole Holocene, and then you have to be very careful what you are looking at. This image shows the temperature for the last 12,000 years. The long term trend is gradually going south while it wobbles along. But the source of the temperature is not given and you always have to be careful as to whether it in Northern Hemisphere, Antarctica, Greenland or otherwise limited and regional. Also the image doesn’t match the text of the article:
Secondly, I’d question whether the last 10,000 years have been cyclical in the strict sense of the word, with regular patterns repeating for the same reasons. For cyclical, it seems to me, you have to go back to the last 400,000 years, where the present interglacial just represents one of those pointy peaks.
Here’s another 40,000 year perspective of Greenland and Antarctica, which I find interesting.
[* Sorry, there is a 2004 mark on the y-axis that shows the graph is correct. The note to the graph is:
The black line looks like at least a 30-year average, possibly more.
- Brian]
@35 – Jack, is that your job application?
Aye, there’s the rub: ‘coherent’! Any time a conservative authoritarian (Lord Monckton, Pat Robertson, etc.) pops their head up, they tend to be not so much coherent, as barking mad. Coincidence? You decide…
That would be nice. You go first.
I posted these elsewhere. (Sorry.)
“The relevant timescale for climatic processes is *much*less than billions of years. Significant movements of temperatures over timescales of a century do indicate that something is happening in the climate system.
Sure, we don’t fully understand the full range of climatic events and processes in all of Earth’s history. But saying ‘we don’t know everything therefore we know nothing’ is flawed and anti-scientific. We do have good paleoclimate data going back nearly a million years. Within this timeframe we understand at a broad level the processes that have driven climate.
Contrary to the implication in the thread collecting mountains of data and then just looking for statistical patterns in it is not very scientific. Understanding the processes driving the trends in the data is.”
“Cryospheric changes at millenial-yr scale; albedo, atmospheric and oceanic changes at centennial-yr scale all have uncertainty and of of course the sub-yr weather scale is quite uncertain.
Measurements do suggest a rapid driving of climate at a time when longer term trends are understood to be quiet. (Very rapid climate changes are certainly known in D-O events, but they are at times of strong orbital forcing.)
With what we know, a centennial scale change of temperature along with a centennial scale change of atmosphere which
* calibrates with estimates of the temperature change from paleoclimate data
* agrees with hindcasts of past measurements with bottom-up modelling
* matches spatial and temporal fingerprint studies
is good evidence that century-scale atmospheric change, such as being measured, is the current strong driver of climate.”
Of course more data is better than less, and long term cycles are important to understand. But unless you want to adopt a plimerian anti-science “stuff just happens” viewpoint, then it’s just not true that centennial-scale records tell you nothing about underlying trends.
Thanks Brian. I find the 2000 yr graph far more convincing than the normal AGW graph because it emphasizes how much faster the temp started to rise at the start of the industrial age. It has the added advantage of making skeptic claims about the medieval warming less believable.
Having said that of course some of the many fast rises shown on the Greenland core (but not the Antarctic cores) apear to rise very sharply but it is hard to tell since the scales are so different. Do you have any info re the drivers of the Greenland blips?
Not as such, John, but possibly it is the interaction of a variety of systems in the North Atlantic/Arctic area. That’s not very helpful, but I note that the Bering Strait item you sent me says:
Brian: Missed the 34,000 yr bit in the Bering Strait item. The Greenland 40,000 yr graph shows the fluctuations dropping right off at about this time although there are still a few spikes after this that might be there for a different reason. However, there is a temporary jump once Greenland starts to warm again that might be Bering St driven.
John, I haven’t made any kind of detailed study of this, but the Last Glacial Maximum is given by Wikipedia as approximately 20kya, although it looks like it might have been a much of a muchness for a while before that. It does appear that Greenland started to warm before 20kya. But the main driver of the ending of the last ice age was, of course, the orbital changes aka the Milankovitch cycles.
Hey IPCC, how is that Himalayan Glacier melt working for you?
Razor, I wouldn’t take anything The Australian claims at face value. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve played fast-and-loose with the facts.
How about <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6991177.ece= The Times
Oops – anyway – is The Times reputable enough for you?
Isn’t The Times another Murdoch rag, Razor?
Guilt by association.
Was just wondering about that warm current from the Gulf of Mexico which keeps European temperatures higher than they might otherwise be, for their latitudes. Especially in view of their current cold snap.
Do they have something like our SOI (Southern Oscillation Index) for El Nino, to measure the strength of their current?
Are there any noticeable trends in their ocean current, lately? Does the Arctic ice have any impact on driving the current? If so, what happens when the Arctic ice melts to bugger-all?
Razor, it has always seemed to me that the projected melting on the Himalayas ice cap was rather fast compared to the Swiss Alps, for example. I heard comment today on the radio that the melting of all ice caps is likely to take 200 years. But no-one (sensible or scientific) is saying that this means much overall in terms of the effects of global warming. If you have a look at the numbers in this post you’ll see that the speed of the melting of glaciers and ice caps (GIC) is not the main issue in sea level rise, for example.
Elise, have a look at the thermohaline circulation and the Wikipedia entry on Shutdown of thermohaline circulation.
The shorter answer is that the evaporation of the Gulf Stream, bringing rain etc to Europe and the increase in salinity because of freezing of the Arctic ice drives the thermohaline current as the denser water sinks. But the thinking is that the shutdown of the thermohaline would probably require a sudden freshwater flush, which is unlikely.
Brian, I think you are either missing or ignoring the point. The IPCC and it’s reports are held out as the pinacle of peer reviewed human-caused climate change science which is supposedly settled. Yet, errors, inconsistencies and out-right fraud continue to be uncovered – all while we are being told that we shouldn’t question the science (we are not worthy) and the West has to transfer billions to the less developed countries and hobble our own continued economic development.
Razor I’m not missing the point. You are making a mountain out of a molehill. There is no fraud here, just at most an error that crept in through oversight, and not one that means much in the overall scheme of things. How much? Close to nothing. So go away!
Razor, further to this, I don’t have the raw statistics of what went into the IPPC AR4 documents, but thousands of scientists worked on it, no doubt much was done in their own time. The documentation runs to some 3000 pages. They try their best, but they are human. It would be truly amazing if there were not a glitch or two.
To suggest that the glitch currently in focus, if true (and I’m accepting that it probably is), compromises the whole edifice is truly clutching at straws.
Brian @50, thanks for the links.
However, I was really asking whether they had an equivalent to our SOI, to measure changes in their system?
How will they know if the Gulf Stream is being affected by climate change, before the change is truely serious?