Found a link to the NYTimes article on Mauna Loa: Mauna Loa
Ah, Mr Keeling. That link makes much better sense ... it alas doesn't mention why a measurement on top of a regularly outgassing volcano is a good place to do that, or how to account for otherwise. I don't disbelieve that CO2 is going up, not at all, but does anyone know where this type of thing has been done well away from local CO2 sources? I do vaguely remember a mention of someone in my youth who did this on the western coast of Tasmania, I think, no where near anything volcanic, human habitation, marshes etc and receiving air straight from the Roaring Forties.
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) Here's the primary record from Scripps for CO2. Specifically this one for Mauna Loa. You'll note that the South Pole data are rather lower by about 20% or so, but I'd reckon it's reasonable to assume something like sublimation at such lower temperatures. If you look at the data from other sites like the various Pacific Islands ( Samoa say ) they all show the same trend, so that is a good consistent indicator, but as far as I can tell are all somewhat lower than Mauna Loa. So if you put that excess down as a local volcano effect then the rising trend is still quite clear. There. Homework done .... :-)
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Thanks for a link to the Goddard paper. I had only read the NYTimes article, as I have read the article on the Mauna Loa measurements, about which you do not speak. All the temperature plots in the Goddard article are rising in time, as all the CO2 measurements. I feel there is a link between the two sets of measurements. But I have seen with my eyes the Alpine glaciers which I have climbed with my feet shrinking and disappearing. I do nor need to read some papers to learn there is a global warming. I have seen it with my eyes.
Tullio.
Another thing I notice is the ability to say things which are believed about a thing rather than about the thing. In this case
Quote:
All the temperature plots in the Goddard article are rising in time, as all the CO2 measurements.
Yet that is not a fact. Fig 21 is perhaps the cleanest with graphs showing clearly the quote is false unless CO2 was decreasing between 1940 and 1975. Actually it is false in toto because of the decrease in temperature between 1940 and 1975 can can only be considered true if the statement is modified to say temperature and CO2 are proportionate. It is the modification which requires CO2 to have decreased between those years.
Without the modification and with no reason to assume there was a CO2 decrease between those years we can only assume that which is reasonable, CO2 did increase during those years. As the temperature did not increase these graphs are clear evidence there is no direct correlation between CO2 and temperature.
If one has a preconceived conclusion then it is natural to say "just ignore what does not support the conclusion" which is what must be done in this matter.
As with any reasonable person I am more than willing to listen to any explanation even if it includes CO2 but only if there are other phenomena NOT HANDWAVING which explains the entire curve.
And before I am accused for moving the goal posts, depending upon the other factor(s) which are introduced to mitigate the effect of CO2 for 35 years there are other problems. For example, if the mitigating factor affects air temperature only not soil or water then it cannot alone explain the data.
Let me try to make my issue with the graph simpler. A direct correlation says the heavier and object the harder it is to lift. So lets make years into lbs. So for 1 to 40 lbs it gets harder to lift. But at 41 lbs up to 75 lbs it gets progressively easier to lift -- perhaps not much but it does stop getting harder. Then suddenly at 76 lbs it is no harder to lift than would have been 41 lbs without the anomaly between 40 and 75. Something is wrong with the either the weights or gravity or the theory that weight is directly proportional to the difficulty in lifting.
Yes, climate is much more complicated but merely saying that is handwaving. In this case the very graph data which the CO2 folks love to point to is in fact evidence showing increasing CO2 does not explain the data.
Okay, but seeing one glacier region melting is nowhere near 'global'.
Gruß,
Gundolf
The same is happening in the Andes. Bolivia did not want to sign the Cancun meeting conclusions because they were too weak. The only water of Bolivia comes from its glaciers, which are also disappearing.
Tullio
Glaciers have been melting for some 22,000 years with most of them finally going away 15-12,000 years ago. I still do not see this love of glaciers nor what it is supposed to mean. As glaciers retreat in the Alps evidence of medieval habitation is being uncovered. Obviously there was a time not that long ago when there were fewer and smaller glaciers than today.
Remember I am the guy that bought the palm tree franchise for Washington DC and I am still waiting to cash in on it.
...
( edit ) Here's the primary record from Scripps for CO2. Specifically this one for Mauna Loa. You'll note that the South Pole data are rather lower by about 20% or so, but I'd reckon it's reasonable to assume something like sublimation at such lower temperatures. If you look at the data from other sites like the various Pacific Islands ( Samoa say ) they all show the same trend, so that is a good consistent indicator, but as far as I can tell are all somewhat lower than Mauna Loa. So if you put that excess down as a local volcano effect then the rising trend is still quite clear. There. Homework done .... :-)
As to the south pole ...
A while back the Ross Ice Shelf was observed to be decreasing and a chunk broke off and it was obviously global warming until an active volcano was discovered under it. I do not recall increased volcanism being a feature of global warming. However one assumes it is putting out CO2. And if air patterns are like the ocean current in the region it is circumpolar. So the CO2 that happens in Antarctica stays in Antarctica. One of these days I may get around to researching the actual air patterns down there but at least there is a large and active source for the gas. Now just where are the Antarctic CO2 measurements being made?
Which brings up the obvious question, where can we get an unbiased CO2 measure and at what altitude? Any place near biological activity is biased as is near volcanic activity. While the altitude variance from molecular weight is slight the turbulence mixing (homogenizing) gases is greatest near the surface. Seems to me a good place would be part way up the Andes above the desert coast areas of Chile and in the southern hemisphere northern CO2 should be well mixed before it gets there to be measured.
But then there is another modest problem, seasonal variation. Plants go dormant where the winters are cold but animals keep breathing so CO2 will increase in winter where there are mammals. But the hemispheres are not balanced in land masses and the seasonal difference is great on land and trivial in oceans.
And then the plant metabolism of CO2 in summer depends upon the quality of the growing season ... and there are certainly many other factors than I have mentioned off of the top of my head. So in the end it all comes down to another great multi-year averaging of the fraction of CO2 in the atmosphere no matter where it is measured.
In Chile highlands there is plenty of astronomical observatories, including the European Southern Observatory at La Silla and others, like the ALMA radiotelescope array for millimeter range radioastronomy. It would not be difficult to establish some CO2 recording stations. As for volcanic activity the FAMOUS model from the UK Meteo Office I am running now in CPDN on a time range from 1199 to 1399 takes account of it .
Tullio
I quite like the Goddard paper for it's clarity and honesty. I have sympathy for the researchers attempting to un-fuddle a complex system to latch on to clear trends and connections. In a scientific sense it's a bit sad to have all the politico-social 'riders' about. I sense they feel like targets for a horde of angry wasps, dammed if they do and dammed if they don't.
This is reminiscent of medical research pre-WWII where the 'latest and greatest' was determined by mass vote, or esteemed authority, or habit, or plain old pride and prejudice. Not alot of progress was being made ie. healing the sick. Then came along the era of clinical trials, especially the 'randomised double-blind' paradigm which separates expectation from measurement from analysis. The medical industry now knows well the perils of hidden bias. It took a little while to get some new news out of that, but mainly because it first required a mass slaughter of most of the existing sacred cows. Sad to say but there was reasonable analogy with the medieval thinking as per Monty Python - 'she weighs as much as a duck, therefore she is a witch' ( as per Matt's correct analysis of the CO2 and temperature curves 1940-75 ie. it takes medieval logic to recover the pre-judged result of causation ). Once that got cleaned up and folks got used to the idea that you have to prove what you say then matters really took off. This lifted the thinking above anecdotal, personally biased or just intellectually lazy attitudes ( especially : I assert something, no one contradicts thus it must be true. Or : I define only one hypothesis to be valid for discussion therefore it is the winner. ).
Not that there haven't been problems, but they're exceptional and not as endemic as they were.
I recall Richard Feynman's poignant revelation about his wife's ( Arlene Greenbaum ) early death in 1945 from tuberculosis. He was quite angry, not simply because the doctors couldn't save her, but that closer inquiry showed the entire profession had no reliable methods for distinguishing the good propositions from the bad. The latter was the greater sin in his view.
For instance see William McBride and thalidomide, which has two particular interesting points (a) we got a heads up on the tragedies that can ensue from medication given in early pregnancy ( letter to The Lancet in 1961 ) and (b) McBride actually knowingly and willingly fudged his data ( published study in 1981 ), admitted it, and was penalised. A good example of the precautionary principle though, especially the FDA in Kennedy's time.
The Austin Flint cardiac murmur. The Wikipedia entry rather politely glosses over the problem : 'the role of this sign in clinical practice has been questioned' and '...suggest the murmur is the result of...'. It was taught to medical students ( ie. me in the early 80's ) as a leaflet of the mitral valve being flicked back to hit the aortic area. Except this mechanism was never seen nor heard when the appropriate technology arrived ( echocardiography ). The humourous interest here is that the ability to detect this murmur with a stethoscope and ears ( the 'Mark I microphone set' ) was seen as a key measure of clinical skill, the quality of your stethoscope ( ie. did you buy cheap? ) and the experience and seniority of the clinician. It's a professional fantasy for poncing value without objective basis. I, like many colleagues, call my stethoscope 'the guessing tubes'. :-)
Why I bring this up is that I see ( from what I can get easy access to ) that climatology is sort of like medical research around WWII. It appears riddled with basic errors learnt and discarded long ago in other fields, like medicine, and even more seriously a dearth of willingness of investigators to admit that. Medicine has the 'advantage', if you will, of forcing practitioners ( ie. lest penalties ) to pay close attention to real biology. Myth is not just ignorance, it is very bloody deadly. It is enough that a disease should take or ruin a life without the doctor weighing in to promote that. In that regard knocking the 'gods of medicine' off their pedestals has been exceptionally fruitful - to sick people!
A harsh comment from without perhaps but climatology really needs to come up with a paradigm ( of similiar significance to them as double blind trials were to medicine ) that will give them genuine progress, or we'll be having the same discussions about process in another ten years : like inserting numbers into models and calling it 'data' when no physical measurement was actually taken at the time and place specified, because it suits the modelling procedure. We call interpolation or extrapolation of measurements professional fraud and negligence in medicine ( you don't guess Tuesday's blood pressure from Monday's and Wednesday's. If you didn't do the BP Tuesday then you just didn't do it on Tuesday. Full stop. No fudging. No hand waving. No assumptions. And no covering up.) The correct answer is get another modelling method while also admitting that you don't actually yet know. Inserting a data point because you 'believe' it 'ought' be close to something up to 1200km away is just trash. So unless you are incredibly lucky with directions and magnitudes it really has no hope of even closely representing the real world. 1200km easily puts me north of Sydney, south of Hobart, west of Adelaide or half-way to New Zealand - thus why bother with a weather forecast before travel if they are all the same? So there's no surprise that you get a 'global trend' as one has deliberately discarded local detail by the design of one's analysis. NB: You get an true average by adding up a list of numbers and dividing by how many you have, NOT by defining a group to be close to an average in the first place! Why this has passed review is beyond me, but then I've just noted Phil Jones was one of the reviewers! See paragraph 137 and 138.*
When medical findings are 'peer reviewed' the focus is on the quality and transparency of the investigative procedures and not a prejudgment about whether we like or think the outcome suits us. In fact the best reviewers are the devil's advocates who take contrary views, much like panelists examining a doctoral thesis candidate. Much of the crappy logic I see in the climate area would have seen one short listed for a fail in pre-clinical medicine ( ie. go forth and multiply, but in another career ).
Pleas to right wing conspiracies, paranoia and 'denier' memes can't be inserted as a defense against poor work.
Enough pontification. If anyone would like to dis-abuse me of these views by specific contrary examples of published work I'd be delighted to look and listen. Except for scale, I too deal with clunky, complex and quirky thermodynamic systems which have surprising behaviours. :-) :-)
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) * Which also shows that the editor and two of the three reviewers also helped draft the paper ( not a rejection upon review - which is typically double-blind in other professions too )! What is going on here? You get to 'peer review' a paper you've contributed to? What is this, kindergarten? You get to effectively co-write a paper ( without prominent acknowledgment of that ) and then claim validity of your own work? The phrase 'helpful suggestions' implies a material contribution and thus a measure of co-authorship. Nice of them to disclose I suppose : but I gain the suspicion that they don't have a problem with this ie. it's the way we do things and they truly don't see a problem. Wow ..... what a mind blower .... it's like I'm asked to give a second opinion, for which I then take care to know of the first one and then align mine to suit. No doubt they wonder why they have credibility problems ....
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
...
Yet that is not a fact. Fig 21 is perhaps the cleanest with graphs showing clearly the quote is false unless CO2 was decreasing between 1940 and 1975. Actually it is false in toto because of the decrease in temperature between 1940 and 1975 can can only be considered true if the statement is modified to say temperature and CO2 are proportionate. It is the modification which requires CO2 to have decreased between those years.
Lets take another look at that graph and see what we can do.
Notice the zero point is arbitrary as are all temperature zeroes except absolute zero.
So if I want to rejoice in the absolutely proven graphical fact that we are finally leaving a period of global cooling I only need move the arbitrary 0.0 to the +0.6 point. I declare we are finally getting back to normal.
If I want to proclaim it is all hopeless I merely move the 0.0 point to -0.4 and declare we have had nearly 1 full degree of warming and we are already passed that magic tipping point derived by reading the entrails of an IPCC maintenance worker.
With the zero on the graph as presented one might be looking at the irony (or perhaps a secret message from one forced to confess) that by putting the 0 point where it is, the point is to draw attention to the feature of the graph which absolutely demonstrates there is no connection between CO2 and temperature.
A further thought : I can't find the use of 'diagnostic criteria' ( across the board ) in climatology. Meaning what legitimises the use of a certain word or phrase as a description for some scenario. An example from clinical medicine, 'febrile convulsion' :
- child aged between six months to six years.
- no prior history of afebrile convulsions ( ie. fitting without a fever )
- core temperature greater than 38.5 degrees Celsius
- no signs of central nervous system infection ( this implies a further sub-process to be enacted )
- generalised and not focal fitting
thus if I arrive at the 'febrile convulsion' diagnosis that ( professionally ) implies I have proceeded through an algorithm that the above definition requires. Note that each element is a pre-condition for the use of the phrase, failure of any single one negates, each is well defined as a practical unambiguous measurement or inquiry and there is no excuse for not exercising the issue when the clinical situation suggests ( say, with infants who can't tell you of their headache, then it is mandatory ). If I am queried later I will produce my contemporaneous notes to indicate or 'replay' my thinking for subsequent ( cross! ) examination.
I have yet to see 'diagnostic criteria' even remotely attempted/specified for the phrases 'global warming' and 'climate change'. Currently either are so poorly defined that they typically mean 'whatever the speaker wants to express' ..... see Al Gore ... and are nearly always so applied in retrospect ie. something happens and then one says "oh, that's what I meant only I didn't say so earlier and no thanks, I won't chance a guess for next year. I'll wait and see and then morph the description to suit". Hence you can have 'global warming' regardless of whether the temperature actually goes up or down ( including baseline and interval-limit shifting, or altering 'significance' definitions on the fly ). But perhaps 'climate change' doesn't need criteria as a natural language interpretation means any outcome will suit ie. there's no hurdle to surmount to gain the category anyway ( it's become the 'universe of discourse' in set theory ). You label a year 'typical' if it suits your view, but 'aberrant' if it contradicts, and either way you retain the hypothesis.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
In case I might be seen to be insufficiently exact in my concerns as regards the 1200km 'nearest neighbour' adjustment for 'missing measurements', then as per the paper's description :
IF I have two points separated by 2400km then I can fill in data ( where there was none ) right along the line between the two.
AND the Earth's diameter is 40000 km or close enough to 17 of these intervals ( rounded up ).
THEN a quick spot of geometry shows that it easily takes less than 100 actual recorded temperatures to cover the Earth and still remain an allowable representation ( for some deemed 'moment' in time ) as per this rule.
BUT it could be fewer actual measurements, because of the circularity induced in the process by using criteria of 'defined temperature anomalies'. That is : if I have yet to define normality ( I'm trying to find a trend remember ) but I have already engaged criteria ( of whatever design or direction ) for what is 'aberrant' then that allows insertion of data that furthers the trend to aberration. Which is then later amalgamated or averaged to return the trend verdict!
Does anyone remember the problem with the early Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet program, where you could do some nearest neighbour simulation ( a rectangular array, boundary values given, some Laplace type analysis of internal temperatures )? For certain cases it had a worrying tendency to wander off and not converge ( all sorts of complex possibilities, now studied by chaos theorists ) because of a 'pass the parcel' propagation of computation variations. It looked like a version of Conway's Life sometimes, so that your 'answer' very sensitively depended upon what iteration you chose to stop at, and not the underlying problem.
Probably the best demonstration of where this sort of approach might lead is in paragraph 85 :
Quote:
Thus, although it is possible that the GISS analysis overstates the magnitude of Arctic warming in regions where data are extrapolated, it is also possible that the Chylek et al. (manuscript in preparation, 2010) analysis underestimates the warming in the Arctic Ocean.
That is, anything actually goes, and you have a suitable range of adjusting excuses to draw upon as preference dictates. Note the language too : even in the absence of actual data for the area in question a warming trend is the assumed outcome. Or do we allow 'underestimates the warming' to include the case of cooling? Again : if you don't actually measure THEN you can't claim to 'know' Tuesday's blood pressure.
Isn't the Arctic quoted as a bellweather - you know, lonely polar bears floating away on icebergs - and yet no reliable information is available to even fudge a result!!
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) BTW I could not find mention of any over-riding or 'guard' rule to limit the number of interpolations/extrapolations and yet remain allowable. So that leaves rather a question as to what is the true rate/fraction of data 'creation' ( as opposed to reporting of actual measurements that were physically performed ) engaged during this process.
( edit ) Sorry I just spotted another beauty, again paragraph 85 :
Quote:
Also, greater warming in the interior of Greenland would not be captured because there are no longâ€record interior stations in the analyses.
This, on data available ( which as just stated are insufficient to deduce a trend ) could also be consistent with the following statements :
"Also, greater cooling in the interior of Greenland would not be captured because there are no longâ€record interior stations in the analyses."
"We don't know about Greenland"
""
And again, we have another oft-quoted bellweather lacking a directly deducible trend, but then indirectly appears after the desired trend is inserted into the machinations of the modelling. { Quick thermodynamic question : there is an region in my house the borders of which show a rising temperature. What is the temperature, as yet unmeasured, in the centre of that region? Careful now - it could either be my fireplace or my fridge - because what you don't know and aren't measuring is energy flows. If there's a nett outward it's the fireplace, if it's nett inward it's my fridge. :-) :-) }
So I guess I ought to deduce, and admit, that I have insufficient advance credulity for this to make any sense for me. Clearly it requires pre-existing assumptions of a specific trend to remain a logical whole. This work is too divorced from actual data collection to stand alone as a consistent scientific construct without some measure of a priori bias.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
...
Yet that is not a fact. Fig 21 is perhaps the cleanest with graphs showing clearly the quote is false unless CO2 was decreasing between 1940 and 1975. Actually it is false in toto because of the decrease in temperature between 1940 and 1975 can can only be considered true if the statement is modified to say temperature and CO2 are proportionate. It is the modification which requires CO2 to have decreased between those years.
Lets take another look at that graph and see what we can do.
Another thing I can do with the graphs is move the zero to the only zero that matters, absolute zero. That would be -273.15 degrees C. That makes the zero on the graphs to be +290 degrees or so. The entire spread of low to high temps on the graphs is less than 1 degree or approximately 1/3 of 1% temperature fluctuation. To get to 1% variation and excursion of approx 3 degrees is needed. Without looking it up I doubt there is any place on earth where over a day to night and summer to winter the temperature excursion is only 3 degrees.
Given the nature of the earth were temperature control over the years to within 1/3 of 1% an engineering project this little variation would be an incredible challenge.
Regardless of one's opinion of the analysis of the temperature data it is obviously a major challenge to collect and analyze the data which would be the first thing to do before attempting temperature regulation.
Yet here we have the earth as a natural system which is, unless one is a creationist, totally devoid of any design effort.
When a year or season is particularly warm or cold the local TV weather reports will give some kind of degree-day for the season or the year. Such reports are usually based upon the same weather station over the year and if a large city then most likely the airport. Again without researching it I am certain I have never heard such a report breathlessly saying the last summer was so hot it was a full degree above average. Yes, daily records are broken by a single full degree but for seasons to be reported they have to be significantly different perhaps because there are no official seasonal or annual statistics.
Note also the problem with daily records. It takes a full degree to break a record. If the record for a day is 110 and the local temperature is 110.9 the record of 110 stands. Take another look at the graphs. Record years are based upon not tenths but hundredths of a degree greater. The entire excursion of the graphs being less than one degree would not break a local record for highest temperature on a particular date.
Going back to moving the zero to absolute zero, were the same scale used absolute zero would be some ten meters below the bottom of the page. Were the scale compressed to the same size the variation would be about one dot on a 300 dpi print out. That means something so small it could be obscured by the printing algorithm at that resolution. On standard printer paper it is on the order of magnitude of the acceptable bleed for an ink bubble.
On the third claw (we are all Kzinti now) are extremes in temperatures and change in average temperature the end of life as we know it? We already live with such differences. At the same latitude in the US the extremes of temperature between Washington DC and Cincinnati Ohio is about ten degrees, the hottest extreme of Summer will be ten degrees warmer and the extreme winter ten degrees cooler. Note I have switched to degrees Fahrenheit here just to save myself some work and avoid fractions of a degree as would happen with conversion to Celsius.
In any event greater extremes are not a problem.
It would be too hard to look up average temperatures but just for this post but I think we can all agree by inspection the average temperature for Montreal Canada and Miami Florida are significantly different. Yet both cities support life as we know it -- unless you are a British descent Canadian.
But what about the extremes at the equator? Nothing really. The closer one gets to the equator the less extreme the seasonal temperature differences and higher the average temperature. This is even true for deserts like the Sahara where it can go below freezing at night. It is not a chance occurrence. Romans made ices by covering a hole with polished metal by day and open to the sky at night for several days. The metal prevents what is in the hole from warming during the day and at night what heat it has radiates into the near black body of the night sky.
But it only works in a desert. Why? Because the heat retained by water vapor, i.e. the humidity, in non-desert areas prevents radiation and condenses on anything significantly cooler than the air temperature.
Not only are the deserts in the temperate region not at the equator but the humidity at the equator stabilizes tropical temperatures.
The bottom line here is today's tropical conditions from the equator to the poles is the worst case of global warming.
RE: Found a link to the
Ah, Mr Keeling. That link makes much better sense ... it alas doesn't mention why a measurement on top of a regularly outgassing volcano is a good place to do that, or how to account for otherwise. I don't disbelieve that CO2 is going up, not at all, but does anyone know where this type of thing has been done well away from local CO2 sources? I do vaguely remember a mention of someone in my youth who did this on the western coast of Tasmania, I think, no where near anything volcanic, human habitation, marshes etc and receiving air straight from the Roaring Forties.
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) Here's the primary record from Scripps for CO2. Specifically this one for Mauna Loa. You'll note that the South Pole data are rather lower by about 20% or so, but I'd reckon it's reasonable to assume something like sublimation at such lower temperatures. If you look at the data from other sites like the various Pacific Islands ( Samoa say ) they all show the same trend, so that is a good consistent indicator, but as far as I can tell are all somewhat lower than Mauna Loa. So if you put that excess down as a local volcano effect then the rising trend is still quite clear. There. Homework done .... :-)
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: Thanks for a link to
Another thing I notice is the ability to say things which are believed about a thing rather than about the thing. In this case
Yet that is not a fact. Fig 21 is perhaps the cleanest with graphs showing clearly the quote is false unless CO2 was decreasing between 1940 and 1975. Actually it is false in toto because of the decrease in temperature between 1940 and 1975 can can only be considered true if the statement is modified to say temperature and CO2 are proportionate. It is the modification which requires CO2 to have decreased between those years.
Without the modification and with no reason to assume there was a CO2 decrease between those years we can only assume that which is reasonable, CO2 did increase during those years. As the temperature did not increase these graphs are clear evidence there is no direct correlation between CO2 and temperature.
If one has a preconceived conclusion then it is natural to say "just ignore what does not support the conclusion" which is what must be done in this matter.
As with any reasonable person I am more than willing to listen to any explanation even if it includes CO2 but only if there are other phenomena NOT HANDWAVING which explains the entire curve.
And before I am accused for moving the goal posts, depending upon the other factor(s) which are introduced to mitigate the effect of CO2 for 35 years there are other problems. For example, if the mitigating factor affects air temperature only not soil or water then it cannot alone explain the data.
Let me try to make my issue with the graph simpler. A direct correlation says the heavier and object the harder it is to lift. So lets make years into lbs. So for 1 to 40 lbs it gets harder to lift. But at 41 lbs up to 75 lbs it gets progressively easier to lift -- perhaps not much but it does stop getting harder. Then suddenly at 76 lbs it is no harder to lift than would have been 41 lbs without the anomaly between 40 and 75. Something is wrong with the either the weights or gravity or the theory that weight is directly proportional to the difficulty in lifting.
Yes, climate is much more complicated but merely saying that is handwaving. In this case the very graph data which the CO2 folks love to point to is in fact evidence showing increasing CO2 does not explain the data.
RE: RE: Okay, but seeing
Glaciers have been melting for some 22,000 years with most of them finally going away 15-12,000 years ago. I still do not see this love of glaciers nor what it is supposed to mean. As glaciers retreat in the Alps evidence of medieval habitation is being uncovered. Obviously there was a time not that long ago when there were fewer and smaller glaciers than today.
Remember I am the guy that bought the palm tree franchise for Washington DC and I am still waiting to cash in on it.
RE: ... ( edit ) Here's the
As to the south pole ...
A while back the Ross Ice Shelf was observed to be decreasing and a chunk broke off and it was obviously global warming until an active volcano was discovered under it. I do not recall increased volcanism being a feature of global warming. However one assumes it is putting out CO2. And if air patterns are like the ocean current in the region it is circumpolar. So the CO2 that happens in Antarctica stays in Antarctica. One of these days I may get around to researching the actual air patterns down there but at least there is a large and active source for the gas. Now just where are the Antarctic CO2 measurements being made?
Which brings up the obvious question, where can we get an unbiased CO2 measure and at what altitude? Any place near biological activity is biased as is near volcanic activity. While the altitude variance from molecular weight is slight the turbulence mixing (homogenizing) gases is greatest near the surface. Seems to me a good place would be part way up the Andes above the desert coast areas of Chile and in the southern hemisphere northern CO2 should be well mixed before it gets there to be measured.
But then there is another modest problem, seasonal variation. Plants go dormant where the winters are cold but animals keep breathing so CO2 will increase in winter where there are mammals. But the hemispheres are not balanced in land masses and the seasonal difference is great on land and trivial in oceans.
And then the plant metabolism of CO2 in summer depends upon the quality of the growing season ... and there are certainly many other factors than I have mentioned off of the top of my head. So in the end it all comes down to another great multi-year averaging of the fraction of CO2 in the atmosphere no matter where it is measured.
In Chile highlands there is
In Chile highlands there is plenty of astronomical observatories, including the European Southern Observatory at La Silla and others, like the ALMA radiotelescope array for millimeter range radioastronomy. It would not be difficult to establish some CO2 recording stations. As for volcanic activity the FAMOUS model from the UK Meteo Office I am running now in CPDN on a time range from 1199 to 1399 takes account of it .
Tullio
I quite like the Goddard
I quite like the Goddard paper for it's clarity and honesty. I have sympathy for the researchers attempting to un-fuddle a complex system to latch on to clear trends and connections. In a scientific sense it's a bit sad to have all the politico-social 'riders' about. I sense they feel like targets for a horde of angry wasps, dammed if they do and dammed if they don't.
This is reminiscent of medical research pre-WWII where the 'latest and greatest' was determined by mass vote, or esteemed authority, or habit, or plain old pride and prejudice. Not alot of progress was being made ie. healing the sick. Then came along the era of clinical trials, especially the 'randomised double-blind' paradigm which separates expectation from measurement from analysis. The medical industry now knows well the perils of hidden bias. It took a little while to get some new news out of that, but mainly because it first required a mass slaughter of most of the existing sacred cows. Sad to say but there was reasonable analogy with the medieval thinking as per Monty Python - 'she weighs as much as a duck, therefore she is a witch' ( as per Matt's correct analysis of the CO2 and temperature curves 1940-75 ie. it takes medieval logic to recover the pre-judged result of causation ). Once that got cleaned up and folks got used to the idea that you have to prove what you say then matters really took off. This lifted the thinking above anecdotal, personally biased or just intellectually lazy attitudes ( especially : I assert something, no one contradicts thus it must be true. Or : I define only one hypothesis to be valid for discussion therefore it is the winner. ).
Not that there haven't been problems, but they're exceptional and not as endemic as they were.
I recall Richard Feynman's poignant revelation about his wife's ( Arlene Greenbaum ) early death in 1945 from tuberculosis. He was quite angry, not simply because the doctors couldn't save her, but that closer inquiry showed the entire profession had no reliable methods for distinguishing the good propositions from the bad. The latter was the greater sin in his view.
For instance see William McBride and thalidomide, which has two particular interesting points (a) we got a heads up on the tragedies that can ensue from medication given in early pregnancy ( letter to The Lancet in 1961 ) and (b) McBride actually knowingly and willingly fudged his data ( published study in 1981 ), admitted it, and was penalised. A good example of the precautionary principle though, especially the FDA in Kennedy's time.
The Austin Flint cardiac murmur. The Wikipedia entry rather politely glosses over the problem : 'the role of this sign in clinical practice has been questioned' and '...suggest the murmur is the result of...'. It was taught to medical students ( ie. me in the early 80's ) as a leaflet of the mitral valve being flicked back to hit the aortic area. Except this mechanism was never seen nor heard when the appropriate technology arrived ( echocardiography ). The humourous interest here is that the ability to detect this murmur with a stethoscope and ears ( the 'Mark I microphone set' ) was seen as a key measure of clinical skill, the quality of your stethoscope ( ie. did you buy cheap? ) and the experience and seniority of the clinician. It's a professional fantasy for poncing value without objective basis. I, like many colleagues, call my stethoscope 'the guessing tubes'. :-)
Why I bring this up is that I see ( from what I can get easy access to ) that climatology is sort of like medical research around WWII. It appears riddled with basic errors learnt and discarded long ago in other fields, like medicine, and even more seriously a dearth of willingness of investigators to admit that. Medicine has the 'advantage', if you will, of forcing practitioners ( ie. lest penalties ) to pay close attention to real biology. Myth is not just ignorance, it is very bloody deadly. It is enough that a disease should take or ruin a life without the doctor weighing in to promote that. In that regard knocking the 'gods of medicine' off their pedestals has been exceptionally fruitful - to sick people!
A harsh comment from without perhaps but climatology really needs to come up with a paradigm ( of similiar significance to them as double blind trials were to medicine ) that will give them genuine progress, or we'll be having the same discussions about process in another ten years : like inserting numbers into models and calling it 'data' when no physical measurement was actually taken at the time and place specified, because it suits the modelling procedure. We call interpolation or extrapolation of measurements professional fraud and negligence in medicine ( you don't guess Tuesday's blood pressure from Monday's and Wednesday's. If you didn't do the BP Tuesday then you just didn't do it on Tuesday. Full stop. No fudging. No hand waving. No assumptions. And no covering up.) The correct answer is get another modelling method while also admitting that you don't actually yet know. Inserting a data point because you 'believe' it 'ought' be close to something up to 1200km away is just trash. So unless you are incredibly lucky with directions and magnitudes it really has no hope of even closely representing the real world. 1200km easily puts me north of Sydney, south of Hobart, west of Adelaide or half-way to New Zealand - thus why bother with a weather forecast before travel if they are all the same? So there's no surprise that you get a 'global trend' as one has deliberately discarded local detail by the design of one's analysis. NB: You get an true average by adding up a list of numbers and dividing by how many you have, NOT by defining a group to be close to an average in the first place! Why this has passed review is beyond me, but then I've just noted Phil Jones was one of the reviewers! See paragraph 137 and 138.*
When medical findings are 'peer reviewed' the focus is on the quality and transparency of the investigative procedures and not a prejudgment about whether we like or think the outcome suits us. In fact the best reviewers are the devil's advocates who take contrary views, much like panelists examining a doctoral thesis candidate. Much of the crappy logic I see in the climate area would have seen one short listed for a fail in pre-clinical medicine ( ie. go forth and multiply, but in another career ).
Pleas to right wing conspiracies, paranoia and 'denier' memes can't be inserted as a defense against poor work.
Enough pontification. If anyone would like to dis-abuse me of these views by specific contrary examples of published work I'd be delighted to look and listen. Except for scale, I too deal with clunky, complex and quirky thermodynamic systems which have surprising behaviours. :-) :-)
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) * Which also shows that the editor and two of the three reviewers also helped draft the paper ( not a rejection upon review - which is typically double-blind in other professions too )! What is going on here? You get to 'peer review' a paper you've contributed to? What is this, kindergarten? You get to effectively co-write a paper ( without prominent acknowledgment of that ) and then claim validity of your own work? The phrase 'helpful suggestions' implies a material contribution and thus a measure of co-authorship. Nice of them to disclose I suppose : but I gain the suspicion that they don't have a problem with this ie. it's the way we do things and they truly don't see a problem. Wow ..... what a mind blower .... it's like I'm asked to give a second opinion, for which I then take care to know of the first one and then align mine to suit. No doubt they wonder why they have credibility problems ....
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: ... Yet that is not a
Lets take another look at that graph and see what we can do.
Notice the zero point is arbitrary as are all temperature zeroes except absolute zero.
So if I want to rejoice in the absolutely proven graphical fact that we are finally leaving a period of global cooling I only need move the arbitrary 0.0 to the +0.6 point. I declare we are finally getting back to normal.
If I want to proclaim it is all hopeless I merely move the 0.0 point to -0.4 and declare we have had nearly 1 full degree of warming and we are already passed that magic tipping point derived by reading the entrails of an IPCC maintenance worker.
With the zero on the graph as presented one might be looking at the irony (or perhaps a secret message from one forced to confess) that by putting the 0 point where it is, the point is to draw attention to the feature of the graph which absolutely demonstrates there is no connection between CO2 and temperature.
A further thought : I can't
A further thought : I can't find the use of 'diagnostic criteria' ( across the board ) in climatology. Meaning what legitimises the use of a certain word or phrase as a description for some scenario. An example from clinical medicine, 'febrile convulsion' :
- child aged between six months to six years.
- no prior history of afebrile convulsions ( ie. fitting without a fever )
- core temperature greater than 38.5 degrees Celsius
- no signs of central nervous system infection ( this implies a further sub-process to be enacted )
- generalised and not focal fitting
thus if I arrive at the 'febrile convulsion' diagnosis that ( professionally ) implies I have proceeded through an algorithm that the above definition requires. Note that each element is a pre-condition for the use of the phrase, failure of any single one negates, each is well defined as a practical unambiguous measurement or inquiry and there is no excuse for not exercising the issue when the clinical situation suggests ( say, with infants who can't tell you of their headache, then it is mandatory ). If I am queried later I will produce my contemporaneous notes to indicate or 'replay' my thinking for subsequent ( cross! ) examination.
I have yet to see 'diagnostic criteria' even remotely attempted/specified for the phrases 'global warming' and 'climate change'. Currently either are so poorly defined that they typically mean 'whatever the speaker wants to express' ..... see Al Gore ... and are nearly always so applied in retrospect ie. something happens and then one says "oh, that's what I meant only I didn't say so earlier and no thanks, I won't chance a guess for next year. I'll wait and see and then morph the description to suit". Hence you can have 'global warming' regardless of whether the temperature actually goes up or down ( including baseline and interval-limit shifting, or altering 'significance' definitions on the fly ). But perhaps 'climate change' doesn't need criteria as a natural language interpretation means any outcome will suit ie. there's no hurdle to surmount to gain the category anyway ( it's become the 'universe of discourse' in set theory ). You label a year 'typical' if it suits your view, but 'aberrant' if it contradicts, and either way you retain the hypothesis.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
In case I might be seen to be
In case I might be seen to be insufficiently exact in my concerns as regards the 1200km 'nearest neighbour' adjustment for 'missing measurements', then as per the paper's description :
IF I have two points separated by 2400km then I can fill in data ( where there was none ) right along the line between the two.
AND the Earth's diameter is 40000 km or close enough to 17 of these intervals ( rounded up ).
THEN a quick spot of geometry shows that it easily takes less than 100 actual recorded temperatures to cover the Earth and still remain an allowable representation ( for some deemed 'moment' in time ) as per this rule.
BUT it could be fewer actual measurements, because of the circularity induced in the process by using criteria of 'defined temperature anomalies'. That is : if I have yet to define normality ( I'm trying to find a trend remember ) but I have already engaged criteria ( of whatever design or direction ) for what is 'aberrant' then that allows insertion of data that furthers the trend to aberration. Which is then later amalgamated or averaged to return the trend verdict!
Does anyone remember the problem with the early Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet program, where you could do some nearest neighbour simulation ( a rectangular array, boundary values given, some Laplace type analysis of internal temperatures )? For certain cases it had a worrying tendency to wander off and not converge ( all sorts of complex possibilities, now studied by chaos theorists ) because of a 'pass the parcel' propagation of computation variations. It looked like a version of Conway's Life sometimes, so that your 'answer' very sensitively depended upon what iteration you chose to stop at, and not the underlying problem.
Probably the best demonstration of where this sort of approach might lead is in paragraph 85 :
That is, anything actually goes, and you have a suitable range of adjusting excuses to draw upon as preference dictates. Note the language too : even in the absence of actual data for the area in question a warming trend is the assumed outcome. Or do we allow 'underestimates the warming' to include the case of cooling? Again : if you don't actually measure THEN you can't claim to 'know' Tuesday's blood pressure.
Isn't the Arctic quoted as a bellweather - you know, lonely polar bears floating away on icebergs - and yet no reliable information is available to even fudge a result!!
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) BTW I could not find mention of any over-riding or 'guard' rule to limit the number of interpolations/extrapolations and yet remain allowable. So that leaves rather a question as to what is the true rate/fraction of data 'creation' ( as opposed to reporting of actual measurements that were physically performed ) engaged during this process.
( edit ) Sorry I just spotted another beauty, again paragraph 85 :
This, on data available ( which as just stated are insufficient to deduce a trend ) could also be consistent with the following statements :
"Also, greater cooling in the interior of Greenland would not be captured because there are no longâ€record interior stations in the analyses."
"We don't know about Greenland"
""
And again, we have another oft-quoted bellweather lacking a directly deducible trend, but then indirectly appears after the desired trend is inserted into the machinations of the modelling. { Quick thermodynamic question : there is an region in my house the borders of which show a rising temperature. What is the temperature, as yet unmeasured, in the centre of that region? Careful now - it could either be my fireplace or my fridge - because what you don't know and aren't measuring is energy flows. If there's a nett outward it's the fireplace, if it's nett inward it's my fridge. :-) :-) }
So I guess I ought to deduce, and admit, that I have insufficient advance credulity for this to make any sense for me. Clearly it requires pre-existing assumptions of a specific trend to remain a logical whole. This work is too divorced from actual data collection to stand alone as a consistent scientific construct without some measure of a priori bias.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: RE: ... Yet that is
Another thing I can do with the graphs is move the zero to the only zero that matters, absolute zero. That would be -273.15 degrees C. That makes the zero on the graphs to be +290 degrees or so. The entire spread of low to high temps on the graphs is less than 1 degree or approximately 1/3 of 1% temperature fluctuation. To get to 1% variation and excursion of approx 3 degrees is needed. Without looking it up I doubt there is any place on earth where over a day to night and summer to winter the temperature excursion is only 3 degrees.
Given the nature of the earth were temperature control over the years to within 1/3 of 1% an engineering project this little variation would be an incredible challenge.
Regardless of one's opinion of the analysis of the temperature data it is obviously a major challenge to collect and analyze the data which would be the first thing to do before attempting temperature regulation.
Yet here we have the earth as a natural system which is, unless one is a creationist, totally devoid of any design effort.
When a year or season is particularly warm or cold the local TV weather reports will give some kind of degree-day for the season or the year. Such reports are usually based upon the same weather station over the year and if a large city then most likely the airport. Again without researching it I am certain I have never heard such a report breathlessly saying the last summer was so hot it was a full degree above average. Yes, daily records are broken by a single full degree but for seasons to be reported they have to be significantly different perhaps because there are no official seasonal or annual statistics.
Note also the problem with daily records. It takes a full degree to break a record. If the record for a day is 110 and the local temperature is 110.9 the record of 110 stands. Take another look at the graphs. Record years are based upon not tenths but hundredths of a degree greater. The entire excursion of the graphs being less than one degree would not break a local record for highest temperature on a particular date.
Going back to moving the zero to absolute zero, were the same scale used absolute zero would be some ten meters below the bottom of the page. Were the scale compressed to the same size the variation would be about one dot on a 300 dpi print out. That means something so small it could be obscured by the printing algorithm at that resolution. On standard printer paper it is on the order of magnitude of the acceptable bleed for an ink bubble.
On the third claw (we are all Kzinti now) are extremes in temperatures and change in average temperature the end of life as we know it? We already live with such differences. At the same latitude in the US the extremes of temperature between Washington DC and Cincinnati Ohio is about ten degrees, the hottest extreme of Summer will be ten degrees warmer and the extreme winter ten degrees cooler. Note I have switched to degrees Fahrenheit here just to save myself some work and avoid fractions of a degree as would happen with conversion to Celsius.
In any event greater extremes are not a problem.
It would be too hard to look up average temperatures but just for this post but I think we can all agree by inspection the average temperature for Montreal Canada and Miami Florida are significantly different. Yet both cities support life as we know it -- unless you are a British descent Canadian.
But what about the extremes at the equator? Nothing really. The closer one gets to the equator the less extreme the seasonal temperature differences and higher the average temperature. This is even true for deserts like the Sahara where it can go below freezing at night. It is not a chance occurrence. Romans made ices by covering a hole with polished metal by day and open to the sky at night for several days. The metal prevents what is in the hole from warming during the day and at night what heat it has radiates into the near black body of the night sky.
But it only works in a desert. Why? Because the heat retained by water vapor, i.e. the humidity, in non-desert areas prevents radiation and condenses on anything significantly cooler than the air temperature.
Not only are the deserts in the temperate region not at the equator but the humidity at the equator stabilizes tropical temperatures.
The bottom line here is today's tropical conditions from the equator to the poles is the worst case of global warming.