Comments on: Downplaying Their Own Finding

By: Stevo

Stevo — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 22:39:01 +0000

“Cities have a heat island over them”

You think somehow this is a grand revelation that shakes all of climate science to its very foundations? What a prize idiot you are!

By: Sly Fox

Sly Fox — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 10:15:59 +0000

Words matter

By: An Inquirer

An Inquirer — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:22:41 +0000

Will Nitschke:
Actually the lack of data may not be as severe as you may think. For glaciers, check out http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GW_4CE_Glaciers.htm
There are other resources as well, but a google search on melting glaciers will give you mostly short-sighted research on the issue.
For ocean temperatures, British sailors have been taking measurements for over 100 years. Unfortunately, methods have evolved (from buckets to more sophisticated techniques), and these inconsistencies hinder the reliability of trends. (HadCru braves to estimate long term SST, but apparently its estimates are overly reliant on Northern Hemisphere data points.) It is of course interesting that the previous poster referred to the Arctic and Siberia — leaving off Antarctica. Also, I understand from that Greenland has lower temperatures now than in the 1940s. Also, one should wonder about the impact of “China’s smog” on Siberia and other northern areas. The issues involve both soot deposits which melt snow/ice and increased nighttime clouds. Finally, there are those nagging reports that Siberian sites decades ago underreported temperatures to get more fuel allocations from Moscow. There was a tremendous drop off in the number of Siberian stations correlated with a suspicious rise in temperatures. So, okay, Will, perphaps I will grant your claim about Siberian temperature records.

By: Will Nitschke

Will Nitschke — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 06:19:21 +0000

Regrettably we don’t have data on mountain glacier melt, ocean heat content or very many temperature records from Siberia and the Arctic going back 100 years, so your comment is obviously foolish.

By: hunter

hunter — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 04:19:25 +0000

Yes, and it’s a little known fact that urban heat islands melt mountain glaciers, heat the oceans, and are strongest in Siberia and the Arctic.

By: Will Nitschke

Will Nitschke — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:08:08 +0000

Yelling it “DOES NOT MATTER” doesn’t make it true. Obviously it does matter. The issue has been discussed many times in the past now. It does matter because what were ‘rural’ stations 80 or 50 years ago, are often no longer rural.

The satellite data is valuable but we only have around 30 years of that data. It can’t be used to determine the actual warming that occurred in the whole of the last century.

By: An Inquirer

An Inquirer — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:28:20 +0000

In the eyes of people that truly study the issue, Global Warming Pessimists often hurt their own cause by self-serving actions. Regarding UHI, they typically embrace dubious studies such as Parker’s that claim UHI is largely non-existent; they attack studies that show UHI to be significant; and they carelessly dismiss the possibility that UHI has increased in many cities over the last 100 years. Nevertheless, I understand the position of mainstream Global Warming Pessimists is that UHI is real and is large in local cities, but DOES NOT MATTER for GMT trends because cities constitute such a small portion of the globe. The challenge for Skeptics is to show that UHI affects GMT. (As a side, I would caution that GMT has weaknesses as a reliable indicator of global climate change.) If satellites truly pick up near-surface temperatures, then are RSS and UAH results contaminated by UHI? Given that 70% of the world’s surface is water, how can UHI substantially affect GMT trends? With GISS relying on satellite readings for ocean temperature trends, would be surprising that UAH, RSS, and GISS have roughly followed each other for much of the past three decades? I believe that three Skeptical thoughts are worth considering. (1) Perhaps micro siting issues may be a reason GISS has had more divergence (less cooling) lately (since 2000) than UAH and RSS. (2) The similarity between various GMT measures since incorporation of satellite data is not surprising, but the severity of temperatures 70 years ago might be understated. GISS has adjusted those temperatures downward, and adverse impacts of climate trends were much more evident in the 1930s than now. (3) Worldwide, glaciers started retreating over 200 years ago. Whatever caused the Little Ice Age to end is likely to be more “natural” than CO2-induced. (And glaciers typically have not yet retreated to the point that they were during the MWP.) So mainstream Skeptics accept that temperatures have risen since the LIA, but why did the LIA end?

By: Paul Power

Paul Power — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 08:19:34 +0000

That “relatively small” comment is more disingenuous than it seems.

You have to compare the .53C to the .81C (not to (.53C + .81C)) which is surely what they meant by “large scale warming”

By: Will Nitschke

Will Nitschke — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 09:40:33 +0000

Not a surprise to anyone… it’s telling that the best kept surface station data, which is in the US, shows no particular warming trend for around 80 years. As I recall the warmest temperatures were in the 1930’s and this fact has always been downplayed…

What is also interesting is that hundreds of millions are spent on climate research these days in support of the AGW hypothesis, yet the resulting studies at best lend tenuous support…

By: MikeS

MikeS — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 01:54:14 +0000

Rob: 1951–2004 times 0.1C/decade = 0.53C