Extreme Events

My modelling backing began in complex dynamics (e.g. turbulent flows) but most of my experience is in financial modelling.  And I can say with a high degree of confidence that anyone in the financial world who actually bet money based on this modelling approach (employed in the recent Nature article on UK flooding) can be described with one word: bankrupt.  No one in their right mind would have any confidence in this approach.  No one would ever trust a model that has been hand-tuned to match retrospective data to be accurate going forward, unless that model had been observed to have a high degree of accuracy when actually run forward for a while (a test every climate model so far fails).  And certainly no one would trust a model based on pure modelling without even reference to historical data.

Te entire emerging industry of pundits willing to ascribe individual outlier weather events to manmade CO2 simply drive me crazy.  Forget the uncertainties with catastrophic anthropogenic global warming theory.  Consider the following:

  • I can think of no extreme weather event over the last 10 years that has been attributed to manmade CO2 (Katrina, recent flooding, snowstroms, etc) for which there are not numerous analogs in pre-anthropogenic years.   The logic that some event is unprecedented and therefore must be manmade is particularly absurd when the events in question are not unprecedented.  In some sense, the purveyors of these opinions are relying on really short memories or poor Google skills in their audiences.
  • Imagine weather simplified to 200 balls in a bingo hopper.  195 are green and 5 are red.  At any one point in time, the chance is 2.5% that a red ball (an extreme event) is pulled.  Now add one more ball.  The chances of an extreme even is now 20% higher.  At some point a red ball is pulled.  Can you blame the manual addition of a red ball for that extreme event?  How?  A red ball was going to get pulled anyway, at some point, so we don’t know if this was one of the originals or the new one.  In fact, there is only a one in six chance this extreme event is from our manual intervention.   So even if there is absolute proof the probability of extreme events has gone up, it is still impossible to ascribe any particular one to that increased probability.
  • How many samples would one have to take to convince yourself, with a high probability, the distribution has gone up?  The answer is … a lot more than just having pulled one red ball, which is basically what has happened with reporting on extreme events.  In fact, the number is really, really high because in the real climate we don’t even know the starting distribution with any certainty, and at any point in time other natural effects are adding and subtracting green and red balls (not to mention a nearly infinite number of other colors).

86 thoughts on “Extreme Events”

  1. netdr:
    Renewable
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    The alarmists are running a “shell game” and the smarter ones know it.

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    Any documentation.

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    They say the PDO doesn’t explain the long slow warming since records began in the little ice age. They are right but the increase in solar effects does explain it quite nicely.
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    Documentation?

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    They then say that solar effects don’t explain the warming in the last 1/2 of the 20′th century since solar radiation actually dripped a very tiny amount during that period. [This warming period means 1978 to 1998 since there hasn’t been any warming outside of those years.]
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    You have a degree in science and make these really definitive statements.

    The earth just set a record tieing 2010 with 2005 the warmest year in the temperature record.

    The warmest decade on record was 2001 to 2010. You have a real talent for making stuff up. How creative.

    NASA GISS, NOAA, HADCRUT, etc. agree with my statements. Where do you get yours?
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    The excess El Nino’s explains this warming nicely.
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    No single factor including CO2 can explain both the rising and falling of temperatures sice records began.

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    SOOOOOOOO this energy in the El Nino just magically appears out of nowhere. The source is the sun combined with GHG’s.

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    It just seems convenient that the so called aerosols cause cooling in the 1940 to 1978 period exactly when the excess La Nina’s would have caused cooling anyway. Since aerosol effects are unknown the are the “fudge factor” which can be expanded or contracted to cover any discrepancies in the theory. Even the IPCC admits that knowledge of aerosol effects is very low.

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    Lower yet is your own knowledge of climate. And yet you are claiming the experts don’t know. Sounds arrogant thinking on your part. False bravado is interesting to watch.
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    I have played the silly shell game at skepticalscience.org a few times until I got disgusted. The underlying fallacy of the site is that temperatures for the period recorded must be explained by a single cause. Not even CO2 theory can deliver on that impossible requirement.

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    So is organized observation of data a shell game? Pacific Decadal Oscillation?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_decadal_oscillation

    Mechanisms

    Several studies have indicated that the PDO index can be reconstructed as the superimposition of tropical forcing and extra-tropical processes.[2][4][5][6] Thus, unlike ENSO, the PDO is not a single physical mode of ocean variability, but rather the sum of several processes with different dynamical origins.

    Processes drive the PDO. Energy comes from outside the system to drive the PDO.

  2. They say the PDO doesn’t explain the long slow warming since records began in the little ice age. They are right but the increase in solar effects does explain it quite nicely.
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    Documentation?
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    Glad to oblige.
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    http://sidc.oma.be/html/wolfaml.html
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    The “Rough guide to climate change” says these sunspot peaks can add .1 % to the solar radiation. Since the alarmists multiply CO2 warming by 3 to 6 to increase the scare factor it is only fair to do the same for solar effects. [.6 % times 300 K is 1.8 ° K which is even more warming than observed]
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    The 20’th century sunspot cycles are huge ! I believe, however, that the 1978 to 1998 warming was
    caused by the Excess of El Nino’s which I have documented.
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    Since the 1978 to 1998 warming was caused by Excess El Nino’s the period 1998 to 2030 [about ] will be dominated by La Nina’s and it will cool.
    .
    Don’t be fooled by 2010 because there was an El Nino in late 1999 early 2010 and the La Nina was only felt for 1 month by GISS. It was a blip on a downward trend since 2006 approximately.

    http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2005/to:2010/plot/uah/from:2005/to:2010/trend
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    Claiming the excess El Nino’s are caused by CO2 is brain damaged since they have been present since the beginning of recorded temperatures. There have been 3 repetitions of the cycle we have observed and the latest one isn’t any larger or steeper than the last two.

    http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2008/08/global-warming-6.html

    Tell me which warming was caused by CO2 if you can.
    Dr Jones of CRU infamy has admitted it so it must be true. [besides I can read a graph].
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    CO2 effects must be minuscule because since 1998 there have been approximately equal El Nino and La Nina periods and the temperature didn’t go up. Why not ?
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  3. Q&A: Professor Phil Jones
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    … The BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin put questions to Professor Jones, including several gathered from climate sceptics. The questions were put to Professor Jones with the co-operation of UEA’s press office.
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    A – Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
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    An initial point to make is that in the responses to these questions I’ve assumed that when you talk about the global temperature record, you mean the record that combines the estimates from land regions with those from the marine regions of the world. CRU produces the land component, with the Met Office Hadley Centre producing the marine component.
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    Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below).
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    [This indicates that the recent warming is not exceptional. Moreover, even if it had been “exceptional,” that would not prove it is due to greenhouse gas emissions?]
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    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/14/phil-jones-momentous-qa-with-bbc-reopens-the-science-is-settled-issues/

  4. If we have been stable in the past 10,000 years of ghg’s and then we shoot up faster than any time in earth’s history, what do you think will happen. Remember we have the climate we do because of GHG’s otherwise we would have the climate of the moon.

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    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/temperaturevariations-in-past-centuries-and-the-so-called-hockey-stick/

    The simulations all show that it is not possible to explain the anomalous late 20th century warmth without including the contribution from anthropogenic forcing factors, and, in particular, modern greenhouse gas concentration increases. A healthy, vigorous debate can be found in the legitimate peer-reviewed climate research literature with regard to the precise details of empirically and model-based estimates of climate changes in past centuries, and it remains a challenge to reduce the substantial uncertainties that currently exist. Despite current uncertainties, it nonetheless remains a widespread view among paleoclimate researchers that late 20th century hemispheric-scale warmth is anomalous in a long-term (at least millennial) context, and that anthropogenic factors likely play an important role in explaining the anomalous recent warmth.
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    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=science-behind-climate-change

    The atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide remained roughly stable for nearly 10,000 years, before the abrupt and rapidly accelerating increases of the past 200 years. Growth rates for concentrations of carbon dioxide have been faster in the past 10 years than over any 10-year period since continuous atmospheric monitoring began in the 1950s, with concentrations now roughly 35 percent above preindustrial levels (which can be determined from air bubbles trapped in ice cores). Methane levels are roughly two and a half times preindustrial levels, and nitrous oxide levels are around 20 percent higher.

  5. Renewable

    The simulations all show that it is not possible to explain the anomalous late 20th century warmth without including the contribution from anthropogenic forcing factors, and, in particular, modern greenhouse gas concentration increases.
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    Saying “We couldn’t get the models to match observations without including CO2” is the least persuasive argument I have ever heard. It simply means your model isn’t any good. Considering how poorly models of that era worked in predicting the future what they say is meaningless.
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    Simulations are just like like laundering money. You encode your ideas of how climate works including feedbacks and the model plays them back to you. The ignorant are impressed.
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    There are a finite but huge number of combination of variables which return approximately the same answer. Running them over past data means nothing, running them over unknown future data means everything. So far the less scary the prediction the closer it comes to being right.
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    None of the published studies predicted the lack of warming since 1998. How could they ? They were backcasted over the 1978 to 1998 warming period so of course they predicted continuing warming. You expected fortunetelling ? Get serious.
    .
    I have coded computer simulations for professionally so I know a little more than the average person about them. They are like sausages and laws, you don’t want to see any of them made. The less you know the more impressed you are!

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    The simulations made no attempt to simulate ocean currents. We aren’t capable of doing it correctly even today. The only ones I am aware of which use ocean currents were done by Mojib Latif and they said that temperatures over a 20 year period could easily be dominated by ocean currents and we are in for 20 years of cooling because of the negative PDO. He almost got fired for that one so he hurriedly reestablished his membership in the church of global warming.
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    What he doesn’t say is that this 2 steps up 1 step back dance makes the average warming very slow. [1/2 ° C per century or so ]

  6. Re: Renewable
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    Renewable energy make sense if not done foolishly.
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    We should have been developing non petroleum solutions for cars and electricity since 1977, but global warming has nothing to do with it. Being dependent on the volatile middle East has everything to do with it. As prices rise conversion will take place somewhat painfully.

  7. Saying “We couldn’t get the models to match observations without including CO2″ is the least persuasive argument I have ever heard. It simply means your model isn’t any good. Considering how poorly models of that era worked in predicting the future what they say is meaningless.
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    No you would be wrong on this. Their simulations are much more accurate at hindcasting with co2 than without. If your model does not use co2 in its calculations it wanders off the course. If you choose to read the article the models have made predictions that have come true.

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm

    While there are uncertainties with climate models, they successfully reproduce the past and have made predictions that have been subsequently confirmed by observations.

    All the models are unable to predict recent warming without taking rising CO2 levels into account.

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    None of the published studies predicted the lack of warming since 1998. How could they ? They were backcasted over the 1978 to 1998 warming period so of course they predicted continuing warming. You expected fortunetelling ? Get serious.

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    You are like a stuck record on this one. Show me that it hasn’t warmed since 1998. NASA disagrees with you.

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    The simulations made no attempt to simulate ocean currents. We aren’t capable of doing it correctly even today. The only ones I am aware of which use ocean currents were done by Mojib Latif and they said that temperatures over a 20 year period could easily be dominated by ocean currents and we are in for 20 years of cooling because of the negative PDO. He almost got fired for that one so he hurriedly reestablished his membership in the church of global warming.

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    You are just so confident. The scientists are sloppy and greedy according to you, models don’t work and you know the earth is going to cool. How do you know the PDO has that effect on the earth.

    The authorities are wrong and yet your sources unknown to me are right. That’s a very odd situation to me. How do happen to have all this greatly found knowledge??

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  8. netdr:
    Re: Renewable

    Renewable energy make sense if not done foolishly.

    We should have been developing non petroleum solutions for cars and electricity since 1977, but global warming has nothing to do with it. Being dependent on the volatile middle East has everything to do with it. As prices rise conversion will take place somewhat painfully.

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    I can’t think of anything that should be done foolishly. We are in a vulnerable position due to a poor energy policy in the United States. Right now there is too much dominance on the part of oil companies on congress. It will be difficult to move ahead even though we need to.

    Where practical, we need to move to as much electrification of the transportation system as possible. Also giving energy efficiency the highest priority.

    We are a country that will go to war for oil, or dominate other countries so that we can have our supply.

    http://www.grist.org/article/2011-03-06-the-collapse-of-the-old-oil-order

    A good way to keep our soldiers at home is to have energy independence. I’d rather keep our soldiers at home taking care of their wives and kids.

  9. Renewable
    .
    I know the effect the PDO has on the earth because we have seen what it did through 3 cycles. It has probably done it forever but we don’t have accurate enough proxies to know. [The error bars seem to show that the temperature could be anywhere in a 1 ° C window.]
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    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy

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    I have made my sources known to you including peer reviewed studies and charts which back them up.
    .
    In the end the alarmists position boils down to “How can so many scientists possibly be so wrong ?” Even when the evidence clearly shows that they are. Translated this means “I have faith, regardless of all evidence to the contrary.”
    .
    That is a broken record if I have ever heard one.
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    As for reasons they got it wrong group-think and the desire for continued employment come to mind readily. Circle the wagons to defend the CAUSE ! Yes I believe many scientists have crossed the line from objective scientists into the role of advocate for a cause, like Dr Hansen. [Allowing an advocate to adjust the temperature record his models are judged against is a conflict of interest.]
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    It hasn’t warmed since 1998.
    http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1998/to:2010/plot/uah/from:1998/to:2010/trend
    .
    Even if you could get a stating point which showed a warming trend it is far from significant warming. Clearly the rate went down to almost zero as even the most biased observe can see. Something changed in about 1998. It will be obvious to even the dimmest bulb in a few years.

    .
    Actually we could do great damage to the economy if we convert foolishly. If we fail to use coal [while removing soot] and tar sands and Thorium reactors.
    .
    The proposals which have been made amount to doing it [converting] stupidly.

    If we artificially raise the price of energy and smother our own economy with Cap and trade or high taxes thus causing businesses to close and the CO2 production moved to China or India. CO2 would go up worldwide !!! Talk about unintended consequences.
    .
    A world government with the ability to make nations go against their own best interest won’t happen any time soon thank God.
    .
    As the earth cools and it becomes more evident that we are on a 60 year cycle sanity will return and conversion will happen due to natural forces.

  10. Renewable
    .
    Regardless of what I post for the confirmed alarmist it boils down to “A catastrophe is coming because the “consensus” can’t be wrong”.
    .
    Nothing I post will change that almost religious belief !

  11. Renewable

    The statement that “Our models couldn’t reproduce past temperatures without CO2 ” Is the poorest reason to believe CO2 is causing warming there is. All that statement means is that the models aren’t valid.
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    1) There are hundreds of factors, including the PDO, not included in the models or not correctly included in the models.
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    2) There are thousands of solutions which hind cast well and only predicting the future will sort out the good the bad and the ugly. You can have high sensitivity to CO2 and high sensitivity to Aerosols, or low sensitivity to both and get the same answer.
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    3) The models which are published are sensational and always wrong. They might have less sensational models which are closer to correct [and kept secret] but if they aren’t scary they aren’t published. Given a choice of being scary and wrong or being not scary and more correct the best career move is to be scary. People will forgive you for being wrong but not for failing to scare the public.
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    4) The defense of Dr Hansen’s 1988 model stops at 2007 when it wasn’t doing too badly. They deliberately glossed over the fact that the models predicted relatively great warming between 2007 and 2010 which didn’t happen. Skeptcalscience needs to be more skeptical and use better science.

    .
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm

    By 2011 the model had failed miserably. Like the poor horse player Dr Hansen can say “I could have” “I should have” but only predicting the future counts. Something changed in 1998 and the future won’t look like the 1978 to 1998 run up so hind casting just makes the fit worse.
    .
    It is like driving a car looking in the rear view mirror. The road turned in 1998 as anyone with eyes can see.
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    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.C.gif
    .
    I can do LMS fits etc but a pair of eyeballs are all it takes to see there has been no significant warming in 12 years. If NASA or anyone else says differently they are simply wrong. The truth is obvious.
    .
    If CO2 were a potent GHG there would be no doubt at all. Since the ocean currents have been positive and negative during the period 1998 to present the CO2 should have caused warming without help from El Nino’s but it didn’t happen did it?
    .
    The only warming in the last 1/2 of the 20th century or so far in the 21 st happened during 1978 to 1998 when it would have warmed anyway CO2 or no CO2.

  12. I know the effect the PDO has on the earth because we have seen what it did through 3 cycles. It has probably done it forever but we don’t have accurate enough proxies to know. [The error bars seem to show that the temperature could be anywhere in a 1 ° C window.]
    .
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy
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    YOu are talking about PDO and put up a hockey stick link?

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/Hockey-stick-or-hockey-league.html

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/its-not-us-advanced.htm

    Surface Temperature Change
    More warming at night than day
    Stratospheric Temperature Change
    Tropopause Height
    Upper Atmosphere Temperature Change
    Ocean Heat Content
    Sea Level Pressure
    Precipitation
    Infrared Radiation
    This is an impressively wide variety of global and regional climate change observations strongly matching the changes predicted by climate models and providing clear fingerprints of human-caused climate change.

    This is an impressively wide variety of global and regional climate change observations strongly matching the changes predicted by climate models and providing clear fingerprints of human-caused climate change.

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    Its a short brief representation of the observed changes in the earth to what is happening. PDO will not cause warmer nights. Warmer nights come from CO2 slowing down the exiting of infrared from the atmosphere. As the atmosphere accumulates more CO2 the exit of infrared will be slowed even more unitl a new higher balance is reached.

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    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Satellite_Temperatures.png

  13. To finish out my previous comment
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Satellite_Temperatures.png

    Notice the upward average trend of all three temperature readings.

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    Coal could be used in the short term with sequestration of co2, but it really adds co2 to the atmosphere just less of it. Once you start sequestering co2 underground, all of a sudden renewable energy is cost competitive.

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    Cap and trade puts the money where it actually saves money, and that is in energy efficiency. It is the most unglamorous cost effective way to reduce our energy dependence. The return on energy efficiency is 1 to 3 years, with money earned or not spent after that for the life time of the product. You can actually have an expanding economy with flat energy production instead of an ever expanding energy production.

  14. The beauty of a climate model is that you can take out whatever parameter you want and run that simulation.

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    http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm

    Figure 1: Comparison of climate results with observations. (a) represents simulations done with only natural forcings: solar variation and volcanic activity. (b) represents simulations done with anthropogenic forcings: greenhouse gases and sulphate aerosols. (c) was done with both natural and anthropogenic forcings (IPCC).

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    All 3 are observations vs the model.

    a.)obviously the model does not match the observations. WIth just soar variations and volcanic acitivity in the models, observation and the models diverge widely.

    b.) anthroprogenic alone without natural the model comes out lower than the observations and yet has that hockystick charachteristic at the end. Showing the human equation of the heating of the atmosphere by GHG’s.

    c.)anthroprogenic and natural combined, the model does a repectable job of simualating the oberved temperature. This one gets the closest correlation to observed temperatures.

    To say the models are totally wrong is to totally miss the point. The model clearly shows the trend to the upward swing in observed temperatures since the 1970’s.
    This is what hindcasting is about. When the model can hindcast, now the future cast is used to see where the trends will be. Run the model forward and then wait to see what the results are.

    As the earth and atmosphere are studied with satellites and other forms of observation, the models are improved in hindcasting and future casting over time.

  15. netdr:
    Renewable
    .
    Regardless of what I post for the confirmed alarmist it boils down to “A catastrophe is coming because the “consensus” can’t be wrong”.
    .
    Nothing I post will change that almost religious belief !

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    The PDO does explain all the symptoms of a warming world. Plus the PDO is not a source of energy. It is the result of external influences.

    Faith is believing in something when no external evidence is available.

    Right now the evidence coming in is that the earth is warming from anthroprogenic influence. When societys cannot or refuse to adapt, especially when overwhelming knowledge is available, the consequences will occur.

  16. http://climateprogress.org/2011/03/08/american-lung-association-we-must-clean-up-coal-fired-power-plants-and-close-the-toxic-loophole/

    American Lung Association: We must clean up coal-fired power plants and close the ‘Toxic Loophole’

    http://www.lungusa.org/healthy-air/outdoor/resources/toxic-air-report/

    Our kids are being exposed to 386,000 tons of 84 dangerous pollutants currently ‘uncontrolled’ as they spew from power plants, with known deleterious effects. These include:

    •Arsenic, lead, and other toxic metals;
    •Mercury;
    •Dioxins;
    •Formaldehyde and other chemicals known or thought to cause cancer, including benzene and radioisotopes;
    •Acid gases such as hydrogen chloride;
    •Radioactive materials, like radium and uranium.

    Coal is cheap no doubt. But is it worth the price anymore?

    http://climateprogress.org/2011/03/08/utility-executives-support-epas-new-air-quality-regulations/

    Utility CEO support EPA’s new air-quality standards
    Plus Exelon’s John Rowe speaks at AEI

    The utilities are ready to change with the new EPA rules.

  17. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.C.gif
    .
    I can do LMS fits etc but a pair of eyeballs are all it takes to see there has been no significant warming in 12 years. If NASA or anyone else says differently they are simply wrong. The truth is obvious.
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    From memory the last decade increased .18oC over the previous decade. Your graph supports my view. If you draw an imaginary line for the average, it definitely has an upward slope.

  18. Renewable, there is no way that graph has a significant upward slope from 1998 to 2010. I’m not going to test the beta value. But I come up with .12 degrees C per decade, but I have an R^2 of just .11. Which means the noise is extremely high and that slope is likely totally insignificant.

    The other thing to consider is that this is the GISS temps, which is the highest of the several global mean temps available. If we did a composite of the main GMT availabe, I think we’re pretty sure to find it to be even lower.

    We also have to wonder just what the value of this tend really is. Because the positive slope is largely driven by 3 relatively cool years from ~1999-2001. Other than that 1998, and 2002-2010 look pretty much the same with monthly temps generally looking like a shot gun blast between .4-.7 C. If you look at just 2002 on, the slope drops to basically zero.

    In short, no real trend here….move a long….

  19. Which is to say, as even Jones agrees, there’s been no significant warming for the past decade. So in addition to every one of the supposed catastrophic consequences of warming, none of which seem to be happening at all as predicted, now even the warming itself is absent. All this should be more than enough to put a stake into the heart of the hypothesis we’re facing dramatic, unprecedented, and extreme climate change justifying dramatic responses. Whatever the mounting data suggests with respect to the validity of earlier models of global climate (which more and more appear in need of substantial re-work), it’s pretty clear the data fail entirely to support advocacy of any radical agenda of any kind at all on the basis of any likelihood of substantial negative impacts from inaction. It’s become quite clear that inaction is, in fact, the one rational choice, on the basis of the evidence…at least with respect to the claimed rational for any.

    So we can confidently respond to Chicken Little “the sky is being studied, and no, it definitely is not falling”.

  20. Hi,

    I know that stuff like this is supposed simply to reinforce the prejudices of the converted, and it seems to be working, but do you have the vaguest interest in truth or reality? The fact is, your arguments are perfectly valid when applied to very simple financial models – those based on some form of regression process – but they are irrelevant when applied to climate models. Climate models claim to simulate physical processes by an iterative/feedback process based on mathematical approximations to reality – only an idiot would try to develop a financial model using the same approach. Even if it would work, which it wouldn’t – the dominant human factor makes for too many unknowns in finance, the models take months to run and the financial world wants answers now! There are many things wrong with climate models, but you obviously don’t know what they are and can’t be bothered to find out. With the anti-global warming side of the “debate” dominated by people like you, I fear the “warmists” have already won. At least they sound plausible and have a vague awareness of what they are talking about. In the face of your obvious ignorance, I find it very hard to believe in the modeling background you claim.

  21. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.C.gif
    .
    I can do LMS fits etc but a pair of eyeballs are all it takes to see there has been no significant warming in 12 years. If NASA or anyone else says differently they are simply wrong. The truth is obvious.
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    From memory the last decade increased .18oC over the previous decade. Your graph supports my view. If you draw an imaginary line for the average, it definitely has an upward slope.
    ***************
    Saying that the 00’s were warmer than the 90’s proves that the 00’s weren’t cooling is sloppy logic.

    [I have explained that fallacy to you already.]

    It warmed from 1990 to 1998 and was flat or cooling slightly since 1998.

    So the 90s must be cooler than the 00’s because of the relatively cool 1990, 1991 , 1992 years. RIGHT ?

    Does that say anything about the slope of the 00’s ? Of course not as anyone with a working brain can see.

    There has been no significant warming since 1998 when something changed. There have been approximately equal El Nino’s and La Nina’s and despite this there has been no warming. Why not?

    #Least squares trend line; slope = -0.00210646 per year

    http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1998/to:2010/plot/uah/from:1998/to:2010/trend

    Even if you cherry pick the dates and which temperature data to use the warming is trivial.

    The temperature has varied by 1 ° C over the 12 year period and a .01 rate of warming or cooling is essentially flat.

    Crow-barring our economy and spending trillions for nothing is clearly silly.

  22. netr,

    Thanks for bring the UAH data set. I used the GISS temps which have started to diverge from the UAH and HADCRUT temps around 2002 to 2003. Both the UAH and HADCRUT temps are basically flat, yet GISS has been growing at .12 degrees a decade. Which still isn’t much given the gross amount of noise going on, but is far more than what shows up in the other two temp sets.

    Anyway, if the so called experts can’t even agree on a method of figuring out the GMT in a given decade or even year (and the differences between methods can range up to about .4 degrees C in a given year) how in the world can we even start to have a discussion about what’s going to happen in 100 years?

  23. Wally

    As it fails to warm Dr Hansen and his minions are cranking in warming to keep his models from looking as bad as they should.

    Letting the fox be in charge of the hen house is a bad idea. Dr Hansen is an “advocate” not a scientist anymore. There is a huge difference.

  24. ADiff:
    Which is to say, as even Jones agrees, there’s been no significant warming for the past decade.

    ##########################################################

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/Phil-Jones-says-no-global-warming-since-1995.htm

    What the science says…
    When you read Phil Jones’ actual words, you see he’s saying there is a warming trend but it’s not statistically significant. He’s not talking about whether warming is actually happening. He’s discussing our ability to detect that warming trend in a noisy signal over a short period.

    BBC: How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?

    Phil Jones: I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 – there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.

  25. http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998-intermediate.htm

    The planet has continued to accumulate heat since 1998 – global warming is still happening. Nevertheless, surface temperatures show much internal variability due to heat exchange between the ocean and atmosphere. 1998 was an unusually hot year due to a strong El Nino.

    To claim global warming stopped in 1998 overlooks one simple physical reality – the land and atmosphere are just a small fraction of the Earth’s climate (albeit the part we inhabit). The entire planet is accumulating heat due to an energy imbalance. The atmosphere is warming. Oceans are accumulating energy. Land absorbs energy and ice absorbs heat to melt. To get the full picture on global warming, you need to view the Earth’s entire heat content.

    ##########################################################

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110308150228.htm

    Ice melt at both poles is accelerating.

    http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/lacis_01/

    CO2: The Thermostat that Controls Earth’s Temperature

    #########################################################

    If more and more ice melts the earth is heating up. Simple.

  26. Renewable,

    “When you read Phil Jones’ actual words, you see he’s saying there is a warming trend but it’s not statistically significant. He’s not talking about whether warming is actually happening.”

    Intellegence fail. If the trend cannot be confirmed as statistically significant, it is very unlikely that warming is actually happening. Thus, when Jones is talking about the statistical significance of the warming, he is talking about what is “actually happening.” Get it? The idea behind “statistical significance” is that we have usually a 95% confidence that something is “actually happening.”

    And if Jones were to include data sets other than GISS, he wouldn’t have any warming trend, significant or not, to talk about.

  27. Statistical significance is a vital concept.

    Over the 12 year period since 1998 the temperature anomaly has varied by .8 degrees C !

    [from .1 to .9]

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.C.gif

    When the background noise is high and the “signal” is tiny it is easy to claim warming when all that has happened is a non significant blip ! That is why the concept of “statistically significant” was conceived.

    Quibbling about .01 ° C warming over those 12 years is simply ridiculous. If that rate is continued for 100 to 300 years there is no catastrophe and we will have long since converted to renewable fuels because we had to.

  28. Netdr:
    Wishing for it doesn’t make it so.
    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.C.gif

    With your science background you are falling a little short. This is a very good representation of the increase in global temperature over the last 14 years and yes it reaches just short of .2C.

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.gif

    Tack this on to the graph above going back to 1880 and its a definite trend. Over the last 130 years there is a clear and definite trend upward. This trend is predicted to accelerate due to feedbacks which we have discussed before. This trend will not slow down either. Cooling will only result from a massive volcano or a large meteoroid. New global temperature records will be set this decade. At 1000 years out, there will be several meters of sea level rise just from the co2 content in the atmosphere now. With the present inability of the world to curtail co2 emissions except for europe, we are easily headed to 450 or higher ppm co2 which may be an area where the earth’s tipping points are and we are stuck with the earth also emitting co2 and methane. These are the significant pos feedbacks that will accelerate temperature increase.

  29. Renewable, what’s with the moving goal posts, first it was the last 12 years (since 1998), then it was the last decade, now its the last 14 years. The dramatic changes you see in the slope of your regression depending on which one you use, ranging from ~.12-.2 degrees C per decade, should give you an indication that the noise is simply way too high to give a meaningful trend.

    Of course you also continue to ignore GISS’s divergance from other data sets. Shockingly, this divergance is towards increased warming, not cooling. So, you’re just continuing to cherry picking the data that confirms your bias and ignoring anything that conflicts with said bias.

    But what are we expect from someone that picks a name of “Renewable Guy”?

  30. Wally:
    Your comment says that you don’t really understand the definition of climate. Long term weather. Since 1880 we have experienced about .7 to .8 degrees cenitigrade increase in temperature.

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.C.gif

    On a short from your own graph presented to me I’ve noticed that the low temperatures are getting warmer. That is part of the AGW theory. I don’t know how that it is that you ignor 2010 as record tieing temperature with 2005 and the last decade was the warmest ever in recorded temp history.

    And yet I hear occasional attempts at the earth is going to cool.

    The earth will start its glide path down about 50 years after we stop emitting more co2 than the earth can absorb. We don’t stop soon enough the earth will emit its own co2 and ch4 on its own. Then we have to wait for it to balance out after a very long time.

  31. Renewable said
    And yet I hear occasional attempts at the earth is going to cool.

    The earth will start its glide path down about 50 years after we stop emitting more co2 than the earth can absorb. We don’t stop soon enough the earth will emit its own co2 and ch4 on its own. Then we have to wait for it to balance out after a very long time.

    *********************

    Regardless of what we post if it cools for the next few years it will be obvious that the warming of 1978 to 1998 had nothing to do with CO2. When that happens the whole cult of global warming will collapse.

    If it begins to warm sharply again after the present 12 year hiatus I will join you !

    Since temperature records began the temperatures see to be dominated y ocean currents. No CO2 is needed to explain them.
    .
    El Nino — La Nina chart
    .
    http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
    .
    Temperature chart
    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.gif

    From 1944 or so to 1978 there were more La Nina’s and it cooled. CO2 wasn’t involved in the cooling was it ?

    From 1978 to 1998 was the only warming of the last 1/2 of the 20’th century or the first part of the 21’s when the alarmists tell us it accelerated. This warming would have happened without CO2 because there were more El Nino’s than La Nina’s ! It would have warmed even without CO2..

    The period 1998 to present had an approximately equal number of El Nino’s and La Nina’s. This is the most perplexing because with no help or harm CO2 caused no warming. From 1998 to present there has been no warming.

    The El Nino blip in 2010 shouldn’t fool anyone. The temperatures for 2011, 2012, 2013 etc should all be cooler than 2010 and the next 20 to 30 years should see a continued cooling trend. It probably won’t get as cool as in 1978 but the constant cooling cycles hold the warming to 1/2 ° per century which is no crisis.

    As I said before:

    If it begins to warm sharply again [without excess El Ninos] after the present 12 year hiatus I will join you in believing in CO2 induced warming!

    So far exactly what happened would have happened without any help from CO2.

  32. Sure Renewable, just blame it on I don’t “understand”. Maybe the problem here is that your own lack of “understanding” leavings you unable to recignize someone else’s understanding, even when in hits you square in the nose? And even if it is a lack of understanding on my part, that only puts the onus on you to explain it. Either way, it doesn’t help you.

    Anyway, lets get to your lame attempt to explain how I am not understanding something or other.

    “Since 1880 we have experienced about .7 to .8 degrees cenitigrade increase in temperature.”

    Yeah, give or take a little, but so what? That isn’t really the point here, and if you think this has something to do with our current discussion, you certainly have not adiquately explained your point.

    “On a short from your own graph presented to me I’ve noticed that the low temperatures are getting warmer.”

    What you “notice” is irrelevent. Do some statistical analysis and give me some logical explaination of said analysis. Just looking at set of data and saying, “oh I notice something”, is almost worthless. If you use this thing you notice as a reason to more fully pursue a new theory, great, but “noticing” alone is garbage. I could go on to explain what using what you “notice” as evidence of a physical phenominon means regarding your “understanding” or general intellegence, however, I’ll spare myself the lecture. I don’t think you have the required knowledge or lack of bias to recognize your own ignorance, even upon explanation.

    “I don’t know how that it is that you ignor 2010 as record tieing temperature with 2005 and the last decade was the warmest ever in recorded temp history.”

    Well, our recorded temp history is so short, and given the fact that we are coming out of an ice age, I don’t really think record temps by themselves mean much at all. Second, 2010 was only a record high year by GISS, other data sets put it well below 1998 (by ~.2 degrees C). Your continued evasion of other data sets is yet further proof of your bias and/or lack of intellegence.

    “And yet I hear occasional attempts at the earth is going to cool.”

    It would be quite foolish to think past warming trends means cooling is not possible, or even unlikely. If you wish to make the case for continued warming, you’re going to have to come up with a model that takes into account all known variables that control the GMT, prove it is a valid model, then show me the projected continued warming. Anyway, arguing or even suggesting that past warming, and even a quite reduced warming over the last 10 or year, means cooling is unlikely or impossible displays your “lack of understanding.”

    “The earth will start its glide path down about 50 years after we stop emitting more co2 than the earth can absorb. We don’t stop soon enough the earth will emit its own co2 and ch4 on its own. Then we have to wait for it to balance out after a very long time.”

    And now you’ve gone back to your simplist, 1-D alarmist rhetoric. These are large, sweeping statements that assume we have an extremely large degree of certainty regarding what controls the GMT. No such certainty excists, and even if it did, you made no attempt to prove it does. Yet another gross lack of understanding about not only climate science, but scientific arguments in general.

    After all this evidence toward our own beliefs/knowledge/etc., I think the only thing we’ve discovered I don’t understand is how to effectively communicate with a biased ignoramus.

  33. Netdr:

    Regardless of what we post if it cools for the next few years it will be obvious that the warming of 1978 to 1998 had nothing to do with CO2. When that happens the whole cult of global warming will collapse.

    If it begins to warm sharply again after the present 12 year hiatus I will join you !

    Since temperature records began the temperatures see to be dominated y ocean currents. No CO2 is needed to explain them.

    #################################################

    To exclude any factor in climate is to make your statement or observation less accurate.

    The cult is the unwilling people to accept the reality of data driven observations.

    Keep in mind Net, that we have the climate of the last 10,000 years because of the level of GHG’s. It’s what has given our civilization a place to thrive in. More GHG’s more reflection back to the earth, for higher surface temperatures.

    #########################################################

  34. Hey Wally:
    I see you are back to your old self. You do get all boxed up in your personal crap.

    The ice age that preceeded the holocene changed through a tipping point. The natural way to get to the climate we have today came the change in the sun’s relationship to the earth. THe milankovitch cycle. Because of the change in the orbital relationship, the great glaciers of the northern hemisphere melted. There has been ample study of this. The natural change took 15,000 years. Because of the warming co2 solubility decreased adding more GHG’s to the atmosphere. Sea level rose 120 meters.

    http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level_png

    WIth temperatures measured at local sites in antartica,
    there seems to be about 9C lower temperature before coming up to our present day global temperature.

    http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature_Rev_png

    carbon dioxide is about 800 years behind the rise in temperature. As co2 solubility decreases with temperature more of it is released into the atmosphere. co2 then becomes a positive feedback to the milankovitch cycle. As carbon dioxide increases temperature increases, humidity increases and again temperature increases. As we have discussed before co2 is the thermostat of the earth. It is the main driver of the condensing h2o with co2 being the noncondensing ghg.

    It explains a good portion of the climate then and is used to help explain its role in climate today.

    http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20101014/

  35. NOAA: Monster crop-destroying Russian heat wave to be once-in-a-decade event by 2060s (or sooner)
    Exclusive: NCAR’s Trenberth challenges the attribution analysis, “Many statements are not justified and are actually irresponsible.”

    http://climateprogress.org/2011/03/14/noaa-russian-heat-wave-trenberth-attribution/#more-44408

    Relating to extreme events. There is some contention of how much or what are the possibilities like of global warming contributing to extreme weather such as that discussed in the link above. NOAA made the claim that the Russian heat wave really did not have a GW conection.
    Trenberth who is a specialist in extreme weather disagrees.

  36. http://climateprogress.org/2011/03/15/stern-we-need-a-new-industrial-revolution-but-a-pretty-minor-investment-considering-the-massive-risk-reduction/

    Nicholas Stern interview, Part 2: We need a new industrial revolution, “but a pretty minor investment” considering the “massive risk reduction”

    March 15, 2011

    Lord Nicholas Stern, ((((one of the world’s most prominent climate economists,)))) believes that the fight against global warming will lead to the next industrial revolution. Brad Johnson has the story and video.

    ##########################################################

    This expert believes it worthwhile to address global warming on a large economic scle.

    ##########################################################

    http://climateprogress.org/2011/03/11/nicholas-stern-climate-inaction-risks-global-war/

    Nicholas Stern: Climate inaction risks a “global war”

    March 11, 2011

    Nicholas Stern, one of the world’s most prominent climate economists, believes that failure to address global warming could eventually lead to World War III. Brad Johnson has the exclusive interview and video.

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