Few simple questions

[universal_soul]

Hi,

I'm a new guy here, with no education in the field.

I have a few questions:
1/ is the temperature in the last 10 years rising or not? I hear it's actually cooling, since 2000-2002. Is that true? If yes - what is the reference for it?
(simply I need a trusworthy source of the temperature reads)
2/ What computer models from IPCC predicted for this period of time? We don't need to go in all the LW/SW budget discussion to prove what
these GMCs are worth. IPCC operates from 1988, and made 4 panels as far as I remember it correctly. What were the temperature predictions for 1998-2000
temperatures in 1,2 and 3rd IPCC panel? And what were the other predictions if this data exists anywhere (it should)
3/ What about this: http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2002/200 ... etal_2.pdf ? There is another paper by Wielicki below (Evidence for Large Decadal
Variability in the Tropical Mean Radiative Energy Budget). I might be a laic, but it looks like it kind of shows, that greenhouse effect concept is BS. If so - what are these people talking about?
4/ Is the ice cover melting ? or it's rather the other way around? Last time I checked it was: until 2002 it melted by 27% and then recovered by 24% (2008 data I believe).
5/ there is a lot of arguments about oceans and the prove of warming the surface of the oceans etc. I heard that deep layers of oceans warm even 1000 years. If this is the case, theen they can simply emit the heat that was there for ages, which would have nothing to do with co2 produced by man.

If these questions were answered in one place, pleas give ma a link. I try very hard, but difficult to find a time for digging for information.

I read some discussions on the forums and blogs and the impression I get is: AGW concept is a religion.
It appeals to irrational parts of thinking in human, and is as good as any kind of mythology. Funnily enough I just watched
some interview with Michael Crichton, who said the same thing.

Discussion is completely surreal for me, yet as Kary Mullis said: the issue is not so complicated as the language 'they' use might
suggest. I'm trying to understand all the facets of it, but the more I uncover, I just find more and more lyers beneath. My personal opinion is:
very little people uncovered a very little piece of puzzle, and are trying to play very expensive 'climate control' game. Simpifly everything
and reduce to the size they can comprehend, whereas they don't understand nothing. So for now that's the best position to take imo - we don't understand
enough to formulate theories of man made global warming, because we don't understand how the climate works. There is no good theory of climate, as it's
too complex to be comprehended with our today's knowledge.
Theory about AGW is unfunded in science, regardless of all "concesus' in IPCC. It's not that someone who doesn't believe in AGW, has to prove it doesn't exist, but rather that believers have to prove it before governments will start to formulate their policies and budgets based on virtual predictions of GMCs.

For the last 2 weeks I'm looking for any kind of evidence supporting AGW, and found none. Only consensus, assumptions, models and predictions.

On the other hand it's extremely difficult to show that AGW doesn't exist (truth be told: in some extent it has to exist, as we are the part of ecosystem,
are breathing and are emitting chemical substances into the air, cutting rain forrest, poisoning the oceans etc).
It's a bit like trying to prove to someone deeply faithful in God, that God doesn't exist. Impossible.

We live in the PR era, and doom and gloom sells best. We have one hysteria after another. This one will be very expensive.
judging by the arguments used in this discussion, average person - all those who can stand up and say 'no' - will not understand one bit from what you're talking about.

Thank you for your patience

Best

JJ

[Mike Davis]

JJ:
You are correct in all your guesses. There is no real world evidence to support AGW. The models have no predictive power. Climate is to complex for any one contributing factor to be the primary cause and all are involved with a contribution any where from .1 to 60 % in the end result. That varies on a day to day, week to week, year by year and decade to decade basis.
AGW is man made, it has been created as a public relations scare tactic based on guesses and has become a modern day myth with a cult like following.
Trying to find answers is a lesson in futility. Every one is right and wrong at the same time. You need to be able to determine what percentage is right and what is wrong as the answer is not 50/50 but anywhere from 1/99 to 99/1 or worse/ better depending on your point of view.
Your question regarding whether the globe has warmed or cooled during the last 10 years is not answerable due to the corruption in the temperature records kept by the major players. We do not even have accurate records to determine if the globe has warmed or cooled over the last 100 years. It has likely warmed over the 100 year period but the errors in the measurements are larger than the measurements. I would say the globe has warmed by .8 degrees over 150 years with an error band of +/- 1.5 degrees. That leaves an answer of I do not know and anyone claiming to know has no real world evidence to support their position.

[universal_soul]

Hi Mike,

Thank you for your reply.

I started looking into this not too long ago and am confused.

I'm an activist you can say, and rather on the left, so AGW was part of my system of beliefs for a long time. First time I read an article by Bjorn Lomborg, I started digging into this a little bit deeper, and deeper I got, the darker it was:)

Anyway.
I'm writing an article on the subject, and need to summarize it to the best of my ability (it's not in english of course ).
I'm looking at the GISS records, and I don't see any temperature cooling there, yet I hear a lot of people talking about it actually cooling. Of course we can assume that the „record is corrupted”. But then whole discussion is completely futile and I don't believe this is a good way.

I also found this article:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... asy-steps/

recommended by AGW believers, but as much as I'm cool with 3 first steps, I don't buy the 4-6, about radiative sensivity and the rest. Some of it doesn't appeal to me from the purely logical point of view. Like for example: co2 and water vapor is stopping heat going out, but it also 'creates' clouds, which are stopping heat from coming in from the outside. And so on.

Another thing, that should be measurable is ice cover. I heard that it decreased until 2002, and then increased after 2007. Yet the first thing I see in google on the ice cover is this:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... #more-4469

So I'm trying to find out if it's one way or another.
I think whole this discussion creates an impression of unhealthy relativity. I have a strong feeling, that it's done on purpose, to leave people unable to decide for themselves and be left to the PR machine. We have to avoid this at all costs, as it can simply drown world economy, which IMO is the plan behind all the plans.
But it's another matter, for another forum probably:)

JJ

PS. But I still need to write this damn article:)

[Mike Davis]

JJ:
Try this site:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
It has the results from UAH satellite records. While they are only 31 years old and are comprised of data from different satellites I still think the results are better than any surface measurements.
For what is wrong with surface stations and sea surface temperatures you would need to read at WUWT and surfacestations.org to see how not to measure temperatures. One of the biggest problems I have is the use of 30 years as a base period to compare today's anomaly to because the thirty year period was picked to provide the most dramatic results and we now know that natural climate cycles are 40 to 80 years in length with an average of 60. Using even 100 years is Cherry picking because you can pick the period that best displays your desired results.

Ice extent is always changing and follows regional cycles which are evident in historical records. If the ice is diminishing in the Arctic it may be expanding in the south or they may be in sync and both followiing the same pattern although lately the south has been expanding while the north diminished but the north may be recovering as it recovered for 2 years. I do not place much faith in periods less than 3 or 4 thousand years because of the variable nature of global climate. For regional climate we might find patterns by observing 2 or 3 hundred years but the idea of thinking someone knows with any certainty what the next hundred years holds regarding climate is a fantasy either way. Chances are equal for cooling or warming and warming is better for humanity than cooling. Actually warming is better for the entire biosphere than cooling. We have not fully recovered to the warmth experienced one thousand years ago or two thousand years ago or even worse the temperatures experienced during the Holocene period 10 to 5 thousand years ago have not been reached since and the overall trend has been a slow cooling that has not stopped but slowed for short periods of time which we are currently enjoying one such period.
.8 C in 150 years is minor in comparison to 10C in 50 years when the globe was recovering from the last glacial maximum.

One last thing I learned is that climate is not an average but a range of extremes that we experience. The globe has a range of 100C of temperatures on any given day depending where you are Antarctica can be -70C while the desert somewhere is +50C. Would that make the average temperature for that day -20 C? Probably not!

[Gorilla Tan]

I have a few questions:
1/ is the temperature in the last 10 years rising or not? I hear it's actually cooling, since 2000-2002. Is that true?

Answer is yes. And NO. And more specifically for 2005-2008. Here is one summary of the rundown on this apparent cooling, from comments that are included in GSA Today, July 2010, under an article titled "GSA Position Statement on Climate Change". For more go to http://www.geosociety.org/news/pr/10-21.htm and http://www.geosociety.org/geopolicy/

"The 150-year instrumental record of global temperature shows an obvious long-term increase. Superimposed on this increase are shorter-term rises and falls caused by natural fluctuations due to ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation); or decadal-scale atmosphere-ocean oscillations such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), volcanic eruptions, the 11-year solar cycle, and perhaps other factors. A very small cooling occurred from 2005 to 2008, but 2009 was a warmer year. The last 10 years make up the warmest 10-year interval in the entire instrumental record, as are the averages for the last 15 years, 20 years, and longer. Every previous pause or dip in the long-term warming trend was followed by new record warmth."

Your other questions are good ones; the GSA website might be helpful, again see links above. For now, one thing at a time. Good luck!

[Mike Davis]

GT:
You seem to leave out the issue that climate is long term. Your reference is to a group that uses a period related to a warming portion of a cycle. Going back further one will find that the globe was warmer during the MWP, RWP, Minoan Warm Period, and the Holocene Climate Optimum. Over the last 10,000 years there were about 8 periods when the globe was warmer and cooler than today with evidence shown in regions of higher altitude and higher latitude by location of tree line and type of vegetation along with glaciation in those areas. What you are describing is a short term record that has been corrupted by UHI, LULC, siting, And adjustments. There are a couple of papers that show 50% of the recorded warming for the last 150 years could be caused by technological advances which produce waste heat in the form of UHI.
Here is the Q&A from the GISS website about surface temperatures:
Q. What exactly do we mean by SAT ?
A. I doubt that there is a general agreement how to answer this question. Even at the same location, the temperature near the ground may be very different from the temperature 5 ft above the ground and different again from 10 ft or 50 ft above the ground. Particularly in the presence of vegetation (say in a rain forest), the temperature above the vegetation may be very different from the temperature below the top of the vegetation. A reasonable suggestion might be to use the average temperature of the first 50 ft of air either above ground or above the top of the vegetation. To measure SAT we have to agree on what it is and, as far as I know, no such standard has been suggested or generally adopted. Even if the 50 ft standard were adopted, I cannot imagine that a weather station would build a 50 ft stack of thermometers to be able to find the true SAT at its location.

Q. What do we mean by daily mean SAT ?
A. Again, there is no universally accepted correct answer. Should we note the temperature every 6 hours and report the mean, should we do it every 2 hours, hourly, have a machine record it every second, or simply take the average of the highest and lowest temperature of the day ? On some days the various methods may lead to drastically different results.

Q. What SAT do the local media report ?
A. The media report the reading of 1 particular thermometer of a nearby weather station. This temperature may be very different from the true SAT even at that location and has certainly nothing to do with the true regional SAT. To measure the true regional SAT, we would have to use many 50 ft stacks of thermometers distributed evenly over the whole region, an obvious practical impossibility.

Q. If the reported SATs are not the true SATs, why are they still useful ?
A. The reported temperature is truly meaningful only to a person who happens to visit the weather station at the precise moment when the reported temperature is measured, in other words, to nobody. However, in addition to the SAT the reports usually also mention whether the current temperature is unusually high or unusually low, how much it differs from the normal temperature, and that information (the anomaly) is meaningful for the whole region. Also, if we hear a temperature (say 70°F), we instinctively translate it into hot or cold, but our translation key depends on the season and region, the same temperature may be 'hot' in winter and 'cold' in July, since by 'hot' we always mean 'hotter than normal', i.e. we all translate absolute temperatures automatically into anomalies whether we are aware of it or not.

Q. If SATs cannot be measured, how are SAT maps created ?
A. This can only be done with the help of computer models, the same models that are used to create the daily weather forecasts. We may start out the model with the few observed data that are available and fill in the rest with guesses (also called extrapolations) and then let the model run long enough so that the initial guesses no longer matter, but not too long in order to avoid that the inaccuracies of the model become relevant. This may be done starting from conditions from many years, so that the average (called a 'climatology') hopefully represents a typical map for the particular month or day of the year.

Q. What do I do if I need absolute SATs, not anomalies ?
A. In 99.9% of the cases you'll find that anomalies are exactly what you need, not absolute temperatures. In the remaining cases, you have to pick one of the available climatologies and add the anomalies (with respect to the proper base period) to it. For the global mean, the most trusted models produce a value of roughly 14°C, i.e. 57.2°F, but it may easily be anywhere between 56 and 58°F and regionally, let alone locally, the situation is even worse.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/abs_temp.html
Reading carefully you will see that surface temperatures are based on guesses.

[universal_soul]

Thank you all for your answers,

I like to look at things in a very long perspectives, especially regarding climate related to geology, meteorology, marine science etc short periods of
time are imo very deceiving. I'll go to the sites you point out of course - yet as I work full time + do my own business in spare time it's very difficult to find time for this. I must say I'm impressed by your knowledge Mike.

JJ

PS> As a laic trying to find his way around this forum I think it would be reasonable to create a glossary of terms (for guys like me i.e.),
and interlink explanations of the terms to the articles you're using them (someting like wikipedia does).
It takes a lot of time to go aout and dig it out and not always the places you go to are reliable. Usually it will be wikipedia.
If something is explained well in wiki, you could even link it to the wiki definition (or other dictionary) alhough creating your own is the best
practice (you can still cite wiki in large parts and/or other sources).
This way everybody will know what UHI, LULC, SAT, RWP mean (I know most of you know it, because you deal with these issues for
long time and/or have scientific training.

[Mike Davis]

UHI= Urban Heat Island
STA= Surface Air Temperature
LULC= Land Use Land Change
RWP= Roman Warm Period

[Gorilla Tan]

Thank you all for your answers, I must say I'm impressed by your knowledge Mike.

Moderator! Howl! Mike Davis poses as "universal_soul"! Transparent doubling and trolling alert. Phooooffff! Out! Well at least he's double-exercising and blowing off steam. Hope he doesn't get too much sand in HIS eyes...

[Mike Davis]

Now That Is Funny!