Statistics

What BEST Means And What It Doesn’t

This post is for you to link into discussions proliferating across the internet which are filled with error.

Temperature Changes

BEST has confirmed what everybody—and I mean everybody—already believed: that temperature changes. BEST has not—I repeat not; I repeat it in bold: not; I repeat it in italics: not—proved why the temperature has changed.

That is, BEST has not given any evidence that the temperatures changes because a particular theory of anthropogenic global warming is true. Nor has it proven that any AGW theory is false. BEST says nothing one way or another. As in nothing. As is not one thing. As in it remains mute. As in AGW is not confirmed nor discomfirmed by BEST. As in the debate is not over.

BEST believes that, over the past two centuries, the temperature went up in about two-thirds of all land-based stations. BEST also believes, and has so stated, that the temperature went down in about one-third of all land-based stations. As in decreased. As in became cooler. As in, it is no so that everywhere became hotter.

BEST has said nothing about temperature changes over most of the EARTH’s surface, which is to say, the oceans. As in BEST had nothing to say about most of the planet. And BEST has confined itself to a very brief period of time.

Uncertainty in BEST

Did you not know that BEST has not claimed absolute certainty in their results? It is true that many stories in the press have hinted at perfection, but these stories are the creation of reporters who are either (a) ignorant of math and meteorology, or (b) who desire certainty where none exists, because certainty is consonant with their political beliefs.

BEST provided point and uncertainty estimates of (an operationally defined) global average temperature. Most agree that the point estimate is “in there”, plus or minus, in the ballpark. BEST admits that its estimates may be refined, as in changed, as in moved to different numbers.

Even using BEST’s own estimates of uncertainty, we are only confident of change over the past century or so. As in even BEST themselves say they are far less certain what happened before about 1900.

BEST’s estimates of uncertainty are too narrow. That is, BEST is too sure of themselves. By how much they are uncertain, there is disagreement. There is strong evidence that their certainty is off by at least a factor of two.BEST temperature

That is, BEST should at least double its uncertainty, which means we should have even less confidence in what happened in the past. Which means we are still unsure—we may always be unsure—exactly what the temperature was prior to about 1940. We may be sure what it was at a few individual land stations, but we will probably remain unsure what the temperature was averaged over all land surfaces. This is likely a case of scientific tough luck. If only our ancestors had thought to measure temperature most assiduously, we wouldn’t be in this boat.

Peer Review

BEST has not been peer-reviewed. And incidentally, peer-review is the weakest filter of truth science has.

Let’s repeat that. BEST announced its results via press conference, press release, and blog. Just in the way that we always hear is shocking, anathema, horrifying, suspicious, wrong, worthy of being denounced, and so forth.

Peers (like your author) have released critiques of BEST in the same way that BEST announced their own results.

It is a fallacy, and a stupid one, to say that because a peer has not reviewed a claim (according to the procedure laid down by some editor), or that because a claim has not appeared in the pages of some journal, then that claim is therefore false or cannot be believed.

If this were not a fallacy, then the comments you are now making in support of (or in the criticism of) BEST are also false, because your comments have not been reviewed by scientist peers.

Motivation

It is again a fallacy, and an asinine one, to claim that those who make up BEST, or those who criticize it, have this or that “agenda”, or “history”, or this or that political or religious or philosophical belief, and that because of these antecedents the claims of BEST are therefore true (or false).

Again, if it were not a fallacy, then the comments you are not making are subject to the same failing.

Every argument must be judged on its own merits.

Categories: Statistics

72 replies »

  1. Mr. Briggs,

    Please don’t propagate disinformation again. The BEST project was established exactly because a lot of people had questioned the reality of the temperature rise observed since the middle of the 20th century, attempting to ascribe to the urban heat island effect, station (siting) quality, or station dropout — generally, tried to dismiss it as an artifact of a methodological imperfection. The findings of the BEST project may not have proved what is causing the warming, but it confimed again that a) the warming is not a fatamorgana, and b) it’s not observed just because our observations are imperfect. I’m saying “again”, because in terms of scientific progress the BEST team forces an open door. Their conclusions may be a shock for the the pseudo-skeptical blogosphere that buys the lie about “no warming since 1998” and asks for more, and who expected a different truth from Muller and Curry, but in science this particular debate has been over for years. The core of the debate right now is climate sensitivity. The fact of change and its anthropogenic source are as good as obvious, with BEST papers or without them.

    By the way, the uncertainty ranges in the first BEST paper are still better than in previous work, and they find that the warmest years on record are 2007, then 2005, 2002, 2006, with 1998 at the fifth position. I think I’ll go home now and read Watts, Motl or Lindzen telling the world about this “no warming since 1995/1997/1998” again. As they say, laughter is the best medicine.

  2. @Grzegorz: I browse several websites that deal with global warming, and I don’t remember seeing any denial that there’s been no global warming at all over the last century. The only place that I can think that a *lot* of people might deny it are perhaps in letters-to-the-editor pages or radio talk show sites

    “No warming since 1998”, yes, I’ve seen that. “Minimal anthropogenic influence”, yep, I’ve seen that a lot. “AGW but not CAGW (Catastrophic AGW)”, I’ve seen that a lot, too.

    The most outspoken websites (that I read) have not questioned the entirety of increases since the mid-20th-century, but rather have criticized the climate community’s choice to ignore a variety of issues including: UHI, station quality, station dropout, various interpolation methods used, and several of the ad-hoc statistical methods that are unique to the climate community.

    So perhaps the results of BEST are no surprise to you. You evidently needed no proof that issues ignored with a handwave, not research, were already settled. Other observers would like to see basic assumptions actually investigated and proven. That’s the scientific method.

  3. As most people that are not surprised from the data (nice to see the error bars becoming more realistic.), but the paleoclimate community must be getting nervous. Just imagine trying to back that dendro-data into the BEST dataset and calibrating. It is going to look silly if the dendro STDEV is less than or equal to thermometers 😉

  4. “BEST has confirmed what everybody—and I mean everybody—already believed: that temperature changes. BEST has not—I repeat not; I repeat it in bold: not; I repeat it in italics: not—proved why the temperature has changed.”

    But in which way the temperature has changed is crucial. BEST “confirms” (like CRU and NOAA before) that global (averaged) land-based temperatures have changed towards more positive temperatures, ie they show warming.

    Though, isn’t it a fallacy to state that everybody (by this I mean people who have been given credibility by the blogosphere or otherwise) believed this? What about Fred Singer (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/debate/singer.html)? Don Easterbrook (http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/05/19/global-cooling-scientists-warming/)? Joe Bastardi (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dYzXbGnWg8)? Would you admit that they were wrong? Or is the uncertainty too high to determine that these people were wrong?

    Thanks.

  5. morbidangel,

    Excellent questions. Let me answer by asking, What does it mean to say the temperature increased? Looks like 2011 will be cooler than 2010. Have temps decreased? Yes, relative to 2010. But what about relative to, say, 1950? They’ve gone up. Relative to, say, 1840? Who knows?

    To say that “temperatures have increased” always implies two things: a mechanism for creating a measurement in time and there exists a reference point. Temperatures that have increased with respect to one reference point can have decreased with respect to another.

    Thus, much, even most, or perhaps even all, talk about temperature change is loose and ambiguous. The best I can say in short order is that nobody disagreed that temperatures does change. Various folk have said, “It hasn’t warmed!” or “It has!” Both of these statements are right and wrong simultaneously; that is, they are ill defined.

    What about “significant” change you ask? Well, this talk is always with reference to some statistical model—where talk of “significance” has nothing to do with the colloquial English word. If somebody claimed that “temperature has significantly increased” (or it has not), then those two previous implications still hold, and so does a third: that some p-value less than the magic number was spit out of software. But this p-value, whatever its size, does not mean, for instance, that the observed temperature in 2011 is now suddenly warmer than in 2010. Yet many people make claims that imply this. It instead means one model (usually over-simplified) out of an infinite number of models fits the data well enough to give a small p-value. Whoopee.

    We can tell if the model is useful if and only if it can skillfully predict new data, new temperatures that were not used in any way to fit that data. And in that sense, very few models pass the test.

  6. morbidangel: “Would you admit that they were wrong? Or is the uncertainty too high to determine that these people were wrong?”

    Did these people you cite say that temperature is always static and never changes?

    I didn’t think so.

    Briggs said everyone agrees “that temperature changes.”

  7. Thanks Briggs. Your analysis of BEST in this and previous posts has been very helpful in understanding its significance (in the colloquial English sense of the word).

  8. Wait. I don’t get it. What did BEST say about boiling oceans?

    You see, the “climate community” lives on the assertion that the “tipping point” has passed, the globe is careening into runaway warming, and the seas are going to boil away into outer space.

    That’s the assertion made by Hanson, Gore, Biden, Waxman, et al. They have not backed away from it. Indeed, all their civil disobedience, puntative regulations, and commandeering of global energy production is predicated on their “confirmed” theory that the Earth is lost and Life As We Know It is doomed.

    Did the BEST boys consider the Venus Effect? If not, why not?

    I mean, either we descend into irrational panic or we don’t. I need some clear direction on that. Grzegorz, what actions have you taken to thwart the Venus Effect and to save Life As We Know It? What actions do you recommend for the rest of us?

  9. A Washington Post headline was “The scientific finding that settles the climate-change debate”. A better headline might have been “Static climate forever skeptics proved wrong”, and if they could find one of these rare creatures it would be nice to get a quote and identify who they are.

    Things I found interesting include:

    The spacial distribution of temperature changes in America. Is this connected to any changes in ocean circulation or pollution, is it natural or anthropogenic?

    The big swings in temperature between 1800 and 1840. The rates of change seem to exceed the “unprecedented” modern warming. Maybe I am reading too much into this given the wide error bands, which Briggs says should perhaps be doubled. It might be nice to plot this period over the hockey stick shaft and see how well they line up.

    The lack of urban warming – at first glance this actually does conflict with what I have read elsewhere (except the paper with the lost Chinese data). I’ve not read the details and I may be confusing urbanisation with temperature records in urban areas. The urban warming would be expected when the level of urbanisation changes, not simply whether the area is classed as urban or rural. It might also make sense to look for evidence of land use change on local temperatures.

  10. @Briggs: Thank you for replying.

    I agree that there is always a reference point in question -> warmed or cooled relative to which point in time is obviously a pertinent, important aspect to a climatological analysis. However, you still haven’t commented on the credibility of the predictions made by the aforementioned people (and others of course, be it warm or cool). But to paraphrase, and also to address Eric Anderson, I agree that these people never said anything about global average temperatures NOT being static, however, in light of this BEST data (and of course, NOAA, CRU etc), would it be too far a stretch to say that global cooling predictions, with say, the start of the 20th century as a reference point, is out of the question? (apologies for such a long-winded sentence).

    Going off on a slight tangent, would you say that global average temperature is an intrinsic physical value? Regardless of extrapolation, models and guesstimates, the physical quantity of temperature at every single spatial point on Earth can be averaged to give you a global average temperature for a particular time slice. Do you think this averaged value (for that slice of time) has any meaning? If so, how can we find out about this geophysical parameter when the instrumental record stops? I believe the answer lies in paleoclimatological analysis. Even considering inherent errors associated with proxies (personally, I am not a fan of tree rings), they do pretty well to reproduce mean state reconstructions, corroborating existing independent man-made observation (which may not necessarily be through the instrumental measurement of temperature: written accounts, observations of weather etc.) Thus I would say that we can obtain information on what is forcing such a mean state and we can also say (with reasonably quantifiable uncertainties) that the GAT is warmer relative to 1840.


  11. It is again a fallacy, and an asinine one, to claim that those who make up BEST, or those who criticize it, have this or that “agenda”, or “history”, or this or that political or religious or philosophical belief, and that because of these antecedents the claims of BEST are therefore true (or false).

    Technically true, but in spirit quite incorrect.

    It is irrational to even consider anything, absolutely anything, that an habitual liar says. The complexity of the real world, combined with the effort required to even deal with non-nonsense, DEMANDS this response.
    ‘Science’ was intended to be a repository of fact, logic, and reason: the ceaseless LYING by the hippies have corrupted that repository. Hence, science is DEAD.

    The hippies themselves, and ALL their works, and ALL derivatives, should be deleted from the mindspace of any person who would dare to consider himself sane.

    Period.

    These damned (liberal-progressive, socialist, humanist) hippies are extremely strongly inclined to either lie; or otherwise to UNCARINGLY spout forth B.S. gibberish – which is, if you think about it for just a little while, effectively equivalent to knowingly lying.
    I am sure that you have had more than enough empirical contact with these bastards to know that this is a strong general truism.

    Hippies DO NOT indulge in ‘sloppy-reasoning’: they are lying (type 1 – knowingly; or type 2 – uncaringly). Sure, they pretend when caught: ‘you can’t know what I was thinking, man – so don’t you be goin after my integrity, man – I like love the truth, man – I’m like an actual scientist, man’: the same damned excuse, time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time…

    For something sufficiently well propagandized: Fool me the first few times, shame on you.
    After that, YOU are the mindless fool.
    In this I, and those who try and frame this argument one way or another, are not being asinine – you are.

  12. Picking on the first response, why did Muller do this redo (and you can hear the same reason given by Muller in the Briggs 11:39 clip).

    “They show the global warming curve which I think is probably pretty good, although I am now remeasuring it because I don’t trust the group that did it any more.[…] So I’m redoing this in part because one of the major groups that has done this has now lost my trust. But it’s gotten worse,this is the curve that was used by the IPCC, the consensus group. And this is pretty solid, I think, we’re checking it but i think it’s pretty solid.” (and then goes on to say that his concern is that .4 degrees Celsius is not noticeable)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLiQdCKUgRs

  13. Mike D,

    “all their civil disobedience, [etc.] is predicated on … Earth is lost and Life As We Know It is doomed”

    If that were the case then wouldn’t it render at least the civil disobedience and commandeering parts pointless tantrum throwing? I think their actions are conditioned on “not too late”. Nothing else makes sense.

    FWIW, my recommendation on thwarting the Venus effect: move to Mars.

    When I look at the temperature record I see what appear to be cycles yet all of these magically disappear in figure 5. Even back in the 90’s, looking at the slopes along these cycles, it was rather apparent that the next peak would be circa 2000 (and the next minimum around 2030). I think the filtering applied by BEST is too strong.

    Maybe it’s just that I don’t understand fig. 5. It doesn’t match the digitizing done by Willis which shows BEST peaking near 2003.

    http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/best-and-other-global-land-only-temps1.
    from: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/22/a-preliminary-assessment-of-bests-decline/#more-49792

  14. The three main criticisms of BEST findings follow; two of which are substantive:

    1. BEST does not match up with the post 1979 satellite data (neither do NOAA or GISS; HadCRUT is better), presumed to be the gold standard because the satellites avoid problems associated with human development. In fact the trends from NOAA, GISS, and now BEST, diverge from UAH and RSS published satellite data by more than a degree per century. Thus there is an implication that BEST is also contaminated by UHI, ground station drop out/maintenance issues, and other such effects.
    2. BEST says nothing about attribution. Anyone serious about the global warming business will agree that the world has warmed somewhat, but everything depends on cause. Of course BEST acknowledges this, but the headlines screamed that skepticism is dead.
    3. Rich Muller is a skilled and accomplished self promoter. (While this may be true, I for one trust self promoters more than self promoting ideologues, which Rich is not).

  15. Ok, BEST shows that about 2/3 of the Earth’s surface warmed over the period examined & 1/3 didn’t warm, or even cooled. The oceans were not addressed. So, BEST confirmed that roughly about 20 percent of the Earth has warmed.

    So-called “Deniers” have NOT denied that things have warmed up a bit. The “Believers” that keep harping on the fact that the data show warming are arguing a point never in question (at least by anyone worth debating).

    But WHY has it warmed? No comment there.

    Burt Rutan (of Scaled Composites fame, etc.) has analyzed (search with his name & “Global warming” & his information is easily found) the data as an engineer, and is skeptical of any cause for alarm. He’s pointed out that 3.62% of all greenhouse gasses are CO2, and of that 3.4% are caused by human activity. That’s tiny and hardly seems worth fussing about.

    If the “Believers” want to argue about WHY it is warming they’ll have to do some much heavier analysis than to just show a flimsy correlation.

    And such mental heavy lifting seems to be something they keep avoiding.

  16. According to Michael Shermer’s latest book, “The Believing Brain” humans are hard-wired to believe something first then seek out supporting evidence while disregarding contrary evidence.

  17. DAV,

    The cycles has not disappeared, they are probably hidden in the term W(x,t).

    Dear Mr. Briggs,

    BEST’s estimates of uncertainty are too narrow.

    Show me the evidence!!! I am very conceivable and will be more than willing to admit that I am wrong just as Lindzen has done here.

    Bootstrap (and Jackknife) is a method used to estimate the standard error (stderr, uncertainty defined here) of an estimate (\hat theta) when there is no formal theoretical structure. Supposedly the method can deliver a consistent estimate. However, in practice, the one specific resulting stderr estimate may over-estimate or underestimate the true stderr as we really have no idea what it’s. That is, the confidence interval may be too narrow or too wide.

    I have no doubt that this paper would be rejected by major statistics journals because it has not provided any scholar evidence that the suggested fixes will work as assumed, BUT they potentially they would work.

  18. JH,

    The evidence is in my critique, where I gave several instances where they could have done more bootstrapping/jackknifing, particularly with regard to the kriging. Have you forgotten these? I recall you yourself gave some criticisms. Too, the burden of proof is on them, not me. If you can swing me a grant to investigate this more deeply, I’ll be profoundly grateful.

    It’s also good to see you admit that the method they used is to provide a guess of uncertainty on the model parameter and not the actual temperature. They completely ignored the uncertainty there, as I discussed. Remember: we are not interested in some metaphysical, unobservable parameter from some flawed statistical model. Instead, we want to know what the actual observable temperature was; we want the uncertainty around the observable, not the parameter. We want the physics, not the statistics.

  19. I note that in the midst of all the hoopla over the .5 deg C increase in the ‘annual temperature of the Earth’ over the last century or so, no one has ever gotten around to defining the ‘annual temperature of the Earth’, specifying the procedures for measuring it, or explaining why the current one is perfect. The only thing that we know for sure (as BEST assures us) is that whatever it is and however it is measured it has increased slightly.

    I also note that given that single data point, the Climate Science Community has concluded that the change is caused by human production of CO2 as a byproduct of our technological civilization, that the temperature circa 1976 (when the CSC was sounding the alarm for the coming Ice Age), or today, or some other time, was perfect, that any deviation from it will be catastrophic, that heroic measures must be taken to stave off the change, that those measures require a world government with absolute control over every aspect of civilization from the individual to the nation-state, including the distribution of wealth, and that the world government must be Marxist/socialist/redistributive (without ever using those terms, of course).

    Noting right along, NONE of the proposed actions required to ‘Save the Planet’ produce quantifiable climactic results. More specifically, there is no formula from which, given atmospheric CO2, planetary temperature can be calculated.

    And, as a final note, aside from Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Climate Change, there is, reportedly, a large and growing set of existential treats to civilization and/or the planet. ALL have a common solution. See above. If one didn’t know better one would conclude that rather than being faced with a variety of problems which could reasonably be expected to require tailored solutions, what we in fact have is a universal solution and a corps of crusaders looking for problems for which it can be touted as the ONLY solution. Empirically, based on current reporting, that would appear to be all problems.

    I am not skeptical of the postulate that climate is changing; after all, it always has, why should I expect it to suddenly cease changing? I AM skeptical of the motives of those who, in the name of controlling the climate, propose reducing the population of the world from 7 billion to .5 billion (unstated reduction plan) and returning most of the remainder, with the exception of the relatively small cadre of the ‘more equal’ (themselves) required to manage things, to what would amount to hunter-gatherer status. REAL skeptical.

  20. Mr. Briggs,

    The evidence is in your critique? Hmmm… don’t know how to make a comment on this. I’ll accept simulation results as evidence!!! You, not the authors, claim that ”BEST’s estimates of uncertainty are too narrow. Surely, the burden of proof is on you.

    Yes, all errors, including measurement error and estimation error, cause extra uncertainty. But the point is… again, bootstrap is a method used to estimate the standard error of an estimate when there is no formal theoretical structure. And the uncertainty due to all sources of errors in the estimate is suppose to be “consistently” reflected in the bootstrap result. And you’ve no way of knowing whether a resulting estimate overestimates or underestimates the true uncertainty.

    It’s also good to see you admit that the method they used is to provide a guess of uncertainty on the model parameter and not the actual temperature.

    There is nothing to admit, Mr. Briggs. No statisticians would tell you that a statistical method can provide you the actual temperatures.

  21. JH,

    Simulation results as evidence? Good grief. Are you saying you now do not accept your own criticisms because you yourself did not provide “simulation results”?

    “No statisticians would tell you that a statistical method can provide you the actual temperatures.” Many could, and I have repeatedly shown how.

  22. It’s (in general) been warming since the bottom of the Little Ice Age (back in the late 1600s), so warming (at least off and on) since then is pretty much accepted.

    However, the Muller temperature graph for the period 1940 to 1975 (which was cooling) appears a bit different than reality. Looks like more of the “hockey stick graph”.

    Given Muller’s temperatures, how embarassing it would be for Obama’s science adviser, Holdren, to explain how – during the 70s he became an alarmist about the oncoming ice age.

    In any event, comparing a cooling period (1950) with current temperatures is a guarantee that recent years should show up warmer.

    So, in summary, temperatures on 30% of our land surface (before removing perhaps half those due to serious problems) is used to represent the planet’s temperature??

    Singer points out that the theory requires a hot spot in the troposphere (which – according to all balloon and satellite readings isn’t there). He also argues that there’s been no recent change in the temperature of the atmosphere since about 1940. (That should have made the press rather than Muller’s report.)

    Neither has anyone figured out whether the cloud feedback is positive or negative, but the AGW theory assumes, in fact, that most of the temperature increase will be caused by positive cloud feedback, 2 + times as much as by CO2. Evidence on that cloud feedback please !

    Then there’s the fact that satellites are also showing that, as the planet warms, more heat is escaping to space, yet another hole in the AGW theory, and the subject “ClimateGate” hasn’t even been brought up here.

    And what about the Medieval Warming Period. The IPCC ignored some 900+ peer-reviewed studies demonstrating that the MWP was as warm, likely warmer than now, was global and not regional – and – the investigators, studies, etc., can all be linked via co2science.org No CO2 increase back then (or between the 1680s and our industrial revolution some 200 years later).

    There are so many holes in the AGW theory that its entire fabric has been rendered invisible to the naked eye. Perhaps this is how dark matter is manufactured.

  23. I simply state known results. In fact, I can provide references about bootstrapping.

    Many could, and I have repeatedly shown how.

    I don’t think so! Show me who they are.

  24. It’s also good to see you admit that the method they used is to provide a guess of uncertainty on the model parameter and not the actual temperature.

    I read this statement too fast and misunderstood it. Still there is nothing to admit. A statistician should know that a statistical method can provide a guess of uncertainty on the model parameter. Add the uncertainty is estimated based on the “observed” actual temperatures. It also can provide a guess (estimate) of the uncertainty on a prediction of the temperature. Think of simple linear regression.

  25. CoronaBunny is fundamentally correct, but says it in a roundabout way.

    A conspiracy is generally accepted as a group of people organised and trying to influence some current politics, while trying to remain out of public knowledge. It’s also true that claims of conspiracies are usually dismissed out of hand, but in reality conspiracies are real and do happen in the modern world.

    What CoronaBunny is saying however, is that this is more a mindset of the individual. Can a conspiracy involving only one person ‘be’ a conspiracy? I’m not sure.

    What can be identified is that there are many individuals with the same mind set. Having the same mind set means they act alike with an apparent common cause. It’s not exactly a conspiracy, but they are also not necessarily telling the whole truth either. Their ideology means they ‘will’ try to influence others with their own ideas, and present a proof of why it must be so.

    Greens, Malthusians, Socialists, Marxists, Narcissists ect, do exist among us and do try to influence politics. This should be remembered by all. Even though they act individualy, they also act as per a known agenda (hece the categorising of idiologies).

  26. The scientific finding that does not settle the climate-change debate
    By S. Fred Singer
    Letter to WashPost Oct 25, 2011**

    Before you write off Bachmann, Cain, and Perry as cynical diehards, deniers, idiots, or whatever, [WashPost Oct 24] consider this:

    Why are you surprised by the results of the Berkeley Climate Project? They used data from the same weather stations as the Climategate people, but reported that one-third showed cooling — not warming.

    They covered the same land area – less than 30% of the Earth’s surface – with recording stations that are poorly distributed, mainly in US and Western Europe. They state that 70% of US stations are badly sited and don’t meet the standards set by government; the rest of the world is likely worse.

    Unlike the land surface, the atmosphere showed no warming trend, either over land or over ocean — according to satellites and independent data from weather balloons. This indicates to me that there is something very wrong with the land surface data. And did you know that the climate models, run on super-computers, all show that the atmosphere must warm faster than the surface. What does this tell you?

    And finally, we have non-thermometer temperature data from so-called “proxies”: tree rings, ice cores, ocean sediments, stalagmites. They don’t show any global warming since 1940!

    The Berkeley results in no way confirm the scientifically discredited Hockeystick graph, which had been so eagerly adopted by climate alarmists. In fact, the Hockeystick authors have never published their temperature results after 1978. The reason for hiding them? It’s likely that their proxy data show no warming either.

    One last word: In their scientific paper, submitted for peer review, the Berkeley scientists disclaim knowing the cause of the temperature increase reported by their project. However, their research paper comments: “The human component of global warming may be somewhat overestimated.” I commend them for their honesty and skepticism.

    ********************************************************************
    S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project. He is a Senior Fellow of the Heartland Institute and of the Independent Institute. His specialty is atmospheric and space physics. An expert in remote sensing and satellites, he served as the founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service and, more recently, as vice chair of the US National Advisory Committee on Oceans & Atmosphere. He is co-author of Climate Change Reconsidered [2009 and 2011] and of Unstoppable Global Warming [2007]

    **Responding to: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-scientific-finding-that-settles-the-climate-change-debate/2011/03/01/gIQAd6QfDM_story.html

  27. morbidangel: “BEST “confirms” (like CRU and NOAA before) that global (averaged) land-based temperatures have changed towards more positive temperatures, ie they show warming.”

    Roger Pielke, Sr. says:

    * * * we reported that

    “The raw surface temperature data from which all of the different global surface temperature trend analyses are derived are essentially the same. The best estimate that has been reported is that 90–95% of the raw data in each of the analyses is the same (P. Jones, personal communication, 2003).”

    Unless, Muller pulls from a significantly different set of raw data, it is no surprise that his trends are the same.

    http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/comment-on-the-article-in-the-economist-on-rich-mullers-data-analysis/

    Same data, same result. The real problem is that the data is far noisier than the result.

  28. @Wayne

    I don’t remember seeing any denial that there’s been no global warming at all over the last century

    We must be using two different Internets then:

    http://goo.gl/Ol1jF
    http://goo.gl/myO5v
    http://goo.gl/rl467
    http://goo.gl/eEHTK

    These are the first phrases that Google prompts, by the way. Look at the recent posts at Watt’s blog:

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/24/unadjusted-data-of-long-period-stations-in-giss-show-a-virtually-flat-century-scale-trend/
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/24/tisdale-on-the-new-hide-the-decline-version-of-ocean-heat-content-data/

    Why do you think these publish such comments if not to cast a doubt about whether the warming is happening at all?

    criticized the climate community’s choice to ignore a variety of issues including: UHI, station quality, station dropout, various interpolation methods used […]

    All of these problems had been tackled before and there’s rich body of scientific work showing their effects are either negligable, or accounted for. The BEST project, whose team includes just one “traditional” climatologist — a skeptical one, too — is forcing an open door. The fact that they’ve reached the same conclusions as everybody else is news only for the “skeptical” blogosphere, who expected a confirmation of their denialist prejudice (Watts: “I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong”) and feel betrayed/disappointed etc. etc. (just google for “WORST” now). The scientific community is yawning.

  29. @Mike D.

    Could you please cite a paper published by a climatologist which warns that “the seas are going to boil away into outer space”? Or stop building those primitive straw-men?

  30. @Ken

    You’re dragging Burt Rutan again? Puh-lease. This guy is as lost as a drunk child in a fog. He quotes Beck, for pity’s sake. What more do you need to recognize an ignorant, his self-signed affidavit ackowledging that?

  31. @Bob Ludwick

    Have you actually read anything temperature records and calculations of anomalies? I’m not sure whether “no one has ever gotten around to defining the ‘annual temperature of the Earth'”, but I know that no one needs it.

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
    http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/OfAveragesAndAnomalies_pt_1A.html
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/OfAveragesAndAnomalies_pt_1B.html
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/OfAveragesAndAnomalies_pt_2A.html
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/OfAveragesAndAnomalies_pt_2B.html

  32. @GoFigure

    How do you know that “the Muller temperature graph for the period 1940 to 1975 (which was cooling) appears a bit different than reality”? Where do you draw your certainty about that “reality” from?

  33. @Grzegorz Stumpiak

    Grzegorz,

    You sure seem to think you know it all. I have a very simple question for you. Given that the earth is below average temperature and below average levels of co2 in the atmosphere, how can you attribute anything to manmade emissions?

    You’re essentially telling us that something that happened before is now happening for a different reason.

    It is factually impossible to distinguish between manmade and natural warming, so the side you endorse simply claims it is all co2.

  34. ^^Average levels on what time scale? You seem to be confused about the same thing that Briggs was talking about earlier. Averaged with respect to what? How many data points? Averaged over the entire history of the Earth? Such a statistical parameter makes absolutely no sense. It is all about forcings and the lenghts of time scales that the forcing effects.

  35. @Dr. Jay Cadbury, phd.

    No, I don’t “know it all” — I merely know what the science says on this particular subject, or at least the gist of it. Please, read anything before you start asking questions like the ones you asked, because at the moment you’re not even wrong. The attribution of the current warming to human activities is proven beyond reasonable doubt, and there’s ample empirical evidence to support it.

  36. Grzegorz,

    Chief Global Warming Alarmist, adviser to Al Gore, and NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen made a presentation to the American Geophysical Union in December 2008 in which he said:

    …The danger that we face is the Venus syndrome. There is no escape from the Venus Syndrome. Venus will never have oceans again. …

    If the planet gets too warm, the water vapor feedback can cause a runaway greenhouse effect. The ocean boils into the atmosphere and life is extinguished. …

    Here’s a link:

    http://westinstenv.org/sosf/2008/12/23/contrary-to-popular-belief-there-is-hope/

    Hansen is an actual person, not a straw-man.

    You alarmopods spew insane babble like the “Venus Syndrome” and then you deny it ten minutes later. There’s no reasoning with your kind. IMHO, it’s pointless to even attempt it.

  37. @Mike D.

    I’m sorry, but you haven’t answered my question. First, you confused “boils into the atmosphere” with “boils into the outer space”. Second, this is a slideshow presentation, not a published, reviewed paper. Third, it puts an explicit condition on the threat of a runaway greenhouse effect: at least 10 W/m2 of radiative forcing (approximately corresponding to burning all available coal, or coal and tars).

    You should start doing that “reasoning” that you mentioned one day, it’s a really nice thing. You might learn, among other things, that the “Venus syndrome” is a reality, not “insane babble”, and that there’s nothing in the Earth’s climate system that would immunize it against this syndrome once the surface gets enough radiation to enter the spiral.

  38. @ Grzegorz Staniak

    In answer to your question: No.

    The climate science community routinely announces that year x was the ‘warmest in history’ or some such equivalent, often comparing the temperature of year x with the previous warmest year, y, and quoting the two ‘yearly temperatures of the earth’ with great precision, at least once to a precision of milli-degrees. Here is a previous note:

    “By the way, on the precision of global temperature measurements, here is a quote from a January 12, 1999 Associated Press article by Randolph E. Schmid, titled “Researchers: 1998 was the hottest year on record.”: “The NASA findings indicate a mean worldwide temperature of about 58.496 degrees F., topping the previous record, set in 1995 of 58.154.” I particularly like the touch of using ‘about’, followed by a world temperature quoted to 1/1000 degree F. One wonders how they would have done if they had gone for precision. I also find it amusing that NASA was cited as the source of the temperature figures. I wonder if they weigh the shuttle to +/- one grain when doing their launch calculations?”

    Whether or not I have have read any temperature records OR done any calculations of anomalies I am pretty sure that they are blowing smoke when they quote the annual temperature of the earth to a milli-degree. C OR F. And if they blow political agenda smoke once, why would I assume that the the blowing was a one time event? I do not have to wade through reams of data and duplicate papers worth of calculations, even if I could, to know that whatever the temperature of the earth was in 1998, it was not 58.496+/- .001 degree F.

    The ecology/government complex and I also differ a bit in our problem solution inventories; mine doesn’t contain one labeled ‘Set up a Marxist world government with infinite power over everything and everyone.’, while that one is the only one in their warehouse.

    I did another tirade awhile back that I think raises some questions that it would be worth knowing the answers to (not outputs of simulator runs) before we save the planet by returning to a hunter-gatherer subsistence managed by a world wide eco-dictatorship.

    “In the manner, absent the brains, of Dr. Sowell, a few random thoughts.

    ‘Global Warming’ is caused by excess CO2 in the atmosphere, produced as a byproduct of our technological civilization. We know that because the science is settled. The CO2 is currently resident to the tune of around 385 ppm. Just out of curiosity, what would the Temperature of the Earth be if the atmosphere was 100% CO2? How about 0 %?

    Since the Temperature of the Earth is currently too high, as evidenced by the calls to reduce it by ceasing our production of CO2 and paying to have the excess removed from the atmosphere, what IS the current temperature and how was it measured? What is the ideal temperature, and who or which body, using what criteria, determined it?

    What percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere would set the Earthly thermostat to the ideal temperature and how was the percentage determined?

    Since our excess production of CO2 is destroying the earth, with a certainty so great that there are calls for prosecution of doubters for crimes against humanity, is there ANY safe level for anthropogenic CO2?

    How does the death and destruction predicted as a result of the observed (not predicted) changes in sea level and earthly temperature compare with the death and destruction predicted by the elimination of anthropogenic CO2? Has the latter prediction been made? Why not?

    “Yet it is still the satellites from which we derive our most reliable data.” It is indisputable that satellites provide the widest coverage, but they do not provide temperature data directly. They provide data from which temperature can be deduced, using algorithms to ‘calibrate’ the satellites against ground truth. Conversion algorithms and ground truth as provided by the three ‘gold standard’ climate monitoring organizations that collect ground sensor data and ‘adjust’ IT for accuracy using secret algorithms. You know, the same three that provided all the entertaining emails a few months ago.

    The best that satellites can provide is change vs time. If the change vs time due to variations in orbital parameters can be extracted reliably from the change vs time due to climate variations.

    As one of your readers, Ray, noted, positive feedback either drives the system to the rail and latches it up or causes it to oscillate. It is unlikely that there is positive feedback due to CO2, as there are numerous references to periods in our history when CO2 was 8-10 times higher than current levels. If positive feedback due to CO2 existed, we would have been ‘latched up’ long ago.

    Has anyone paid any attention to our climactic sample rate vs the natural period of climate variations? Are we doing the climactic equivalent of sampling a very noisy 1 Hz sine wave by taking 32 samples (number of years since satellite data became available) of the noisy sine wave at a 1 MHz rate and then using those 32 samples to make predictions as to the future of the noisy sine wave?

    Why do people believe ANYTHING from a ‘scientific’ organization that publishes an annual temperature of the Earth to a resolution of +/- .001 degree F., with proclamations that it set a new annual temperature record by a few hundredths of a degree?

    Do the people who believe that NASA can measure the annual temperature of the earth to an accuracy of 1/1000 degree F. (reference available) believe that NASA could measure the annual temperature of Rappahannock County, VA to an accuracy of 1/1000 degree F? If not, why would they believe that they could do better with the entire earth? If they do, are they in the market for bridges?

    It is not necessary that you be an unprincipled charlatan to be a climate scientist; it IS necessary if you are to be considered an authority on climate science.”

  39. @Bob Ludwick

    Whether or not I have have read any temperature records OR done any calculations of anomalies I am pretty sure

    …and you could’ve stopped right there. It sums up the attitude very nicely: “I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure”.

    I’m not really interested in your little political obsessions, I don’t know where you get inspired anyway: Australia has just implemented a cap & trade carbon policy without turning into a eco-marxist-governed hunter-gatherer territory — unless I missed today’s news. Guys like you will be remembered by your own grandchildren as the old gits who screwed up the planet for them ’cause they regarded thinking as politically incorrect.

  40. @Gregorz and Morbidangel

    “Average levels on what time scale? You seem to be confused about the same thing that Briggs was talking about earlier. Averaged with respect to what? How many data points? Averaged over the entire history of the Earth? Such a statistical parameter makes absolutely no sense. It is all about forcings and the lenghts of time scales that the forcing effects.”

    hahahaha. But of course I was talking about the entire history of the earth. When you average an MLB players batting average, do you use the whole season or 5 games? So to answer your question, averaged with respect to the earth’s entire history, every data point. Ho ho ho, guess you can’t claim I cherry picked, huh? Morbid Angel, what time scale would you use? Wait, I know. 1979-present so you can claim that ice is melting. You fools always cry about cherry picking, so why not use the whole record? I eagerly await you telling me why this is an underhanded attempt by me.

    @Gregorz

    “No, I don’t “know it all” — I merely know what the science says on this particular subject, or at least the gist of it. Please, read anything before you start asking questions like the ones you asked, because at the moment you’re not even wrong. The attribution of the current warming to human activities is proven beyond reasonable doubt, and there’s ample empirical evidence to support it.

    The attribution of current warming to human activities is proven beyond all doubt yet the earth is below average temperature and atmospheric co2 levels. Interesting. Pray tell, what new measurement device has been invented that ruled out everything besides co2?

  41. @Dr. Jay Cadbury

    As I said, you’re not even wrong, you’re ignorant. The notions of “average temperature and atmospheric co2 levels” throughout the history of Earth doesn’t make much sense, especially when you forget that when CO2 levels were much higher, the Sun was much fainter. If you’re really interested in getting to know how the climate change is attributed, you can start here:

    http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9.html
    http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-7.html

    Also, please refrain from misrepresenting your opponents’ posittions. I wrote “beyond reasonable doubt”, not “beyond all doubt”.

  42. Dr. Cadbury, Bob Ludwick
    Please remember the old adage: “The biggest fool is one who argues with a fool.”

    Grzegorz is obviously a fool…or a liar. I’ve dealt with trolls like him many times. He will never , ever admit he’s wrong and will continue to throw up (pun intended) bogus information from Warmist sites.

    Save your energy for something important.

  43. Emotional Reasoning — BEWARE of it!!! There’s ample background available on-line.

    It’s easy to get sucked in….and once engaged with someone prone to use it you will NEVER reach any conclusions, just bounce from one topic to another neatly & not so neatly sidestepping the objective facts–even as the emotional thinker asserts reference to facts. Such people are often unaware of what they’re doing as they’re doing it.

    You know you’ve gotten sucked into this non-thinking debate when the other person refuses to do any analysis beyond name-dropping, pointing to a cherry-picked conclusion, etc. They just keep bouncing to a new topic, falling into emotional hubris & ad homium rants, etc. And always avoiding any direct substantial response to a question that actually digs into the data.

    Better to just address the issues & ignore the source pointing them out. That keeps the discussion substantial.

    ALSO WATCH OUT FOR “SPLITTING” — the psychological effect of seeing thinks as ‘either/or’ or “Black/White” propositions. Most issues, especially those technical with incomplete data, are “shades of grey” issues that are further ambiguous by different levels of understanding.

    HEALTHY personalities will address the facts & sort out the data & reach various conclusions amicably.

    TOXIC personalities (Borderlines, Narcissits, Histrionics being most common of the ilk) are incapable of restraining splitting & emotional reasoning. They’re readily spotted with remarks like calling someone with a different perspective an “opponent” (not a different perspective, simple “either-or” :”black-white” thinking — you agree with me or you do not, no middle ground for either of us to possibly alter a view/level of understanding/etc.), name calling, etc. where reference to the source of information is entirely unnecessary.

    Engaging them directly in any “analysis” is next to impossible as they cannot distinguish where their views/depth of understanding/etc. end and they-themselves begin. Any disagreement is personal — and they respond in character. Pathetic, but toxic. Avoid & ignore them.

  44. @jim breeding

    I can support everything I say with research results. What have you got, apart from a prejudice?

  45. @ Grzegorz Staniak

    Does your comment mean that you believe that NASA CAN in fact measure the ‘annual temperature of the earth’, accurate to +/- 1/1000 degree F.? And that it is not necessary to rigorously define the term ‘annual temperature of the earth’ in order to measure it?

    OK. I revise my statement. Given the planetary temperature data acquisition system in place, I am SURE that anyone quoting, as a finding of climate science, the ‘annual temperature of the earth’ to a precision of one milli-degree F is blowing smoke. Or is deluded. I make no claim that I know what the ‘temperature of the earth’, however defined, in fact WAS for any particular year, but you can bet the farm that NO ONE knows the answer to +/- 1/1000 degree F. Furthermore, having a bit of experience in measuring stuff, I am willing to bet that neither you nor NASA can instrument a random county in VA, collect data for a year, massage it, and produce a final report that will convince an impartial panel of metrology experts that you know its annual temperature with an accuracy of 1/1000 degree F. Measuring the ‘annual temperature of the earth’ with the instrumentation system currently in place is harder.

    I also note that you did not address any of the questions that I asked; you simply implied that I was not qualified to ask them. Does that mean that the answers are readily available and that my not knowing them simply demonstrates my ignorance or that none of the answers are important in establishing planetary or national energy policies? Or both?

    Historical climate records indicate that climate is somewhat periodic in the long term and very noisy in the short term. Do you think our sample rate, nominally one sample/year in the published temperature anomaly data, is appropriate to the climactic periodicity and that our sample length is adequate to make long term predictions about future climate?

    “Australia has just implemented a cap & trade carbon policy without turning into a eco-marxist-governed hunter-gatherer territory — unless I missed today’s news.”

    As you said: they just implemented it. Confined to Australia. Lets see how it works expanded to the planet. Unless you think that cap and trade in Aus will solve the problem and make expansion to the rest of the world unnecessary. Also, lets see how serious about it they are and how personal autonomy looks after it has had about 10 years to metastasize. Also, do you deny that many of the climate change experts have called for prosecution of ‘CAGW deniers’ as enemies of humanity, or that many of the strongest supporters of CAGW, groups and individuals, have called, publicly, for reducing the planetary population of humans to around .5 billion, using any means necessary? Do you think that either or both policies are desirable, based on the evidence (data, not computer simulations) that anthropogenic CO2 poses an existential threat to the planetary biosphere? Also, whether or not I am politically obsessed, do you think that the policy recommendations of the climate science nomenklatura are NOT Marxist/socialist in principle or that their common theme is the need to forcibly redistribute resources according to the directives of a world authority with the power to ‘make it stick’?

  46. @Jim Breeding

    Jim, I rather enjoy thrashing Gregorz. To him it is worse to be “ignorant” than flat out “wrong”.

    @Gregorz

    I don’t need to read your links to the IPCC I am confident in my own knowledge. Now, you’ve stated that averaging the earth’s history is a bad metric, let me ask you something else.

    In the Devonian period of the the paleozoic era, atmospheric co2 rose by 1,000ppm and temperature dropped from 25C to around 20C. Please explain how that happened.

    In the Ordovician period, atmospheric co2 concentrations were 4400ppm and there was an ice age, please explain.

    Maybe you have been ignorant for trusting the mainstream media, which obviously directed you to the ipcc, clown.

  47. @Jim, dear Jim

    I am not really suprised that you “don’t need to read”, because “you’re confident in your own knowledge” — that seems to be the prevalent attitude here. Except that, Jim, when you “don’t need to read” it’s called “ignorance”. To be even wrong, you need at least to understand what you’re talking about. You can’t teach maths to seomeone who answers “what is two times two” with “an orange whale on a Sunday afternoon”.

    So, go and start reading up, Jim. The bits and pieces you’ve picked up on denialist blogs are seriously outdated or just plain wrong. Modern research based on isotope analyses (like O18) confirms the coupling between CO2 and temperatures: there was no cooling parallel to CO2 increase in the Devonian — there was a warming at a time when CO2 levels fell instead. And when you adjust for solar brightness, there are no problems with Ordovician glaciations. The Sun was 5% fainter then. That means c. 68 W/m2 less in radiation reaching the atmosphere. Compare this with the current warming due to radiative forcing of c. 2.7 W/m2.

  48. Make that @Jay, dear Jay. Mr. Briggs, I think it’s time to move to a platform that allows for post previews and edits, we’re living in the XXI century now.

  49. @Bob Ludwick

    You’re clinging to that one little factoid with dedication worthy of a nobler cause. So, 13 years ago an AP journalist wrote an article in which he quoted the “annual temperature of the Earth” with precision that you regard as highly suspicious. OK. Great. What have you been doing for the last 13 years? Repeating this to everybody to prove that NASA “is blowing smoke”? Haven’t you found time in 13 years to — gasp, shock — ask NASA about it? I’m sure there’s contact info available for the guys who maintain the temperature record. Should I email them on your behalf asking something like “Dear NASA guys, WTF? You want me to believe that you can measure ‘annual temperature of the Earth’ to the third decimal place? Get out!”?

    As I said before, nobody needs this “annual temperature of the Earth” to draw conclusions about the current warming. It’s the trend that counts, not absolute measurements. I’m quite certain the NASA guys would answer “Dear Curious Guy, hell no. It’s just sorta estimate/index resulting from averaging the records — we talk about a ‘hottest year on record’ on the basis of anomalies from a base period, not any prfecise measurements of a ‘annual temperature of the Earth'”.

    As for your questions, they really don’t make much sense. Asking about “ideal temperature/CO2 levels” is building another staw-man (seems a very popular pastime here). Everybody accepts natural climate variability. Problems appear when the rate of change exceeds the natural rates by orders of magnitude. Have a look at PETM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum — this was an abrupt warming episode when temperatures rose by about 6°C (11°F) over a period of approximately 20,000 years. It resulted in a massive extinction of species. We are bound to rise temperatures by at least 2°C in a century. Do the calculations yourself.

  50. @Walter Sobchak

    If Staniak is for it. I am against it.

    The credo of a true skeptic. You’re right, Walter. Who needs thinking anyway.

  51. “there was no cooling parallel to CO2 increase in the Devonian — there was a warming at a time when CO2 levels fell instead.”

    Um, no that’s completely wrong. Furthermore, you keep referencing the sun…as a devoted global warmer, you should know that discussing the sun’s influence is a big no no. Additionally, you’ve completely contradicted yourself by claiming that the faint sun allowed for glaciation during the Ordovecian. That means you consider natural forcings to be stronger than manmade forcings.

    Shall we continue?

  52. @Jay

    No, that’s not “completely wrong”. As I said, you’re talking about research results from decades ago, kept alive with delight on denialist blogs. Have a look at e.g:

    http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/documents/2009/110115royer/ndx_royer.pdf
    (look at the graph on p. 20, check out the references) or:
    http://www.atmosedu.com/Geol390/articles/RoyeretalCO2GSAToday’04PhanerozoicClimate.pdf

    Also, Jay, leave attempts at sarcasm to people who can do sarcasm. No climatologist negates the fundamental influence of the solar radiation on our climate. Unlike you, however, they have researched Earth’s energy budget and they know that the solar radiation varies c. 1.3 W/m2, from peak to trough — at the top of the atmosphere. Only a fraction of this difference is detectable at the surface. Meanwhile, the total radiative forcing due to GHG emissions is estimated at 2.7 W/m2 and is rising.

    Your last sentence before the question makes me wonder who gave you the degree, if you actually have got any. Are you really surprised that natural forcings during the Ordovician were stronger that “manmade” forcings? Well, Jay, there were no “manmade forcings” then, you know. Does that tell you that “manmade forcings” are by definition weaker than natural? Then go to your school and give up your degree, you shouldn’t have it.

    Wake me up when you’ve read a coursebook — like this one, for example:
    http://stratus.astr.ucl.ac.be/textbook/. Then we can continue, yes.

  53. @Gregorz

    “As I said, you’re talking about research results from decades ago, kept alive with delight on denialist blogs.”

    Right, this is very similar to the fake graph that Michael Mann made to replace H.H. Lamb’s graph. It doesn’t matter when the research was done as long as it is correct. Sorry that the historical record smashes your worldview, Gregorz. The graph on page 20 of search and discovery is a complete joke, the lines have been smoothed to the point of uselessness. The errors bars are the size of my candy bar. The other link is broken.

    “Are you really surprised that natural forcings during the Ordovician were stronger that “manmade” forcings? Well, Jay, there were no “manmade forcings” then, you know. Does that tell you that “manmade forcings” are by definition weaker than natural? Then go to your school and give up your degree, you shouldn’t have it.”

    Yes and because there were no manmade forcings but the temperature and co2 levels were still higher, you cannot attribute the below average levels to manmade co2, clown.

  54. @Jay

    Please read anything before you start writing. Seriously. No more tutoring you until you at least read the coursebook.

    And yes, sorry, the blog soft deformed the URL, here’s a short version: http://goo.gl/mchNC
    Ask your mom to help you read it, and don’t hesitate to ask here if you don’t understand some word.

  55. No. I will read when you explain how to attribute below average temperature and co2 levels to manmade emissions. What is your basis for comparison? How have you discovered that natural forcings were unable to raise the temperatures .8 kelvin since 1800? You can’t answer the question, so you defer to the echo chamber.

  56. Jay, I already told you that the notion of averaging “temperature and CO2 levels” throughout the Earth history is absurd. Read the coursebook, learn about planetary energy budgets. If you have an imbalance in the budget, temperatures rise or fall (leaving aside internal variability for a moment). It doesn’t matter in the slightest whether today’s temps or CO2 levels are “below average” in history, if you currently have a positive imbalance in the energy budget. This positive imbalance is happening right before our eyes, and there’s ample empirical evidence for that and for its anthropogenic character. No amount of your cute foot stomping will change that.

    Go back to school, kid. Learn to think. Read. Then come back to talk.

  57. Agreed, there is an energy imbalance. Currently, the atmosphere is starved for co2. Only the Carboniferous and the Quaternary period have had levels of co2 less than 400ppm.

    “the notion of averaging temperature and co2 levels throughout earth’s history is absurd.”

    But measuring the temperature from 1800-present is totally acceptable. Claiming ice is melting by starting at 1979-present is perfectly fine. Sorry, I will use the 90% of earth’s history and you can continue to use the .0000000000000000000000001%, clown.

  58. Jay, I’m impressed. What eloquence, what discipline of thought! And just one thing missing: arguments. I can give you a citation for everything I say. Where are your references?

  59. It is unneccesary to cite common knowledge. You sure can cite Grzegorz, although I think you’re probably the only person here who finds the IPCC to be credible. Seems to me, the only things you know are what you read from the IPCC or realclimate. Frankly the entire discussion is meaningless anyway. Either one of us could be 100% right and wouldn’t make any difference. I think we need to start with broader, more general problems that everyone can agree on. For example, there is a huge pile of trash in the ocean, I am pro-cleaning it up.

  60. @Jay

    Thanks for the acknowledgement, Jay. Somehow I was quite sure I could expect from you absolutely anything — except references to research. Keep on living in your la-la-land.

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