[BartSimpson]

ASLplease wrote:

It sucks that the world just happens to be at that critical threshold where a .2 degree rise in temperature is going to destroy humanity

For those people living in Man I think a +.2 wouldn't even be a good start.

[Zipperfish]

N_Fiddledog wrote:

Thanks Zip, I think I'm starting to get it.

Do you know when RSS started measuring temps? It was after UAH, wasn't it? I read some place one the reasons for measuring global temps from RSS was to double-check UAH. In fact, isn't that how they first discovered the problems with either orbital drift, or orbital decay in UAH? Isn't that why Spencer, and Christy made the adjustments?

That link from Christy was good. I get a clearer picture of exactly how he thinks concerning the whole AGW question. There was some interesting bits there, like how he sees a CO2 signature over the NH, yet how Arctic temperatures were warmer in the 30s. He's juggling contradictions like everybody else, but he also appears to be on the "Yes there's AGW, just not enough to worry about bandwagon".

Spencer posted a kind of short, end of year update at Watts.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/05/d ... n-by-almos

There's a graph...

...

It's interesting when you compare it to Hansen's above. Spencer's only covers the years of the spike after 78, of course, but even though the trend up is not that different (Christy says a difference of .3 for the next century) they look so different. It's a good example of how 2 graphs can show pretty much the same information, yet one's scary, and the other is not. It's a matter of how you display it.

And Bart...yeah...I hear ya.

I'm not sure, actually. It sounds to me like UAH started it (as a university research project), but that RSS has been contracted (i.e. paid) by NOAA to do the work. Who knows about the politics. I note that the RSS site references UAH, but the UAH site doesn't reference RSS. According to wiki most of the discrepancy is due to intercalibration of the instrumentation for one satellite (NOAA-9).

And, yeah there was an issue over the early satellite measurements, and it had something to do with orbital decay or drift. The discovery of the error of the satellites (or rather, the error in the interpretation of the satellite datat) was significant in bringing global wamring to the forefront as an issue. Up until then, the satellites did not show the tropospehere warming the way that the land-based instrumental records did.

[Zipperfish]

Bulgaria's Pamporovo tourist numbers hurt by warm weather

Quote:

Unseasonably warm weather has hurt the number of tourists that Bulgaria's winter resort Pamporovo has hoped to attract, news agency Focus reported on January 2 2010.

More proof of global warming.

[N_Fiddledog]

And, as you said, it's pretty nice where we are on the West coast.

Overall though, I think it's not unjustified to talk about a Northern Hemisphere cold snap.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ather.html

This video below is fun. John Hirst from the UK Met is getting raked over the coals by the BBC for the Met's incorrect forecast of a warm winter.



I heard one from a commenter at Watts on John Hirst. If true it makes one scratch one's head. He was saying Hirst used to be a bigwig at the WWF. How does somebody go from the World Wildlife Federation to heading the weather forecasting service for the UK, I wonder. The commenter must have gotten his facts wrong though. Still...gotta check that one out.

Oh, but back to the NH cold snap.

Iguanas are falling out of the trees in Florida - video. So it goes that far south in some areas.

Oh well...at least it's nice here in Van. Hope it doesn't rain at Whistler for the Olympics though.

[N_Fiddledog]

Oh and here's a better one on the Arctic Oscillation going strongly negative; which probably explains this NH cold snap.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters ... cause.html

The other explanation is of course, CO2 is causing erratic climate change. The warming is causing cooling. Which explanation sounds more reasonable?

[N_Fiddledog]

Also, let's not forget the original intent of this thread was to discuss global temperatures.

The fact remains, global temperatures have been trending down since 2001.

[Zipperfish]

Again, it's warm here and in Bulgaria, so--using the burden of proof approved by skeptics everywhere--I have proved global warming!

[Zipperfish]

N_Fiddledog wrote:

Also, let's not forget the original intent of this thread was to discuss global temperatures.

The fact remains, global temperatures have been trending down since 2001.

Probably.

[N_Fiddledog]

Zipperfish wrote:

Again, it's warm here and in Bulgaria, so--using the burden of proof approved by skeptics everywhere--I have proved global warming!

I don't know if skeptics can take credit for the habit of attributing localized events, or noticed oddities as evidence of a global trend. Gore and others have been doing it for years. Remember when there was that heat wave in Europe, and there were headlines offering it up as evidence of a CO2 forced warming trend. Katrina was supposed to have proved CO2 forced global warming was causing more frequent, and more damaging hurricanes.

It gets worse though. Remember back to those old, forgotten days of a few years ago when the warming was still kind of noticeable, or at least remembered, and any ridiculous thing outside the norm was supposed to be evidence of AGW.

Global Warming causes more sex

[BartSimpson]

Zipperfish wrote:

Bulgaria's Pamporovo tourist numbers hurt by warm weather

Quote:

Unseasonably warm weather has hurt the number of tourists that Bulgaria's winter resort Pamporovo has hoped to attract, news agency Focus reported on January 2 2010.

More proof of global warming.

Excuse me, but you're the one who says that cold weather is not negative proof of global warming so why is warm weather proof of global warming? Hmmm?

[Zipperfish]

BartSimpson wrote:

Excuse me, but you're the one who says that cold weather is not negative proof of global warming so why is warm weather proof of global warming? Hmmm?

Because I was deliberately just trying to start an argument!!!!

[BartSimpson]

Zipperfish wrote:

BartSimpson wrote:

Excuse me, but you're the one who says that cold weather is not negative proof of global warming so why is warm weather proof of global warming? Hmmm?

Because I was deliberately just trying to start an argument!!!!

Oh, excuse me, do carry on.

[N_Fiddledog]

Here ya go Zip. This one's for you.

The BBC straightens people out on the difference between climate and weather.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8447262.stm

I'm thinking though, that even with weather not being climate these 3 cooling NH winters do weaken the warmers' argument.

1. It deprives them of their ability to point at incidents of warming, then going "See...told ya so".

2. It gives that argument to the hoi poloi of the other side.

3. It makes one question the idea of CO2 as the primary force on climate. If the weather is cooling over large areas of the Northern hemisphere something other than CO2 is causing it. Something, or some things is, or are, more powerful as climate forcing(s) than CO2.

4. In this particular case if it is the Arctic Oscillation going negative which is causing the current NH winter cold, it doesn't take too much thinking to guess this will affect the Arctic ice. The Arctic was the last thing in the natural world which offered the warmists anything like real world support for the idea there was anomalous warming going on. If 2010's ice gets still thicker, and the extent continues to a 3 year enlargement of the Arctic ice-pack, the climate catastrophists will have nothing left in the real world to point at as evidence warming is something to worry about.

[Zipperfish]

N_Fiddledog wrote:

Here ya go Zip. This one's for you.

The BBC straightens people out on the difference between climate and weather.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8447262.stm

I'm thinking though, that even with weather not being climate these 3 cooling NH winters do weaken the warmers' argument.

1. It deprives them of their ability to point at incidents of warming, then going "See...told ya so".

2. It gives that argument to the hoi poloi of the other side.

3. It makes one question the idea of CO2 as the primary force on climate. If the weather is cooling over large areas of the Northern hemisphere something other than CO2 is causing it. Something, or some things is, or are, more powerful as climate forcing(s) than CO2.

4. In this particular case if it is the Arctic Oscillation going negative which is causing the current NH winter cold, it doesn't take too much thinking to guess this will affect the Arctic ice. The Arctic was the last thing in the natural world which offered the warmists anything like real world support for the idea there was anomalous warming going on. If 2010's ice gets still thicker, and the extent continues to a 3 year enlargement of the Arctic ice-pack, the climate catastrophists will have nothing left in the real world to point at as evidence warming is something to worry about.

Well, I would never argue that CO2 is the "primary force on climate." That would be the sun. I would say a lot of things are more important drivers--including clouds. But given two identical earths except for a change in CO2 concentration, the physics would say that that the one with the CO2 would be at a higher temperature, just by virtue of the fact that it "reflects" some heat back to the planet's surface.

And I disagree that the arctic was the last gasp of the so-called warmists. There's the temperature record, for example, and the CO2 record. And I guess conversely, if the arctic ice melt is significantly above normal again this year, that would hurt the skeptics argument, since we'd continue to see an increase in arctic ice melt despite their claims that it is getting cooler.

The fact is that both sides will seize on the weather that day as proof or disproof. By 2030 the argument should be over, either way. 2050 at the latest.

Again, I've never heard much of an argument from anyone (the exception being Lindzen) whose been able to answer the question: "Well, if the increased CO2 isn't heating the planet, why?" From a thermodynamic viewpoint--grossly exaggerated--that would be like turning the element on under a pot and watching your water turn to ice.

[N_Fiddledog]

Zipperfish wrote:

Well, I would never argue that CO2 is the "primary force on climate." That would be the sun. I would say a lot of things are more important drivers--including clouds.

Oh oh. You're disagreeing with the IPCC. Careful now, or they won't send you your free decoder ring, and end of the world calendar.

Quote:

And I disagree that the arctic was the last gasp of the so-called warmists. There's the temperature record, for example, and the CO2 record.

Huh? They lost that one a long time ago. The Vostok record shows temperature forces CO2. CO2 does not initiate temperature over that scale. There is the argument that suggests temperature rises, CO2 rises about 800 years, or so after that, then CO2 is the driver. However that's just a hypothesis. I've seen graphic support for a counter-argument. Over short time scales there is no evidence of CO2 forcing real world global temperatures which is not contradictory. CO2 rose from the 50s to the 70s. Temperatures declined. Recently CO2 continued to rise, as temperatures plateaued, then dropped. There is another hypothesis which suggests the cause of all that is a counter-balance of aerosol cooling, but not enough is known about aerosols to consider the hypotheses credible. The only thing we know for sure is temperatures dropped while CO2 rose on short time scales.

Quote:

And I guess conversely, if the arctic ice melt is significantly above normal again this year, that would hurt the skeptics argument, since we'd continue to see an increase in arctic ice melt despite their claims that it is getting cooler.

Yeah, but my point was if this Northern Hemisphere cold snap does turn out to be something caused by the Arctic Oscillation going to negative, and it does facilitate an increase in ice even more than the massive summer minimum increases we've seen over the last two years, it may not affect the long term trend that much, but it will affect the AGW argument.

Quote:

Again, I've never heard much of an argument from anyone (the exception being Lindzen) whose been able to answer the question: "Well, if the increased CO2 isn't heating the planet, why?" From a thermodynamic viewpoint--grossly exaggerated--that would be like turning the element on under a pot and watching your water turn to ice.

Actually it would be more like blowing out a match next to a barbecue.

The argument has never been CO2 can't force some heat (or more descriptively re-circulate some stored heat energy). The argument has always been there's no reason at this time to believe it can force enough to worry about.