Climate Change - The Scientific Debate

[Variomatic]

Try repeating your graph using the trend to 2013 rather than conveniently stopping in 2006 and using 2003 (2002 inclusive)as the end of the first trend. As I said, 1998 isn't set in stone as a "turning point", and hadcrut is "only" showing about 13 years of insignificant trend at the moment. The conclusion is reversed using those small date changes:



That's not an intention to "cherry pick" btw, just an illustration of how sensitive the data around that time can be to date changes. That's exactly what you'd expect around any sort of turning point but not what you'd expect with a continuing linear trend.

Certainly not conclusive, but certainly enough to keep an open mind over

[tallbloke]

OK Guys, this is an exceptionally long shot in the dark. Andy Mac, currently sin binned here has asked me to see if anyone can find a graph he saw here years ago which had a "prediction for number of pauses of period X expected per century or something"

Not much to go on I know, but maybe someone will remember and link it?

TIA

By the way, I posted a stonking essay by Walter Starck: The Climate Scam’s Meltdown this morning
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/11/22/walter-s...

Edited by tallbloke on Saturday 22 November 17:05

[Einion Yrth]

It's a good article but it would really benefit from some decent proofreading.

[tallbloke]

No time!

[dickymint]

tallbloke said:

OK Guys, this is an exceptionally long shot in the dark. Andy Mac, currently sin binned here has asked me to see if anyone can find a graph he saw here years ago which had a "prediction for number of pauses of period X expected per century or something"

Not much to go on I know, but maybe someone will remember and link it?

TIA

By the way, I posted a stonking essay by Walter Starck: The Climate Scam’s Meltdown this morning
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/11/22/walter-s...

Edited by tallbloke on Saturday 22 November 17:05

Can't help with the graph Rog but certainly enjoyed the Starch essay

[plunker]

Variomatic said:

Try repeating your graph using the trend to 2013 rather than conveniently stopping in 2006 and using 2003 (2002 inclusive)as the end of the first trend. As I said, 1998 isn't set in stone as a "turning point", and hadcrut is "only" showing about 13 years of insignificant trend at the moment. The conclusion is reversed using those small date changes:

That's not an intention to "cherry pick" btw, just an illustration of how sensitive the data around that time can be to date changes. That's exactly what you'd expect around any sort of turning point but not what you'd expect with a continuing linear trend.

Certainly not conclusive, but certainly enough to keep an open mind over

Nothing wrong with stopping in 2006 - the aim was to show that the warming trend continued well into the 21st century and that claims that warming stopped in 1998 are incompatible with the data.

Not sure what your point is re 2013/2003. What conclusion is reversed?

[plunker]

Variomatic said:

dickymint said:

How about.......

[...]

But then "Climategate" emails don't count... do they?

Thanks, but I'm afraid you're right - god forbid that their own exact words, with crystal clear context, should be treated as evidence of what they said!

Crystal clear context, apart from the omitted qualifying sentences that followed:

"Bottom line - the no upward trend has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried. We're really counting this from about 2004/5 and not 1998. 1998 was warm due to the El Nino."

[tallbloke]

plunker said:

Crystal clear context, apart from the omitted qualifying sentences that followed:

"Bottom line - the no upward trend has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried. We're really counting this from about 2004/5 and not 1998. 1998 was warm due to the El Nino."

As it happens I agree. It'll be getting much colder by 2020 though so the 2004 startpoint won't save their theory, which is lamer than a one legged duck.

[plunker]

tallbloke said:

plunker said:

Crystal clear context, apart from the omitted qualifying sentences that followed:

"Bottom line - the no upward trend has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried. We're really counting this from about 2004/5 and not 1998. 1998 was warm due to the El Nino."

As it happens I agree. It'll be getting much colder by 2020 though so the 2004 startpoint won't save their theory, which is lamer than a one legged duck.

oh yes, Lockwood isn't it and there's a mention of Scafetta too..

I like your prediction - it's bold and near future.

[Variomatic]

plunker said:

Crystal clear context, apart from the omitted qualifying sentences that followed:

"Bottom line - the no upward trend has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried. We're really counting this from about 2004/5 and not 1998. 1998 was warm due to the El Nino."

Why are you so hooked on 1998? The 18 year+ lack of warming that the RSS dataset shows is since 1996, not 1998. 1996 was not an El Nino year!!!

Hint: 18 years from 1998 won't happen until 2016!

My point about checking the trend "to date" in the previous post was that, if you do that, the trend is less than the trend of the late 20th C - suggesting that warming has (at least) reduced since.

In fact, that wasn't even the main point. The main point was the one that I thought I'd stated clearly enough that even an alarmist couldn't (intentionally) misrepresent. Clearly I misjudged my own communication ability!

If warming is a linear, or increasing, trend (as it should be according to all of AGW theory) then you would not expect to find prolonged periods where the apparent trend reduces. If, on the other hand, warming had made a "turning point" and was reducing - or even reversing - then that's exactly what you'd expect to see as the first sign of that change.

It's too early to know yet from the data as it is, but the records are entirely consistent with a change to drastically reduced warming somewhere around the late '90s to early '00s. The longer that continues, the harder it is to explain by AGW theory, and the easier it is to explain simply by the warming going away.

[Diderot]

There's another good scientific reason for showing all data to date.

[hairykrishna]

Variomatic said:

If warming is a linear, or increasing, trend (as it should be according to all of AGW theory) then you would not expect to find prolonged periods where the apparent trend reduces. If, on the other hand, warming had made a "turning point" and was reducing - or even reversing - then that's exactly what you'd expect to see as the first sign of that change.

The energy input to the system is increasing in line with CO2 increase. How that is reflected in the atmospheric temperatures is dependent on the response of various feedbacks. Saying that a 'pause' is incompatible with AGW theory is incorrect, in my opinion. If it was incompatible then individual model runs wouldn't ever have periods where the trend flattens out but they do.

[plunker]

Variomatic said:

plunker said:

Crystal clear context, apart from the omitted qualifying sentences that followed:

"Bottom line - the no upward trend has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried. We're really counting this from about 2004/5 and not 1998. 1998 was warm due to the El Nino."

Why are you so hooked on 1998? The 18 year+ lack of warming that the RSS dataset shows is since 1996, not 1998. 1996 was not an El Nino year!!!

Hint: 18 years from 1998 won't happen until 2016!

Strange comment. I didn't say anything about 1998 in the post you're responding to.

Variomatic said:

My point about checking the trend "to date" in the previous post was that, if you do that, the trend is less than the trend of the late 20th C - suggesting that warming has (at least) reduced since.

oh yes the trend has reduced in recent years (since around 2007 I'd say) - I already acknowledged that.

Variomatic said:

In fact, that wasn't even the main point. The main point was the one that I thought I'd stated clearly enough that even an alarmist couldn't (intentionally) misrepresent. Clearly I misjudged my own communication ability!

If warming is a linear, or increasing, trend (as it should be according to all of AGW theory) then you would not expect to find prolonged periods where the apparent trend reduces. If, on the other hand, warming had made a "turning point" and was reducing - or even reversing - then that's exactly what you'd expect to see as the first sign of that change.

It's too early to know yet from the data as it is, but the records are entirely consistent with a change to drastically reduced warming somewhere around the late '90s to early '00s. The longer that continues, the harder it is to explain by AGW theory, and the easier it is to explain simply by the warming going away.

No I think I've demonstrated the warming trend continued well into the 21st century - I'd go for a failure to warm since around 2007 and the trend has reduced since around that time:



(We're concentrating on the surface/satellite data here of course. Ocean heat content shows an increase in recent years)

[Silver Smudger]

plunker said:

(We're concentrating on the surface/satellite data here of course. Ocean heat content shows an increase in recent years)

How far back does the ocean heat content record go, so we can see how much it has changed 'in recent years'?

[plunker]

Silver Smudger said:

plunker said:

(We're concentrating on the surface/satellite data here of course. Ocean heat content shows an increase in recent years)

How far back does the ocean heat content record go, so we can see how much it has changed 'in recent years'?

Off the cuff without checking, I think the supposed 'high quality' ARGO float network began in 2003 but the record goes back further than that. You'd probaly do better using google rather than asking a telephone engineer on pistonheads.

Edited by plunker on Sunday 23 November 20:38

[Variomatic]

plunker said:

Variomatic said:

plunker said:

Crystal clear context, apart from the omitted qualifying sentences that followed:

"Bottom line - the no upward trend has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried. We're really counting this from about 2004/5 and not 1998. 1998 was warm due to the El Nino."

Why are you so hooked on 1998?[...]

Strange comment. I didn't say anything about 1998 in the post you're responding to.

Err, yes you did (bold added above to show you where

plunker said:

oh yes the trend has reduced in recent years (since around 2007 I'd say) - I already acknowledged that.

Fair enough, we seem to agree on that. The actual "year of change" depends, of course, on which of the major datasets you choose (hadcrut is shorter than the others). There's no hard and fast rule about which dataset should be used, or there'd be no need for the different sets. The fact they can all vary so much in what the mid-term trend has been doing doesn't speak particularly well of the data quality though.

But at least we agree there's a reduction sometime in the last decade or two. We also seem to agree that we can't really know whether or not that will continue - you believe it won't, I believe it might, but we both know we can't tell till it happens

plunker said:

No I think I've demonstrated the warming trend continued well into the 21st century - I'd go for a failure to warm since around 2007 and the trend has reduced since around that time:

[snipped to save screen space - refer to previous woodfortrees graph]

(We're concentrating on the surface/satellite data here of course. Ocean heat content shows an increase in recent years)

Good that we agree about the reduction, I hope you also agree that it'll be interesting over time to see where the "actual" date of the change was, and whether or not it continues

As for ocean heat content, I'm sorry but the sampling for that is so bad it'd be like standing in Piccadilly Circus on election day, stopping one random stranger and asking them wh they voted for, then forming the government based on their answer.

Simply, far too much water with [/i]far[/i] too few thermometers to get anything meaningful from.

And that's not to even mention the confounding problems of geothermal heat adding unknown (but very large) amounts of heat to the oceans locally in places we don't actually know, so can't tell whether we're sampling them or not in the data!

[Variomatic]

hairykrishna said:

Saying that a 'pause' is incompatible with AGW theory is incorrect, in my opinion. If it was incompatible then individual model runs wouldn't ever have periods where the trend flattens out but they do.

I'm guessing that English isn't your first language unless you're intentionally misinterpreting what I said to create a strawman?

"Not what you'd expect to happen" (what I said) is absolutely not the same as "incompatible with" (what you tried to turn it into).

You don't expect to get run over by a police car chasing a TWOCer when you corss the road, but people being run over is entirely consistent with police needing to chase the bad guys, which is why it happens sometimes.

As for the total energy in the climate system (whic is not just the atmosphere btw), we have no idea what it is, what it's doing, or what it will do in te future. Wat we do know is that, if it's increasing (as you say) then the long term effect on temperatures (atmospheric and ocean) will have nothing at all to do with "various feedbacks".

Physics dictates that, if you add thermal energy to something, its temperature will increase and that increase will depend only on how much nett energy you add, what it's made of, and what its mass is.

That holds true for everythig from a kettle full of water right up to the universe as a whole. Of course, the caluclations for a litre of water in a kettle are much easier than those for the whole climate system, but the physics remains the same.

The proposed feedbacks that you speak of only change the nett amount of energy being added, not what the effect of that energy would be.

So, when you learn some basic physics and stop trying to distort people's words so transparently, please feel free to rejoin the conversation

[hairykrishna]

Variomatic said:

I'm guessing that English isn't your first language unless you're intentionally misinterpreting what I said to create a strawman?

"Not what you'd expect to happen" (what I said) is absolutely not the same as "incompatible with" (what you tried to turn it into).

You don't expect to get run over by a police car chasing a TWOCer when you corss the road, but people being run over is entirely consistent with police needing to chase the bad guys, which is why it happens sometimes.

As for the total energy in the climate system (whic is not just the atmosphere btw), we have no idea what it is, what it's doing, or what it will do in te future. Wat we do know is that, if it's increasing (as you say) then the long term effect on temperatures (atmospheric and ocean) will have nothing at all to do with "various feedbacks".

Physics dictates that, if you add thermal energy to something, its temperature will increase and that increase will depend only on how much nett energy you add, what it's made of, and what its mass is.

That holds true for everythig from a kettle full of water right up to the universe as a whole. Of course, the caluclations for a litre of water in a kettle are much easier than those for the whole climate system, but the physics remains the same.

The proposed feedbacks that you speak of only change the nett amount of energy being added, not what the effect of that energy would be.

So, when you learn some basic physics and stop trying to distort people's words so transparently, please feel free to rejoin the conversation

Of course it's possible to add heat energy to a system without the temperature changing. Ever heard of phase changes?

Some of the feedbacks are temperature dependent.

'Not what you'd expect to happen' is exactly what occasionally happens in model runs. That was my point, before you got all self rightous about my wording.

Edited by hairykrishna on Sunday 23 November 22:36

[Variomatic]

hairykrishna said:

Of course it's possible to add heat energy to a system without the temperature changing. Ever heard of phase changes?

Of course I've heard of phase changes but, unless you're suggesting that it's possible for every single joule of energy entering the climate system to go into phase change, that doesn't alter the fact that increased energy in the system must create an increase in temperature.

Maybe it's just me being unobservant (after all, I'm not trained in these things) but I haven't notice the world's oceans and rocks boiling away to vapour lately, so i'm guessing not all the energy is going into changing phases

In fact, even with phase cange, the ultimate result of (allegedly) continual energy increase is increased temperature because, following a phase change temerature increase resumes

As for "some of the feedbacks are temperature dependant" - of course they bloody well are (ALL of them are) because, if temperature doesn't change then there's nothing to trigger a feedback - thats kind of the definition of a feedback!!!

I suspect what you meant was that some of the feedbacks express non-linear responses to change depending on the curent state of the system, which I would entirely agree with. But it's absolutely not what you said, so I'm only guessing that's what you meant.

hairykrishna said:

'Not what you'd expect to happen' is exactly what occasionally happens in model runs. That was my point, before you got all self rightous about my wording.

It's not a matter of self righteousness, it's a matter of not having valid statements twisted into invalid ones in order to "rebut" them. Something that happens far too often when this subjet is discussed, and something that I'll happily pick up either side on if i see it because it adds nothing to the discussion except for point-scoring and animosity.

In short, it ain't clever to rebut a point that no-one made in the first place.

Edited by Variomatic on Sunday 23 November 22:49

[plunker]

Variomatic said:

plunker said:

Variomatic said:

plunker said:

Crystal clear context, apart from the omitted qualifying sentences that followed:

"Bottom line - the no upward trend has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried. We're really counting this from about 2004/5 and not 1998. 1998 was warm due to the El Nino."

Why are you so hooked on 1998?[...]

Strange comment. I didn't say anything about 1998 in the post you're responding to.

Err, yes you did (bold added above to show you where

Those are Phil Jones' words matey and are clearly incidental.

Variomatic said:

plunker said:

oh yes the trend has reduced in recent years (since around 2007 I'd say) - I already acknowledged that.

Fair enough, we seem to agree on that. The actual "year of change" depends, of course, on which of the major datasets you choose (hadcrut is shorter than the others). There's no hard and fast rule about which dataset should be used, or there'd be no need for the different sets. The fact they can all vary so much in what the mid-term trend has been doing doesn't speak particularly well of the data quality though.


But at least we agree there's a reduction sometime in the last decade or two.

Well it's nice of you to find agreements between us but I feel you're still missing the point. What I've been trying to show you is that the focus on mining the data backwards from the present to find the longest flat trend is leading you to false conclusions that don't stand up to scrutiny. There's nothing 'wrong' with mining the data backwards to find the longest flat trend but you need to be careful about what you conclude from it because that very much depends on the nature of the data, and as I've shown ALL the datasets show a continuing/increasing trend well past the start date of the flat trends, so to conclude the start point of a flat trend marks the start of a downward shift in the trend is clearly fallacious.

Edited by plunker on Monday 24th November 01:12