Hadley CRU files/emails hacked!

So even though you can see that the last dozen years are much warmer than the previous dozen, you say this is evidence against AGW?

I tried to find your chart of lower troposphere temps online, to make sure it was global data, not just one continent, etc. I didn't find that chart, but I did find what is apparently the original data (with little explanation other than the column headers, but it is global), which I put into a spreadsheet and made a simple chart. Looks like yours, but seems to have a bit more rise to it.

source from University of Alabama - Huntsville

Keep in mind that the lower troposphere doesn't perfectly track the temperatures on the ground, which is ultimately what we're concerned with. Glaciers and sea ice show no signs of slowing their melt rate, stories are coming out daily this week that global warming seems to following the worst-case scenario envisioned at the time of the agreement of the Kyoto accord.

I completely agree that CO2 isn't the only factor involved by a long shot, soot like you mention needs to be better understood, as does water vapor. Water vapor overall has a larger greenhouse effect than the total CO2 in our atmosphere - but - with a warmer world, more vapor can be held in the atmosphere, and there will be increased evaporation to put it there. Other effects, including volcanoes and solar activity obviously play an independent role. But I'd rather not bank on a big volcano saving the economy for our children's well-being. If we have to move or barricade Miami, NYC, New Orleans, handle West Nile and other warm-weather diseases, pipe water ever longer distances to California and Nevada, and lose our pine forests in the Rockies due to beetles that don't die over the winters, it doesn't bode well for our economy.

 

I was referring to radioprius. I've had Tim on ignore for a long time now. Don't see that changing any time soon, I use the ignore list to reduce the Groundhog Day effect.

 

If you're referring to F8L's work, you apparently don't understand it.

 

Fair enough. And I think CO2 warming is possible - it just won't be much, if it is occurring at all. So it is a matter of degree - please pardon the pun.

As for the questions, here are a few that trouble me about AGW. Not that there couldn't be some background warming going on, but clearly, the empirical data in these cases seems, in my opinion, to raise significant, unanswered questions about AGW relative to natural climate factors.

• What drove large temp increases early in the 20th Century in the absence of CO2 increases and why that same factor should be ruled out for later periods of temp increases
• What drove DECLINING temps from 1940-1980 during a period of rapid CO2 increases
• How CO2 drove a "step change" in temperature post 1998 (and why the more likely explanation, a strong El Nino, should not be considered as causal)
• Why CO2 has not driven continued temperature increases since around the year 2000.

 

Sign of a true believer.

 

True - LT doesn't exactly track ground temps but most ground measures are contaminated by urban heat (75% of audited ground climate stations in the US have a temperature bias of plus 2 degrees C or more). So LT is a better measure and as can be seen in the data, it remains roughly flat since around 2000. Further, Douglass et all found the modeled tropospheric temperature "hot spot" does not exist empirically, disproving the models. As for sea ice, the arctic is recovering nicely after a recent decline caused by - as NASA put it - changing wind patterns that blew more sea ice than usual out to sea. And antarctic sea ice is near an all time high for the measured record. Further, ocean heat content is running far below what modeled expectations are. Lastly, sea level rise has flattened out considerably in the past several years as well.

Why do you think in the hacked emails the scientists talk about "hiding the decline" in temperatures and the "travesty" of the current cooling?

Given all that, upon what evidence do you conclude that global warming is following the "worst case" scenario?

 

Nice chart - looks about right. Now please do me (or yourself and the others reading this) a favor. Run a regression on your chart for 1979-1997 then from 1998 - 2009. Tell me the corresponding slope for each period. Then look at the spike during the 1998 El Nino year.

Why is the slope essentially zero before 1998 and negative from 1998 - 2009? And why is there a step change in temperature after the strong 1998 El Nino? This does not appear to be consistent with CO2 driven warming but rather, the result of a natural cycle of some sort.

 

Hey - really - I have to say I may not agree with everything F8L says here - but we DO need scientists to study the environment. I am not at all against that and wish him and others well in their studies.

However, back to the original point of the thread, I do hope and expect that they will pursue their work professionally and dispassionately so that as a society we make good, well reasoned decisions about our interaction with the environment. However, my concern (and it seems to be confirmed by the hacked emails) is that many scientists who pursue this field of study have a pre-existing bias and are out to prove things like AGW whether the full weight of the evidence supports it or not.

Altering and hiding data, manipulating results, attacking peers, bullying journal editors and the like are not the mark of good science. If a pharmaceutical company did this to market a new drug (as has been found in the past), it would once again be front page news. With climate research, there is barely a peep from the mainstream media, since it runs against the narrative they are trying to sell.

 

Shawn, the world has you on "ignore" you because you are too busy flushing toilets

 

Yep, you're dead right, do you want an award for that?
Putting 45 tons of freight on your truck would also be a concern, right? But 100 tons would be a bigger concern, so putting 45 tons on it is now OK, isn't it?

 

Actually 45 tons total weight for a semi is only about 8k over legal. And with proper permitting you can do it

 

Ok, guess you should have peer reviewed the IPPC AR4 (Fourth Assessment Report)


"The two most abundant gases in the atmosphere, nitrogen (comprising 78% of the dry atmosphere) and oxygen (comprising 21%), exert almost no greenhouse effect. Instead, the greenhouse effect comes from molecules that are more complex and much less common. Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas, and carbon dioxide (CO2) is the second-most important one. Methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and several other gases present in the atmosphere in small amounts also contribute to the greenhouse effect. In the humid equatorial regions, where there is so much water vapour in the air that the greenhouse effect is very large, adding a small additional amount of CO2 or water vapour has only a small direct impact on downward infrared radiation. However, in the cold, dry polar regions, the effect of a small increase in CO2 or
water vapour is much greater. The same is true for the cold, dry upper atmosphere where a small increase in water vapour has a greater influence on the greenhouse effect than the same change in water vapour would have near the surface."

I think you should read this:

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_FAQs.pdf

In fact, read the whole thing!

IPCC WG1 AR4 Report

 

You are pulling quotes out without context. The "hiding the decline" comment was in regards to the well known issue referring to one tree-ring dataset which diverged (declining) from multiple other data sets.

The "travesty" comment was in regards to the fact that air temps have not increased as much as might have expected at the top of the atmosphere over the past 10 years which is a short time scale. That doesn't mean that the globe isn't warming - deep ocean temps have risen considerably over the past 10 years so the energy has gone there instead of the atmosphere. Never mind that many of the past 10 years have been the warmest on record regardless, even though recent solar forcing is at a very low level.

Sea ice has been declining far faster than previous IPCC estimates.
Sea level has been rising far faster than previous IPCC estimates.
Ice at the poles is melting at an increasingly faster rate.

A small group of the IPCC scientists have published a new report using the latest data. Things have worsened over the past few years, not gotten better.

The Copenhagen Diagnosis

 

What a complete fool. It must have really hurt you to put Tim on ignore. He is single handedly destroying all of the points the AGW are trying to make. Really sad man.

 

These hackers stole 10 years of private e-mails and documents about climate research, and those two quotes are the worst they could come up with? Imagine your life's work being constantly attacked by people outside your profession, I would think evidence of collusion, plotting and reworking data, if it were happening, would be quite rampant. (And what exactly is the travesty - one data set, a particular time frame, or climate change in general during industrial times?) I don't know enough about these particular e-mails to change my conclusions based on actual data I've seen.

Worst case reference: Christian Science Monitor, yesterday: Amid charges of global warming hoax, new warning on climate change | csmonitor.com
The Copenhagen Diagnosis

I don't agree with your sea-ice statement at all, but don't have the links in front of me to research that at the moment. Perhaps you can provide your links and I can follow up on this. Arctic ice is disappearing faster than they expected the last several years, not sure about this last summer. One thing I was reading recently is that the Arctic ice that was there was thinner than expected on an expedition this year, but I'm not sure what previous data they have for comparison. (See, I'm willing to point out and look at possible flaws in AGW evidence. I keep reading reading "denialist" information if it's data-based, hoping for proof that we're not screwed, because it sure would make my son's life better. But so far the evidence doesn't point that way, plus now we have the ocean acidification problem to worry about.)

And you still haven't said why AGW is incorrect when the last 10 (or 15) years is warmer compared to the previous 10 (or 15) years. I'm not concerned about year-to-year variations, for one thing we're at a solar minimum right now, which generally follows an 11-year cycle.

 

If it makes TimBikes, DocBooks, etc. feel any better, there's virtually no chance we can come to a global agreement on what to do, and then actually enforce it. Kyoto is case in point. We need to stop coddling the Chinese and developing countries on their shoddy environmental practices, and they want us to cut back first. I just don't see that happening unless we're already having cities flooded, and by then it's too late.

There's only two ways things will change: 1) driven by citizens making personal choices, but this will be unlikely in India, China, etc. for at least the next decade, and 2) the end of cheap oil (precursor of peak oil) is upon us, and depending on the severity, we may need to make lifestyle changes based on that. That still doesn't address the use of coal or land practices (logging, farming make an effect that rivals the total U.S. transportation CO2 input). But it will be a big change, particularly if it results in a prolonged global recession, and that's one reason I bought the Prius. (That and keeping money away from Al Qaeda, and reducing pollution, and saving money in the long term, probably in that order).

 

No, not gross mass, nett payload.

Believe me, I know the mass limits here.
42.5 tonnes gross for a 6 axle artic (6 + 16.5 + 20)
45.5 tonnes with Mass management (6 + 17 + 22.5)
62.5 tonnes B double (6 + 16.5 + 20 + 20)
68 tonnes for a B double on Mass Management (6 + 17 + 22.5 + 22.5)
I won't go on, I just enforce it.

 

Yeah, didn't think you were doing much, thanks for confirmation. Are you carrying the drinks? Did you get on the team because your mum has a really nice orange tree?

 

OH MY GOD please tell me you didn't just quote Christian Science Monitor. I don't care WHAT side of the debate they are on, they are complete morons. Oh my god.