The majority of the world’s climate scientists agree: climate change is real, we are causing it and it’s happening right now. Despite the scientific consensus, Australia is still deeply divided about what we should do and whether we should do anything at all. We’ve asked some of Australia’s leading academics and researchers to look at the science supporting climate change and the efforts to discredit it.
An open letter from Australia’s science community asserts that climate change is happening, but vested interests and the media are distorting the facts.
The overwhelming scientific evidence tells us that human greenhouse gas emissions are resulting in climate changes that cannot be explained by natural causes. Climate change is real, we are causing it, and it is happening right now. Like it or not, humanity is facing a problem that is unparalleled in its scale and complexity. Understandable economic insecurity and fear of radical change have been exploited by ideologues and vested interests to whip up ill-informed, populist rage, and climate scientists have become the punching bag of shock jocks and tabloid scribes. Aided by a pervasive media culture that often considers peer-reviewed scientific evidence to be in need of “balance” by internet bloggers, this has enabled so-called “sceptics” to find a captive audience while largely escaping scrutiny. Read more.
Bureau of Meteorology scientist Karl Braganza explains why we know the climate is changing, and what’s causing it.
By choosing a range of indicators, by averaging over decades rather than years, and by looking at the pattern of change through the entire climate system, scientists are able to clearly discern the fingerprint of human-induced change. The climate of Earth is now a closely monitored thing; from instruments in space, in the deep ocean, in the atmosphere and across the surface of both land and sea. It’s now practically certain that increasing greenhouse gases have already warmed the climate system. That continued rapid increases in greenhouse gases will cause rapid future warming is irrefutable. Read more.
CSIRO’s James Risbey explains why it’s not “alarmist” to describe the threat of climate change to the public and how the climate system will respond to half measures.
Climate science doesn’t tell us what to do. It doesn’t tell us whether to have a carbon price or where it should be set. Those decisions ultimately involve a range of normative and deliberative issues which are beyond the scope of climatology. Climatology can tell us, however, what is likely to happen if we don’t act, or if we don’t act with sufficient speed to keep total emissions within specific carbon allocations… Pointing out that we are close to one of the largest tipping points imaginable in the climate system is well within the remit of science. It’s not alarmist to describe the threat accurately; it’s alarming if the political and social culture can’t absorb this. Read More.
Director of the Melbourne Energy Institute and Professor of Geology Mike Sandiford explores the staggering ways we influence the shape of the globe.
Aren’t we too puny to rival the great forces of nature that shape our planet? Certainly some prominent Australian geologists sceptical of our ability to impact our climate have said as much. But the facts show that we are fundamentally impacting planet Earth in unprecedented ways, and we’ve known about it for a century… We are a geological agent of unprecedented power. Faced with that stark reality now, it would be folly at best to maintain the fiction that we are too puny to impact the planet – at worst, it is just plain reckless. Whether we like it or not, for better or for worse, we are already engineering our planet. Read more.
Director of the Global Change Institute, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg submits some climate “sceptics” to peer-review and finds them wanting.
I used the Web of Science to see if Carter, Evans, Franks and Kininmonth were legitimate experts in the areas that they claiming superior knowledge in with respect to the Climate Commission’s report… The number of peer-reviewed papers that adequately expose the ideas of Carter and co-authors to the scientific peer-review system on the climate change issue is 0, 0, 0 and 0. We are left, then, with the observation that the Climate Commission’s report, peer-reviewed and assessed by scientists with appropriate expertise, is being challenged by four individuals who refer to websites and blogs and who have not had their core claims about climate change tested in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. Read more.
Professor Stephan Lewandowsky holds “sceptics” accountable for their subversion of the peer review process.
Science is inherently sceptical, and peer-review is the instrument by which scientific scepticism is pursued. Circumventing or subverting that process does not do justice to the public’s need for scientific accountability. At a time when Greenland is losing around 9,000 tonnes of ice every second — all of which contributes to sea level rises – it is time to hold accountable those who invert common standards of science, decency, and ethics in pursuit of their agenda to delay action on climate change. Read more.
Dr Michael Brown exposes the tactics used by purveyors of “non-science” to attack climate change research.
Those denying the science of climate change present arguments that appear scientific, with measurements, theories, statistics and jargon. But many of those denying anthropogenic climate change are not truly doing science. Science tries to provide the simplest explanation for a wealth of measurements in the natural world. Non-science, on the other hand, cherry-picks evidence … Purveyors of non-science charge that thousands of scientists are ignorant of basic science. This would be shocking, if it were not patently false. Read more.
Professor Ross Garnaut explains why Australia’s action on climate change policy is important.
Australians who don’t want any action on climate change make the point that we account for only a very small proportion—just under 1.5% of total global emissions—so that what we do has little direct effect on the global total. This is a true but trivial point. And, while the United Kingdom’s share of global emissions is not much larger than ours—about 1.7%, despite it having three times our population—it hasn’t occurred to a British prime minister from Margaret Thatcher onwards that Britain’s efforts are unimportant. And nor are they. The influence of British ideas has been considerable. But the view that Australia doesn’t matter is common enough in Australia for us to have to answer the question: is ours truly a country that doesn’t count? Read more.
Professors Stephan Lewandowsky and Michael Ashley step into the twilight zone of climate change scepticism: where the sun is made of iron and the royals are out to get you.
According to a recent (not peer-reviewed) book by Bob Carter, who has an unpaid Adjunct position at James Cook University, it is “simply professional suicide for a scientist to put a questioning head above the parapet” when faced with opposition from “the BBC, commercial television, all major newspapers, the Royal Society, the Chief Scientist, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, David Attenborough, countless haloed-image organisations such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and even Prince Charles himself.” Just imagine the devastating rebuttal of climate change that Bob Carter could submit for peer-review if he wasn’t being oppressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and Prince Charles. But seriously, why doesn’t Carter, or any of the deniers, simply write a coherent outline of their best arguments against the expert consensus and publish it in the peer-reviewed literature? Why don’t they turn up to the relevant scientific conferences and give a talk on their theories? The answer is simple: they don’t have any arguments that have any scientific merit. Read more.
Associate Professor John Abraham puts Christopher Monckton’s climate claims to the test.
Mr. Monckton artfully mixes self-deprecation and humour among slides laden with graphs and scientific images that seem convincing to his audience. I wondered, what does Mr. Monckton know that 97% of the world’s leading climate scientists don’t? Is he some Galileo shouting truth from the rooftops? I had to find out. Last year, I performed a little investigation. I actually read the articles that Mr. Monckton used as evidence against the concerns of climate change. What I discovered was astonishing. None of the articles I read supported the claims or inferences that Mr. Monckton was promoting. Just to be sure, I began to write to the authors of the papers. Of the 16 authors I wrote to, all of them agreed with me: Mr. Monckton had misrepresented or misunderstood their work. Read more.
Professor Ian Enting takes a look at the front groups and published texts of Australia’s climate sceptics.
Many of us, including most of the authors of this series, have engaged with the arguments of self-styled “sceptics”. We’ve looked at not just the blogs, but also the information from organised groups, the few published scientific papers and the books in which these their claims are presented in detail … Any self-styled “sceptic” who claims to have a genuine case should do what normal scientists do and dissociate themselves from those who practise fabrication and misrepresentation … The reality is that the most prominent pseudo-sceptical scientists are doing the opposite: gathering together to provide apparent respectability to front organisations that are designed to spread confusion. Read more.
Professor David Karoly goes down the rabbit hole of Bob Carter’s climate theories.
Let’s enter a different world: the “Carter reality”. In that world, it is OK to select any evidence that supports your ideas and ignore all other evidence. In that world, geologists like Carter “hold the key to delineating climate history,” … In the real world, this is not true. The Geological Society of Australia, the Geological Society of America, the Geological Society of London and the American Geophysical Union have all recognised the reality of human-caused climate change and called for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. In the Carter reality, “there has been no net warming between 1958 and 2005.“ Of course, in the real world, there is no basis for this statement from scientific analysis of observational data. The decade of the 2000s was warmer than the 1990s, which was warmer than the 1980s, which was warmer than the 1970s, which was warmer than the 1960s. Read more.
A closing statement from our authors puts the blame at the feet of the media for reporting a “debate” that doesn’t exist.
One might be tempted to forgive the media’s inappropriate inclusion of unfounded contrarian opinions, given that its function is to stimulate broad debate in which, ideally, even exotic opinions are given a voice. But the media by and large do not report the opinions of 9/11 “truthers” who think that the attacks were an “inside job” of the Bush administration. The media also do not report the opinion of people who believe that Prince Phillip runs the world’s drug trade… The very fact that society is wracked by a phony debate where there is none in the scientific literature provides strong evidence that the Australian media has tragically and thoroughly failed the Australian public. This is same public in whose interest climate science is being conducted at our world-renowned public institutions. Read more.
The Conversation
Comments (90)
Comments on this article are now closed.
Toby James
retired physicist (logged in via email @yahoo.com)
"The very fact that society is wracked by a phony debate where there is none in the scientific literature ..."
The debate on climate change in the scientific literature is anything but phony.
During the last decade and more most of the climate data has seriously diverged from the predictions of the AGW climate models. Despite the increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, the more sophisticated measurement by satellites, among others, have shown flat or declining global temperatures and slowing or zero rise in sea level.
These and many other facts are the subjects of debate in the scientific literature. Over 900 such peer-reviewed papers are here: http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
Tristan Croll
(logged in via Facebook)
Slowing or zero rise in sea level? I don't see any plateau in this graph, do you?
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/
Toby James
retired physicist (logged in via email @yahoo.com)
Right, it looks a bit like a hockey stick.
This one gives the lie to the claim that all scientists agree with the warmist position: http://climate4you.com/images/UnivColorado%20MeanSeaLevelSince1992%20With1yrRunningAverage.gif
The CSIRO's opinion is not the only one in Australia either. This is an excerpt of the abstract to such a paper:
“These long records have been converted to relative 20-year moving average water level time series and fitted to second-order polynomial functions to consider trends of acceleration in mean sea level over time. The analysis reveals a consistent trend of weak deceleration at each of these gauge sites throughout Australasia over the period from 1940 to 2000.”
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00141.1
Tristan Croll
(logged in via Facebook)
Uhh... you do know the difference between "global" and "around Australia" don't you?
Also, that graph isn't opinion. It's data. It doesn't come from models, or predictions - just from tide gauges and (more recently) satellite altimeters.
Tristan Croll
(logged in via Facebook)
To add some more detail to why it's most important to consider *global* rather than *local* sea level rises (even more so than considering temperature changes), let's do some quick calculations.
The distance between the southernmost point of Australia and our very nearest source of potential sea level rise (Antarctica) is 3443 km. Imagine that the sea level around Antarctica suddenly rises 10 cm. That rise will start to head towards us, but the effective slope it will be flowing down is (10 cm…
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James Szabadics
Technical Development and R&D Manager, Plantation Timber Industry (logged in via email @technologist.com)
Tristan - maybe you didn't see Toby's link to global sea level change? Sea level rise appears to be decellerating along with OHC and temperature but hasn't decellerated as much as the OHC and temps. The trend over the last 5 years is approximately 2mm/yr which would indicate that ice loss from ice sheets has slowed slightly from the long term trend. The long term trend for global sea level is 3.1mm/yr.
Here is the link to global sea level change for readers:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/current/sl_ib_global.jpg
Tristan Croll
(logged in via Facebook)
No - I didn't click on his link. I was just going by his text which appeared to be all about Australia, so I didn't bother. However, there is no evidence for a deceleration (or acceleration, for that matter) in either of the graphs he or you linked to - if you need a decade or more to see clearly whether a trend exists, you're going to need a *lot* more than that to see if there's a higher-order term in the trend.
Toby James
retired physicist (logged in via email @yahoo.com)
The Australian study in the paper I quoted extended over 60 years of data and concluded that sea level has undergone a "consistent trend of weak deceleration"
I was simply pointing to the existence of a view which does not coincide with the warmist view. There other opinions.
The AGW doctrine has remained essentially the same as it was in the 1980s. Its predictions/projections have not been born out by subsequent facts. However, the doctrine is not up for discussion.
Tristan Croll
(logged in via Facebook)
"However, the doctrine is not up for discussion."
Strange - I thought that's what we were doing right now. And you still seem to have missed the key point that it is *global* data that counts. It may have been 60 years of data, but it was 60 years of data concerning only a few sites around Australia.
Toby James
retired physicist (logged in via email @yahoo.com)
You could be right, Tristan. Maybe the oceans are not global at all.
Tristan Croll
(logged in via Facebook)
Oh, for the love of... read what I wrote above about the pace at which sea levels equilibrate. Or, even better, look at the map at http://climate.nasa.gov/news/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=16. Some parts of the ocean are rising fast, some are rising slowly, and a few spots are actually going down. But, on average, they're going up.
Toby James
retired physicist (logged in via email @yahoo.com)
Tristan, I am simply pointing out that it is wrong to claim that " . . . society is wracked by a phony debate where there is none in the scientific literature ", when there are plenty of scientists in the peer-reviewed literature whose research runs counter to warmest claims. To deny that the disparity is seriously debated is disingenuous.
I am not here making an evaluation of the science, I am claiming that others who are well qualified to do so, are.
The position, in regard to AGW, taken by the IPCC in its First Assessment Report of 1990 is essentially unchanged. If anything, their position has hardened and their warnings are more dire.
It would indeed be incredible, in view of the complexities of the climate system, if the enormous scientific inquiry since the 1980s had uniformly supported their original position.
Tristan Croll
(logged in via Facebook)
As a retired physicist, I'm sure you know what a journal impact factor is. For those not in the know, it's the average number of times each paper published in that journal is cited by other scientific papers in the two years following its publication. It's a rough, but reasonably useful measure of the average quality of articles published in that journal.
The impact factor of the journal publishing the article you linked to above (and another, Houston and Dean, which is being loudly trumpeted…
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Toby James
retired physicist (logged in via email @yahoo.com)
Tristan, readers could be forgiven for thinking that you are engaging in a debate on the science of AGW. Now, if you were a climate scientist and serious about what you write, and I'm certainly not claiming that you are not either of those, then apart from peer review, you exemplify my point very well.
Tristan Croll
(logged in via Facebook)
If *this* is the level of debate that is sufficient to justify inaction, then I'm afraid we're pretty much screwed.
Daryl Deal
retired (logged in via email @melbpc.org.au)
Ah, the old Senator Inhofe/Marc Morano, initially at first 400 then mysteriously grew some flab or much padding to become the 900, so called peer reviewed science papers! I was wondering when that piece of climate change denial churnalism would reappear from the grave? It's a shame Marc Morano, has yet to apologize, to the general public at large for introducing them such an easy to debunk furphy ! Alas, that too was effectively debunked by "The Carbon Brief-Clear on Climate" :-http://www.carbonbrief…
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Pop tech
(logged in via email @gmail.com)
Please get your facts straight, the list has nothing to do with Senator Infore or Marc Morano.
The list has never been debunked. The lies and propaganda from the Carbon Brief have been completely debunked,
http://www.populartechnology.net/2011/05/are-skeptical-scientists-funded-by.html
John McLean
(logged in via email @connexus.net.au)
"The majority of the world’s climate scientists agree: climate change is real, we are causing it..."
For what is supposedly a scientific forum it is odd that the editor seems to think that a consensus (whether or not one really exists) is how scientific (provisional) truths are determined.
What happened to matching a hypothesis to observations and continuing to do so?
Could it be that you don't like that method because global average temperatures for the last 10 years fail to accord with the rise in CO2, at least nowhere like they did from 1977 to 1997?
Typical warmist approach - if you don't like what the empirical data says, you change the rules. Why else did "global warming" suddenly shift to "climate change"
This web site really makes me sick on climate matters.
It's just one giant cheer squad regardless of the absence of credible empirical evidence.
Felix MacNeill
Felix MacNeill (logged in via email @grapevine.com.au)
John, if it makes you so sick, why do you keep turning up here?
Do you really expect anyone to take a nonsense like the argument about consensus in your second paragraph seriously? This one is so basic a misconstruction of reality that it almost defies refutation.
Daryl Deal
retired (logged in via email @melbpc.org.au)
Sorry John, one must ask PhD in what academic field again?
Remember this fact, all the wonderful technology marvels we use in the computer age of the 21st century, are the results of accumulated knowledge, academic mathematics and scientific research since the Industrial Age began.
Now, as for the debate, there is none really, not in this world where 97% of climate scientists concur, it is real and it is happening as we speak.
I can also clearly find 165 plus reasons, why you are so wrong here…
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Paul Richards
Have you see the GCC from another perspective John?
I would enjoy your feedback on this video.
http://youtu.be/zORv8wwiadQ
Andrew McRae
B.InfTech, software developer. (logged in via email @gmail.com)
For those with a spare hour, this is an easily-understood video about possible natural causes of climate change.
Cosmic rays and climate
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073
Part of the abstract reads: " ... This talk presents an overview of the palaeoclimatic evidence for solar/cosmic ray forcing of the climate, and reviews the possible physical mechanisms. These will be investigated in the CLOUD experiment which begins to take data at the CERN PS later [in 2009]."
The one thing we can say for sure from this video is that external forces have a large effect on Earth's climate and that the science is not settled.
Douglas Cotton
(B.Sc.(Physics), B.A.(Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin)
Cosmic rays are one of the three possible causes related to gravity coming from the sun and planets and thus cyclical in nature. See the last footnote at my site http://earth-climate.com which summarises recent research.
Douglas Cotton
(Douglas Cotton B.Sc. (Physics) B.A. (Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin.)
Everyone should read John Dodds' lengthy posting under "Monckton Watch > Hear Ye .." (about 4am 19 July Australian Eastern time) which summarises his theory. I don't hide the fact that there has been a lot of private communication and subsequent summarising of his theory on http://earth-climate.com for the public to read.
A key oversight by the IPCC has been the warming of the rest of the air (ie non GHG) by direct contact of molecules of air with the surface molecules and subsequent convection…
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Douglas Cotton
(B.Sc.(Physics), B.A.(Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin)
Here are Prof. Lindzen;'s concluding remarks which all should read. The full paper is linked from my site. At the very least, CO2 in his view contributes only about a third of what the IPCC claimed - basically because heat is swept away by winds.
http://earth-climate.com/lindzen.jpg
Kelly Liddle
(logged in via email @hotmail.com)
Please prove me wrong.
Thermal emissions warming.
The following study done by myself and assisted by a scientist is only to demonstrate that the warming can be mostly if not all explained by thermal emmissions or basically a large scale heat island study using energy use data. This is not intended to give any exact warming extent as average values are used and wind land cover etc are not taken into account (this is virtually impossible despite the claims of organisations such as NASA or CSIRO…
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Doug Cotton
(logged in via email @live.com.au)
At last the debate is cleared up. Search Google "Biology Cabinet laboratories Professor Nahle"
Comments everywhere like: "Greenhouse gas theory of global warming is refuted in momentous Mexican lab experiment."
And what did I say at http://earth-climate.com before reading this news?
All air molecules are radiating photons in all directions as they rise and cool, the only difference being that greenhouse gases can temporarily capture certain photons and send them off in a different direction…
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Jason Birch
Managing Director (logged in via email @hotmail.com)
"At last the debate is cleared up. Search Google "Biology Cabinet laboratories Professor Nahle"
Comments everywhere like: "Greenhouse gas theory of global warming is refuted in momentous Mexican lab experiment.""
Wow.
I did as you suggested and Googled that phrase.
The result is a list of bloggers that you can confidently write off as not worth ever reading again because not only are they completely ignorant, they are completely ignorant of their own ignorance.
It truly boggles the mind how…
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Paul Richards
Just to add to your thought Jason.
There is a team of physicists near Geneva, Switzerland, at CERN working on theoretical physics, using the LHC to do experimental checks on photon mass. To my knowledge they haven't published any data outlining a radical change in photon behaviour.
But I a happy to be corrected.
Douglas Cotton
(B.Sc.(Physics), B.A.(Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin)
Everyone please note yesterday's refinements at http://earth-climate.com which now predict that the next maximum in the 60 year cycle around 2060 (about 0.3 deg.C higher than present temperatures) will be the last before the start of the 460 year decline to the next Little Ice Age. The revision now takes into account gravity from all the other planets, not just Jupiter, Saturn and Venus.
Here's a copy of a reply I wrote to a recent email which might help your understanding ...
I suggest that…
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Douglas Cotton
(B.Sc.(Physics), B.A.(Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin)
To say, when the force of the sun's gravity accelerates the Earth (F = ma) including its atmosphere, that no heat is generated would be as absurd as saying that when the moon circles the Earth no energy is transmitted to the oceans. Now wouldn't it?
The issue is whether the amount of heat generated VARIES.
It wouldn't if there were no planets and the Earth's orbit was perfectly circular and the Earth didn't spin. Now would it?
It's so obvious you wonder how the IPCC missed it.
Douglas Cotton
(B.Sc.(Physics), B.A.(Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin)
PS They missed it because there is far more CO2 up there than is needed to convert all the available photons. Their "science" was based on laboratory experiments which did have enough photons - in the lab that was - hardly a real-life emulation! And there has never been ANY empirical evidence to support their wild hypothesis.
Andrew McRae
B.InfTech, software developer. (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Question to the moderators.
I could swear when I first began reading this article about 1hr ago there were 208 comments on it. Now I have logged in and refreshed the page... and 190+ comments have disappeared, including a protracted exchange involving "Mr T".
What happened to all these comments?
Megan Clement
(Editor, The Conversation)
Hi Andrew,
This is the master article for a thirteen-part series.
You might have been thinking of this article: http://theconversation.edu.au/climate-change-is-real-an-open-letter-from-the-scientific-community-1808
Or this one: http://theconversation.edu.au/the-chief-troupier-the-follies-of-mr-monckton-1555
Timothy Curtin
Economic adviser (logged in via email @bigblue.net.au)
Hi Megan
Can you explain why "the Conversation" ceases whenever I put up a post? I am still awaiting responses from David Karoly, Ian Enting, and Andrew Glikson to my last posts responding to theirs. Am I right it is because they have no answers to my queries?
Ian Enting
(Professorial Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematics and Statistics of Complex Systems at University of Melbourne)
my reply to what you posted 6 days ago went up a couple of days later, pointing out, among other things that you were repeatedly lying about me having been at CRU in an attempt to entrain me in the smearing of Phil Jones
Michael J. I. Brown
(ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Monash University)
An interesting tactic of those denying anthropogenic climate change is to demand scientists reply to various questions related to pet theories.
Replying to such demands is probably a poor use of scientists time. The pet theories often rely on misinterpretation of the data, may misuse established theory (e.g., thermodynamics), and are rarely (or never) published in peer reviewed science journals. Those that do make it past peer review are often in the very speculative category of science - potentially…
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Ian Enting
(Professorial Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematics and Statistics of Complex Systems at University of Melbourne)
"Replying to such demands is probably a poor use of scientists time. ",
Neverheless, it's important that ideas get looked at, Even with Time Curtin's extensive misrepresentation, there wasone comment that drew our attention to an error in eqn A16 in the 2008 Mienshausen et al At Chem Physics Discussion paper (although when final version came out in 2011 in At Chem Physics , error had been corrected.
But not every scientist has to respond to each occurence recycled claims that violate long established laws of physics
Michael J. I. Brown
(ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Monash University)
Good point. I should have nuanced my argument that such discussions can be useful if they give a broader audience a sense of the robustness or otherwise of the relevant science. Scientists do need to communicate their science better to the public, but long discussions on peculiar pet theories (they only need to be debunked once) with a limited online audience don't truly satisfy that role.
I personally have found the discussions interesting because the arguments of those countering the scientific consensus are far weaker than I originally expected. The spurious thermodynamics argument and the Scafetta papers being the most obvious examples to me.
Douglas Cotton
(B.Sc.(Physics), B.A.(Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin)
Fact: The mean temperature gradient from 1940 to the present is LESS than that from 1880 to 1940. Yet carbon dioxide has increased significantly.
Question: Why?
Answer; See http://earth-climate.com
Jason Birch
Managing Director (logged in via email @hotmail.com)
GISTemp has 1880-1940 increasing at a rate of 0.040 C/decade and 1940 to now increasing at a rate of 0.084 C/decade.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1880/to:1940/plot/gistemp/from:1880/to:1940/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1940/plot/gistemp/from:1940/trend
HadCRUT has 1880-1940 increasing at a rate of 0.033 C/decade and 1940 to now increasing at a rate of 0.087 C/decade.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/data/hadcrut3vgl/from:1880/to:1940/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1880/to:1940/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl…
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Douglas Cotton
(B.Sc.(Physics), B.A.(Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin)
OK I'll use your figures starting with the latest 2011.33 and using the same time of year (.33). Now I know it's rough just using end points but it is an approximation ...
2011.33 0.333
1940.33 0.009
Difference 0.324 / 71 yrs = 0.00456 pa
1940.33 0.009
1880.33 -0.243
Difference 0.252 / 60 yrs = 0.0042 pa
OK you win but by the slenderest of margins which is of course totally insignificant. Use another month and you get a different result..
Now look at the trend since 2003 and tell me if…
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Jason Birch
Managing Director (logged in via email @hotmail.com)
"OK I'll use your figures starting with the latest 2011.33 and using the same time of year (.33)."
Why would you throw out 855 of the 857 data points to compute your trend?
"Use another month and you get a different result."
Precisely because you've thrown out 99.8% of the data. If you use *all* of the data available it becomes much more robust. For example:
1940 - 2011.42: 0.087 C/decade
1940 - 2011.33: 0.087 C/decade
1940 - 2011.25: 0.087 C/decade
Using the two endpoints of a series for a…
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Douglas Cotton
(Douglas Cotton B.Sc. (Physics) B.A. (Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin.)
Here's a chart showing cooling for the last 13 years: http://climate-change-theory.com/13years.jpg
See also my detailed explanation under "Monckton Watch" "Hear Ye .."
Jason Birch
Managing Director (logged in via email @hotmail.com)
Any particular reason you chose to start your trend on the biggest El Nino on record, and then picked the *only* temperature reconstruction (RSS) that happens to show a negative trend since then -- especially since satellite-based reconstructions of lower-tropospheric temperature are known to be even more sensitive to ENSO?
UAH (also satellite-based) gives 0.059 C/decade from 1998.08.
GISS gives 0.119 C/decade from 1998.08.
HadCRUT gives 0.006 C/decade from 1998.08. (A critical difference between…
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Douglas Cotton
(Douglas Cotton B.Sc. (Physics) B.A. (Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin.)
Actually I prefer to just look at the 8.5 years that can be displayed on the NASA site, namely 2003 to the present .
Each of these years shows a very definite pattern which is clearly repeated in corresponding months each year. http://earth-climate.com/all-2003-2011.jpg
Hence, the statistical probability of these variations being just random noise (getting systematically further and further below the expected IPCC trend but still retaining the patterns) is infinitesimal.
Hence the trend (which…
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Jason Birch
Managing Director (logged in via email @hotmail.com)
“Actually I prefer to just look at the 8.5 years that can be displayed on the NASA site, namely 2003 to the present .”
Obviously you “prefer” that, but that doesn’t make it correct. Since you seem to like UAH so much, here’s the period since 2003 in context using ALL of UAH’s data:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1980/plot/uah/from:1980/trend/plot/uah/from:2003/trend
For a while, around 2007-2009, the UAH trend from 1998 to 2007/2008/2009 was the “preferred” period to use to show how…
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Douglas Cotton
(B.Sc.(Physics), B.A.(Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin)
With all the discussion of the new peer-reviewed Mexican experiment that confirmed my remarks on http://earth-climate.com that the Second Law of Thermodynamics cannot be applied to the atmosphere because pressure is not uniform - and debunked the greenhouse warming theory, I overlooked responding to this post.
Firstly, I'm sorry I omitted the second sentence below (which has been on my website) as that should make it clear that I was including ground molecules: "During the day some extra molecules…
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Douglas Cotton
(Douglas Cotton B.Sc. (Physics) B.A. (Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin.)
I have studied www.earth-climate.com whereas I don't think you have in any detail.
The site refers to "earth tides" which raise the hard crust of the earth about 30cm - not ocean tides. Your comment implying the gravitational attraction of the moon is greater than the sun is totally incorrect. Do the calculations and you'll find the sun's gravitational force is about 179 times that of the moon. Otherwise the earth would crash into the moon.
Your trends including part of 2011 are invalid…
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Douglas Cotton
(Douglas Cotton B.Sc. (Physics) B.A. (Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin.)
And just one final thought: The Earth's distance from the sun varies by 3,25% twice a year in its eliptical orbit. Hence, space being 3 dimensional, the radiation reaching Earth varies by the cube or 1.0325,namely about 10% twice a year. Do we see such variation in temperatures? Nothing like it! Go to NASA "Sea surface" temperature plots and overlay all available years from 2003 and the obvious annual pattern does not even show two maxima and two minima! Also read NASA's science: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1997/essd06oct97_1/
Jason Birch
Managing Director (logged in via email @hotmail.com)
"Do we see such variation in temperatures? Nothing like it! Go to NASA "Sea surface" temperature plots and overlay all available years from 2003 and the obvious annual pattern does not even show two maxima and two minima!"
I would only expect one maxima and one minima per year because the earth only approaches aphelion once per year and perihelion once per year.
But as for NASA "Sea surface" temperature plots are you actually talking about http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps…
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Douglas Cotton
(Douglas Cotton B.Sc. (Physics) B.A. (Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin.)
Unless one considers what has happened since 1998 (or even 2003) then it is not possible to even guess whether temperatures are following the red (linear) trend in this plot or the green one http://earth-climate.com/62yearcycle.jpg I go with the green; you can go with the red: that's fine. Time will tell.
But what you cannot prove is that there is still insufficient CO2 (and water vapour) in the atmosphere to capture ALL the available photons. And you need to prove this in order to have a sound…
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Jason Birch
Managing Director (logged in via email @hotmail.com)
"Unless one considers what has happened since 1998 (or even 2003) then it is not possible to even guess whether temperatures are following the red (linear) trend in this plot or the green one http://earth-climate.com/62yearcycle.jpg I go with the green; you can go with the red: that's fine. Time will tell."
Why so defeatist? We can easily assess the performance of the green temperature model (a 5th order polynomial) vs the red one (a linear trend).
First, let's do a little forecasting (to see how…
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Douglas Cotton
(B.Sc.(Physics), B.A.(Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin)
Jason, in response to all the above, now that this news is out about the peer-reviewed Mexican experiment debunking the Greenhouse Warming theory, perhaps you will see that what I have been saying about not applying the Second Law of Thermodynamics to the atmosphere is valid. Also, the latest (bold type) paragraphs at http://earth-climate.com explain why it does not matter how much greenhouse gas there is up there.
Then, back on the gravity issue, see my reply to John Dodds under "Monchton Watch…
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Jason Birch
Managing Director (logged in via email @hotmail.com)
"The site refers to "earth tides" which raise the hard crust of the earth about 30cm - not ocean tides."
I never mentioned ocean tides. I simply said tides, which covers everything.
"Your comment implying the gravitational attraction of the moon is greater than the sun is totally incorrect."
I never said the gravitation attraction of the moon is greater than the sun. I said the tidal effect of the moon is a lot stronger than the sun. The magnitude of the tidal effect is the difference in gravitational…
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Douglas Cotton
(Douglas Cotton B.Sc. (Physics) B.A. (Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin.)
Just one more http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/new-paper-illustrates-another-failure-of-the-ipcc-mullti-decadal-global-model-predictions-on-the-warming-in-the-tropical-upper-troposphere-models-versus-observations-by-fu-et-al-2011/
Douglas Cotton
(Douglas Cotton B.Sc. (Physics) B.A. (Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin.)
You and the IPCC continually assume that you have to fit LINEAR trends when in fact the natural cycles are more like this http://earth-climate.com/62yearcycle.jpg
The 934 year cycle tends to be fairly pointed near its maxima and that could very well explain a very slightly steeper gradient approaching 2000 but getting less now as the long-term maximum is getting closer.
The trend since 2003 is totally in keeping with the 60 year cycle starting to decline whilst the 934 year cycle is still rising…
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Jason Birch
Managing Director (logged in via email @hotmail.com)
“You and the IPCC continually assume that you have to fit LINEAR trends when in fact the natural cycles are more like this http://earth-climate.com/62yearcycle.jpg”
This is not an “assumption”, it’s simply the simplest mathematical model that can incorporate trend. It only has two parameters to solve for (slope and intercept).
If you add more parameters then you improve the ability of the model to fit the data, but you *decrease* the ability of the model to filter out noise in the data. As John…
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Douglas Cotton
(Douglas Cotton B.Sc. (Physics) B.A. (Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin.)
Regarding the earth tides - yes I do now accept that the moon has about twice the effect that the sun has. The reason is not exactly as you explain though. It is because we have to consider the total acceleration which is made up of the acceleration due to gravity and the actual physical acceleration of one body relative to the other because of the orbits. The two acceleration vectors have to be added. When this is done, then, the sun's effect is about 46% of the moon's effect, Venus' average…
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Jason Birch
Managing Director (logged in via email @hotmail.com)
“Regarding the earth tides - yes I do now accept that the moon has about twice the effect that the sun has.”
Excellent. Now, previously you pointed out that the sun’s gravitational force was 179 times as strong as the moon’s (and even claimed that there was “no way” the moon could lift the surface of the earth by 30 cm daily, “and the timing is wrong anyway”). Now you concede that the tidal effect of the moon is more than double that of the sun.
I have to ask:
1. How did it escape your attention…
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Doug Cotton
(logged in via email @live.com.au)
Very briefly: Jupiter's gravity causes a variation in Sun-Earth distance of from about 0% to nearly 5% I understand - currently 3.25%. Not insignificant I would suggest. Hence the mean Earth-Sun distance over a year (and so its gravity) varies DUE TO JUPITER causing variations in eccentricity. In addition to that variation, neither you nor I have done calculations on the VARIATION of acceleration due to gravity over 1,000 years or so. Sometimes Jupiter is getting closer, sometimes further away, and the variation in distance is about 60%. In the course of the 934 year cycles I would suggest a lag of, say 60 years, would barely be noticed. So multiply your difference by about 22,000 days, say. Then apply the percentage to about 270 degrees K.
Now, changing the subject, please let me have a valid criticism based on physics regarding the bold paragraph in the main text and the final footnote (10) at http://earth-climate.com
Douglas Cotton
(Douglas Cotton B.Sc. (Physics) B.A. (Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin.)
I will just focus on the issue of heat transfer which can, of course, be by conduction (in solids) , convection in gases and radiation. For those who perhaps don't understand the differences this page may help http://www.virginiaradiant.com/radiantheat.html
Now, when solar radiation falls on, say, sand on a beach the top few centimetres get quite hot, but the sand cools at least by night. Solids absorb radiated photons quite effectively and so the photons don't penetrate very far. Conduction…
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Jason Birch
Managing Director (logged in via email @hotmail.com)
“When you (and the IPCC) refer to photons being captured they seem to imply that the CO2 molecule (or the water vapour molecule) gets heated and yet still releases the photon with the same energy that it had before the collision. This would be creating energy, so it doesn't happen that way. If the photon did have the same energy then the CO2 molecule would not be heated and all that happened is the photon gets delayed. Alternaively, if the molecule is heated then the photon that is released has less…
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Douglas Cotton
(Douglas Cotton B.Sc. (Physics) B.A. (Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin.)
Correction - I should of course have just squared 1.0325 to get 1.066 and so about 6.6% variation in solar radiation instead of 10% over the course of a year. Actual NASA mean temperatures vary about 0.6 degrees out of 294 degrees K which is about 0.2% - a lot less than 6.6%. Please explain!
Jason Birch
Managing Director (logged in via email @hotmail.com)
Sorry, the link for the HadCRUT plot should be
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1880/to:1940/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1880/to:1940/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/trend
The other link is for the raw data to obtain the numerical trend values.
Andrew McRae
B.InfTech, software developer. (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Megan, thanks for that. Seems I got the articles mixed up... but still remembered the comment count number perfectly, haha typical.
Please feel free to send my above question down the memory hole - you've answered it and it was an ill-founded question which has turned out to be tangential.
David Smith
IT Communications Professional (logged in via email @gmail.com)
There's an Anti Carbon Tax rally going on in Martin Place at the moment. Alan Jones and Angry Anderson are there.
Some choice quotes:
"There is no country on this planet that has placed a price on Carbon. None. Nowhere" - That was Alan Jones.
"Carbon Dioxide is good for the environment. Calling Carbon Dioxide a pollutant is a lie."
"Belief in Global Warming can not be tolerated. The world is now cooling at a rapid rate. To quote from Genesis..."
"Stop the lies. Election now!"
Tristan Croll
(logged in via Facebook)
Isn't it lovely the way they're allowed to lie and slander to their hearts' content, while the scientists are bound to honesty?
Andrew McRae
B.InfTech, software developer. (logged in via email @gmail.com)
We can safely say that people don't go to a rally or demonstration of any kind with the goal of calmly discussing and learning the facts and scientific findings of anything. If a rally preaches to the unconverted it is by accident rather than design.
All the blather and motherhood statements that we've heard on this site in the last three weeks have many of the trappings of a protest march. For one example, Sandiford's adoption of Hiroshima bombs as a unit of measure of human impact on the environment…
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Peter J Scott
Retired English professor (logged in via email @gmail.com)
The Argo Buoy data would seem to be have a significant role in "Clearing up the Climate Debate", yet a clear summary of this appears unavailable, at least as far as I can ascertain. Would anyone have any information on this?
James Szabadics
Technical Development and R&D Manager, Plantation Timber Industry (logged in via email @technologist.com)
Peter - ARGO has been used to measure ocean heat content. Since 2003 it is the primary data source for OCH to 700m depth and in that time it appears to have a flat trend. That doesnt clear up the debate but with the assumption that AGW is correct you would not expect to see ocean heat content trending flat with increasing CO2 levels unless there was a significant change in another forcing.
See the OHC data collected by ARGO here:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content55-07.png
Andrew McRae
B.InfTech, software developer. (logged in via email @gmail.com)
That link is not specifically ARGO data, that is NOAA's best attempt at OHC estimation from a longer time series measured mostly by older dodgy technology. You are correct to say ARGO is the prime OHC source since 2003.
To my knowledge the only occasion that OHC data derived solely from ARGO has been released is here: http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3152
An explanation for why other scientists were not permitted access to the OHC data may perhaps be inferred from this discussion…
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Toby James
retired physicist (logged in via email @yahoo.com)
The key to understanding the OHC problem for the AGW conjecture is well summarised here: "Although four years is a relatively short period of analysis, the absence of heating of the magnitude reported by Hansen and his collaborators and the 2007 IPCC report should raise issues with respect to our level of understanding of the climate system, since the global climate projections used by the IPCC predict more or less monotonic accumulation of heat in the Earth system." http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress…
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Tristan Croll
(logged in via Facebook)
"Although four years is a relatively short period of analysis..."
Four years is an *insanely* short period of analysis. Just look at the ocean heat content graph at http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/. By my eyeball, there is year-on-year variability of at least 4-5x10^22 J, while the trend between 1990 and 2003 is no more than 1x10^22 J.
It's the same old story: setting up a strawman version of the climate scientists' position by stating that there should be a monotonic year-on-year…
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Toby James
retired physicist (logged in via email @yahoo.com)
Tristan, you seem intent on changing the subject; Hansen and his collaborators' conjectures and the 2007 IPCC with all their models and resources are not congruent with the facts.
By your eyeball of the graph you cited, you would have seen that the the ocean heat content has not risen during the last seven years which contrasts with the claims of the warmist community and the Australian Government and Prof. Garnaut.
A four year period is "relatively" short, not "insanely" short.
Tristan Croll
(logged in via Facebook)
"By your eyeball of the graph you cited, you would have seen that the the ocean heat content has not risen during the last seven years which contrasts with the claims of the warmist community and the Australian Government and Prof. Garnaut."
You simply don't learn, do you. This does *not* constrast with the claims of the "warmist" community. No climate model predicts that heat content should always increase year upon year. Every run output has periods where temperature (or heat content) remains stable or even goes down slightly. That's one of the major reasons why the graphs of aggregate model predictions have such a big spread.
The year-on-year variation due to natural climate oscillations and sampling error is large, while the trend is small. Therefore reliable trend information can only come from consideration of long time periods. Is that really so hard to understand?
Toby James
retired physicist (logged in via email @yahoo.com)
As all the warmists know, not one of the IPCC's climate models can tolerate, without a wholesale overhaul, a 10 year stretch of its predictions being out of synchrony with rising global CO2 levels.
As we all know, warmists included, global temperatures have not risen in the last decade, and the ocean heat content has been flat or trending down for seven years.
CO2 levels rose more in 2010 than any previous year on record and it seemingly hasn't yet caused a global temperature rise.
In the face of the increasing anthropogenic plant food when can we expect to experience some more CAGW?
Tristan Croll
(logged in via Facebook)
"As all the warmists know, not one of the IPCC's climate models can tolerate, without a wholesale overhaul, a 10 year stretch of its predictions being out of synchrony with rising global CO2 levels. "
You claim to be a retired scientist, and yet you repeatedly and persistently repeat claims which simply aren't true. Why?
Toby James
retired physicist (logged in via email @yahoo.com)
Tristan, name one IPCC climate model that can survive a decade and more of predictive failure.
Tristan Croll
(logged in via Facebook)
I'll do that when you show me one that has failed.
James Szabadics
Technical Development and R&D Manager, Plantation Timber Industry (logged in via email @technologist.com)
Tristan,
RE the Realclimate blog comparison of model ensemble to GISS link you posted
This is a nice link. You can see that all of the real world data points since 2005 are below the IPCC ensemble mean. 2011 is likely to be more than 1 standard deviation below the ensemble mean. And this is despite CO2 emissions rising faster than IPCC predictions.
If realclimate is correct, the IPCC ensemble models predict the 2011 anomaly to be +0.4 Degrees C +/- 0.4 degrees C. Hmm the error is quite large…
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Tristan Croll
(logged in via Facebook)
How many ways can I possibly express the point that the climate is an inherently noisy system before you get it? Look at the historical measured temperature trend - it fluctuates by 0.2-0.3 degrees Celsius on a year-to-year basis. The models give such a wide range of results primarily because they capture much of the dynamic behaviour (ENSO, etc.) that leads to these fluctuations, but the actual *timing* of such fluctuations is inherently unpredictable - so each model gives a different pattern…
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James Szabadics
Technical Development and R&D Manager, Plantation Timber Industry (logged in via email @technologist.com)
We are not seeing a low growth scenario for CO2 in the real world. We are seeing a higher than expected rate of growth of CO2 emissions and apparently higher rate than any of the models use. So I guess we can ditch that low growth model for now?
Back to the realclimate presentation you linked to. They show an apparent standard deviation of approx 0.15 degrees C from the start of prediction in the IPCC model ensemble in the year 2000. What is the standard deviation of the real world annual temperature since the year 2000? 0.08 degreec C!
This shows that the real world annual average temperature over the prediction period is much less variable than the model. We can see that the model's forcings are not just out of timing but also out of scale for the prediction period.
Nobody is arguing that the real world doesn't vary from year to year. You would expect the real world data to bounce around equally above and below the model mean if it was just a timing issue.
Douglas Cotton
(Douglas Cotton B.Sc. (Physics) B.A. (Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin.)
James - I would suggest that there is quite a degree of "control" rather than random varying "from year to year" as you claim. Take a close look at the pattern for these last eight and a half years http://earth-climate.com/all-2003-2011.jpg where we see a great deal of consistency with warmer temperatures following the Earth's perihelion and cooler ones about six months later. There are even some other consistent variations in the annual pattern which, in my view, could indicate some dependency…
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Douglas Cotton
(B.Sc.(Physics), B.A.(Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin)
continued ...
This is the direct link to this just published , peer-reviewed paper http://www.biocab.org/Wood_Experiment_Repeated.html
This experiment basically debunks Greenhouse warming theory. The significance of this experiment (published after I had written the rest of the content of http://earth-climate.com ) is that it confirms that air is warmed primarily (if not entirely) by contact of air molecules with the (warmer) Earth. The warm air then rises by convection and cannot return to…
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Jason Birch
Managing Director (logged in via email @hotmail.com)
"This is the direct link to this just published , peer-reviewed paper http://www.biocab.org/Wood_Experiment_Repeated.html
This experiment basically debunks Greenhouse warming theory."
I'm sorry Douglas, but if you really believe that then it just proves what I said about you really not understanding the science at all.
The article you linked to describes an experiment that shows that the warming effect in real greenhouses comes from inhibiting convection and not by inhibiting radiation at all…
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Douglas Cotton
(B.Sc.(Physics), B.A.(Econ), Dip.Bus.Admin)
Of course the consensus says "we caused it" for the simple reason that it takes time for a majority to come to grips with the "New Theory." Some people probably still think that the sun's solar radiation is the Earth's main source of energy. It is not. It's gravity is, with further minor contributions from all the planets, Jupiter, Saturn and Venus having the greatest effect. If we only had solar insolation to warm the Earth the facts are that the Earth would probably be below 30 degrees K (ie…
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Tristan Croll
(logged in via Facebook)
Moderators: seriously, when are you going to decide that enough is enough with this crank?
Felix MacNeill
Felix MacNeill (logged in via email @grapevine.com.au)
Yup, I reckon he's being paid by the word.
Paul Richards
tr;dl