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Phred said:
I must point out again (though the Warmenists will again ignore it) that prior to 1880 the Earth's temperature changed many, many times by a lot more than a degree Fahrenheit in a lot less than 120 years. What mechanism was responsible for all those hundreds (or thousands or tens of thousands) of swings of more than a degree? It sure as shit wasn't human activity. Even the Warmenists have to admit that.

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Not to turn the debate back towards science, but since there is now discussion of the political ramifications of developing green industries and whatnot, and since this is the thread in which this has all gone down, I thought I'd like to take this statement and ask another one of my little questions to hopefully wring ten more pages out of this thread.



Which instances are you referring to? Any specific examples? Weren't events like the Maunder Minimum demonstrated to correspond with a marked decrease in sunspot activity, whereas this warming event has no real relation with it? Are there any examples in history, the thousands of times it has warmed in a similar manner, in which it is actually demonstrated that sunspot activity wasn't responsible? Similarily, where is the data that points towards thousands of similar increases in such a manner?

I'm asking everyone, not specifically Phred.

Alright, now I have time to do a point by point. I love how this is in shroomery, because "I was to high and drunk to respond yesterday" is an acceptable excuse here . I showed in my earlier post a cursory explanation as to the flaws in Phred's post. For arguments sake, I will start with the end of Phred's post, then work my way towards the beginning. That is because I prefer to start with explanations that are backed up by sources. Of course, once a source has been established, the next two things you need to establish are credibility of source, and credibility of information. This goes beyond good science and into the realm of "good internet research"

So lets take a look at Phred's study's findings:

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The other inconvenient truth (to plagiarize Al Gore) is that the correlation between CO2 increase and global temperature increase is far less than the correlation between other climate factors (such as total solar irradiance, Pacific decadal oscillation/Atlantic multidecadal oscillation) and temperature increase.

Now again, we must remember that correlation does not equal causation. So even though both TSI (total solar irradiance) and PDO/AMO (Pacific decadal oscillation/Atlantic multidecadal oscillation), correlate vastly better with the Earth's temperature changes than does the level of atmospheric CO2, this does not mean warming is necessarily caused by either STI or to PDO/AMO. There may be some other factor/s at work which drive all three phenomenona. Maybe cloud cover or aerosol. Maybe something else entirely.

Still, it's interesting to see just how much better a fit TSI and especially PDO/AMO show with the temperature record.

First, CO2 --



next, TSI --





and finally, PDO+AMO --



Those of you interested enough to click on these thumbnails to embiggen them may have noticed a notation at the bottom of each giving the R2 (R-squared) coefficient. The R2 coefficient is just a metric describing the correlation between two curves. A perfect correlation gives an R2 of 1.0 (only achieved when two curves are absolutely identical over their entire length).

So an R2 of 1.0 is "perfect". An R2 of .90 is considered "good". An R2 of .50 is considered "fair". An R2 of .25 is "poor". Anything less than .25 is not worth even glancing at.

So how does the CO2 correlation look? Why... it is .44. Between fair and poor. Hmmm.

And TSI? Quite a bit better at .57 -- between fair and good.

And PDO+AMO? Quite a bit better still at .83 -- almost double the R2 value for CO2. Still not quite "good" yet. If I'm not mistaken, there are few scientists willing to commit themselves to anything less than .90 or "good". But non-scientists looking at this might not be so picky.

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http://icecap.us/images/uploads/US_Temperatures_and_Climate_Factors_since_1895.pdf

It's worth reading the entire article. Tons more graphs, extensive bibliography of references.

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The second two questions are 1) Is this a reliable source? And 2) Is this reliable information?

The answer to #1 is absolutely, positively, no. The website does not have a peer review process by independent scientists in their respective fields. The website is not an academic journal, nor are its papers submitted to any major academic journal. The paper itself has not been peer reviewed by the process that involves statistical analysis by statisticians, analysis of the climatological effects he is suggesting by climatologists, and independent verrification. He does have sources, but he does many things on his own (namely, he makes these graphs and charts and draws conclusions from them, on his own, leading to the possibility of manipulation of data and excessive filters, 1:2:1 ratios, variable ratios, and outright fraud.

The answer to #2, is the data accurate and reliable, is absolutely, positively, no.

The writer goes on to undertake a series of misleading adjustments and misadjustments of information to make absolute non-correlations look like causations. The first problem is that he uses the USHCN climatological data. This only measures the temperature, once again, of 2% of the earths surface. How the heck can you say that the temperature graphs there represent the warming of the earth itself?

Furthermore, he decides that a good way to see the correlation between atmospheric forcing would be to compare solar irradiance with US temperatures... But wait a second, how is he getting those numbers for solar irradiance? He uses filters, and applies an 11-year smoothing, to make it appear less cyclical and more correlated to the temperature (which is, by the way, not the global temperature.

Lets compare the graphs for a moment, of solar irradiance...

Here is his total solar irradiance graph, from a non-peer-reviewed source:



Here is the REAL solar irradiance graph, from NASA:



Funny how after 1980, the correlation COMPLETELY breaks down. This is because as time goes on, people realize that climate does have a cyclical effect. Think of climate as a random sine curve (or really, just any periodic function). Though the climate may warm, this cycle will still happen. There will be abnormally cool months and abnormally warm months, sometimes the CO2 and other forcings will lead to a large increase in temperature, while on the other hand, a volcanic erruption or two will lead to a large decrease. The net result could be a plateau. Same with a particularly strong la-nina event, or a particularly strong year in the PDO and AMO. The thing is, MANY things in nature are cyclical, so they try to match cyclical things on certain phases of the dataset, only to find that as soon as a few years new data come in, the correlation fails to match. This is what happened with cirrus cover and cosmic rays a few years back.

However, the problems with this dataset are far more obvious. He's outright faking his data, or using very, very faulty, VERY misleading curves for his r^2 value. Furthermore, since total solar irradiance is much less today (though average temperature is highest in the last 5 years), why is the average temperature higher today than it was back in, say, 80?

Anyhow, the same problem applies with the PMD + AMO. He's comparing it to only 2% of the earths surface, and it has been shown that this 2% of the earths surface was certainly not representative of the heating of the earth. Furthermore, being that America is right between the Pacific and Atlantic, its temperatures WILL be controlled by the AMO + PMD, because that is precisely what its local weather depends on.

This brings me back to an old arguement, because this is just a rehashing of something that you (Phred) and Zappa did earlier that got me very angry. You both said that 1934 was the hottest year on record, and misrepresented US data as representative of WORLD warming.

So I direct ANY reader up to this point back to this post, where I called them out on this and never got a response as to why they were misleading people. , where I called them out on this and never got a response as to why they were misleading people.

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1) CO2 is a very, VERY minor greenhouse gas

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2) The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is already so high that no IR radiation (at CO2's absorption frequencies) emanating from the Earth's surface makes it all the way through the atmosphere to be radiated into space anyway. This is because IR absorption is a logarithmic function, not an arithmetic or geometric function. To modify your analogy, it's as if you were to spray some translucent paint on a piece of glass and hold it up to a light source and note that the light getting through is decreased by say 90 per cent. You then spray a second layer of the same translucent paint (thereby doubling the amount of paint) and note that the light is now reduced by 99 per cent. Spray a third and a fourth layer (doubling it again to 4) and we're reducing the light getting through by 99.9 per cent, etc. In this analogy the paint is CO2, and we're long past four layers of paint.

3) There are very few absorption bands in the CO2 spectrum not already duplicated by other gases (O2, O3, Methane, H2O) so even if there were no CO2 in the atmosphere at all, the amount of IR radiation escaping back into space would be reduced by a trivial amount.

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zappaisgod said:
Yes, I've mentioned this in other threads most notably about the bullshit artist Hansen who got caught with his thumb on the scale. A quick Google search of "Nasa restates temperature data 1930 hottest" turns up lots of hits but the most succinct is this Washington Times article.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070815/EDITORIAL/108150004

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Here's what we know: The National Climatic Data Center reported in mid-January that 2006 was the hottest year on record. Then, in May, it revised the numbers, concluding that 1998, in fact, was the hottest on record. NASA's old numbers echoed that last contention. But last week, it emerged that NASA had quietly restated its numbers, without fanfare or so much as a press release, after a blogger pointed out faulty methodology. Now, per NASA: 1934 is hottest, followed by 1998, 1921, 2006 and 1931.

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I can't remember who it was who caught Hansen's error. I'll look through my bookmarks. This will do for now.

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joker_man said:


You can't save your dignity in this debate with another straw man argument and more ad hominem attacks.

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It absolutely kills me (with laughter) that you act like you don't have an agenda yourself. You are trying to find any way possible to "prove" (in your eyes) that anthropogenic caused global warming is bullshit. You start with your desired conclusion and work backwards. How the hell is that not having an agenda?

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Why does supernovasky keep lying about what I said? How can this be construed as me misrepresenting anything , especially since I provided a link to the entire article (heh) in the original post.

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I am going to repeat my position.
The data of Hansen et al in the US have been corrected downward. The data from the US stations are more reliable than from elsewhere.

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I misrepresented nothing. But Hansen did. He went on a national tour whining about how he was being censored by the Bushthugs. Whined thruogh a megaphone that he was being censored. Hansen, NASA, GISS. Restated data twice because they were wrong. Maybe, if they had censored him more they wouldn't have ended up being discredited. Peer review breaks down when some peers are more equal than others.

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Nothing but an ad-hominem against Hansen that has no relevance to the debate. They adjusted their data because of VERY minor mistakes and discontinuities in the way that stations reported their data. Each time, the changes were virtually nonexistent on the global level. I talk about how small the changes were here:

Where I go into detail on the magnitude of the suposedly "shamefaced changs" that nasa had to make to correct the GISS

But, for those that probably dont want to rehash THAT argument, here is the graph showing the change that suposedly will lead to the downfall of Hansen:



I want you to look long and hard on that graph. The reason you see no green line? It's because the red line is virtually identical to the old analysis. Notice how all of the stars line up with all of the boxes, some are a millimeter out. This is the suposed DRASTIC OVERHAUL REVISION that changed the highest temperature in the world from 2005 to 1934.

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Zappa:
There are some clear facts:

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1. CO2 concentration rose 30% (290 to 380) in the last century
2. Global temperature has increased 0.6C in the last century.
3. CO2 concentration rose 15% in the last decade.
4. Global temperature has not increased at all in the last decade.

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But you have to be a daft bitch (or someone with an agenda) to believe that there is anything remotely conclusive either way on global warming and CO2.

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The second two questions are 1) Is this a reliable source? And 2) Is this reliable information?

The answer to #1 is absolutely, positively, no. The website does not have a peer review process by independent scientists in their respective fields. The website is not an academic journal, nor are its papers submitted to any major academic journal. The paper itself has not been peer reviewed by the process that involves statistical analysis by statisticians, analysis of the climatological effects he is suggesting by climatologists, and independent verrification. He does have sources, but he does many things on his own (namely, he makes these graphs and charts and draws conclusions from them, on his own, leading to the possibility of manipulation of data and excessive filters, 1:2:1 ratios, variable ratios, and outright fraud.

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The answer to #2, is the data accurate and reliable, is absolutely, positively, no.

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The writer goes on to undertake a series of misleading adjustments and misadjustments of information to make absolute non-correlations look like causations. The first problem is that he uses the USHCN climatological data. This only measures the temperature, once again, of 2% of the earths surface. How the heck can you say that the temperature graphs there represent the warming of the earth itself?

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Furthermore, he decides that a good way to see the correlation between atmospheric forcing would be to compare solar irradiance with US temperatures... But wait a second, how is he getting those numbers for solar irradiance? He uses filters, and applies an 11-year smoothing, to make it appear less cyclical and more correlated to the temperature (which is, by the way, not the global temperature.

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Here is the REAL solar irradiance graph, from NASA:

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However, the problems with this dataset are far more obvious. He's outright faking his data, or using very, very faulty, VERY misleading curves for his r^2 value.

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Anyhow, the same problem applies with the PMD + AMO. He's comparing it to only 2% of the earths surface, and it has been shown that this 2% of the earths surface was certainly not representative of the heating of the earth.

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Furthermore, being that America is right between the Pacific and Atlantic, its temperatures WILL be controlled by the AMO + PMD, because that is precisely what its local weather depends on.

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You both said that 1934 was the hottest year on record, and misrepresented US data as representative of WORLD warming.

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So I direct ANY reader up to this point back to this post, where I called them out on this and never got a response as to why they were misleading people.

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Update: I would also like to add, to clarrify for readers, thathe atmosphere is nowhere near opague to IR yet, so we are not even close to the upper limit of the greenhouse effect, Because other IR blockers decrease with height (H2O being the most significant).

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CO2, however, is currently considered the most significant forcing, with the highest correlation.

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Ad hominem. He gives sources for all the data. Anyone can go there and reproduce his work -- or disprove it. He didn't do the research himself -- he didn't gather any of the data. He is just using open source data to show how two drivers of climate change produce much, MUCH better matches than atmospheric CO2 concentration.

He draws no conclusions. He simply overlays graphs, runs R2 correlations, and leaves it to the readers to reach their own conclusions. And objective readers will reach the same conclusion I and so many others have -- the correlation between global surface temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration is not very good at all, when examined over a timescale of a century.

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So sorry, but it is as accurate and reliable as any of the data you have presented in this thread.

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You keep going on about this supposedly vast difference between a graph of US surface temperature and a graph of global temperature. The fact of the matter is that although there are of course discrepancies, they are pretty damn close. If he had used the global NASA GISS graph, would the R2 values have been different? Sure they would have. But the CO2 R2 would still have been the lowest value of the three, with TSI second and PDO/AMO the best fit.

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Alright, let me bring it out... Lets see the differences between US temperature, and global temperature:

Global temperature:



US temperature:



Yeah, I would call these graphs "very different"

TSI would not fit best, and this has been explored by scientists and recent papers. I will show you the TSI chart again:


source: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/

Here is what they say on the matter:

The solar minimum forcing is thus about 0.15 W/m2 relative to the mean solar forcing. For comparison, the human-made GHG climate forcing is now increasing at a rate of about 0.3 W/m2 per decade (Hansen & Sato 2004). If the sun were to remain "stuck" in its present minimum for several decades, as has been suggested (e.g., Independent story) in analogy to the solar Maunder Minimum of the seventeenth century, that negative forcing would be balanced by a 5-year increase of GHGs. Thus, in the current era of rapidly increasing GHGs, such solar variations cannot have a substantial impact on long-term global warming trends. Furthermore, recent sighting of the first sunspot of reversed polarity (reported Jan. 4 by, e.g., SpaceWeather.com and NOAA) signifies that the ~ 4-year period of increasing solar irradiance is about to get underway.

Willson, R.C., and A.V. Mordvinov, 2003: Secular total solar irradiance trend during solar cycles 21-23. Geophys. Res. Lett., 30, no. 5, 1199, doi:10.1029/2002GL016038.

"Variations in solar luminosity and their effect on the Earth's climate.",P. Foukal, C. Frohlich, H. Spruit, and T.M.L. Wigley,Nature, September 14, 2006.

Both of these studies determined that Solar Iradiance is too weak a force. Furthermore, you can see the chart yourself up there. The nail in the coffin for total solar iradiance being the primary forcer.

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LOL! You're the one who objected to my showing the readers raw "noisy" data. You claimed that only five year averaging (a form of smoothing) was acceptable, yadda yadda yadda. Now you're giving this guy grief for doing the same thing? Get real. Besides, he explains what he is doing and why he is doing it, and he still gives a bibliography of original source data for those who don't agree with his selection of noise removal and prefer to do their own.

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