Not so hot air

Townhal.com ^ | August 16, 2007 | Cal Thomas

[Kaslin]

In every child's life there comes a time when childhood fantasies are shattered and he or she is forced to accept reality - there is no Santa Claus or tooth fairy; parents don't always mean it when they promise to stay married until parted by death.

Grown-up scientists, theologians, historians, archaeologists and others who pursue facts and objective truths are rooted in reality and constantly adjusting their conclusions, theories and hypotheses when new information comes to light. Those who ignore facts and cling to outdated information, or outright falsehoods, can quickly embrace fanaticism.

So it is with "global warming," the secular religion of our day that even has a good number of adherents among people of faith. Having decided to focus less on the eternal and whether anyone dwells there, global warming fundamentalists are pushing planet worship on us in a manner that would make a jihadist proud.

There are at least two characteristics all fundamentalists share. One is the exclusion and sometimes suppression of any and all information that challenges or contradicts the belief one wishes to impose on all. The other is the use of the state in pursuit of their objectives, overriding the majority's will.

With global warming, some members of the scientific community - not all of whom are climatologists, who disagree among themselves - have circled the wagons, denying access and labeling illegitimate any scientist who disagrees with the "doctrines" of a recently warming planet. The big media have been complicit in this censorship or ridicule of alternative views, mostly refusing to interview anyone who does not push the global warming faith. CBS News this week broadcast a four-part series on "climate change." Newsweek magazine recently slammed global warming "deniers." That brought a counterattack in the Aug. 20 issue from Newsweek contributor Robert Samuelson, who termed the article "highly contrived" and "fundamentally misleading." In 1975, Newsweek was just as convinced - using "scientific evidence" - that a new Ice Age was upon us.

Many global warming fanatics have pointed to NASA as proof that their concerns about a warming planet are justified. They have repeatedly cited the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), whose director, James Hansen, has asserted that nine of the 10 warmest years in history have occurred since 1995, with 1998 the warmest. When NASA was confronted with evidence provided by Climate Audit, a blog run by Stephen McIntyre devoted to auditing the statistical methods and data used in historical reconstructions of past climate data, it reversed itself. Without the fanfare used to hype the global warming fanaticism it had earlier supported, NASA now says four of the top 10 years of high temperatures are from the 1930s. Several previously selected "warm" years - 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2004 - fell behind 1900.

GISS now says its previous claim that 1998 was the warmest year in American history is no longer valid. The warmest year was 1934.

Has any of this new information changed the minds of the global warming fundamentalists? Nope. Neither has much of it seen the light of day in the mainstream media, which continue to carry stories where seldom is heard an alternative word and the skies are polluted all day.

The New York Times ran a story in its Sunday Business section last week that said it would cost a lot of money to fight global warming. The implication being that this money should come from government (and taxpayers), along with more government regulations and control over our lives by the very people who seem to have difficulty winning wars and controlling spending.

The Earth has warmed and cooled over many centuries. One can get a sense of who is telling the truth about global warming by the company the concept keeps. Most of the disciples of global warming are liberal Democrats who never have enough of our money and believe there are never enough regulations concerning the way we lead our lives. That ought to be enough to give everyone pause, along with emerging evidence that the global warming jihadists may be more full of hot air than the climate they claim is about to burn us up.

[iopscusa]

Quote of the day:
The Earth has warmed and cooled over many centuries. One can get a sense of who is telling the truth about global warming by the company the concept keeps. Most of the disciples of global warming are liberal Democrats who never have enough of our money and believe there are never enough regulations concerning the way we lead our lives. That ought to be enough to give everyone pause, along with emerging evidence that the global warming jihadists may be more full of hot air than the climate they claim is about to burn us up.

[gridlock]

The drumbeat continues. The deniers will be silent no more.

Now that the Green Weenies are the "establishment", we need to find a way to invest the deniers with counter cultural cachet.

[maryz]

Most of the disciples of global warming are liberal Democrats who never have enough of our money and believe there are never enough regulations concerning the way we lead our lives.

Bears repeating! (And true not only in this context!)

[Carbonado]

“Those who ignore facts and cling to outdated information, or outright falsehoods, can quickly embrace fanaticism”

This implies that the “facts” of Glo-Bull warming lead to the fanaticism. I would say it is the opposite - The fanaticism of the Leftists to control all around them leads them to adopt what they see as the most effective vehicle to get there, Glo-Bull warming.

Glo-Bull warming isn’t a religion in and of itself, but it is one part of the current doctrine of the Leftist religion, which seeks to bring us all to their version of nirvana, which naturally would be under their “enlightened” tyrannical control.

[ichabod1]

Infidel!

[Socratic]

“Those who ignore facts and cling to outdated information, or outright falsehoods, can quickly embrace fanaticism”

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." - Winston Churchill

[ishabibble]

>>Most of the disciples of global warming are liberal Democrats who never have enough of our money and believe there are never enough regulations concerning the way we lead our lives.<<

This quote reminded me of the time that Barbra Streisand wrote on her blog that we should all quit using clothes dryers and hang the laundry out on the line. IOW, do as I say, not as I do. Somehow, I don’t think Babs does the washing at her mega-estate!

[M. Dodge Thomas]

It’s long been understood that that difference between the highest deviations in the 1930s and 1980s are very small, and that the periods might jockey back and forth as the data is refined, for example this is from a 1991 paper:

“The U.S. annual (January-December) mean temperature is slightly warmer in 1934 than in 1998 in the GISS analysis (Plate 6). This contrasts with the USHCN data, which has 1998 as the warmest year in the century. In both cases the difference between 1934 and 1998 mean temperatures is a few hundredths of a degree. The main reason that 1998 is relatively cooler in the GISS analysis is its larger adjustment for urban warming. In comparing temperatures of years separated by 60 or 70 years the uncertainties in various adjustments (urban warming, station history adjustments, etc.) lead to an uncertainty of at least 0.1°C. Thus it is not possible to declare a record U.S. temperature with confidence until a result is obtained that exceeds the temperature of 1934 by more than 0.1°C.”

http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2001/2001_Hansen_etal.pdf

McIntyre’s discovery was a small error at introduced at the transition between two data sets, correcting for the error does not materially change the observed trends:

It’s also important to understand that temperature does not rise or fall everywhere and equally. In the case of the US, as noted in the paper above:

… it is clear that the post-1930s cooling was much larger in the United States than in the global mean. The U.S. mean temperature has now reached a level comparable to that of the 1930s, while the global temperature is now far above the levels earlier in the century. The successive periods of global warming (1900-1940), cooling (1940-1965), and warming (1965-2000) in the 20th century show distinctive patterns of temperature change suggestive of roles for both climate forcings and dynamical variability.”

Here is the “global” picture:

Some people really, really want to believe that some major statistical error is going to be discovered tomorrow which demonstrates that such trends are a mirage. It’s not going to happen – these trends have been established on the basis of several different sorts of terrestrial and satellite data, and as the data has been refined data sets are rapidly converging. In this regard it's quite telling that observers such as the author of this article are reduced to claims that the increasingly minor nature of the errors discovered and the corrections made suggest that skepticism is increasingly justified.

[BillM]

Neat Charts!

Climate change has a VERY long time constant. These charts are transient in nature and do not reflect long term trends.

There are many factors that affect the climate. We understand little about them.

It is fascinating to watch people focus on the noise instaed of the real underlying trends.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From my local paper:

Today's editorial: Cool it, hotheads (Orange County Register chimes in on the NASA error)

[WOSG]

“Some people really, really want to believe that some major statistical error is going to be discovered tomorrow which demonstrates that such trends are a mirage.”

And some people really, really want to believe that error after error and flaw after flaw in modeling, in assumptions, in climate sensitivity estimates, in CO2 sink assumptions, etc. means nothing to the credibility of catastrophic AGW alarmism.

We recently found out that climate models vastly underestimate precipation increases wrt temp increases, and thereby are getting feedbacks like clouds completely wrong.

New paper studies the temperature impact and deduces that the temp sensitivity estimate by IPCC is too high by factor of 3. They are modelling the heat capacity of oceans in an incorrect way in order to get those scary scenarios.

The temp increase for 290ppm -> 380ppm is, according to the 5.35. ln (C/C0) equation for CO2 forcing, as impactful as another 30% increase, to 550ppm, which wont happen until 2070. So far it was 0.6C, there is another 0.6C in store in case of ‘doing nothing about CO2’ for 50 years.

Meanwhile, methane in atmosphere has *levelled off*, rainforest destruction is *slowing down*, and the ‘doubling of CO2’ looks less and less likely.

[M. Dodge Thomas]

Sure, the models keep getting refined.

But what you don't see are radical changes in the in the projections as a result.

------------

We recently found out that climate models vastly underestimate precipation increases wrt temp increases...

If you are referring to "Cloud and radiation budget changes associated with tropical intraseasonal oscillations"

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007.../2007GL029698.shtml

I doubt the authors would agree that current models are "getting feed-backs like clouds completely wrong". Climate modelers know (and acknowledge) that cloud interactions are one of the less well understood inputs, but also that unrealistically large changes to current understandings would be needed to significantly affect their results - IMO this s another example of a case where critics of the models are just not being realistic about the likely results of improved modeling. ---------

"Meanwhile, methane in atmosphere has *levelled off*

See:

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2006/s2709.htm

[WOSG]

“Sure, the models keep getting refined.
But what you don’t see are radical changes in the in the projections as a result. “

Disagree. The recent Schwartz paper model wrt heat sink effect of oceans cuts AGW temperature sensitivity of CO2 forcings by two-thirds. Just by changing one variable, the time constant of ocean heat content. And there are dozens of other knobs to tweak that could similar double or half AGW impact. I’d say it is a significant departure model-wise. Even a “radical change”. see:
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/08/20/new-paper-on-the-diagnosis-and-significance-of-ocean-heat-content-changes/

it’s been criticized by James Annan on his blog for the time constant assumption. Probably Annan is right that there is no time constant that fully represents the system, a truer model (like electronic circuit model) would have more than one moment; otoh, the paper opens up the question about assumptions of ocean thermal content in GCMs. Its given as 15 years? Why?

There are model claims that defy credulity. There are uncertainties, like cloud feedback, that are bigger than CO2 direct impact as a forcing. And the error bars on models and estimates are bigger than the AGW alarmists and IPCC let on. The science is far from settled on this.

The comment on precipitation was not referred to that paper specifically, but another paper that measured precipitation changes. GCMs are off by a factor of 3 in modelling precipitation sensitivities. This has been reported here on this blog as well:
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/

[WOSG]

Thanks for confirming my point on methane levelling off in the atmosphere:

I believe 50 years from now, we will be seeing a similar chart for CO2.