Category Archives: Climate Models

Hurricane Sandy-Does It Prove Man-Made Global Warming?

Posted on October 28, 2012 | Leave a comment

Sunday afternoon,  28 October 2012

We are directly in the line of the forecasted hurricane Sandy landfall, albeit about 6 miles away from the Delaware Bay.  For most of this day, there has been no wind and very little rain.  I guess that this is the often cited “calm before the storm”.   It is almost 5 pm EDT and the rain is picking up but there is still not much wind.   My concern is wind speed.  Homes in the Northeastern part of the US, excepting those on the beach, are not built for hurricane force winds.   We hope our roof stays on.

I expect that the media will go full-out on this hurricane calling it proof that man-made global warming caused it and that it is just the first of a deluge of more such storms.   They know this because their climate models told them.

Actual data suggests that this is not the case.  The measure of hurricane ( often called “cyclones” so as to include typhoons that occur in the Pacific) intensity takes into account the number of such storms and how powerful they are.  And it measures those that don’t make landfall too.  Wikipedia defines hurricane intensity as follows:

Accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) is a measure used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to express the activity of individual tropical cyclones and entire tropical cyclone seasons, particularly the North Atlantic hurricane season. It uses an approximation of the energy used by a tropical system over its lifetime and is calculated every six-hour period. The ACE of a season is the sum of the ACEs for each storm and takes into account the number, strength, and duration of all the tropical storms in the season.[1]

The chart below is a measure of intensity.  Observe that actual data shows that hurricane intensity does not correlate with atmospheric CO2 volume.  And that  overall intensities of hurricanes have fallen in recent years.  (click on the chart to improve clarity.)

Ryan Maue produced this chart and he describes as follows:

Last 4-decades of Global and Northern Hemisphere Accumulated Cyclone Energy: 24 month running sums. Note that the year indicated represents the value of ACE through the previous 24-months for the Northern Hemisphere (bottom line/gray boxes) and the entire global (top line/blue boxes). The area in between represents the Southern Hemisphere total ACE.

 But this is actual data and how could it possibly be correct if the models provide different predictions.(sarc)

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Climate Models, CO2, Environment, Storms/hurricanes

Solar Cycle 24 Is Underperforming Its Predecessors

Posted on October 16, 2012 | 2 comments

Solar Cycle 24 is underperforming its predecessors, Cycles 21, 22 and 23. The chart below, using sunspots as proxy for solar activity, shows the progress for Cycles 21, 22 and 23 over their nominal 11 year life cycle. Solar Cycle 24’s current progress is clearly less active than 21, 22 or 23. This level of activity, if it continues at its current pace, will be the least active Solar Cycle in the last 100 years.The chart maker is Solen. (Click on the chart for clarity.)

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How much longer will Cycle 24 go before its maximum activity occurs and quiets down? Experts are forecasting that in the first part of 2013. When the maximum occurs the Sun’s poles switch. So if you want to make your own guess, lets look at how close the poles are to switching right now. The chart below records the position of the North and South poles with time. The three previous Cycles polar locations are shown and you can see when the poles swapped sides. Cycle 24 poles are drawing near that now and it seems likely they will switch soon. If so, it will be a very weak–solar activity–Cycle. (Click chart for clarity.)


Solar Polar Field – Wilcox Solar Observatory (WSO) – 1976 to Present

Solar experts are predicting that Cycle 25 will be less active than 24. In the past, several Cycles with such low solar activity were associated with cooling global temperatures. The global temperature has plateaued for the past 15 to 16 years. The Warmers say that it has to go at least 20 years to disprove their CO2 man-made global warming theory. We may be heading for a period that will be much longer than 20 years of plateaued or even falling global temperatures. This should send the CO2 theory to the trash bin, but it does not necessarily bode well for mankind. Cooler global temperatures have not provided the era of plenty we now enjoy. Food production will likely be less than optimal and that can’t be a good thing with the continued growth of global population.
cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Climate Models, CO2, crop yields, Global Temperatures, IPCC, Solar Activity, Solar Cycle 24, Solar Cycle 25, sun and climate, Sunspots

No Global Warming For 16 Years

Posted on October 16, 2012 | Leave a comment

On October 13, 2012 the UK’s Daily Mail posted:  “Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released… and here is the chart to prove it”.  My posting of several months ago (July 19, 2012) How Many Years Of No Global Warming Are Required To Disprove CO2 As The Primary Factor In Global Warming? reported this pause.  The Daily Mail’s posting is worth a read as it contains interviews with the head of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit,  Dr. Phil Jones and Professor Judith Curry from Georgia Tech. 

“Some climate scientists, such as Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, last week dismissed the significance of the plateau, saying that 15 or 16 years is too short a period from which to draw conclusions.

Others disagreed.  Professor Judith Curry, who is the head of the climate science department at America’s prestigious Georgia Tech university, told The Mail on Sunday that it was clear that the computer models used to predict future warming were ‘deeply flawed’.

Even Prof Jones admitted that he and his colleagues did not understand the impact of ‘natural variability’ – factors such as long-term ocean temperature cycles and changes in the output of the sun. However, he said he was still convinced that the current decade would end up significantly warmer than the previous two.”

Professor Curry’s statement about computer models is spot on.  Jones, however, is not about to give up the source of his income (climate research money) which requires that he and his colleagues continue to alarm and frighten people.

Several other excerpts from the Mail’s posting:

 “Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, who found himself at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ scandal over leaked emails three years ago, would not normally be expected to agree with her. Yet on two important points, he did.

The data does suggest a plateau, he admitted, and without a major El Nino event – the sudden, dramatic warming of the southern Pacific which takes place unpredictably and always has a huge effect on global weather – ‘it could go on for a while’.

Like Prof Curry, Prof Jones also admitted that the climate models were imperfect: ‘We don’t fully understand how to input things like changes in the oceans, and because we don’t fully understand it you could say that natural variability is now working to suppress the warming. We don’t know what natural variability is doing.’

Yet he insisted that 15 or 16 years is not a significant period: pauses of such length had always been expected, he said.

Yet in 2009, when the plateau was already becoming apparent and being discussed by scientists, he told a colleague in one of the Climategate emails: ‘Bottom line: the “no upward trend” has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried.’

But although that point has now been passed, he said that he hadn’t changed his mind about the models’ gloomy predictions: ‘I still think that the current decade which began in 2010 will be warmer by about 0.17 degrees than the previous one, which was warmer than the Nineties.’

Only if that did not happen would he seriously begin to wonder whether something more profound might be happening. In other words, though five years ago he seemed to be saying that 15 years without warming would make him ‘worried’, that period has now become 20 years.”

 

The author of the posting, David Rose makes the following comment:

 “Yet it has steadily become apparent since the 2008 crash that both the statistics and the modelling are extremely unreliable. To plan the future around them makes about as much sense as choosing a wedding date three months’ hence on the basis of a long-term weather forecast.”

Solar Cycle 24 is indicating the least active Sun in the past 100 years.  Most solar scientists predict that Solar Cycle 25 will be even weaker than Cycle 24.  What does this mean?  Such performance in the past has resulted in “solar minimums” that coincided with significantly lower global temperatures. The correlation of solar activity (often indicated by number and size of the sunspots) and global temperatures has been very good over the centuries. 

To read more of the Daily Mail posting: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released–chart-prove-it.html#ixzz29U2Gb6uW

To read my posting “How Many Years Of No Global Warming Are Required To Disprove CO2 As The Primary Factor In Global Warming?” click here:https://cbdakota.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/how-many-years-of-no-global-warming-are-required-to-disprove-co2-as-the-primary-factor-in-global-warming/

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Climate Models, ClimateGate, CO2, Global Temperatures, IPCC, Solar Activity, Solar Cycle 24, Solar Cycle 25, sun and climate, Sunspots

Global Temperature Anomaly Up in August

Posted on September 7, 2012 | Leave a comment

The UAH satellite measurement of the global temperature anomaly for the month of August was up slightly from July +0.28  to August +0.34C.   The running average since satellite temperature measurements began,  is about +0.2C.

cbd   

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Climate Models, CO2, Environment, Global Temperatures, UAH Satellite Temps

How Many Years Of No Global Warming Are Required To Disprove CO2 As The Primary Factor In Global Warming?

Posted on July 19, 2012 | 7 comments

The WoodforTrees Chart below shows no Global warming since 1997 to date.  The data used to construct the chart came from Hadley Center and University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit—yes this is the CRU of Climategate fame.

(click on charts for clarity.)

During this period, carbon dioxide (CO2) has increased from about 362 ppm in 1997 to 396ppm by mid-year 2012.  (See atmospheric CO2 chart below.)  If CO2 is the potent forcing agent claimed by the proponents of the man-made global warming theory, then why are the global temperatures flat?   15 years of no statistically significant global temperature increase are in the books. When is enough, enough.  Last I heard, the warmers had lengthened the needed time to 17 years.  Want to bet that when 17 years arrives and the temperature shows no increase, that they will want to lengthen the time needed, once again.

 

This posting is not to deny that for 10,000 years or so the globe has been warming.   Rather it is to demonstrate that no one really has proven the cause to be other than “natural”.

Do you hear a chorus of “cherrypicking” from the warmers? Please note that their CO2 theory was postulated during a period of rising global temperatures and a corresponding atmospheric CO2 increase.  We said then, about their theory, that correlation does not prove causation.  And we were right.   15 years of no correlation proves no causation.

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Climate Models, ClimateGate, CO2, CRU Temps, Global Temperatures

Lovelock No Longer an AGW Alarmist

Posted on April 24, 2012 | Leave a comment

“James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too.” according to a report by MSNBC.  Lovelock still supports the theory of man-made global warming (AGW), but clearly he wishes to back away from the Alarmists that dominate that movement and are followed closely by the mass media.

For those who don’t know James Lovelock, he is considered a major force in the AGW movement.  In a 2007 Time magazine special edition titled “Heroes of the Environment”, Lovelock was cited as one of 13 “leaders and visionaries” of the environmental movement.  Also cited in that edition were Gore, Gorbachev, Prince Charles, Angela Merkel, Robert Redford, David Suzuki and several others.  (I know, I know, based on his company in the Time list you may want to question its value.)   Lovelock is a Fellow of the Royal Society.   He has been awarded many prizes including the Wollaston Medal, the Geological Society highest award.  Charles Darwin was a previous winner.  He was made Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1990.

Here are several of Lovelock’s Alarmist positions.

“Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.”

“By 2040, parts of the Sahara desert will have moved into middle Europe. We are talking about Paris – as far north as Berlin. In Britain we will escape because of our oceanic position.”  “If you take the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predictions, then by 2040 every summer in Europe will be as hot as it was in 2003 – between 110F and 120F. It is not the death of people that is the main problem, it is the fact that the plants can’t grow – there will be almost no food grown in Europe.”[25]

In 2006 Dr Lovelock predicted the Earth “would catch a morbid fever” that would destroy six billion people – “the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.  In 2009, he told the Guardian that “we may face planet-wide devastation worse even than unrestricted nuclear war between superpowers”.

Lovelock formulated the Gaia hypothesis:  “First formulated by Lovelock during the 1960s as a result of work for NASA concerned with detecting life on Mars the Gaia hypothesis proposes that living and non-living parts of the Earth form a complex interacting system that can be thought of as a single organism.”

So what is he now saying?

“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,”

“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,”

“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that….”

He adds that Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” as other examples of “alarmist” forecasts of the future.

Well,  we are better off by one Alarmist dousing his flaming rhetoric.  But there are many others out there still untamed and a mass media still happy to pass such rhetoric along as science.

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Climate Models, Ecosystems, Environment, Famine, Global Temperatures, IPCC, United Nations

Global Temperature Update—February 2012

Posted on March 2, 2012 | Leave a comment

The UAH satellite global temperatures have been posted by Dr Roy Spencer on his website.  The February temperature anomaly is -0.12 C.   That is just slightly down from the January number of -0.09C.

Above is Dr Spencer’s chart (click on it to enlarge) of the global temperature anomalies since the start of the satellite temperature-measuring program in the late seventies.  The average global temperature departure is about 0.16C warmer that the average temperature for the period 1981-2010.  Dr Spencer might not approve of this calculation but 0.16 C over that 30-year period might indicate a warming of about 0.6C per century.  Further, if solar Cycle 24 and the next Cycle 25 perform as many are now forecasting, we may see the anomaly go negative for many years.

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Climate Models, CO2, Global Temperatures, IPCC, Solar Activity, Solar Cycle 24

Lubos Motl’s 104 Reasons To Be A Skeptic

Posted on March 1, 2012 | Leave a comment

Lubos Motl’s skeptical website, The Reference Frame, is widely read and cited.  Motl counters John Cook’s assertions about man-made global warming.  Motl provides background science that will serve skeptics in any discussion and/or debate.  Motl introduces his material as follows:

John Cook, a former student of physics in Australia, has constructed an interesting website trying to attack the opinions of climate skeptics.

It’s been in my climate bookmarks for quite some time but no one really cared about it so I didn’t want to respond. However, his talking counter-points were recently adopted by an iPhone application. Moreover, Andrew Revkin promoted the website, too. So let us look at his points and counter-points.

Motl matches the headings from Cook’s listing of “myths” and Motl adds his view illustrating what the real story is. Below are two of the 104 topics so you can get a flavor of what is included. To read to all of Motl’s work click here.

On his (Cook) website, you can currently see 102 observations by the skeptics (or some skeptics); 2 of them were added by March 29th and I can’t constantly update this web page so that he’s likely to surpass his 104 points sometime in the future. Each of the “slogans” is accompanied by a short attempted rebuttal by John Cook. And if you click it, you get to a long rebuttal. So let’s look at them:

1. It’s the sun: I agree with Richard Lindzen that it’s silly to try to find “one reason behind all climate change”, because the climate is pretty complex and clearly has lots of drivers, and this applies to the opinion that “everything is in the Sun”, too. Cook shows that the solar irradiance is too small and largely uncorrelated to the observed changes of temperatures. I agree with that: a typical 0.1% change of the output is enough for a 0.025% change of the temperature in Kelvins which is less than 0.1 °C and unlikely to matter much. But I find it embarrassing for a student of solar physics such as himself to be so narrow-minded. The Sun influences the Earth’s atmosphere not only directly by the output but also indirectly, by its magnetic field and its impact on the cosmic rays (via solar wind etc.) and other things. He has completely ignored all these things. Of course, I am actually not certain that these effects are very important for the climate but the evidence – including peer-reviewed articles – is as diverse as the evidence supporting CO2 as an important driver.

104. Southern sea ice is increasing: Cook agrees but says that it surely has nothing to do with warming or global climate change. It must be due to “complex phenomena” such as changes of the winds and circulation. Note that such comments would be unthinkable if he tried to discuss the Northern sea ice. As we have noticed, all “warming” observations are about the climate, important signals that you should appreciate, worship, extrapolate, and be afraid of. On the other hand, all “cooling” observations are just an irrelevant weather that you should dismiss, humiliate, and spit on. With such a biased attitude, it shouldn’t be shocking that Mr Cook ends up with an irrational orthodoxy based on 104 largely obscure misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and myths – and that his opinions about the most important questions are upside down.

Go through all of them, you will might learn something that you didn’t know.

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Climate Models, CO2, Environment, glaciers, IPCC, Sea Ice, Solar Activity, sun and climate, United Nations

Dr Evans Explains Why Climate Models Overstate Potential Global Warming

Posted on February 25, 2012 | Leave a comment

Last September, I posted:  Dr Evans:”Climate Models Are Violently At Odds With Reality”.   This posting is a Dr Evans up-date of the September information.  This time he adds a simple explanation of the central issue regarding CO2 caused global warming—will feedbacks from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 be positive or negative?  The Warmers claim that a 1C increase due to doubling of atmospheric CO2 will really become a 3.3C  increase because of positive feedback.  We skeptics believe that the feedback will be negative and the warming will probably be in the range of 0.6C.

For those of you more inquisitive types, Dr Evans in his footnotes, gives more information and references to help you do some research of your own.

Click here to read Dr Evans full posting

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Climate Models, CO2, CO2 positive feedback, Environment, Government Regulations, Green Jobs, Ocean heat content, Solar Activity, United Nations, Windpower

Warmer “Ethics” Leader Fakes Identity to Steal Documents

Posted on February 22, 2012 | Leave a comment

Peter Gleick, who stole the Heartland Institute Board of Director documents under false pretenses, is the Chair of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Task Force on Scientific Integrity!!!!   How is that for irony and perhaps it speaks to the overall integrity of the Warmer cause.

Someone made up a fake cover letter to accompany the stolen documents and sent out a package to Warmer supporters in the media.  In the fake cover letter, Heartland is saying that they are going to spend $100,000 in schools with the objective of providing information that would show that “the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science”.   NOT TO TEACH SCIENCE!  Heartland did not write the cover letter.  Gleick says he is not guilty of writing the cover letter.  Those are leading the investigation believe he did write it.  He has resigned his position as the head of the Scientific Integrity Task Force.

However Gleick says it really wasn’t his fault:“My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts — often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated — to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate, and by the lack of transparency of the organizations involved.”   So it is Heartland’s fault. They are so well funded.

Jo Nova’s blog has the following table showing only a few of the Warmer organizations’ funding versus Heartland Institute funding:

Entity USD
Greenpeace  $300m  2010 Annual Report
WWF  $700m  ”  ($524m Euro)
Pew Charitable Trust  $360m 2010 Annual Report
Sierra Club  $56m 2010 Annual Report
US government funding for climate science and technology  $7,000m  “Climate Money” 2009
US government funding for “climate related appropriations” $1,300m USAID 2010
US government funding for skeptical scientists     $ 0
Heartland Institute $7m  (actually $6.4m)

Nova’s table highlights the vast discrepancy in funding.  She adds: “So what the expose shows is that the Heartland Institute punches far above its weight with an incredibly efficient budget.” To see Jo Nova’s full posting click here.

Why are the Skeptics becoming so successful in getting their message across?  It is not that they have a lot of money.  It certainly isn’t the media that seem only interested in press releases from the Warmers.  It is not the Governments of the world that support only Warmer climate research.  Its not the school districts that make Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” required viewing.

But rather it is the Internet where people can judge the available reports for themselves. It the exposure of the Warmer leaders hiding the truth, gaming the science, denying Skeptics access to publication of their studies etc. as exposed by Climate Gate.  It is also a public that is weary of Warmer shrill claims of impending disaster—which never materialize.

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, cap and trade, Climate Models, ClimateGate, CO2, Environment, Global Temperatures, IPCC