TODAY June 7th 2011: Phenomenal eruption on the sun (see the bottom of the post for more info).
Apparently previous studies of the sun-climate connection looked at the equatorial polar magnetic field which produces sun spots, but they did not consider the polar magnetic component of the solar dynamo. The polar fields are less strong than the equatorial fields, but it is claimed that the total magnetic fluxes of both fields are comparable. With proxy data they derive an empirical relation between tropospherical temperatures and solar equatorial and polar magnetic fields. The polar field could contribute about 30% as much as the equatorial field.
The paper, published in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics focused on the period 1844-1960 (but extended at least one graph back to 1600) and finds our current warming period is not that different from earlier episodes and that the increase in solar activity in the last 400 years explains the warming, without any need to invoke a man-made enhanced greenhouse hypothesis.
“The amplitude of the present period of global warming does not significanty differ from the other episodes of relative warming.”
“1650 was the onset of the Maunder Minimum, 1835 was the Dalton Minimum”
“Around 1720 solar activity changed from a Grand Minimum into a period of Regular Oscillation”
“In 1923 the 20th century Grand Maximum started.”
Conclusions
“The three main results of this study are the following: First, there exists a relation between solar activity and average tropospheric temperatures. Next, this relation depends both on the toroidal and the poloidal component of solar magnetism. The seven temperature sets that we studied here, evidently give different results but it is gratifying that they agree qualitatively in confirming the dependence of tropospheric temperature on both components of solar activity. The third result is that a comparison of observed with calculated temperatures shows residual peaks and valleys. Some of these are significant, appearing in all seven data sets studied here.”
“These results may be of importance for understanding the solar mechanism(s) that influence(s) climate. The refereed literature contains 15 global or NH temperature data sets. Obviously all must be studied in order to further check the above results. It is also necessary to discuss the heliophysical and climatologic aspects of these findings. Such a study is presently underway with colleagues.”
REFERENCE
de Jager, C. and Duhau, S. 2009. Episodes of relative global warming. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 71: 194-198. [PDF]
h/t via, NIPCC, then The Hockey Schtick (which has another graph from the paper), and then Menzies House. Thanks to all concerned (and especially to the person who sent me the email, which I can’t find).
—————————————————————–
Phenomenal Solar Eruption Today (see photo above)
Watch the Youtube of this hard-to-believe-it-could-be-this-big explosion. Wow. Just wow. It’s hard to get a grip on the scales involved.
…
Try this for size, thanks to Brevardastro (then see the Sun compared to Arcturus, or then Antares).
…
And since we have a solar theme: this site at UCCS has a neat size comparison and an impressive moving image of solar activity. Go ogle.
h/t Gregg T.
UPDATE: There are mixed views on whether the solar flare today will disrupt satellites and electronics. See climate realists:
“”America’s space agency NASA has reported on Tuesday an unusual explosion on the surface of the Sun, which according to the US National Weather Service (NWS) released a solar flare that would likely disrupt satellite, communication and power facilities on Earth over the next two days
The NWS added in its statement that a similar explosion of the same magnitude occurred five years ago, with the present one measured by NASA as M-2 or medium sized solar flare that carries “a substantial coronal mass ejection (CME) … and is visually spectacular.””
But NASA was less concerned, and pointed out the flare emissions were not pointed towards Earth. “Spectacular” but “not that big”.
Meanwhile, In The Secret World of MSM…… the sky is falling on the heads of Australians.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthpicturegalleries/8559430/Australian-landmarks-threatened-by-climate-change.html
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Our AWESOME Sun! What climate “scientist” would under-estimate the Sun in the first place?
I just hope we can keep her happy so that ICE is kept to a minimum…..
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Have a glance at Brevardastro link – it’s a great way to (almost, sorta) get your head around the sizes, but the astronomical range is just so, for want of a better word… unimaginable.
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for an additional graph from the paper showing the correlation between sunspot activity & NH temp see
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/06/study-finds-global-warming-over-past-4.html
which btw is the uncredited origin of the “Menzies House” post
[Reply: Link added. Thanks! _ JN]
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Fantastic! Thank you for posting this, Joanne. But is this enough to convince the religious zealots that they are wrong? Very hard to do, I suppose. Then there is the established money flow where funds are stolen from the population and used to line the pockets of quite an established group of robber barons. (As here in New Zealand and in Europe). It may take more than convincing. It may take a bit of a revolution to get their snout out of that juicy trough. At least you, Australians, do not have an established ETS. Keep it that way, guys! It will only wrecks your economy!
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Earth might be small in comparison, but, excepting the hippies and especially their distance challenged metro kinds, rational folks has fairly sizable cojones, which is why the good old Sol can’t measure up to having an effect on our climate in the pseudo-scientific CAGW hypothesis. If they actually would have had any size to their cojones, flaunting them in the sun, come end of summer, they’d understand why we sizable folks cover ourselves and rather stick to real observable kind of science afterwards. :p
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I can just imagine the response:
“There is no such thing as solar magnetism. It does not feature in any of the climate models, and therefore there is a consensus of scientists that magnetism can have no impact on climate change. Furthermore, there is absolutely no proof, and nothing is published in any of the reputable scientific literature that even suggests that Carbon dioxide is influenced by magnetic fields. This report should therefore be consigned to the dustbin” .
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But what are a few paltry facts that they should trump the opinion of experts?
Oh! Scuse me! Facts! Yes, now I remember them. They’ve been in such short supply I almost forgot the word.
Do I detect a bunch of uncomfortable wiggling around in certain quarters? No, they’ll blow this off like they do everything else.
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Don’t you know? – the current global cooling is caused by carbon and a carbon tax will fix everything. Send money and I will “cure” the climate 😉
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Jo. I’m afraid nothing you post will convince me as, in an ABC interview some months ago, I have it on no less an authority than our own esteemed UNIPCC mythicist- (sorry, I meant scientist) David Karoly, that he had looked into every other possible factor for CAGW but it still came down to the few extra parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere that could be attributed to humans.
Though he didn’t at the time list those factors he had personally investigated I know he will be pleased that I, with the help of Malcolm Roberts (google “Thriving with Nature and Humanity”), now attempt to provide at least a partial list on his behalf.
There appear to be hundreds, perhaps many hundreds of factors affecting global climate. These operate across many scales including the following partial list:
• Galactic. eg, 150 million year cycle of our solar system passing through high cosmic wind radiation bands in our galaxy.
• Solar system and sun. These are many, varied and appear highly significant for climate including
variations in sun’s solar output; output of solar particles; sun’s magnetic field polarity and strength; Earth’s orbit; solar system’s centre-of-gravity; Earth’s axis tilt and precession; sun’s polarity; sunspot cycles; moon’s orbit.
• Planetary. These appear to include Earth’s axis tilt; geotectonic and volcanic activity; many forms of energy including kinetic and magnetic; Earth’s polarity and movement of the poles; length of day; seasons of the year; volume of water in the global hydrological cycle; Earth’s geothermal heat flow; Earth’s interior heat source – vastly greater by many orders of magnitude than oceans as a heat sink.
• Earth’s surface. eg, topography; Earth’s surface temperatures; seasonal variations in temperature; fires; relative differentials between regions around the Earth’s surface, especially polar to tropical; photochemical -dynamical changes; sea ice; sea level; Earth’s internal constitution.
• Atmospheric. eg, variations in strength of Earth’s magnetic field – deflecting of photons; atmospheric water content; cloud cover; precipitation – rain, snow; variability in wind currents; lower and upper atmospheric temperatures and their relationships; natural aerosols (far outweigh human-made aerosols); ozone; natural mineral aerosols; atmospheric pressure; storm activity; auroral lights.
• Oceanic. eg, ocean temperature; salinity; currents; sea surface temperatures; iron content; Earth’s tides due to interaction of sun and moon.
• Cyclic regional decadal circulation patterns such as North American Oscillation and the southern
Pacific ocean’s El Nino together with their variation over time.
• Biological. eg, marine phytoplanckton producing natural aerosols like sea salt and dimethyl sulphide; enzyme action of microbes;
• Nature’s large scale changes to vegetation.
• Interactions. eg, of wind currents and ocean currents; conversion of energy forms (eg, from sun’s
e-m energy to cloud seeds); environmental processes involving the interaction of climate, biological and geological processes and, at times, extraterrestrial bombardment by meteorites; area of snow cover; heat content and transfers spatially and vertically around and within Earth; heat transfers between ocean and atmosphere and between land and atmosphere;
• water vapour transfers spatially and vertically; release of volatiles at deep ocean vents.
• Human. eg, relatively tiny human production of aerosols (eg, soot); aircraft contrails; land use.
It’s not necessary to list any more because it should be clear to anyone with half a brain that none of these minor factors listed could possibly over-rule any of the several computer-modelled projections based on several different what-if scenarios which prove that CO2 is the culprit.
How could you or your posters here and on thousands of other unbeliever’s blogs possibly doubt the combined wisdom of that august body the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?
In the same interview, David Karoly assured us we could still be saved if we’d only cut our carbon emissions (he was that full of missionary zeal he simply forgot to mention the dioxide part)!
Why do you deny the obvious and not listen nor take the “overwhelming settled science consensus” on board! If you don’t, you and the world are doomed. “We’ll all be rooned” said Hanrahan!
Now, if I can just get my tongue unstuck from my cheek, I’ll have what may be my last meal!!
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Rereke @ 7
That’s exactly what they do say – that TOTAL output from the sun has been pretty well constant, therefore the solar input to the climate models can be conveniently ignored.
I don’t know whether the IPCC has investigated the role of solar magnetics – it seems to have a lot more plausibility than CO2. I remember economist Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations) citing this hundreds of years ago when he linked sunspot activity to the price of grain. Then, as now, a quiet sun means colder weather and a shortage of food.
Can you explain WHY a “scientific” body such as the IPCC would skip over this?
Cheers,
Speedy
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Shouldn’t we all first need to be skeptical about this study (the possibility that their method or data could be wrong)? (i.e., like how we are skeptical toward the AGW hypothesis)
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Sadly Prof Svensmark will never get a Nobel for physics, as you have to be a living physicist to get the prize. Too many consensus climate scientists and politicians have long and vindictive memories.
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Jo. Don’t miss this!
http://www.icecap.us/
The Weather Makers Re-examined
D Weston Allen
Tim Flannery’s best seller under the spotlight of climate change realism
Flannery’s book ‘The Weather Makers� is shown to contain 23 misinterpretations, 28 contradictory statements, 31 untraceable or suspect sources, 45’failures to reflect uncertainty, 66 over-simplifications or factual errors, 78 exaggerations and over a hundred unsupported dogmatic statements, many of them quite outlandish.
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We know this! BUT THEY dont want to know.
Heres more climatologists going out of the mainstream.
“Anthropogenic global warming is a huge costly fraud!”
http://www.cdapress.com/columns/cliff_harris/article_c98c9ffd-2389-5a0a-89b3-a092bcc0d40b.html
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Robyn Williams will feature this next week along with Shaviv and Svensmark?
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Speedy in 11,
In short NO, they have not investigated this. I know this because i actually read the crap the IPCC printed, i can tell you they discussed and dismissed Svensmarks theory in the space taken up by one paragraph. When it comes to the sun they only mention TSI and nothing more so the idea that the sun can influence climate beyond TSI was rejected before they even sat down at the cracked crab buffet to talk about what to talk about!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Many researches have been busily trying to predict what the sun will do next. one by one they have fallen on their sword the only ones left standing are Livingston & Penn who picked up on the work of the late Theodore Landscheidt. They predicted SC23 will last 13 years and SC24 would be similar with a very low SSN, SC25 will have very little sunspots at all the sunspots will in fact be there but we wont see them due to a very weak magnetic field.
Can anyone guess what happened the last time the sunspots went missing whilst TSI stayed basically the same, JB, Dip=Shit, MattyB, care to have a guess?
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Sunspot activity as a proxy for solar influence on climate is a another shamefully ignored factor by the AGW acolytes. This paper establishes a long term average sunspot cycle of 24:
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/Sola2-PRL_rev.pdf
In another study by David Stockwell which is soon to be published, the effect of sunspots on climate is measured on the basis of whether the suspot number exceeds the determined average. David establishes that there is no effective lag with the dominant temperature effect of sunspot number. This has profound ramifications for the essential AGW distinction between transient and equilibrium climate sensitivity, with the latter effectively non-existent.
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My understanding of sunspot impact is that the actual direction/orientation of sunspots is more relevant than the actual numbers in a cycle. That is, how many were pointing directly at earth, or oriented in the way that maximises impact on earth? Over a very long interval we could assume a random distribution of angles of incidence but this would not be the case in such a short interval as half a millenia.
Off topic, but is there any indication yet of the comparative scale of the Chilean eruption to determine any Pinatubo style cooling event?
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Mottie, you will be astounded by David’s paper; I am not going to steal any of his well deserved thunder but in application of David’s model based on accumulated sunspot activity, <Solar, he states:
"We conclude that within the limitations of our methodology, <Solar explains
all of the [temperature] trend since 1950."
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I find it very hard to believe the sun has any effect on global warming. I think the climate scientists would have thought of that and there would be no need for alarming carbon taxes. Next you’ll be saying that the earth changes seasons because it tips on an axis. What have you been smoking?
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KeithH highlights the best evidence that exists for AGW; we can’t explain the warming otherwise. There was a post about this exclusion principle on WUWT.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/08/alarmist-climate-science-and-the-principle-of-exclusion/#more-41294
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Um, upper stratosphere cooling eliminates solar forcing as the cause of global warming.
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tell tim moore of northwest carbon, cos it might help save the camels, which ABC and similar reported without a hint of humour!
8 June: UK Register: Lewis Page: FARTING DEATH CAMELS MUST DIE to save the world!
Carbon plan to unleash kill-choppers against dromedaries
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/08/farting_carbon_camels/
some interesting info on moore in here:
Tim Moore
CSIRO Postgrauate Award 2002
http://au.linkedin.com/in/timnmoore
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It looks like Tim Moore’s
catcamel is out of the bag. This is just a not very clever money making scheme. Bless his heart. Someone else pays, he collects.10
Here are a few links to Theodore Landscheidt’s work
http://www.john-daly.com/solar/solar.htm
This link i think (as i cant view from here) is the paper where he explains how Jupiter controls the solar cycles
http://landscheidt.wordpress.com/6000-year-ephemeris/
Anyway he talks about how the solar cycles change and how we can predict events on Earth based on this.
Here is the L&P paper where they describe the process of sunspots losing their darkness if you like due to reductions in magnetic field strength.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/livingston-penn_sunspots2.pdf
So what does all this tell us?
In the mind of a warmbot………absolutely nothing, for the sane people left we can conclude that due primarily to Jupiters 11.88 Earth year and the standard solar cycle length of 11.8 years that Jupiter will approach the sun at varying times of the cycle. Sometimes Jupiter’s approach boosts the solar cycle strength and sometimes it reduces its strength. We are now in the part of the cycle that reduces the cycle strength.
We know from empirical evidence that the longer the cycle the colder the Earth gets, SC20, 21 & 22 were short, sharp and shit hot (max of 9 years with very high SSN’s)whereas SC23 was long and protracted (13 years) and by coincedence the planet has cooled. SC 24 and SC25 will be just as long with a lower SSN so we can expect another 20 or so years of cooling at least.
The Landscheidt studies show the physical reasons why this happens, the L&P paper shows us the symptoms in weaker sunspots.
The sad fact is none of this will ever be mentioned by the MSM due to its absolute exclusion from the IPCC and if the MSM dont mention it then the warmbots wont accept it.
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I wonder what the camels think of the death-threat.
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I might be going out on a limb here but i am wondering if the government has thought this through re killing camels,
I was wondering where the ethical line in the sand is drawn on this issue?
From what i am seeing it appears it is not OK to export live cattle to a destination where they may be treated inhumanely so we ban the export and cripple an industry but it seems quite humane to shoot camels from a helicopter? The hypocrisy is quite stunning.
Now before the warmbots cry “but camels are pests and destroy the environment” i should remind all, cows and all bovine variants in Australia (not to mention Ovine’s as well) are an introduced species and are therefore also destroying the environment.
Something else that i am sure will go left unsaid is that the camel population in native Saudi Arabia and the like are full of disease so why dont we keep our camels and get the KSA to shoot all of theirs , this way the global GHG footprint of camels will be reduced but the species will remain viable and intact.
Surely Bob Brown would think this a good idea or have i crossed that ethical line in the sand?
What about all the wild, pigs, donkeys, Oxen, Horse (both wild and domestic), sheep, deer, fox, rabbit, cat, dog (including Dingo) that add to our carbon pollution foot print do we kill them as well or have i once again crossed that ethical line in the sand?
Once i was working just south of Alice Springs when all of a sudden this big kickass camel came running past, a few minutes later two blokes in a ute pulled up brandishing shot guns and asking if we saw a camel? We asked why are you chasing it? They said he escaped from a circus and if they cant catch him they would have to shoot him. So we said he went thataway and they drove of in the opposite direction.
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It’s good, but only going up to 1960 it won’t be planting a nail in any coffins. They claim around mid-century CO2 starting kicking in? (devils advocate!)
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Keith @ 10
Good post. I’ve believed for a decade that we will be closer to understanding climate science at about mid-century. There’s not been an increase in extreme weather in my lifetime. Every event labelled a new record, I’ve seen or read about it before.
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Zorba in 23,
How do you arrive at this conclusion?
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Lighthouse in 12,
This from the conclusions
“These results may be of importance for understanding the solar mechanism(s) that influence(s) climate. The refereed literature contains 15 global or NH temperature data sets. Obviously all must be studied in order to further check the above results. It is also necessary to discuss the heliophysical and climatologic aspects of these findings. Such a study is presently underway with colleagues.”
What this means is the authors state that the results do not clearly define an answer to the questions posed but the results do indicate a connection between solar cycles and temp on Earth and from these results further study into this connection is being carried out.
Look at it this way there are many, many studies which show a strong link between the sun and the climate and when these studies are read together there is only one conclusion that can be drawn. However not one of these studies has ever made it into an IPCC report, in fact the IPCC have gone out of their way to suppress this information.
The AR4 instalment has one author which contributes to the report regarding the influence of the sun, their name is J. Lean who references ONE paper to substantiate the IPCC claims that the sun plays a minor role. J. Lean just happens to be a co-author of the one paper.
So we have the IPCC basing their clams that the sun plays only a minor role in the current warming on ONE study!
Here is the response from the Norwegian government and the IPCC response.
http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/7786003?n=6&imagesize=1200&jp2Res=.25
Furthermore it is no so much the results you need to view with skepticism but the methods, for example would you accept Santer et al when they say radio sonde and sat temp measurements are no good but temp measurements using GPS data is fantastic?
The IPCC is a corrupt body, they use people Santer as their first line of defence to destroy a paper and or its authors if that does not work they just ignore the papers they dont like (see danish response for example).
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I’ve just flicked through the Productivity Commission Research Report “Carbon Emission Policies in Key Economies”. It’s possibly the most ludicrous and inept document I’ve seen in quite some time. This quote from the forward says it all:
Robust methodology. Makes you warm and tingly everytime you hear or read that phrase. Very climate science, very vogue/vague. The first problem?
No mystery why there was no draft. All energy and transportation sector subsidies which are not related to improved efficiency were ignored. Most policy targets studied where done so on the understanding that they are aspirational targets. In fact, not once did they study the amount of C02 being pumped into the atmosphere. They only studied economic pain which the policies wrought for their unfortunate populace.
It is interesting that, in addition to not measuring C02 reductions from the result of the policies and instead measuring the cost, they then use proxies and inferences to the actual cost itself. Bizarre!
One of their most fundamental errors is a complete lack of understanding of basic economics.
Yes, but no. The more efficient something is the more use it gets. That’s known. Energy efficiency leads to greater energy consumption. But the PC is not interested in economics, they are only interested in how much the Australian public suffers:
But what’s that you say? You weren’t able to get data on policies already in place? I wonder why? Maybe because these policies are ill conceived and not measured out of sheer embarrassment of their outcomes. Take biofuels in the US, that policy is only to do with the mutual back-scratching between government and the corn and feed industry.
Now. Some policies might have the opposite effect than intended? That’s OK, we already know how to hide the decline…
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I forgot the link: http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/109830/carbon-prices.pdf
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Lighthouse:@12
“Shouldn’t we all first need to be skeptical about this study”.
Be assured many scientists will be sceptical, ready to test the methods and the data. That’s the way real science works.
The big difference to those who propound the AGW hypothesis is that the data and methods will be readily available from the authors and not “lost” nor eaten by the dog, nor met with the response “why should I tell you when you only want to prove me wrong”!
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zorba@23 says: “Um, upper stratosphere cooling eliminates solar forcing as the cause of global warming.”
craker24 asked for some further details; I too am anxious for your explanation.
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so, just as the US is pushing the saudis to go against the OPEC decision not to raise oil quotas – in fact, it seems all the Western
countries want more oil at cheaper prices (u know, to wean us off those awful fossil fuels!), we have the latest slam dunk for the govt’s carbon dioxide tax. always love how the MSM always states it’s being worked out by a “multi-party” committee, not to mention other falsehoods in the article:
9 June: Reuters: UPDATE 1-Australia productivity report backs carbon pricing
Australia’s bruising battle to price carbon pollution received a boost on Thursday with a major report into steps by leading trade partners concluding a price-based scheme would be the cheapest, most effective way to cut emissions.
The report pointed to a multitude of steps by the United States and other competitors, undercutting criticism by the Australia’s conservative opposition that the country risked acting alone in using carbon pricing to fight climate change…
Several independent lawmakers who support Gillard’s one-seat majority government in parliament have called the commission report the “final pieces of the jigsaw puzzle” that will decide whether they back the carbon tax legislation, providing a benchmark for action elsewhere…
But the commission, the government’s main advisory body on competition issues, found there were more than 1,000 climate policies already in place around the world, despite wrangling over a global climate framework beyond 2012.
More than 300 policies were in place in the United States. This is despite the government shelving federal emissions cap-and-trade legislation in the face of political opposition and international uncertainty.
California is pressing ahead with its own emissions trading scheme that it aims to link with a regional North American programme, while 10 northeast U.S. states already participate in a mandatory cap-and-trade scheme for the power sector…
The survey by London-based Vivid Economics for the Climate Institute in Australia assessed incentives for power generators in six countries to move to cleaner energy and away from polluting coal and oil.
Britain ranked first with an implied carbon price per tonne of $29.30. China was second at $14.20 per tonne, followed by the United States at $5.10, Japan $3.10, Australia $1.70 and South Korea $0.70…
Australians are the top per-capita emitters of carbon dioxide among developed nations, ahead of the United States, with more than 80 percent of the country’s pollution coming from reliance on ageing coal-fired power stations.
Details of the tax, including a starting price and levels of compensation to business and households, is being worked out by a multi-party committee…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/09/australia-carbon-idUSL3E7H907V20110609
note the linking of Vivid Economics and Grantham Research Institute in this piece from last year:
10 March 2010: Industryresearch: AAP: Big investors will study climate change asset allocation
A group of 15 institutional investors from around the world is collaborating in a study of the likely impact of climate change on asset allocation.
Mercer, which has a sizeable Australian footprint, has had a key role in setting up the study.
The “investor partners” in the study include a home-grown Australian contingent as well – superannuation funds AustralianSuper and VicSuper.
They are in the company of some major players from around the world – the Norwegian Government Pension Fund, the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) and British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (bcIMC) among others.
Also involved are the UK’s government-owned Carbon Trust, a non-profit firm set up to promote the transition to a low-carbon economy, and International Finance Corporation (IFC), which is part of the World Bank Group.
Expertise has been drafted in to help with the analysis.
“We’re partnering with Grantham Research Institute, chaired by Nicholas Stern, and also Vivid Economics,” said Helga Birgden, Mercer’s Melbourne-based acting global head of responsible investment.
Vivid Economics is a UK-based consulting firm specialising in the economics of climate change.
The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment is located in the London School of Economics and Political Science…
However the study would not try to second-guess the consensus among climate scientists.
“This is taking the projected science outlook as a given, and then modelling the impact of those policy responses under different scenarios,” he said.
“We think its fairly likely there’s going to be a policy response on a global basis – the world’s inching towards it – and it’s going to be an issue for building investment portfolios,” he said.
http://www.industrysearch.com.au/News/Big-investors-will-study-climate-change-asset-allocation-43476
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Wow…that is a remarkable misreading of that paper. At no point does it state that ” finds our current warming period is not that different from earlier episodes and that the increase in solar activity in the last 400 years explains the warming, without any need to invoke a man-made enhanced greenhouse hypothesis.”
Not at all, in fact it excludes data from 1960 onwards precisely because of man made warming, “As stated above we restricted ourselves to the period 1844-1960 ie the time when direct observations were available and DURING WHICH ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING WAS NOT YET SIGINIFICANT’ .
Sure the amplitude of the current warming period may not be different to past warming episodes, no climate scientist has ever said that the planet has no had warming and cooling periods before. The problem is that it is happening many times faster than it has ever happened before, and we are not starting from an ice age – we are already reasonably warm. 2 degrees starting from 14 degrees is a lot different than 2 degrees starting from 1 degree in terms of the effects on climate and how it might impact on our lives, agriculture and so on.
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cohenite:
At #36 you write:
Do not be “anxious” because you need to be very, very patient.
But when H*ll freezes over ‘zorba’ may admit that it is an unjustified assertion that he read on some ‘warmist’ blog.
Richard
10
Hello Jo,
Have you seen this critique of their work by Dr Gerbrand Komen?
http://home.kpn.nl/g.j.komen/zon.pdf
Gerbrand Komen worked with the authors in his review of the paper, and thanks them at the end of his assessment for their cooperation. It was written in September 2009.
I’d be very interested if you, or any of your readers, know of any more recent critiques that support the paper’s conclusions. I’m a supporter of yours, but if the authors are wrong, I’d like to know so I don’t repeat the error (if it exists). Many thanks.
The summary of the Dr Komen’s analysis is:
4. Summary of conclusions
This note is written as a quick comment on the papers by de Jager (2008) and dJ-D. It does not present any new results. This would require a longer study involving different datasets and more detailed statistics etc. However, this does not seem essential for reaching the main conclusions
1. The statement by de Jager (2008) and dJ-D concerning the nature of recent warming is NOT supported by their statistical relation between solar magnetic variations and terrestrial temperatures.
2. Correlations between solar magnetic activity and terrestrial NH temperatures are likely to be contaminated by other forcings, not only in the 20th century but also in earlier centuries.
3. Models forced with solar irradiance variations and other established physical mechanisms have successfully simulated the evolution of the NH-temperature in the period under consideration, confirming the existence of a certain amount of correlation between NH temperatures and solar activity, especially in the period prior to the 20th century, where two temperature minima coincide with the Maunder and the Dalton minimum. The magnitude of the temperature variations is consistent with estimates in solar irradiance and volcanic forcing.
4. Attribution to solar magnetic variation through an unknown mechanisms as made by dJ-D seems premature, since the reconstructed NH temperature can also be understood in terms of solar irradiance variations and other known physical processes.
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“Pat” (24),
Here is the email address of this character Tim Moore’s company…..
info@northwestcarbon.com
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“Zorba” in (23) ,
Was your conclusion Peer Reviewed ??????
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Waffle: #33
A colleague (a real economist) has done a study on the overall impact of changing a fleet of company vehicles to the equivalent hybrids. The client is “sensitive to environmental outcomes” so wanted an end-to-end analysis. That is what they got.
It seems that the economic and environmental costs of selling (and presumably disposing of) the existing fleet, plus the economic and environment of the manufacture of the replacements, including the acquisition of raw materials, outweighs the projected economic and environmental costs of maintaining the current petrol and diesel fleet, by a factor of 5.3 within the required 3 year timeframe.
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craker24: #31; cohenite: #36; Richard S Courtney: #38
Zorba has all of the indications of a trollbot that was triggered by something (a phrase or keyword) in the article. If you ask the “right” question, you may get another meaningless response. But why bother?
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Damian Allen: #40
Sorry Damian, I left you off the list – my bad.
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Zorba@23
What do you think causes the Stratosphere? It is caused by solar UV absorption by oxygen which then forms some ozone which also absorbs solar UV. Sol is a more variable star in the UV than in the visible spectrum. I’d worry about measuring that solar UV influence before worrying about a little extra CO2.
Incidently, the stratosphere is what puts the lid on convection in Earth’s atmosphere and you could say that this is what forms the greenhouse (a real one that inhibits convection)in the atmosphere. So oxygen and ozone are the real greenhouse gases.
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Pat @ 37.
“However the study would not try to second-guess the consensus among climate scientists.
“This is taking the projected science outlook as a given, and then modelling the impact of those policy responses under different scenarios,” he said.
“We think its fairly likely there’s going to be a policy response on a global basis – the world’s inching towards it – and it’s going to be an issue for building investment portfolios,”.
That pretty much nails why Al Gore, Goldman Sachs and all the other investment organisations and carpet baggers have been instrumental in promoting the CAGW scam, some right from the start.
As the old saying goes – follow the money!
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“To assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the latest scientific, technical and socio-economic literature produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change, its observed and projected impacts, and options for adaptation and mitigation.”
To understand why AGW “science” has got as far as it has, you have to keep going back to the IPCC charter: in summary, to build a case to blame the human race for climate change, NOT to independently and credibly investigate climate, as most people have been hoodwinked into believing that a UN agency should have undertaken on our behalf. Why? The benefit of the AGW hypothesis is that it puts the UN in prime position to administer a new economy based on taxes, emissions trading schemes, etc. This is not and never has been independent, credible science. Now its disciples have become upset that anyone with average intelligence can drive a truck through the central hypothesis.
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crakar24@32, keithH@35, Thank you for your responses to my comment. This is the first time I’ve posted comments on this site, partly motivated by what’s been happening on the political arena in recent times. However, I don’t think I can post often, so my apology in advance. I thank Jo Nova for providing us an avenue to express our opinion. I enjoy reading this website and many of the comments.
I agree that there are still things that we don’t fully understand about the climate system, for examples, the impact of solar forcing variability, the stochasticity of the system, even the internally-forced variability itself, to name a few. Having said that, the greenhouse effect is fundamentally robust, and so increasing greenhouse gas concentration, holding other things constant, warms the planet. But to what extent, if we take into account of all things? The debate primarily lies on the sensitivity of the response to this effect, expected as there are things that are not currently known or fully understood.
Many of us, the skeptics, agree, that part of the warming is anthropogenically driven. Part of it is also due to the fact that we are ‘recovering from the last Ice Age’.
Given that there are still plenty that we don’t understand, the AGW hypothesis should still be at the back of the mind of all good scientists, while considering other possibilities. I don’t comprehend how one can discard the hypothesis, while easily accepting a few studies that at first seem to contradict it; and vice versa, how one strongly holds onto the hypothesis, ignoring other possibilities. I wonder if this kind of attitude is simply due to the basic nature of the human mind, perception, reflecting the fact that we tend to form clusters, gangs, opposition (e.g., we prefer to associate with like minded people). In this sense I pity that the debate has gone to the point where the two ends have become somewhat too distance – the tendency to shut off differing scientific opinions.
Civilisations had in the past, and will be in the future, subjected to climate phenomena coupled with failures/miscalculation in technological designs (e.g., irrigation, dam – in memory of the recent Queensland flood).
Modern civilisations are subject to economical catastrophe, which can be caused by climate-related events, and also of course internal shocks in the economic-financial system. We seem to be at present at a cross-road if we may call it, where climate is warming. Would it continue warming and until when (as we are recovering from ice age, and increasing greenhouse gas emission)? We’ll wait and see.
Given the uncertainties, given the risks, it’s perhaps safer to be cautious (human’s natural response for survival), at the same time we have to be cautious in prescribing policy schemes that may potentially introduce shocks to our delicate existing economic-socio-financial system. Being cautious, ambitious, is alright I think (e.g., attempt to limit to 2deg C warming etc.), but at the same time be careful not to introduce problems to the delicate economic system. So politicians and economists should formulate things extra carefully.
Talking about economy, renewable energy should be the way to go, eventually. Being renewable, it does not restrain the economy – by scarcity and demand principle. But we should also strive to improve energy efficiency, without necessarily discarding non-renewables completely. They should be in the mix, because they are at present cheap (given our current technology to process them), although they may not necessarily and naturally be in the mix in the future as our technology advances.
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The referenced study has a copyright date of 2008 and was published 2009. Did it really take two years for this to surface? Or is there some kind of Solargate (Heliogate if you prefer) going on behind the scenes?
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MT #38: This quote from them pretty much covers it: “The amplitude of the present period of global warming does not significantly differ from the other episodes of relative warming.”
And the graph I posted has the modern warming, which is what this quote refers too.
If they can explain global climate turning points and amplitude with a factor that is not used being used by the IPCC then I would say they have a produced something that explains the warming without invoking CO2.
I do have some reservations about the tropospheric temperature proxies that they used however.
Mark, yes, thanks, it is a 2009 paper. When there is only a tiny team of skeptics reading papers and putting them on blogs, I guess these things can take two years to surface. Thanks to NIPCC for this one.
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Lighthouse @ 49:
On what time scale are you talking about? On a millenium timescale we are cooling from the early Holocene, on a century timescale we are warming from the little ice age and from the decadal timescale we are cooling since 1998. If we ignore C02 then the science tells us that we are in for 20-30 years of cooling, after that, we just don’t know.
The only cross-roads we are at is called the present. Life is a journey which advances one step at a time. The cross-roads is always going to be right here and now. Deal with it.
As much as I want to take the time to argue against the precautionary principle, there are many others who have done a better job. So, it might be best to Google “libertarian precautionary principle”. Suffice to say, it is usually the case that the cure is always worse than the disease.
I’m very much of the argument that now is the time that we must, yes must, dig and drill as much coal and oil to burn as possible. If you take the Gaia hypothesis then the answer is obvious; the earth as been in a slow death spiral of C02 starvation in recent geological history and it is man, the chosen species, which was put here to nurture the biosphere through the liberation of C02 by way of industry. Thus, increasing biota mass and diversity while, simultaneously raising the consciousness of all living being through the self-reflection that the wealth burning fossil fuels has afforded man. We must take this opportunity now before nuclear energy becomes too cheap to warrant the burning of carbon based energy in the future.
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MT@38
“no climate scientist has ever said that the planet has no had warming and cooling periods before. ”
However, Mann’s hockey stick only works by smoothing the MWP and the LIA out of existence by the use of some very dodgy statistical procedures.
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[…] joannenova […]
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“Lighthouse” (49),
Please read this…..
FALSIFICATION OF THE ATMOSPHERIC CO2 GREENHOUSE EFFECTS WITHIN THE FRAME OF PHYSICS:-
http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb/23/2303/S021797920904984X.html
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I am still astounded at the lack of logic eminating from some of the so called scientists and I bet we paid for this research under the “AGW” banner.
This is astonishing. Maybe we should let the Japanese kill all the whales in the Southern Ocean to stop Methane and Carbon Pollution. I don’t think the Greens would like that idea though.
Elimate all the trees too so they can’t produce Carbon at night.
Let’s get rid of the population as well, while were at it ..There are about 8 million Greens in our society that would gladly sacrifice themselves for the health of the planet…give me a break, these guys are out of their trees.
I apologise if this sounds in some sense sarcastic but I am really having trouble believing this..It can’t be real. Surely this is a joke?
I wish I had Richard Lindzen’s demeanour about this subject but I can’t help getting passionate about it. I care about Science and the irrepairable harm this whole global warming fallacy has created.
The neo nazi’s on the other side want to shut down industry and take us back to the dark ages.. in essence I thing it’s too late the con has driven us to it already.
The only real solution is to observe, theorise and prove the processes in our natural world. Oh wait is that called “Science”??? So people let’s do some, instead of listening to the spin doctors or thinking for one moment that money will solve the problem, it’s only going to exacerbate the issue.
Come on Greenies I dare you, get off your socialistic, marxist butt and do some investigation and see for yourself.. You’re wrong, cataclysmically wrong..DO THE RESEARCH AND FIND OUT WHY THE SKEPTICS DON’T BELIEVE IN THIS BOGUS, UNSUBTANTIATED FRAUD.
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Thanks Waffle #52 – interesting way of thinking..
Thanks Damian Allen for the reference – this then implies that there’re perhaps still gaps in our understanding even on the basic greenhouse effect. But I also found this:
http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb/24/2410/S021797921005555X.html
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I thought it was all about CO2 and the terribles things it does , but the UN is worried about space weather !!!
http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/technology/9607087/u-n-to-upgrade-space-weather-forecasts/
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Hi Jo,
Further to my previous post (#40) I have found a follow up paper (2010) by the two authors which clarifies and corrects the error in their first paper. The new paper takes into account the criticisms of Dr Gerbrand Komen. I don’t think it changes their conclusions, but a more knowledgeable reader may like to investigate this further. You can get the new paper from:
http://www.cdejager.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/2010-Quantifying-JASTP72-9261.pdf
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Lighthouse @ 49
Let me say that I consider you a very welcome new poster to this site and I’m sure many other posters here appreciate your courteous approach and considered comments. You get a big tick from me.
I too, appreciate Jo Nova who provides such a fair forum for crotchety old fellas like me to take out our frustrations!
I agree with many of the points you make and I share your sentiment
“In this sense I pity that the debate has gone to the point where the two ends have become somewhat too distance – the tendency to shut off differing scientific opinions.”
But you won’t find any serious poster here who will try and stifle you with statements such as “there is an overwhelming consensus”
“the science is settled” “the debate is over”.
If you are only referring to CO2 forcing, you are also perhaps right when you say “The debate primarily lies on the sensitivity of the response to this effect, expected as there are things that are not currently known or fully understood”.
I can’t speak for others, but in the face of all the factors as set out in my post at 10, it would take a lot more than the projections in the UNIPCC Fourth Report, based on flawed climate models, to convince me that CO2 will ever cause runaway Catastrophic AGW.
Which is the same reason I cannot accept that no matter what level of prohibitive tax is put on to try and limit the production of human-induced CO2, that it will ever have any significant measurable effect on either climate or temperature. But, I could be wrong!
You are no doubt well aware of the closed-minded siege mentality that has been adopted by most UNIPCC scientists and their backers.
I ask you to compare that attitude with this from the sceptic side.
I’d appreciate your comments.
From his book “Climate – The Counter Consensus” by Professor Robert M Carter.
A Balanced Statement regarding Climate Change
“The consensus view of experienced scientists is undoubtedly that both the extreme ‘alarmist’ and the extreme ‘denialist’ views of human-caused global warming are incorrect.
The majority of scientists, most of whom are independent of the IPCC, espouse views that represent a balanced summary of the available scientific information.
Such a view neither inflates nor underestimates the risk of human-caused change, and at the same time takes proper account of the demonstrably severe risks of natural climate change.
It is certain that natural climate change will continue, sometimes driven by unforced internal variations in the climate system and at other times forced by factors that we do not understand.
The appropriate public policy response is first, to monitor climate accurately in an ongoing way and second, to respond to any changes – both warmings and the likely more damaging coolings – in the same way that we cope with other natural events such as droughts, cyclones, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
In dealing with the certainties and uncertainties of climate change, the key issue is prudence. The main certainty is that natural climate change will continue and that some of its likely manifestations – sea-level rise and coastal change in particular locations, for example – will be expensive to adapt to, but adapt we must and will.
Moreover, reducing vulnerability to today’s climate-sensitive problems will also help the world cope with future challenges from climate change whether that is due to natural variability, anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions or other human causes.
The most prudent way of ensuring that happens is to build wealth into the world economy and to be receptive to new technologies.
This will not be achieved by irrational restructuring of the world’s energy economy in pursuit of the chimera of ‘stopping’ an alleged dangerous human-caused climate change that in reality can neither be measured or demonstrated at this time.”
Cheers. Keith
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Curioser and curioser…
Hiya Jo, hope things are good for you and yours, cyber visiting from the states and thought I’d add my couple pennies to the pot.
Apparently a number of people cannot quite wrap their thoughts around the notion that a paper analyzing something for whatever purpose (lets call it theory A) the data and results of which can also provide evidence supporting a later (or even opposing) theory (theory B) is nothing unusual.
That is how science gets done.
As you stated:
Too bad people so many of the people relying on this quote:
to refute your article have no grasp whatsoever that the data in the paper does support your statement regardless of whatever purpose the authors had when they composed it.
The paper supports the fact that changes occurring today are in no way extreme or out of the ordinary when looking at a much larger time scale.
Keep up the good work.
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Interesting, time to think about the possibility of things getting a bit cold?
BTW found this paper Recent Stratospheric Temperature Observed from Satellite Measurements 2009
Some important recent findings in climate studies are the warming trend in the troposphere and the cooling trend in the stratosphere. However, the evidence for the cooling trend in the stratosphere may need to be revisited. This study presents evidence that the strato-sphere is slightly warming since 1996. Using long-term Stratosphere Sounding Unit (SSU) measurements at channels 1 and 2 before 1996, we did obtain a cooling trend in the middle and upper parts of stratosphere similar to the findings for the lower stratosphere in lit-erature (Ramaswamy et al. 2001; Fu et al. 2004). But, we also found that the temperature trend in the middle and upper stratosphere has alternated to warming since1996. We also analyzed a time series of the Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) channel 4 brightness tempera-tures between 1978 and 2006 and found the same re-versing trend in the lower stratosphere. The reversing trend may relate to a possible recovery of stratospheric ozone concentration.
The cooling in the troposphere ‘goes against’ what the climate models predict for global warming.. Combine that with no clear hot spot in the Stratosphere and it looks like the models are staying from reality on multiple counts… Anything more up to date?
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Oh come on Lighthouse, you are a troll. Its no good trying to hide it by being reasonable!
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Waffle…
“I’m very much of the argument that now is the time that we must, yes must, dig and drill as much coal and oil to burn as possible. If you take the Gaia hypothesis then the answer is obvious; the earth as been in a slow death spiral of C02 starvation in recent geological history and it is man, the chosen species, which was put here to nurture the biosphere through the liberation of C02 by way of industry. Thus, increasing biota mass and diversity while, simultaneously raising the consciousness of all living being through the self-reflection that the wealth burning fossil fuels has afforded man. We must take this opportunity now before nuclear energy becomes too cheap to warrant the burning of carbon based energy in the future.”
I laughed anyway:)
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John Brookes #63, I am not going to entertain such comments. But I understand where you’re coming from on that regards.
KeithH # 60, thank you for your warm welcome. I agree with many of your opinions.
You said: “I ask you to compare that attitude with this from the sceptic side. I’d appreciate your comments.”
I would have to say that both sides are quite similar in that sense. In each camp there are people who are reasonable, who tend to see both sides of the coin; and there are certainly deniers, or believers, whatever way you want to term, they’re essentially the same thing, stemming from ignorance – their natural response stems from hatred. These qualities are in each of us, and we just need to be aware when these arise in our mind to cloud our judgement.
Sorry, this has been quite out of topic. The point I wanted to make in this thread is just that all of us need to consider all factors/hypothesis, see things from different angles, be objective. And as important in most aspects of life, is that we need to be considerate to others. It’s good to be intelectual, but it’s also necessary to open our hearts from time to time – be it dealing with our loved ones, colleagues, opposition, and ourselves.
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Its a pity that since at least the 70s the Sun has been showing a slight cooling trend, while at the same time the Earth is showing a warming trend. So the claim that the findings show that “our current warming period is not that different from earlier episodes and that the increase in solar activity in the last 400 years explains the warming, without any need to invoke a man-made enhanced greenhouse hypothesis” doesn’t fly.
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I notice cohenite is a regular here. Just wondering if he’s still parroting Monkton’s hilarious effort to use Pinker’s paper re CO2 radiative forcing? I know Monkton never responded when Pinker shot him down (one link to this is here) –
(http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/upload/2010/02/debate_australia_tim_lambert.pdf)
I suspect the same goes for cohenite, after all i’ve seen you posting the same theories elsewhere despite Pinker’s rebuttal.
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[…] Every day that goes by climate change alarmists become less and less credible…… http://joannenova.com.au/2011/06/study-finds-global-warming-over-past-400-years-was-due-to-increased… […]
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Zorba from post #23:
Two or more people have asked you for an explanation.
Here it is TWO days later and you never come back.
What happened? Cat eat the URL addy to this website?
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