There have been suggestions that Jo Nova might be trying to hide or ignore the most recent boreholes graph from Huang et al. So here it is. This is the last 2,000 years according to 6000 boreholes, with the last 100 years also using the “instrumental record” which gives us that hockey-stick uptick at the end. Below I explain the pros and cons of this study and update my thoughts.
Huang and Pollack 2008: Their latest boreholes published study
A borehole sounds like a bit-of-a-stretch as a proxy. How could we tell if the world was warmer in 1066 by drilling a hole in the ground? Yes, fair point. But what makes boreholes useful is that they are global and there is a lot of data: specifically 6,000 holes all over the world.
I’ve been looking at boreholes in more detail, analyzing them in the light of newer proxies. When all the evidence is considered, boreholes turn out be not-much-use at giving us meaningful numbers in degrees C, and in my opinion, not-too-hot at telling us the “when” of an event either. Too much depends on assumptions.
But what are they good for is that, when combined with other proxies, they can help show whether a temperature swing was regional or global.
The basics of Boreholes
Heat from the surface slowly sinks deep into the Earth. Theoretically a hot decade will warm the rocks below and that wave of heat will travel slowly downwards. Rather annoyingly, heat from the boiling hot magma at the center of the Earth is moving up at the same time. As the wave of heat moves down from the top it gradually spreads and blends with cooler decades, information is lost and resolution fades. But if we dig holes down to 2,000m below the surface it’s possible to see signals that appear to be from the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, and the Holocene Optimum — going back 20,000 years.
The last ice age seemingly still leaves it’s cold mark on rocks far below, but details like the Younger Dryas spike and the Roman warming are gone, forever blended into the rocks. In other words, there is vastly more detail in ice cores, and we wouldn’t bother with boreholes at all if there were glaciers conveniently located all over the world.
How fast does that heat spread down? In the words of Huang:
Following a change in temperature at the surface, it takes about 100 years for the perturbation to reach a depth of 150m, and 1,000 years to reach 500m depth.
Boreholes are handy because they assess land areas that have few other proxies.
The pro side of boreholes is that there are thousands of measurements, and they are spread all over the land masses of the globe (all bar Antarctica). On the downside, it’s hard to calibrate, and doesn’t include the ocean. After looking closely at these records below, all I can say is that when we have enough data, we’ll be able to use boreholes to tell us highly smoothed past temperatures. Though that might be a thousand years from now.
The boreholes are still useful
For current national policies which aim to change the weather, boreholes suggest three things: 1/ the world has been warmer and colder than now, and sometimes it was global; 2/ those past swings have nothing to do with CO2; 3/ the models can’t explain these swings, so they don’t understand what drives the climate.
Huang and Pollack published a huge study in 1997 with 6,000 boreholes across many continents. What happened over the next ten years in boreholelogy was three different versions of boreholes from the same team all of which contradict each other about the amplitude of the swings.
Let’s follow the curious progression. All these boreholes tell us there were two warm bumps in the last 20,000 years, and two cool swings, but it’s hard to pin down when and how big those bumps and swings were. The basic graph curves seem to flex according to the dominant proxy meme of the day.
Huang et al 1997 “warmer than the present”
Note their conclusions in 1997 — they thought they could compare temperatures to the present day, and to fractions of a degree. They also thought their reconstruction matched the other proxies known at the time.
From the Abstract: “The early to mid-Holocene appears as a relatively long warm interval some 0.2-0.6 K above present-day temperatures, the culmination of the warming that followed the end of the last glaciation. Temperatures were also warmer than present 500-1000 years ago, but then cooled to a minimum some 0.2-0.7C below present about 200 years ago.
Although temperature(s)… are highly smoothed, the results clearly resemble the broad outlines of late Quaternary climate changes suggested by proxies.”
Huang and Pollack have published several newer graphs (posted below) since this one, and now say that this earlier study can’t be used to compare temperatures to modern times, since they had “excluded the data from the top 100m” (which was stated in the ’97 paper), and in this graph below the zer0 point really is around 1900, not 1997. But they have not published a corrected version of this graph. In 97 Huang said “The uppermost 100m is the depth range most susceptible to non-climatic perturbations such as advective heat transfer associated with ground water flow and terrain effects…”
But it begs the question, if the data from the last 100 years is so useless we need to throw it away, why would older poor resolution records in deeper rocks be that useful? With boreholes, isn’t the best data the data in the most recent waves of heat?
Another point that sets this earlier study apart from later ones is that it was an independent analysis, based only on boreholes and not dependent on any other proxies.
Last 20,000 years. Huang and Pollack 97. The caption says 1000 years ka b.p. The text refers to “the present” but this graph ends around 1900 according to Huang in 2008.
But lo, the consensus on proxies was changing. In 1998 the infamous Mann Hockey Stick was published, and other proxies were coming out as well. The Mann v Huang graphs didn’t sit well together, to put it mildly.
Tree-rings adapted from Mann et al 1999 ; Boreholes from data from Huang et al 1997 graphed by McKitrick and Essex and adapted here. The modern zero end point was described in 2008 as being around the year 1900. Assuming the other end of the boreholes graph stays at the year 1000AD (though maybe it should line up with 900AD?), I fitted it as best as possible to the centre of the Mann trend at the 1900AD point. Obviously, these two global reconstructions are supposed to be for the same planet. One (or both) was wrong.
Mann was rapidly becoming the star with his bristlecones pines and the hockeystick graph, but what happened to 6,144 global boreholes? Hardly anyone would cite them. The IPCC ignored them, and instead repeatedly promoted the smaller, shorter bristlecone work based on deeply flawed maths and assumptions.
Huang et al 1997 – 2000: 500 years of warming but where did 20,000 years of data go?
The boreholes team of Huang, Shen and Pollack put out quite a few papers from 1997 – 2000, but instead of 6,000 boreholes, these studies dropped 90% of the holes, and 19,500 years of the data. They used between 358 and 616 boreholes. The results were cited widely.
Note how cold things are in the year 1500?
The main finding that was reported was how steep the recent warming is — but look at the numbers. It’s still only 0.5 K since 1900 — it’s supposed to be 0.9 K according to the thermometers (after adjustments and homogenization).
In the twentieth century alone, the average surface temperature of the continents has increased by about 0.5 K, and the twentieth century has been the warmest century of the past five.
In another paper in the year 2000, the team essentially repeated the 1997 conclusions on page 354 of Ann. Rev. Earth Planet Sci. 2000 28:339-65 so the authors still thought that the world was warmer in 1300 or so. Though oddly in that same paper they also used their heavily truncated 500 year graph, where the year 1500 was the coldest of the cold, which is at odds with the mild temperature of the same year in the 1997 paper. Hmm. Incompatible? Completely.
On a longer timescale embracing all of the Holocene, Huang et al (1997) used the global heat flow database (Pollack et al 1993) to establish a composite profile of heat flow versus depth to 2 km beneath the surface. The inversion of this profile revealed a long mid-Holocene warm interval some 0.2–0.6 K above present day temperatures, and another similar but shorter warm interval 500–1,000 years ago. Temperatures then cooled to a minimum of approximately 0.5 K below present, about 200 years ago.
How could Huang be so specific about the range (0.2–0.6 K) as compared to the present if he and his colleagues were not sure at the time whether the present meant 1900 or 1990?
Then the skeptics asked for the data
McKitrick and Essex asked Huang for his data in 2002 and graphed a close up of that last 1000 years. Since the ’97 paper mentioned “the present” so many times, they naturally assumed that the data ended in 1990. McKitrick and Essex published a very good paper. Their point was that the IPCC cherry picked the study they liked (Mann’s), and ignored the study that fitted the known proxies of the time but did not fit not their pet theory.
Note that Huang in 2008 specifically said that this older graph applies to 1900 not 1990. But it is otherwise still valid. In most proxies (see Loehle 2008 or Ljundqvist 2012), the coldest point of the little ice age was in 1700, and the warmest point of the medieval warm period was somewhere between 800 – 1000AD (with another lesser peak occurred in 1200). Temperatures in 1600 are usually cooler than 1900 in most proxies. Quite probably this whole graph should be shifted back 100 years — though the text in the paper specifically talks about the peak cooling being “200 years ago”. It’s all untidy. Even if it’s shifted back 100 years, it doesn’t fit the proxies of very warm 9th and 10th centuries. Shouldn’t it blend the two (or multiple) peaks shown in other proxies?
Last 2,000 years, McKitrick and Essex (book, 2002) Data from Huang. Huang now says that the end point of the graph lines up with 1900 not 1990. There is no corrected graph to post, and the extremes in the paper are described as 200 years ago, and 700-800 years ago. The latest updated 2008 graph suggests the years 800-1000AD was nearly as cold as the Little Ice Age. That doesn’t help either.
Huang 2008 shows “same or slightly less” warmth than the present
In 2008 Huang et al published a new 20,000-year study, but this time used three data sets to get one line. The HP 97 heat flux data set was used again from 20,000 – 300 years ago, but the HP 2000 set was used for 300-100 years ago, and the last 100 years is from the instrumental record from land for the 20th Century. The first graph below covers the last 2000 years. Unlike the 97 study the 2008 one is strongly tied to “the instrumental record”, so it’s not independent and has all the same problems the “instrumental set” has (namely, the micro-siting near tarmac and car parks, urban heat island effects, homogenization, and inexplicable adjustments. See Australian problems, and US ones). I prefer proxies that continue to “present day”. If the boreholes don’t work for the last 100 years, why would they work for the last 1000?
The graph below and text in the paper suggest the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was about the same as mid-20th Century temperatures.
The reconstructions show the temperatures of the mid-Holocene warm episode some 1–2 K above the
reference level, the maximum of the MWP at or slightly below the reference level, the minimum of the LIA about 1 K below the reference level, and end-of-20th century temperatures about 0.5 K above the reference level.
How much warmer is it since the mid-1900’s?
Hadcrut4 would say 0.6C. But the boreholes were done on land, which varies more than the global temperatures, but paradoxically, because the land was warm in the mid 1900’s, that means the land temperatures haven’t changed as much as the global temp since then. Since there are so many problems with the adjusted instrumental record, I no longer think it’s possible to say exactly how much warmer the land temperature is. It’s significant that the mid-20th Century raw thermometer observations from most continental landmasses shows a much smaller rise than the highly adjusted records. The 1930’s and 1940’s were hot on land in most continents. Not just in the US.
Note that Huang and Pollack have a suite of reconstructions to pick from (below), but while most proxies are suggesting there were two peaks in the MWP (the biggest before 1000AD and the second around 1200AD) the borehole reconstruction below that suggests things were “as warm” in the year 1000AD (q60a09) is also the one that tells us it peaked in 1200. The other reconstructions are too early, and unrealistically cold in the year 1000AD. They are also much colder in the Little Ice Age than other proxies suggest.
Huang et al 2008. Note the peak of the MWP is around 1300, which is not the same as most land proxies suggest. The latest multiproxies suggest the peak was before the year 1000AD. The curves closer to that are also the highest. The zero K horizontal line is the reference period 1961-1990.
Is Pollack an un-skeptical scientist?
Henry Pollack published a book “Uncertain Science, Uncertain World” in July 2005. In official reviews, his book appealed to the IPCC head Sir John Houghton, and another well known alarmist Stephen Schneider of Stanford University: “This well-written book is a welcome antidote to the misrepresentations of special interests who misuse scientific uncertainty to stall public policy and advance their own agendas.”
Pollack’s points about uncertainty may well be valid, but the point of the book was to “demolish the mythology” that uncertainty is an excuse for inaction. Pollack was not sympathetic to skeptical scientists, and it’s fair to ask whether he was as dispassionate about the results as a scientist should be. Would anyone who felt “climate action” was necessary be pleased to report results that showed climate action is a fruitless endeavor?
Oh look, in 2010 he wrote “A world Without Ice” and the book description tells us the author is A cowinner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (and we all know how accurate that is). “The arctic is imperiled”.
The bottom line
Huang 2008, for what it’s worth, shows that the world was warmer in the Holocene 5,000 years ago, even warmer than our current airports and carparks are today; warmer than the air next to air-conditioner exhaust vents. Ice cores show CO2 levels were lower. The central point keeps coming back: the models don’t know what caused that warming, it wasn’t CO2, and we know it was not a disaster for life on Earth either.
….
The borehole’s monster spaghetti graph
Here are all three graphs, none of which agree with each other, or with the hockey stick or any other major proxy. Most proxies put the depth of the little ice age around 1700, and the peaks of the MWP either 900- 1000 or 1200 years ago. Nothing fits.
It possibly says more about the political nature of climate research than anything much about our climate.
Last word
What do boreholes tell us? That past warming episodes were global. That the IPCC cherry picks studies to suit it’s political mission.
In order to see if medieval temperatures were warmer cooler or the same, we need to look at other proxies, which I will do soon.
————————————————————
REFERENCES
Huang, S., H. N. Pollack, and P. Y. Shen (1997), Late Quaternary temperature changes seen in world‐wide continental heat flow measurements, Geophys. Res. Lett., 24(15), 1947–1950. [Abstract, PDF] Discussion
Huang, S., H. N. Pollack, and P. Y. Shen (2000), Temperature trends over the past five centuries reconstructed from borehole temperatures, Nature, 403, 756– 758. [PDF]
Huang, S. (2004), Merging information from different resources for new insights intoclimate change in the past and future, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L13205, doi:10.1029/2004GL019781.
Huang, S. P., H. N. Pollack, and P.-Y. Shen (2008), A late Quaternary climate reconstruction based on borehole heat
flux data, borehole temperature data, and the instrumental record, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L13703, doi:10.1029/2008GL034187 [PDF]
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Stoat has a useful thread on this from way back in 2007 with some good comments.
Hat tip to NiceOne who drew my attention to the contradictions in the Boreholes studies and details of the updated version.
Start the countdown to the argument that only “experts” can understand data this complex. 3.2.1….
I’d say if you believe any of the above can really show
you temp for any area of the planet with any accuracy then you would probably believe in anything.
It’s far too uncertain and very messy.
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My mob of flying Polar Bears will just love this.They down the bottom of the garden visiting Tim Flannery(he lives in the compost heap and the pixies,I will tell when they come back at Beer O’clock.
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Do they include those 4,000 boreholes in Blackburn, Lancashire?
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No.
They were rather small, and thus the measuring instruments couldn’t fit.
😉
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What about the boreholes in Canberra, Wellington (NZ), Brussells, Washington and New York (in the UN tower)?
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Very clever Robbo. I was just listening to Norwegian Wood on the radio as I read your comment
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Here’s my post from Jennifer Marohasy’s blog about the deceleration of SLR.
This agrees with what the IPCC have found in their last four reports, that SLR is declining.
Also found by the UNI of Colorado as well. But here’s my comment below on this new study by an Aussie scientist.
Interesting study by Aussie scientist AA Boretti on the remarkable deceleration in SLR over the last 10 years. He uses Jason and Topex satellite data.
http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2012/aug/8aug2012a1.html
Here is his quote at the end of the article.
Commenting on these findings, Boretti writes that the huge deceleration of SLR over the last 10 years “is clearly the opposite of what is being predicted by the models,” and that “the SLR’s reduction is even more pronounced during the last 5 years.” To illustrate the importance of his findings, he notes that “in order for the prediction of a 100-cm increase in sea level by 2100 to be correct, the SLR must be almost 11 mm/year every year for the next 89 years,” but he notes that “since the SLR is dropping, the predictions become increasingly unlikely,” especially in view of the facts that (1) “not once in the past 20 years has the SLR of 11 mm/year ever been achieved,” and that (2) “the average SLR of 3.1640 mm/year is only 20% of the SLR needed for the prediction of a one meter rise to be correct.”
Clearly, the more-rabid-than-the-IPCC-crowd has it all wrong when it comes to both sea level and climate, for as Boretti concludes, “the oceans are truly the best indicator of climate,” and what they suggest is not compatible with what those alarmed about climate change continually claim.
The paragraph above is a gem, just as I claimed a few days ago. “The oceans are the best indicator of climate.”
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The clueless Gillard govt puts more of investment at risk because of the co2 tax and other cost blowouts.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/more_investments_at_risk_from_carbon_tax_and_other_costs/#commentsmore
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Despite all the problems, they are probably more reliable than the corrupted, mannipulated data from the last 100 or so years. !
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AndyG55. Even with that the last 16 years now needs to be a flat or nearly flat line. The near vertical climb of the exponential ever steepening hockey stick just did not happen.
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Yep, they tried everything they could get away with to mannufacture a steep trend. Adjustments past temps downwards, ignoring UHI, loosing remote stations, “homogenising” to the worst urban affected stations….. and STILL they can’t manage a positive trend in the last 16 or so year.
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A couple of the main reasons for the leveling off are …….
1. they have run out of adjustments they can feasibly make
2. too many people are watching now
3. there are very few remote stations left for them to misplace.
You can bet they will still try though !!!
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like it.
KK
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I find it amazing that with all their tampering, the best they can manage is something like 0.8C in 140 years. Incompetance, I put it down to.
Sure, they made a very short period between 1978-1998 look a bit steeper, but really, even after all their adjustments, there is nothing to show any problem related to CO2.
A short period of coincidence between rising urban land temps and CO2, then since 1998.. nothing, nada, zip !!
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Little JJ was travelling from Newcastle to Sydney in his Prius hybrid, got behind a truck with what looked like a Sydney address on the back. The truck was dragging him along really nice and saving him lots of fuel…, so JJ decided to stay behind the truck
By the time they got to Canberra……
gees, sounds like a CO2 story !!
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You (finally) made my day.
It was a shame to see you misrepresent the science in the first place, but I’m glad you finally accept that HP97 does not show the MWP to be warmer than today, nor does HP08.
Your method of sticking modern thermometer record to proxy data seems dubious. Can you describe your scientific method, or was it a case of photoshop the best you could?
Huang, Pollack and Shen say:
Rereke Whakaaro must be disappointed that you now prove him wrong.
You still have some work to do on Idso.
In our previous discussion on this you never answer this comment.
You pick out one or two sites as evidence of poor citing, but then fail to follow to show how this has impacted global results. Were they even used in the “quality” set of data used for global analysis? You generate doubt, but provide little in the way of firm answers.
And you never answered the following either:
8. Where’s your evidence to show that whatever caused the MWP is also causing the temps today?
Multiple studies attribute the current warming to man-kind’s activities
Lastly, remember when you, Joanne Nova, said:
http://youtu.be/NtbuM3OuTZg?t=5m5s
I guess you’ll need to remove this from your next presentation.
I look forward to your Idso correction post.
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Huang [adjusted] says the MWP was about 0.5C less than today; no CO2 then, and today TSI and natural variability account for about 0.4C of the ~0.7C increase over the 20thC; that takes CWP to below the MWP.
Where’s AGW; in your head, nowhere else. You’ve got nothing.
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For one moment, lets assume all you say is true, with natural variation accounting for most of the warming. With CO2 that still makes it warmer than the MWP – that’s the whole friggen point!
Now, rather than assume you are correct, lets look at what the science has to say:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/a-comprehensive-review-of-the-causes-of-global-warming.html
Tett et al. (2000)
Meehl et al. (2004)
Stone et al. (2007)
Lean and Rind (2008)
Stott et al. (2010)
Huber and Knutti (2011)
Foster and Rahmstorf (2011)
Gillett et al. (2012)
Wigley, Santer – 2012
According to the science I posted, GHGs contribute the vast majority of recent warming, despite the increase in aerosols causing a cooling effect.
Where’s your peer-reviewed science to support your attribution calculation?
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Master Nice, even if the world was cooler in the MWP, that doesn’t tell us CO2 caused the modern warming.
It was hotter in the holocene… it was hotter in the Eemian, it was hotter for most of the evolution of life on Earth. Naturally…
You ask “where is your peer reviewed science?”
Answer (again): Here.
They are some of the papers you keep pretending we don’t have.
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Nova says: You ask “where is your peer reviewed science?”
Actual Question: Where’s your peer-reviewed science to support your attribution calculation?
Spot the difference (I love this game). Shouldn’t be too hard for you.
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I love this game
Hey thats my line and the last time i used it you berated me for it, Hip, hip, o, crite. Well done you have just added another string to your bow.
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“I love this game”
Pity you aren’t much good at it, then.
Maybe go and practice a lot more at SkS first ??
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I never said it did. Ipresented a list of peer-reviewed papers that do attribute GHGs as the main cause of recent warming.
Yes, I agree. As I said before, “And if the MWP was warmer, so what? That’s evidence for high sensitivity and it still doesn’t rebut the science that shows current warming is being caused by man’s activities.”
No, please read more carefully. I asked where were your papers on the attribution of recent warming.
Nope, that’s not attribution. The first point, the oceans aren’t warming, you cherry pick a small amount of data in your graph. Why ignore recent years and the data below 700m?
Perhaps because it shows warming!
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content2000m.png
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Oh – do forgive me. But we’ve already discussed this and it hasn’t changed. Remember? I am not asking you for any money – I’m not claiming I can change the weather, nor save you from droughts, storms, giant fish, early snow, or sea ice that is not identical in coverage to the average of 30 years before. You are. You need to provide evidence. You haven’t. Hence I’m saying you are mistaken, and unscientific, at best, having faith in “experts” with no evidence to back you up.
As for ARGO, go use The Index, discover how I’ve cleverly hidden my thoughts on ocean heat and argo under the tags “Oceans” and “ARGO”. Then you can apologize for suggesting that I ignored the recent years or the data down to 2000m.
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Are you sure it’s science?
Can you meet the challenge of constructing simple statements in English that would describe the measurable, empirical events that if they were to occur would falsify your beliefs in Catastrophic Man Made Global Warming (or whatever it is that you believe).
How do you tell that what you believe is not a dogmatic superstition?
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Nice One gets a hat tip from Joanne and then still behaves as a snarky turd.
Nice one.
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And Mark D requires no hat tip.
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Did you forget I live here?
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Miss Nice, your desire to toss insults is as usual bounded by no connection to reality. There are still many studies suggesting temperatures were as warm or warmer during medieval times and as Huang himself said in 97, their study matched the proxies of the time. In other words, their results matched decades of research, not just one treering graph. Huang Pollacks smaller year 2000 borehole paper showed only 0.5C warming since 1900, so add that to the 97 graph (taking into account the odd 2008 caveat about “the present” in 1997 being 1900 AD). Furthermore, it appears the boreholes MWP peak is too recent, and ought to be closer to the centre of the MWP which according to other proxies peaked several times from 800-1400. If the boreholes peak is more distant in time than his reconstruction suggests (see Loehle 2008 esp) that means he probably underestimated the surface warming that it represents and those 1997 peaks would be higher (as would the 2008 study). But you know… angels on a pin and all. Like I said. Other proxies are better than boreholes to work out relative temperatures. We couldn’t expect Huang et al to be an expert on the flaws in the instrumental record, though it would help if his team understood that the raw records fit his borehole data better than the “adjusted” ones.
We know Europe and Greenland was hotter in Medieval times, boreholes suggest it was generally warm (rather than cooler) elsewhere in the world as do many other proxies, so it is rather the default (Occam’s razor) suggestion to say it was “as warm or warmer” as I have both in July and October before you raised HP2008.
As for “multiple studies show the current warming was man-made”, we’ve been over this many times. You can’t tell us why the world warmed 1000 years ago, or why it cooled until 300 years ago. The models don’t know. You still can’t name any observations (rather than flawed models) that support the claims that CO2 causes catastrophic warming. The last one you tried to name had 20,000 simulations. you hadn’t even read the paper.
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Not in the least.
Point scoring, and “winning”, is for children.
What we are about, is moving towards a closer approximation of the truth (through all of the spin and downright lies), and in developing an understanding of the world in terms that can be communicated to people who did not benefit from science at school.
I am quite happy to “draw fire” from somebody with too much testosterone, if doing so exposes some of their personality (or lack thereof) and gives a good indication of just how much they know, and how much they pretend to know, for extrinsic purposes. You have shown you are an adept at using a bibliography – a good skill for a librarian – but I have yet to see any true explanation of how you interpret each of those references, and reconcile their discrepancies, in any way that is useful.
Also, I might add, “drawing fire” is often a good way to facilitate people making a dork of themselves.
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Brilliant work Nice One!!!!!!
It’s funny to see Nova, on the one hand claim, “… 6,144 boreholes around the world which found that temperatures were about 0.5°C warmer world wide.”, and now, after much persistance by you, claim they are not much worth.
What were you expecting, the same team to produce the same report three times? Do you expect that science should never progress?
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James, HP 2008 is not “progress”. It hasn’t improved our understanding of boreholes, instead if anything, it shows how dubious the technique is and how heavy the political pressure is to conform to fit other dubious studies. It doesn’t match the best proxies, in timing or in amplitude — the 2008 study doesn’t get “more accurate” than the 97 one, instead it adds in the known-flawed temperature record, is probably too cold for both the LIA and the MWP, it still wipes out the known warmth in 800 – 1000AD. And the 2008 study disagrees completely with the 2000 study in the year 1500AD.
The 1997 one is still the most realistic of the three, but needs to be stretched back in time by a couple of centuries which also would increase the amplitude of both warm and cool spells and make the LIA cooler (tick) around 1700, and the MWP warmer around 1000 – 1100.
HP assume heat travels slower than other proxies suggest it would have.
I could still quote HP 1997 (which has not been corrected) in support, but I can’t be bothered, because there are so many better studies.
HP still show Mann was wrong, and the MWP was not “local”. How is that a “win” for alarmists?
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Oh? I can see by all the peer-reviewed material you have that rebuts it – LOL!
From your ideological point of view perhaps. Real scientists don’t dismiss evidence because they don’t like the implications.
No, HP shows different data provides additional clues as to what the planet was doing. No proxy is ever 100% correct. We warmists already accepted the MWP was not local. You went further with ‘6,000 boreholes told us that the world was warmer a 1,000 years ago’
http://youtu.be/NtbuM3OuTZg?t=5m5s
Guess you were wrong. Cake/Eat/Too.
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Really, are you the official spokespersons for the
warmistsalarmists or can you refer to someone with slightly more authority to back this up.100
James, guess I was right. 6000 boreholes did show the world was warmer, which matched most of the proxies of the day. Then the authors looked at them again, didn’t fix the bad timing, changed assumptions to make it cooler than any other proxy suggests in the LIA, added in the dodgy instrument temperature and a strange caveat (but not a correction) about their study 11 years earlier which changes the conclusions they wrote in the abstract. In the end they made a study which tells us nothing new about the climate, but does make their specialty look pretty silly.
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Nope. Would you denounce heliocentrism based on science prior to Copernicus and claim you were right?
You were wrong. At the time of your speech and your previous post, Huang had clarified why the 97 paper doesn’t support your claim.
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So Huang adjusting his prior work to be more AGW consistent is equivalent to the change from the Earth being the centre of the universe to Copernician values.
That is really stupid trolling.
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Huang didn’t adjust his old work. He clarified in latter work why Nova was wrong to make her assertion.
If Nova had done her homework, instead of copying others, she would have realised this earlier and that would have avoided misleading all those people she’s been speaking to since.
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Noone can mislead you though James; a ‘mind’ set in cement is impervious to most things, certainly commonsense.
Huang hve done what many climate researchers have done to their initial findings; changed them, always to support AGW; here is a classic example.
It never works the other way though where the rubbish papers in support of AGW are either corrected or withdrawn they are never done so the same publicity as when they are first presented.
100
Sorry Jmes but boreholelogy is not a word used in the English language care to try again?
41
Direct your observation at the originator of the word. It’s Nova’s invention, not mine.
27
But still you used it? Things are much much clearer to me now.
70
Yes, it’s called “quoting someone”. I’m glad you are clear on this; I get a nice feeling when I help the intellectually challenged.
13
James…
Are you sure it’s science?
Can you meet the challenge of constructing simple statements in English that would describe the measurable, empirical events that if they were to occur would falsify your beliefs in Catastrophic Man Made Global Warming (or whatever it is that you believe).
How do you tell that what you believe is not a dogmatic superstition?
80
ExWarmist.
James, along with all other disciples of CAGW, has been continually challenged to state what turn of events and/or data, would cause him to rethink his position. The response is invariably to slink, slither and slide away to SkS for further instructions.
50
The Huang, S., H. N. Pollack, and P. Y. Shen (1997) paper is what made me a sceptic. It is a scientific paper of very high importance. While Mann’s Northern Hemisphere Hockey stick was taking centre stage as a “global” study, the real global study was ignored.
It doesn’t matter if we ditch the last 100 years of the study, it demonstrates the little ice age and medieval warm period were global. And we know from other studies of the medieval warm period that temperatures today are approx as warm as then. What period was/is technically warmer doesn’t matter.
When Huang’s years of research were ignored by the IPCC, Huang was very clever. He didn’t rock the boat, and as such wasn’t vilified. The clowns in the IPCC that ignored the paper didn’t bury it. It is still accessible, and every sceptic should put it in their favourites. It is the smoking gun against the revisionists that say either the MWP didn’t exist or was localised to Greenland and a coastal area of north America.
I’d say post reference to this paper in Lewandowsky’s blog, but it would probably be deleted for being racist.
Cheers
221
Oh and another thing I missed with regards to:
Can you please cite where in reference material they support such an idea? As you know I’m very familiar with Huang et al and cannot find any such claim by them.
CO2 is a well known feedback mechanism (at least well known within the climate science). Here’s Richard Alley explaining how CO2 acts as a feedback. You might be interested that he also explains why CO2 lagged temperature in previous warmings.
532
How could the past swings have anything to do with CO2 when the levels of CO2 didn’t change.
You are the sorriest excuse for a troll I have read.
241
http://www.grida.no/images/series/vg-climate/large/2.jpg
You see the up down bits?
Well… how can I explain this in a way you’d understand…
622
Start by explaining why (according to your chart) CO2 has fluctuated by amounts up to 100 or 110ppm all on its own many times in the past.
It seems to me that you warmists switch from pretending CO2 should remain constant to claiming that it has caused warming in the past. So while Cohenite calls you out on one of the two contradictory delusions, I would like an explanation for the other. You can’t have it both ways. Either CO2 and temperature should be stable or they should continue to fluctuate and oscillate. As well as the large swings of 10 degrees C or more, your chart shows recent regular swings of 1 or two degrees C. Why should swings of far less amplitude than these now be blamed entirely on humans and not considered to be well within the norm.
BTW I think that chart shows an underestimate of past CO2.
191
To add to your great post Siliggy we have the following from Nice One above :
” With CO2 that still makes it warmer than the MWP – that’s the whole friggen point!”
And then he points us to the video which
” You might be interested that he also explains why CO2 lagged temperature in previous warmings.”
Thanks for bringing up the Vostock graphs , Nice One. I think they are some of the best evidence to support the sceptics case.
180
Your mood swings perhaps?
CO2 follows, at best, temp; actually, over geological periods it has NO relationship with temp at all.
181
Be Nice, yeah, checked the graphs. You are aware of the average 800 year lag between temperature and co2, and that co2 peaks and troughs follow temperature by 800 years, give or take a few 100 years? This would indicate that current co2 rise COULD be related to the warming of the medieval warm period. So, we can expect co2 to continue rising for a few hundred years, even though the temperature of the planet may stabilize, as it has done for the last decade and a half, or continue to fall
82
You are asking Jo to prove a negative.
Can you give us a reference that explicitly links the swings to CO2?
180
I second that.
70
Hi Rereke,
Actually, I think one can prove a negative.
I also think Jo did so in her answer.
I remember seeing a doco (?) by Wallace & Gromit “A Grand Day Out” which clearly shows the moon is made of cheese. Can you provide evidence that the moon is not made of cheese? 🙂
40
The Eagle landed at Tranquillity Bay.
20
Hello Noice.
SkS calling, SkS Calling all wannabe “scientists”…..
“Can you please cite Can you please cite Can you please cite Can you please cite”
So Noice has a BSc(Can you please cite) from the University of SkS.
Big Deal
ha ha.
KK 🙂
90
Had a look at back’s video performance .
Found his nasal tone off putting more than the fact that he has no qualifications in thermodynamics; apparently he is a Geologist but needs to do some courses in basic physics and heat transfer.
It’s an old trick to touch on the many possible factors that may be involved, he does it well.
But it is till wrong science to then jump to a firm conclusion WITHOUT THE CHAIN OF CAUSE AND EFFECT that is needed and required in scientific analysis.
Too many people see Climate Science as Science.
It is actually Engineering because of the many intersecting and overlapping causes and effects at work.
KK 🙂
60
Miss Nice, I realise this is a Very Complex Point, but since global temperatures varied and CO2 didn’t, CO2 did not cause the swings.
PS: Do see your reading comprehension tutor to ask about using quotes properly. I didn’t say Huang said anything about that. (It’s such an obvious point he didn’t need too.) We can all see through your cheap tactic of repeatedly suggesting I said things that I didn’t.
PS: Do you have any specific evidence (except in flawed models) that CO2 causes a measureable feedback? No one else has.
192
Supplemntary question to Miss Nice (whoda thought it was a girl)how does Co2’s effect on temp vary over time, ice cores show approx 800 years lag in effect, your theory whilst it held stated an instantaneous effect and now no warming for 15 years indicates..well..at least a 15 year lag.
Now i understand you have your hands full answering Jo but i would appreciate a thoughtful response, on the other hand i wont hold it against you if you simply cut and run like all the other times.
Cheers
80
CO2 did change.
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/11/the-message-from-boreholes/#comment-1189237
23
NiceOne…
Are you sure it’s science?
Can you meet the challenge of constructing simple statements in English that would describe the measurable, empirical events that if they were to occur would falsify your beliefs in Catastrophic Man Made Global Warming (or whatever it is that you believe).
How do you tell that what you believe is not a dogmatic superstition?
What would falsify your notion that CO2 is both a forcing and a feedback?
30
I started to watch Mr Alley’s talk, but could not continue. He is a historian, an excitable moron, saying strange things. Why draw attention to him?
10
The boreholes in the Greenland ice-sheet provide a calibration that indicates the Greenland summit increased in temperature by 22C since the Last Glacial Maximum.
Global average temperature increased 5.0C, ocean SSTs about 4.0C, Tropics by 3.5C, Antarctica by 10.0C but somehow Greenland increased by 22.0C.
The science of borehole thermometry is not sound and it has set-back Greenland ice-core science by 20 years.
92
You mean ice-core.
Yeah local climate is not the same as global climate. What other data do you have in Greenland to suggest what the local climate was doing?
Proxy data, by it’s very nature is inaccurate. I agree. Hence why, in part, Nova was previously incorrect to use Hunag et al to suggest the MWP was warmer than today.
322
Be Nice, if you want to talk about ice cores rather than boreholes, I have a question to which I am hoping someone here has an answer . Carbon dioxide is soluble in water, right? And it becomes increasingly soluble at low temperature and at high pressure? At very low temp and high pressure, co2 is extremely soluble in water.So, when we do a core , the friction of the corer and the ice must melt some of that ice core, and the co2 from the sample would be lost , dissolved in the water. If this happens, then there would be very little correlation between atmospheric co2 and the co2 recorded in the ice cores. How much of a problem is this? Any glaciologists out there willing to comment?
40
“What do boreholes tell us? That past warming episodes were global. ”
I couldn’t disagree with this more. In my opinion, the signal from a borehole is mathematically fabricated. Boreholes tell us that governments, universities and scientists are willing to accept money for replicating a mathematical and scientific fairytale. The fact that it is on a global scale speaks to the poor quality of the science in general.
You do have to actually do some math to understand the problem, CA has some good posts on it.
171
I agree. In the paper they talk of heat flows of 55 to 62 mW/m2.
Take a column of rock of varying constituents 1m square, 1000m long. Insert an LED in a hole at one end. Run a hose over the other end for 1000 years, then with a thermometer determine whether the LED was switched on, and when.
It is beyond ludicrous.
The pea under 20 mattresses and the Higgs Boson are easy peasy.
20
I have scanned through the paper cited and I’m not really satisfied that the friction heating generated by the drilling of the borehole can be, or has been removed from the signal that Huang and Pollack are seeking to demonstrate.
There are so many variables in drilling a borehole – bit type, drilling muds, types of power source etc., all of which can heat the walls of the borehole in different ways, that it seems to me that trying to extract such a subtle signal is a hopeless task.
100
I am sorry, but as a geologist I can only say that measuring heat signatures from boreholes as proxies of historic temperatures is at best just another example of Mannian mathematics, or at worst complete BS.
Let’s look at the factors which have to be considered:
1. Is the borehole dry or full of water – the latter is the norm. So is the water, or the rock, temperature being measured?
2. Is the local thermal gradient known for each borehole.
3. Is the geology of each borehole logged and taken into account – different rocks have differing thermal conductivity.
And this statement: “But if we dig holes down to 2,000m below the surface it’s possible to see signals that appear to be from the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, and the Holocene Optimum — going back 20,000 years.” I am sorry but even Mann and Hansen would be embarrassed to make statements like this.
210
You want to drill a borehole down 2000m where I live. (Central North Island New Zealand) One place you will get water at 96 degrees at 2m below the surface, and 500 m away you will get water at 7 degrees at 60m (that’s the well we draw our drinking water from).
Okay we have a wonderful tourism industry based on this geothermal activity. But what would Huang et al conclude from those boreholes?
130
I agree. 1000m below Lithgow, NSW the coal mines are quite warm. Surely crust thickness and geology play a key role and mask any effect of cooling from above. On the Tasman Glacier, NZ a 6″ layer of morraine effectively stops any further melt of surface ice by solar radiation. I question the whole idea that the crust is significantly altered by atmospheric warmth. Other factors might be at work tho’.
60
Hi Peter
As a geologist, you would know (like most other geologists) that Michael Mann is full of it.
The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warming Period are well known to geologists, and it is an affront to them that the IPCC tried to pretend these events weren’t real, global or significant.
Your attempts to sow doubt won’t work. The Huang et al 1997 paper was (is) robust. It is a smoking gun on alarmist deliberate dishonesty.
Whether temperatures now or during the medieval warming period were warmer doesn’t matter. The fact is temperatures are very similar. And that is all that is required to demonstrate temperatures today are within the normal natural variable temperature range.
And for the record I do believe and agree that man’s CO2 influences the climate and is making the climate warmer. The key question of course is by how much.
Cheers
61
Peter,
Don’t expect a quick response to that question.
You posit a scenario that is not currently on Nice One’s crib sheet. You will have to wait 24 to 36 hours before somebody in the SkS Central Committee can stitch a response together that is suitably sneer-worthy for the standard-issue delivery style.
Alternatively you may be asked to cite several references to peer reviewed research showing that holes in the ground have a significant tendency to fill with water, and do so on a global basis.
110
Many years ago I founded a drilling company in South Africa, it quickly grew to having 42 diamond core rigs and three water well rigs.
I was always amazed that just about every hole we drilled ‘made water’ albeit sometimes very slowly – that’s not the bit which amazed me, that bit was that the water temperature was almost always 56 degrees F.
Anyhow, that’s not the point. The point is this, no sane person could possibly take this statement seriously – it is complete and utter BS. “Following a change in temperature at the surface, it takes about 100 years for the perturbation to reach a depth of 150m, and 1,000 years to reach 500m depth.”
Solid rock has a heat memory of tiny changes in temperature and this can actually be measured travelling at the rate of ~1.5 metres/year?!?!? Yeah, right.
60
Back in 1979 (or there about) I was taken for a visit to the Vaal Reefs gold mine in South Africa. I can’t remember the time of the year, all I can say was I don’t remember it being cold on the surface, but I can say I remember very clearly that it was HOT down in that mine, far hotter than the surface.
60
hmmmm – mining equipment & insulating rock walls vs exposed surface susceptible to current weather.
Yeah, great scientific mind you have.
110
Yes he does!
However James I doubt anyone will take you seriously anymore.
Have a look at the link below and note this part: “The deeper you go inside the Earth, the hotter it gets. ” Were you away the day they did science in primary school?
http://www.ceoe.udel.edu/extreme2004/geology/tectonics/index.html
50
Having skimmed Jo’s interesting post I’m Hooked, must read the whole lot later.
In the comments, Peter Miller has made a great case for ignoring boreholes in the Earth as being useful.
Examining past temperature records on the Surface with this method seems inaccurate.
A number of problems are listed and the idea of past temperature records being available from that technique is squashed.
Discounting rock conductivity, adjusting for proximity to core magma, and extrusions are just a couple of the more important issues.
It would seem a monster of a task to derive a zero base point from which to allocate real temperatures created by “heat moving in from the surface” to depths of 150 metres.
The whole idea of heat moving in to the Earth for anything more than a metre or two seems ridiculous when the overall situation is viewed.
The Earths core is very, very hot; certainly you would not touch it with your finger.
At the other end of this energy highway we have Deep Space ( pardon the drama) at 1.6 C deg above zero absolute; an equally perilous place to try to exist.
You do not need much common sense to work out which way the heat is going to flow; and no it’s NOT inwards towards the core.
In 2009 we visited New York Museum of natural science and saw a number of rock samples on exhibit.
I was surprised to see a beaker sitting besides a number of samples that contained water.
Apparently this water was equivalent to the water held by the sample. Peter may be able to comment on the ability of water to move through granite, but I suspect that over geologic time scales it must add to the overall conductivity of the mass.
Having said all that, I can see why ice cores, may still be useful.
They are a genuine time capsule and while not giving exact temperature records the proxy system should still be valid there.
KK 🙂
80
“Deep Space ( pardon the drama) at 1.6 C deg above zero absolute”
Deep space doesn’t really have a temperature.
10
Hi Andy,
Have heard that in the past and never got to get my head around it.
Probably what I should have said is that any object placed there (in deep space) would rapidly lose energy and reach equilibrium at 1.6C deg over abs zero?
Does that sound more feasible?
KK 🙂
10
If that were the case, the moon would be at 1.6C abs. It isn’t.
But remember that a body in space can only loose energy by radiation, not conduction.
If a body has even the least bit of self warming capacity (eg a space craft), cooling can be a problem.
And if it gets a bit of radiant heat from somewhere, it warms rapidly.
Strange hey.
Comes down to the problem how to measure properties of “nothing” 🙂
40
Hi Andy
For a large body like the moon there would be residual energy left just as Earth has residual energy left over from formation.
That wonderful science reservoir “Google” says that “the temperature of the Moon can dip down to -153°C during the night and in the day can rise to 107°C.”
So the sun does make a big difference.
You live and learn.
KK 🙂
20
Just had a weird thought.
If Al Gore in one of his properties were dumped in space, would it create enough hot air and CO2 atmosphere to get a warm as Venus.?
(not that the CO2 would help at all, anyway. Makes no difference on Venus)
Or would he need Hansen, trneberth, Lewy, Gerbles, an ancient butler called Robyn….. and minions such as JB, NO, a Cat, and a Donkey etc to create enough hot air ???
(sorry, been marking stuff for the last few days, my brain is going way tangential !!)
30
Food would become a problem, unless you also added a big enough trough.
10
Latest News re court case against Mann, and more
Click here.
71
LOOK LOOK .. OVER HERE!!!!
215
Inane response from James … as we have come to expect.
80
Britney Spears???
10
Sorry, but the writing style is unreadable. The writer would have done well writing the annual reports for the current five year plan for the USSR.
There is probably some factual statement about the latest news on the Mann/Ball court case, but it is so deeply buried in bullshit that I have real difficulty seeing it.
20
.
Sadly, I too must concur. It reads like somebody took some newsworthy factoids and tried to string them together into a “Boys Own Adventure” series.
As Rereke put it – truly cringe-worthy.
And I write that as an admirer and supporter of the PSI.
20
Written by someone who is somewhat “over-exited” 😉
10
I have to agree with Philip. The prose in cringe-worthy. All it lacks is a liberal sprinkling of “OMG’s”.
10
Interesting that Weaver has been forced to withdraw his writ (with lots of costs I hope) against Tim Ball, because Weaver refused to let his IPCC models be shown.. would not produce the evidence to court.
Mann, next !! 🙂
20
OK, I’m no expert on boreholes. But it doesn’t take much on the ball to ask some questions, among which is this — how in this world can one calibrate a borehole?
The answer — the only answer I can see — is that it takes a lot of assuming. Or do they each come with an instruction manual?
.
.
.
I can remember being in Virginia City, Nevada, USA, a 19th or early 20th century gold mining town turned tourist trap. One of the most prominently displayed bits of mining history in Virginia City is how, as the mines got deeper the temperature went up so fast that at the depths where the gold led them it was so hot the miners couldn’t work. They had to make continual trips (horse and wagon) to the nearest mountains where there was snow, bringing back big blocks of ice. Those were taken down into the mines where special rooms had been carved so the miners could cool off for 10 minutes or more every 15 minutes (their time limit, not mine). Otherwise they couldn’t keep working in the high temperature.
So what exactly are these boreholes measuring for us?
Jo’s statement,
nails down exactly what the question is and why no one should get very excited over boreholes.
PS: Virginia City is high up on the side of a mountain. So high in fact that the depths where the temperature was too high to work were probably not very far below the surrounding desert floor.
Now before my critics jump on me, I know none of this proves anything, doesn’t even come close. Which is exactly my whole point.
100
Makes you think there should be some pretty big error bars in those nicely smoothed graphs. And given all the rounding and errors I wonder if there a hidden fluctations on decadal intervals. These graphs would make the simple and those incapable of logic to assume that the climate was more predictable and uniform many centuries ago.
50
Quote from the article: “How fast does that heat spread down? In the words of Huang:
Following a change in temperature at the surface, it takes about 100 years for the perturbation to reach a depth of 150m, and 1,000 years to reach 500m depth.”
=================================================
But in the words Chuang it is a complete nonsense about moving perturbation, for many reasons. Who should we believe now?
OK, I made Chuang up, but the question remains: who on Earth scientifically proved that thing about moving perturbation? Where are experiments proving that?
What about turning critical thinking on when we are offered “proxies” once again?
30
I have a question that kinda relates to this topic (theres a first ha ha) that anyone can answer if they like.
Here at work we are experiencing a small problem with our equipment now i wont bore you all with the detail but suffice to say i needed to compare the internal temp with the outside temp.
Now to cut a long story short we all know that as we climb in altitude the temp drops but as i was watching this event unfold i was struck with a question that i thought i would ask you all.
Firstly the data.
On the tarmac the outside temp was 32C
At 13800 feet the outside temp was 0C
At 40000 feet the temp was -62C
As i said this data is not news to most people but the question i was struck with was “how in the hell does CO2 trap/create/absorb and retain heat?”
Look at it this way, if the atmosphere had the capacity to hold heat then surely the heat from the sun would be absorbed/retained in the upper atmosphere and as we ascended the temp would rise but this is not the case. The only thing that can absorb/retain heat is teh surface.
No the atmosphere does not retain heat so if it does not have the capacity to retain heat how can the green house effect even work? Surely any heat given up by the surface must be released to space.
Therefore any changes in temp (historical) could not have been caused by increasing GHG’s the borehole data above may be true but it was not caused by CO2 or WV etc any culprit needs to be found.
71
Ya know Crakar, you’d have to go to the SkS “Advanced” site for their technical answers like this:
Imagine a big black ball (that’s the evil C atom). Now there are two little arms coming off it at an angle. At the end of each arm is a little white ball. These are the O atoms. They were designed to tightly grab hold of any loose photons. When they get them, they scurry back down to ground and hide them (sometimes under rocks). They know that people like Santer, Trenberth and model computers are looking for all this heat, but they are saving them up to melt some ice (it’s thirsty work ya know!). After hiding the heat, they then scurry back up to find some more.
That’s why you don’t find much heat at 40,000 feet.
That pretty much summarizes warmist theory. 🙂
50
Says Nice One November 26, 2012 at 9:32 pm #6 and provides a link to Skeptical Science and an article entitled: “A Comprehensive Review of the Causes of Global Warming.”
Following this link here is a truncated version of the short research summaries provided. It is self evident that they depend in great part on estimates and wholly on modeling. This hardly represents ‘multiple lines of evidence’ that disprove the null hypothesis that human influenced climate change is not responsible for the observed increase in temperature in the late 20th century.
On the other hand, a ‘settled’ view based on this level of evidence merely serves to prove the experimental hypothesis that advocates of CAGW live in a fantasy world of modeled reality upon which they build their precarious, unsustainable constructs relying upon the installation of statist and international totalitarianism to impose their beliefs.
In my branch of science, I would be laughed out of the room babbling on about models and estimates without solid empirical evidence. But then I’m not an esteemed member of the Disorder of Catastrophists.
I looked at the proffered list of studies with interest and maybe fleeting hope because it is ‘difficult’ and ‘stressful’ being a climate empiricist as opposed to a fantasist. I thought for a moment that multiple lines of evidence would at last relieve me of this single-minded burden. My bitter disappointment was complete when I was instead confronted by a long line of estimates.
I had briefly succumbed to Nice-One’s sardonic humour. Never again. I feel affirmed in my view of reality and I thank Nice-One for their thoughtful input.
As follows:
Tett et al. (2000).
“Tett et al. applied their model to global surface temperatures from 1897 to 1997. Their best estimate matched the overall global warming during this period very well; however, it underestimated the warming from 1897 to 1947, and overestimated the warming from 1947 to 1997. Tett et al. estimated that natural factors have had a slight net cooling effect, and thus human factors have caused more than 100% of the observed global warming.”
Meehl et al. (2004).
Meehl et al. 2004 used a similar approach to Tett et al., running global climate model simulations using various combinations of the different main factors which influence global temperatures (GHGs, solar activity, volcanic aerosols, human aerosols, and ozone), and comparing the results to the temperature data from 1890 to 2000. They found that natural factors could account for most of the warming from 1910 to 1940, but simply could not account for the global warming we’ve experienced since the mid-20th Century. Meehl et al. estimated that approximately 80% of the global warming from 1890 to 2000 was due to human effects. Meehl et al. concluded that human caused more than 100% of the global warming over that period. Over the past 25 years, nearly 100% of the warming is due to humans, in their estimate.”
Stone et al. (2007)
“Stone et al. actually published two studies in 2007. Over the 60 year period, Stone et al. estimated that humans caused close to 100% of the observed warming, and the natural factors had a net negative effect. As with Stott, their model did not fit the data perfectly, though they had the opposite result, underestimating the observed warming. In their second 2007 paper, Stone et al. updated the results from their first paper by including more climate models and more up-to-date data, and examining the timeframe of 1901 to 2005. Over that full 104-year period, Stone et al. estimated that humans and natural effects had each contributed to approximately half of the observed warming. They estimated that solar and volcanic activity were responsible for 37% and 13% of the warming, respectively.
Lean and Rind (2008)
“Lean and Rind 2008 used more of a statistical approach than these previous studies, using a multiple linear regression analysis. As with the previous studies discussed, this doesn’t add up to exactly 100% because the statistical fit is not perfect, and not every effect on global temperature was taken into consideration. From both 1955 and 1979 to 2005, they estimated that humans have caused close to 100% of the observed warming.”
Stott et al. (2010)
“Stott et al. (S10) used a somewhat similar approach to LR08, but they used their statistical multiple linear regression results to constrain simulations from five different climate models. The average of the five models put the human contribution at 86% of the observed warming, and greenhouse gases at 138%, with a very small natural contribution. Stott et al. also corroborated their results by looking not only at global, but also regional climate changes by reviewing the body of scientific literature.”
Since when is a ‘review’ evidence???
Huber and Knutti (2011)
“Huber and Knutti 2011 implemented a very interesting approach in their study, Huber and Knutti took the estimated global heat content increase since 1850, calculated how much of the increase is due to various estimated radiative forcings, and partition the increase between increasing ocean heat content and outgoing longwave radiation. More than 85% of the global heat uptake has gone into the oceans, so by including this data, their study is particularly robust. Huber and Knutti estimate that since 1850 and 1950, approximately 75% and 100% of the observed global warming is due to human influences, respectively.”
Foster and Rahmstorf (2011)
“Foster and Rahmstorf (2011; FR11) implemented a very similar statistical approach to that in Lean and Rind (2008). Using the temperature data from the British Hadley Centre (which was used by LR08, and is the most frequently-used temperature data set in these studies), FR11 found that the three natural effects in their analysis exerted a small net cooling effect from 1979 to 2010, and therefore the leftover influence, which is predominantly due to human effects, is responsible for more than 100% of the observed global warming (huh???) over that timeframe.”
Gillett et al. (2012)
“Similar to S10, Gillett et al. applied a statistical multiple linear regression approach to a climate model – the second generation Canadian Earth System Model (CanESM2). For their attributions over the most recent 50 years, we took the average of the latter two, and used their ‘other’ category as an estimate for the influence of human aerosol emissions (which will result in somewhat of an underestimate, since most ‘other’ effects are in the warming direction). Gillett et al. estimated that over both timeframes, humans are responsible for greater than 100% of the observed warming (huh???).”
So…plenty of robust estimates, some even greater than 100% of the observed warming from multiply funded sources constitutes evidence. And you wonder why so many folk struggle with this view of reality as they feel your grasping fingers snatching at their pockets in the name of the Ministry of We Know Best?
To the barricades I say.
240
Outstanding Manfred! A great brief on the current state of warmist affairs.
90
Well hang on a moment.
We need to recognise the quality of this information.
Quality, by definition, is being able reproduce results. And when you look at the sample, the stated estimations are certainly reproducible. In fact, there seems to be very little variance in the quantity or quality of estimations made. That would explain the lack of error bars.
Gosh, I wish physics was that easy.
70
If only software was that easy…maybe Windows would never crash. 😉
10
WARMISTS: Multiple studies calculating (yes, using models) the Attribution of recent warming
vs
“SKEPTICS”: ________________________________________________ ?
213
“SKEPTICS”: _______________________ REALITY !!!
80
This comment by you clearly establishes you as a minor troll and a waste of time; Jo has connected a number of times to this analysis and list of papers which disprove AGW.
You ignore this substantial list and analysis and your own list has been effectively critiqued by Manfred above although I thought he was much too polite about those papers, F&R 2011 particularly which is just dreadful.
In any event you are not contributing to this debate beyond being an irritant and if you are going to persist could you at least be entertaining.
90
By your very own reasoning, you would classify Nova as a troll because rather than address the reasons I LISTED BEFORE, she simply repeats herself.
11
Something that hasn’t happened for a decade and a half is hardly “recent”.
70
Amazing MV, that James has this OCD thing in reciting that prayer. Can’t seem to get the concept of statistical significance through his skull.
50
James,
You’ve convinced me.
Certainly sounds like ironclad “virtual” evidence on which to base totally and (importantly) abruptly transforming the entire world’s economy, by 1)forcing countries to invest in a multi-trillion dollar carbon casino for the benefit of rogue bankers and predatory corporate raiders to profit at the expense of genuine working folk who actually contribute something of value to society, by 2)stifling development in the 3rd world by restricting their access to fossil fuels, by 3)sending large numbers of the world’s poor off the financial edge into starvation through rising food prices, by 4) drastically cutting the standard of living (and needlessly restricting access to energy) for those in the developed world, by 5)forcing countries to heavily invest (with money they can ill afford) in renewable wind and solar that don’t work well enough at the current state of technology (due to intermittency and lack of energy storage capacity) to make them viable for any more than a small boutique percentage of power production, etc, etc, etc.
Who needs evidence anyway when the stakes are so minor? So what if the whole CAGW was an ill-founded and poorly conceived mistake, and nothing catastrophic was even remotely on the cards within the next 100 years or more. Nothing bad can possibly happen by taking a few sensible precautions, surely. What’s a few million lives here and there between friends? Only a number, right.
Just like Orson Welles on that Ferris Wheel in “The Third Man”- no moral dilemma at all if you don’t see those whom you harm, is there?
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Winston, that’s all ‘conspiracy theory’ according to James.
No doubt you caught Christiana Figueres’ comments about how all our lives are going to be very different if she gets her way with us.
30
Would that be soprano or castrato?
30
Economic policy inspired by the ancient Mexican moon goddess? What’s not to love? 8-S
Mind you, it’s an upgrade on Keynes.
30
OK, coulda chosen my words better there, methinks.
Don’t care much for the castrato tessitura though, now you mention it Winston.
30
Estimates? Of course they are estimates! Science is all about making estimations. You want 100% answers I suggest you study mathmatical proofs.
On the non-warmist front, as others here have pointed out, you’ve bugger all to offer in the way of an alternative explanation for the Attribution.
Nova posts her link to “Global Warming Disproved”, hoping to derail the debate and fails to answer the question of attribution.
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Mrs Nice, I’ve answered the attribution question many times. It’s always the same: You’re the one asking for our money so you can stop the storms, the tides, the onslaught of killer fish, freak clouds, and early season grapes. You need some evidence that you are right. When we ask you for some, you point to models we know don’t work, or you pretend we need to do what you can’t — explain the planetary climate.
We’re still not fooled, but we are bored.
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I’m not asking for any money.
I am asking for your opposing “skeptical” science that counters the attribution of recent warming.
The models, whilst not perfect, are better than having no idea at all, which is your current position.
10
Your “scientists” certainly never tire of demanding more moolah.
Attribution schmatribution! It’s called natural variation. You know, that thing that you warmista deny when it suits then invoke when it suits. Nothing like being flexible, huh..
So……any answer you can conjure up will do as long as it suits your belief. Even if your quack “climate scientists” somehow stumbled on the right answer, if the method is crap then the science is crap.
Lenin used to refer to “useful idiots”. I have no doubt he would have described you as a “useless idiot”. As well, you really are an unpleasant piece of work. Nobody forces you to comment here yet you persist in acting the part of a drunken, deranged, crack-headed bogan to spill your bile and abuse the hostess of the site. Awful to think that there are creatures like you stalking the good earth.
Now go find a real job.
12
Still no calcs from you guys????
10
Are you guys still at it?
Somebody needs to get a life – seriously! And I don’t mean Jo, she has several already.
Nice One, let me lay it out for you as somebody who has done considerable research work as a modeller (see my comment at 20.1).
Models have never constituted evidence of anything. Whether you are using Mathcad or the nuts and bolts approach of Assembler and Fortran2, all you are doing is stitching together algorithms – subroutines and functions – that simulate mathematical formula. The field used to be called Numerical Methods, or Applied Mathematics by the more pretentious.
You want to do a Fourier Trandform of a complex waveform – get the routine and plug in the relative amplitude for each time interval, and let her rip. You want to measure the heat transfer around a closed metallic ring, just grab the appropriate routine, specify the ring dimensions, thermal conductivity of the material, and energy applied, and let her rip. Easy. And the models always gave you the right answers.
The problem is though, that you need to ask the right questions. You need to have the right hypothesis, and to express that hypothesis in mathematical terms that the models can understand, and do so unambiguously.
Garbage in equals garbage out. And it does it every time, without fail.
This is why the climate models (or any mathematical models, for that matter) can never provide proof of anything.
The best you can say is, “If the current hypothesis is true, then this should be the result we would observe”. When you don’t observe the results you expect from your hypothesis, you either change the hypothesis, or you change the models by changing the functionality.
What CAGW has done politically, is to define the hypothesis and then cast it in concrete. Politically, it is then left it to the modellers to try and tweak the models to best match that predetermined hypothesis. And that is why the models cannot, and never will, constitute evidence or proof of the hypothesis. It is a circular argument.
But if the hypothesis is correct, as it well might be, then there would be other empirical evidence that supports it. Evidence other than a bunch of algorithms thrown together by the modeller.
That empirical evidence is what we ask to see. Not model output. And especially not model output where the input data has been “adjusted” to make the output appear closer to the hypothesis.
We know the models are not perfect, but they are based on the ideas behind the hypothesis, and it is that hypothesis that is the alarmist’s current position. But it is no scientific position at all, it is a political position for which models will never be able to provide proof.
So, Nice One, it is put-up or shut-up time. Where is the empirical evidence (not models) that supports the hypothesis of anthropogenic global climate change?
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It is that easy RW, all you need to know is how to right a few basic lines in C or is it dancing penguins? anyway thats all you need to know.
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Well, that’s my problem – Assembler and Fortran2 – gotta know what’s in the registers … 🙂
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probably were the CAGW modellers go wrong , they mix up computer registers with cash registers.
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Reproducibility aka. reliability serves fantasists well. They continue to do a really appalling well funded job very reliably in the name of politics and further funding. Realist empirical science rates such predictive activity less well, though the post-modern clap-trap appears to rate it rather well.
Then climate realists come along waving a little inconvenience called validity and all hell breaks loose. Realists are the devil incarnate, irrational, demented and wrong about everything. Fantasists happily continue in their cotton wool headgear supported by mercenary and political interest.
There are other areas in which this phenomena is paralleled to some measure. Clinical practice for example is riddled with sacred cows and arcane practices. Wonderful physical tests exist that purport to elicit a sign. Clinicians repeat them reliable, over and over again. Confirmation bias abounds. Then real world studies come along and show the tests have no validity – that is, they do not accomplish what they purport to do when compared against a ‘gold standard’.
Climate models it seems to me, are not so dissimilar. Climate fantasists have a very very long way to go before they can claim ‘evidence based best practice’. For the moment therefore, it is undeniably ‘usual’ practice.
How awfully passé.
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The last few days around here could be made into a TV show called “When Warmists Attack”.
Do they smell blood in the water? Or were they told by their thought leaders that there was blood in the water, so gnashing and splashing and biting nothing but air?
It’s all quite bewildering. Which is probably their goal.
The tables are turning. The skeptics are no longer the only ones “delaying action on climate change”, though the warmists dread a different kind of action.
Perhaps the JN Team could put together a Lesson Plan for deprogramming warmists, showing them how they’ve been fooled by their masters, and equipping them with some basic instruments of skepticism.
Aside from our dear hostess, perhaps it could also use the help of Robin (eg,eg), BobC (eg, eg), ExWarmist (eg), Bruce of Newcastle (eg), and anyone else who wants to join in.
We cannot just substitute one kind of brainwashing for its equal and opposite kind. This must equip recovering warmists with the intellectual toolkit and reliable data sources to test the CAGW hypothesis for themselves, i.e.- in a way that would support CAGW if the evidence for it existed.
I like this Nice One. We should adopt him/her as a pet. And subject it to brainwashing to deprogram them of their warmist delusions. They can be the first in-patient of the Nova Skeptics Clinic For Warmist Rehabilitation.
Okay I haven’t thought about the name much yet. NSCWR doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue easily. Plus the term “warmist” is considered insulting by some, and doesn’t exactly endear it to the fence-sitting public. I’m sure our less technically inclined commentators can devise a better marketing plan for the idea.
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The problem is that the warmist meme has become deliberately obfuscated. Recreational goal post shifting has become a primary occupation. The CO2 induced (C)AGW hypothesis has been politically corrected to anthropogenic influenced climate change. All anthropogenic activity is now interpreted within the environmental meme. Church and State are once again no longer separate.
We need to highlight the necessity of a New Separation. Once effected by challenging the overwhelming papist authority of Rome, now we challenge the aspirant global authority of the UN, Helen Clark, Ban Ki-moon and Jan Eliasson.
Among other things, highlighting UN Agenda 21 is a useful place to start.
60
Whoah, hold on a second there. We both know that’s what’s going on, but the public can only absorb one mindbending cognitive dissonance at a time. Telling them global warming was a scam is big enough by itself. We’re only making the education task more difficult by throwing Agenda 21 and the UN takeover into the mix.
For one thing, what about the Leftist Greens who DON’T believe global warming is man-made?
One of the criticisms of the Heartland institute was that they didn’t make it clear if they were just a right wing industry mouthpiece or whether they were truly focussed on busting the carbon tax scam. If they are genuine about the carbon tax scam then the green left who don’t believe in CAGW should also be welcome at the table. Such people are likely to be sympathetic to Agenda 21 simply because of the environmental protection and sustainability angles.
I myself have no issue with pursuing sustainability for a more libertarian civilisation, but separating the Agenda 21 tyranny from sustainability and conservation should be a totally separate battle in my opinion. That issue is huge. Really huge. Bigger than global warming huge. What people learn from CAGW can prime them for understanding the larger problem – the plan described by President G H-W Bush as “a New World Order” (his words, not mine). But tying the two together is going to impede progress on both.
If only Robin the education researcher were here to lend an opinion on that. That’s why we need a team.
70
Nicely said Andrew. I think I’ve been in the bunker too long! I agree, one duck at a time, preferably starting with the ‘smallest’ most digestible.
30
On second thoughts, I should clarify the above. You say “one duck at a time…”
I’m not saying people should ignore the NWO conspiracy theory. It sounds crazy and it’s a vague theory but deserves attention if even half of it is true. The timeline of climate change is in decades at minimum, whereas the NWO could be deployed in…??…well who knows how those people think.
I’m just saying that in tailoring our arguments to specifically redirect climate change policy from mitigation to adaptation, we should not import the NWO stuff into that conversation. It holds both back. We can’t tell people that they’re not permitted to stand up against tyranny unless they first understand blackbody radiative transfer! Likewise it is not necessary to understand the enormity of A21 / ICLEI / CDM before they can recognise Greenland used to be green.
Some people will follow both issues, and probably join the dots between them, but each conversation happens separately in (cyber)space, not separately in time.
Climate should be addressed firstly by science and secondly by satire of the chief warmist screwups and coverups. The politics (of “why?”) can be chucked in at the end after the physical reality is recognised.
50
Andrew, you make a good point. I am into the idea of caring for the world we live in. I like the farming ideal of leaving something better when you pass on. At some point a few years back I decided it was time to investigate the AGW issue because I had no information other than trite news clips. Aided by some physicist offspring I came to the conclusion that it was the greatest scam of our time.
I think Jo’s Handbook is great. People seem more likely to change their minds when they are given the information and allowed to draw their own conclusions. The CAGW crowd and some sceptics badger the dis-believer, it is an ineffective strategy.
40
The Skeptic’s Handbook is something of a gold standard in that regard. Even a dumb old software engineer like me could understand it.
10
Thanks Andrew,
Fine company indeed.
10
“As the wave of heat moves down from the top it gradually spreads and blends with cooler decades, information is lost and resolution fades. But if we dig holes down to 2,000m below the surface it’s possible to see signals that appear to be from the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, and the Holocene Optimum — going back 20,000 years.”
Huang doesn’t know the difference between an hypothesis and a proxy. This is very silly. He’s going to lose his shirt if he bets on the stock-market and starts seeing patterns that aren’t really there.
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OT but it looks like there are some academics that have it worked out.
The Havard University investment fund will continue to invest in fossil fuel related companies
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/11/25/univ-fossil-fuel-divsetment/
10
Thanks, Ross.
From the article I note that “The divestment referendum […] earned 72 percent of the student vote.”
But, “President Drew G. Faust reiterated that the Harvard Management Company […] is principally committed to generating funds to support education…”
It looks like they’ve got plenty of work left to do… 🙂
20
Sorry Jo. I have a great deal of trouble accepting this. I haven’t read the papers cited, so maybe some of the geological issues are covered, but I have my doubts.
Doubt A: How does one drill through meters of ground/rock and not introduce the heat of drilling as contamination? Even well flushed/lubricated drills cause heat.
Doubt B: Most people think of the earth as similar to what they can see. The earth below our feet is NOT similar, nor can it even be thought of as consistent. Where one stands now on level ground could have had several mountain building episodes, sea floor deposits, river sedimentation, carboniferous growth, etc. during it’s history and form the roots that lie below along with layers of folded metamorphic rock. Even the supposedly most stable Archaean continental structures still undergo a continuous change resulting from earth building events/changes as the Archaean structures endured through ages of erosion, sedimentation, and magma intrusions.
Doubt C: Yes, earth has a molten core. It is NOT a smooth round mass far below our feet with occasional volcano pimples that reach the surface. Tectionics, crustal structures, magma intrusions, etc. bring fluid or plastic magma intrusions close to the earths surface in many areas. Either now, or many times in the past.
Doubt D: We’ve established some of the constraints to understanding what lies below us. Now I am very curious how waves or pulses of heat migrate through all of these different layers in any sort of cohesion?
Da: Water changes thermal conductivity. In the heat’s march to earth’s center, how many times has this heat wave migrated through each level containing water.
Db: Dry rock, especially dry porous rock is very insulating. How does heat migrate through every insulating layer? And how many insulating layers are in each hole?
Dc: People call them underground springs. Some call them aquifers. What is understood is that often these waters are ‘migrating’. How are temperature pulses followed through geologically moving water, (certainly fast enough to disrupt yearly measurements or wells wouldn’t be worth the effort to drill them).
Dd: Just because one somehow manages to drill a truly dry hole, that does not mean that very near that hole underground there is no moving water equalizing temps. It’s why dousers are still used.
De: Very rarely are holes drilled straight down that fail to start drilling through increasing temperatures at a shallow depth. As one commenter already posted earth’s core is radiating heat towards space, cooling over the ages. As soon as a hole reaches a higher temperature than the previous meter, I sincerely doubt that the increase is a wave of surface heat. Especially if it is warmer ten meters further.
Df: If it is possible to truly measure these waves of heat, then a controlled experiment with sealed sensors should be able to detect this summer heat shadow, yearly, peak to trough in solid replicable measurements. Have these been done? Without this basic science approach, swallowing the whole 1000m hole deal is impossible.
Dg: Consider that all of these layers are below us. Often, one or perhaps all of the layers below us are not horizontal. How do angled layers, (off horizontal to vertical) impact heat migration? Especially if they are more thermally interactive?
However, I am very glad this borehole series is viewed as causing warmist angst! Especially given the sks trollfools in full annoyance mode here. Cite Cite cite they bleat, look at our junk circular science links which prove sks is the most post embarrassment historically edited site ever! We (sks desperate denizons) ever adapt and edit to hide our past illusions. If a CAGW alarmist coprolitic scientist uses the words; maybe, could, possibly, might, perhaps, and similar evasive words we accept and believe that it means CO2 is proof of warming, (or is that CO2 spikes cause storms or…) Yeah yeah, just more flim flam science theatrics at sks and friends. So any paper that causes these CAGW gumbies angst is all right with me. That doesn’t mean I believe all of the borehole findings, just that I love warmista angst..
Some intriguing earth shaping links:
How many caldera-forming eruptions have occurred from the long-lived hotspot that is currently beneath Yellowstone?
Why do I wonder where this hotspot was when the siberian traps erupted?
Yellowstone Volcanic History
This is just over a few million years. In a similar timespan, the India subcontinent (now) decided to leave Australian waters and slam into Asia. A hundred million years makes for many changes on every continent.
30
that is an astonishingly long comment given this
might reveal that it is all irrelevant.
21
I won’t try to answer all your doubts, but this one is easy: Of course the drilling operation creates heat, but that heat is localized and small compared to the heat contained in the thousands of cubic meters of surrounding rock. In a very short while, the borehole will return to the temperature of the surrounding rock. Just don’t measure it while drilling.
If you have ever been spelunking, you might know that the temperature in a cave (once you have gotten 20 feet down or so) is the average temperature of the outside climate. In Colorado at 6000 ft elevation and near the 40th Parallel, this is about 55 deg F. If you build a bonfire in a cave, you can heat up some of the rock by quite a bit — but the next day, it is all 55 deg again. The amount of heat the fire adds is practically infintesimal compared to the heat capacity of the surrounding rock.
(BTY: Building fires in caves is one of the (many) things I have done once in my life that I strongly advise others not to copy.)
20
Oh? Got anything to prove all of my doubts are wrong? Geology is geology, dispute requires real proof both in data and independent replication.
Flim flam trough feeders would do well to understand the basics of geology before they contruct statistical mountains. as well as commenters who just snark.
Several others with a background in geology have expressed major doubts, with details of their doubt.
I walk by thousands of books. Some I may be interested enough in to check the book out. What makes me interested? Authors, writing quality, detail in the text, trusted source recommendations, etc. What makes me disinterested, well absurd cover stories are certainly one way to keep me walking. What’s absurd you ask? A 1000-2000 meter hole that is pristine enough to track historical surface temperature waves. Suuure they did…
When you’ve read the paper and can refute all of the issues above (not just mine), then comment that perhaps the paper is worth a read and give us enough detail so we’d be interested.
10
ATheoK, My hat tips to you!
The best burn of the month.
Good one.
11
So your answer is more unsupported assertions, including the old fallacy that if an expert wrote it, it must be so.
Your gut feeling response is not good enough.
11
Oh crap now we have to go back to defining “expert”.
You go first.
00
Allow me …
Defining Expert:
An expert is somebody who is cognisant of everything currently known in their specialised area.
Or, to put it another way, an expert is somebody who knows a great deal about very little.
And so, the more they know about practically nothing, the more of an expert they become.
We often hear politicians claiming to defer to the advice of “experts”. A statement that says it all, really.
00
Jo,
The equation governing temperature down boreholes is the diffusion equation, in which the second derivative of temperature with respect to distance down the hole is proportional to the first derivative of temperature with respect to time. If you know the rate at which heat comes up from below due to geological processes, and the temperature at the surface as a function of time, you can solve the equation to give the temperature profile down the borehole at a given time ahead, in particular the present.
The aim is then to use the measured temperature profile down the hole as the solution to this equation and then ‘invert’ it mathematically to find the temperature at the surface as a function of time running back into the past.
However the diffusion equation is time-asymmetric, which means that it leaks information, which means that you cannot do this inversion uniquely. More than one time profile of the temperature at the surface can correspond to the same solution of the equation. It is possible to say if a particular time profile of the temperature at the surface is *consistent* with the observations, but not to say that it is the only one that is consistent.
This means, of course, that it is possible to cheat (if you wish to be actively dishonest), or to stop looking as soon as you have found an answer that matches your prejudices (which is not dishonest but is just lousy science).
Is this the real reason why borehole analyses find hockey sticks…?
10