OK, the CO2 part of the warming has jumped 3 times since 1940. However, the warming from 1870-1940 was about 0.2 C so it depends where you want to start from. It is easiest to take the whole period with a forcing change of 2.3 W/m2 and a rise of 0.8-0.9 C. This avoids the issue with starting points, and using short 30-year periods that you might want to cherrypick. Whatever the sun did in this period, it is very hard to get the anthropogenic portion down to 0.4 C with 2.3 W/m2 of forcing. The IPCC attribution with their 95% confidence was for the period since 1950, so sticking to that, you will have an even harder time with your numbers.

OT but self destructing messages seem to have been around for a while now. Climategate III won’t happen now! That’s providing that no paper copies of the files are made.

https://www.raymond.cc/blog/message-or-text-that-automatic-deletes-after-viewing/

Apologies for this overly long comment. I read much of the USGCRP Climate and Health Assessment and found a many dubious if not
erroneous conclusions and ‘findings’. It’s GIGO science at its worst.
Here’s my attempt at looking at just one of them:

” Future climate warming could lead to thousands to tens of thousands of
additional deaths each year from heat in the summer, as calculated by
extrapolating statistical relationships and without considering potential
adaptive changes”

Summary of how they got to this finding: They use CMIP models which, if
not outright flawed, have not proved their validity in estimated temperature
levels in the 2030 to 2070 timeframe, are used as the basis for extrapolations that assert the creation of more and more 3-sigma ‘extreme events’ of hot weather; this is despite the statistical contradiction and weak support for predicting significant increases in outlier events based on mean increases; then, based on statistical correlations between mortality and extreme heat events (ie heat waves), temperature warming trends
are conjured into an enlargement of the risks from heat events; risks increase significantly only by ignoring obvious adjustments and mitigations any reasonable community or person would make to adapt to warmer weather.

How many deaths per year from heat have we measured in the past?
CDC 6,615 heat related deaths from 1979-1996:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00053616.htm

During 1979-1995, a total of 6615 deaths in the United States were attributed to excessive heat exposure; of these, 2792 (42%) were “due to weather conditions”; 327 (5%) were “of man-made origin”; and 3496 (53%) were “of unspecified origin.” So 160 deaths per year where heat was the direct cause.

Davis, Knappenberger et al found that heat-related mortality has been declining significantly, by a factor of 4 from the 1960s to 1990s:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1241712/
“Heat-related mortality rates declined significantly over time in 19
of the 28 cities. For the 28-city average, there were 41.0 +/- 4.8
(mean +/- SE) excess heat-related deaths per year (per standard million)
in the 1960s and 1970s, 17.3 +/- 2.7 in the 1980s, and 10.5 +/- 2.0 in
the 1990s. In the 1960s and 1970s, almost all study cities exhibited
mortality significantly above normal on days with high apparent
temperatures. During the 1980s, many cities, particularly those
in the typically hot and humid southern United States, experienced
no excess mortality. In the 1990s, this effect spread northward
across interior cities. ”

When it comes to total weather-related mortality, winter cold kills more than
twice as many Americans as does summer heat.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/07/30/weather-death-statistics-cold-heat/13323173/

The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), in the CDC reported:
Based on death certificate data from 2006-10, the report’s authors found
that “about 2,000 U.S. residents died each year from weather-related causes of death.” The CDC report found that 63% of these deaths were attributed to exposure to excessive natural cold, hypothermia or both, while about 31% of these deaths were attributed to exposure to excessive natural heat, heat stroke, sun stroke or all.

So this data tells us a few things:
– More deaths from cold than heat, by two to one ratio.
– Total deaths from heat in the several hundreds per year (about 400 per year)
– A trend of declining mortality, at least during 1960s to 1990s,
likely due to technology adaptation such as air conditioning

Analyzing heat-related mortality based on the above information,
one would conclude that moderate warming would likely result in fewer net deaths, and that the trend of technology adaptation plus warming will make
the already small issue of weather related deaths even smaller.
This is in particular the case when the warming is more pronounced
by warming winter nights. Of course 400-600 heat-related deaths is a
concern, but relative to diabetes at 75,000 a year, cancer at 584,000 or
suicide at 41,000, etc. it is relatively small.

So how did the authors get to ‘tens of thousands’ of excess deaths?
They use a ‘statistical’ approach is to ignore cause of death and look
instead at excess numbers of deaths correlated chronologically with ‘extreme weather’.

They show for example the Cook County (Chicago) records in 1995,
(Chapter 2, Figure 2, page 83), showing deaths in July 1995 during a heat
wave. Since 700 reported deaths were statistically ‘excess’ versus about
400 deaths reported as ‘heat-related’ on death certificate, they justify
that this is better and that focussing on death certificate causes
understates the actual mortality impact. In some cases, this may be valid; a heart condition could be worsened by heat exhaustion for example. However, this approach is fraught with ‘correlation without a cause’ error; it’s unclear how or if the heat caused this mortality, or whether some indirect correlation, eg if EMS services burdened by an extreme event being less available was a cause.

The analysis that extrapoles this statistical correlation of ‘more deaths
during extreme events’ into a future where we are hit with more frequent
extreme events; the analysis suffers from two main errors:

1. Error one is that is we raise the mean, we do not necessarily raise
the number of outlier events. How many days will be ‘3-sigma’ 99.7
percentile events? Trick question; if ‘extreme events’ become more
common, they will stop being ‘extreme’, thus invalidating the statistical
correlation obtained. Notably, its not warmth that studies showed
caused higher mortality but “much hotter than average” weather.
Warmer US cities do not have much higher mortality rates from heat
exposure, nor do they have higher mortality rates in general.
If warmth killed the elderly, they wouldn’t move to Florida.
Throughout the report, there are many attributions of harm to more
‘extreme events’ with the supposition and claim that extreme events
are more likely as a result of AGW. However, there is not a strong
validation that raising the mean will also raise the number of
“much warmer than average” outlier heat waves. The claims are made
without strong validation.

2. The other error is the failure to account for adaptation in
addressing heat-related events.
For example, Paris last decade suffered from a heat wave that killed
thousands; the heat was no worse than Dallas Texas has yearly, in fact
milder, but Paris is not adapted to the heat. Thousands of Parisians died
because they lacked technology adaptation, ie, air conditioning,
and personal adaptation, in a heat wave that would rate a mild spell
for the city of Dallas.
The report on page 85 references Schwartz, using GFDL-CM3 climate models, to project 10,000 excess deaths by 2100, more deaths on net than
die today from the heat, and note: “without any quantitative adjustment for potential future adaptation”. Buy why is such an assumption credible basis for estimation?

This is related to the first point, because in fact, the reason why these
‘extreme events’ kill is simple – communities don’t expect them and so are not ready for them. Buffalo is more ready for 3 feet of snow than Atlanta, and Dallas can handle 100 degree days better than Portland Maine (or Portland Oregon). The entire analysis relies on not having any adjustment for adaptation,
and for assuming there are going to be a lot more 3-sigma events in the future. This is a bit like Lake Wobegon, ‘where everyone is above average’, except here, normal weather gets to be called ‘extreme’.

It defies credulity to assume that in the face of risks of extreme heat
and increase in mean temperatures, and people will die rather than take
reasonable precautions like find an air-conditioned place to stay cool.

The chapter 2 references this paper:
Schwartz, J. D., M. Lee, P.L. Kinney, S. Yang, D. Mills, M. Sarofim,
R. Jones, R. Streeter, A. St., Juliana, J. Peers, and R. M. Horton,
2014: Projections of future temperature-attributable deaths in 209 U.S. cities using a cluster-based Poisson approach. Environmental Health, submitted.

Joel Schwartz of Harvard, lead author on the paper, is a contributing author
on the chapter, and Kinney, Mills and St Juliana also share authorship on
the submitted paper and chapter.

So, to summarize, Chapter 2 has the counterintuitive and counterfactual
conclusion that more warmth overall will lead to a large increase in
excess deaths; this is stated even though:
1. More specific evidence-based measurements of heat-related deaths suggest a much lower mortality impact from heat (several hundreds annually).
2.Cold kills twice as many people directly in USA than heat (CDC data).
3. Hotter southern cities do not have higher mortality than colder ones; adaptation influences impact.
4. Climate models (CMIP/RCP6.5 and RCP8.5) that include dubious ramped-up temperature extrapolations are used to construct outcome estimates that largely overstate current trends and are likely to overstate future ones as well. Moderate temperature increase estimates would lead to insignificant impacts in the next 50 years.
5. As with most of the ‘harms’ around climate change in this document,
it centers on the claim that more extreme weather events will take place.
Those claims are not strongly justified, but conclusions based on such
assumptions are stated with “High Confidence”. It should be rated
“low confidence”, as connections between warming and more extreme
weather events is weak at best.

There are dozens of findings like the above in USGCRP document, and most of them are similar in nature. Example – in the area of food security, it’s claimed spoilage of food will increase from climate change because people will be too stupid to refrigerate or keep cool food products. Weak, statistical correlations, sexed up models and failure to contemplate obvious mitigations lead us to GIGO findings.

Repeat, wrong

And please do not say again that we know the physics of global warming, we do not.

Here are some of the points that Murry Salby made in his lecture. For his explanations you need to watch it.

• After 2002 fossil fuel emissions increased three times faster but the CO₂ in the atmosphere increased at exactly the same rate as it had been. The growth of fossil fuel emission thus increased by a factor of 300% but the growth of CO₂ didn’t blink.

• Humans put 5GT CO₂ per year into the atmosphere. The natural sources and sinks are each around 150GT/year, according to the IPCC. The natural sources and sinks are 95% of what determines atmospheric CO₂, and an imbalance there is more likely to be the cause of a net increase than a perfect balance there and the increase caused by anthropogenic sources.

• Net global emission varies more than 100% from year to year. Since the human part remains constant, this can only be caused by variations in natural sources and sinks. There is a correlation of 0.93 between changes in CO₂ emission and changes of surface properties. 0.8 is due to temperature.

• Within observational precision the evolution of observed CO₂ and its thermally induced contribution are indistinguishable .

• CO₂ has a residence time of five years, but absorption, which is highly variable, is not observed, and so residence time is a guess.

• CO₂ lag behind temperature leaves unambiguous which is the horse and which the cart.

• The more CO₂, the faster it’s absorbed. The first order Taylor Series for absorption, wherein CO₂ absorption is proportional to CO₂ abundance is close to exact. c = .996.

• If mankind had been obliterated as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis and there had been no further anthropogenic emisssions, by 2007 the CO₂ level would have reached 360ppmv instead of 380, but would have reached 380 ten years later.

• The fossil fuel component will never reach 50% of overall emissions. Before it can, fossil fuel reserves will be exhausted.

• All fossil fuel will be exhausted by around 2122, when the ppmv will be 690, which will further increase surface temp by 0.6K.

• In 2014 the anthropogenic contribution to increased CO₂ is less than 30%, and the anthropogenic portion of the increase from 280 to 400 ppmv has been responsible for a temperature increase of 0.18K.

• Over the 20th century as a whole, temperature exhibits no systematic change except for two periods. In the 80s and 90s CO₂ was at 350 and there was a rise. The 30s and 40s also showed warming just as long and even faster but the CO₂ then was less than 300ppmv. The three decades prior to 1910 showed a 0.7K reduction, so what was CO₂ responsible for here?

All the best Doc!

Remember to turn down the AC temp when you get to the room. (Somehow I think there is some sort of custom with the thermostat too) ;-)

You’ll do great. Tell them the truth as you see it. Nuance doesn’t work in these settings.

Somewhere in your oral or written testimony, I’d like to hear/see your favorable opinion on “Fast Mitigation” (methane, smog, HFCs, dark soot). Its absolutely fine to talk about “problems”, but its also important to give at least one example of a mitigation effort that you feel looks promising. Your opinion on Fast Mitigation shows “Good Faith” to the folks who incorrectly label you a Naysayer.

The TSI change you show translates to a solar forcing change of 0.2 W/m2 in the whole period. Remember that we are comparing this with CO2 forcing changes of 1.8 W/m2 in the same period, so it would indicate that CO2 is somewhat dominant. Since 1950, the IPCC has a total forcing change of 1.7 W/m2, with the solar contribution somewhat negligible compared to the sum of the main factors, GHGs and aerosols. While a change of 0.2 W/m2 focused in one or two decades does show up in the trend, such as in the 1930’s, it isn’t much in the big picture against a steadily increasing GHGs forcing that has been recently rising at 0.3-0.4 W/m2 per decade.

Joshua,

I hear that you hang at Lucia’s a bit. Do you see more good faith exchange of views among people with strongly divergent perspectives there than you see here? If you ever read ATTP, i’d be interested in your take on what takes place over there.

I’m a climate refugee from Lucia’s in a sense. :) I’m extremely fond of the Blackboard, but her climate blogging has winded down. Times were, you could have a good discussion there. We went a thousand comments in a pretty civilized discussion with Neal King from SkS once. Seemed like a pretty decent fellow. I think one probably still could have a decent discussion at the Blackboard. I always ended up doing too much homework over there though, trying to follow what everybody was talking about. I’m not a physical scientist, just a software engineer. The work was both a plus and a minus. All this said, food fights did happen there.

ATTP, yes I read it. I’m unwilling to express my honest opinion because I’m sure I’ve got some unjustified hostility mixed in with whatever legitimate observations I might produce, and I’d just as soon not run my mouth without careful review.

An excellent choice. I’m not a climate scientist but I know how to evaluate data. I’ve been following Climate Etc. since the outset and have learned much. You might point out that natural sources will keep providing CO2 regardless (thank you Tim Ball) and the junk science of Lysenko in the USSR and the racial hygiene crowd in the Reich provide unfortunate evidence of the malignant effects of ideologically driven scientific BS. That’s what global warming is. It may take a while and people will die but eventually the truth will emerge. Sadly, you can count on it and you can count on POTUS trying to smooth talk his way out of culpability, should he still have a say in this. God speed, Dr. Curry, you can make a difference in
D.C and thank you for all you’ve done with Climate Etc.

Hopefully someone will point out that “Carbon Mitigation” is an example of the inverse Robin Hood principle…………by which you rob the poor and give to the rich.

Finally this truth has dawned on a major political party in the United Kingdom:
http://euanmearns.com/tories-place-energy-policy-at-heart-of-manifesto/

If the Tories win on May 7 it may encourage politicians in the USA to start talking sense about energy policies.

The invite was certainly late and you had to drop everything to put your written submission together. The topic is certainly about strength of the science behind the climate change agenda of the POTUS and this could elicit some bad press from the AGW crowd, who seem to be under represented at the hearing.

My thoughts on the science is that there is insufficient evidence of any discernable global trend either way in the climate but that regional impacts will undoubtedly need to be watched for and measures taken to ameliorate any adverse effects on vulnerable communities.

The proposed carbon emissions reduction policies for the US seem to be unsupported by current climate observations and the the use of the GCM’s in their present state for the purposes of prediction seems to be unjustified in the light of their overall divergence from these observations.

Tricky climatologists. )

My understanding is that the present average global temperature is 288 K or 64 F.

That is much warmer than it was 25,000 years ago and much cooler than 50,000,000 years ago:

If you believe in an ice free future you are either smoking something pretty powerful or you believe people like Archer & Ganopolski:
http://www.odlt.org/dcd/docs/archer.2005.trigger.pdf

It would be wonderful if there was any real hope that CO2 would defer of prevent the next glaciation that will decimate mankind. We could save the world simply by buying a bigger gas guzzler or encouraging more Al Gores to fly Gulfsteam jets.

How exciting! I’m sure you’ll do a great job Dr. Curry.
I’m so looking forward to reading it!

He doesn’t talk about ocean acidification that defeats his argument. In fact emissions are about twice the atmospheric CO2 growth rate with a large amount going into the ocean, hence the acidification. He has some net flux arrows the wrong way around especially between the ocean and atmosphere. This is probably why he hasn’t gained any traction. You should be skeptical.

::grin::
====

Simple reality check:

Solar = $1.00/25% = $4.00/W average
Add storage@25¢/25% = $1.00/W average
Total for solar+storage = $5.00/W average. Peak capacity 4-8×Average.

Nuclear = $5.00/W baseload
Add storage@25¢/50% = 50¢/W average
Total for Nuclear+storage = $6.00/W average. Peak capacity 3×Average.

Key Assumption: storage is pumped hydro installed only at existing dams with suitable afterbay.