Lou
Here is the data for the Contigious US year to date. It is the eigth warmest on record
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/201509
It comes from NOAA rather than BEST so is not strictly like for like. I used BEST as Steve Mosher often posts here who works at BEST and may be able to give us an update
Tonyb
Natural variation cannot overwhelm ACO2 at will. At the zenith of its power, negative PDO index numbers and La Nina dominance, it did not even break even.
Dr. Lovejoy:
You state “The scientific debate is now over, the moment of closure has now arrived”
I would submit that the debate has MUCH farther to go.
Much has been written about the role of greenhouse gasses in climate change, but it can easily be shown that increasisng levels of CO2 have NO climatic effect.
Anthropogenic global warming is real, but the actual cause is the reduction in the amount of stromgly dimming anthropogenic sulfur dioxide aerosol emissions into the troposphere due to Clean Air efforts.
The IPCC’s diagram of radiative forcings shows a negative forcing for SO2, but has no component for the positive forcing resulting from their removal from the atmosphere. This is a major error. Their removal results in cleaner, more transparent air, which allows the sun to naturally increase the warming of the Earth’s surface (and which is mistakenly attributed to greenhouse gasses).
The reduction in the net amount of global SO2 emissions since about 1972 is approx. 38 million tonnes The Climate Sensitivity factor to their removal is approx. .02 deg. C. of temp. rise for each net Megatonne of reduction in SO2 emissions (as derived from the 1991 volcanic eruptions). The amount of warming due to their removal is so large that there is simply no room for any additional warming from any
non-solar source such as greenhouse gasses. For example, .02 x 38 + 0.76 deg. C, which is within a few hundreth’s of a degree of 2015’s average global temperature.
Continued efforts to further reduce SO2 emissions will guarantee even higher temperatures, which is why thie scientific debate MUST continue.
As noted above, CO2 has no discernable climatic effect.
Very clear, Matt. He has to assume there can be cyclical elements in the downward trend, which is plainly against paleontological evidence.
I really can’t think of any better explanation than cognitive dissonance engendered by the necessity of sustaining alarm against the evidence of his own eyes.
I’ve said for a long time, that one day we’ll pity these climate scientists, laboring like serfs in the unwilling soil, hounded by beasts, and whipped with disdain.
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Then, show me the same plot for the data you do use.
At the zenith of its power, negative PDO index numbers and La Nina dominance, it did not even break even.
You’re building in an assumption of no longer-term fluctuations. Given the frequent references to such fluctuations, this makes your comment a typical example of dishonest rhetoric.
The true relationship between temperature and CO2 is this one:
Dang, ‘no cyclical elements’. Nothing quite like inadvertently writing the opposite of the truth, which is something Shaun Lovejoy seems able to to subconsciously.
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It’s a nonlinear, dynamic system. I cannot stick my feet into the same river twice, and yet, my family has been sticking their feet, thousands and thousands of times, into the creek that was named for them in 1720. These things are not hard.
Ah! JCH creek, I know it well. It is overlooked by climate bluff.
Tonyb
Explaining the term pink flamingo to my son, I called it something right in front of you, you cannot see. He says, like global warming? Natural variability I replied. I think a question worth considering is, What is it that lukewarmers cannot see?
Your point still escapes me. I don’t consider my comments to be sharp or cutting. The word trenchant is on the acid side of on-topic discourse. Pointedly descriptive and straightforward would be a better choice. I try to be quite dry with the occasional adjective.
And why are you almost out of chalk?
LOL! As I was writing that last question, I just got the “ignore the millenial at your perennial!!! You mean “peril”! Too funny!
Shaun, I think your problem is to equate ‘natural variation’ with a simple noise process (Gaussian or otherwise). P-value analysis is completely inadequate for this problem. Have you applied the same reasoning that leads you to say the probability of the 20thC warming is <1/1000 to the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, or the Roman Warm Period?
I think you would conclude that the probability of these events occurring as a 'natural fluctuation' was also very small. But of course nobody thinks any of these events are simply large noise events. The alternative hypothesis is that there are century and multi-century variations in climate, which are as yet unexplained. If you accept there were a RWP, MWP and LIA, with natural causes, then the probability that a new natural warming event contributed to the 20th century warming is plausibly much greater than 1/1000.
It’s safer in his ignorance, AK, and it allows him to ignore the rest of my comment.
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It’s a nonlinear, dynamic system. I cannot stick my feet into the same river twice, and yet, my family has been sticking their feet, thousands and thousands of times, into the creek that was named for them in 1720.
::grin::. Love ya, most of the time.
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The other side of that joke is that the alarmist consensus has ignored, nay, actively hidden, the longer term natural variation, from the nineties onward, and ever, perennially, more shrilly. Thus, some of the defense of the whole hockey stick meme.
It’s an error, a peril, and not just for the climate scientists, but for all of us, and most tragically, for the poor.
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Maybe what is needed is for engineers, schooled in fluid dynamics, heat transfer, and the interaction between water surface dynamics and atmospheric gases, to take over climate research.
Give them the actual real data and turn them loose and they can take you to the moon and back. We did not have any data to show how to get to the moon and back. We have a lot of Climate Data in Proxy records that go back thousands and millions of years. This can be understood with the data that is already available. Include the climate scientists. Not the 97% climate scientists. I would kick out anyone over 50%.
