The last couple of hundred years illustrate a continual increase of warmth with the starting point being around 1700 rather than 1850.
Based on CET, this is flat out false.
The trend from 1700 to 1900 is negative (although not significantly different to zero).
The trend from 1900 to now is, by contrast, nearly two degrees per century.
CET shows a hockey stick.
Mosh
Taking my comment to its logical conclusion we can query the 30 year period used-why 1983?. The 1990’s were the warmest decade in CET since the 1730’s. From the year 2000 there has been a small overall decline in CET
What is noticeable is that though we can observe this decline in CET it remains on an overall high plateau. The year just passed was one of the warmest years on record in CET but not the warmest, despite a very hot summer-but not as warm as 1976.
The 1730’s were not noted for their warm summers, but a general overall warmth, with especially mild winter and Autumn.
So the warmest 30 year consecutive period? I would want to check that out, with a start at a year of my choice rather than from the start of the decade, as is more normal, but not it seems with the work under reference-1983?
tonyb
A very happy new year to you very tall guy. I look forward to your article on CET in due course.
tonyb
Curious George:
Their belief stems from emotive conviction, not reason, and so does not properly consider the level of appropriateness (or not) of their sources / experts. Strong emotive support of emergent cultural consensuses bypasses the objectivity necessary to perceive such things. We don’t think all those who are religious adherents (still a big majority in the world) are lying about their beliefs, or about the general validity of their priests or old religious writings; they are just emotively convinced. Same thing with belief in imminent global climate catastrophe. While this also means a fringe of folks more consciously bending the rules due to noble cause corruption, that stems from emotive belief too and the majority of adherents won’t be in this category anyhow. If it was as simple as all the adherents (whether grass roots or indeed elite) lying, the whole social phenomenon associated with a certainty of catastrophic climate change would never have made it out of the nursery. Conscious lying on this scale also implies a massive and massively co-ordinated conspiracy, but in reality no such are needed to explain events; cultural belief provides group co-ordination at instinctive / brain architecture level that bypasses reason and objectivity. Of course in any human enterprise that is large enough, just from statistics there’ll also be a few outright liars and scammers, and for sure the climate change domain has mushroomed in size. But that’s very different to being a main or causal component. Consider Hayhoe’s quote; do you really think this is an expression of bold and conscious lying, or merely deep conviction, an emotive belief?
Tony,
Happy new year to you too!
Here’s my article on CET for you:
CET is only reported daily from 1772, but earlier data is available, should one wish to trust it. Using this earlier data, the trend from 1700 to 1900 is negative (although not significantly different to zero).
The trend from 1900 to now is, by contrast, nearly two degrees per century.
CET shows a hockey stick.
You don’t have to worry about going off the cliff, because the water level has risen so much with global warming – oh, wait!
Reflections – “My experience in owing a company that makes weather and climate predictions …” “Owning,” I think!
http://climexp.knmi.nl/plotseries.cgi?id=someone@somewhere&TYPE=t&WMO=cet_1900:2018&STATION=Central_England_Temperature&NAME=temperature&KIND=season
CET show no significant warming from 1989 on.
CET winter temperatures show now significant warming for the last century.
Judith Curry,
I appreciate statement of Roy Spencer.
The Five Big Questions / December 18th, 2018 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D. :
”It is no secret that I doubt increasing CO2 in the atmosphere will have enough negative effects on the global environment to warrant the extreme cost to humanity of substantially reducing those effects. Note that this statement has both science and energy policy components. In fact, with “global greening” we should consider the possibility of net positive benefits.
– – –
1) Is warming and associated climate change mostly human-caused?
2) Is the human-caused portion of warming and associated climate change large enough to be damaging?
3) Do the climate models we use for proposed energy policies accurately predict climate change?
4) Would the proposed policy changes substantially reduce climate change and resulting damage?
5) Would the policy changes do more good than harm to humanity?”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2018/12/the-five-questions-global-warming-policy-must-answer/
The recent climate warming, believed to be dominateded by human CO2 emissions, without any evidence in reality, can be questioned. The questionable, blind belief of politicians in man-made, threatening climate warming demands an alternative strategy. The sooner even politicians will understand that the better it is.
Judith Curry’s statement ”how much warming is caused by humans is THE key issue of debate” is the most urgent one in order of priority to be solved. But she seems not yet to be ready to show, what the real share of warming is caused by human CO2 emissions. In addition, I have understood, that Judith Curry is gradually taking care of the alternative strategy, too, by taking part in activities to make mankind adapt themselves to natural, extreme weather phenomena.
The climate sensitivity based on results of climate models adopted by IPCC is deeply uncertain and exaggerated, as Judith Curry etc. have stated. As there is no evidence in reality, according to which any human-caused, threatening warming of climate could be possible, my forecast is that she will agree with the scientists who say: ‘climate sensitivity can not be distinguished from zero’ (Cripwell, Wojick, Arrak etc; and even Scafetta and Lindzen have claimed that climate sensitivity is less than 1C or 0.5C).
My experiences by solving of multiscientific, metallurgical problems have teached me to solve even other practical problems that way, what is needed even to solve multiscientific problems of climate changes. At first you have only to understand, which one – or which ones – of potential problems can be regarded as potentially threatening. That is realized only on the bases by getting to know theoretical and/or earlier, practical experiences well enough. Thereafter, by basing on experiences of you own and even others, you can search for potential alternatives to be investigated more exactly. Anyhow, without any evidence, each ones of these potential alternatives are still only hypotheses. Any potentially working solution needs an evidence in reality, which can be solved by any due observation available in reality, at the latest by being put that to experimental or practical tests in order to check a working solution.
As far as I am aware, IPCC, intergovernmental panel of climate change, has been established by UN politicians in order to prove scientifically, that the recent climate warming has been caused by human CO2 emissions. In spite of the continuous attempts during the last 3 decades, any cutting of human CO2 emissions according to the Kyoto protocol and the Paris aggreement has not been able to prove any proper basis for the believed, threatening climate warming. Even any cutting of CO2 emissions according to the latest report of IPCC, will not seem to be any working solution. That is why a new strategy must be adopted, in which the cutting of human CO2 emissions must be given up. One necessary way seems to be to replace the cuttings of CO2 emissions by making mankind adapt themselves to natural climate changes and extreme weather phenomena. Why even the latest report of IPCC does give an unreliable view on the cause of the recent climate warming? My view on that is as follows:
– At first the representatives of IPCC – possibly by circular argumentiton, without any evidence in reality – seem to assume, that the recent increase of CO2 content in atmosphere has been totally caused by human CO2 emissions. Whereas, according to natural laws, the share of human CO2 emissions in the recent, total increase of CO2 content in atmosphere is only about 5 % at the most. We have to understand the fact that the quality of all kind of CO2 emissions to atmosphere are similar. Any content of CO2 in atmosphere is determined according to dynamic balance betwween all CO2 emissions from sources to atmosphere and all CO2 absorptions from atmosphere to sinks. The influence of any CO2 emission on CO2 content in atmosphere depends on its its share of total emissions.
– Secondly even the role of the sun in the climate models adopted by IPCC seems to be based on assumption – may be even on circular argumentation, too – without any evidence in reality, too. The sun is key factor to control climate warming. In addition there are plenty of other factors conrolling changes on climate warming dominated by the sun. From the cretagenous period, since 100 million years, until today activity of sun has little by little been increasing. However, the climate temperature during that time has decreased so much, that nowadays tropical temperature is ahout 2 C-degrees and climate temperature of polar regions 20-40 C-degrees lower than during the 100 million years ago, caused by continent movings, which have changed water streams of oceans so that climate had been getting cool especially upper latitudes. During the latest 800 000 years, being associated with glacials and interglacials, the sun has orbitally controlled changes of climate temperature according to distance of the globe from the sun in the mildly elliptical orbit. During the current interglacial Holocene there can be found, that changes of climate temperature trends can be explained by activity changes of sun, which has especially controlled natural El Niño and La Niña phenomena.
– The third inconsistence, compared to the truth, is, that, according to observations, trends of CO2 content in atmosphere have been always found to follow trends of climate temperature and not vice versa. For instance that can be found by geological and even latest observations during the last 100 million years, during the last 800 000 concerning the glacials and interglacials, and even during the present interglacial Holocene, as the trends of climate temperature has been dominated by El Niño and La Niña phenomena.
– Finally one have to learn to understand the truth, that by using the climate models adopted by IPCC, nobody has managed to forcast or to hindcast trends of climate temperatures.
As a summary one can find that there is no evidence in reality, according to which human CO2 emissions could make any observable, threatening warming of climate be possible. Read more in the links https://judithcurry.com/2017/05/02/nyes-quadrant/#comment-848558 and https://judithcurry.com/2011/08/04/carbon-cycle-questions/#comment-198992.
Mosher, Judith in this regard cites Steve McIntyre who has many hundreds of posts on paleoclimate and is one of the world’s leading experts. Any assessment that omits his work is in my view not worth much. I would liken paleoclimatology to nutrition science. Both are fields where poor statistical methods and poor quality data give a large scope for bias. Both fields have a poor track record.
Yes, and to make sure there is no contradictory messaging that motivates people to actually think for themselves. The worst of all worlds, losing the narrative to the threat of critical thinking.
Exactly, I cited SMI also in my evaluation. SMI is probably the best single person to do a first-order assessment on this topic. I am doing a second order assessment, in terms of assessing whether the assessment appears justified. IPCC AR5 did a first order assessment, whereas NCA4 did a second-order assessment.
!!! fixed
Actually, the errors and uncertainty are so large that they are mostly unquantifiable. Putting ‘medium’ or ‘high’ confidence on errors/uncertainty that you can’t objectively quantify seems rather ridiculous.
Excellent post, and (for me) a new perspective.
I did an analysis of every AGW example used in Chapter 1 of NCA3 (2013). Each was either simply false, or false in a broader context (i.e. cherrypicked), or definitionally exaggerated. Concluded the chapter showed deliberate (intentional) NCA bias. Illustrated each example in essay Credibility Conundrums in ebook Blowing Smoke.
Nick, I am a P.Eng, mechanical ‘74 with post grad courses in heat transfer, with the same obligations to be correct.
The amount of heat being radiated from one surface to another is
q/a= [k/(1/ehot+1/ecold-1] x (Thot^4-Tcold^4).
The ground is at Thot due to being warmed by sunshine,
If the atmosphere was only N2 and O2, it would be completelely transparent to Infrared. The “surface”, the ground would radiate to is outer space at -270 C. But CO2 and H2O readily absorb and reradiate IR. Because the H2O and CO2 are the same temperature in the atmosphere as the N2 and CO2, the “surface” the ground radiates to is “the sky”, and the “sky” is much warmer than outer space. You can take an IR thermometer and typically read the temperature of clouds at about freezing and blue sky down to -80, but $40 IR guns do not have proper emissivity settings for this job. Anyway my point is that the ground temp has to get warmer as it heats in the sunshine in order to radiate the same amount of heat it receives from the sun, when there are radiating gases between the ground and outer space.
Yes, it is foolish to assume a constant Albedo of .3 to come up with the often stated 33 C number, when Albedo is so dependent on clouds and clouds are made of water, but people who make this generalization are only trying to show how the radiative gas effect works.
Dr Curry,
I am not surprised that you have misgivings regarding the IPCC’s treatment of confidence levels. When reading “IPCC AR5 guidance note on consistent treatment of uncertainties: a common approach across the working groups”, I was struck by a number of serious flaws. In particular, I found the following:
a) Failure to define its terms
There are plenty of references to variables such as ‘confidence’, ‘risk’, ‘likelihood’ and ‘uncertainty’ but nowhere are these terms defined – even though the guidance note has the sole purpose of standardising upon how levels of said variables are to be described.
b) The use of semantically vague terminology
Any adjective that can take the modifiers ‘high’, ‘medium’ and ‘low’ is, by definition, a ‘degree adjective’ suffering all of the problems associated with the philosophy of vagueness. In particular, there will be boundary-related paradoxes and ambiguities resulting from shifting context.
c) Skewed framing
Using the term ‘confidence’ as the measurand communicates a built-in bias towards certitude. A commonly understood definition for ‘confidence’ is ‘full trust’. That being the case, ‘medium confidence’ is no longer a neutral position. If instead of ‘confidence’, one had used ‘uncertainty’ as the measurand, the subject matter would take on an entirely different framing.
d) Treating consensus as an independent factor contributing towards confidence
By treating ‘degree of agreement’ as one of two dimensions in the calculation of confidence levels (the other being evidential weight), figure 1 of the guidance note represents a seriously flawed approach to the metrication of confidence levels:
i) In reality, the level of agreement is not an orthogonal variable that can be treated separately from the robustness of evidence. For example, if the evidence is robust then disagreement should be low, or something very odd is happening. Moreover, it is only when the data is sparse, and expert opinion starts to serve as a substitute, that level of agreement between experts even becomes relevant. That said, when the experts do agree, this agreement is factored into the assessment of evidential weight – it still can’t be treated as a second dimension in the assessment of uncertainty.
ii) In treating levels of dispute as a legitimate measure of uncertainty, the assessment invites the involvement of factors that have much more to do with politics, sociology and cultural bias than they do the objective evaluation of data. The methods adopted by the IPCC represent a professionally immature approach towards uncertainty analysis, in which there is too much focus upon social cohesion within the scientific community and not enough focus upon the evidence.
e) Conflation of uncertainty and risk
It is not always clear whether ‘likelihood’ refers to the probability of occurrence of an event or the prospects for a hypothesis proving incorrect. The former would be a factor in the calculation of risk; the latter is germane when calculating levels of epistemic uncertainty. In this respect I found the advice to be conceptually confusing and too open to misinterpretation.
These, and other deficiencies, will be very apparent to anyone who has any background in the application of uncertainty analysis when making risk-based decisions. There are plenty of professions that fall within that category (e.g. safety-critical systems engineering) and I find it disappointing that greater effort has not been made by the climate science community to engage such expertise.
On a wider matter, I have always found IPCC judgements to be over-reliant upon the use of probabilistic methodologies that pay insufficient regard to the capture and propagation of systemic uncertainty. Once again, one cannot help but feel that a bit of cross-professional liaison would have been of benefit here.
Doug Affirm. For details see Line By Line (LBL) modeling with 11 greenhouse gases, 3459 spectral regions, and 150 atmospheric levels. e.g. by Ferenc Miskolczi using HARTCODE. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ferenc_Miskolczi/publication/268507883_The_Greenhouse_Effect_and_the_Infrared_Radiative_Structure_of_the_Earth%27s_Atmosphere/links/5a1c29d40f7e9be37f9d5b8e/The-Greenhouse-Effect-and-the-Infrared-Radiative-Structure-of-the-Earths-Atmosphere.pdf
PS At full sensitivity analysis, O2 also weakly absorbs/radiates.
JCH
Section 6
https://judithcurry.com/2011/12/01/the-long-slow-thaw/
Lamb of Cru, the Met Office, the KNMI, Hulme, Barrow, Lockwood of The University Of Reading, amongst many others, believed CET had a useful place as a proxy for the temperature of the Northern Hemisphere.
Why are they ‘silly’?
tonyb
