What Do We Think About Climate Change

Diagram showing HadCRUT3 monthly global surface temperature estimate plotted against the monthly atmospheric CO2 content according to the Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, back to March 1958. The red line is a polynomial fit with the relation: Y = 46762.84786 - 672.9202291 * X + 3.870440539 * X2 - 0.0111225724 * X3 + 1.59696728E-005 * X4 - 9.164606771E-009 * X5. The coefficient of determination for this polynomial fit is R2 = 0.727377 (N = 611). Last month incorporated in the analysis: January 2009 (shown by red cross). Last figure update: 27 February 2009.

http://www.climate4you.com/ClimateReflections.htm

"In the early part of the period, with CO2 concentrations close to 315 ppm, an increase of CO2 was associated with decreasing global air temperatures. When the CO2 concentration around 1975 reached 325 ppm this association changed, and increasing atmospheric CO2 was now associated with rising global temperatures. However, when the CO2 concentration at the turn of the century reached about 378 ppm, the association changed back to that characterizing the period before 1975. Thus, since 2000, increasing concentration of atmospheric CO2 has again been associated with decreasing global temperature.

The diagram above thereby demonstrates that CO2 can not have been the dominant control on global temperatures since 1958. Had CO2 been the dominant control, periods of decreasing temperature (longer than 2-5 years) with increasing CO2 values should not occur. It might be argued (IPCC 2007) that the CO2 dominance first emerged around 1975, but if so, the recent breakdown of the association around 2000 should not occur, either.

Consequently, the complex nature of the relation between global temperature and atmospheric CO2 since at least 1958 therefore represents an example of empirical falsification of the hypothesis ascribing dominance on the global temperature by the amount of atmospheric CO2. Clearly, the potential influence of CO2 must be subordinate to one or several other phenomena influencing global temperature. Presumably, it is more correct to characterize CO2 as a contributing factor for global temperature changes, rather than a dominant factor."

 

interesting site G
written by Prof of geography Ole Humlum Phd



He was the guy who tried to explain away this photo by green peace saying that all glaciers undergo periods of advance and retreat and suggesting there are as many glaciers advancing as declining

course then there is the sticky little issue of the actual data



course in fairness to the prof it would be important to note that he was specifically referring to local phenomena when he made his statements and in no way commenting on the global situation

looking at the following I can see why its possible to say that there are some glaciers advancing



this next makes it obvious how the statement that glaciers ebb and flow while true is completely misleading in regards to the global tragedy that is rapid global climate change



and we're back to the point made about a hundred pages ago that if we are actually cooling off
how come all this ice is melting

or the more recent point
how come such a large percentage of the sources used by skeptics are industry funded industry published industry spin

I also kinda like how the prof starts out with a diatribe on how this graph is somehow invalid and unfairly depicts the temp over time trend as we approach present



and then moves on to distort this graph



into this graph



by "detrending" for linear fit ( neat trick eh )

and then displays a detrended average
without noting that it no longer represents an accurate visual representation



and after rambling on about co2 then states

an interesting viewpoint given that he just ran us through a hardly detailed description of how he cooked the graphs to show a lack of warming and then presented graphs uncooked to show co2 change
along with his then presumably "honest" comparison conclusion
as apposed to the rest of the worlds
empirical falsification

no wonder no one is listening to the deniers

cheers
B

 

And this - How does this fit with current theories & postulations? http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/05/2535191.htm?section=justin

"...Antarctic ice shelf 'disappears'

One Antarctic ice shelf has quickly vanished, another is disappearing and glaciers are melting faster than anyone thought due to climate change, US and British government researchers have reported.

They said the Wordie Ice Shelf, which had been disintegrating since the 1960s, is gone and the northern part of the Larsen Ice Shelf no longer exists.

More than 8,300 square kilometres have broken off from the Larsen shelf since 1986.

Climate change is to blame, according to the report from the US Geological Survey and the British Antarctic Survey.

In another report published in the journal Geophysical Letters, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that ice is melting much more rapidly than expected in the Arctic as well, based on new computer analyses and recent ice measurements.

The UN Climate Panel projects that world atmospheric temperature will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius because of emissions of greenhouse gases that could bring floods, droughts, heat waves and more powerful storms.

As glaciers and ice sheets melt, they can raise overall ocean levels and swamp low-lying areas...."

The inclination towards weather extremes, are evident and definitely cannot be passed off as "normal events in the cyclic nature of things"...

 

Boston, my darling: you really understand nothing of what you read !!
Here the bibliography of Ole Humlum: http://www.climate4you.com/Text/BIBLIOGRAPHY OLE HUMLUM version20090320.pdf
And here his contact data: Phone: +47 22 85 58 04 Fax: +47 22 84 44 85 E-mail: Ole.Humlum@geo.uio.no
Go tell hem he doesn't know what he's saying.

Masa: search this thread for "antarctic": you'll get 47 posts. Please read them.

Regards.

 

Global monthly average lower troposphere temperature since 1979 for the North Pole and South Pole regions, according to University of Alabama at Huntsville, USA. This graph uses data obtained by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) TIROS-N satellite, interpreted by Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. John Christy, both at Global Hydrology and Climate Center, University of Alabama at Huntsville, USA. The thick line is the simple running 37 month average, nearly corresponding to a running 3 yr average. Last month shown: February 2009 (last diagram update: 12 March 2009).

Source: http://www.climate4you.com/

 

Sea Ice extent

Sea ice extent 1 April 2009. The 'normal' limit of sea ice (orange line) is defined as 15% sea ice cover, according to the average of satellite observations 1979-2000. Sea ice may therefore well be encountered outside and open water areas inside the limit shown in the diagrams above. Map source: National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

Graphs showing daily Arctic (left) and Antarctic (right) sea ice extent until 1 April 2009. Diagrams from National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

 

Superimposed plot of five different global monthly temperature estimates shown above, after setting January 1979 = 0. The graph showing the amount of atmospheric CO2 is based on data from the Mauna Loa station, Hawaii. For the first two decades in the 21th century a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios according to the 2007 IPCC Summary for Policymakers (p.7 and Fig.SPM.5). The rate of this projected temperature increase is shown by the grey stippled line. Last month shown: February 2009. Last figure update: 19 March 2009.

Same source as before.

 

well if you actually look at the graphs you can see the progression from the actual graphs to detrended ones
a pretty deceitful way to make a visual presentation of an upward trend in anyone's book
mathematically remove the upward trend from the plotting system

guy is a classic denier
using a very deceptive argument
not very impressive if you ask me
and pretty easy to see through if you only look

if he was correct about the advancing glaciers
were are they and why don't these many glaciers appear on the data charts
just about every glacier we have is retreating and fast
no signs of any cooling if you look at the ice record

looks to me like not only did I read and understand the article but also saw right through it for the bad attempt at fooling the public it was
why else cook the graphs like that
if not to give the false impression the trend was not upwards

he kinda studiously failed to mention that

instead stating

magnitude and position on the temp scale are both effected by the detrending process
so of course they are not
he cooked the rising trend out of the graphs
a classic case of the typical denialists deceitful presentation

makes you wonder were he gets his money

if you need any further explanations you might want to call these guys at NOAA 301-713-1208 Climate Program Office, Education Program, Climate Literacy
Im sure they will be able to explain whats up with the glaciers and those graphs, ask for the carbon group and tell em Boston says hi
might even be able to tell you were Humlum gets his money from

a colleague of his wrote of his comments

need I list the glacier mass data again



or the glacier extent data



Humlum Phd in geography also was among thirty or forty Phd's to sign a letter to the president denying global warming was occurring
the letter was organized by the infamous Cato institute
you do not want me to expose the Cato institute again for the industry paid public relations arm of the oil and gas industry that it clearly is
and who pays scientists handsomely to sign those kind of "open" letters

the truth will out G
the truth will out

your man Humlum deceptively states concerning glaciers

amazing coming from a guy who just tried to present reformulated graphs
the original looks like this



and when he is done reformulating it where's the rising trend



notice how it says clearly at the top "detrended for linear fit"
so who is formulating (or reformulating in this case) data to fit the desired conclusion

he fails to mention that many glaciers experience rapid states of movement when experiencing rapid melting because the water flowing off them gets under them as well and acts like a lubricant
lets try and remember that glaciers flow downhill under normal circumstances
what matters is the ice mass data and that data is unmistakable
need I repeat it

and this last sentence is classic denialist double speak
Humlum has the nerve to suggest that its Greenpeace who is only looking at one glacier and suggests that its meaningless that the glaciers are retreating

cmon G this guy is being paid by someone to sing the praises of healthy cigarettes

please lets at least try to make this challenging

it begs the question is this really the best deniers can do to support there claims
why was that guys argument so deceptive when even a cursory look reveals the deception
and why use deception at all if the science is so sound

rapid global climate change is real

97% of scientists agree
and that in itself is unprecedented

 

You keep on misunderstanding things and looking for phantoms under the carpets, but it's not me who's going to teach you.

Prosit!

 

FATAL ERRORS IN IPCC'S GLOBAL CLIMATE MODELS
by Jeffrey A. Glassman, PhD

http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2009/03/_internal_modeling_mistakes_by.html

 

Reference
Cook, T.L., Bradley, R.S., Stoner, J.S. and Francus, P. 2009. Five thousand years of sediment transfer in a high arctic watershed recorded in annually laminated sediments from Lower Murray Lake, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada. Journal of Paleolimnology 41: 77-94.

Description
Working with sediment cores extracted from Lower Murray Lake, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada (81°21'N, 69°32'W) in 2005 and 2006, the authors calculated annual mass accumulation rate (MAR) for the past five millennia, which they used to derive a relationship between MAR and July temperature at the two nearest permanent weather stations over the period of instrumental measurements. This work revealed there were several periods over the past 5000 years when the temperature of the region exceeded the peak temperature of the 20th century, the most recent of which was during the Medieval Warm Period, which we have delineated on the following figure as occurring between about AD 930 and 1400, and where the peak temperature of that period can be seen to have been about 0.6°C higher than the peak temperature of the Current Warm Period.


Attached figure: Reconstructed Lower Murray Lake temperature anomaly relative to the AD 1001-2000 mean. Adapted from Cook et al. (2009).

 

Northwest Spain Peat Bog

Reference
Martinez-Cortizas, A., Pontevedra-Pombal, X., Garcia-Rodeja, E., Novoa-Muñoz, J.C. and Shotyk, W. 1999. Mercury in a Spanish peat bog: Archive of climate change and atmospheric metal deposition. Science 284: 939-942.

Description
Mean annual temperatures were inferred from a record of mercury deposition in a peat bog in northwest Spain (43°32'N, 7°34'W) spanning the last 4000 radiocarbon years. The Medieval Warm Period occurred between AD 1000 and 1200 and the mean annual temperature during this time was as much as 3.4°C warmer than that of the 1968-98 period.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/284/5416/939

 

Climate change and coastal hydrographic response along the Atlantic Iberian margin (Tagus Prodelta and Muros Ría) during the last two millennia

http://hol.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/16/7/1003

The Tagus Prodelta (W Portugal) and the Muros Ría (NW Spain) are areas of high deposition rates registering high-resolution palaeoclimatic records for western Iberia. We compare the climatic conditions of the two areas over the last two millennia based on proxies of temperature (sea surface temperatures and oxygen isotopes), continental input (grain size, iron and magnetic susceptibility) and productivity (inorganic and organic carbon, carbon isotopes, benthic foraminifera and diatoms). Biogeochemical changes in the Tagus Prodelta reflect widely recognized North Atlantic climatic periods encompassing the Roman Period (AD 0-350), the Dark Ages (AD 400-700), the ‘Mediaeval Warm Period’ (MWP; AD 800-1200) and the ‘Little Ice Age’ (LIA; AD 1300-1750). The atmospheric North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) drives the Tagus Prodelta multidecadal, long-term variability in precipitation-river input during cold periods (negative NAO) and marine upwelling during warmer periods (positive NAO), a scheme that is reversed in the Galician region. The Muros Ría shows only local hydrodynamics until AD 1150, including a ‘suboxic’ event in the inner Ría around AD 500-700. Since AD 1150 Atlantic warm upwelled waters have ventilated the outer Ría but only reach the inner Ría at AD 1750. The twentieth-century records are also interpreted as a reflex of the inverse NAO mode in both areas, resulting in amplification of the LIA biogeochemical water conditions. Centennial-scale solar activity appears to be another important forcing mechanism (or the only one, if solar activity drives the NAO and ‘Bond-cycles’) behind changes in the hydrography of the Tagus Prodelta, and primary production, bottom ventilation and organic carbon degradation in the Muros Ría.

 

looks like I understood it better than most and was one of the few to notice that the graphs had the upward trend cooked out of em

detrended
means an alteration in the relative values of the relationship between axis

has a huge impact on the visual appearance of a graph
might even remove the obvious upward movement of the pertinent indices

also Im kinda curious
this guy claims in reference to Greenpeace

when clearly there is ample data to suggest that the vast majority of glaciers are in rapid decline and it was he who references only one glacier that just happened to be in advance when in fact the vast majority are in decline





so what is it that you think is correct about his statement
because even his native colleagues came out and said he was wrong

also in what way is it not misleading to suggest that even though one glacier is receding there are numerous that are advancing when clearly the opposite is true

with declining glaciers outnumbering advancing ~30 to 1
and those that are advancing doing so largely because so much melt water has lubricated there flow rate

seems that it is not I that has a some things to learn G
although I have learned a lot here

maybe you could be a little more specific with your concerns regarding my refutation of the good professor

cheers
B

 

the reality of the unprecedented rise in the carbon content of the atmosphere