Blogger Accuses Climate Scientists of 'Manufacturing' Warming

[isohume]

So the motive for "cooking the books" is to keep the coffers filled with research funding? How does this relate to GS/ZP payscale NOAA and NASA scientists? The ones accused of skewing the data.

[JBG]

So the motive for "cooking the books" is to keep the coffers filled with research funding? How does this relate to GS/ZP payscale NOAA and NASA scientists? The ones accused of skewing the data.

If there's no problem to research then there's no funding to research the "problem."

[Msalgado]

If there's no problem to research then there's no funding to research the "problem."

 

Spoken like someone who has no clue how money for scientific research is handed out.  Most of the money raised by my department is raised by calls for grants to advance scientific understanding in our field in one way or another.  I currently work on grants related to biology more than atmospheric science who's research goals have nothing to do with climate change.  That being said there are large climate change implications with some of the research being done.  Many of the people in our department who study things such data assimilation for modeling, convective dynamics, or remote sensing methods are working on grants with very specific goals that don't even mention climate change.  That being said, all of them in some way shape or form advance the science which helps us better understand climate change.

 

There are people who get grants directly related to AGW.  But acting as though we need to have AGW to research the atmosphere is ridiculous.

 

The money trail in this debate is severely tilted toward the private sector oil companies; not researchers.  I'm always confused as how that is always ignored. 

[isohume]

If there's no problem to research then there's no funding to research the "problem."

The problem is, federal employees don't receive grant funding. They are on fixed scales determined by Congress.

[AvantHiatus]

The problem is, federal employees don't receive grant funding. They are on fixed scales determined by Congress.

'Beholden to the grant money, as they say.

[donsutherland1]

“Anyway, any warming observed during the past century appears to be trivially small…”

--S. Fred Singer

 

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/01/climate_change_the_burden_of_proof.html

 

Despite 2015’s smashing the record for the highest global land and ocean temperature anomaly on record, some activists e.g., the above-cited case, continue to try to present an artificial reality that has no basis in the evidence. In this case, the blogger attempted to use the issue of model error to try to mask actual temperature trends. When exposed to the data, his claim disintegrated.

 

If one uses the GISS data set, one finds an annual temperature anomaly of -.08°C in 1900. The 2015 figure was +0.87°C). The 1880-2015 standard deviation is 0.313°C. In short, the 2015 anomaly was just over 3σ above the 1900 figure. Given the anomaly, one could reject the null hypothesis that 2015 was not warmer than 1900 at the 99.7% confidence level. Put another way, there is a less than 1-in-2,100 chance that this outcome is due to chance.

 

If one examines the 1900 +/- 15 years against the most recent 30-year period (ended in 2015), one finds that the latter is just over 3.5 σ above the prior period. That means one can reject the null hypothesis that the current period is not warmer than the beginning of the 20^th century with an astounding 99.95% level of confidence.

 

No credible statistical yardstick can be used to support Mr. Singer’s claim. IMO, one should be cautious when considering the opinions of political activists whose organizations may have vested interests in pushing conclusions that lack scientific merit.

[JBG]

“Anyway, any warming observed during the past century appears to be trivially small…”

--S. Fred Singer

 

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/01/climate_change_the_burden_of_proof.html

 

Despite 2015’s smashing the record for the highest global land and ocean temperature anomaly on record, some activists e.g., the above-cited case, continue to try to present an artificial reality that has no basis in the evidence. In this case, the blogger attempted to use the issue of model error to try to mask actual temperature trends. When exposed to the data, his claim disintegrated.

 

If one uses the GISS data set, one finds an annual temperature anomaly of -.08°C in 1900. The 2015 figure was +0.87°C). The 1880-2015 standard deviation is 0.313°C. In short, the 2015 anomaly was just over 3σ above the 1900 figure. Given the anomaly, one could reject the null hypothesis that 2015 was not warmer than 1900 at the 99.7% confidence level. Put another way, there is a less than 1-in-2,100 chance that this outcome is due to chance.

 

If one examines the 1900 +/- 15 years against the most recent 30-year period (ended in 2015), one finds that the latter is just over 3.5 σ above the prior period. That means one can reject the null hypothesis that the current period is not warmer than the beginning of the 20^th century with an astounding 99.95% level of confidence.

 

No credible statistical yardstick can be used to support Mr. Singer’s claim. IMO, one should be cautious when considering the opinions of political activists whose organizations may have vested interests in pushing conclusions that lack scientific merit.

Were records smashed in any continuously inhabited temperate zone city?

[donsutherland1]

Were records smashed in any continuously inhabited temperate zone city?

That wasn't Mr. Singer's claim. His claim was that only "trivially small" warming had taken place globally over the past century. Statistically, his argument has no merit at all.

[Cheeznado]

Now January also smashed the previous record. 4 months in a row of over 1C higher than average. Parts of the Arctic were 23C!!!!! above average last month. How anybody with a functioning brain can still cling to the notion that AGW is somehow false is mind boggling.

[blizzard1024]

About 20-30% of the 1850-present warming was natural, so you can attribute 0.6-0.7C of the warming to anthropogenic forcing. The CO^2 increase during the 1850-1950 window was not enough to account for the majority of the observed temperature increase during that time.

 

And you know this from what? computer models???  LOL. Explain to me how CO2, if it is doubled leading to 3.7 W/m2 forcing which is around 1% of the total greenhouse effect, will destabilize the climate. 1% change in forcing!! These changes in forcing happen all the time in the climate system from variations in convection, albedo, cloud cover and the climate always stabilizes. Plus,how do we know how much of an upward forcing was present in 1850 from coming out of the LIA??? Like was said on this thread, the burden of proof rests with the climate alarmists. And yes funding definitively sways honest people in the direction of exaggeration.  Look at ALL the adjustments made to various datasets. All make it warmer now and colder in the past. There was a global pause in temperature from 1998-2015, BUT now they adjusted up the temperatures from 1998-2015!!! Why begin at 1998??? They are ruining our real ability to monitor the climate by being so biased toward funding... But who can blame people for wanting careers and feeding their kids I suppose.

[Eric Romm]

Interesting.

It's undeniable that the temperatures are rising. It has been predicted that over the next 20 years it's going to be warmer by 2C. 

[ORH_wxman]

2C over the next 20 years has about as much chance as happening as returning to LIA temps in that time period. 

[lookingnorth]

8 hours ago, Eric Romm said:

Interesting.

It's undeniable that the temperatures are rising. It has been predicted that over the next 20 years it's going to be warmer by 2C. 

Do you mean 2C warmer than today or 2C warmer than preindustrial?

[tracy18]

People claim Global Warming to be a hoax. Scientists, who are arguing about it being real, base most of their evidence on the interpretation of the change in the levels of gases in the atmosphere and the ocean. The actual warming of temperature is something they say they can document, but the primary evidence is drawn from detecting what precedes a temperature rise – the change, and effect of atmospheric gases on the Earth’s environment.
I chanced upon few global warming essays and research papers and it seems like a serious issue not a hoax. There's a rise in sea level, ocean temperatures, Earth's average temperature, Ocean Acidification and shrinking glaciers that cannot be denied.

[Roger Smith]

I believe that the controversy in the blogosphere misses the point and it's because most of the participants have a lot less familiarity with climate statistics than either we as weather weenies (or professionals) might have, or as much as they think they have. 

However, that ironically does not mean they are wrong to be skeptical. I believe the skepticism is misplaced.

Our climate is certainly warming in almost all regions away from perhaps the sub-antarctic. The cause of that may be natural variability combined with some human modifications, or it may be all natural or mostly human. I tend to the view that it is about two-third natural and one-third human-modification. But in the blogosphere, I think the prevailing view is that no "real" warming has happened and that there is some conspiracy to cook the books to pretend that there is warming. 

What I find most significant is that the warming is generally larger in the overnight minima than in the daytime maxima. This is true not just for urban heat island cases but for more regional statistics such as the Central England Temperature series where there is some effort made to adjust numbers (downward) to factor out the urban heat island effect at some of the stations used. 

The result of this is that mean temperatures are rising by about 60% the rate of the increase of overnight temperatures since daytime averages are only creeping upward slightly. Warmer nights will have less dramatic impacts on agriculture than hotter days. 

There are probably other subtleties lost to the main proponents of the debate. Arctic ice depletion has been more linked to sooty deposition than to warm air advection into the ice margin regions. The darker snow or ice cover is able to absorb solar radiation more efficiently and this is why the arctic ice margins are receding in the past thirty years. That may feed back into temperatures slightly but at some point we run the risk of seeing unstable swings in subarctic climate patterns if a larger feedback occurs from greater snowfalls around the subarctic land masses downwind from unusual open water in late autumn and early winter. 

The natural portion of the warming is probably due mainly to long-term and significantly lagged responses to centuries of active solar cycles from about 1720 to 2000, with the brief interruptions of the Dalton and late 19th century minima. I don't find in my own research that there is very much direct response year to year to solar activity but there is certainly a clear correlation with long-term averages with the lag time being roughly 30-50 years. 

The part of the debate about increasing severe weather is probably the weakest part of the orthodox position and I frankly see very weak support for it in the data. 

On the whole, I believe that we are not "screwing up" the atmosphere, we are simply changing the temperatures in the boundary layer and to a lesser extent higher up and in the oceans also, but the circulation patterns are resistant to shifting so we still get roughly the same mixture of air masses, just with somewhat more low-level cloud and milder nights in each situation (by perhaps an average of 3-4 deg when you eliminate the urban heat island). The fact that urban heat islands are expanding and that more people live in them is also a factor, and at some point the argument about eliminating them from consideration becomes moot if half of the land masses become urbanized (as they are now in some parts of the world). Each time large urban heat islands break down under windy mixing conditions, that surplus heat has to go somewhere and not all of it is radiated to space. 

I think our political (and media) classes may have over-reacted to the actual extent of the problem and certainly proposals for changing the climate back to "what it should be" strike me as fanciful and overblown by factors of maybe ten to a hundred. Our climate has not changed as much as some think, and our present ability to bring about "desirable" changes is seriously over-estimated by politicians and media people. I am willing to wager, although this can never really be demonstrated, that if we all stayed home and did nothing for five years, the weather each day in the fourth and fifth year of that period would be so close to what would have happened otherwise, that nobody would notice any difference. Slight variations might occur in temperature averages but the effect on vegetation and snow cover for example would be negligible. But then if that is so, making much smaller changes that are costly make even less sense. 

There, I've done the work of a blogger and you're welcome, blogosphere. No more of this impending ice age nonsense, please. 

[csnavywx]

There's no real scientifically-backed position that can be supported at any less than ~75% human contribution. In fact, the median estimate is 110% IIRC (meaning that natural variability has counteracted it slightly). The only real things throwing on the brakes at this point are aerosols, the Southern Ocean and (until recently) central Pacific.

[Roger Smith]

I'm not so sure there is no evidence of a larger natural variation ... look at how much warmer the period 1720-1739 was in the Central England temperature series than the Maunder minimum, that increase was larger than what has been seen from the 1970s to the past thirty years. Even less would I agree with the slight natural downturn except perhaps in the limited sense of some regional winter stats since 2009. 

I think the problem some laypeople and skeptics have with the pace of warming is that the places they live are not warming as much as the postulated global or hemispheric values and so they come away thinking the numbers are being cooked. Then they find evidence that one or two sites are in fact not very well insulated from ambient heat sources. But I've never thought that the numbers are faulty or poorly maintained. It is what it is, the only real debate is why, not how much. 

[skierinvermont]

On 10/3/2016 at 11:40 AM, Roger Smith said:

I'm not so sure there is no evidence of a larger natural variation ... look at how much warmer the period 1720-1739 was in the Central England temperature series than the Maunder minimum, that increase was larger than what has been seen from the 1970s to the past thirty years. Even less would I agree with the slight natural downturn except perhaps in the limited sense of some regional winter stats since 2009. 

I think the problem some laypeople and skeptics have with the pace of warming is that the places they live are not warming as much as the postulated global or hemispheric values and so they come away thinking the numbers are being cooked. Then they find evidence that one or two sites are in fact not very well insulated from ambient heat sources. But I've never thought that the numbers are faulty or poorly maintained. It is what it is, the only real debate is why, not how much. 

The point is that the natural factors that caused warming in the past actually point to cooling today. Instead we have warmed. Just because .4C of natural warming has occurred in the past doesn't mean we assume that .4C out of 1C of present warming is natural. You have to actually look at causation. Just to start with, the sun is pretty low output right now and has probably moderated the warming trend the last 20 years.

Even more importantly, human aerosols would probably have caused .2-.4C of cooling which means the human induced warming has been 1.2-1.4C for a net of 1C observed.

 

That's how they have arrived at an estimate of 110-140% of observed warming explained by human GHG contribution. It's an important distinction to make because aerosol cooling will probably plateau or diminish but GHG could keep going up, leading to an even faster pace of warming in the future.