BEST Study Finds Temperature Changes Explained by GHG Emissions and Volcanoes

riverat1 writes "The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature studies latest release finds that land surface temperature changes since 1750 are nearly completely explained by increases in greenhouse gases and large volcanic eruptions. They also said that including solar forcing did not significantly improve the fit. Unlike the other major temperature records BEST used nearly all available temperature records instead of just a representative sample. Yet to come is an analysis that includes ocean temperatures."

Comments

Human Nature and Avocados

[For a Free Internet]

Greetings Slashdort readers,

I've been thinking about some deep subjects, and now I think I'll share some of my thoughts with you. Please give me your constructive criticism, but if you don't like this, you can just fuck off, OK?

The question is: what is "human nature"? I think any time someone talks about "human nature" to back up their argument, they are full of crap. For them, "human nature" is just a mystified name for a particular set of social relations. It's a secular form of political argument to the divine rights and authority of kings. Fuck all that.

We don't know what human nature is because what confronts us is the historically determined nature of our society which clearly limits and deforms human development.

Only under COMMUNISM will human nature become evident. "Human nature" today, under capitalism, is like a flower trying to grow in a basement.

Anyway, I know some of you syncophants for CAPITALISM will make all sorts of stupid arguments against me or call me a "troll" or whatever but YOU are the real trolls, because you're just jealous of my LAURA and the awesorme sexy love that we have for each other!

Re:Koch Brothers?

[Pino Grigio]

Spot on Geezer. But regardless, it's all bollocks anyway, as it's the Sun; CO2 is a minor player.

Re:Typical bad summary

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I pretty sure no serious (by which I mean logically sound) skeptical arguments deny that CO2 contributes to warming.

Your mistake is in assuming that "logically sound" applies to the "skeptical" arguments in question.

Re:Koch Brothers?

[DiamondGeezer]

Notice how someone labelled berashith as a Troll even though what he/she wrote is entirely correct. A denialist is the modern version of heretic, just as Climate Alarm is the modern version of Apocalypse.

Re:Why even bother involving this study ?

[khayman80]

Here is a graph of global temperatures using skeptic Roy Spencer's satellite reconstruction: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/plot/uah-land/trend Temperatures have gone from -0.25 to 0.25 since 1980. That is 0.5C in 30 years or 0.16C/decade. [Layzej]

Here is a classic case of cherry-picking your data in order to try to prove your point. You are comparing the low temperature from one year to the high temperature of another. [Jane Q. Public]

That's nonsense, Jane. Click on "raw data" then scroll down:

#Time series (uah-land) from 1978.92 to 2013

#Least squares trend line; slope = 0.0175687 per year

1978.92 -0.295807

2013 0.302992

So Layzej actually understated the warming trend, which his link calculates (not cherry-picks!) based on all the UAH satellite data to be 0.175C/decade.

Note that the supposed average starts at that low point on the left. In a curve that accounted for prior data, the line would start somewhat further up. [Jane Q. Public]

The supposed average? Do you mean the trend line fit to the UAH data with ordinary least squares? Also: what prior data? Again, there is no prior UAH data.

Also, look at the years chosen: if you choose instead 1998 to present, you end up with (roughly) 0.4 to 0.3, or a change of -0.4. [Jane Q. Public]

Again, this is nonsense. Layzej didn't choose any years, as anyone who glances at the URL can tell. He loaded the entire UAH dataset.

Ironically, right after baselessly accusing Layzej of cherry-picking data to show that the Earth is warming, you once again endorse cherry-picking a shorter timespan, despite the fact that shorter timespans have larger error bars.

These error bars can be shrunk by accounting for natural variability. I've recently discussed warming trends and uncertainties over the last 16 years. This graph removes natural variations like solar activity, ENSO, volcanos, etc. Notice that the warming trends since 1998 for all 5 adjusted datasets are statistically significant at the 95% confidence level, and they're all statistically indistinguishable from the IPCC's projection.

I'm not arguing with you about AGW. I'm just saying that the evidence you have used to support your point is almost laughably weak. [Jane Q. Public]

No, you're not arguing about anthropogenic global warming; you're baselessly (and ironically) accusing Layzej of cherry-picking data to "try" to prove the obvious point that the world is warming as scientists predicted.

Jane, please stop spamming humanity with all this misinformation. It's staining your legacy and threatening the future of our civilization.