The Top Weather/Climate Events of 2015 (wunderground.com)

Layzej writes: With only a few stations left to report, 2015 is virtually certain to beat 2014's record as the planet's warmest year since record keeping began in 1880. The new record was caused by the long-term warming of the planet due to human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide, combined with a extra bump in temperature due to the strongest El Niño event ever recorded in the Eastern Pacific. Record warm ocean temperatures in the tropics in 2015 led to a global coral bleaching event, which is expected to cause a loss of 10 — 20% of all coral worldwide. Weather Underground recounts several other records that accompanied the heat including the most intense hurricane ever observed in the Western Hemisphere, the ongoing agricultural fires in Indonesia — the most expensive disaster in Indonesia's history estimated at $16 billion in damages, flooding in America and India, and record central pacific hurricane activity.

Comments

What a farce.

[wkwilley2]

But what about the icecaps??? They are huge

Re:What a farce.

[Ol Olsoc]

But what about the icecaps??? They are huge

And it was cold today when I looked out my window. So much for global warming.

So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> the most intense hurricane ever observed in the Western Hemisphere...and record central pacific hurricane activity.

I believe the biggest knock on Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" movie was the prediction of lots of new super-hurricanes that hasn't come true, especially not in recent years. I'd be careful trying to link the two again...

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you understand BASIC SCIENCE?

Extreme weather of any kind is evidence of global warming.
Mild weather isn't evidence against global warming because weather isn't the same as climate.
Data that shows warming is obviously valid evidence.
Data that shows anything other than warming is invalid because the measurements must have missed ocean heat sinks or something, or obviously it would have shown warming.

So sick of you deniers who don't even understand basic scientific method.

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget basic science and the scientific method. I think the main thing he doesn't understand is sarcasm. So your attempts to criticize the OP and the original article using searing sarcasm probably fell on deaf ears. He was supposed to be afraid that he might be subjected to public ridicule for possibly agreeing with Al Gore, but he doesn't seem to have received the message. You plainly pointed out the absurd method these so-called "scientists" used to research their topic and issue their report. Obviously, it is wrong of them to draw any conclusions because any scientific paper has uncertainty and can be invalidated by future research. Even Einstein recognized his theory of General Relativity was fundamentally uncertain, and could be disproved at any time by a single experiment. So, just as we shouldn't go putting our faith in uncertain theories like General Relativity, so we should not pay any attention to the "conclusions" of "climate scientists". They are obviously cherry picking their evidence, as you have precisely pointed out. Doing it with sarcasm, the way you did, lets us fellow science types sit back and laugh at the fools making these assertions!

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[sjames]

So you take the most powerful hurricane ever to be evidence AGAINST a prediction of super hurricanes?

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Please define "most" and "ever", because it's clear you're not using them correctly.

Heh. This nitpick was just for decorative purposes only.

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[KenDiPietro]

I'm kinda sick of fuck-sticks who accept all (so called) science as fact w/o question then brow beat those who may be a little more cautious

No shit! Can you imagine how bad the world be if every single uneducated prick wasn't seen as being as capable of understanding incredibly complex issues on equal footing as those who have studied these issues for decades? I mean, let's face it, your opinion should be every bit as valid as these experts because we all know your gut feeling is without question far more valuable than mountains of accumulated data.

By the way, should you be stricken with cancer, you might shun those very same scientists and make up your own cure based on your beliefs. I'm sure the rest of us here would broadly support your efforts.

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every one of the warmest years on record has occurred in the last 20 years. Currently, virtually every year is either "warmest year on record" or "almost the warmest year on record." There hasn't been a candidate for "coldest year on record" in living memory. It's unlikely anyone currently alive will see another one because Earth's mean surface temperature has risen a full degree C since 1917 (the most recent of the 10 coldest years on record), which is about 10 times the typical annual variability.

Continued massive CO2 emissions are continuing to acidify the upper layers of the ocean and, if not abated, threaten to implode the foundation of the oceanic food chain by killing off diatoms and reducing their growth rates. Simultaneously (and ironically), improved emission controls for fossil fuels have greatly *reduced* aerosol emissions, increasing earth's effective insolation (or rather, returning it nearer to pre-industrial levels) at the same time heat trapping is getting more efficient.

The gulf stream is decelerating due to all the meltwater pouring into the north atlantic.

Virtually every glacier in the world is in full-on retreat.

Ice chunks the size of small US states have broken off of Antarctica in the last few years.

Rising surface temperatures in the subarctic are melting permafrost, permitting decay (with associated methane release) and destabilizing shallow methane calthrate deposits of unknown but possibly substantial extent.

But don't panic, there's no reason at all to worry. There are absolutely no signs that our activities are destabilizing things or threatening to set off/accelerate a potentially catastrophic nonlinear chain reaction. Climate change and its negative effects are a liberal conspiracy. Just like physics, chemistry, biology, record keeping and computer modelling. Keep calm and keep strip-mining earth's resources!

The next 100 years are going to be... "interesting."

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[Geoffrey.landis]

Forget basic science and the scientific method. I think the main thing he doesn't understand is sarcasm.

Sarcasm is invisible on the internet. There's so much hyperbole on the net that isn't intended as sarcasm that it's completely impossible to tell when it is.

Slashdot commenters really need to start learning this.

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[Solandri]

So you take the most powerful hurricane ever to be evidence AGAINST a prediction of super hurricanes?

Actually, yes. It was the most powerful hurricane, but it wasn't the most powerful tropical cyclone. Not by a long shot. There were 4 to 7 more intense cyclones, all in the West Pacific during the 1950s-1970s. (A lot of the early measurements were in inches of Hg, while recent measurements are in mm of Hg. The uncertainty in the measurement of the early "880 mmHg" storms overlaps with the uncertainty in Patricia's 879mm, so they could in fact have been more powerful than Patricia.)

But the media was so busy tripping over themselves to present Patricia as evidence of global warming, that it was commonly misreported as the "most powerful" hurricane ever. Apparently when something happens which supports the hypothesis of global warming, it's ok to abuse a linguistic curiosity to manufacture a story (tropical cyclones are called typhoons, hurricanes, or cyclones depending on which part of the world they happen in, even though they're all the same thing). Thus it becomes evidence of pro-global warming bias in the media rather than evidence for the prediction of super hurricanes.

As for evidence of super hurricanes, of the 77 cyclones on Earth measured to have reached 900 mmHg pressures or lower (arbitrary cutoff, I picked it because that's the highest the West Pacific data on that Wiki page goes, feel free to crunch the numbers yourself):

1935 = 1
1950s = 11
1960s = 15
1970s = 13
1980s = 15
1990s = 8
2000s = 6
2010s = 8 (projects to 13 by the end of the decade)

Bear in mind that before the 1970s, we didn't have global weather satellite coverage, so there were probably a lot of powerful storms in the 1950s and 1960s and even 1970s that aren't on that list because they were too far from shore for us to measure or even know about. Looking at that list, not only does it look like the super hurricane hypothesis is wrong, but that the opposite has been happening. We've been getting fewer powerful storms than in the past, not more. And what's really going on is probably just temporal bias - the tendency for you to remember recent events more strongly than events which happened in the distant past.

BTW, typhoon Tip (1979) was a monster - nearly half the size of the continental U.S. Not only was it the most powerful storm, it was biggest. Patricia, Wilma, Katrina, Rita were all wild storms. But they're like little children compared to Tip.

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[Xyrus]

>> the most intense hurricane ever observed in the Western Hemisphere...and record central pacific hurricane activity.

I believe the biggest knock on Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" movie was the prediction of lots of new super-hurricanes that hasn't come true, especially not in recent years. I'd be careful trying to link the two again...

That was a prediction for the end of the century, not the next decade. And even then, there are fairly large error bars still around any such claims since relatively small scale phenomena like Hurricanes are far more subject to local weather conditions than climate conditions.

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[Sir Holo]

>> the most intense hurricane ever observed in the Western Hemisphere...and record central pacific hurricane activity.

I believe the biggest knock on Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" movie was the prediction of lots of new super-hurricanes that hasn't come true, especially not in recent years. I'd be careful trying to link the two again...

I predict that you will not die of an aggressive cancer in the next few months.

I pray that my prediction is as "wrong" as your colorization of the hypotheses presented in An Inconvenient Truth.

That is, I hope you die – soon. People like you are stymieing real political and technological progress that can address this threat to human existence.

No need to 'Save the Earth' — It will do just fine without humans around to foul it up.

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[Geoffrey.landis]

The prediction was for a likelihood of stronger hurricanes over a time scale of fifty to a hundred years.

The time scale is important.

Any one year-- even a bad year-- is still just weather.

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[bfpierce]

I think you're confusing prediction with increased probability.

Climate Science isn't really that great at prediction, you should be able to figure that one out by looking at the 5 day.

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[Ol Olsoc]

What's to forget? You never knew anything about it.

Neither did/do anyone who actually believes man is actually behind any steep curve in climate change/global warming. I guess if you drilled down to a granular-enough level, humans might be responsible for speeding up warming by like... 3 weeks and 4 days.

You made the statement - you prove it.

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[Ol Olsoc]

I'm kinda sick of fuck-sticks who accept all (so called) science as fact w/o question then brow beat those who may be a little more cautious

No shit! Can you imagine how bad the world be if every single uneducated prick wasn't seen as being as capable of understanding incredibly complex issues on equal footing as those who have studied these issues for decades?

In one of the most interesting paradoxes ever, is the fact that most deniers hate politicians, but they have decided to get their entire science education from them.

Just this past week, I heard a new level of denialism for them to latch onto. A guy on a radio show that was denying that dinosaurs ever existed. Sounds legit, so get cracking, deniers!

Stupid is the new smart.

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[DroolTwist]

You do realize my post was not serious, correct? Last paragraph and all.

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[Ol Olsoc]

The prediction was for a likelihood of stronger hurricanes over a time scale of fifty to a hundred years.

The time scale is important.

Any one year-- even a bad year-- is still just weather.

Once again - yes. The extreme short term outlook of what happens today, versus the trends that take many years, should not be that hard to understand, but for some reason it doesn't sink in. A warming trend does not mean that there will not be cold times. It doesn't mean that there can't be a year with no hurricanes at all.

And weather such as it is, has some weird localizations. I think it was 6 years ago, Washing D.C. was hit by some nasty snowstorms and a cold winter. I was supervising a video team from Nat Geo that came up from DC. They were shocked after driving hundreds of miles north, it was shirtsleeve weather.

So it isn't particularly easy for the weather scientists, to work their way through all this stuff, but no where near impossible. Their conclusion? It's getting warmer. Most people with a basic understanding of science can work their way through it and understand it.

But the foe is powerful, because those who can't grasp the science can be manipulated by the politicians who have a pecuniary interest in the industries that are karge emitters are telling them the scientists are liberal. So nuff said - its a very hard to break through bubble they are in.

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[Ol Olsoc]

You do realize my post was not serious, correct? Last paragraph and all.

Poes Law in action.

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[KenDiPietro]

Stupid is the new smart.

The very idea that every person's opinion must be accorded the same value is so profoundly absurd that is should cause intense physical pain to anyone who believes it.

I can accept my limitations. To my way of thinking, life is too short for anyone to master everything. The fact that I don't have a background which provides me with the level of knowledge necessary to offer any substantive opposing view to climatologists also allows me to accept their determination of the situation. This is not a failing on my part. Instead, I see this as rational and sane as opposed to anyone who believes they have to double check a scientist and based on that belief should have standing in an argument.

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[jandersen]

Yeah, we all know there's no such thing as climate, and anyone who claims so is a communist, democrat libertarian out to take away our guns and SUVs ;-)

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[Ol Olsoc]

Stupid is the new smart.

The very idea that every person's opinion must be accorded the same value is so profoundly absurd that is should cause intense physical pain to anyone who believes it.

This. Once upon a time, matters were reported, and that was that. There might be opposition, but they needed to get their own time.

Now we can have Michael Mann give an interview or paper, and the news outlets feel they have to give equal time, so they get someone to deny everything immediately afterwards. Denialism doesn't need research, or education, all it needs is "NO!"

The best example I ever heard was ironically not a scientist, but on the Don LaBatard show - a sports show. Sarah Spain ( one time basketball player and now ESPN employee) was talking to some oddball, when he launched into how he doesn't believe that dinosaurs existed. His argument was how did scientists know how to put these bones together and how could they tell what they looked like, and he ended each sentence with "That's just crazy".

Spain, a very intelligent and knowledgable woman, gave a concise and very accurate rebuttal to every objection the guy had to dinosaur's existence. His answer to every one of her replies was "That's just crazy!"

Eventually, she had no place to go other than to insult the guy, which she didn't want to do, so she changed the subject.

So the guy who denies the existence of dinosaurs "won", at least in his mind.

I can accept my limitations. To my way of thinking, life is too short for anyone to master everything.

And here is the big thing, and the big difference. Scientists put everything out there. So even if I can't know something off the top of my head, I know where to find it. Coupled with an intense curiousity, I'm happy to do personal research. So every time I hear a new claim - and most are simply recycled older ones, I can find a rebuttal to it. Go back, check the original debunking, and lo and behold, the rebuttal has always stood up.

Then it's off to retraction watch - oddly enough, denialists see it as a condemnation of science, I see it as a powerful tool for making things right. Also a number of anti AGW works are in there.

The fact that I don't have a background which provides me with the level of knowledge necessary to offer any substantive opposing view to climatologists also allows me to accept their determination of the situation.

One of the best aspects of my career is that I have been blessed to have worked with a fair number of scientists. I think they liked me because although I wasn't one, I thought like they did, and had a broad range of experience with different fields. So I picked up a lot of things, learned a lot about scientists and science in general.

One of the biggest things I learned is that despite denialists assertions, scientists love controversy. They are happy to prove AGW wrong. But for most at this point, it's like trying to prove that gravity doesn't exist. The basic physics is there, the scaling effects have been verified, and measurements and other data do not falsify any of it.

This is not a failing on my part.

Of course not. There is so much data out there, in so many fields, that it simply isn't possible to check everything. But I have a good bit of confidence I can find the information, and as well if the assertions are bogus, it will be found out soon enough. So I can take matters at face value for a time.

Instead, I see this as rational and sane as opposed to anyone who believes they have to double check a scientist and based on that belief should have standing in an argument.

Well, I do have a tendency to read the papers when possible. Perhaps the difference is I'm reading them to see what is in them, and determine their veracity not to cherry pick any anomalies so I can debunk the

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[haruchai]

More heat in the climate system or more warm tropical water are only a couple of several key factors in the formation of cyclones.
Another is the absence of wind shear. If one of the outcomes of a warming world in greater wind shear where hurricanes & cyclones form, then the trend will be towards fewer really large storms.

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/keyno...

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[sjames]

That's a great deal of effort to downplay the whole thing, but doesn't change my statement even a jot. Even if it was the smallest and weakest weather event ever measured, it's existence doesn't contradict a prediction that there would be more strong storms, it just doesn't support it.

However, it was rather large in a place where they don't typically get that large. That could be a fluke or part of a trend, but it certainly doesn't HARM the case for stronger storms.

As for the larger case of storm activity, the correct measure would be energy expenditure but those figures would be hard to come up with.

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[ebvwfbw]

Same time, ignore all of the scientists with decades upon decades of experience that disagree with the ones that say CO2 is causing GW. Even though there is absolutely no scientific proof that CO2 has anything to do with warming, other than a symptom. You see warming, later you see an increase in CO2.

There's a huge motive to say CO2 is causing it - people making trillions off of carbon credits. They then fund those saying it's causing it. Buy politicians to see to it no government scientists disagree with them, if they do they're fired. I've personally seen it done in the 1990s.

Before you mod me down or flame me, show me. Where is there ANY proof that CO2 is actually the cause of GW. Show me that even though water levels have been rising for at least the past 1000 years, somehow it's man's fault now. Look at Venice Italy - we know they were trying to keep the Adriatic out in the 14th century.

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[KenDiPietro]

Same time, ignore all of the scientists with decades upon decades of experience that disagree with the ones that say CO2 is causing GW.

Are you referring to the roughly 3% who have questionable motives for the positions they hold? Because that's exactly the reality the situation. Now, I personally would be thrilled to see any credible individual or group who could present any peer reviewed evidence that backs up your assertions - but there are none. And that's the problem, any scientist who could prove beyond any reasonable doubt that climate change wasn't caused by human being (to whatever extent they could) would be instantly famous - and yet, no one has stepped to meet that challenge.

Even though there is absolutely no scientific proof that CO2 has anything to do with warming, other than a symptom.

Bullshit. There is a mountain of proof - even though because you can't even begin to understand it you are suspicious.

You see warming, later you see an increase in CO2.

That has nothing to do with anything - but I would like to credit you with knowing that. We do, for example, know that CO2 is a gas which does cause heat to be trapped in our atmosphere. As far as I know, aside from you and a small group of moronic skeptics, no one is saying otherwise.

There's a huge motive to say CO2 is causing it - people making trillions off of carbon credits. They then fund those saying it's causing it.

And you somehow can say that without acknowledging that an incredibly larger amount of money is being made from burning fossil fuels? And even in knowing that you somehow choose to believe that it must be the all those people making "trillions off of carbon credits" as if that statement can be accepted at face value.

Buy politicians to see to it no government scientists disagree with them, if they do they're fired.

Implicit in your statement is an absurd absence of all of the people in the fossil fuel business who buy politicians - or don't you believe in that reality either?

I've personally seen it done in the 1990s.

What? Wait a God Damn minute! Some guy on the Internet is stating that he has seen this personally? Well stop the fucking presses. I had no idea.

Before you mod me down or flame me, show me.

First off, I don't mod people when I am commenting, that is not how the discussion should be handled. As far as flaming you, I'm having a hard time taking you seriously. And if I come off as being sarcastic, it's only because you spit in the faces of tens of thousands of highly educated people, all of whom have taken the position that they are convinced to the point of laying their professional credibility on the line to state that they know CO2 does cause climate change.

Where is there ANY proof that CO2 is actually the cause of GW. Show me that even though water levels have been rising for at least the past 1000 years, somehow it's man's fault now. Look at Venice Italy - we know they were trying to keep the Adriatic out in the 14th century.

Let's make sure we understand each other. The overwhelming percentage of people who should be allowed to voice a professional opinion have done so. Yes, a small portion of those people have indicated doubts to varying degrees but the entire scientific community is almost without credible exception stating with a very high level of certainty that mankind has caused this crisis. And no, water levels have not been rising for the last thousand years, not at the rate they are today but you just keep on pointing out irrelevant factoids that you believe back up your already thoroughly debunked bullshit because it's your right. You have the right to be disrespected by every thinking individual when you open your mouth and spout garbage.

And for my sake, I'm just here to exercise my right to tell you that you are completely full of it. You're welcome.

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[ebvwfbw]

My apologies, this ended up being way longer than I anticipated it would be. However I think it's all important.

First let me start of by saying - yes, things are getting warmer. They've been getting warmer for over thousands of years with some brief cold spells. Check out sea water rise here - http://www.giss.nasa.gov/resea... . So this is far and beyond man if you look at the scale in years. Another sign they're wrong - put people in jail - http://www.newsweek.com/should... . Some might call this typical leftist fascism. I was a bit surprised, I googled - "global warming skeptics in jail". No free speech, other than what they want. Where have we heard that before?

Bullshit. There is a mountain of proof - even though because you can't even begin to understand it you are suspicious.

Mountain of proof. So you should have no trouble showing me this mountain. Science isn't hard. There's the scientific method. I have no doubt you're familiar with it, I'll include it here for other people just as my comment before about moding me down was to other people - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... .
Here are recent co2 levels - http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/c...
Here we have them trying to explain a decade of problems - https://www.climate.gov/news-f...
Then we have the hottest decade in the 20th century - the 1930s. This was embarrassing to Mr. Hansen (Mr. MMGW himself) as he had to admit he lied, of course he blamed it on a y2k error (it was a mistake, not a lie!) - when he claimed the 1990s where the hottest decade of the 20th century. I called full BULSHIT on that. I don't understand how a y2k bug could change his data and I'm a guy that used to fix those problems.

Don't say I don't understand it, it's likely you don't understand it. The above concerns break the scientific method, therefore it's almost certain it's not CO2 causing it. Not with a big rise in CO2 and when temperatures stop rising. Remember Algore's prediction that we'd be roasting in Washington DC in 2015 with desert like temperatures? Yea, not so much. Same old hot summers we've always had. Remember his predictions about more and stronger hurricanes after Katrina? Yea, not so much either. I bet he would be howling if Hog Island happened today - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... Remember "Super Storm Sandy", yea, what crap. It was just a run of the mill hurricane. Nothing super about sandy.

As for the scientists - good luck conducting a study that disproves MMGW. Right now you're about as likely to get a grant proving that as say (not that I believe this, to illustrate the point - ) white people are superior to black people. That is, forget about it and don't come back. Only people that look at the data and say - hey, wait a minute. The bitch is, I may convince you and I've convinced hundreds over the years. They are making true believers every day in schools.

We do, for example, know that CO2 is a gas which does cause heat to be trapped in our atmosphere. As far as I know, aside from you and a small group of moronic skeptics, no one is saying otherwise.

A lot of people conclude when you resort to name calling, you've lost the argument. Otherwise, you'd state your case instead of calling someone names. Just so you know. Did you know there are definitions of what a moron, idiot, imbecile are? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... .

It's not a small group, otherwise Kyoto, Paris, etc would have proceeded a whole lo

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[KenDiPietro]

You know what, I owe you an unqualified apology. I got pissed off with you and implied that you were a moronic skeptic and that was uncalled for. Since you have decided to be the better man in this discussion, let me see if I can briefly put the facts in front of you.

So, in that vein, let's start with this claim by yours truly.

Then we have the hottest decade in the 20th century - the 1930s.

No, the 1930s were not the warmest in the last century and not by a long shot. The information you based your claim on is profoundly flawed as it ignore ocean temperature changes. Given that the ocean covers the overwhelming majority of the earth's surface, I have no idea how any credible researcher could make that horrific a mistake.

The above concerns break the scientific method, therefore it's almost certain it's not CO2 causing it.

Feel free to think about that assertion in light ot the new evidence.

Algore's

Damn, did you really just do that? Seriously? And you did this after verbally lambasting me for stopping to lump you in with the people who call Al Gore, Algore?

Liars, cheats and swindlers often try to baffle people with bullshit.

Indeed.

Where's the theory (CO2 is causing GW), where's the experiment (yea, where is the experiment), can we reproduce this result (nope, sure can't. Not even in computer models.

I found dozens of similar reports, some from universities, others from Youtube and the like. You know what I didn't find, a single credible study that even tried to claim CO2 doesn't trap heat. As far as those in the scientific community are concerned, this isn't even up for debate, no more than the earth being flat or that angry humors cause upset stomachs.

It isn't that we have a lot more to learn, we certainly do. And you are most welcome to be skeptical, but only if you can actually present more than some guy's blog who ended up being shown he was completely inept.

Here's an example of just the kind of thing that should have no place in this argument. '97% Of Climate Scientists Agree' Is 100% Wrong - written by Alex Epstein

And who is Alex Epstein? Why he's "An energy philosopher, debater, and communications consultant, the Founder and President of the Center for Industrial Progress and head of the I Love Fossil Fuels Campaign." He is also the author of, "The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.

In short, he's an asshole with an opinion, not a scientist but he is a shill plugging his own book. Sadly, you are right. There are any number of people who are making money on this issue but most of them are on your side.

I'm sorry. There is no controversy. The world is not flat.

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[ebvwfbw]

You know what, I owe you an unqualified apology. I got pissed off with you and implied that you were a moronic skeptic and that was uncalled for. Since you have decided to be the better man in this discussion, let me see if I can briefly put the facts in front of you.

I come to expect it with GW. Seems people all the way around are sick and tired of this subject. I think I know better, it's really hard to not say anything. Ok, let me continue.

No, the 1930s were not the warmest in the last century and not by a long shot. The information you based your claim on is profoundly flawed as it ignore ocean temperature changes. Given that the ocean covers the overwhelming majority of the earth's surface, I have no idea how any credible researcher could make that horrific a mistake.

Oh yes, the ocean temperatures that we can't quantify like surface temperatures. We simply lack data to be useful in this area. As for the 1930s, admit I'm right. Even Hansen himself admitted he was wrong on that one. If he admits it, you should too. I wasn't at the conference where he did that, however I was at Goddard later that day. They were still talking about it years later. Jim's stuff at Goddard doesn't seem to be online anymore. However I found this without a problem - http://www.breitbart.com/londo... . This should trouble you.

Damn, did you really just do that? Seriously? And you did this after verbally lambasting me for stopping to lump you in with the people who call Al Gore, Algore?

I'm sorry if you felt I was lambasting you. That wasn't the intention. I threw in Algore for a couple of reasons. The funny factor (especially if you hear his name on TV from now on - was it Al Gore or Algore?) and I don't think he deserves respect in this area. He's nothing more than a used car salesman to be honest with you. This stuff is way, way, way above him. If it weren't for his father, he'd be just a newspaper reporter in Tenn. Nobody would know who he is. In fact, he probably wouldn't have even made it out of Vietnam if it weren't for his father.

I found dozens of similar reports, some from universities, others from Youtube and the like. You know what I didn't find, a single credible study that even tried to claim CO2 doesn't trap heat. As far as those in the scientific community are concerned, this isn't even up for debate, no more than the earth being flat or that angry humors cause upset stomachs.

It isn't that we have a lot more to learn, we certainly do. And you are most welcome to be skeptical, but only if you can actually present more than some guy's blog who ended up being shown he was completely inept.

Ok, now I have to do some work in this area. For the first time in years. Great - let's look at the data. Try as I might, I can find the article cited, talked about, I can't find anything about the data itself, how it was collected, method, anything. You know, where's the science? We have just their word for it. Can you find the technical details of it? I'm a big hungry data guy. Feed me. A big clue in the article is they say clouds and water vapor can't be to blame. Really big flag, we CAN show water vapor heats things up. In fact water has almost everything to do with our weather. To dismiss it like they do is very troubling, however that could simply be the reporter. What the reporter writes is often a whole lot different than what really happened, sometimes to the point that you wonder if they were even there at all. I don't seem to see anything after that article came out (except for a few repeats recently that were just about verbatim.. which is suspicious, was it really an advertisement made to look like a science article?) and it's been years. Sounds fishy.

Re:So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming?

[KenDiPietro]

And we're back...

In the interest of keeping this concise, I chose to only hit the highlights but hope that I have in no way changed or distorted your context.

I think I know better, it's really hard to not say anything.

And that's the crux of the issue right there. You think you know better and yet, people who have made it their life's work more than likely do.

Oh yes, the ocean temperatures that we can't quantify like surface temperatures. We simply lack data to be useful in this area.

Who is this "we" that you refer to. "We" actually have very accurate ways to measure temperature and have been using them for decades now.

As for the 1930s, admit I'm right.

No, you're not right. Belief confirmation is a bitch but mankind developed a way of minimizing it's effect. We refer to this as the "Scientific method" and you would do well to become familiar with it. It isn't perfect but if you actually understood how it worked you would know the difference between making reasonable assumptions in order to test a theory and "cooking the numbers."

I'm sorry if you felt I was lambasting you. I threw in Algore for a couple of reasons.

Perish the thought. I didn't take your remark as being a personal attack. I found it interesting that you rightfully demand respect from others but don't feel the need to reciprocate.

Try as I might, I can find the article cited, talked about, I can't find anything about the data itself, how it was collected, method, anything.

While I can't explicitly quantify the amount of studies which have been peer reviewed and published, suffice it to say it is certainly in the thousands and more likely in the tens of thousands. It's not that the data isn't out there, it's simply a matter than you somehow can't seem to find it. Amazingly, that is nothing short of baffling.

As I said - baffle with bullshit.

Yes, yes you did.

This area is so saturated with assholes with an opinion it's challenging to find real scientific articles on it.

I honestly believe that you believe this. Seriously, I do. And yet, with all of your accomplishments that you filled us in on previously, you somehow can't locate articles that the scientific community has authored, reviewed, published, and discussed. Baffling.

He paid a lot for people like you to believe what you do.

Yes, people wasted a metric boatload of money to get other people to believe in a made up fairy tale.

Personally, I don't find this subject very appealing from an educational standpoint. Rather, I am enjoying this discussion with you based on my informal love of the science of Agnotology.

Beginning in the 1980s, when I was first introduced to the concept, I began collecting examples of this technique and have become somewhat adept at recognizing it when I see it. One of my favorite examples is the Heartland Institute's Please Don't Poop in My Salad .

Granted, more egregious tomes have been published but no one gets it quite a right as the Heartland Institute. From the title, right down to the last page, everything they present just feels right. Yes, any number of assertions and carefully manipulated facts are included but no one will ever outdo the carefully engineered presentation when it comes to making something so unpalatable sound so wonderful.

Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[NotDrWho]

Trying to find a "top ten" list of the hottest and coldest years. Can't find it on NOAA's website. Anyone?

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[NotDrWho]

Not city (that can vary wildly). I mean worldwide average.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[NotDrWho]

Come on, if this is the hottest average worldwide year on record, there must be a list of average temps for each year SOMEWHERE, right?

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[dywolf]

What? They don't have Google in your reality?

Here: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=annual+gl...

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[dywolf]

You could have shown an ounce of intelligence and tried clicking the link in the summary ( http://icons.wxug.com/hurrican... ).
Of course that assumes you know how to read a chart.

So let me help you:
See the tallest red lines?
Those are the biggest years.
Find the 10 tallest, and there's your list.
Now repeat for the blue ones.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[matthelm007]

Cool, and thanks for the link.

Weird, I looked up my home town, and there is only 1 record high and 1 record low in my lifetime. (50+ years)

Most records (high or low) are in the early 1900s.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[NotDrWho]

That chart is not showing what I'm asking for. It shows "Global Departure of Temperature from Average."

I just need a simple list of average temps from each year, so I can do a top ten list of hottest and coldest. Not a chart, not using "departure from average" or whatever the fuck. Just just a simple list of average worldwide temps for each year going back as far as possible.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[serviscope_minor]

Wow a climate change denialist^Wskeptic and someone who rants and raves about teh evul SJW.

I award you today's "walking stereotype" prize.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[hey!]

Here's the data.

If you look through the data you'll see these are the ten coldest years after 1849, coolest first:
      1911, 1909, 1904, 1908, 1862, 1910, 1903, 1864, 1917, 1893.

These are the ten hottest years prior to 2015, hottest first:
    2014, **2010, *2005, ***/++1998, **2003, *2006, **2009, **2002, *2007, 2013.

I've also noted El Niño years with stars and La Niña with plusses:
* = weak El Niño year
** = moderate El Niño year
***/++ = 1998 started as a very strong El Niño and ended as a moderate La Niña.

2015 is an El Niño year (which tend to be hot), but is not in this dataset yet. Note that 8/10 of the top 10 years have an El Niño component, except 2013 and 2014, which were "ordinary" but very warm years.

I didn't note the ENSO (El Niño / Southern oscillation) status for the coldest years, because all ten of the coldest years are before 1912 and there is no reliable ENSO data for before 1950 so far as I know. However it's a safe bet that many of these were La Niñas, which tend to be colder than average. The last colder-than-average year was 1985, which was a La Niña; all six La Niña years since have been warmer than the 1850-2014 average. The last "ordinary" (non-ENSO) year that was colder than average was 1970.

Here is the average temperature anomaly by decade:
Decade Anomaly
1850 -0.3174
1860 -0.3296
1870 -0.2548
1880 -0.3
1890 -0.3623
1900 -0.4099
1918 -0.2494
1930 -0.1182
1940 -0.0036
1950 -0.061
1960 -0.0535
1970 -0.0769
1980 +0.0943
1990 +0.274
2000 +0.4622
2010 +0.4998 // partial, obviously

Note that all the decades up to the 70s are colder than the "average" year because "average" is dominated by the acceleration of warming from the 90s to present.

I hope this helps.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[PopeRatzo]

Not a chart, not using "departure from average" or whatever the fuck.

Those goddamn SJW charts and graphs.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[Darinbob]

You never know with the certainty to satisfy all doubters, which is why conspiracy theories will always exist.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[riverat1]

Trying to find a "top ten" list of the hottest and coldest years. Can't find it on NOAA's website. Anyone?

Here's a page that has a table that ranks the years from 1880 to 2014 with 1 being the coldest and 135 being the warmest. You can suss out the bottom and top ten from it. It doesn't have 2015 yet because the official numbers haven't come out yet but you can bet that 2015 will be ranked 136.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[zapadnik]

Thank you for the short-term data. Have you seen the long term data yet?
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com...

Isn't natural warming what we'd expect to see as solar magnetic activity picks up and we climb out of the Little Ice Age ? There is a link between the solar heliosphere (controlled by solar magnetic activity), mediated by cosmic rays, and terrestrial cloud formation - that is, terrestrial climate is correlated with solar magnetic activity and this is well established (although denied by Michael Mann's now debunked 'Hockey Stick').

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[Layzej]

Trying to find a "top ten" list of the hottest and coldest years.

http://icons.wxug.com/hurrican...

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[Layzej]

Here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist... Add a constant to each year if you fear anomalies.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[dryeo]

Solar magnetic activity is easy to measure (using sunspots and the aurora) and has been measured since 1755 and the latest cycle was lower then normal which may be one of the reasons for the "pause" at the beginning of this century. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... which has some nice graphs of solar activity (peaked in the '50's) and a section on the effects on climate (small, hard to find correlations).

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[dywolf]

so what you're saying is not only do you not know how to use google, but you dont understand math either.
hint: the years with the highest departure from average are the same as the hottest years

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[dywolf]

This is called Sealioning.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/J...

it's a form of trolling, marked by asking basic, inane questions readers would be expected to already know hte answer to.

for example: no its not solar activity.
solar activity is on a downward trend and has been.

no the kockey stick is not debunked.

no you didnt say anything factual.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[Kernel Kurtz]

Here is the average temperature anomaly by decade....

Thanks. I always like to point out warming is nothing new also. It is an interglacial after all so that is an easy bet.

Without an understanding of natural climate, there’s no strong basis for predicting climate change

http://business.financialpost....

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[Ol Olsoc]

That chart is not showing what I'm asking for. It shows "Global Departure of Temperature from Average."

I just need a simple list of average temps from each year, so I can do a top ten list of hottest and coldest. Not a chart, not using "departure from average" or whatever the fuck. Just just a simple list of average worldwide temps for each year going back as far as possible.

Well then you know the old saying, "If you want it done right, go fuck yourself." Find your own data and quit bitching about it when others try to help.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[zapadnik]

A Hockey Stick believer? wow! I didn't know you still existed. Did you not notice the IPCC remove the Hockey Stick from AR 5 ever since Steve McIntyre and others discredited the analysis. But even if we pretend the Hockey Stick is true, you still need to explain the Minoan Warm Period, Roman Warm Period, Medieval Cold Period, Medieval Warm Period (ya know, when the Vikings farmed Greenland, and buried their people in places that are now colder with 'permafrost'), and the Little Ice Age that is well-attested as correlated with solar magnetic activity levels (observed through sunspots).

I can't believe that any Slashdotters are so behind the times they don't know the Hockey Stick has been *comprehensively* debunked (not least because 70% of its record is based on a single bristlecone pine) and there is a HUGE amount of observational data (eg. stalectite records around the globe) that show Mann's analysis was at best completely incompetent and more likely deliberately fraudulent (based on his re-created methodology).

You can conduct ad hominems against me personally if you wish - but it just shows you don't have the DATA to prove your case. In fact, because the CAGW crew cannot refute the actual paleo data that shows natural climatic variability (and there is a LOT - when you start looking) then the only thing you can do is conduct ad hominems and talk about "consensus" rather than OBSERVED REALITY.

So bring data next time.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[zapadnik]

Yes. Solar magnetic activity is correlated with climate. The mechanism has only recently been understood with the work of astrophysicist Dr Nir Shaviv (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nir_Shaviv), Svensmark, et al.

Please also remember that the oceans moderate the heat transfer between solar insolation and the atmosphere, The ocean also plays a large part in natural CO2 emission and absorption (CO2 concentration follows temperature to an extent far greater than the other way around), as well as the biosphere (which is has temperature-dependent emission that dwarfs human sources by an order of magnitude).

Humans contribute to global warming through our CO2 emissions, but our contribution appears to be minor compared to natural effects. Hence, the de-industrialization of the First World and massive wealth redistribution called for by the United Nations (who stands to profit handsomely from it - as well as obtaining a funding source independent of oversight from the USA) is not based on observational science at this time. The CAGW hypothesis had some merit in the 1990s and even 2000's, but should be considered falsified at this time and must be reformulated (which is why officials have moved from the disproven 'Global Warming' into the meaningless 'Climate Change' meme - and hoped you didn't notice).

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[dryeo]

Interesting, if he's right it means that it is even more important to do something about CO2 as the cosmic rays are going to do half the warming and the CO2 the other half, so perhaps a 2 degree warming without CO2 and a 4 degree warming with our CO2 additions. To quote your wiki article,

In 2011 he has shown together with Shlomi Ziskin that the solar variability explains about half the 20th century warming, with the other half attributable to anthropogenic forcing[13]

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[riverat1]

So throw out Michael Mann's 1998 hockey stick graph. Since then more than a dozen studies by other researchers using different techniques show essentially the same thing. So much so that if you put Mann's 1998 graph in with the others you couldn't pick out the original hockey stick graph from the rest of them. Mann's 1998 graph is old news. You've got a bunch of other hockey stick graphs to debunk. Better get to work.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[riverat1]

Except this interglacial reached its peak forcing from Milankovitch Cycles around 6,000 to 8,000 years ago and has been slowly cooling since then. From Milankovitch Cycles alone you would conclude that the cooling would continue. But it isn't.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[Sique]

Whenever this claim comes up, and some people try to back it up by digging through the raw data, the end of story is that they come up with the same results than the climate scientists.

At least if they are honest. Then you get something like the Berkeley Project.

I've seen graphs floating around which claim to show different, and whenever you look at the data set they claim to be based on, you see that they were creatively manipulated to show the foregone conclusion. So the blame goes in the opposite direction. The non-AGW graphs are mostly fabricated by sometimes cleverly, but mostly bluntly manipulating the raw data.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[haruchai]

See below for NOAA's time series / histogram chart for the list of years in their record, going back to 1880. There are separate tabs for US & Global

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/t...

You can sort the table by year, temp anomaly or rank.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[whoda]

Can we get the data for years 10,000 BC to 1848 as well please? I'd like to check against those numbers.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[zapadnik]

You are starting to get the idea. But when you look at the most probable values for the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) and Transient Climate Sensitivity (TCS) that values coming out of the IPCC computer models are 4 to 8 K. That means, when CO2 is doubled from the pre-Industrial level of around 270 ppmV to 540 ppmV sometime next century then the computer models predict a rise of 4 to 8 K. Doubling CO2 itself produces a rise of about 1.2 K by itself, and the rest of the predicted rise is basically due to estimated water vapor effects. If this was the case then the alarmists would be correct. However, this is not the case.

Studies based on observation data show that the IPCC's modeled ECS of 4 K is way too high. The most probable value is around 1.1 to 1.2 K (see Lewis & Curry 2015). That means that water vapor does not provide a 'positive feedback' to CO2, but actually is either neutral or very slightly negative. This is the observed reality. The problem lies with the computer 'global circulation' models which project way to much warming - mostly because they are unable to model the complex effects of water vapor, such as convection.

The Climategate emails revealed that the modelers realized their models could not match observed reality, and could not explain the difference and people like Ken Trenberth considered this a "travesty". In short, a significant number of the climate change alarmists understand that their claims are not true, but they must maintain their position in order to keep the $29 Billion per year in funding going (otherwise they'll go back to being a poorly funded and ignored sector of science) and to save face. This is why their attacks on people using the Scientific Method to match observations to the predictions are so vicious. In addition, the politicians at the UN have a different agenda - which you can read for yourself from their statements at http://green-agenda.com/

Should humans look after their environment? of course ! but lying about the failed CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) undermines Science and real environmentalism - as well as allowing authoritarians to regulate every aspect of your life through control of 'carbon'.

Like I say, please look at the actual paleo data. Please look at the graphs I already supplied. Here's another one, which shows forest fires in the US which have declined massively since the 'dustbowl' of the 1940s. The forest fires agree with the UAH and RSS satellites and weather balloons and the data from well-sited surface stations. The only data that shows any significant warming is the non-well sited stations subject to Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect as well as unexplained adjustments that massively cool the past and warm the present (which produces an apparent warming trend that other data do not show - get rid of these unexplained adjustments and the weather looks perfectly normal with normal variability).

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[zapadnik]

Oops, sorry. I forgot to add the forest fire data. Here it is :)
http://www.fs.fed.us/research/...

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[zapadnik]

The 1990 IPCC report clearly showed the Medieval Warm Period - the presence of a WMP (and the Roman Warm Period, Little Ice Age etc all invalidate the Hickey Sticl). You need to debunk that IPCC report. Please also notice that ever since the analysis of McIntyre and McKitrick and the Glever Report the Hockey stick has been removed from the *latest* IPCC report. You also need to explain the longer-term paleo record that shows massive natural variability, mostly correlated with solar activity. Warming for the last 200 years seems to be a consequence of solar activity increasing since the Maunder minimum (which produced the famous, Little Ice Age, which have numerous contemporary accounts about, and we are recovering from).

While you are getting to work explaining why the Vikings could farm in Greenland (and their dead are buried in once-soft soil that is now permafrost, because it is colder today), perhaps you'd like to explain the difference between the observed ECS of 1.2 K and the IPCC computer prediction of 4 to 8 K. See Lewis & Curry 2015 for the meta-study of observed values.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[riverat1]

The "graph" you are referring to in the first IPCC report was a schematic diagram from Hubert Lamb with no scale on the y-axis. You can see it described as a schematic diagram in the IPCC's first archive report on page 202, Fig. 7.1. Also it is now known that the MWP was not a global phenomenon but was mostly limited to the the North Atlantic and Europe. Current science indicates the Little Ice Age was driven largely by volcanic activity with a small added impetus from the Maunder minimum. Solar activity has been low for a decade now yet temperatures continue to rise. What will be your response if as some predict solar activity remains low into the 2030s yet temperatures continue to rise?

I don't know where you got your 1.2 K ECS from (I suppose from Lewis & Curry) but the latest IPCC report give a range of 1.5-4.5 K for ECS. Gavin Schmidt has an interesting commentary on Reconiciling estimates of climate sensitivity over at RealClimate talking about the recent Kate Marvel paper in which he had a part.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[ebvwfbw]

Something's wrong. We know the 1930s was the warmest decade of the 20th century. It made Mr. Hansen look like the fool he is when he had to admit he was wrong when he said the 1990s were the hottest.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[riverat1]

Don't be silly. It's trivial to show that they used different data sets.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[Kernel Kurtz]

From Milankovitch Cycles alone you would conclude that the cooling would continue. But it isn't.

Why would anyone think it was Milankovich cycles alone? Still lots they clearly don't understand.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[Sique]

You can get pretty good data for instance from Austria. The country has collected daily weather data since the mid 18th century, for more than 250 years. And you can easily tell that this data is not tampered with as you can still view the original sheets. And yes, this data shows a positive slope - an increase in temperature of about two degrees Celsius. Same is valid for Germany, where the observatory in Potsdam likewise has collected data since 250 years. And yes, also there you can see a two degrees Celsius increase in temperature.

The same is valid for about any place that has a long history of collecting weather data, be it Greenwich or Boston: Everywhere you can look at the actual manual recordings of the time. So your claim that the data was generally tampered with looks quite suspicious to me.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[zapadnik]

Thanks for commenting riverrat1.

Also it is now known that the MWP was not a global phenomenon but was mostly limited to the the North Atlantic and Europe.

I have heard this asserted, however stalactite formation in the Southern Hemisphere (where I live) was affected. I suggest you look at the stalactite data (which comes from numerous sites around the globe).

Current science indicates the Little Ice Age was driven largely by volcanic activity with a small added impetus from the Maunder minimum.

Really? for a hundred years? citation required.

Solar activity has been low for a decade now yet temperatures continue to rise. What will be your response if as some predict solar activity remains low into the 2030s yet temperatures continue to rise?

I fully expect temperatures to continue to rise for a little bit, since the oceans have stored so much energy from previous heating. Plus, the CO2 level is going up. Everyone understands this. What it will not appear to be, is *catastrophic*. The question really is - if temperatures continue to show natural variability and a rise consistent with CO2 concentration alone (no 'enhanced' greenhouse effect), which is what has been seen in the satellite data for nearly two decades now, what will YOUR response be? or is your CAGW hypothesis non-falsifiable? (and thus, not actually a scientific theory).

I don't know where you got your 1.2 K ECS from (I suppose from Lewis & Curry) but the latest IPCC report give a range of 1.5-4.5 K for ECS.

Yes, the Lewis and Curry analysis is two years AFTER the IPCC. Please note also that Lewis and Curry use observational reality. The IPCC use GCM models - which don't appear to match the observational reality. So the choice is before you, do you go with philosophy and chose an axiomatic approach that ignores data you don't like; or do you do science and change your hypothesis based on the data? since I have a PhD in physics I was FORCED to change my hypothesis from a CAGW believer into someone who now considers ALL the data.

Gavin Schmidt has an interesting commentary on Reconiciling estimates of climate sensitivity [realclimate.org] over at RealClimate talking about the recent Kate Marvel paper in which he had a part.

Sorry, Gavin Schmidt is not considered an unbiased source, and neither is realclimate (which is a mouthpiece for Gavin). How about you give some data that hasn't passed through NOAA or NASA? I'd love more data not from these sources - but all the data I see that aren't from them pretty much agree - and show the CAGW hypothesis cannot be sustained based on the data.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[riverat1]

Current science indicates the Little Ice Age was driven largely by volcanic activity with a small added impetus from the Maunder minimum.

Really? for a hundred years? citation required.

The original paper:
Abrupt onset of the Little Ice Age triggered by volcanism and sustained by sea-ice/ocean feedbacks

Or:
Volcanoes May Have Sparked Little Ice Age

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[riverat1]

I have heard this asserted, however stalactite formation in the Southern Hemisphere (where I live) was affected. I suggest you look at the stalactite data (which comes from numerous sites around the globe).

Yes there were warm episodes scattered around the world during that time but research indicates they weren't well coordinated in time so the global temperature was probably less driven by them.

I fully expect temperatures to continue to rise for a little bit, since the oceans have stored so much energy from previous heating. Plus, the CO2 level is going up. Everyone understands this. What it will not appear to be, is *catastrophic*. The question really is - if temperatures continue to show natural variability and a rise consistent with CO2 concentration alone (no 'enhanced' greenhouse effect), which is what has been seen in the satellite data for nearly two decades now, what will YOUR response be? or is your CAGW hypothesis non-falsifiable? (and thus, not actually a scientific theory).

You should really drop the "C" in CAGW. I just marks you out as being on the climate science denier side of things. Whether something is catastrophic or not is a pretty subjective measurement.

I take the satellite measurements with a grain of salt. The complexity of sussing out atmospheric temperatures by measuring microwave emissions of O2 molecules in the atmosphere makes it a difficult process. On top of that I live on the surface, not in the lower troposphere so I'm more interested in surface temperature measurements which even Carl Mears of RSS considers to be more trustworthy.

Yes, the Lewis and Curry analysis is two years AFTER the IPCC. Please note also that Lewis and Curry use observational reality. The IPCC use GCM models - which don't appear to match the observational reality. So the choice is before you, do you go with philosophy and chose an axiomatic approach that ignores data you don't like; or do you do science and change your hypothesis based on the data? since I have a PhD in physics I was FORCED to change my hypothesis from a CAGW believer into someone who now considers ALL the data.

Lewis and Curry's estimated ranges for climate sensitivity isn't that far off from the IPCC's estimates. You just cherry picked the low end of their range. Also while 150 years of observations may be long enough to determine the Transient Climate Response I'm not sure that is long enough to determine the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity because among other things it doesn't take into full account albedo changes from melting ice.

I don't consider Nic Lewis and Judith Curry to particularly be unbiased sources so I guess we're even on that score.

Regarding changing my mind about CAGW as I said I don't accept the "C" in it. Whether it becomes catastrophic depends on what we do in the way of mitigation and adaption. As long as we keep increasing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere temperatures will continue to increase. If someone comes along and demonstrates that statement isn't true then I'll change my mind.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[zapadnik]

Yes there were warm episodes scattered around the world during that time but research indicates they weren't well coordinated in time so the global temperature was probably less driven by them.

FALSE. The same thing happened on every continent at the same time period. This is, by definition, a global effect. You just don't want to acknowledge the possibility.

You should really drop the "C" in CAGW. I just marks you out as being on the climate science denier side of things. Whether something is catastrophic or not is a pretty subjective measurement.

But the whole schtick for 'healing the planet' is becaiuse the change is deemed to be catastrophic. If it is not catastrophic than no action is required. The climate has always changed. Oh, and speaking of dropping terms. Even the newspapers now realize that using the term 'denier' not only makes the person using it look completely biased (which you appear to be), and waters down the disgusting acts of real 'deniers' (Holocaust deniers). So, if you want to stop looking like a non-objective extremist, I suggest you drop the 'denier' nonsense. But it seems we agree that what is observed is not catastrophic - which means the whole Alarmist hyperventilation (and UN imposition of socialist 'green taxes') is unnecessary.

Lewis and Curry's estimated ranges for climate sensitivity isn't that far off from the IPCC's estimates.

Not so. They are significantly different. The claim has been that warming of up to 8 K is possible and 4 K is *extrenely likely* hence the West must be de-industrialized - which means that tens of millions of poor people in the Third World will lack medicines and food as energy becomes much more expensive and scares. There is a huge difference between the IPCC computer-generated guesses and the observational reality, and at the moment the Alarmists in their comfy First World cities are condemning the poor of the Third World to energy poverty where they can never climb out of - as well as dying of preventable diseases where treatments are unavailable due to much higher manufacturing and transportation costs. Already thousands of old people are dying in Britain and Germany as a result of 'green energy' which is unreliable and triples energy costs. Did you not know that the alarmist scam is already killing people?

Also while 150 years of observations may be long enough to determine the Transient Climate Response I'm not sure that is long enough to determine the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity because among other things it doesn't take into full account albedo changes from melting ice.

Melting ice? did you not look at the DATA I provided? The Arctic is putting on ice. So is the Antarctic. Total ice cover is at record levels. Polar bear numbers are up. You have not looked at the actual observational data at all, have you? Here is a hint:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/old...

I don't consider Nic Lewis and Judith Curry to particularly be unbiased sources so I guess we're even on that score.

Which data of their do you refute and why?

Regarding changing my mind about CAGW as I said I don't accept the "C" in it

If there is no 'C' then what is the problem? Furthermore, what is the proper temperature that the Earth should be at? you guys never answer that question. You are the ultimate in conservatives who always want to wind the clock back to the conditions (and society) of the 1970s. Think about it, "What temperature and CO2 should the Earth be at?". We do know that plants evolved at around 2000 ppmV CO2, and below 150 ppmV of CO2 all plant life dies (which means all life dies) - we have been perilously close to that limit in the recent past and fortunately are moving away from real climate catastrophe.

Whether it becomes cat

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[zapadnik]

Fantastic. So if your references are correct then the LIA is caused by NATURAL processes, and the resulting recovery to normal temperatures again is caused by NATURAL processes with some small CO2 effect on top. Great,. you are now officially a 'denier' since you don't think that CO2 drives all temperature variability. Oh, and thanks for confirming using these references that Michael Mann's Hockey Stick really is a fraud, since it denies the existence of the MWP, RWP and LIA. You are a double 'denier' know, according to you own reckoning, right? Of course, you'd realize this already if you actually looked at the observational data - since you'd recognize the Hockey Stick is a fraud straight away and without a Hockey Stick then the CAGW theory is an utter nonsense and is falsified immediately.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[riverat1]

Don't be ridiculous. Of course other things besides CO2 drive climate. Volcanoes, changes in albedo and solar variation (driven more strongly by Milankovitch Cycles than variation in solar output) being some of the big ones. The question is can you find a current natural process other than CO2 to account for the bulk of the current warming.

In the original hockey stick graph the period from 1000 to 1200 was the warmest before the current warming. How is that denying the MWP? The period from about 1400 to 1900 is the coldest shown on the graph. How is that denying the LIA?

I'm confused by you mentioning RWP since it was 1000 years before the start of the graph. Which makes me wonder have you ever actually looked at that graph?

The hockey stick graph has absolutely nothing to do with as you put it "C"AGW theory. It is a reconstruction of past temperatures, not a theory of how climate changes. Therefore it has nothing to do with supporting or falsifying current climate theory.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[zapadnik]

The question is can you find a current natural process other than CO2 to account for the bulk of the current warming.

Yes. Solar magnetic variability which is correlated with temperature changes, with the correlation affected by a lag explained by oceanic effects. Furthermore, the CO2 concentration itself follows temperature (specifically, Earth's surface properties which are strongly temperature dependent, eg. the biospheric respiration of microbial life is HUGE and very temperature dependent).

But hey, anyone who believes in anything other than CO2 as climate driver is called a "denier" by the warmistas. That makes you a denier.

In the original hockey stick graph the period from 1000 to 1200 was the warmest before the current warming. How is that denying the MWP? The period from about 1400 to 1900 is the coldest shown on the graph. How is that denying the LIA?

Nope. Michael Mann's Hockey Stick has a very flat handle. Very flat, The fact that the blade shoots up is the 'evidence' for CAGW. Without a 'flat handle' t it there is not proof of the 'A' in CAGW.

I'm confused by you mentioning RWP since it was 1000 years before the start of the graph. Which makes me wonder have you ever actually looked at that graph?

Yes, I understand you are very confused. Now you are making a legal argument and not a scientific one, "Your Honor, the RWP which disproves AGW happened before the time period of the Statute of Limitations !". You guys should really listen to yourselves sometime and just think through what you are saying from a 'common sense' point of view (which is apparently not very common amongst warmistas).

The hockey stick graph has absolutely nothing to do with as you put it "C"AGW theory. It is a reconstruction of past temperatures, not a theory of how climate changes. Therefore it has nothing to do with supporting or falsifying current climate theory.

BOOM ! A second time you demonstrate a complete ignorance of the argument that YOUR side makes. The Hockey Stick is *essentialy* to the argument that the cause of the warming after the LIA is principally due to humans. This is why the Hockey Stick *must* have a flat blade or AGW is falsified (which means warmunists MUST deny the LIA and WMP and RWM and even older warming in the Holocene), That is why I post this graph, because it shows that the hypothesis advanced by the warmistas CANNOT be true:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com...

That is why the warmistas always have to quantity the time period of their argument and prevent you from looking at ALL the data - because once you start collecting data they don't want you to see then you clearly see that not only is CAGW wrong, even AGW is wrong (meaning, humans are not the principal driver of climate change, but yes, we do put a small finger on the scales), and the only reason this zombie theory is still pushed is because the forces behind it are not scientific and using rationalism and the Scientific Method - but they are POLITICAL with a particular agenda that doesn't care about the science (except if it helped them, but observational reality has falsified their hypothesis and made things difficult for the international socialist agenda that is driving this).

You can read about the goals of the UN and IPCC from their own statements, here:
http://green-agenda.com/

I'm trying to help you use the Scientific Method and look at ALL the data - because the RSS and UAH satellites are the most important, but their data falsifies CAGW and AGW at this time. Same with the paleo record. But the warmistas are trying to play lawyer sophistry on you, and not do science. I want you to do the science using the Scientific Method.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[riverat1]

Oh... your feelings are hurt being called a climate science denier. All you're trying to do is co-opt the word denier so it only applies to Holocaust deniers. Actually in the long run I think climate science deniers may be found more wanting morally than Holocaust deniers because they're actively trying to thwart taking action against anthropogenic global warming rather than simply denying a historic fact.

The latest IPCC report gives an ECS range of 1.5 to 4 K. Lewis and Curry give a range of 1.04 to 4.05 K. Looks pretty similar to me. I've never seen anything from the IPCC that said 4 K is extremely likely. Perhaps you could cite the section of the report that says that.

As far as ice goes, Arctic sea ice minimum extent was the 4th lowest after 2012, 2007 and 2011. The 9 lowest years of Arctic sea ice extent minimums have all been since 2007. Link. Greenland continues to lose ice by all measurements including the GRACE satellites which measure changes in gravity. Antarctic sea ice did not set a new record this year although it was still higher than before the recent spate of record high years. The GRACE satellites continue to show net loss of ice from the Antarctic ice sheet although a recent paper shows gains in some areas.

To say that total ice cover is at record levels is absurd.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[riverat1]

Maybe you can say there's a correlation between solar magnetic variability and climate (I have my doubts) but now you need to come up with the method of causation before you can really call it a theory.

But hey, anyone who believes in anything other than CO2 as climate driver is called a "denier" by the warmistas. That makes you a denier.

That makes all the scientists who worked on the IPCC WG1 report deniers too. I'm in good company :)

My confusion about your mention of the RWP was that you mentioned it in the context of the hockey stick graph when the start of the HSG is 1000 years after the RMP.

BOOM ! A second time you demonstrate a complete ignorance of the argument that YOUR side makes. The Hockey Stick is *essentialy* to the argument that the cause of the warming after the LIA is principally due to humans. This is why the Hockey Stick *must* have a flat blade or AGW is falsified (which means warmunists MUST deny the LIA and WMP and RWM and even older warming in the Holocene), That is why I post this graph, because it shows that the hypothesis advanced by the warmistas CANNOT be true:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com... [amazonaws.com]

So now you're claiming the record from one ice core in Greenland is a suitable analog for the whole planet? Cherry picking at its finest.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[zapadnik]

Maybe you can say there's a correlation between solar magnetic variability and climate (I have my doubts) but now you need to come up with the method of causation before you can really call it a theory.

I have already talked about this. See the work of astrophysicist Nir Shaviv.

That makes all the scientists who worked on the IPCC WG1 report deniers too. I'm in good company :)

Too bad the IPCC's Summary for Policymakers is at odds with the science in the bulk of the document. Did you not notice this? You are still a "denier" by the criteria that the warmistas use.

My confusion about your mention of the RWP was that you mentioned it in the context of the hockey stick graph when the start of the HSG is 1000 years after the RMP.

The fact that the RWP exists shows that NATURAL VARIABILITY is greater and faster than what we've seen over the last 200 years. The Hockey Stick is hokum.

So now you're claiming the record from one ice core in Greenland is a suitable analog for the whole planet? Cherry picking at its finest.

This is what Richard Feyman had to say, "It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.". You don't get to dismiss realty. You MUST explain the Greenland ice core record. You must explain the Antarctic ice core records. You must explain the stalactite growth measurements ALL OVER THE WORLD. They are all consistent, and they all show that the Hockey Stick is WRONG (nb: Michael Mann's Hockey Stick is the ULTIMATE in 'cherry picking').

Furthermore, like all extremists you simply ignore questions and data that destroy your faith. You have not answered what you think the global mean temperature should be, and what the CO2 temperature should be, and why you think this.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[zapadnik]

Oh... your feelings are hurt being called a climate science denier.

Where did I mention my "feelings"? Where? However, as a maladjusted misanthrope you clearly would like this to have been the case. That's what you trolls live on. It's not like you could win the debate on the evidence - since you deny the reality of the evidence that counters your "faith".

All you're trying to do is co-opt the word denier so it only applies to Holocaust deniers. Actually in the long run I think climate science deniers may be found more wanting morally than Holocaust deniers because they're actively trying to thwart taking action against anthropogenic global warming rather than simply denying a historic fact.

Here we go. You make a disgusting use of the word "denier" and then you double-down on your nonsense. Truly pathetic.

The latest IPCC report gives an ECS range of 1.5 to 4 K. Lewis and Curry give a range of 1.04 to 4.05 K. Looks pretty similar to me. I've never seen anything from the IPCC that said 4 K is extremely likely. Perhaps you could cite the section of the report that says that.

Perhaps you could learn some statistics and look at the respective probability distributions and look at the expectation values. If you can. 'Cause at the moment you statement shows a clear ignorance of the significant difference. Furthermore, you don't seem to be aware of the evolution of the IPCC's position from insane back somewhat to observational reality as shown by Lewis and Curry.

As far as ice goes, Arctic sea ice minimum extent was the 4th lowest after 2012, 2007 and 2011. The 9 lowest years of Arctic sea ice extent minimums have all been since 2007. Link. [nsidc.org] Greenland continues to lose ice by all measurements including the GRACE satellites which measure changes in gravity. Antarctic sea ice did not set a new record this year although it was still higher than before the recent spate of record high years. The GRACE satellites continue to show net loss of ice from the Antarctic ice sheet although a recent paper shows gains in some areas.

Actually, there was FAR less ice 70 years ago. But you don't know anything about the newspaper reports of the time. This is at the same time that the US experienced its 'dustbowl' conditions that were far hotter and more extreme than temperatures today (based on the real data before NASA and NOAA cooled the past to produce 'Mike's Nature Trick').

To say that total ice cover is at record levels is absurd.

Nonsense. I've already provided a link to the Danish measurements which show the cover is at record levels. Your whole position is based on media propaganda and NOT on looking at the actual data. Which is why you are crap at science.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[riverat1]

I've seen work from Nir Shaviv before. Right now his solar magnetic variability work is just a hypothesis. There is no known causative factor for that to drive climate. Come up with the causation link and you have a theory.

So I went and read the IPCC AR5 WG1 Summary for Policymakers. (Errata) As an aside I found this statement in it that supports my contention the the MWP wasn't globally well coordinated in time.

Continental-scale surface temperature reconstructions show, with high confidence, multi-decadal periods during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (year 950 to 1250) that were in some regions as warm as in the late 20th century. These regional warm periods did not occur as coherently across regions as the warming in the late 20th century (high confidence). {5.5}

Maybe I'm dense but you'll have to explain to me why the "SPM is at odds with the bulk of the document". If it's about natural climate forcings they get mentioned in the SPM although not particularly prominently. Section 8.4 of the WG1 report is titled "Natural Radiative Forcing Changes: Solar and Volcanic".

The fact that the RWP exists shows that NATURAL VARIABILITY is greater and faster than what we've seen over the last 200 years.

You're going to have to justify that statement scientifically for me to give it any credence. I've never seen any evidence for that.

What the global mean temperature should be is an irrelevant question. The issue is the rate of temperature change is far faster than natural and human systems can adapt to easily. If you took the temperature change expected over the next 200 years with BAU and spread it out over 2,000 years or more it wouldn't be nearly as big a problem.

To bring this back to a single thread I'll respond to your 2nd message here.

Denier is a perfectly good descriptive word that can apply to many types of denial. Holocaust deniers, climate science deniers, anti-vaxxers (vacine science deniers), creationists (evolution science deniers), moon landing deniers and many more. I'll continue to use it when I think it's appropriate.

Perhaps you could learn some statistics and look at the respective probability distributions and look at the expectation values. If you can. 'Cause at the moment you statement shows a clear ignorance of the significant difference. Furthermore, you don't seem to be aware of the evolution of the IPCC's position from insane back somewhat to observational reality as shown by Lewis and Curry.

I went to the WG1 report (it's big, took me over 10 minutes to download) and looked at what it has to say about climate sensitivity. On page 1110 there is a graph of different measurements of equilibrium climate sensitivity. The give the likely range at 1.5 to 4.5 C. They included "Lewis, N., 2013: An objective Bayesian, improved approach for applying optimal fingerprint techniques to estimate climate sensitivity. J. Clim., doi:10.1175/JCLID-12-00473.1." in the graph. The range for that is still mostly within the IPCC range. That apparently isn't the Lewis & Curry paper you are referring to but as I said the range for L&C is 1.04 to 4.05 K, largely within the IPCC likely range.

I'm well aware that the IPCC's position on ECS has evolved over time but an ECS of about 3 C has always been near the middle of the range.

Actually, there was FAR less ice 70 years ago. But you don't know anything about the newspaper reports of the time. This is at the same time that the US experienced its 'dustbowl' conditions that were far hotter and more extreme than temperatures today (based on the real data before NASA and NOAA cooled the past to produce 'Mike's Nature Trick').

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[zapadnik]

I've seen work from Nir Shaviv before. Right now his solar magnetic variability work is just a hypothesis. There is no known causative factor for that to drive climate. Come up with the causation link and you have a theory.

Completely false. I even hinted with the name Svensmark to see how much you knew. A lot less than you think, it appears. There is a known causative factor linking Solar activity to the most powerful 'greenhouse gas' there is. The correlation is well established. But it appears you do not know it. Hence you claim there is no 'causation link' when there is - you just seem unaware of it. So you have a chance to retain some credibility if you can show you understand the mechanism - and you can be as detailed as you like, I actually do have a PhD in Astrophysics - so we can see whether you understand or not.

Maybe I'm dense but you'll have to explain to me why the "SPM is at odds with the bulk of the document". If it's about natural climate forcings they get mentioned in the SPM although not particularly prominently. Section 8.4 of the WG1 report is titled "Natural Radiative Forcing Changes: Solar and Volcanic".

Do you not know that the IPCC's terms of reference is to investigate man-made climate change ONLY. They are not to investigate natural variability - that is out-of-scope although some stuff does slip in. Hence, if the only thing you read are the IPCC's documents the only conclusion you can reach is that all warming is man made. This is by design. Did you not know this? This is why the IPCC does not report on the mountain of data *outside* of human effects.

Furthermore, the claims of 'regional' warming is falsified by the fact that EVERY continent shows warming at the SAME TIME. The IPCC simply don't want to admit this, just as they don't want to admit their computer simulations are diverging more and more rapidly from reality - this is even when them adjusting their predictions downward with every report. Look at the time series of IPCC reports and you can see this - of course, since you only just looked at the latest report and have not looked at them as a time series you cannot see the time derivative of their predictions (which, given sufficient time, would converge on the observational reality that Climate Realists have been talking about). Thank you for at least looking at one of the source documents.

You're going to have to justify that statement scientifically for me to give it any credence. I've never seen any evidence for that.

Have I not already given you the data multiple times. You chose to ignore it by placing it 'out of scope'. I can only lead you to water, I cannot make you think. Look at the data!

What the global mean temperature should be is an irrelevant question. The issue is the rate of temperature change is far faster than natural and human systems can adapt to easily. If you took the temperature change expected over the next 200 years with BAU and spread it out over 2,000 years or more it wouldn't be nearly as big a problem.

It is completely relevant. In the past the global mean terrestrial surface temperature has been as high as 25 C and life THRIVED. Plants thrive when at 2000 ppmV CO2, which was the level when they evolved - and they are dangerously STARVED of CO2 right now. Which is why special structures can make plants grow a lot better by putting the plants under conditions of increased temperature and CO2 (so much that diesel generator exhaust is vented into the structure to increase CO2 levels), these special structures are called 'Greenhouses' - ever heard of them? Higher CO2 is a GOOD THING and is making the World greener (if you examine the satellite data).

But let us ignore the fact that you are the ultimate of conservatives who wants to keep conditions exactly as they were in 1970. And let us also ignore you (nor any other alarmist) can answer what the optimal terrestrial

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[riverat1]

No one thinks it's Milankovitch Cycles alone but they clearly seem to have a major effect over multi-thousand year periods. I suspect they understand more than you think they do.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[riverat1]

I know of Henrik Svensmark's cosmic ray hypothesis. There may be some relationship between cosmic rays and clouds but it's far from clear how much of an influence GCRs are. There are plenty of cloud condensation nuclei in the atmosphere even without the influence of GCRs.

Do you not know that the IPCC's terms of reference is to investigate man-made climate change ONLY.

It's impossible to understand anthropogenic climate change without also understanding natural variability and the scientists who put together the IPCC WG1 reports are well aware of this.

Have I not already given you the data multiple times.

What data? You've just made the bald statement that "The fact that the RWP exists shows that NATURAL VARIABILITY is greater and faster than what we've seen over the last 200 years." No cites to anything to support that.

It is completely relevant. In the past the global mean terrestrial surface temperature has been as high as 25 C and life THRIVED. Plants thrive when at 2000 ppmV CO2, which was the level when they evolved ...

Sure but that doesn't mean that life in its current evolutionary state can easily withstand those conditions. It's probably been 100 million years since CO2 was at 2000 ppm and over 65 million years since it was even above 1000.

But let us ignore the fact that you are the ultimate of conservatives who wants to keep conditions exactly as they were in 1970. And let us also ignore you (nor any other alarmist) can answer what the optimal terrestrial temperature ought to be. But let us examine your statement about "the rate of temperature change is far faster than natural and human systems can adapt to easily." What is the maximum acceptable rate of change? You made the claim, now quantify it so we can discuss further.

Didn't I quantify it somewhat by saying " If you took the temperature change expected over the next 200 years with BAU and spread it out over 2,000 years or more it wouldn't be nearly as big a problem."?

Thank you for looking at the data. Now, what would you expect to see if the CAGW/AGW hypothesis is true? didn't Al Gore scam millions with the statement that all polar bears would be dead (they're not only not dead, their numbers are UP - because it is thick spring ice that kills them and their cubs after hibernation - not a lack of summer ice), that children would not know what snow was, and that the Arctic would be 'Ice Free' in summer. Not only are all the predictions of you Alarmists neo-Marxists wrong, reality turned out to be 180-degrees away from your predictions - because you don't use the Scientific Method. Your goal is described exactly here: [green-agenda.com] - but you are not only on the wrong side of history, you are on the wrong side of reality. You are akin to a Flat Earther who does not want to look at the data (eg. UAH and RSS satellite data sets) that blows your non-falsifiable hypothesis (CAGW/AGW) away.

I don't think any of those predictions were expected to happen by now. In particular Arctic sea ice is expected to disappear by mid-century by most scientists.

I went to that exercise in quote mining at GA. There are some things in there that I agree with but I completely disagree with the stuff from Earth First and and others like it. The ones that involve religion are meaningless to me.

I pay attention to the UAH and RSS data. I just think the surface temperature data is more reliable. I expect UAH and RSS to show large spikes this year as they have during past large El Ninos.

Someone needs to do a definitive study taking the known temperature data for other planets compared to Earth over time. I'd be interested in that. But there's probably not enough data on other planets yet to make the study.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[zapadnik]

I know of Henrik Svensmark's cosmic ray hypothesis. There may be some relationship between cosmic rays and clouds but it's far from clear how much of an influence GCRs are. There are plenty of cloud condensation nuclei in the atmosphere even without the influence of GCRs.

Perhaps you might like to look at this, then: http://principia-scientific.or...

t's impossible to understand anthropogenic climate change without also understanding natural variability and the scientists who put together the IPCC WG1 reports are well aware of this.

Of course it is impossible, that is the point!
This analysis makes it clear that the Franework Convention defines 'climate change' as that change which is due to human activity" http://www.mclean.ch/climate/d...

Of course humans have an effect on the climate. Of course nature has an effect on the climate. Which is greater? the IPCC is NOT charged with finding out. "Climate Change" is *defined* as that from human activity *only*, so of course reasonable people like yourself will be convinced that humans need to de-industrialize in accordance with http://green-agenda.com/
I am trying to make you aware that the IPCC is not about science, but about cover for a pre-defined neo-Marxist policy which doesn't actually care about the science. Your problem is that you are unable to fathom the ways that non-scientists work. The scientists are mostly honest (although if you've done research as I have you'll know that once the fight for funding is on even scientists show self-interest and bias), but the bureaucrats writing the summaries and press-releases most certainly are not !

What data? You've just made the bald statement that "The fact that the RWP exists shows that NATURAL VARIABILITY is greater and faster than what we've seen over the last 200 years." No cites to anything to support that.

Yes I have. You simply dismissed the data I gave. Thus, I will MAKE you look through the links I have already given - to get you out of the bad habit of arguing your position without actually examining the evidence presented. Sorry, but it is for your own damn good. You sound like an intelligent person, but you are having a hard time throwing off the programming you've been subjected to. Unfortunately de-programming you requires some work on your part.

Sure but that doesn't mean that life in its current evolutionary state can easily withstand those conditions. It's probably been 100 million years since CO2 was at 2000 ppm and over 65 million years since it was even above 1000.

Great. But you still need to answer what the 'optimimum' CO2 and mean global temperature should be, right? I mean, surely the IPCC has laid that out exactly for you, right? It has not ! That is my point - they get the world into hysterics (because getting people to react emotionally bypasses their reason) but they never defined what the actual target conditions should be or why. We do get a hint of their true motivation when the leaders of the movement refer to pre-industrial conditions as the reference. Would you like to live in a pre-industrial World? because that is what the eco-loons behind this movement are really aiming for. Have you never thought about that?

Didn't I quantify it somewhat by saying " If you took the temperature change expected over the next 200 years with BAU and spread it out over 2,000 years or more it wouldn't be nearly as big a problem."?

Why wouldn't it be a problem? surely if the CAGW/AGW hypothesis is correct and human emitted CO2 is the biggest driver of the climate then the World is just as cooked in 2000 years as 200? no? the rate of change makes l

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[riverat1]

The Pricipia Scientific article was interesting in that it shows a correlation between insolation and cloud cover when looked at hemispherically. It does not however show anything about a long term trend in insolation that could account for rising temperatures. Particularly since the trend in insolation is slightly downward since the 1950s.

... so of course reasonable people like yourself will be convinced that humans need to de-industrialize...

Don't try to tell me what I think. I've never said anything like that ever. What I think is industry needs to work toward sustainability.

I am trying to make you aware that the IPCC is not about science, but about cover for a pre-defined neo-Marxist policy which doesn't actually care about the science.

Ah, it appears to me that your objection to the current consensus on climate science is more rooted in your politics than science and you're desperately seeking anything you can throw at it. The IPCC's Working Group I report is entirely written by credentialed scientists even though you may not consider them to be scientists.

You simply dismissed the data I gave.

You presented one cite that I could find regarding the RWP, the GISP2 graph at joannanova (the link appears to be nonfunctional right now but there are plenty of other pages with GISP2 information).

The first thing you need to know about that graph is that it ends 95 years before the present and by convention in those types of graphs 1950 is considered the present. So the graph ends in 1855. I wonder what it would look like if you could add 1856 to 2015 to it?

The other thing is I want to corroborating evidence from geographically dispersed sites before I consider it anything but indicative of the GISP2 site itself.

Again the optimum CO2 and mean global temperature are irrelevant questions. The question is how fast can they change so that we can still maintain our global civilization and the natural systems we depend on remain viable. If the change took 2000 years rather than 200 it would be much easier to adapt to the change.

As far as Arctic sea ice I go mostly by what is published in the IPCC reports but they have consistently underpredicted the loss of Arctic sea ice. Other people may have made more hyperbolic predictions but I can't stop that.

Yes, El Nino is natural. But why is it that when they claim "No warming for 18 years!" it starts at the last super El Nino year in 1988. If you plot only El Nino years the long term trend is still upward. And plotting La Nina years or ENSO neutral years also show an upward trend.

Any warming on Pluto can probably be attributed to orbital eccentricity. It has by far the most eccentric orbit of any planet and it just recently passed perihelion (September 1989). I still want more than anecdotal evidence that other bodies in the solar system are heating up. Whenever I've tried searching the web for that I've come up empty.

You keep leaking politics into what should be a scientific discussion.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[zapadnik]

The Pricipia Scientific article was interesting in that it shows a correlation between insolation and cloud cover when looked at hemispherically. It does not however show anything about a long term trend in insolation that could account for rising temperatures. Particularly since the trend in insolation is slightly downward since the 1950s.

You seemed to have missed the point entirely (again). Water vapor is THE dominant greenhouse gas - vastly more so than CO2. That is what makes determining the ECS and TCS so important. The computer simulations to determine the ECS and TCS have failed utterly to predict what is observed - and the most-likely values of the observed ECS and TCS are entirely due to CO2 (which is small, and diminishing, at the current CO2 concentration) because the effect on water vapor is neutral or even slightly negative. This is another observation that falsifies the CAGW/AGW hypothesis (in addition to the failure of the tropical lower troposphere to warm before the surface which also falsifies CAGW/CAGW).

Don't try to tell me what I think. I've never said anything like that ever. What I think is industry needs to work toward sustainability.

Ah, playing the victim by deliberately mis-reading what I wrote. I said the aim of the people pushing this scam is to convince you of the need to de-industralize, and they are halfway there. What exactly does "sustainability" mean? it means a roll-back of the industrialization of the World.

Ah, it appears to me that your objection to the current consensus on climate science is more rooted in your politics than science and you're desperately seeking anything you can throw at it. The IPCC's Working Group I report is entirely written by credentialed scientists even though you may not consider them to be scientists.

Here you go, Appeal to Authority. I don't give a flying fsck who said what - all I care about is the Scientific Method - and the OBSERVATIONAL DATA shows that CAGW/AGW is falsified and the Null Hypothesis MUST be accepted instead at this time. Because you don't actually have the data you have to appeal to authority. It is YOU who is failing to do science because of your political position. Of course I will use all the data there is - that IS the POINT of the Scientific Method. You anti-scientific warmistas always throw away data you don't like, and then accuse others of 'cherry picking' - but it is the anomalies that MUST be explained in order to do actual science.

The first thing you need to know about that graph is that it ends 95 years before the present and by convention in those types of graphs 1950 is considered the present. So the graph ends in 1855. I wonder what it would look like if you could add 1856 to 2015 to it?

Nice talking points you have there. Again you demonstrate an utter inability to do objective analysis. The point of that graph was not to do with data after 1950 - but to demonstrate NATURAL VARIABILITY in the paleo record that is vastly greater and faster than what we see today - and appears correlated with solar magnetic activity (and thus, water vapor concentration, which is the dominant greenhouse gas that is NOT modeled accurately by the IPCC). But you need to deliberately ignore this point so you can continue with your anti-scientific CAGW/AGW hypothesis lest it be falsified by you actually folllowing the Scientific Method.

The other thing is I want to corroborating evidence from geographically dispersed sites before I consider it anything but indicative of the GISP2 site itself.

It's out there in total abundance - go and look yourself you lazy sod ! I'm not your servant. And looking yourself will turn over a wealth of GLOBAL evidence.

Again the optimum CO2 and mean global temperature are irrelevant questions. The question is how fast can they change so that we c

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[riverat1]

It's true that water vapor is the greenhouse gas that causes the most greenhouse effect but it's also true that water is present in all three phases of normal matter on the Earth and it easily transforms from one to the other. The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is strictly limited by temperature and to some extent by the availability of water to evaporate. If there's too much it precipitates out. And while there's a relationship between water vapor and clouds they are two quite different things when it comes to the greenhouse effect. Again the level of water vapor in the atmosphere is strictly limited by temperature. If we could magically reduce CO2 in the atmosphere to 200 ppm the cooling would cause the level of water vapor to also drop and pretty quickly we would be starting a new glacial period. Water vapor by itself can not drive climate change but is strictly a feedback of other things that do drive climate.

Ok, the optimum CO2 level from my point of view would be somewhere between 300 and 350 ppm, enough to conteract the slow cooling trend from changes in Milankovitch Cycles but not so much that it causes major warming. But it's still an irrelevant question.

After the sea ice low minimum in 2012 (which was more than 2 standard deviations below the trend line) Arctic sea ice rebounded to slightly above the trend line in 2013. In science this is commonly called regression to the mean. 2014 ASI minimum was lower than 2013 and in 2015 it was the 4th lowest on record. None of the ASI minimums after 2006 are greater than the lowest records before 2006 (back to 1979 when the satellite measurements started).

Baffin Island is really close to Greenland so it doesn't surprise me it shows similar trends. How about some records from Siberia, China, Chile or New Zealand?

Thus, I write not for you, but for other people reading this thread who approach it objectively.

Funny, I do it for the same reason.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[zapadnik]

It's true that water vapor is the greenhouse gas that causes the most greenhouse effect but it's also true that water is present in all three phases of normal matter on the Earth and it easily transforms from one to the other. The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is strictly limited by temperature and to some extent by the availability of water to evaporate. If there's too much it precipitates out. And while there's a relationship between water vapor and clouds they are two quite different things when it comes to the greenhouse effect. Again the level of water vapor in the atmosphere is strictly limited by temperature. If we could magically reduce CO2 in the atmosphere to 200 ppm the cooling would cause the level of water vapor to also drop and pretty quickly we would be starting a new glacial period. Water vapor by itself can not drive climate change but is strictly a feedback of other things that do drive climate.

Nearly, but not quite. However, you do have an inkling of the idea - that temperature drives water vapor and that has a large effect on the climate. Now we have already established that the effect of CO2 on water vapor is negligible, with the low *OBSERVED* ECS and TCS.

We've already covered the effect of solar magnetic activity on cloud formation (and thus, climate) through the work of Dr Nir Shaviv and Professor Svensmark. Now you can learn more from the man who literally wrote the (post-graduate) textbook on atmospheric physics (although you probably cannot follow the math):
"Climate Scientist Murry Salby Demolishes the Global Warming Alarm"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"Climate Scientist Murry Salby Returns! - Presents NEW SCIENCE"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Ok, the optimum CO2 level from my point of view would be somewhere between 300 and 350 ppm, enough to conteract the slow cooling trend from changes in Milankovitch Cycles but not so much that it causes major warming. But it's still an irrelevant question.

Ah, here we have the reactionary wanting to head back to pre-industrial levels. Do you not understand that dropping the CO2 to this level will cut crop yields massively, and thus starve BILLIONS? as a zealot you don't care, right? the only thing that matters is your sanctimony and feeling of self-worth for propagating the warmunist groupthiink.

After the sea ice low minimum in 2012 (which was more than 2 standard deviations below the trend line) Arctic sea ice rebounded to slightly above the trend line in 2013. In science this is commonly called regression to the mean. 2014 ASI minimum was lower than 2013 and in 2015 it was the 4th lowest on record. None of the ASI minimums after 2006 are greater than the lowest records before 2006 (back to 1979 when the satellite measurements started).

And? What is magical about the cold year 1979? why is it superior to 2006? you don't know ! because there is no reason - apart from the fact you warmunists are the ultimate in conservative reactionaries. What matters is that the derivative of ice change is basically zero, with natural variability on top (dominated by wind effects, as it tuns out). You have no reason to worry about this - since the polar bears are increasing in number - but you are simply afraid of any change at all. It is irrational.

Baffin Island is really close to Greenland so it doesn't surprise me it shows similar trends. How about some records from Siberia, China, Chile or New Zealand?

Here is New Zealand - looks exactly the same as the USA
https://stevengoddard.wordpres...
And local bodies concur

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[riverat1]

What's "magical" about 1979 is that's the year the satellite that allowed us to continuously monitor and get detailed records of sea ice were launched. Here's a report on a study of Arctic sea ice extents back to 1935 using at least in part ships logs. As one of the authors of the report says it's not the last word on the subject but it does advance the science.

As for the rest of it I've been holding back but I have to say that most of the cites you make (WUWT, Steven Goddard, Murry Salby, etc) have no credibility with me. You might as well resign yourself to continued frustration because unless your side can put together a coherent narrative and make climate models that explain the current situation better than existing models you will continue to be ignored by most scientists.

Your "wiping the floor" comment made me laugh out loud. What I see in you is someone whose political leanings color your understanding of climate science. You don't like the obvious solutions so you seek out evidence that is counter to the mainstream, ignoring the stuff that doesn't fit your view. But physics doesn't care. It is what it is. As the future unfolds we'll see who is right but I'm pretty confident that the scientists in the mainstream are honestly reporting what they find.

Re:Does anyone have a list of the hottest years?

[zapadnik]

What's "magical" about 1979 is that's the year the satellite that allowed us to continuously monitor and get detailed records of sea ice were launched. Here's a report [typepad.com] on a study of Arctic sea ice extents back to 1935 using at least in part ships logs. As one of the authors of the report says it's not the last word on the subject but it does advance the science.

No. You don't get it (again). What is "magical" about 1979 that requires the Earth to be return to the *same exact conditions* as in that year? because that is the basis for the warmista argument.

As for the rest of it I've been holding back but I have to say that most of the cites you make (WUWT, Steven Goddard, Murry Salby, etc) have no credibility with me.

More anti-scientific garbage from you. I have NEVER appealed to their authority, only to their data. And you REFUSE to look at the data - which makes you anti-scientific. Another fail on your part.

You might as well resign yourself to continued frustration because unless your side can put together a coherent narrative and make climate models that explain the current situation better than existing models you will continue to be ignored by most scientists.

False. We don't have to do anything. You don't understand the Scientific Method at all, do you? it is YOU who has to prove your case, and if you cannot prove your case using OBSERVATIONAL DATA then the Null Hypothesis MUST be accepted. We are simply showing data that falsifies your hypothesis, and since YOU are unable to explain this data using your hypothesis it means your hypothesis is falsified and the Null Hypothesis MUST be accepted over CAGW/AGW instead. The burden of proof falls on YOU, and you are unable to prove anything. Furthermore, you also don't seem to understand that climate models mean NOTHING, they are hypothesis and not OBSERVATIONAL DATA. You fail to grok this - because you don't understand the Scientific Method at all.

Your "wiping the floor" comment made me laugh out loud. What I see in you is someone whose political leanings color your understanding of climate science.

Nice ad hominem. But what are my political leanings, riverat1? I'm not a US citizen so your pathetic ad hominem is not only false, it is idiotic - and shows how you must argue about everything except the observational data that falsifies the claims of CAGW/AGW warmistas. FAIL.

You don't like the obvious solutions so you seek out evidence that is counter to the mainstream, ignoring the stuff that doesn't fit your view.

This is not only false, and not only stupid, but is completely anti-thetical to the Scientific Method where it is REQUIRED to try find data that falsifies your hypothesis. To avoid contrary data is anti-scientific - which is exactly what you are. Again, you don't understand the Scientific Method at all.

But physics doesn't care. It is what it is. As the future unfolds we'll see who is right but I'm pretty confident that the scientists in the mainstream are honestly reporting what they find.

The physics is clear - CAGW is not happening, because the models (hypothesis) are completely wrong. The physics shows that the observational ECS and TCS are incompatible with CAGW - hence CAGW is falsified and the Null Hypothesis MUST be accepted instead.

As the future unfolds we'll see who is right but I'm pretty confident that the scientists in the mainstream are honestly reporting what they find.

Your confidence is irrelevant. Consensus is irrelevant. The only thing that matters in the Scientific Method are OBSERVATIONAL DATA. And the Observational Data from RSS and UAH and tens of thousands of weather balloons and the well-sited surface stations all show REALITY does not match the CAGW hypothesis - hence the hypothesis is falsified.

You don't understand the Scientific Method at all !

Not according to satellites

[mi]

2015 is virtually certain to beat 2014's record as the planet's warmest year since record keeping began in 1880

Not according to satellite data.

Re:Not according to satellites

[russotto]

Ah, but the satellite data is obviously wrong, because it clearly shows the "hiatus"
  that we're assured didn't happen. Every other dataset that has been carefully examined to find and eliminate causes for the "hiatus" has been successfully corrected, it won't be long for this one.

Re:Not according to satellites

[The-Ixian]

Perhaps I am misreading this graph but it looks to me like this is only showing temperature variance due to El Nino not global temperature averages.

Re:Not according to satellites

[Cyberax]

Satellite data put it at least in the top 3 years. Oh, and there's no "hiatus" any more.

Re:Not according to satellites

[Coren22]

Clearly 2015 was the hottest year since 1998.

Re:Not according to satellites

[fche]

"there's no "hiatus" any more"

What's your definition of "hiatus"?

Re:Not according to satellites

[dywolf]

and the reason satellites show the hiatus?
because they aren't capable of showing subsurface ocean temperatures, aka the place storing all that 'missing' energy.

seriously.
its now 2016.
this line of BS has been known for the last few years.
you really need to get some new material.

Re:Not according to satellites

[dywolf]

2015 is virtually certain to beat 2014's record as the planet's warmest year since record keeping began in 1880

Not according to satellite data cherry picked and misrepresented by well known serial climate liar Roy Spencer

FTFY.
Plus, unless you just have no clue how to read a chart, the chart at your link clearly does show warming.
which is probably the rest of the climate science community stopped taking Roy Spencer seriously a long time ago.

For more his greatest hits, check out:
https://www.skepticalscience.c...
http://thinkprogress.org/clima...

Re:Not according to satellites

[dywolf]

also note that what he states is This makes 2015 the third warmest year globally (+0.27 deg C) in the satellite record (since 1979).

this is not at all contradictory or mutually exclusive. the flaws or inadequacies of the satellite data are well known, and its completely possible to be only 3rd warmest in one flawed data set, and warmest in another more complete dataset.

But congratulations on mastering how to lie with statistics 101 and moving onto 102 methods.
That's progress, albeit not the kind honest people like to see.

Re:Not according to satellites

[Anonymous Coward]

You picked a creationist and denier of evolutionary theory to dispute the findings here? Ok. Not sure how much credibility he brings to the table for the typical Slashdot reader. Even so, his limited data set, however he managed to construe it, suggested 2015 was the 3rd warmest year on record.

From Wikipedia

"In the book The Evolution Crisis, Spencer wrote, 'I finally became convinced that the theory of creation actually had a much better scientific basis than the theory of evolution, for the creation model was actually better able to explain the physical and biological complexity in the world.' "

Re:Not according to satellites

[russotto]

Oh my god, there was a hiatus in the warming, whatever shall we do?

Well, satellite temperatures don't show everything, we'll blame it on that.

But wait, surface temperatures show a hiatus too!

Oh, we'll just carefully examine all the datasets for signs of a systemic error in favor of cooling, and correct for each of those errors until the hiatus goes away.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

(Note that the procedure described produces invalid results even if all the systemic errors in favor of cooling actually exist and are correctly accounted for)

Re:Not according to satellites

[hort_wort]

Plus, unless you just have no clue how to read a chart, the chart at your link clearly does show warming.
which is probably the rest of the climate science community stopped taking Roy Spencer seriously a long time ago.

Technically I think Roy is right in this case. I looked through it for a bit and it looks like that graph is showing a spike around `97 or so. They usually factor out volcanic, solar, and other activities to get an overall trend. This is the raw data that still has all that. If you're *just* looking for the hottest year on record, regardless of trends, then it looks like that spike is probably it.

That's not to say that the trend isn't still terrifying though. If the same conditions arose today that caused that spike in `97, then the new spike would probably be much much higher. Knowing that anomalies like that can happen is actually even scarier than the claim that we set a record. :c

Re:Not according to satellites

[Anonymous Coward]

Every single year that isn't the warmest year on record, the deniers are out in force screaming "lol not hottest!".

Meanwhile, there hasn't been a candidate for *coldest* year on record (or even the top ten) in 100 years. To meet the ~1910 nadir now would require a downward fluctuation of roughly eleven standard deviations to occur...

Re:Not according to satellites

[Cyberax]

Statistically significant reversal of the warming trend.

Re:Not according to satellites

[fche]

More specifically, by what metric was there a hiatus until December (?).

Re:Not according to satellites

[Cyberax]

There hasn't ever been - I should have been clearer. During 2005-2010 years you could have feasibly proposed a theory that the GW is on hiatus. But we've had more than enough data to disprove it with a good statistical confidence since at least 2013.

Re:Not according to satellites

[dywolf]

hiatus = pause
in this context, means no warming.
surface temps showed slow (but not none!) warming.
if you graphed the RATE OF CHANGE, it appeared to flatten out recently.
but note, that because this is a rate of change (akin to a derivative 9in calculus), because it's non-zero, even flatted out meant it was still warming.

but even accepting the slowdown was apparent....it wasnt real.
surface temps are incapable, by definition, of tracking subsurface ocean temperatures and therefore cannot spot the energy being absorbed by the oceans, which is what was happening.

ergo: there was no hiatus.

Re:Not according to satellites

[riverat1]

2015 is going to blow 1998's record out of the water and chances are 2016 will be even hotter. But never fear, 2017 will be cooler than 2015 or 2016. New meme: No warming since 2016!

Re:Not according to satellites

[haruchai]

Agreed. Here's what someone who knows a thing or two about climate and a whole lot more about statistics had to say about the "hiatus/no warming" almost 2 years ago

https://tamino.wordpress.com/2...

Re:Not according to satellites

[haruchai]

Mod parent up

+3 Informative

Re:Not according to satellites

[Coren22]

Did you actually read the comment I replied to?

Hint, I, and the OP were referring to this chart:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp...

which contains temperatures up to Dec 2015, so, no it wasn't hotter.

Re:Not according to satellites

[riverat1]

In looking at major El Ninos 2015 is clearly analogous to 1997 and 2016 will be analogous to 1998. 2016 will likely set a new record even in the satellite records.

On top of that I live on the surface, not in the troposphere so I pay more attention to the surface temperature records.

Shocking!

[Anonymous Coward]

WOW! El Nino caused Agricultural fires in Indonesia........... BAD BABY!!

Re:Shocking!

[Coren22]

I can see the connection. During El Nino, the prevailing winds in the Pacific ocean are to the East, this draws heat and humidity away from the East coast of Australia and Indonesia and into Chile which is usually very dry. It changes the weather patterns for both Americas and Eastern Asia and Oceania.

Re: So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming

[Anonymous Coward]

There's that, and then every other prediction in the movie turning out to also be a farcical lie.

Re:What was "Adjusted" this year?

[Anonymous Coward]

Comrade, you should rejoice! the chocolate ration was increased from 40 grams to 20!

Re:What was "Adjusted" this year?

[hey!]

The average of the instrumental record ... just like last year, and the year before that. The thing that you're missing is that it's reasonable to do this to account for the fact that you've added additional stations to the dataset, which would alter the raw average.

Solving `climate change' is easy...

[colin_faber]

Lets just adjust it away in the models.

Tons and tons of paid posters here

[DogDude]

Every time there's anything about climate change, there are tons and tons more AC posts than usual, and of course, a large majority of them are making fun of the idea that humankind can change our climate. I wonder if it's just a few nutters, or a team of people paid by the oil industry to do this...

Re:Tons and tons of paid posters here

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get paid for saying that even (or especially) when it isn't true.

Re:Tons and tons of paid posters here

[clonehappy]

Tons and tons of paid posters here

Thanks for being so forthcoming.

Re:Tons and tons of paid posters here

[quantaman]

Every time there's anything about climate change, there are tons and tons more AC posts than usual, and of course, a large majority of them are making fun of the idea that humankind can change our climate. I wonder if it's just a few nutters, or a team of people paid by the oil industry to do this...

I think it's more that certain people are trolled by certain topics. They don't comment on much, but bring out a topic that they're passionate about and they come out of the woodwork to express their views. I'll do the same thing on some right leaning or libertarian blogs, I don't troll, but on some topics I think it's important to challenge the consensus and try to sway people.

On Slashdot the two big ones seem to be global warming and feminism (particularly in gaming or software development). I don't think there's anything insincere about their beliefs, they're just wrong.

Re:Tons and tons of paid posters here

[thegarbz]

Yes the oil industry cares about a bunch of posts on an obscure website like Slashdot. Pull yourself together man.

Or a more realistic hypothesis: A science related matter posted on a nerdy site with loads of political bullshit to spare brings the nutters out of the woodwork, because opinions on global warming are like arseholes, everyone has one, whereas relatively few people give a shit about Oracle being the database of the year.

Re:Tons and tons of paid posters here

[haruchai]

What "retribution" would that be?

Re:Tons and tons of paid posters here

[haruchai]

"Climate change deniers are the new tobacco industry cancer link" - as Naomi Oreskes showed, some of them are the very SAME people, who've made denial a lucrative career and been at it since Al Gore was a schoolboy.

Re:Tons and tons of paid posters here

[hene]

I believe that humankind can change climate and I have courage to reveal my stupidity. So, please educate me. As far as I understand climate should be warming. If we are coming from ice age to warmer age, it should not be surprise that climate is getting warmer, right? I also have read that CO2 levels were affected in past, in addition to all other symptoms that we see.

I'm sure that I'm the idiot here and smart scientist are for sure included these and more in their reasoning. Still, that one chart that is usually used as prove, the one with CO2 rising alongside with temperature, is not enough to convince me.

I can't understand this but I'm all for being more environment-friendly.

Re:Tons and tons of paid posters here

[dave420]

And what "problems"? As a body of evidence goes, it's amazingly good. Sure, there are some rough parts, but those same rough parts don't stop you using your computer, eating food, or talking to a doctor. Suddenly claiming those rough parts are now really rough in this one field, but happily ignoring them in others, is not what rational people do. If you try to pull that one on people, you deserve to be called out. It's nothing to do with AGW but assuming your hubris is any match for the scientific method - some people find that highly ridiculous and disrespectful.

Re:What was "Adjusted" this year?

[KenDiPietro]

The average of the instrumental record ... just like last year, and the year before that. The thing that you're missing is that it's reasonable to do this to account for the fact that you've added additional stations to the dataset, which would alter the raw average.

OK...now I'm not sure if you just forgot the sarcasm tag or if you're serious.

Poe's Law - How does it fucking work?

hundredths of a degree?

[Anonymous Coward]

When the global average temperature is warmer by two hundredths of a degree, and the margin of error is a tenth of a degree, does that actually mean anything?

Re:What was "Adjusted" this year?

[Old97]

Stations sample at a point. Adding more stations is adding more sample points. The distribution of the locations of the stations is no longer the same and that skews the sample, i.e. it's representation of the entire planet is different so you have to change the weightings so you aren't giving more weight to areas that have a different station density.

The good thing is

[110010001000]

Now with the Paris accord in place, and the fact that the EU has been reducing their Co2 emissions every year since we learned that Co2 emissions cause climate change, we are on the right path. What is that you say? The EU has been INCREASING their Co2 emissions every year, not reducing them??? Very strange. Why would they do that? I thought they didn't like AGW. So why are they doing the opposite?

Re:The good thing is

[danbob999]

Because the EU has been enlarging?

Re:The good thing is

[haruchai]

Quite a few places that are doing well or are advanced have decreasing or stagnant per-capita electricity consumption.
For example, California's has been nearly flat since 1978 while that of the USA as a whole has increased by nearly 50% since.

Truth

[davide marney]

You don't have to sell the truth, it sells itself. Conversely, if you find yourself having to sell something, it probably isn't the full truth.

Just sayin'

Re:Truth

[fredrated]

Do you live in a cave? The truth selling itself is so last century. Today outright lies have far more credibility.

Re:What was "Adjusted" this year?

[nospam007]

"The distribution of the locations of the stations is no longer the same and that skews the sample"

So you are pleading that we should still use the same instruments and measure locations than in 1880?

Re: really?

[mspohr]

The science shows that it keeps getting warmer.
Perhaps we should be concerned.

So?

[Areyoukiddingme]

Weather Underground recounts several other records that accompanied the heat including the most intense hurricane ever observed in the Western Hemisphere, the ongoing agricultural fires in Indonesia — the most expensive disaster in Indonesia's history estimated at $16 billion in damages, flooding in America and India, and record central pacific hurricane activity.

So? Those are just weather. And possibly arson. They are not indicative of climate change of any kind.

Re: So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming

[PopeRatzo]

As experts, it's your job to convince people.

Where did you get the idea that it's the job of experts to convince anyone of anything? You can lead a jackass to water, but you can't make him drink.

Re:really?

[riverat1]

"The new record was caused by the long-term warming of the planet due to human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide"

Do you like flame wars???? Because that is how you turn the comments section into a flame war.....

And heaven knows we don't need any more flame wars. The planet's getting warm enough as it is. /s

Re:What was "Adjusted" this year?

[hey!]

You could, but you'd get a less precise tracking of changes in recent years.

You basically have three choices here:
(1) Limit yourself to in instruments and stations in use in 1850.
(2) Add new stations and technologies but ignore their effect on the average.
(3) Add new stations and technologies then use statistical techniques to find the approximation that best fits the datapoints you have.

Simply limiting yourself to the instruments you had in place in 1850 is bound to *overestimate* the amount of warming. That's because the land-based instruments are likely to be overwhelmed by waste heat generated by urban sprawl. Instruments that were in quiet rural suburbs are now in the center of cities with hard, heat-catching surfaces like asphalt and concrete, surrounded by buildings heated with what by 1850 standards are vast amounts of energy. So even if you tried approach 1 you'd still have to adjust the figures (in this case discounting some of the spurious "warming" you're seeing) to get a reasonable estimate of change.

The instrumental "global average temperature" is an artificial construct in any case. We know there must *be* a global average temperature, but we can't measure it directly, short of measuring the temperature continuously over very point on the surface of the Earth. All we have are discrete measurements taken from a finite number of stations. You need some kind of model for how representative you think those measurements you do have are of the whole.

OR....

[Anonymous Coward]

...Go with real time, objective, and all inclusive sat Data.

The Ground Station data is polluted beyond all help.

Re:OR....

[hey!]

There is no such thing. Oh, there's remote sensing, but you have to ground truth that. And it leaves you in the dark about anything that happened before the 1990s when the first climate observation satellites were launched.

Re:OR....

[phantomfive]

And it leaves you in the dark about anything that happened before the 1990s when the first climate observation satellites were launched.

Temperature satellite records go back to the 70s. See for example. Generally I consider them to be much more reliable than terrestrial data, for a lot of reasons, but essentially they're harder to mess up.

Re:OR....

[haruchai]

Have a look at the number of adjustments required for the UAH satellites - Christy & Spenser have a scrawny leg to stand on when they talk about other people's adjustments.
And when I want to know the temperature, why would I rely solely on a device that does NOT measure temps directly but has to extrapolate?

Re:OR....

[phantomfive]

And when I want to know the temperature, why would I rely solely on a device that does NOT measure temps directly but has to extrapolate?

Because even with all the problems you stated, which are real, the satellite record is still an order of magnitude more simple than the terrestrial record.

Re:OR....

[haruchai]

If it's not measuring temp accurately, then it doesn't matter how simple it is.

Re:OR....

[phantomfive]

Yeap, you are right. The simplicity just makes it easier to verify that it is accurate.
How much confidence do you have in the terrestrial record?

Re:OR....

[haruchai]

Going back a couple centuries, quite a bit. Even if measurements back then weren't up to modern standards, there's plenty of writing about the temps & the seasons.
It was much more a factor in daily survival than it is now and more difficult to cope with.

Re:OR....

[phantomfive]

Going back a couple centuries, quite a bit.

Oh, you're a fool.

Here is the adjustment

[Geoffrey.landis]

Here is the "adjustment" you're referring to:
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-...

The recent correction is the difference between the black line and the red line. The temperature rise between 1959 and 2014 is about 0.9C. The adjustment, in the last two years, is just barely large enough to see, about 0.05C. Over the full period analyzed, the new global analysis changed the observed rate of warming from 0.065C/decade to 0.068C/decade, less than the noise.

Really, I need to point out that analyzing data sets is what science does. But, if you actually look at the data, even if you throw out the new corrections entirely, it doesn't make a difference. The corrections didn't change whether warming exists or not.

That image is from this article: http://arstechnica.com/science...
For reference, here is the paper with the adjustments explained: http://www.sciencemag.org/cont...
(Karl, et al., "Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus," Science Vol. 348 no. 6242, 26 June 2015: pp. 1469-1472
DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa5632)

Re:Here is the adjustment

[phantomfive]

It's better to just trust the satellite record. (Also, it's fairly annoying how infrequently the error bars are included on those temperature graphs).

You must have been really upset

[mpercy]

Virtually every glacier in the world is in full-on retreat.

Ice chunks the size of small US states have broken off of Antarctica in the last few years.

Rising surface temperatures in the subarctic are melting permafrost, permitting decay (with associated methane release) and destabilizing shallow methane calthrate deposits of unknown but possibly substantial extent.

You must have been really upset when the Laurentide Ice Sheet almost completely melted. 5 million square miles of ice up to 2 miles thick just *melted*. Damn those cavemen. Why didn't they think that their campfires 10,000 years ago would melt all that ice and ruin the whole Earth's ice-based ecosystem?

Re:You must have been really upset

[haruchai]

How many caveman lifetimes did it take for that massive campfire melt event?

Data manipulation

[mpercy]

While I'm sure the climate is warming, and I'm sure that humans are exacerbating the trend, it is hard to be impressed with the alarmist rants when the models used and raw data are not made available. When even the people developing the models cannot explain what they are doing. When the data is massaged beyond recognition. Not to mention that rather than being treated as a ecological problem, AGW has morphed into a treatise on income inequality, rich nations vs poor ones, etc.

"In early 2001, CPC was requested to implement the 1971-2000 normal for operational forecasts. So, we constructed a new SST normal for the 1971-2000 base period and implemented it operationally at CPC in August of 2001" (Journal of Climate). Read that again: "we constructed a new SST normal", that's not science, that's manipulation of data to fit the model.

Just the abstract to that particular paper reveals how fragile the models are, being based on assumptions piled on top of assumptions, and unveiling a tendency to massage data.

www dot ncdc dot noaa dot gov/oa/climate/research/sst/papers/xue-etal.pdf

"SST predictions are usually issued in terms of anomalies and standardized anomalies relative to a 30-yr normal: climatological mean (CM) and standard deviation (SD). The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) suggests updating the 30-yr normal every 10 yr."

How can a normal be updated--the data is the data, and its normal is its normal? This sentence implies that the data is somehow massaged every ten years or so. There may be legitimate reasons to do so, but anytime you massage data, there have to be questions as to the legitmacy of the alteration.

"Using the extended reconstructed sea surface temperature (ERSST) on a 28 grid for 1854-2000 and the Hadley Centre Sea Ice and SST dataset (HadISST) on a 18 grid for 1870-1999, eleven 30-yr normals are calculated, and the interdecadal changes of seasonal CM, seasonal SD, and seasonal persistence (P) are discussed."

This says that data is being assembled from widely disparate data sources, with different measurement techniques, and that some of the data was made with instrumentation that simply cannot be validated (data from 1854?).

"Both PDO and NAO show a multidecadal oscillation that is consistent between ERSST and HadISST except that HadISST is biased toward warm in summer and cold in winter relative to ERSST."

Now we see that different data sets, ostensibly of the same population, disagree. And the fact that one data set exhibits bias to the extreme (too warm in summer and too cold in winter) raises questions about the proper use of this data. One scientist may be able to make a valid claim that the more stable data is in error and "correct" it to be more in line with the more volatile data; another scientist may do the opposite. And how is the bias measured? Why, against the model! Which one is right? Who's model is now more correct?

Re:Data manipulation

[riverat1]

While I'm sure the climate is warming, and I'm sure that humans are exacerbating the trend, it is hard to be impressed with the alarmist rants when the models used and raw data are not made available.

If you think the models and raw data are not available you haven't looked very hard. Of course I doubt you'd know what to do with them if you got them.

Re:Data manipulation

[haruchai]

Check out the Berkeley Earth project. An accomplished scientist assembled a team of others with impressive credentials and did the hard work of examining all the raw data.

http://berkeleyearth.org/

I won't spoil the surprise by revealing their conclusions. Go see for yourself :-)

Here's the 10000 year view

[zapadnik]

Slashdotters love data, right?

Here is the 10000 year view of the situation:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com...

Here's the data from the Arctic:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/ice...
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/old...

Here's the RSS satellite trend since the big El Nino of 1998:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/pl...

Here's the RSS satellite trend since the big El Nino of 1998:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/pl...

Here is a correlation between CO2 and various surface and satellite data-sets: http://www.woodfortrees.org/pl...

Unfortunately the global temperature range is of the order of 100 K from poles to equator, and the uncertainty in the measurement data is at least +/- 0.2 K, so increases of fractions of a degree are not particularly significant. Here is a paper discussing the same
http://multi-science.atypon.co...
http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...

There is Global Warming for sure. We would expect warming after the Sun increased magnetic activity after the end of the Little Ice Age. Some component of that warming is due to human-emitted CO2. Whether the dominant effect is natural or human is still being debated (particularly since CO2 effects are weak and the IPCC's models that the CO2-induced water vapor effects would increase the temperature further appear to be falsified by experiment). To de-industrialize and impose punitive 'carbon taxes' at this stage does not look like it can be supported by the data. The difference between surface and satellite observations has not yet been resolved satisfactorily (the 'science is not settled'). If you think the science is settled please refer to the data I have provided in your response (you need to explain it). Thanks.

Re:Here's the 10000 year view

[zapadnik]

Opps, first and most important link broken. My apologies. Here is the fixed link:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com...

Re:Here's the 10000 year view

[haruchai]

"There is Global Warming for sure" - it wasn't so long ago that the deniers were claiming we were in a cooling period, in front of Congress no less and you can still find some who think die Kalte Sonne's output will drop well below historic lows in a few years and we'll all freeze to death.

By far the most comprehensive re-examination of all the data by real scientists was done by the Berkeley Earth project
Have a look: berkeleyearth.org

The deniers were all on board with their approach and were playing it up for a couple years that the lies, distortions & manipulations of the Evil Commie Gore-suckers would be laid bare.............oops.

Re:Here's the 10000 year view

[zapadnik]

Thanks. I'm well aware of Richard Muller's consultancy business. You know that Muller runs a business, right? and Berkley Earth is his brochure site, right? you were aware of this?

Berkley Earth does use land and ocean data. Land data is problematic, for reason I won't go into here. Do you know why they don't choose to use the RSS and UAH satellite data that has vastly better coverage and has *much* smaller adjustments. Especially since the satellite data sets measure the troposphere that the CAGW theory says is most sensitive to their predicted effects. At the moment, the satellite data shows natural variability for the better part of the last two decades. Which means the *observed* ECS and TCS values are lower than the lower limit of the IPCC AR5. In short, the CAGW hypothesis cannot be sustained based on the observation satellite data (which has VASTLY better coverage than the surface and ocean data). So could you please explain this?

Re:What was "Adjusted" this year?

[Layzej]

Stations sample at a point. Adding more stations is adding more sample points. The distribution of the locations of the stations is no longer the same and that skews the sample,

That is not correct. Stations are grouped by grid boxes. The grid boxes are then averaged. Adding stations does not change the distribution, it just adds detail to a grid box.

Adjustments typically address known biases such as time of observation bias. These methods are published and thus far no fault has been found with them. In fact they are acknowledged as necessary.

Which data set [Re:Here is the adjustment]

[Geoffrey.landis]

It's better to just trust the satellite record. (Also, it's fairly annoying how infrequently the error bars are included on those temperature graphs).

There are several satellite data sets, and they have a very large number of corrections required to convert radiance to atmospheric temperature profiles. In general, they give tropospheric temperature, not surface temperature.

Which data set do you like?

Re:Which data set [Re:Here is the adjustment]

[phantomfive]

Which data set do you like?

None in particular, I just don't find the terrestrial record trustworthy in the least.

Why anomaly and not average?

[Geoffrey.landis]

FYI, honest question here. Why is NOAA so insistent on only releasing data by anomaly and not by actual temperature?

Because the average temperature isn't actually interesting, and not actually terribly useful.

If you want the global average temperature, just calculate the global average temperature of the baseline year, and add the anomaly relative to that baseline year. As should be obvious, the global average temperature is just a baseline shifting the whole curve up or down, and it's simplest to just subtract it out, unless there's some reason you want that absolute number-- and I can't think of any reason you would want that average number.

Different people calculate the average in different ways. The NASA data has the global temperature average in 2013 at 14.6 degrees Celsius-- that would be a good value to use. (If 2013 isn't your baseline year, subtract the anomaly for 2013 to convert to the baseline year you do use-- it's just a baseline shift; the whole curve shifts by the same amount.)

By only looking at the difference from the baseline, you leave out all of the errors that aren't there if you only are looking at the change in temperature at each location, not the absolute temperature.

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/moni...
https://notalotofpeopleknowtha...
http://ete.cet.edu/gcc/?/globa...
http://www.odlt.org/dcd/ballas...

Re:Why anomaly and not average?

[raind]

Do we have statistics on the planets interior temperatures? Could it be were heating like a tea kettle?

Re:Why anomaly and not average?

[BouncingBob]

The internal temperature is due to "primordial" heat and the heat due to decay of radioisotopes.

The radioisotopes involved have very-long half-lives, so this energy input is effectively constant over historical timescales. In fact, it is effectively constant over timescales of millions of years.

The primordial heat (heat from earth's formation) is comparable in magnitude to the heat from radioisotopes, The conduction of this energy to the surface is also effectively constant over millions of years.

Both of these are negligible compared the the solar flux - without the solar flux we would have a surface cold enough to freeze out the atmosphere.

That isn't to say that geological processes can't have an effect. For example, volcanic ash can block some of the incoming solar radiation, leading to a short term dip in temperatures until the ash falls out of the atmosphere. Volcanic CO2 is occasionally brought up in discussion, however it is negligible in comparison the CO2 release from fossil fuel use.

Re:Land Grab

[Geoffrey.landis]

Because global warming is something that happens on a very long time scale, and real estate investment is something that happens on a relatively short time scale.

By the middle of the 2100s, the sea level will, if present trends continue, rise enough to flood Miami. But real estate investors look for profits in ten years or less, and sea levels will rise by no more than millimeters over that time scale.

Re: really?

[Ol Olsoc]

Science doesn't show that is getting warmer, the math that scientist are using to massage the measurement is showing that it is getting warmer.

We get it, we get it - but we need the help of people like you to save us. You - the proud AC - know a whole shitload more about Global warming or actualy the complete lack of it, tha any scientist ever did? How? I don't know, but you really need to show your work, publish the papers. You WILL win a Nobel prize for showing the proof that you and all of the non scientists know is God's truth. Now Get off Slashdot and save the world from the scientists! Good luck - we're counting on you! I get all of my data on science from Politicians, as any right thinking person should. Because if there is any person on earth that you can trust, the group of people who have never ever lied and always operated with the highest moral and ethical standards, it is politicians. They are the only trustable source of science info, and teh less education teh better, because eddycayton is socialistic.

Goddamit, I have to quit mixing vicodin with NyQuil....

Re: So...a year with fewer hurricanes = no warming

[Ol Olsoc]

As experts, it's your job to convince people. You have failed. You are bad at your job. You are a failure. Why should I listen to a failure?

As a stupid person, you do not get to make laws of physic untrue just because you deny them.

The universe does not care that US Republicans have decided that stupid is the new smart, and that denial of science is job one. The greenhouse gases effect on atmospheres is a proven fact (unless gawd is just making it look that way, like when he planted fossils as a test of our faith) and your accepting that or not won't change it a bit.

Kool-Aid Summary should not be relied upon

[gordguide]

" ... The new record was caused by the long-term warming of the planet due to human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide, combined with a extra bump in temperature due to the strongest El Niño event ever recorded in the Eastern Pacific. ..."

This is, of course, the Kool-Aid of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); here is another summary from the IPCC's webpage:

" ... the human influence on the climate system is clear and is evident from the increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, positive radiative forcing, observed warming, and understanding of the climate system. ..."
http://www.un.org/climatechang...

This has nothing to do with whether Global Warming is real or imagined; it's about the causes of Global Warming. There is (at least) one other contributing factor, namely a historical record of patterns in Earth's climate that predicts that we should be experiencing a warming trend, regardless of human activities.

The reason is the IPCC is limited to considering the human activities affecting Global Climate and is prohibited from even considering any other cause, including the Geological record.

In other words, when you read that humans are the only cause of Global Warming, you are drinking the IPCC Kool-Aid, which is a very narrow view of the issue that specifically ignores well regarded science on the subject. Ignoring science is a poor method to investigate the causes of Climate Change.

Re:Kool-Aid Summary should not be relied upon

[haruchai]

Nonsense. The IPCC doesn't conduct research directly and the analyses and opinions of scientists who disagree get reflected in the literature.
If it strikes you as being as echo chamber it's because with each 5 year review, the science has come down more strongly on AGW each time.

Warmest December on record in the UK

[Retron]

The weather event of 2015 for me, being in the UK, was the way December was absurdly warm... breaking the record going back to 1659, in fact.

The most amazing thing was that it wasn't broken by a small amount, either; the old record was 8.1C and the new record is 9.7C. I daresay I'll never see anything like that again in my lifetime!

Re:Warmest December on record in the UK

[haruchai]

Actually if the AGW camp is right, you may not have to wait very long. The record highs won't topple every year but will be surpassed much more frequently.
Quite a few places have been seeing the effects through flooding where what used to be a once-a-decade flood is nearly an annual event and what used to be once-a-century happens every 5-10 years.

Re:really?

[BouncingBob]

Maybe it's because you ignore the science you are asking to speak for itself, dismiss everyone who disagrees with you as a "SJW", and the only "questioning" you did is effectively saying "Nuh-uh!".

Re:So 1880s had digital temperature monitoring?

[riverat1]

Thermometers (as we would recognize them) were developed in the mid to late 1600s and by the 1720s they were making accurate mercury thermometers. By the mid 1800s making accurate thermometers was a well developed skill. You may not have been able to read them with the same degree of precision (decimal places) as modern thermometers but there's no reason to believe they weren't as accurate (within the limits of their precision).

Re:in before

[Hognoxious]

I'm breaking out the carbon-neutral popcorn as we speak.

Come on, no mention of the record-smashing winter

[PJ6]

in the Northeast? They say all the snow meant for Alaska hit New England instead. It cost MA alone $300M.

From Canada

[scarboni888]

The warmer the better.

Bring it on.

Re:So 1880s had digital temperature monitoring?

[riverat1]

That doesn't matter. When you are combining the results of thousands of thermometer readings you're going to get an accurate result to several decimal places even if your readings were only integer values.

An example that makes this clear is baseball batting averages. In each at bat you either get a hit or you're out, a 1 or a 0. But baseball batting averages are commonly reported to 3 decimal places.

Re:More propaganda

[haruchai]

Then Japan should be one of the most violent major economies in the world - but it isn't, not even close may well be the least.

Re:So 1880s had digital temperature monitoring?

[haruchai]

+1 Insightful

Re:No it wasn't

[haruchai]

"Lastly they are run by 2 scientists with good credentials (Dr Mears & Dr Spencer respectively) "

Spencer? Sorry, but Dr Roy developed dementia emerititus quite early. Apart from his creationist views, there's this from 2011:

"I would wager that my job has helped save our economy from the economic ravages of out-of-control environmental extremism.
I view my job a little like a legislator, supported by the taxpayer, to protect the interests of the taxpayer and to minimize the role of government.
If I and others are ultimately successful, it may well be that my job is no longer needed. Well then, that is progress. There are other things I can do"

That's not the heart of a pure scientist, that's beating in the chest of a person with an agenda.

Re:really?

[chipschap]

It's so easy to deliberately miss the point. What I objected to was politicizing science by tying it to a leftist agenda. I didn't question the science part, quite the contrary. Science is what it is. I don't have to like (or dislike) science's results, but I definitely have to live with them.

Re: really?

[hucker75]

Ooooh different weather, so what? Weather and climate have been changeable for millions of years, get used to it and carry on with your life. But please, stop wasting money on trying to stop it happening!