As I said, satellite measurements match the surface measurements within the margin of error. That's an indication there is no selection bias in the surface measurements.
You are right, I didn't address your "these mountains have not been ice-free for millions of years" comment. It was late and I was tired. Sorry.
However, ice cores drilled in central Greenland where there are no mountains and the land has been depressed under the weight of ice show a continuous record that goes back over 100,000 years. Some areas around the coast appear to have melted out near the end of the Holocene climate optimum around 4,000 years ago and rebuilt since then but the main ice sheet of Greenland did not. I just don't see how you can say there was less of an ice load 15,000 years ago than there is now. I'll be surprised if you can you point me to some reference that justifies that statement.
Greenland has now a huge ice load it didn't have 15,000 years ago.
So you're saying that Greenland lost all of it's ice 15,000 years ago, about half way through the ending of the last glacial period when there were still ice sheets reaching into the US mainland? Yeah, right. Can you point me to any research that shows that?
From the Wikipedia article on Greenland (emphasis added):
Scientists who probed 2 km (1.2 mi) through a Greenland glacier to recover the oldest plant DNA on record said that the planet was far warmer hundreds of thousands of years ago than is generally believed. DNA of trees, plants and insects including butterflies and spiders from beneath the southern Greenland glacier was estimated to date to 450,000 to 900,000 years ago, according to the remnants retrieved from this long-vanished boreal forest. That view contrasts sharply with the prevailing one that a lush forest of this kind could not have existed in Greenland any later than 2.4 million years ago. These DNA samples suggest that the temperature probably reached 10 C (50 F) in the summer and 17 C (1.4 F) in the winter. They also indicate that during the last interglacial period, 130,000–116,000 years ago, when temperatures were on average 5 C (9 F) higher than now, the glaciers on Greenland did not completely melt away.
Looking at the list geekoid provided that means no year (in the instrument temperature record) before 1998 was warmer than the 0.5188 degree anomaly of 2001.
The CRU (the vilified Phil Jones' outfit) still considers 1998 the warmest year on record but both NASA/GISS and NOAA consider 2005 and 2010 tied for the warmest year on record. Take any 17 year record (starting with 1994-2011 and going back to the 1970's as a starting point) and the temperature trend is positive.
Yet no AWG proponent can tell me why they are regulating CO2 instead of Methane
Oh! I can! I can!
There is about 222 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere as there is methane. And methane has a 12 year average lifetime in the atmosphere and breaks down into 1 CO2 and 2 H20. So on long time scales it has about the same effect as CO2. Plus a large source of it is natural and the only way to slow it down is to stop warming the Arctic.
Your time scale is off. Recently it was determined that it took at least 17 years to separate the global warming signal from the noise of weather. So if you cherry pick 1998 as the warmest year then we'll have to wait until at least 2015 before we can say anything definitive.
"humans are destroying the planet and everything's going to be destroyed and under water in just ten years unless we radically alter all human activity across the planet right this second".
That's a pretty hyperbolic statement. It'll take at least 40-50 years to radically alter human activity but we ought to be working on it to get going. The sooner we do the less destruction there will be. Sea level is expected to rise 3-6 feet by 2100 with BAU. Sheesh, and folks like you call me an alarmist.
The BEST study used all of the stations available including the ones no longer used by the other temperature records. Their temperature record is within the margin of error of the others. They concluded that the other temperature records had made valid cuts in their sample size. Next.
I'd like to correct myself though. I looked it up and the last time Greenland was mostly ice free was at least 100,000 years ago, not 1 million. So Greenland has not had significantly* less than it has now since the height of the last glacial cycle. ~25,000 years ago.
*I'll just say 10% less ice. That would be enough to show a noticeable amount of sea level rise (around 2 feet) that isn't evident in the records.
Correlation has nothing to do with it. Rising temperature is just corroborating evidence that scientists were right when they determined that rising CO2 levels would cause an increase in temperature starting with Arrhenius in 1896.
What a load of crap. Accurate thermometers have existed for several hundred years. By 130 years ago they were spread out around the world enough to make a reasonable estimate of global temperature.
Saying that the earth is getting hotter and implying that this itself implies that humans are to blame...
It's a good thing that no credible climate scientist would say such a thing. Their logic goes more like 1) CO2 is a greenhouse gas. 2) The CO2 level in the atmosphere is rising. 3) That rising CO2 level changes the energy balance of the Earth increasing the temperature. 4) Humans are the source of most of the rise in CO2 levels.
Would you quit with that bullshit that climate scientists refuse to make their data and methods available. It's out there if you're not too lazy to go find it. I doubt you'd know what to do with it if you found it though.
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As I said, satellite measurements match the surface measurements within the margin of error. That's an indication there is no selection bias in the surface measurements.
So what? That was then, now is now. Much of the Arctic has already warmed nearly 3C since the 1950's.
You are right, I didn't address your "these mountains have not been ice-free for millions of years" comment. It was late and I was tired. Sorry.
However, ice cores drilled in central Greenland where there are no mountains and the land has been depressed under the weight of ice show a continuous record that goes back over 100,000 years. Some areas around the coast appear to have melted out near the end of the Holocene climate optimum around 4,000 years ago and rebuilt since then but the main ice sheet of Greenland did not. I just don't see how you can say there was less of an ice load 15,000 years ago than there is now. I'll be surprised if you can you point me to some reference that justifies that statement.
Greenland has now a huge ice load it didn't have 15,000 years ago.
So you're saying that Greenland lost all of it's ice 15,000 years ago, about half way through the ending of the last glacial period when there were still ice sheets reaching into the US mainland? Yeah, right. Can you point me to any research that shows that?
From the Wikipedia article on Greenland (emphasis added):
Scientists who probed 2 km (1.2 mi) through a Greenland glacier to recover the oldest plant DNA on record said that the planet was far warmer hundreds of thousands of years ago than is generally believed. DNA of trees, plants and insects including butterflies and spiders from beneath the southern Greenland glacier was estimated to date to 450,000 to 900,000 years ago, according to the remnants retrieved from this long-vanished boreal forest. That view contrasts sharply with the prevailing one that a lush forest of this kind could not have existed in Greenland any later than 2.4 million years ago. These DNA samples suggest that the temperature probably reached 10 C (50 F) in the summer and 17 C (1.4 F) in the winter. They also indicate that during the last interglacial period, 130,000–116,000 years ago, when temperatures were on average 5 C (9 F) higher than now, the glaciers on Greenland did not completely melt away.
I agree with everything you said. I was just pointing the GP's extremely exaggerated time scale.
The colder it is the dryer the air is and the less snowfall you get. How much snowfall do you see when the temperature's below 0F?
No it is not the consensus of respected climate scientists. Both NASA/GISS and NOAA have 2005 and 2010 as tied for the warmest year on record.
One degree of accuracy is plenty good to detect global warming. Thermometers have been that good for several hundred years.
Please refer me to a peer reviewed paper that shows the Earth has been warmer "many times" over the holocene period.
Looking at the list geekoid provided that means no year (in the instrument temperature record) before 1998 was warmer than the 0.5188 degree anomaly of 2001.
The CRU (the vilified Phil Jones' outfit) still considers 1998 the warmest year on record but both NASA/GISS and NOAA consider 2005 and 2010 tied for the warmest year on record. Take any 17 year record (starting with 1994-2011 and going back to the 1970's as a starting point) and the temperature trend is positive.
Yet no AWG proponent can tell me why they are regulating CO2 instead of Methane
Oh! I can! I can!
There is about 222 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere as there is methane. And methane has a 12 year average lifetime in the atmosphere and breaks down into 1 CO2 and 2 H20. So on long time scales it has about the same effect as CO2. Plus a large source of it is natural and the only way to slow it down is to stop warming the Arctic.
Your time scale is off. Recently it was determined that it took at least 17 years to separate the global warming signal from the noise of weather. So if you cherry pick 1998 as the warmest year then we'll have to wait until at least 2015 before we can say anything definitive.
"humans are destroying the planet and everything's going to be destroyed and under water in just ten years unless we radically alter all human activity across the planet right this second".
That's a pretty hyperbolic statement. It'll take at least 40-50 years to radically alter human activity but we ought to be working on it to get going. The sooner we do the less destruction there will be. Sea level is expected to rise 3-6 feet by 2100 with BAU. Sheesh, and folks like you call me an alarmist.
What you failed to mention is that 1998 was also the year of one of the biggest El Nino's on record.
That level of accuracy doesn't matter. An accuracy of 1 degree is good enough.
The BEST study used all of the stations available including the ones no longer used by the other temperature records. Their temperature record is within the margin of error of the others. They concluded that the other temperature records had made valid cuts in their sample size. Next.
But the ice fishermen are loving it.
Blame the messenger, eh?
You are right, it is a fuzzy word to use.
I'd like to correct myself though. I looked it up and the last time Greenland was mostly ice free was at least 100,000 years ago, not 1 million. So Greenland has not had significantly* less than it has now since the height of the last glacial cycle. ~25,000 years ago.
*I'll just say 10% less ice. That would be enough to show a noticeable amount of sea level rise (around 2 feet) that isn't evident in the records.
Correlation has nothing to do with it. Rising temperature is just corroborating evidence that scientists were right when they determined that rising CO2 levels would cause an increase in temperature starting with Arrhenius in 1896.
What a load of crap. Accurate thermometers have existed for several hundred years. By 130 years ago they were spread out around the world enough to make a reasonable estimate of global temperature.
Saying that the earth is getting hotter and implying that this itself implies that humans are to blame ...
It's a good thing that no credible climate scientist would say such a thing. Their logic goes more like 1) CO2 is a greenhouse gas. 2) The CO2 level in the atmosphere is rising. 3) That rising CO2 level changes the energy balance of the Earth increasing the temperature. 4) Humans are the source of most of the rise in CO2 levels.
Just for your entertainment the link to Michael Mann's 1998 "hockey stick" data and methods is here.
Would you quit with that bullshit that climate scientists refuse to make their data and methods available. It's out there if you're not too lazy to go find it. I doubt you'd know what to do with it if you found it though.