Dangit, I and just invested in tubs of sunblock and farmland in Greenland. Now you say I should have spent all that money on heaters, insulated coats and farmland in Mexico?
Unfortunatly, the data are not on your side here.
As for Scott's comment - gw scientists actually do understand equilibria - perhaps you are the one who needs to understand how s focus on small scale variation can obscure vision of the larger picture. I.e. a focus on months, or even seasons!
OK, maybe these GW scientists need to understand the principle that one does not extrapolate a trend off a very short piece of data. Sure the chart Joe links shows reveals a half degree centigrade rise, but does that mean it will continue to go up a half-degree over the next 30 years? NO, and any Ph.D who thinks that that is evidence enough to state that equivocally needs to have all their sheepskins revoked and shredded.
The chart Joe linked is also available via Dave Price's link. The key different being that Joe's chart ends in 2005, while Dave's ends with January 2008.
The 2008 numbers aren't enough to indicate a pattern on their own. However, they do correspond to a pattern in the Solar data.
The cooling last year means it got cooler last year. No more, no less. It is probably best explained by the continuing La Nina.
More puzzling is the lack of a temperature trend over the period from the mid-1990s to 2006. About 12 years.
It shouldn't take Einstein to realize that over those 12 years a lot more changed than in 1 year. In attempting to explain 12 years you must factor in La Ninas, El Ninos, several other long observed ocean current oscillations, a complete solar cycle (aka sunspot cycle), volcanos tossing gases and particles into the air, as well China and others burning about a zillion times as much coal and oil as they did before. Did I mention rising CO2? Or the great increase in air traffic burning jet fuel at high altitudes?
I don't think the professionals know why there was a plateau for 12 years. But considering all those variables uncertainty is not terribly unexpected.
Let us now pretend Joe had provided a link to a chart for 1995-2006. Then the trend would look pretty flat. But his chart started at the low point of 1970. So the warming trend seems very steep.
That is not Joe's fault, any chart must start in some year and 1970 is where that one starts.
And again, image Joe's link had gone back to the year 1930 instead of 1970. Matters wouldn't seem too bad. The 1930s and early 1940s were hot too.
Chart back a full century and you would see a slow rise, not as alarming as looking at 1970-1996 but not as comforting as looking at 1930-1996 or 1995-2006.
I'm sure some readers already were thoroughly aware of all I wrote. But a few may not have been. (Sometimes I merely write to order my thoughts about a technical matter.)
Summary:
(1) the long-term rate of heating depends on when you start measuring.
(2) 2007 more or less fooled everyone.
(3) the Solar Cycle expected in 2006 did not start. But it isn't very late yet; a delay is worrysome because historically delay seems related to serious cooling.
It is probably best explained by the continuing La Nina.
Well, it can't all be El Nina; when you consider how unprecedented this drop was, there was either a large random fluctuation, a feedback effect not seen before, or a solar-driven effect.
the Solar Cycle expected in 2006 did not start. But it isn't very late yet
Has it been a year late before? My impression was this had not happened in modern history.
Here are two unprecedented events and a mechanism for one to have caused the other. Let's hope that it's either a coincidence or the Sun starts up again.
What you see depends on where you start your graph. Take it back a few hundred years and you see something entirely different from the graph that started in 1950 or 1900. Take it back a few thousand, or million years and you've something else again.
If a year's data is too little, who's to say that 100 years' data isn't also too little? Account for the Maunder Minimum and the Medieval warm period, then discuss.
I'm sure some will say that this is too minor a data point to draw any sweeping conclusions from, but I remember not so long ago when we were being told in thundering tones that the 1990s were "the hottest decade on record," and things like that to prove that the skeptics were merely "denialists" and "anti-science."
As for Scott's comment - gw scientists actually do understand equilibria - perhaps you are the one who needs to understand how s focus on small scale variation can obscure vision of the larger picture. I.e. a focus on months, or even seasons!
I followed the link back to PIK, and the "Global Warming in a Nushell" makes extremely inflammatory statements a-al-Gore that ignore (I want to say deny, but they don't even suggest any) potential for moderating influences in favor of advancing potentially unmoderated and unihibited trends. The link in general does NOT suggest GW scientists understand equilibria.
I offer no explanation for the drop in 2007. La Nina seems to be the most often cited answer from science. Yet this La Nina seems pretty much like others to me as an amateur.
My personal position is that the big climate issues are too complex to figure out just yet, But better data gathering and analysis will essentially solve it in a decade.
After the big problems are solved some wild cards will remain; things such volcanos, earthquakes, and solar behavior. These won't accept orders from man and I am dubious that volcanic effects and earthquakes will be predicted to a worthwhile degree.
e.g.
when a volcano blows the effect on climate for the next few years depends upon where it is, how big the eruption, and the winds at various altitudes. Rain can wash ash from the air but there may be no rain soon after the event. It would be interesting to study a big eruption during a hurricane.
What irritates me is that so much GW work is based on extrapolated empirical models. When you extrapolate off of a curve fitted model, all you do is show everybody what basis functions you used. Use a polynomial, you'll get divergence to +/- infinity. Use a sinusoidal/Fourier method and you'll get oscillation. Use a rational polynomial and you'll get various divergences or convergences based on the relative degrees of the numerator and denominator. Once you start extrapolating, all you see is the basis functions. All this predicting about what things will look like in 100 years is pure, weapons grade balonium. 5-10 years- maybe, assuming there are no unmodeled effects with that time scale. (A highly dubious assumption) Anyway, that's my rant for the day, unless I start in on Vista.
Ryan
2.27.2008 7:30pm
Commenting on Dean's World is a privilege, not a right. Dean is your host, you are his guest, and you should behave in that fashion. Dean is not your babysitter, nor is he your punching bag. Please remember this. In general, you are free to disagree with anyone on any subject you wish, but abusive behavior will not be tolerated.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.
It’s a universal saying no matter where you go on Earth:
If you don’t like the weather, just wait a couple hours (or days, or weeks, or years ) and it will change.
HankB
As for Scott's comment - gw scientists actually do understand equilibria - perhaps you are the one who needs to understand how s focus on small scale variation can obscure vision of the larger picture. I.e. a focus on months, or even seasons!
LINK
You might try reading the linked article before commenting.
The 2008 numbers aren't enough to indicate a pattern on their own. However, they do correspond to a pattern in the Solar data.
More puzzling is the lack of a temperature trend over the period from the mid-1990s to 2006. About 12 years.
It shouldn't take Einstein to realize that over those 12 years a lot more changed than in 1 year. In attempting to explain 12 years you must factor in La Ninas, El Ninos, several other long observed ocean current oscillations, a complete solar cycle (aka sunspot cycle), volcanos tossing gases and particles into the air, as well China and others burning about a zillion times as much coal and oil as they did before. Did I mention rising CO2? Or the great increase in air traffic burning jet fuel at high altitudes?
I don't think the professionals know why there was a plateau for 12 years. But considering all those variables uncertainty is not terribly unexpected.
Let us now pretend Joe had provided a link to a chart for 1995-2006. Then the trend would look pretty flat. But his chart started at the low point of 1970. So the warming trend seems very steep.
That is not Joe's fault, any chart must start in some year and 1970 is where that one starts.
And again, image Joe's link had gone back to the year 1930 instead of 1970. Matters wouldn't seem too bad. The 1930s and early 1940s were hot too.
Chart back a full century and you would see a slow rise, not as alarming as looking at 1970-1996 but not as comforting as looking at 1930-1996 or 1995-2006.
I'm sure some readers already were thoroughly aware of all I wrote. But a few may not have been. (Sometimes I merely write to order my thoughts about a technical matter.)
Summary:
(1) the long-term rate of heating depends on when you start measuring.
(2) 2007 more or less fooled everyone.
(3) the Solar Cycle expected in 2006 did not start. But it isn't very late yet; a delay is worrysome because historically delay seems related to serious cooling.
It is probably best explained by the continuing La Nina.
Well, it can't all be El Nina; when you consider how unprecedented this drop was, there was either a large random fluctuation, a feedback effect not seen before, or a solar-driven effect.
the Solar Cycle expected in 2006 did not start. But it isn't very late yet
Has it been a year late before? My impression was this had not happened in modern history.
Here are two unprecedented events and a mechanism for one to have caused the other. Let's hope that it's either a coincidence or the Sun starts up again.
Now, the solar minimum we are going through (along with the idea that we are experiencing another Maunder Minimum) may have something to do with it.
I'll still push for an electric car, just so that we can get off foreign oil... :-)
Maybe I'll actually live long enough to watch the glacier push Algore's mansion into the Gulf of Mexico.
What you see depends on where you start your graph. Take it back a few hundred years and you see something entirely different from the graph that started in 1950 or 1900. Take it back a few thousand, or million years and you've something else again.
If a year's data is too little, who's to say that 100 years' data isn't also too little? Account for the Maunder Minimum and the Medieval warm period, then discuss.
I followed the link back to PIK, and the "Global Warming in a Nushell" makes extremely inflammatory statements a-al-Gore that ignore (I want to say deny, but they don't even suggest any) potential for moderating influences in favor of advancing potentially unmoderated and unihibited trends. The link in general does NOT suggest GW scientists understand equilibria.
I offer no explanation for the drop in 2007. La Nina seems to be the most often cited answer from science. Yet this La Nina seems pretty much like others to me as an amateur.
My personal position is that the big climate issues are too complex to figure out just yet, But better data gathering and analysis will essentially solve it in a decade.
After the big problems are solved some wild cards will remain; things such volcanos, earthquakes, and solar behavior. These won't accept orders from man and I am dubious that volcanic effects and earthquakes will be predicted to a worthwhile degree.
e.g.
when a volcano blows the effect on climate for the next few years depends upon where it is, how big the eruption, and the winds at various altitudes. Rain can wash ash from the air but there may be no rain soon after the event. It would be interesting to study a big eruption during a hurricane.
Thanks to all for kind words.
Ryan
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.