A good place to start is http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/ it’s the blog site for Dr James Hansen. I’ve been reading his material for some years and often think he has made a mistake or hope he has.

To date all the things that I thought he had wrong or could not be so I took the trouble to look for and find other references that corroborated Dr Hansen’s work.

He has been correct in all of the issues that I thought he had got wrong. Moral of the story – philosophy and climate science don’t mix. When checking a climate issue data trumps guesses.

Look, our air is constantly moving and changing its temperature. Physically the same molecules move and change their temperature, but the weather stations do not travel around the world, they measure the temperature at certain places.

So statistically you may have different trends on different places for whatever reason. The AGW proponents put all the data together, calculate an average and see a “global warming”, that is not “global” per definition and is purely statistical.

It might well be, that e.g. only 20% of the weather stations show “warming”, 30% show “cooling” and 50% show neither “warming” nor “cooling”, but the “warming” at some places is a little bit stronger, than “cooling” at other places, so you get a rise in average.

My point is, that a rise in average does not mean a rise everywhere.

Geographically you might well have a rise only in rather small areas. Anyway, you can not conclude, that there is a rise in a certain area just because there is a rise in “global average”.

That goes for Greenland, Arctic, Antarctic, agriculture, diseases, populations of animals and all the consequences too. You may have an average rise in average temperature and at the same time more ice, less diseases, more animals, more agriculture production etc.
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This term implies it, indeed, and some people believe it, but per definition “global warming” is a rise in the “average temperature”.

The only thing you can conclude from an average rise is, that there is a rise at least at 1 place. By no means you can conclude anything about “across the world”.

So, actually it is wrong to call “global warming” “global warming”. The right term would be “average warming”, but this term would have no propaganda effect.

That’s why “global warming” can not produce e.g. ice melting in Greenland. You may have an “average warming” and at the same time “cooling” in Greenland. Or the other way round: “average cooling” and at the same ice melting in Greenland.

The same goes for other “consequences” of “global warming”.

“The climate will always change”

Contradiction anyone? ;)

there is the decline of phytoplankton on the one hand (this is the weakening of the “biological pump?”); then there is the build up of different algae leading to dead zones (a process connected to nitrate run off in gulf, etc).

Barry or anyone: can you recommend a book on the oceans, specifically how “algaes” of various kinds react to warming, in such a way as to sort out the “killing algae” phenomenon (leading to oxygen depletion and weakening of carbon sink) from the spread of algae leading to oxygen depletion (cyanobacteria?)

Looking for understanding here.

The study, published in the journal Nature, is the first analysis of its kind and deliberately used data gathered over such a long period of time to eliminate the sort of natural fluctuations in phytoplankton that are known to occur from one decade to the next due to normal oscillations in ocean temperatures, Dr Worm said. “Phytoplankton are a critical part of our planetary life support system. They produce half of the oxygen we breathe, draw down surface CO2 and ultimately support all of our fishes.” he said.

If further studies support this finding, this has to be more than a little worrying – disastrous might be a better phrase. And an indication that carbon cycle feedbacks may not be as long term as we might have hoped for. The free ride on the biosphere’s ability to absorb CO2 may be being lost a lot faster than previously thought. Scary stuff.

The big message is that multiple lines of evidence (not just surface temperature) all show with a confidence beyond reasonable doubt that the planet is warming:

The 2009 State of the Climate report released today draws on data for 10 key climate indicators that all point to the same finding: the scientific evidence that our world is warming is unmistakable. More than 300 scientists from 160 research groups in 48 countries contributed to the report, which confirms that the past decade was the warmest on record and that the Earth has been growing warmer over the last 50 years.

Based on comprehensive data from multiple sources, the report defines 10 measurable planet-wide features used to gauge global temperature changes. The relative movement of each of these indicators proves consistent with a warming world. Seven indicators are rising: air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, air temperature over oceans, sea level, ocean heat, humidity and tropospheric temperature in the “active-weather” layer of the atmosphere closest to the Earth’s surface. Three indicators are declining: Arctic sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover in the Northern hemisphere.

I figured the answer was something like you say: which of course makes the watt point a total absurdity, if not a self evident absurdity.

the contrarians, the smarter ones, are great at peddling absurdities that are not absurd on their face, and so require some knowledge that most of us don’t have.

Gross, gross, gross.

thanks again and I get the point about temp anomaly.

On the issue of the proximity of weather stations, it should be noted that it’s not absolute temperature that is important, it is temperature anomaly. As I understand it, it has been shown that anomalies extend over significant geographical areas and something like 1200kms is some sort of rule of thumb. (eg if it is hot in London it is very likely hot in Paris as well) When there is more than one station, I think there is a weighting applied according to distance in the griding. This has been discussed more than once over at RealClimate.

I’m pretty sure all of this is well documented on the GISS web site and in papers by Hansen and others describing the compilation of the temperature record. No doubt NOAA also have similar publications.

Above: Sacreamento CA,

http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect.htm

okay.

btw, skeptics celebrate data from NOAA if it fits their preconceptions (see if they were skeptical about 2008 climate data–a RELATIVELY cooler year); they view it as a socialist conspiracy when it does not (last two years).

I don’t know if it would be worth traveling to anthony watts’ contrarian site and analyzing their automatic rebuttals to anything put out by NOAA, viewed as a socialist website by most of the folks there.

They of course have labeled the recent NOAA claims to be a hoax based on false or missing data–propaganda not science.

More precisely, Watt claims that where the greatest upward temp anomalies are found, the least data is available. Greatest anomalies point to absence of weather stations.

They focus on Africa and Greenland. It should be noted that even with their own graphs, many of the hot spots in Africa point directly at a weather station, but even when a hot spot does not correlate directly with a weather station, how close does a weather station have to be to a region to take a viable reading?

Given the number of “skeptics” out there, and given that you are after all a climate scientist, is it worth responding to anthony watt?

I gather you think responding to contrarians is at this point fruitless and so you post NOAA data, assuming it will be taken as valuable by most people.

question: are the contrarians more beyond the pale than anti nuke renewables types? the latter BNC really confronts. The former, no longer.

I understand non confrontation with contrarians is the “pragmatic” move to make when the contrarians are pro nuclear power.

I worry that this pragmatism could come back to bite the majority of pro nuke people; after all, what if only or primarily state led forces can build these things fast enough and safely enough given the current investment climate? some of our pro nuke folks will then oppose nukes, since what they hate the most is “big government.”

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1546

Whatever energy savings may or may not be achieved by demand management, it seems perfectly clear that as temperatures rise and there are more frequent and larger magnitude heat waves the demand for peak capacity can only rise.