William Connolley has an interesting post on a new reconstruction of temperatures over the past 2000 years. It's the blue line in the graph to the right. It suggests that things were colder in the past than the hockey stick reconstruction (MBH in the diagram). The usual suspects will no doubt try to argue that this somehow disproves anthropogenic global warming, despite the finding that temperatures since the 90s are unprecedented.
Louis Hissink warns about the dangers of shifting the axis of rotation of a spinning hard disk:
Never ever move a hard drive that is spinning---hard drive reading heads tend to do awful things to the magnetic data when asked to compete with gravity and abrupt inertial changes.
Cool. Now imagine if the hard disk was the size of the Earth. Don't you think that changing the axis of rotation would do awful things to anyone living on it?
"The usual suspects will no doubt try to argue that this somehow disproves anthropogenic global warming, despite the finding that temperatures since the 90s are unprecedented."
Muhahaha. Your colleagues show that the natural variations are one order of magnitude bigger than your previous colleagues wrote, but you're still sure that things are unprecedented. The new graphs are a kick in the teeth for MBH and similar scientists.
You probably don't understand what it means to have an error by an order of magnitude. Let me give you an example. Do you remember last night when you drank 6 liters of beer? So imagine it was 60 liters. In that case you would not even know whether it is +60 or -60 - the original information 6 liters simply gives no useful information whatsoever. Rubbish.
What your colleagues are doing is a completely weird form of religion - in comparison, Jehovah's Wittnesses are ultrarational scientists.
Lubos,
Both MBH's 'hockey stick' analysis and the Moberg et al paper are pieces of science. The fact that you attack one while embracing the other with zero scrutiny shows that you have a huge axe to grind, and very little invested in actually understanding what's going on.
To add insult to injury, you're embracing a paper that:
1)Is hot off of the presses, so still has to undergo the scrutiny of the scientific community.
2)Explicitly endorses (follow the link) the viewpoint that you believe has been 'kicked in the teeth'. We find no evidence for any earlier periods in the last millenia with warmer conditions than the post-1990 period... and then specifically cites the MBH papers.
That's correct- Moberg et al also think that the warming has been unprecedented. Muhahaha. Bluntly, you are wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong.
Speaking of religion, I wonder if now that you've learned that this paper's authors explicitly endorse anthropogenic global climate change, do you still think that it's the Revealed Truth? 'cos from where Im sitting, you strike me as the one using faith rather than rationality to understand the universe...
Interesting, thanks Tim.
What's worse, Carleton, poor hapless Lubos already knew that the Moberg et al. contained that passage you quoted. Yet he made his statement anyway. I'm pretty sure his posts are cries in the e-wilderness. Won't someone ask Lubos out on a date to save Tim's bandwidth?D
There still is no objective PROOF for anthopogentic global warming. The Earth has been warming and cooling for Hundreds of Millions of years and it has been much warmer in the past compared to now. And BTW stop the lefty twist of changing the name from global warming to global climate change.
John F, OK, I'll bite. Here are two papers that claim to show measured changes due to GHGs. I can discuss either if Tim does not mind us using his place for this.
1) Radiative forcing - measured at Earth's surface - corroborate the increasing greenhouse effect
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2004/2003GL018765.shtml
A nifty experiment where they measure downward longwave IR radiation and show an increase from CO2 plus feedbacks.
2) Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997.
http://www.natureasia.com/get.pl5/japan/nature/abstracts/issue6826/abst…
Looking at the spectrum from the atmosphere, satellites have measured changes in the frequencies where GHG absorb EM radiation.
Regards,
Yelling
John F: the Bush administration were the people who first startign using the term "climate change" because it was supposed to be less threatening than "global warming". That was a couple of years ago, only in the last couple of months have the claism that this is a "lefty" term originated.
While you're technically correct that there is no "absolute proof" for AGW, there's also no absoute proof of the existence of gravity or atoms either.They are, to borrow a term from the creationists and greenhouse skeptics, "only a theory".
Yelling, I don;t have to password to read anything but the abstracts. But since the exact nature of cloud cover and it's modeling in the GCM's is primitive, I think it's quite a stretch. The Author's used terms like statistically significant , but not overwhelming. I am sure there is a reaction of the CO2 in the atmosphere to the long wavelenth photons, that is not in question. The Ice core data taken over hundreds of thousands of years show no causality to Earths; temperature with the ppm's not too far from today.
To the leftys' they are afraid people actually like the temps a little warmer, and know they can't scare the public with "Global warming" So they have to claim every natural event can somehow be tied to Man and CO2---"Climate Change"---what a joke!
John F:
If you are refering to an increase of longwave radiation due to cloud cover the authors address it in their paper; to quote:
" Cloud amount
is determined with the clear-sky index method [Marty and
Philipona, 2000], and the longwave cloud effect (LCE) is
calculated by subtracting longwave net radiation (downward
minus upward) of cloud-free from all-sky situations
[Charlock and Ramanathan, 1985]"
In regards to the photons you mention, it is not so much a reaction as the fact that the added CO2 causes more downward longwave radiation as expected from the greenhouse effect. This is just the first experiment to measure it.
I have no comment regarding Global Warming and climate change. I think that both are appropriate and most people know what you mean.
Regards
Yelling
Frank Luntz averred that Climate Change(TM) was preferable over AGW.
It's always good to know history when one reads predigested information, because Google doesn't come with a 'context' button.
D
Mr. Dano: Did you make up that memo?? Every argument (well, maybe not Mr. Hissink's points) that I have heard about global warming is there. My god, they even state that "The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed" and how they must take advantage of that.
Another quote "The facts only become relevant when the public is receptive and willing to listen to them".
I even note that the memo quotes Mr. Fumento but calls him an "investigative journalist".
Anyway, as someone who has spent a great deal of time looking at the science of global warming I find I am more and more shocked at the deliberate manipulation of the public by those opposed to taking action against global warming (opps, I mean climate change).
Regards
Yelling
Yelling, you mention taking action???
Check this out and tell me Kyoto is worth it.
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Kyoto_Count_Up.htm
Ahhhh, yes: we're rubes here, and we read linkies uncritically whilst breathing thru our mouths.Golly, them are big numbers!D
Lessee...I'm gonna read the source documents for them big numbers. Yup, surely the linky provided methodology for the numbers! So, lets see...hmmm...checking for methodology...checking...hmmm...OK, no source. Let's read the op-ed...hmmm...calculations...hmmm...where'd them big ol' numbers come from...hmmm. Shucks.
Golly, John F - these numbers could be pulled out of any old orifice at all! D
Yes Dano, adding up the big $$$$$$ numbers is quite easy. Finding out how the Kyoto accord may actually do something is quite impossible--since it can't change a damn thing.
John F. the aptly named junkscience misses the point of Kyoto entirely.
The Kyoto Protocols were designed to cause minimum net cost and to set up the institutions for cost-effective reductions in later implementation phases after 2012. It was always understood that the actual reductions attributable to the first 5 year perido would be minimal.
It was also understood that China, India and other developing countries would commit to emission reductions in those later implementation phaees. Of course, since George Bush Jr. has renenged on the commitments his father made at Kyoto, those developing countries feel they are no longer bound by those commitments.