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Global warming

Quarter-Degree Fix Fuels Climate Fight

Balanced review in the New York Times
Never underestimate the power of the blogosphere and a quarter of a degree to inflame the fight over global warming.​

From coyoteblog.com, a blogger with lots of cool stuff.

An Interesting Source of Man-Made Global Warming
The US Historical Climate Network (USHCN) reports about a 0.6C temperature increase in the lower 48 states since about 1940. There are two steps to reporting these historic temperature numbers. First, actual measurements are taken. Second, adjustments are made after the fact by scientists to the data. Would you like to guess how much of the 0.6C temperature rise is from actual measured temperature increases and how much is due to adjustments of various levels of arbitrariness? Here it is, for the period from 1940 to present in the US:

Actual Measured Temperature Increase: 0.1C Adjustments and Fudge Factors: 0.5C Total Reported Warming: 0.6C Yes, that is correct. Nearly all the reported warming in the USHCN data base, which is used for nearly all global warming studies and models, is from human-added fudge factors, guesstimates, and corrections.

I know what you are thinking - this is some weird skeptic's urban legend. Well, actually it comes right from the NOAA web page which describes how they maintain the USHCN data set. Below is the key chart from that site showing the sum of all the plug factors and corrections they add to the raw USHCN measurements:


(Mhaze commenting)

Coyote posted this back around June or July - before the NASA temperature corrections. Steve McIntyre's corrections to the NASA data are probably only the first of three or four sets of corrections that are coming.
 
If an effort to create world wide tax, penalty and control system to limit CO2, plus possibly build CO2 sequestration plants, with the expressed goal of lowering the planet's temperature does not define climate control, then what is it, just solely an effort to create world wide tax, penalty and control system?

We have inadvertently created a situation in which a side effect of burning fossil fuels is that the temperature of the earth is rising. That is not controlling the climate. Many people want to stop that happening. That also is not controlling the climate.
 
From coyoteblog.com, a blogger with lots of cool stuff.

An Interesting Source of Man-Made Global Warming
The US Historical Climate Network (USHCN) reports about a 0.6C temperature increase in the lower 48 states since about 1940. There are two steps to reporting these historic temperature numbers. First, actual measurements are taken. Second, adjustments are made after the fact by scientists to the data. Would you like to guess how much of the 0.6C temperature rise is from actual measured temperature increases and how much is due to adjustments of various levels of arbitrariness? Here it is, for the period from 1940 to present in the US:

Actual Measured Temperature Increase: 0.1C Adjustments and Fudge Factors: 0.5C Total Reported Warming: 0.6C Yes, that is correct. Nearly all the reported warming in the USHCN data base, which is used for nearly all global warming studies and models, is from human-added fudge factors, guesstimates, and corrections.

I know what you are thinking - this is some weird skeptic's urban legend. Well, actually it comes right from the NOAA web page which describes how they maintain the USHCN data set. Below is the key chart from that site showing the sum of all the plug factors and corrections they add to the raw USHCN measurements:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=7930http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_1422446d1c990d7248.gif

(Mhaze commenting)

Coyote posted this back around June or July - before the NASA temperature corrections. Steve McIntyre's corrections to the NASA data are probably only the first of three or four sets of corrections that are coming.

:rolleyes:

The major adjustment is due to TOB bias.

Coyote says

Let's take each of these in turn. The time of observation adjustment is defined as follows:
The Time of Observation Bias (TOB) arises when the 24-hour daily summary period at a station begins and ends at an hour other than local midnight. When the summary period ends at an hour other than midnight, monthly mean temperatures exhibit a systematic bias relative to the local midnight standard
0.3C seems absurdly high for this adjustment, but I can't prove it. However, if I understand the problem, a month might be picking up a few extra hours from the next month and losing a few hours to the previous month. How is a few hour time shift really biasing a 720+ hour month by so large a number? I will look to see if I can find a study digging into this.

That's the level of debate, is it?

If you read the explanation from NOAA.

Next, the temperature data are adjusted for the time-of-observation bias (Karl, et al. 1986) which occurs when observing times are changed from midnight to some time earlier in the day. The TOB is the first of several adjustments. The ending time of the 24 hour climatological day varies from station to station and/or over a period of years at a given station. The TOB introduces a non climatic bias into the monthly means. The TOB software is an empirical model used to estimate the time of observation biases associated with different observation schedules and the routine computes the TOB with respect to daily readings taken at midnight. Details on the procedure are given in, "A Model to Estimate the Time of Observation Bias Associated with Monthly Mean Maximum, Minimum, and Mean Temperatures." by Karl, Williams, et al.1986, Journal of Climate and Applied Meteorology 15: 145-160

If you change the time of the day that a reading is taken, from midnight to earlier in the day, that would introduce a significant change in temperature.
 
Coal-mine fires in China and India could be huge culprits in global warming. In China alone, up to 200 million tons of coal go up in flames each year—which may be equivalent to America’s total carbon-dioxide emissions from gasoline. India’s mine fires waste up to 10 million tons of coal annually. The pollution has made land in both countries uninhabitable. And the problem is expected to worsen.
Is this the good old 'the US shouldn't do anything 'cause China ain't' argument? Perhaps we should stop having costly and time-consuming elections, too, since, after all, China isn't having them? Maybe it's OK for me to stop respecting speed limits, since John Doe isn't?

Look, it doesn't matter what China does or doesn't do. If the US needs to cut emissions, it needs to cut emissions, regardless of what other nations are doing. I also find it quite interesting that if you ask a Chinese if they should cut emissions, they'll answer that nah, I don't see why we should, and too be honest, I don't see why you're picking on us. Look at how much the US emits every year, they have the highest Co2 emissions per capita in the world! Go bother them!

So in essence, you won't improve 'til China does, China won't improve 'til you do. Wow. Wonderful stalemate you've made yourself.
 
:rolleyes:

The major adjustment is due to TOB bias.

If you read the explanation from NOAA.

If you change the time of the day that a reading is taken, from midnight to earlier in the day, that would introduce a significant change in temperature.

Of course. Also note criticisms of efforts to find flaws in temperature data at Eli Rabbet's blog.

But in general, I do suspect several more corrections are coming.
 
Yet the curve shows an almost the linear rise in sea level from 1920 to 2000? How can that be if the effect is much more significant now than in 1930 or 1940?

The CO2 influence is greater now but the solar influence peaked around 1950. The volcanic influence has been pretty much factored in, not having changed much this last century or so. Different influences wax and wane and the thermal inertia of the oceans tends to smooth out the effect.


I think we can discount that as the reason for the increase in the level at the location I cited. Here's data from 23 gauges.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0f/Recent_Sea_Level_Rise.png

Notice the linear increase from 1920 to 2000?

There's a fair bit of noise on that line, don't you think? Plenty of room for the shuffling of un-coordinated influences.

Here's the rise in sea level over the last 20,000 years or so:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1d/Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png

As you can see, sea levels rose a 100 meters in a relatively linear fashion over a 10,000 year period (that's 10 mm per year) without any input from man. Yet all of a sudden, we are DEFINITELY the culprit for a rise of 0.4mm per year the last 5 years? (sarcasm)

10mm per annum spanning the shift between glaciation and interglaciation - a cataclysmic shift, I'm sure you'll agree - is hardly surprising. It certainly puts 0.4mm pa in the shade, and even the 0.5mm pa contribution from the Antarctic.


I'm glad there are some science-based historical reconstructions that you trust.

Notice that between 7,000 and 4,000 years ago, when man wasn't producing much CO2, sea levels rose about 2.5 meters in a linear fashion ... that's an average of about 0.8mm per year. Notice that from 3,000 years ago to 2,000 years ago, sea level rose a meter ... 1.0mm per year. Yet Henry Ford wasn't to be born for another 2000 years. So why are you sure we are the culprit for a 0.4mm rise per year over a time span of only the last 5 years?

Because I can spot a specious argument when I see one. And because of the science, naturally.

7,000 years ago agriculture was just starting to get into its exponential stride. By 4,000 years ago it was dominant pretty much everywhere. Are you sure that warming wasn't anthropogenic? And if so, why?

The generally used measure of current sea-level rise is the decadal observation, which takes out incidental variation. That's still at about 3mm per decade, I think. The recently measured increase could be a blip.

When your models don't take the sun into account ...

If you're referring to GCM's, they do take the Sun into account. Of course they do; they're designed to model the climate, which is affected by solar variation.

... and you are ready to jump off an economic cliff ...

Standard contrarian alarmism.

... based on 5 years of data suggesting a 0.4mm per year rise in sea level when for the last 20,000 years, most of the time the sea levels were rising much faster than that, I wonder about your common sense.

I wonder about yours when you conjure up a 0.5mm pa contribution from Antarctica in the last twenty thousand years and stand it up against a 0.4mm pa global increase today. What was meant to be your point in the first place?

Was that your credibility I just saw flying out the window?

I don't think so. More likely a pig.
 
Is this the good old 'the US shouldn't do anything 'cause China ain't' argument? Perhaps we should stop having costly and time-consuming elections, too, since, after all, China isn't having them? Maybe it's OK for me to stop respecting speed limits, since John Doe isn't?

Look, it doesn't matter what China does or doesn't do. If the US needs to cut emissions, it needs to cut emissions, regardless of what other nations are doing. I also find it quite interesting that if you ask a Chinese if they should cut emissions, they'll answer that nah, I don't see why we should, and too be honest, I don't see why you're picking on us. Look at how much the US emits every year, they have the highest Co2 emissions per capita in the world! Go bother them!

So in essence, you won't improve 'til China does, China won't improve 'til you do. Wow. Wonderful stalemate you've made yourself.

Well, I have not made any stalemate for myself.

There are two issues that I think you may have confused. The post you responded to was concerning - strictly - China coal mine fires that are basically burning out of control underground. I was saying that might be something we could actually go fix, with advanced technology. The guy that posted it was commenting that that one issue alone looked bigger than all our automotive emissions.

So we had not even got to the overall issue of Chinese emissions, which incidentally have already surpassed the USA. That we can go into if you like later, but I got to go now.
 
Ethanol is not an answer, just one more cave in to the farm lobby.

Not so much a cave-in, more business-as-usual with some greenwash slapped on. The appearance of action while nothing changes. Well, no change there, then :) .

What I find significant is the need for greenwash in the first place. People (potential voters) are noticing stuff going on around them. Younger voters - and there are a lot of them - don't remember how things were back in the last glaciation. (Nor can I, but I blame it on the drugs.) Nor do they care. They're more focused on the present and future. And, increasingly, voters are being persuaded by their own experience that Something Should Be Done. So you have to make like something was done. That's politics. In Australia as it is in the US. Amen.

Don't say I didn't warn you. Old South Wales is the epitome of "medium" under any projection; New South Wales (Australia in general) not so much. Indonesia's hardly the neighbour-of-choice as thigs stand, let alone factoring in climate change. It's time to bug-out. In Old South Wales our neighbours are the English, Irish, Cornish, and way off in the distance the 'Murricans - who are focused on the Pacific. Like the Chinese and Japanese. And whatever develops in South America. The Pacific is where the Great Power game is being played now. Get out from under, is my advice.
 
Really?
any system of knowledge that is concerned with the physical world and its phenomena and that entails unbiased observations and systematic experimentation. In general, a science involves a pursuit of knowledge covering general truths or the operations of fundamental laws.

Economics fails that test.

Not to turn this into argument of semantics, but it was you that asked me if English was my second language.

So I did.

First you said evidence can't explain things ...

Nor can it. Explanations explain evidence.

... I said it can explain many things ...

So you did. I remain unpersuaded.

... you'd better inform the other idiots out there who think it can too:

Better for what? I'm talking to you, not these other guys.

Now you're saying Economics and Statistics are not science? Again, you need to straighten out Encyclopedia Britannica and edit Wikipedia to fit your definition:

I have no such need. I don't give a toss for the Britannica, and less for Wikipedia. Statistics is a branch of Mathematics; Mathematics is a science, it is worthy. Statistics isn't.

Economic "science" has always been biased towards an establishment view or has been so esoteric as to have no application to the real world. Economics is far more dependent on models as a research tool than the AGW argument is.



Considering AGW hypotheses is almost exclusively based on climate models and proxies ...

Almost exclusively. So there's some other stuff.


... how does that square with being a "science"?

I'm sure nobody's ever claimed that there's an "AGW Hypothesis" that is a "science". It seems to be more your end of things that's over-promoting.

And since climate science relies heavily on statistics, is it really a science either?

Climate science doesn't rely heavily on statistics. It's relies on, and emerges from, the science of Physics.
 
Economics fails that test.

I have no such need. I don't give a toss for the Britannica, and less for Wikipedia. Statistics is a branch of Mathematics; Mathematics is a science, it is worthy. Statistics isn't.

Economic "science" has always been biased towards an establishment view or has been so esoteric as to have no application to the real world. Economics is far more dependent on models as a research tool than the AGW argument is.

Then you, thinking such, must eschew all conclusions favoring AGW based on statistics.

So you have no-

tree rings
ice cores
global temperatures
satellite temperature inferences
hockey stick
ice Mass balance
sea ice calculations

which leaves you with...
 
Then you, thinking such, must eschew all conclusions favoring AGW based on statistics.

So you have no-

tree rings
ice cores
global temperatures
satellite temperature inferences
hockey stick
ice Mass balance
sea ice calculations

which leaves you with...

Climate science doesn't rely heavily on statistics. It's relies on, and emerges from, the science of Physics.
1. Evidence can explain things
2. Statistics is science
3. Economics is science

And lastly, climate science does in fact rely heavily on statistics.

http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11175&page=12
Climate is conventionally defined as the long-term statistics of the weather (e.g., temperature, cloudiness, precipitation).

http://geography.uoregon.edu/amarcus/geog620/Guest-Readings/zwiers-IntJClim-2004.pdf
The study of the climate system is, to a large extent, the study of the statistics of weather; so, it is not surprising that statistical reasoning, analysis and modelling are pervasive in the climatological sciences.

pervasive
per•va•sive
adjective
Definition:

present everywhere: spreading widely or present throughout something

Synonyms: all-encompassing, enveloping, invasive, omnipresent
 
Is this the good old 'the US shouldn't do anything 'cause China ain't' argument? Perhaps we should stop having costly and time-consuming elections, too, since, after all, China isn't having them? Maybe it's OK for me to stop respecting speed limits, since John Doe isn't?

Look, it doesn't matter what China does or doesn't do. If the US needs to cut emissions, it needs to cut emissions, regardless of what other nations are doing. I also find it quite interesting that if you ask a Chinese if they should cut emissions, they'll answer that nah, I don't see why we should, and too be honest, I don't see why you're picking on us. Look at how much the US emits every year, they have the highest Co2 emissions per capita in the world! Go bother them!

So in essence, you won't improve 'til China does, China won't improve 'til you do. Wow. Wonderful stalemate you've made yourself.

It is meaningfully to carefully look at the actual emissions numbers before making statements of this sort...

US greenhouse gas emissions are about 7 gigaton per year. The (utterly worthless) Kyoto agreement requested a 6% reduction in emissions over the entire term.

6% of 7 gigatons is 420 megatons.
China's emissions from out of control coal fires are 400 megatons.

See?

The poster was asserting people need to be smart, and carefully think this stuff out on a numerical basis. Where that leads isn't where the progagandists a la Gore want to take you....
 
From coyoteblog.com, a blogger with lots of cool stuff.

An Interesting Source of Man-Made Global Warming
The US Historical Climate Network (USHCN) reports about a 0.6C temperature increase in the lower 48 states since about 1940. There are two steps to reporting these historic temperature numbers. First, actual measurements are taken. Second, adjustments are made after the fact by scientists to the data. Would you like to guess how much of the 0.6C temperature rise is from actual measured temperature increases and how much is due to adjustments of various levels of arbitrariness? Here it is, for the period from 1940 to present in the US:

Actual Measured Temperature Increase: 0.1C Adjustments and Fudge Factors: 0.5C Total Reported Warming: 0.6C Yes, that is correct. Nearly all the reported warming in the USHCN data base, which is used for nearly all global warming studies and models, is from human-added fudge factors, guesstimates, and corrections.

I know what you are thinking - this is some weird skeptic's urban legend. Well, actually it comes right from the NOAA web page which describes how they maintain the USHCN data set. Below is the key chart from that site showing the sum of all the plug factors and corrections they add to the raw USHCN measurements:
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_1422446d1c990d7248.gif[/qimg]

(Mhaze commenting)

Coyote posted this back around June or July - before the NASA temperature corrections. Steve McIntyre's corrections to the NASA data are probably only the first of three or four sets of corrections that are coming.


Older readings were typically measured at noon, newer ones are typically taken in the morning. Are you suggesting this should not be corrected for? What next, take the readings at midnight? I’m sure you could hide at least a couple degrees of warming that way.
 
1. Evidence can explain things
2. Statistics is science
3. Economics is science

As previously stated statistics is a branch of mathematics, and while mathematics is used extensively in science it is a decidedly different field. Economics generally doesn’t attempt to apply the scientific method, nor does it attempt to identify underlying physical phenomena so it doesn’t really qualify as a science.


The use of statistics in climate science has little or nothing in common with the use of statistics in economics. In climate science statistics are used to describe an underlying phenomenon. A climate model doesn’t use statistics to generate it’s results it only uses them to report its results.

In contrast an economic model uses the statistics to find out what happened in the past and extrapolates them forward. This is a notoriously flawed way to use statistics.
 
As previously stated statistics is a branch of mathematics, and while mathematics is used extensively in science it is a decidedly different field. Economics generally doesn’t attempt to apply the scientific method, nor does it attempt to identify underlying physical phenomena so it doesn’t really qualify as a science.

The use of statistics in climate science has little or nothing in common with the use of statistics in economics. In climate science statistics are used to describe an underlying phenomenon. A climate model doesn’t use statistics to generate it’s results it only uses them to report its results.

In contrast an economic model uses the statistics to find out what happened in the past and extrapolates them forward. This is a notoriously flawed way to use statistics.

By your reasoning the IPCC projections of scientific and economic consequences of global warming then are notoriously flawed.
 
10mm per annum spanning the shift between glaciation and interglaciation - a cataclysmic shift

No, 10 mm per year over 10,000 years, instead of a decrease that lasted only a few thousand years at the start of the 20,000 year period like you wanted readers to believe was the case.

Quote:
Notice that between 7,000 and 4,000 years ago, when man wasn't producing much CO2, sea levels rose about 2.5 meters in a linear fashion ... that's an average of about 0.8mm per year. Notice that from 3,000 years ago to 2,000 years ago, sea level rose a meter ... 1.0mm per year. Yet Henry Ford wasn't to be born for another 2000 years. So why are you sure we are the culprit for a 0.4mm rise per year over a time span of only the last 5 years?

Because I can spot a specious argument when I see one.

Yeah, right. (sarcasm)

What is specious is you trying to give readers the impression that the major loss of ice (and therefore rise in sea levels) was over a span of few thousand years at the start of the 20,000 year period. The chart I linked clearly shows that over 65 percent of the last 20,000 year time period, the sea levels have risen many times faster than the rise that you walarmists are excited about happening over only the last 5 years or so. On that basis, you want us to jump off an economic cliff. That's specious.

7,000 years ago agriculture was just starting to get into its exponential stride. By 4,000 years ago it was dominant pretty much everywhere. Are you sure that warming wasn't anthropogenic?

Oh this just gets funnier and funnier. Now the walarmists want us to stop growing food too? ROTFLOL!

The recently measured increase could be a blip.

Yet the walarmists insist we jump off an economic cliff.

Quote:
... and you are ready to jump off an economic cliff ...

Standard contrarian alarmism.

Tell us, SPECIFICALLY, what measures will be needed to immediately freeze greenhouse-gas emissions and see a 90 percent cut in those emissions by 2050 as proposed by Gore and his friends. Let's see if my concerns are just alarmism.
 
Now the walarmists want us to stop growing food too? ROTFLOL!

Yet the walarmists insist we jump off an economic cliff.

Tell us, SPECIFICALLY, what measures will be needed to immediately freeze greenhouse-gas emissions and see a 90 percent cut in those emissions by 2050 as proposed by Gore and his friends. Let's see if my concerns are just alarmism.

A comparison of specific strategies on the macro scale, eh? Taking into account probable growth patterns of southeast Asia and China?

Easy to do really, but the results do not bode well for alarmists.
Particularly for fundamentalist faith based reasoning by the Gored.
 
Older readings were typically measured at noon, newer ones are typically taken in the morning. Are you suggesting this should not be corrected for?

Of course not. But corrections of this sort were devised long ago, back when nobody seriously thought anyone would be hunting for accuracy in the plus or minus a tenth C range. Which by the way is right at the limit of accuracy of the instrument.

So old rules of thumb such as "add 0.3 C" which used to seem basically logical, well, now, a 0.3 C rise is a big deal.
 

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