Matthew England will talk about climate models this Sunday 23rd August in the Powerhouse Museum as part of the Ultimo Science Festival. The press release says:
Climate modeller challenges skeptics
With the Government's emissions trading legislation now delayed, one of Australia's leading climate scientists, UNSW Professor Matthew England has thrown down the gauntlet to climate skeptics to update their thinking.
"Those that deny basic climate science question climate modelling and fundamental climate physics. But each of their arguments is wrong, outdated, or irrelevant. Most of their claims have long been refuted by the scientific community, the national academies, and so on. Others need no refuting: they fly in the face of basic geophysical measurements, or they are so appallingly wrong they go against simple high-school physics,'' England says.
The award-winning oceanographer, who is co-director of UNSW's Climate Change Research Centre, will discuss the whys and wherefores of climate modelling and provide the most up-to-date climate predictions out to the year 2100 (since the IPCC report of 2007), at the Ultimo Science Festival on Sunday.
"This talk will show the step by step of how the models work, how they have evolved over the past 50 years, where they can be trusted, and what their uncertainties are. I will also address many of the skeptics' claims and show why they are wrong," England says.
But the latest research is not a pretty prediction, according to England.
"We need a fairly dramatic change in the way we power this planet, away from the old carbon-intensive technologies and into a new era of clean energy. We need to do this very quickly to give us any chance of staying below a net 2 degrees Celsius global average warming.
"Alarmingly, even at that level of warming we will lose most of the world's coral reefs and around 20 to 30 per cent of species will face potential extinction. The Greenland ice sheet is likely to disintegrate completely if we warm in excess of 2.5 degrees C, that's a seven-metre sealevel rise" he says.
England says we have already emitted half the greenhouse gases we can if we are to have a reasonable chance of staying below a net 2 degrees Celsius global average warming.
"Every year that there is inaction, this locks in a greater level of climate change. Climate change is now unavoidable, but we can determine, to some extent, what level of change we are prepared to commit to," says England. "If we care about minimising the impact on heat extremes, bushfires, human health, our ecosystems and our capacity to produce food and have a secure freshwater supply, greenhouse gas emissions need to peak in the next decade and then decline rapidly."
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One final point before # 1000 is reached:
Girma says, in all seriousness, "Play the ball, not the man".
Girma, you play neither. Many of us here are hitting powerful balls back at you and you ignore them. For instance, at #997:
As I and others have written before, the global climate systems is deterministic. It takes a major forcing to change that over short time scales. Given the stupendous size of the system, it is simply not possible to extrapolate trends on the basis of 3 years or 10 years; 30 or even more are required. Those who extrapolate trends since 1998, a year when at least 0.2 degrees of the mean annual temperature increase was due to the largest El Nino in a century, are being intellectually dishonest. I work in a field - ecology - where scale is important. To extrapolate trends at the scale of landscapes we must transcend national boundries and centuries. Its no use attempting to understand the demographics of wolf populations in North America by studying trends since 1998. We need data that goes back a lot longer. For climate this is even more apparent. I believe that even 30 years is not long enough, given the immense scales over which the system operates.
I know you won`t understand a scintilla of this, or do not want to, but for once just try.
Too late Jeff! Some earlier posts must have come through moderation.
1000 - yikes.
I know Girma is a hopeless case of a self-imposed ideological straight-jacket making him impervious to the science, but my morbid curiosity keeps getting the better of me.
Girma, you still have not defined "under occupation".
Incidently, scholarships are good. Why do we need to have them? Are you thankful for the market intervention of scholarships? Who provided your scholorships? What would happen without scholarships?
And regarding your statement, did [Ken Saro Wiwa](http://www.ratical.org/corporations/OgoniFactS.html) get what his genius deserved? Why are you more likely to get power if you [side with power](http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/ken/murder.html)?
Mark, Jeff
I am not against one nation helping another. I am grateful for the scholarships. It has lifted me and my family out of poverty. But, I worked for it. I had the burning desire in my heart not to remain poor. I never skipped class. I studied day and night hard with empty stomach.
Now, by sending money to my parents back at home I contribute to the foreign exchange of my birth country. Here in Australia, I pay tax and that is used to help others. I donât have any problem in those who have helping those who do not. But before we blame others for our circumstances, we have to look ourselves on the mirror to find out the reason.
Jeff, I agree I want simple solution and straight lines. You also do not need to worry about me too much. It has been very pleasant so far: I have never been hungry for a very, very long time!
Girma,
That's an excellent outcome, Pleased to hear you got this chance. Now how about some more scholarships for more people? What about 10 times increase in the opportunites for people around the world?
How do you reconcile the genuine benefit of scholarships with your Rand philosophy?
And for someone who has worked so hard, why didn't you take the time to read the AR4 before you signed your name to that petition?
I know how you beleive it is important not to put an intermediary between you and facts, so why make up your mind after only reading the summary as reported in the media?
BTW I respect your exceptional politness in these debates, and your intension to draw people back to 'play the ball'.
Girma,
I second Mark Byrne`s comments. Let us keep the discourse polite.
Having said that, it is dawning on me that you probably don`t fully understand (fully perhaps being a kind way of saying it) the gist of what most of us here are discussing. Something is being lost in translation here, because your answers rarely gel with our comments.
Given this fact, I am not so sure this thread will get anywhere. I am reminded of the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the King (played by Michael Palin) gives orders to the two guards (Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam) to ensure his son (Terry Jones) does not leave his room is the castle. The instructions made by the king seem simple enough, but the guards never seem to understand. The result is actually quite funny.
Unfortunately, this appears to be what is happening here, as Girma never really addresses the comments made by others, and I find he makes the same comments made over and over and over again (e.g. its cooled since 2005; it has not warmed since 1998) that have been dispensed with time and time again.
So perhaps I ought to follow my own advice and bail out of this thread now.
"Huge... tracts of land."
That's all I have to say. Resume your previously scheduled dismantling of Girma.
"Unfortunately, this appears to be what is happening here, as Girma never really addresses the comments made by others, and I find he makes the same comments made over and over and over again (e.g. its cooled since 2005; it has not warmed since 1998)" - Jeff H
What else do you expect Jeff?
Girma has to cherry-pick and misrepresent facts to shoe-horn them into his Randian ideology.
I have printed the content of this thread and we now have written nearly 300 A4 pages and it fills the standard Lever Arch folder. I wish I had your contact numbers so that I could ring you in ten years time with the anomalies still hovering around 0.34 deg C. Unfortunately, you might respond by saying it is because of Copenhagen the temperature is still 0.34 deg C. How sad.
Guys, if I say the mean global temperature has been increasing for the last ten years, I would not be telling you the truth. I want to tell the truth.
Your assumption is that it will go up soon? That is simply a guess on your part. Let us see what temperatures would be in the coming years. You don't know. I don't know.
I am not addressing some of your comments because I deal with FACTS and data only. Your articles are nice to read, but where is the data that shows the tipping points or the assertion that 10 years data is not enough? You are on a shaky ground here, but you donât realize it. As the saying goes, you notice the speck in my eye, not noticing the plank in yours. I showed the slope for the life expectancy for India and China (nearly half of the worldâs population) to be positive with no visible turning point. You could not show me any graph that shows a turning point in life expectancy or turning points in any thing else. We are humans because of our mind, and it is our mind that will solve our problem as they arise. In the 1960s one farmer used to feed 5 families, now he feeds 60.
Bring on your problems and we prime movers of the world will deal with them as they arise.
You say 10 years is too short a time for climate. Who cares for a climate anyway if it is the averages of 10 year data? Is it not the case that what kills an organism is the maximum or minimum temperature in a given day? The smoothed graph over 10 years (3,500 days) is not related in anyway to the life of an organism. It is just a nice graph on your computer screen and it does not have any physical existence.
"Guys, if I say the mean global temperature has been increasing for the last ten years, I would not be telling you the truth. I want to tell the truth." - Girma.
How many times do you have to be told the same thing?
The last 10 yrs is not "climate". Climate has a definition.
We are talking climate.
Do you understand?
>but where is the data that shows the tipping points or the assertion that 10 years data is not enough?
Someone might drag out the data of the conditions underwhich the [methane clathrates](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis) will release terra tonnes of CO2e or where the Amazon dies.
But how do we know that 10 years is not enough to discern the warming trend? Look at the [temperature data](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:12). The 30 year warming tend is currently 0.15K per decade. But the warming in 1998 was equivalent to [3 decades of warming](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/mean:12) (almost 0.45K of warming in one year).
The cummulative warming from CO2 forcing builds over time, yet there are internal cycles such as the 1998 El Nino that are more powerful in the short term. Difference being that temperature fluctuations from ocean cycling don't keep forcing temperature in one direction. Hence over longer periods the 0.015k/year tread [builds up](http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htm).
Given the equivalent of more than 2 decades of warming in one year, it might take a decade or two to match it again with a 0.15K/decade trend.
> Guys, if I say the mean global temperature has been increasing for the last ten years, I would not be telling you the truth. I want to tell the truth.
It has been going up.
A least squares fit shows the temperature is rising over the last 10 years.
The average temperature for the last 10 years is higher than the previous 10 year average.
Temperature isn't going down.
> The root cause is with leaders of the poor nations who write or break the law, not foreign Corporations.
> Posted by: Girma
Prove it.
Who is in charge of these leaders who break the law? Humans.
Who is in charge of these corporations? Humans.
What about corporate power makes corruption impossible whereas if given by government makes it corruption?
And don't say "guns" because the Mafia aren't a government. Mercenaries aren't a government. Street gangs aren't government.
And many companies pay for their own (armed!) security forces.
> I want also to mention that someone from this blog has contacted my supervisor and was told about the quality of my PhD thesis: âOutstanding.â
I have another word for you Grima: "Bollocks".
Girma,
There are two recent questions that you have not addressed. These are:
[1)](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…) *And for someone who has worked so hard, why didn't you take the time to read the AR4 before you signed your name to that petition? I know how you beleive it is important not to put an intermediary between you and facts, so why make up your mind after only reading the summary as reported in the media?*
[2)](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…) *...Pleased to hear you got this chance. Now how about some more scholarships for more people? What about 10 times increase in the opportunites for people around the world?
How do you reconcile the genuine benefit of scholarships with your Rand philosophy?*
Mark Byrne @1016
Why I admire Rand.
My society taught that money is evil and man is cursed. That is what I heard at home, at school and in the media. There is a contradiction to believe in these and live life. When there is contradiction in our belief, we seek to resolve them by seeking guidance from the philosophers that have a deeper understanding of life than us.
For me, Ayn Rand blew these contradictions out of my life.
She wrote on man is cursed:
To hold, as manâs sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold manâs nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your code. The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin.
She wrote on money is evil:
So you think that money is the root of all evil?. Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
We must give credit to those who guided us in our journey we call life.
Girma I acknowledge that you have presented three quotes and explained that you think Rand has a deeper understanding of life than you. But you haven't addressed either of [my questions](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…).
Ah, yes, Ayn Rand the famous Marxist.
Just as a matter of interest to all of us here, Girma, how do you feel now about signing that petition that avowed support for a declaration, among other things, "That there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change."
Given your obvious ignorance of the subject in question, as revealed by the discussion above, doesn't that make you feel even a little bit embarrassed?
Not trying to insult you here, just trying to fathom the complexities of the psychology of climate science denial.
Girma, another question that I have for you. Assuming you are a member of a scientific organization, that organization has identified human-caused global warming as a major issue, whether it is the Australian academy of science, the National Academy in the US, the Royal Society, etc. Also, if you look at running averages and regressions, your assertion that there has been a cooling phase is demonstrated to be false. So:
Are all your professional peers, across many disciplines, knowingly supporting falsehoods, or is there a gap in your knowledge?
And why do you repeat lies when you have been told they are lies, ad can easily search the information to find out they do not reflect the truth of nature. I recommend Open Mind, with a wide variety of graphs and data, and direct responses to these common and untrue statements (the link is over on the left, under Tim's Blogroll column).
Congratulations on your role in the Orssengo-Pye algorithm, and it's been widely used, as you point out. Doesn't mgive you aythority in this case, and it makes your emphasis on politics over science more distressing. Go back and check the websites of the various national scientific academies, and review the data and the logic. Then come back and explain what has altered your view.
1001 Jeff Harvey,
Just to say thanks for the many thought-filled and thought-provoking messages you post here and elsewhere.
Sadly, they are wasted on many that they are intended for. :)
Mark,
Rand never said you cannot help some one. She said you are not obliged to help someone, and it must be voluntary. Mark, what is wrong with that? Why do we need force in human relationships?
From what I learned in critical thinking, our thinking process synthesizes out perceptions of reality in the context of our basic emotional needs, and our values and principles in order to reach conclusions about anything in life.
As a result, when it comes to belief in global warming and the solutions, our political views is very important.
In addition to my political view, my position was reinforced by watching several times a video on [Global Warming]( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WWpH0lmcxA) by Professor John Christy, University of Albama, Huntsville, which I found very convincing.
1010 Girma,
You _printed_ this?! What a waste. If you wanted to keep it, save it as a PDF or other document, which you can then search, unlike a print!
Tell you what, come back to Deltoid (or its successor if Tim decides to change the name or even abandons blogging for some reason) a few times during the next decade and see how the data and the science stand.
I'm willing to make a bet with you that the next decade will be warmer than this one, just as this one has been warmer than the 1990s.
1013 Mark,
Of course. See [here](http://woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1999/plot/wti/from:1999/trend>
(Not that anyone here apart from Girma doesn't know this already.)
> As a result, when it comes to belief in global warming and the solutions, our political views is very important.
> Posted by: Girma
Maybe when it comes to your *belief* in global warming, your politics is important, but the inevitable processes of the real world doesn't give a stuff for your political views.
Rain will remain wet winds will remain gusty and sun will shine warmly no matter what you believe.
And when it comes to the actuality of global warming, your political views have no say in the matter: just the facts.
TrueSceptic @1023
Yes I printed it and I have punched the wholes and now it is all compiled in lever arch folder.
Thanks. It is a good idea to save them as PDF file and I will do that. It will be the evidence that will show whose position would be right in this debate. I dearly hope it is me and mother nature shows its magic by confounding you with 0.34 deg C anomaly in ten years time. My only worry is that you might say it is Copenhagen that has achieved that instead of Mother Nature.
1015 Mark,
That is unfair. We have no reason to doubt Girma's [academic record](http://www.geocities.com/girmao/).
Unfortunately, it appears that ideology seems to have got the better of his reasoning.
102 Girma,
I hope that you at least used a small font and printed double-sided. ;)
1028 Girma,
We all _hope_ that the science is wrong in some way, but the data from the last 3 decades tells us otherwise.
Whatever is decided at Copenhagen, it cannot make a real difference during the next 10 years or so. The residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is such that even if we stopped all human CO2 emissions immediately (clearly impossible), CO2-forced warming will continue for decades yet.
1024 Me,
It seems that, as well as screwing up a few post numbers, I screwed up a link too.
[Recent temperature trend](http://woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1999/plot/wti/from:1999/trend>)
(not that anyone here apart from Girma doesn't know this already.)
> 1015 Mark,
> That is unfair. We have no reason to doubt Girma's academic record.
Nope, it's not unfair.
Grima's paper is worthless because he has learned nothing from it except how to get a PhD.
He hasn't learned science. He hasn't learned now to think and test and hypothesise and find the truth.
You can get to Cardinal by parroting the right words the right way. This doesn't mean you are very spiritual, it just means you have recited the texts.
Grima is one of those cardinals.
PS do we know this grima is that grima? After all, nothing of knowledge seems to be presented by this grima.
@1017, Girma,
'Brilliant' rebuttal by Rand there to people who think that "money is the root of all evil." Unfortunately, it offers nothing in the way of rebuttal to the vastly larger number of people who think that "the love of money is the root of all evil," and thereby exists primarily to attack a straw man. (1 Timothy 6:10)
Girma:
But not the whole truth.
Mark @1031
You wrote, He hasn't learned science. He hasn't learned now to think and test and hypothesise and find the truth.
What do you say about the eminent Professor [John Christy]( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7081331.stm) who wrote:
fundamental knowledge is meagre here, and our own research indicates that alarming changes in the key observations are not occurring.
Mother Nature is incredibly complex, and to think we mortals are so clever and so perceptive that we can create computer code that accurately reproduces the millions of processes that determine climate is hubris (think of predicting the complexities of clouds.
1032 Mark,
Because someone emailed one of the real Girma's colleagues, who, this Girma said, forwarded the message to him. How could he receive that message or even know about it?
Girma:
No, your data does not claim to cover the entire world as opposed to GISS, which does. GISS shows warming.
Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. CO2 is only capable of producing warming of 0.07 deg C in 3 years. Natural variation can easily produce more than that in 3 years. Natural variation goes up and down, but unlike natural variation, CO2's warming only ever goes up. Natural variation is the hare, but CO2 is the tortoise.
Girma:
In that video Christy claimed that "we're not sure" what happened to the sea ice during the 1930's. This is just plain wrong as Tamino points out.
You must be pretty gullible and unskeptical, Girma, to be convinced by someone who says such plain wrong things as Christy.
Chris, it's not a matter of truth or falsehood, but of 'comforting' or 'scarey' and what Christy says is comforting, so Girma wants to believe it.
1039 Micahel (or Michael?),
That's the weird bit. Girma has a science PhD and yet has the outlook and maths understanding of a child.
To all
When are attack me, don't forget that you are also attacking [Professor John Christy]( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7081331.stm) and [Professor Richard Lindzen]( http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220) the eminent experts in the field, who know much, much more about climate science than any of us here.
Girma,
Thankyou for addressing the second part of my question. I will respond to it, but before that can I ask you to address the [first question](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…):
>*...for someone who has worked so hard, why didn't you take the time to read the AR4 before you signed your name to that petition? I know how you beleive it is important not to put an intermediary between you and facts, so why make up your mind after only reading the summary as reported in the media?*
BTW Girm,
You can contact me on (08)8202 5837 in ten years to explain what you wish about the temperature trend.
As has been pointed out Copenhagen will not make any short term difference in temp. There is already CO2 forcing to in the system well past 2019 . One means of countering this trend on a ten year time scale is to turn back more solar radition (eg aerosols). That has other unhappy consequences.
Girma I hope that your response @1043 is not your response to my question:
>*...for someone who has worked so hard, why didn't you take the time to read the AR4 before you signed your name to that petition? I know how you beleive it is important not to put an intermediary between you and facts, so why make up your mind after only reading the summary as reported in the media?*
Can you please address this question?
Girma,
Have you no shame? Your post @ 1043 is a pure strawman. Lindzen and Christy are, like most of the other sceptics, statistical outliers. Stack them up against the vast majority of climate scientists and their view becomes a parody. Are you stating that when some of Morano`s puppets wade in here and criticize the likes of James Hansen, Lonnie Thompson, Michael Mann, Gavin Schmidt and others they aren`t attacking scientists with as much, if not much, much more expertise than Christy and Lindzen?
This kind of vapid remark shows that you are on the defensive. Your balloon is running out of air - fast.
Mark Byrne @1042
I first heard the IPCC statement that there is global warming because mean global temperature increased by 0.74 deg C in a century. From what I saw in documentaries by David Attenborough in Antarctica, I remembered the temperature there to be as low as negative 50 deg C; I also know that at the same instance the maximum temperature in the Sahara is positive 50 deg C. So I rejected the IPCC statement because for something that has a range of 100 deg C at a given instance, to have a change in mean temperature of 0.74 deg C in 100 years is nothing to worry about. But someone showed me the flow in my argument by pointing out that the change in mean global temperature refer to a given grid point on the earthâs surface, but the range refer to two arbitrary grid points. I also checked my high school science book and found that the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere is only 0.038%. To blame global warming on this minuscule amount of CO2 did not make sense to me.
This made me look at the temperature data myself and I plotted the [mean global temperature]( http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/TrueMeanGlobalTemperature…) and was shocked to see that it is nearly flat. I never believed that the global mean temperature changed in 150 years by only less than 1 deg C. So the earth, like the human body temperature of 37 deg C, like a living organism, has a mean global temperature of about 14 deg C. This was a new lesson to me. However, I found the change on my true mean true global temperature plot to be minuscule, and this reinforced my previous position. I got the strongest reinforcement of my position after several times watching the [video]( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WWpH0lmcxA) by the eminent climate science expert Professor John Christy.
Thank You
Hello everyone, my need to counter Girma`s gobbledegook just keeps getting the better of me. He refuses to respond to my detailed posts (above) but to be fair, he probably does not understand the difference between a deterministic process and a stochastic process (amongst very many other things he does not understand).
But let us get to the root of his unhealthy obsession with the rantings of Ayn Rand. Here is what he posts (followed by my interpretation in CAPS).
* Reality => Mean Global Temperature
RATE OF CHANGE IN GLOBAL MEAN TEMPERATURE WITH RESPECT TO SCALE.
* Perceptions => True mean global temperature plot or anomaly plots
ACTUAL RATE OF CHANGE IN TRUE MEAN GLOBAL TEMPERATURE PLOTS OVER PAST 130 YEARS
* Emotional needs => Belonging (AGW or Skeptics), recognition (Nobel prize), love, acceptance, security etc
ELIMINATING GUILT DUE TO AN EMOTIONAL NEED TO JUSTIFY A CONTINUATION OF IRRESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOR - WE ARE BENEFICIARIES OF UNSUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC PRACTICES AND EMBRACE ANYONE WHO FORCEFULLY ARGUES THAT WE CAN CONTINUE WITH BUSINESS AS USUAL; CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH AND POWER; LOVE OF MONEY; MATERIALISM; ELIMINATION OF ALTERNATIVE ECONOMIC SYSTEMS; FEAR OF CHANGE, LOSS OF SECURITY
* Principles => Right or wrong (more/less power to government, government is the problem, government is the solution, government must control peoples life, government should leave us alone, big government, small Government, tax, no tax etc)
MORE POWER TO INDIVIDUALS; CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH; DE-REGULATION; SELFISHNESS; TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS; EVISCERATION OF ANY CONSTRAINTS IN THE PURSUIT OF PRIVATE PROFIT; SHORT-TERM POLITICAL AGENDAS; CORPORATE POWER AND GOVERNMENT POLICY ARE INTERCONNECTED; RETAINING THE STATUS QUO.
Note that Girma`s worldview is miles from reality. He conveniently ignores the strong connection between corporate power and government policy. He conveniently ignores the fact that there is a revolving door between government and corporate positions; that a large number of prominent politicians either came from big business into government or else go to work for big multinational corporations when they leave office. Essentially, Girma`s world is an illusion.
Again, he has been reading too much out-of-date drivel from Rand, and not enough literature outlining the real world as it is today.
Girma,
Although you fail to respond to any of the substantive points in my posts (you clearly don`t understand the process of scale), I wish to again rebut your fatuous remark (# 1047).
You correctly say that the planet`s temperature has changed by approximately 1 C since 1880 (you ignore the fact that most of this has occurred since 1980, but let us not quibble).
My question is this: given that climate control over the biosphere is a largely DETERMINISTIC system, please explain to us all here how you are able to equate on what time scale a 1 degree C temperature rise is significant or not? Since you throw around the word `eminent` quite loosely (and to serve your own interpretation of a scientist`s qualifications) how would you interpret the fact that many `eminent` scientists - in fact those much more ` eminent` than Christy or Lindzen, think that the current rate of change is significant?
Given you have no formal qualifications in Earth or Environmental Science, why do you place your faith in a few contrarians and ignore the vast majority of the scientific community?
I know the answer: because it fits in with your political ideology (libertartian). So, in effect, the scenario you sketched for us is in reality an illusion. Your views on science reflect your political views. Be honest and admit it, will you?
Girma,
Thankyou for writing your response. That lays out a picture for readers to help provide some context.
Incidently, following the prompting that you have been given here to check some of the claims you were making (about what was and was not included in the AR4), have you decided to read the rest of the AR4?
Following Jeff's comments, I have another question. You are more competant to judge what Rand's philosophy is about, having read most of her work.
Is Rand's philosophy contracted is some way if AGW is real? Does Rand's philosphy suffer a blow if AGW is real?
Girma (#1047)
Oh really, Girma? Given that CO2 only reached 380 ppm in the past year or so, that must be a pretty recent high school textbook.
In fact it implies you graduated from high school and got your PhD at pretty much the same time. Well done, Einstein.
Girma:
So your high school science book was written in 2005. Wow! You got through your University degree AND PhD degree in less than four degrees. You are truly incredible Girma. Either that or you're an idiotic liar.
Mechanical Engineering PhD in, ironically enough, computer modelling. Let's also not forget our old friend Steve Fielding with his engineering degree.
Lets be generous with Girma,
It is reasonable to assume that he mis-remembers the exact number, and that [his recollection](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…) is an illustration of the process that he when through inorder to sign that petition without taking the effort to read the AR4.
That is a side issue.
In publishing, there is what is called revision reprints.
Regardless, the fact is, whether it was 0.036 or 0.038%, the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere is still minuscule.
Girma,
Your revision/reprint arguemnt doesn't help your case. I'd advise you don't keep digging down that hole. You could just accept the error, we all make them at times.
Now how about my question about Rand's philosophy (where you have some expertise):
>*Is Rand's philosophy contracted is some way if AGW is real? Does Rand's philosphy suffer a blow if AGW is real?*
Girma, you still have not answered a single point I have made. Why not? I have taken the time to reply to your points in detail. All we get from you are hit-and-run quips that reveal how little you actually know. Why do you persist if you have already lost the debate here so heavily?
Your latest quip -
"Regardless, the fact is, whether it was 0.036 or 0.038%, the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere is still minuscule" -
- is also meaningless. How much pure dioxin in mass would it take to kill a human being? A: a minuscule amount. Given the importance of C02 as a greenhouse gas, which has long been recognized, the relative change in atmospheric concentrations of this gas are what matte, not its overall proportion. This is elementary physics.
Girma`s degree in no way qualifies him for expertise in earth science. The howlers he makes on here with every post should be proof positive of that.
Girma.
I say yet again, that you do not display anywhere near the level of understanding that someone of your supposed capacity should. This is not an ad hominem attack: it is simple statement of fact...
I have tried on several occasions to elicit a response from you on this matter, but to date none has been forthcoming. So, once more unto the breach â given the statistical variance in the mean annual global temperature data for the last century and a half, what period of time is required to discern a signal of, say 1.0C/century from the noise? What period of time would be required to discern a signal of 0.75C, and what period of time would be required to discern a signal of, say, 1.25C?
And most importantly in the context of your fixation with periods of less than a decade, what magnitude of temperature change would be required to discern signal above noise in a period of ten years?
Enough with your straw men and your repetition of vacuous statements. Answer my questions, and explain why they are important; or refute their importance in the first place.
Are you able to perform these calculations?
I note that you did not appear to address [my questions](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…) to you regarding the matter of the ability of low concentrations of substances to exert apparently disproportionate effects. In order to be clear, can you respond to these questions?
Moving along...
"Flat" compared to what? You have had this explained to you countless times, and you still have not absorbed the significance of the matter. This is exactly why we have statistics, and science â to determine significant trends in data where the human eye cannot perceive them, and to determine significant actions of substances in the environment where humans cannot detect them.
You may boast about your "outstanding" PhD, but in any institution where I have worked/taught, such inability to grasp such simple statistical concepts as significance, and such basic scientific concepts as the actions of low concentrations of substances, would see you excluded from postgraduate candidature in the first place.
With respect to your fixation about the magnitude of mean annual global temperature change, consider this: what is the mean temperature of a human body? What systemic change in temperature can be endured before the system suffers or collapses? What is the the significance of the potential difference in core body temperature compared with 'local' changes in temperature â say, of the testes, ears, or fingers?
You claim to be capable of analyses, and of answering questions, at a PhD level. Show us exactly how, by addressing my questions above.
Mark Byrne @1056
You wrote, Is Rand's philosophy contracted is some way if AGW is real? Does Rand's philosphy suffer a blow if AGW is real?
Mark, what does Randâs position that man is not cursed at birth, and that money is not the root of all evil has anything to do with whether AGW is real or not?
Mark, what does Randâs position for man to live a happy, productive and rational life has anything to do with whether AGW is real or not?
In hundred yearâs time, people who want for man a miserable, unproductive and mystic life will undermine Rand. However, they will definitely not discuss whether AGW is real or not.
0.038% is 5.6% larger than 0.036%.
A 5.6% change from 1995 to 2005 is not "miniscule". It is serious, and all the more so for the fact that the increase has persisted for decades, and will for decades to come.
Considering that it took humans just ten years to raise the atmospheric content of CO2 from 360ppm to 380ppm, you should be worried Girma.
Or do you deny that CO2 is a 'greenhouse' gas?
Girma,
Can you explicitly say who *"want for man a miserable, unproductive and mystic life"*?
You also give two examples of Rand's comments but you are not explicit in you assessment. I have not as full a knowledge of Rand's writing as you. Would you say that there is or is not a conflict between Rand's philosophies and AGW? Do Rand followers need to adjust their postion if AGW is real?
"When are attack me, don't forget that you are also attacking Professor John Christy and Professor Richard Lindzen the eminent experts in the field, who know much, much more about climate science than any of us here." - Girma.
The "the" of "the eminent experts" is simply wrong.
Even "eminent" is debatable.
Scientists in the field - definitely.
But this is the scientist cherry-pick to match the 1998 cherry-pick.
Anyone with a scientific background knows, or should know, that there is a broad range of knowledge in any given discipline. Anyone doing an honest appraisal of any feild will acquaint themselves with the range of opinions and debates within that field. Weight is given to work that stands the srutiny of other experts in the feild and the best proof of it's worth is that it is built upon by others.
Think of it as doing a lit review.
And your lit r/v of climate science that only comes up with Christy and Lindzen would't even get by at an undergrad level.
Hi Bernard,
You`ve described Girma perfectly. The problem is he only reads a few little snippets from selected posts and ignores the rest. He won`t touch mine. I think we are effectively responding to a pre-programmed robot.
He gets especially riled when anyone dares criticize Ayn Rand and her outdated selfish libertarian philosophies.
Girma`s latest riposte: *Randâs position for man to live a happy, productive and rational life*
This is utter crap. Rand`s philosophy was for man to live a selfish, insular, "me, myself and I" life and damn the rest. How would she know what a "rational" life was? In her world the rich would have to live in heavily guarded and barricaded enclaves to keep out the ranks of the poor masses. Her philosophy was one of unbridled individual selfishness. I am sorry Girma, but its my opinion that, if Rand was out of sync back in 1950, given today`s hair-trigger free market absolutism and nakedly predatory capitalism she would be *way* out of sync.
Jeff Harvey
I will respond to you as well. I don't write as fast, and I am at work at the moment.
Thanks
Let me be more explicit about why [your response](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…) did not answer [my question](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…).
I ask if Rand's philosophy is contracted in some way if AGW is real?
You respond that
>*...Randâs position that man is not cursed at birth, and that money is not the root of all evil...[and] ...for man to live a happy, productive and rational life...*
And you ask what do these points have "*anything to do with whether AGW is real or not?*"
My asnwer is, nothing. However do these two beliefs that you present sufficiently represent Rand's philosophy in respect to AGW?
You make allusions to grand conspiracies of scientists and governments, you claim that corporation have not been responsible for oppression of indiegenous peoples,see blind to many perverse outcome of a too powerful profit motive, you instead put blame on greens, you want privatisation of science and you made your mind up about AGW without even reading AR4.
Moreover, you have discovered in this blog errors in numerous erroneous assumptions on which you base you AGW position; yet most recently you state you are certain the AGW is not real (will not be talked about in 100 years).
Thus I am curious as to whether there is something else about Rand's philosophies that is in conflict with AGW?
Just for Girma: two essays that might just dent his jaded worldview.
http://www.counterpunch.org/galeano08132009.html
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175050
There is a lot more from where this came from...
Girma, I think you would get a lot more empathy reading someone with passionate views of the world (Galeano) than Rand.
> You claim to be capable of analyses, and of answering questions, at a PhD level. Show us exactly how, by addressing my questions above.
> Posted by: Bernard J.
His inability or, worse, refusal, to do this is why I call his PhD "Bollocks".
Having a PhD isn't the definition of a scientist, any more than an advanced driving license makes a good driver.
> When are attack me, don't forget that you are also attacking Professor John Christy and Professor Richard Lindzen the eminent experts in the field, who know much, much more about climate science than any of us here.
> Posted by: Girma
Shorter: "They said it too!".
If you don't know why they say it enough to defend it yourself, Grima, how do you know they are right?
> Because someone emailed one of the real Girma's colleagues, who, this Girma said, forwarded the message to him.
> Posted by: TrueSceptic
OK, so this grima is that grima and he's a freaking idiot.
I was trying to give the grima with a PhD the benefit of the doubt. But there is no doubt: that grima is an idiot.
1053 Chris O'Neill,
Sorry, yes, applied science, and you wouldn't do too well without good maths skills.
Girma,
Isn't it time that you responded to post 1030? It's a really easy one: all you have to do is click on a link and tell us what you see. When you've done that, I'll tell you in easy steps what to do in your Excel (I assume) spreadsheet that show temps starting in 1878 (IIRC).
It's really annoying when some of us take the trouble to reply to your claims and you just ignore them by repeating the same old, same old.
Bernard J @ 1058
Thank you for your time.
Bernard, you are asking me analogical questions that I donât know the answer off.
However, for my comment, I plotted the mean global temperature and was shocked to see that it is nearly flat; you wrote, "Flat" compared to what?
As I noted in a previous post, the range in global temperature at a given instant, at a given second, is as high as 100 deg C. For the globe that has such wide temperature range, to see a mean global temperature change of less than 1 deg C was shocking to me. I learnt, for the first time that, like a human body of 37 deg C, the earth has a mean global temperature that varies little.
Last year the mean global temperature anomaly was 0.34 deg C above the 30 year long term average. Is 0.34 deg C a sign of catastrophic global warming? I say an emphatic NO!
For an analogical comparison, the mean oral [normal temperature for humans]( http://hypertextbook.com/facts/LenaWong.shtml) is 37 deg C and the upper normal temperature limit is 37.8 deg C. As a result, the anomaly for the maximum normal human body temperature is 0.8 deg C.
Does it stand to reason that an anomaly of 0.8 deg C for human is normal, but an anomaly of 0.34 deg C for the globe is catastrophic?
Girma:
You keep being deliberately biassed and dishonest about this anomaly figure. The baseline for this anomaly is the average of 1961-1990 which itself was affected by global warming. So the amount of global warming for 2008 was not just 0.34 deg C, it was 0.34 deg C plus the global warming in the baseline which is about 0.3 deg C, a total of about 0.64 deg C of global warming for 2008.
or rather an honestly stated warming of 0.64 deg C
You're ignoring the issue that global warming will keep increasing if we keep going the way we're going and would probably exceed 3 deg C this century. 0.7 deg C warming is not catastrophic for human body temperature, but greater than 3 deg C is.
TrueSceptic @1071
I have problem with finding trends in graphs. I prefer the individual values rather than the averages, as they have no effect on the life of a living organism. These average values are just human creations for human consumptions. Could our difference be ideological? I prefer the individuals. You prefer the grouped values.
Does not it stand to reason that the temperature that an organism is exposed to at a given year has more effect on its life than the temperature averages of adjacent years?
That is why I say there was [global cooling](http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/MeanGlobalTemperatureAnom…) from 1878 to 1909 by 0.55 deg C!
Girma:
You're not getting the point Girma which is that you lied about the figure in your high school text book.
How do we know when you're lying and when you're telling the truth?
Girma does the gish gallop again.
Girma Bernards questions to you were perfectly straight-forward. Like this,
As for the human body temp, you've yet again ignored the thrust of Bernards comment.
If we apply your logic to the human body, then we don't have to worry about high core temperature. If I'm standing out side on a really cold day, my extremities might be at 3-4 deg. My core temp is 37.8. How shocking, the body can have a temp range of 30+ !!!!!
So how can Dr's say that a degree or two above or below this can be catastrophic?? - I say an emphatic, NO! (if I have no idea what I'm talking about).
More absolute rubbish from you. You could be forgiven if this was just ignorance. Ignorance can be addressed. But you've had this all patiently explained to you by many people and you just keep repeating it like some demented parrot.
1074 Girma,
No. It is wrong to pick out individual figures (or years) and ignore all the others. It is dishonest at root.
An organism might well suffer in extreme temperatures, but if it is affected by temperature, smaller changes will affect it too. As long as it survives the extremes, it will be affected by the trend, whether it's going up or down.
And when it comes to changes in ice levels, deserts, or cultivatable land, 10 or 20 years of an increasing or decreasing trend make much more difference than 1 or 2 extreme ones.
Go to your spreadsheet. Right-click on the temperature line, choose Trend, then Linear. What do you see?
Change the spreadsheet to start from 1870. Repeat the above.
Change it to 1860. Repeat.
Change it to 1850. Repeat.
What does this tell you about 1878?
Chris O'Neill @1073
Chris, why not go back a bit further?
[Anomaly Data]( http://www.bom.gov.au/web01/ncc/www/cli_chg/timeseries/global_t/0112/gl…)
From the above scientific data, the increase in mean global temperature in 130 years is 0.35 deg C.
Is this catastrophic global warming?
It is not because the normal human body temperature has an anomaly of 0.8 deg C.
"I have problem with finding trends in graphs." - Girma.
Only if you refuse to use statistical analysis. This is what it's for.
"From the above scientific data, the increase in mean global temperature in 130 years is 0.35 deg C.
Is this catastrophic global warming? It is not because the normal human body temperature has an anomaly of 0.8 deg C." - Girma.
These are two entirely unrelated phenomena.
That you think they are related is just staggering.
TrueSceptic @1077
I donât believe that last years mean global temperature is connected to the mean global temperature of 15 years ago by an invisible string. They are independent!
1081 Girma,
Once again you ignore my reply and make some weird, and frankly bizarre, claim.
What did your spreadsheet tell you when you did as I asked?
Mark Byrne @1065
You wrote, Thus I am curious as to whether there is something else about Rand's philosophies that is in conflict with AGW?
There is no conflict with her philosophy if AGW were real. However, there may be conflict in the solution if it involves compulsion or force.
You wrote, You make allusions to grand conspiracies of scientists and governments,.
Mark, these misgivings are based on [evidence.]( http://www.sepp.org/Archive/controv/ipcccont/Item05.htm)
The demented parrot keeps avoiding the substantial questions.
Maybe he's been taking lessons from Plimer?
> Chris O'Neill @1073
> Chris, why not go back a bit further?
Like 1850? -0.43
> 2008 => 0.34
Well looks like 0.77C warming...
Truesceptic @1082
I don't believe in trends drawn through data points in a chaotic system. They mean nothing!
Or later:
1909 -0.56
Which makes the per decade warming rate HUGE!!!!
> Mark, these misgivings are based on evidence.
> Posted by: Girm
Really? from the link:
> Op-Ed by Frederick Seitz
So an Op-Ed from one person is evidence to you?
What about op-ed from over 200?
www.ipcc.ch
?
> I don't believe in trends drawn through data points in a chaotic system. They mean nothing!
> Posted by: Girma
He doesn't believe in maths.
How did he get a PhD??? Was it a printer test page???
"I don't believe in trends drawn through data points in a chaotic system. They mean nothing!" - Girma.
I don't believe in gravity, becuase I can fly.
I don't beleive in Boyle's Laws because individual gas molecules are chaotic.
I don't beleive in Girma because no nobody can be this stupid.
And I don't believe anything you say becuase I can banish your words with the excessive use of exclaimation marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Does increase (trend) in the stock market this week tell you anything about the market next week?
For 2008, the [Australian Bureau of Metrology]( http://www.bom.gov.au/web01/ncc/www/cli_chg/timeseries/global_t/0112/gl…) gives an anomaly of 0.34 deg C. For the same year, the [University of Alabama in Huntsville]( http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt) gives an anomaly of 0.05 deg C.
What can I say about global warming when one measurement gives 0.34 deg C and another gives 0.05 deg C? An anomaly difference of 0.29 deg C between two experimental results! I have been right all along:
CO2 driven AGW has lame legs to stand on.
> What can I say about global warming when one measurement gives 0.34 deg C and another gives 0.05 deg C?
That you're misusing the data.
Of course, you won't say that.
> CO2 driven AGW has lame legs to stand on.
> Posted by: Girma
How do you ascertain that?
After all, you can't draw a line through chaotic data and make a conclusion. What is it that means CO2 trapping heat doesn't cause more warming?
> There is no conflict with her philosophy if AGW were real. However, there may be conflict in the solution if it involves compulsion or force.
But You and Ayn have no problem with compulsion and force to stop people taking "your stuff".
Girma:
They're measuring different things you moron.
1083 Girma,
Rubbish! Your "evidence" is from Fred Seitz, one of the most infamously corrupt scientists in recent history.
Unlike the lying drivel he wrote, here is [evidence](http://www.ecosyn.us/adti/Seitz_Tobacco_Crimes.html) of his crimes. And [S. Fred Singer](http://www.ecosyn.us/adti/Singer-Seitz.html) is in the same mold.
If there is a Hell, Seitz is burning there.
1086 Girma,
If you don't believe in trends in a chaotic system, how can you possibly believe that individual points mean anything at all?
Honestly, I'm starting to be convinced that it's not just a matter of your understanding of basic principles being at the level of a 12-year old. I think you are suffering from some mental impairment.
Girma:
I have told you over and over that 2 years are climatically insignificant. You absorb information like a post.
1078 Girma,
From the same data,
1875 -0.41
1915 -0.24
Increase 0.17 over 40 years.
1864 -0.51
2005 0.48
Increase 0.99 over 141 years.
1911 -0.56
1998 0.53
Increase 1.09 over 87 years.
Your figures are wrong. Mine are right!
TrueSceptic @1096
If you don't believe in trends in a chaotic system, how can you possibly believe that individual points mean anything at all?
I put the question again:
Does increase (trend) in the stock market this week tell you anything about the market next week?
Chris @1094
You wrote, They're measuring different things you moron.
So one was measuring the mean global temperature and the other that of _________; May be Mars?
Does it stand to reason that an anomaly of 0.8 deg C for human is normal, but an anomaly of 0.34 deg C for the globe last year is catastrophic?
Check your assumptions!
Actually, according to [UAH]( http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt) the anomaly for last year was only 0.05 deg C!
Yes, check your assumptions!
I will immediately leave the debate if you stop saying âCO2 driven AGWâ is supported by science. It is NOT!
There is no dangerous [global warming]( http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/TrueMeanGlobalTemperature…)
Girma,
This is just a guess, but I think that unlike the stock market, the climate is a natural system unaffected by human psychology (despite some denialists thinking that if they find certain pictures "comforting" it will all just go away).
"Does it stand to reason that an anomaly of 0.8 deg C for human is normal, but an anomaly of 0.34 deg C for the globe last year is catastrophic?" - Girma
See post 1076 you dimwit.
How many times do we have to explain the same thing to you, only for you to repeat your gibberish.
This is like watching a live train wreck.
1099 Girma,
It tells me far more than taking 2 extreme points that bear no relation to the series of figures as a whole.
But markets have a strong psychological element that makes them inherently unstable. Why else would stocks and shares be such a gamble?
Natural systems might be chaotic in the short term but they are driven by natural laws that make them predictable in the long term.
How about that bet about the next decade vs. this?
1101 Girma,
Do you understand what tautology is?
Anyway, you expect us to declare something we know to be false because, you, who presents only the analysis of an ignorant child, demands it?
Girma:
No, arrogant ignoramus, one measures the surface temperature and the other measures a weighted part of the troposphere.
TrueSceptic @1104
How about that bet about the next decade vs. this?
In all honesty, no ONE knows!
Girma:
Watch him squirm.
Chris O'Neill @1106
Yes, you were right. Sorry.
- Girma
...on everything else too.
Let us hope that Girma follows through on his threat.
Here goes:
We have enough empirical evidence to show that AGW IS driven primarily by human activity. The science IS settled. Let us now move on to examine in more detail what the effects of AGW will be; in other words, the consequences. That is more unclear, but even there the evidence points to potentially serious repercussions for natural systems and for humanity if actions are not taken in the near future.
Girma, it is no use sticking that stupid graph up her all of the time when you have not a clue about scale or about the difference between deterministic versus stochastic properties. The good news is that people like you with their Rand-induced grade school level understanding of the natural world do not work in university research labs studying climate or environmental science. Thank heavens you are stuck in your office twiddling with your computer in another field of endeavor.
I attend conferences and workshops where global change and its effects on communities and ecosystems is discussed in detail. The debate has moved on from your puny world view. The only reason that we are effectively in a rut with respect to policy is because powerful, vested interests exert huge influence over government decision making processes. You appear to hate any form of government regulation but you forget that governments are beholden to industry which aims at maximizing short term profit irrespective of the consequences. As our planet heads faster and faster towards an abyss, one day, perhaps too late, people like you will suddenly wake up from their deep and dreamless sleep and realize how ignorant they have been. I have read your posts with some detail here and what strikes me is your radical innocence (some would say ignorance, but I will try and be polite) of the ways in which the world works. It struck me right away how little you know of the major players in the world and how they exert influence over policy at the national and international levels. Yet in spite of this you hold strong views over climate science as if you are some kind of expert. You have read a few web contrarian sites that are easily accessed and they gelled with your Rand-indoctrinated philosophy and the two blended in right away.
To be honest, the other posters here have utterly deconstructed your arguments. You have become desperate and, as I and others have noted with increasing frustration, you retreat to the same positions time and time again. The same graphs, the same misinterpretations of scale, the same misunderstanding of important concepts, the same reliance on the assertions of a few contrarian scientists you constantly refer to as being "eminent" et al, whilst ignoring hundreds or thousands of more eminent scientists.
If you are unable to understand the field in any detail, why do you persist?
Michael @1110
Only for my mix up of what the two datasets measure.
Girma @ 1112
Chris was right - you are wrong on just about everything you discuss on this thread: science, politics, statistics, you name it. Quite embarrassing, don`t you think?
Dear Jeff Harvey,
I donât find it embarrassing at all in not believing in global warming when last yearâs mean global temperature for 2008, based on [satellite data]( http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt), was a minuscule amount of 0.05 deg C above the 30 year average. Mind you, the temperature range that the globe is exposed to at a given instant, at a given second, reaches 100 deg C.
I can not believe in the unbelievable!
Girma:
nothing more than a single climatically insignificant
That's because you're a shameless idiot.
Girma,
I am actually tired of wasting my time on you. You do not have a clue about scale - in your mind you correlate geological time scales with human life spans. You have no way of understanding the significance of the current changes in 5 years or 30 years or 1,000 years or 10,000 years. How often do I have to say it: you are mixing up stochastic and deterministic processes. Local or short term climate effects are stochastic. Long term or global patterns are deterministic. To change a deterministic system over a short time frame would take a lot of forcing. Sticking your finger to the wind and saying "its warmer today than yesterday", as you seem to be doing, is not science.
There are many ecological indicators that show it is warming and warming rapidly. Flowering times of many plants has advanced in spring by many weeks over the past 30 years in the northern hemisphere. Many species - particularly invertebrates - are advancing their ranges to the north (or to higher elevations) and are tracking the warmer climates. The breeding cycle of many songbirds has advanced by up to a month since the 1980s. These are not trivial changes.
There is no doubt that the earth is warming and doing so rapidly. There is enough evidence to attribute much of this to human activities. The real concern for ecologists such as myself is that the changes are occurring so rapidly and unevenly across the biosphere that many species will not be able to adapt. In case you had not noticed, humans have altered much of the planet`s surface, and in doing so we have placed many barriers in the way of species that need to adjust their distributions. There are now huge expanses of urban and agricultural landscapes where once there were forest corridors. These act as impediments for species dispersal and they did not exist in previous (and less rapid) warming episodes.
We are also seeing a de-synchronization amongst phenological interactions caused by climate warming. In other words species that strongly interact - such as predators and their prey - are sometimes responding differently to the warming leading to food shortages in some instances towards the end of food chains. Given that few intact food webs have actually been examined in detail, the observed scenarios could represent the tip of an iceberg. This explains why the projected warming - and even the warming that has occurred thus far - is expected to exacerbate the extinction rate that is already higher than any time in the past 65 million years.
Girma, I have no idea if you will read this or even attempt to understand it, so I am probably wasting my time writing this. However, I ask you to read it and if you have any questions about it or want more details, I would be happy to oblige.
Just in from the BBC via the journal Science:
"Arctic warmest it has been in 2000 years"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8236797.stm
No doubt the denialists will try to put their own spin on this. But time is running out for them. More grist to the millin debunking the pseudo-science of Girma and his ilk.
Traffic cop: Sir, you were travelling a 20 kph over the speed limit.
Girma: I find that hard to believe. Look at this graph of my speed during this journey. The vertical scale goes from zero to the speed of light. My speed has clearly not changed.
Traffic cop: Here's your ticket, dickhead.
Jeff,
Science according to Jeff: The global is warming because the anomaly for the mean global temperature, measured using satellites, was 0.05 deg C last year, and it was not warming for the last TEN years.
Science according to Girma: An increase in anomaly of 0.05 deg C last year, and no warming in the last TEN years is not global warming.
Which is pseudo-science?
Jeff, in your theory, does the globe some how remembers its 1990s warming?
It's not hard to guess the Girma response - 'anomaly graph - EVIL MAGNIFICATION!'.
Girma,
Where did you pck up this ridiculous "globe...remembers" meme?
It's called statistics. Trends. All part of science.
Why do you reject bog-standard science?
That's a rhetorical question by the way. We know why - your strident free-market beliefs leave no room for disagreement - even if it's reality that disagrees.
Gazz @1118
That was pearl. I chuckled. Thank you.
Girma,
Science according to Jeff: examines empirical evidence for climate change on the basis of spatial and temporal scales in which global surface changes occur. Realizes that 1 and 10 year extrapolations are meaningless because the system is generated over immense scales that require major forcing to change even when humans perceive these changes to be small. Realizes that human perceptions of change that are evolutionarily programmed into our genomes makes it hard to appreciate scale. In fact, the rates of change observed over the past 120 years are probably greater than at least in the past 100,000 years - perhaps much longer.
Science according to Girma: scale is based on human perception of it. Ten years is a long enough time for shifts in global climate regimes to be elucidated. What is the difference between deteminism and stochasticity? Does not understand these terms anyway so they can be dismissed. Ignores ecological data showing dramatic and perhaps unprecedented changes in the phenology of species interactions, as well as breeding and flowering cycles in animals and plants. Ignores data on species distributions and dispersal patterns over the past 30-50 years. Why is this important? Probably cannot tell an elephant from a dung beetle anyway.
I think that this clearly explains why I work in the life sciences Girma and you do not. Basically you do not have a clue what you are talking about. As I said above, your posts are becoming an embarrassment for you. The only thing I can give you credit for is your ability to be annihilated in a debate and to keep coming back for more. You obviously must like intellectual punishment.
By the way, have you read that BBC article yet? I would also like to ask you how many primary sources of information you have read. Not contrarian web sites run by the likes of Morano, but actual peer-reviewed papers in the field. I am sure that you have access to an academic library.
FACT: the planet`s surface is warming, probably at rates not seen in hundreds of thousands of years. FACT: these changes are primarily due to human activities.
Sorry Girma is you do not like the FACTS, but they have been laid out for you.
Girma:
Science acording to Girma - if you say it's possible to draw conclusions through statistical analysis from the past data, and it shows a warming trend, then I say it is meaningless/impossible to plot a line through chaotic data - it's just pseudoscience. If I say the last 10 years of data shows no warming trend, then that is absolutely true and is real science.
good to see the little flea
criticising with such wanton glea
oh for the virtue of oneill
and the endless prejudiced zeal
a shameless idiot am I
that wants the truth without a lie
but according to the IPCC
I am a rock that cannot see
meanwhile ms wong
is singing a new song
for no longer do we want atmospheric T
now we march to the XBT's
another free poem from hagar
I am struck by this statment by Girma:
>I have problem with finding trends in graphs. I prefer the individual values rather than the averages, as they have no effect on the life of a living organism. These average values are just human creations for human consumptions. Could our difference be ideological? I prefer the individuals. You prefer the grouped values.
>Does not it stand to reason that the temperature that an organism is exposed to at a given year has more effect on its life than the temperature averages of adjacent years?
That is why I say there was global cooling from 1878 to 1909 by 0.55 deg C!
>Posted by: Girma | September 3, 2009 10:05 AM
>*âCould our difference be ideological? I prefer the individuals. You prefer the grouped values.â*
Girma, how many individuals you take into account? Just the individual circumstances that fit with your preferred view? Or do you seek to understand the circumstances of all individuals?
Do you realise that when you focus on one years global temp anomaly that you are focusing on an individual. You are focusing on an average. Do you realise that the 0.7K rise in temperature is representative of a rise of several degrees near the Arctic?
Do you realise that this significant temperature rise is already causing infestation, disease and the death of millions of individual trees and the collapse of ancient ecosystems?
Did you realise that the Arctic sea ice is the site on which phytoplankton have their young. Did you realise that phytoplankton is a keystone species on which billions of individuals depend?
When you talk of an your ideological preference for the individual, your are excluding the understanding of the circumstances faced by the rest. That is why we have ecologists to help us understand we all as individuals are integrated and interdependent.
Girma, can you tell us what amount of temperature rise is significant or dangerous in your view? If you canât tell us this how do you know you are correct when you assert that there is no dangerous warming.
Next can you tell us how soon we would need to act to prevent a rise to that degree which is dangerous?
And how long will it take you to realise that relying on ill informed guess work wont cut it in this case, when will you read the AR4 to save us having to correct you so often?
That should read:
>Do you realise that when you focus on one years global temp anomaly that you are **not** focusing on an individual. You are focusing on an average. Do you realise that the 0.7K rise in temperature is representative of a rise of several degrees near the Arctic?
Incidently the temperature reported for Perth is not an idividaul temperature for all of Perth. It is a mean. More individuals experience [more extreme](http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/088.htm) temperatures.
Girma:
Unless Jeff said something like that somewhere, Girma is a pathetic liar.
1107 Girma,
Of course no one knows with certainty. That's, err, why it's possible to bet on something. You have heard of bets, gambling, and wagers?
100 USD says that the global average temperature for 2010-2019 will be higher than that for 2000-2009. Money to be paid to a charity of the winner's choosing at the end of 2019.
> So one was measuring the mean global temperature and the other that of ___; May be Mars?
> Posted by: Girma
Ah, the moron shows how blind he is.
You even WROTE the answer: "temperature *anomaly* 0.34C".
Not global temperature. Global temperature *anomaly*. So what's the baseline?
1117 Jeff,
It's not even pseudoscience. It's antiscience.
Or, more bluntly, lying.
With over 1000 entries on this thread I am struck how few other than Girma have addressed the falsity of most of what Matthew England was planning to say at Ultimo:
So far from Matthew throwing down "the gauntlet to climate skeptics to update their thinking" all he did was regurgitate without attribution most of the IPCC's habitual garbage...
1. "Those that deny basic climate science question climate modelling and fundamental climate physics."
England himself has no known expertise in this area. The fundamental physics is that warming derives from energy, and CO2 itself provides no energy, if it could we would have a wonderful source of new free energy. There really is no need to go with Matthew's nonsense, since until he himself can demonstrate in lab conditions how a flask with just 0.04% of CO2 generates heat he is talking tripe. Until then talk of CO2 radiating energy is poppycock, as it is abundantly clear from the actual rather than manufactured (by Gistemp & Co) global temperature records that warming trends are apparent only where there has been growing energy usage, and nowhere else. Feel free to cite locations with growing warmth and no growth in energy use. Until the likes of you, Jeff Harvey, can show a single place to that effect, cease and desist.
1128 Chris,
Last 10 years using [UAH](http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1999/plot/uah/from:1999/trend). Even over this short timescale and using Girma's favourite data source (Christy and Spencer), the trend is up.
1132 James Taylor,
Good parody but needs work. You didn't mention Al Gore or James Hansen, and didn't use words like True Believer, leftist, warmist, or fascist.
James Taylor:
[The arctic](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8236797.stm).
Mark Byrne @1126
I love your precise questions and rational mind! How did you then end up in the AGW camp?
You wrote, Girma, can you tell us what amount of temperature rise is significant or dangerous in your view? If you canât tell us this how do you know you are correct when you assert that there is no dangerous warming
Mark, the first point is that at given instance, at a given second, the temperature range of the globe reaches 100 deg C between Antarctica and the Sahara. Does it sound reasonable to say for a globe that has this range in temperature is dangerously warming because its mean global temperature anomaly increased by 0.34 deg C?
For our globe, the measured maximum range in [mean global temperature]( http://www.bom.gov.au/web01/ncc/www/cli_chg/timeseries/global_t/0112/gl…) is that between for 1909 of â0.56 deg C and that for 1998 of +0.53 deg C, a maximum range of 1.08 deg C. It is not easy to answer with confidence whether this temperature range for our globe is within the normal range or not. What can we do then?
If someone has not came up with a better method already, my suggestion is why not compare this range in the mean global temperature with that for the human body? For the human body, the [normal mean temperature varies]( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_human_body_temperature) from 36.22 deg C when at rest to 37.57 deg when active. Therefore, the normal range for the human body is 1.35 deg C.
For our globe, which has a range of 100 deg C at a given instant, its recorded maximum range in its mean global temperature is 1.08 deg C. For last year of 2008, the anomaly temperature for the mean global surface temperature was 0.34 deg C and for the atmosphere was 0.05 deg C. These values are well below the change that a human body is exposed to each day. As result, it is hard to accept that an increase in the mean global surface temperature of 0.34 deg C for the globe is dangerous.
A C02 layer could reflect or trap heat but it cannot produce it and therfore cannot of itself contribute to increasing the global net temperature. Of course all living processes generate heat including plant metabolism so their is actually no place where heat production through work is entirely absent.
Mark Byrne
What is good for the human body should be good for mother earth!
So here it is:
Body normal temperature range = 1.35 deg C; so mean global temperature range = 1.35 deg C. Maximum anomaly for mean global temperature 1.35/2 = +/- 0.67 deg C.
For my contribution to its discovery, this range must be called Girmaâs range for mean global temperature.
That is Mark!
More good sense, from Girma and Bruce Black. DAVE r - NICE TRY, but temeperature inthe Arctic is strongely influenced by the surrounding ocean currents and the sea itself, both of which are full of anthropogenic influenced otehr tnan CO2 (eg effluent).
The problem with the IPCC, Matt England and all but a handful of commenters here is their single cause approaqch to GW. The AR 4's Summary for Policy makers shows this, witn no mention of energy usage except as a source of CO2. Serious scientists without a political agenda do multivariate analysis allowing Anthropogenic energy use its due role in addition to the relatively minuscule contribution of CO2. Serious scientists like the late Charles Keeling do measurements by taking care to avoid extraneous e, as he did at Mauna Loa. Dave R, from where and how are your temp measurements in the Arctic derived?
Mark Byrne
What is good for the human body should be good for mother earth!
So here it is:
Body normal temperature range = 1.35 deg C; so mean global temperature range = 1.35 deg C. Maximum anomaly for mean global temperature 1.35/2 = +/- 0.67 deg C.
For my contribution to its discovery, this range must be called Girmaâs range for mean global temperature.
That is it Mark!
There a lot in these messages about "CO2 has not been shown to be the cause of Global Warming".
But all the alternative theories (sunspots, starlight, inaccurate data ...) have been disproved.
So if there is a "world-class" climate scientist out there who disputes AGW, what is his or her alternative mechanism?
And don't spout the shite about "We can't publish because the establishment won't let us".
> The problem with the IPCC, Matt England and all but a handful of commenters here is their single cause approaqch to GW.
> Posted by: James Taylor
Ah, another idiot who hasn't read the IPCC.
There's a WHOLE FREAKING CHAPTER on attribution of climate change.
Funny how you missed it.
Not.
Grima, how much energy is there in warming the globe by 0.7C and how many cubic kilometres of lead would that melt from room temperature?
Once more you insist on demonstrating how wrong you are.
It is, however, correct to say that "[l]ast years [sic] mean global temperature is connected to the mean global temperature of 15 years ago by an invisible string".
This "string" is called '[autocorrelation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocorrelation)', and it is thicker the closer two years are to each other. For annual means 15 years apart, the string is starting to become thin, but it is still there.
Autocorrelation is an inevitable property of a time series such as temperature, where the effects of periodic and stochastic phenomena are superimposed upon a baseline. It matters not whether the phenomenon (or phenomena) is (are) ENSOs, Milanchovic cycles, solar output, volcanic eruptions, or indeed even the emission of greenhouse gases â even after the activity of the forcing ceases, it's influence will continue: it's a matter of simple momentum, and of starting points.
Annual temperatures that are in close proximity (in the order of several, to tens, and even to hundreds, of years) are autocorrelated.
Of course, this makes a nonsense of the "no warming since 1998 (2002, 2005)" canard of the Denialati. If a stochastic or periodic event occurs that superimposes a temporary downward trend upon the steady upward trend of AGW, it will take a number of years for the effects of autocorrelation to diminish. In this circumstance (as in so many others) you have no defensible scientific basis for claiming the cessation of warming Girma, and the fact that you believe that you do is simply a damning indictment on the disgraceful degree of your scientific ignorance.
And here we have it.
In this one paragraph, Girma Orssengo demonstrates that in spite of his vaunted PhD in modelling/engineering, he has no acquaintance with the basic first lesson in statistics that includes the concepts of range versus mean versus variance, and of how [Gaussian curves](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution) can have different values for the defining parameters.
It is worse though, because Girma Orssengo, in his professional incompetence, constructs a strawman whereby he claims that AGW science imputes that an anomaly of 0.34C is 'dangerous'. Girma Orssengo, you are being mendacious and scientifically ignorant in making such a statement â it has already been explained to you here on this thread (and it should be trivially apparent to anyone with a PhD in science) that the concern is about the biotic and abiotic impacts of an anomaly once it reaches 2C or 3C.
And for the umpteenth + 1 time, an increase of several degrees Celsius within several centuries is indeed very much of ecological concern. If you do not understand why, then you are simply demonstrating your ignorance of basic ecology.
Now there's an original thought (not â [control/f/body] will demonstrate this point)...
However, let's stick with the comparison with human core body temperature for a moment. Girma, if your core body temperature increases by 0.34C, what do you understand the physiological sequelæ to be? What would they be if CBT were to increase by 1C, or by 2C, or by 3C? What would happen if it increased by 6C?
Girma Orssengo, your unqualified interchange between mean global temperature and CBT is clumsy: it does not automatically dismiss the import of small changes to mean global temperature, but on the other hand it serves to illustrate how small changes in temperature (in the order of one to several degrees) can have profound physiological effects. Changing human CBT by several degrees is akin to changing the mean global temperature experienced by the biosphere.
You still haven't understood the difference between 'variance', 'range' and 'mean', and how these impact on physiology, have you?
[Insert your own preferred perceived ad hominem 'attack' here - I've run out of words to describe my incredulity at the level to which you are disgracing a PhD conferred by UNSW.]
Pull your head from out of your arse, Orssengo. You have discovered nothing - however, if you somehow actually believe that you have, I am only further convinced of your dubious capacity to validate the conference of a PhD upon you.
Ah, another Poe! Sorry mate, but we're becoming habituated.
And besides, no-one is that stupid, although if Girma Orssengo made this statement I would seriously wonder if he were, in his turn, serious...
Girma:
Girma, you're a pathetic liar and arrogant ignoramus suffering cognitive failure.
You can thank me now for letting everyone know what you are.
Girma, Lets work with 1.35K as a range to begin discussions. There is evidence that the range over the last 8,000 years has been less than this. And strong evidence that the range over the past 1000 to 2000 years has be less than this.
A relevant point is that the last 8-10 thousands years of stable climate has coincided with development of agriculture and with that civilisation followed by the incredible population explosion in the last 200 years.
For the last 800,000 years the earth has cycles through [ice ages and interglacials](http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/programs/atmosphere-energy/climate-ch…) (switching every 100ky or so).
We are already near the top of that temperature range. However the CO2 has gone [way past anything](http://ryanthibodaux.greenoptions.com/files/images/co2Temperature.gif) from the 800ky ice core record. We are seeing ancient ice disappear and ancient ecosystems collapse.
This is causing warming feedback with the release of more CO2e and the loss of light reflectance properties of the icecap. A large part of this warming has happened in just 50 years. A lot of this warming is still in the pipeline because the earth Earthâs radiative energy is [out of balance](http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2005/Imbalance_20050415.pdf).
Hence with the current 0.7K warming at the extra in the pipeline, we may already be getting close to the safe limits of the Orssengo range for mean global temperature.
>*"How did you then end up in the AGW camp?"*
Read the AR4 and you'll get a better idea why I am.
BTW, I continue to remain respectful of your humour and politeness under quite some abuse. It shows one of your qualities of character. However I am also very understanding of the frustration of many here who have attempted to engage with you.
P.S.
I don't believe that many of the people's frustration towards your argument is because your argument is powerful.
Chris O'Neill @1145
You wrote, Girma, you're a pathetic liar and arrogant ignoramus suffering cognitive failure. You can thank me now for letting everyone know what you are.
As requested, thank you Chris for the compliments.
Mark Byrne @1146
You wrote, Hence with the current 0.7K warming at the extra in the pipeline,...
Science is based on evidence. When you talk of âpipelineâ you are not talking about evidence, it is just your hope or belief, which may materialise or may not.
The fact, the data, the science is here: It says no warming in TEN years, and mean global temperature last year based on satellite data was a miniscule 0.05 deg C. There is no global warming at the moment. What the temperatures will be in the future, we will measure them when we get there. Shall we?
Girma:
[All four datasets show warming for the last 10 years](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1999/to:2009/trend/plot/h…).
> Girma:
> > no warming in TEN years
> All four datasets show warming for the last 10 years.
> Posted by: Dave R
Not if you don't read them, like Grima does, Dave!
Then you can just say no warming in ten years and never be wrong (because you can only be wrong if you read the record for the last ten years!).
Some would call it circular reasoning. Grima prefers "without loose ends".
Sorry, but the fact is that you cannot make a claim about climate warming (or otherwise) in a ten-year interval. It has been pointed out to you repeatedly that ten years is not a sufficient length of time to be able to identify, with any statistical significance, any trends, and contrary to what many lay (and educated, apparently) people think, without statistical significance there is no 'trend': "non-significant trend" is an oxymoron.
You may be [unable to accept the distinction between weather and climate](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…), but this does not change the fact that in any time-series dataset containing noise, there is a minimum period required before warming (or cooling, or stasis) can be said, with statistical confidence, to be occurring. You are obviously oblivious to [my previous questioning pertaining to this point](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…) so, in an effort to corner you and your persistent avoidance, I will (to quote the Beatles) ask you once again...
As a very simple supplementary question, I am curious to know if you can even explain to the thread how you would identify the 'noise' in the dataset, separate from the CO2 forcing.
Of course, if you disagree with me on this matter, you can always prove your point by writing the paper that proves scientifically that there was no warming over the last ten years, as opposed to undetectable warming due to a too-short analysis period, and submit the paper for peer-review. Please tell us when the manuscript has been posted, and to which journal you have sent it to.
Bernard J @1143
You wrote, â¦that the concern is about the biotic and abiotic impacts of an anomaly once it reaches 2C or 3C.
At 0.34 deg C anomaly for mean global surface temperature last year, we are very, very far away from your 2 deg C and 3 deg C temperatures, and these high temperatures are just your belief and projections, which you have no way of predicting.
What is the point of talking about 2 deg C and 3 deg C, when the anomaly for last year, based on the satellite measurement, was only 0.05 deg C?
Bernard J @1153
You wrote, .. given the statistical variance in the mean annual global temperature data for the last century and a half, what period of time is required to discern a signal of, say 1.0C/century from the noise?
I contest the assertion that the global temperature increased by about 1 deg C in a century. The reason is that the [global cooling]( http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/MeanGlobalTemperatureAnom…) from 1878 to 1909 by 0.55 deg C must be acknowledged. The data shows this and it must not be ignored. If this is not ignored, it cancels out most of the global warming observed in the last century. So I donât accept the notion of temperature increasing monotonously with time, because the mean global temperature trend has changed direction since 1998.
Re: Jeff Harvey @1111
"We have enough empirical evidence to show that AGW IS driven primarily by human activity."
By definition, "Anthropogenic Global Warming" is driven by human beings ... I will assume you meant to type just "GW" instead of "AGW".
.....
I looked at the HadCRUT3 data series, smoothed with a simple 11-year rolling average (I was looking for correlations with sunspots).
From 1908 to 1941 the average temperature rose by 0.42 degrees (Centigrade), or 0.127 degrees per decade.
From 1941 to 1971 the average temperature fell by 0.07 degrees, or 0.023 degrees per decade (not a lot, but it did fall).
From 1971 to 2000 the average temperature rose by 0.4 degrees, or 0.166 degrees per decade. This is higher than for the 1908 to 1941 period, but it is of the same order of magnitude.
Atmospheric CO2 concentrations rose approximately linearly until about 1950, accelerated until about 1970, then rose approximately linearly (but at a faster rate) until now.
As a lot of people have said elsewhere : "Correlation is not the same as causation, but lack of correlation IS proof of lack of causation".
Pielke Senior, amongst others, seems to have made a reasonable case for other factors than CO2 emissions (particularly land-use changes) contributing to human beings influencing the climate. I have seen no "proof" that human beings are the primary climate driver.
.....
When you say "empirical" evidence, I interpret this as meaning "from real-world measurements, not the output of computer models".
Also, "show that" would imply that all other potential mechanisms have been actively DIS-proved. Until the CLOUD09 results come in, I think that the "Svensmark hypothesis" (solar activity -> cosmic ray modulation -> low-level cloud formation) is still a factor that cannot be discounted.
I have been looking for "empirical evidence" of AGW for a long time, but have not found it. Please can you list what you consider to be your "proof beyond all reasonable doubt" evidence, and where I can find it ?
>The reason is that the [global cooling](http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/MeanGlobalTemperatureAnom…) from 1878 to 1909 by 0.55 deg C must be acknowledged.
An artful graph that you present Girma, as the [BOM data starts in 1850 already, see it here in all its glory](http://i29.tinypic.com/24gos48.png). Given the way you like to pick cherries to determine the temperature decrease you will certainly agree that the atmosphere warmed by 0.9~C from 1909 to 2008?
Mark - BLR:
That's pretty strong empirical evidence that you're a moron.
bluegrue @1157
You wrote, Given the way you like to pick cherries to determine the temperature decrease you will certainly agree that the atmosphere warmed by 0.9~C from 1909 to 2008?
I agree. But it warmed by only 0.35 deg C from 1878 to 2008, or by only 0.22 deg C from 1944 to 2008!
As what is good for the goose is good for the gander, I say: If ABOM can pick 1850 as its starting point for its graph, I can also pick 1878 as a starting point that clearly shows Global Cooling from 1878 to 1909 by 0.55 deg C.
Mark - BLR:
You haven't been looking very hard.
Or if you're a self-confessed liar like Girma then you don't care whether you're right or wrong.
#1159 Girma
> As what is good for the goose is good for the gander, I say: If ABOM can pick 1850 as its starting point for its graph, I can also pick 1878 as a starting point that clearly shows Global Cooling from 1878 to 1909 by 0.55 deg C.
Is _THAT_ how you were taught to analyze data at university? I wouldn't think so.
Girma [writes](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…):
>*When you talk of âpipelineâ you are not talking about evidence, it is just your hope or belief, which may materialise or may not.*
The evidence is the [radiative imbalance](http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2005/Imbalance_20050415.pdf). The earth is absorbing more energy than it is currently emitting. That means the earth's temperature will rise until it can emit enough radiation to return to approximate radiative balance. That is the evidence.
When you say this is not evidence you are engaging in the very wishful thinking that you project onto others.
Mark -BLR,
I have searched for your quote: *"proof beyond all reasonable doubt"* in relation to the primary drivers of current warming. I cannot find it in this thread. You are attributing this quote to Jeff Harvey. Where does he use this phrase? All I read is about the overwhelming evidence.
Girma,
Whilst I respect you politeness and humour, I do not respect that way you fallaciously use data.
Can you count the number of times that it has been pointed out to you the problems of using the different between an extreme peak with a an extreme trough to calculate the warming? I 'd guess I have alerted you to the distortion of this more than 3 times already. It is the equivalent of comparing a daily maximum temp with a daily minimum temp and using this to claim little or no warming. You need to consider [all the data](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from…) not cherry pick your preferred years.
Mark BLR,
The correlation between CO2 (ln CO2) and temperature has [been done](http://bartonpaullevenson.com/Correlation.html). There is high correlation, accounting for approx 60% of the variance.
This link has alredy been provided on this thread.
Girma writes:
>*the global cooling from 1878 to 1909 by 0.55 deg C must be acknowledged. The data shows this and it must not be ignored. If this is not ignored, it cancels out most of the global warming observed in the last century.*
Look at [the data Girma](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from…), it "*must not be ignored"*.
Girma continues:
>*So I donât accept the notion of temperature increasing monotonously with time*
That good, because this belief is consistent with the theory and observations. So we agree that global temp does not increase monontonously with increasing temperature. There are natural cycles that are more powerful in the short term.
It the long term (30 year) trend that reveals the CO2 temperature forcing.
Mark B, I admire your patience.
It's all for nought though. Girma does not argue in good faith.
Your post @1146 is a perfect example. You gave Girma a wealth of information, which he completely ignored in favour of hair-splitting over "pipelines".
Ignorance is OK, it can be helped with the judicious application of knowledge. A decent person would accept it gratefully. Girma on the other hand, keeps on repeating his nonsense despite being given the best information.
That's wilful ignorance.
Anyone who's followed this thread in all it's tortured length knows that Girma has been corrected on a range of significant issues, from his 'CO2 has only increased by 0.01%' nonsense, to his ignorance of graphs and stats, only for him to continue to express exactly the same opinion as he did in his very fist comment. Progress - zero.
Girma will continue to obfuscate, lie, fib, torture the data, cherry-pick and ignore becuase he has a set-in-concrete belief that there is no AGW. He will reject any data that contradicts this belief.
But it will be fun to keep watching him do it!
Michael, Yes that pattern is striking!
It would be interesting to see a study on what causes people to make up their minds.
To All
In critical thinking, according to Greg R. Haskins, there is a concept called Omission.
A cogent argument is one that is complete, in that it presents all relevant reasoning (evidence), not just the evidence that supports the argument. Arguments that omit relevant evidence can appear to be stronger than they really are. Thus, an important step to evaluating arguments is attempting to determine if important evidence has been omitted or suppressed.
Sometimes this happens unintentionally by carelessness or ignorance, but too often it is an intentional act. Since it is usually unproductive to confront arguers and ask them to disclose their omissions, the critical thinkerâs, Girmaâs, best course of action is usually to seek opposing arguments on the subject, which could hopefully reveal such omissions.
One omission in the global warming debate is the selection of the starting and end points to estimate the trend in global warming.
From the same data, here are my global warming trends.
[Mean Global Surface Temperature Trends]( http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1880/plot/hadcrut3vgl…)
From the above plot, we see the following trends:
Yes, no global warming since 1998:
[Global Mean Surface Temperature Plot]( http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1998/plot/uah/from:1998/to:20…)
[Global Mean Lower Atmosphere Temperature Plot]( http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/plot/hadcrut3vgl…)
Cheers,
Sorry, mixed up the links.
Yes, no global warming since 1998:
[Global Mean Lower Atmosphere Temperature Plot](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1998/plot/uah/from:1998/to:20…)
[Global Mean Surface Temperature Plot](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/plot/hadcrut3vgl…)
Girma writes:
>*One omission in the global warming debate is the selection of the starting and end points to estimate the trend in global warming.*
This an accurate sentance, now read my post [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…). Then go read every single post on this thread again.
Now ask yourself with all that cooling how is it we are 0.7k warmer than when records began, at near record temperatures for the past 2,000 years?
And why are we out of radiative balance? (Meaning we will get warmer still without adding any more CO2).
Girma:
Ha ha!. That's just hilarious coming from you.
The cherry-picker lectures us on omission! And then picks the 1998 starting point again. What a scream.
Girma, instead of picking all those cherry-dates, just look back at minimally climate length periods startibng from the present, ie 2008-1978, 1977-1947 etc, tell us what you find.
Girma,
For Pete`s sake, how long is it going to take to get through your head that IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO EXTRAPOLATE MEANINGFUL GLOBAL CLIMATE TRENDS AT TIME SCALES SHORTER THAN 30 YEARS. As I said the other day, climate control regulation at the level of the entire biosphere operates over unimaginably large scales. This makes them deterministic. Mean temperature changes that are significant can only be measured over long time scales. Even 30 years is pushing it to the extreme. Your repeated refrain that "it has not warmed since 1998" is pure and utter garbage!!! The time scale is not remotely long enough. And, besides, 1998 experienced the strongest El Nino in a century which was responsible for 0.2 degrees C of the warming. Of course the warming has not stopped. This year is no exception. The Arctic is warmer than in at least 2000 years.
I have said before that if we are to understand changes in the demographics of animal populations, this will transcend national boundries and centuries. In 1994 Tilman and May wrote a seminal paper in Nature in which they described the "extinction debt"; they argued that changes in the distributions of many species were caused by human-induced changes in habitat that had occurred up to several centuries earlier, but which took a very long time to ripple through ecological communities and end up affecting the terminal end of long food chains. This is because of the vast changes in scale in which the processes occurred. Local processes are unpredictable and thus may fluctuate wildly, whereas large scale processes are much more stable and take time - not easy to understand in the concept of a human life span - to respond to a perterbance. Ecology is the study of scale via hierarchies. Climate maintenance operates in scales that also vary in space and time.
Yet you write as if the effects of the combustion of fossil fuels on climate patterns were an instantaneous process. It is not!
I am fed up with you and your wilful ignorance of science, Girma. I must ask you this: are you just plain dumb or do you actually read my posts and those others? Nothing we say sinks in. It bounces off of you like water off a duck`s back. I can see you blankly staring at the monitor, scanning the responses to your posts, and then dispensing with it right away because you do not understand or do not want to understand it.
I have had it with your "arguments". There are only so many times that we can deconstruct them, only for you to flippantly put them back together again.
First I wish to thank Mark Byrne and Chris O`Neill for support and all the efforts to counter Girma.
Mark BLR: read the responses from Mark Byrne and Chris O`Neill. I stand by my assertion that the human fingerprint is very much over the current warming episode. I have also spoken with enough climate scientists at conferences and workshops to support this statement. As Chris says, if you doubt this then I suggest you read links he and Mark B. have provided, as well as the last IPCC report in full. The report, if anything, was very conservartive because it had to pass through very many rounds of internal and external peer review and was vetted by governments across the world. Thus it probably did not go far enough. Read Mark Bowen`s quite excellent "Censoring Science" if you would like a political slant on the efforts to downplay the human component. Although correlation does not equal causation, I do not think it takes that much common sense to know that 2 plus 2 = 4.
Jeff Harvey
I read, with care, with respect, with reverence, each and every post by everyone, especially yours. If it were otherwise, do you think I would spend all of my free time in the last couple of weeks here?
I asked:
and Girma Orssengo, in another display of mendacious behaviour, replied with:
Girma Orssengo, I did not at any point say that global temperature had increased by 1C in a century. I simply asked what period of time would be required to detect such a rate of change, given the noise inherent in the global temperature dataset.
You, however, erected a strawman in an attempt to distract from the thrust of the question, and then simply avoided answering the question at all.
Sorry, but that won't fly.
So, once again, can you demonstrate that you understand how to determine what periods of time are required to detect, over the noise, changes in global temperature at any of the rates of change I used as examples?
Nobody claims that temperature increases monotonically with time: that's the whole point of all of the explanation about periodic and stochastic forcings. This is simply another clumsy attempt at erecting a strawman.
Girma, it has been pointed out to you hundreds of times here where you are so wrong in your understanding of basic science and statistics that you are not even wrong. So much so, in fact, that there are not merely "omissions" in your knowledge, but great honking chasms. Every one of your perceived points has been completely and mercilessly rebutted, but you ignore the fact that they have so been; and almost every one of the points of science put to you has been ignored by you, or distorted from it's original imputation.
It is long past the time where you should be engaging in some serious introversion and considering your own grasp of science â or rather, the lack thereof. I say once more that you are a disgrace to the conference of not one but two postgraduate degrees upon you, and I continue to wonder how on earth you persuaded a committee to permit you to undertake the degrees in the first place.
I would fail an undergrad for the poor understanding of science that you display. And I am sorry, but I cannot apologise for such a harsh assessment of your abilities: it is the simple fact of the matter.
Girma,
If you ARE reading everyone`s posts, why do you cherry-pick your sources so much? Why do you keep repeating the same things over and over (e.g. it has not warmed in 10 years) when this has been debunked? You do try everyone`s patience in that you rarely actually reply with substance. I have repeatedly discussed the importance of scale in climate science and you have repeatedly ignored it.
Just for the record: how far do you think you will get here, Girma? You have made your mind up on what I and others here see as a very limited information base. Your admiration for Ayn Rand and her "me, myself and I" Objectivism and distrust of government (a distrust I do not think she applied to multinational corporations or to those with concentrated wealth because she was one of the latter) in my opinion plays a significant part in your far-right libertarian ideology and inability to accept that humans are the primary culprits for the warming observed since 1980. I am sure that you think global warming is some vast conspiracy created by global governments and the UN to exert control over people. Is this true? You appear to forget that the agendas of many governments and corporations are one in the same. They are both interchangeable. The foreign policies of many countries that attain wealth and power have long been based on outright expansionism and subjugation of other countries material assets, coupled with the aim of nullifying any alternatives to this. There is a revolving door between government and industry in the US, Britain and elsewhere. You ought to learn a bit about the way the world works.
Wedo know that humans have altered the chemical composition of the air and water, that humans have cleared vast tracts of forest around the world, and that humans have altered cycles of carbon, phosphorus and nitrogen. We do know that humans have extirpated a large number of species and genetically distinct populations, and that humans co-opt 40% of net primary productivity and 50% of freshwater flows. All of these changes have ecological and environmental consequences. Knowing all of this to be true, what makes you believe that humans do not have the ability to influence climate? Several colleagues have pointed this out to me. It makes perfect sense. Humans are a global force and our species can and does disrupt cycles generated over immense spatial scales, yet somehow we are to believe that we cannot influence climate? What gives?
A while back someone (Tamino I think), displayed several graphs illustrating the pattern that occurs when running 10-year, 15-year, 30-year et cetera slopes of global mean temperature are plotted.
Does anyone recall off the top of their head exactly where these graphs are? I think that it would be instructive for Girma to see just how clumsy and non-scientific his cherry-picked examples are...
Bernard J @1177
You wrote, I say once more that you are a disgrace to the conference of not one but two postgraduate degrees upon you, and I continue to wonder how on earth you persuaded a committee to permit you to undertake the degrees in the first place.
So, does your comment above apply to all those who got the following [university degrees?](http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content…)
Jeff @1178
You wrote,Humans are a global force and our species can and does disrupt cycles generated over immense spatial scales, yet somehow we are to believe that we cannot influence climate? What gives?
My point is, is CO2 the culprit? 19ppm increase since 1998 but no increase in mean global temperature. Why did the temperature drop from 1940 to 1970 with increase in CO2?
Where is the natural justice when the advocates, the witnesses, the prosecutors, the judges and the beneficiaries of global warming are the same unit in the form of government, its dependants and its supporters?
Another strawman.
Jeff, Chris, Mark Byrne, Michael, and I, in addition to the many others here, are not engaging any others on that ridiculous list in a detailed demonstration, similar to that on this thread, of the ignorance and the refractoriness to learning that you display here.
Many of them have made outrageous errors of scientific understanding, but that is not to say that they could not understand their errors if they were to engage in a dialogue with scientists not influenced by conservative ideology. Many of them do have an operational undertstanding of statistics, and would not make the outlandish statements that you have made here.
However, none are here to defend their understanding, and so any comment by me on specific people on that list is irrelevant.
So, stop shifting the subject away from the many questions and points of fact that have been addressed to you, and start doing some of your [homework](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…).
>Where is the natural justice when the advocates, the witnesses, the prosecutors, the judges and the beneficiaries of global warming are the same unit in the form of government, its dependants and its supporters?
I'm not from government Girma. But unlike you I've at least read the AR4. Don't you think those who judge should have at least read the evidence.
Think of the governments that have opposed action on CO2 mitigation. Think of the governments that have gagged their scientist from speaking. That is not on the same side, that is a contest of evidence vs political power.
Would your solution be a private panel staked with the best scientist who could be bought? We get their input already through corporate lobby groups. They tell us smoking is OK, that oil spills don't cause much damage, and they leave their reports showing the dangers of asbestos in the bottom draw.
Where are all the privately funded climate researchers now? Who would pay for pure science now if not the government? I for one do not want the pursuit of science to be less rather than more dominated by the profit motive.
Bernard says it for the rest of us. Thanks Bernard.
First of all, Girma, your list IS a strawman. The se anit-environmental bodies love compiling lists. Go to the "Science Advisory Board" and you will hardly find a statured climate scientist on the list. I KNOW many of the names on both the board and on the list, and they are NOT experts in any scientific endeavor. I have had interactions with many of them, and in my opionion they are hiding behind another agenda. The very name of this clearly anti-environmental organization - the "International Climate Science Coalition" - is aimed at confusing the lay public because it uses a name similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change". Note the acronyms - ICSC and IPCC. This kind of clever trick is called "Aggressive Mimicry". Who sponsers the ICSC? I have little doubt who does, but note that they do not show, as far as I could find, who sponsoers them. I think we know why.
Note also their "Mission Statment": *ICSC is an international association of scientists, economists and energy and policy experts working to promote better public understanding of climate change science and policy worldwide. ICSC is committed to providing a highly credible alternative to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) thereby fostering a more rational, open discussion about climate issues*.
Again, in my opinion this is b*. In my view, the aim of the ISCS, like other fervently deregulatory anti-environmental bodies is not to generate public debate but to mislead the public on the issue and to block any measures meant to tackle the problem. I love it where they say they aim at providing a real alternative to the IPCC. What alternative? By collecting a measly bunch of contrarians under one umbrella and promoting short-term profit for those with concentrated wealth and power?
How do I know so much about these groups and their agendas? I have given many lectures over the past 10 years at universities and public halls on the tactics and strategies of the anti-environmental lobby and its paymasters. Nothing these people ever do surprises me. They are well-funded and well-organized and their aim is not to win the scientific debate because they never will. Their aim is create doubt amongst the public and policymakers. This doubt paralyzes efforts to deal with climate change and other environmental problems, all in the name of maximizing short term profits.
Then Girma, you write this AGAIN for the millionth time: *My point is, is CO2 the culprit? 19ppm increase since 1998 but no increase in mean global temperature. Why did the temperature drop from 1940 to 1970 with increase in CO2*?
This has been dealt with!!!!!!!!!!! The small temperature decrease between 1940 and 1970 is almost certainly due to the fact that huge amounts of particulate pollutants (aerosols) were being pumped into the air along with greenhouse gases. As we now know, the particulates provide a shield against incoming UV, a process known as `global dimming`. Note that, around the 1970s, many governments, aware of the huge amounts of aerosols being pumped into the atmosphere installed legislation (e.g. the Clean Air Act) the greatly reduced particulate emissions. These particulates had masked the warming effects of C02, which became apparent during the 1980s. Climate scientists like Steve Schneider were saying this as far back as 1975; if particulate emissions decrease, we might then see the fully manifested effects of increased C02 emissions. And this is exactly what Schneider, Hansen and others were predicting would happen.
I am sick and tired of your frankly absurd "it hasn`t warmed since 1998" statement since I and everyone else here has time and time again rebutted it. For the zillionth time 10 years is not long enough to make predictions for non-linear deterministic systems. Will you darned well read that over and over and over until it sinks in? Also, 1998 was the strongest El Nino in a century. Perhaps as much as 0.2 C of the warming that year was attributable to that El Nino. The past 10 years are the warmest in recorded history, warmer than the 1990s. The warming has not stopped. The oceans are now warmer than at any time in recorded history, and the Arctic in more than 2000 years (at least). Arctic sea ice has retreated by 40% since the 1970s, an event that must be unprecedented in scale in at least hundreds of thousands of years if not longer. Normally these changes would occur over very many human generations or even millenia, but now we are seeing them in the blink of a geological and evolutionary eye. Something is forcing climate at such a rapid rate and that something is humans.
Bernard J @1177
You worte, So, once again, can you demonstrate that you understand how to determine what periods of time are required to detect, over the noise, changes in global temperature at any of the rates of change I used as examples?
As shown in the following plot for [MEAN GLOBAL TEMPERATURE TRENDS](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1880/plot/hadcrut3vgl…), I cannot see a monotonous rise in mean global temperature as a function of year. As a result, I cannot answer your question.
If you have the answer, why donât you show it me so that I can check it against the above experimental observation?
Try [this one](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980…) Girma,
You need 30 years to account for internal variation.
But [this one](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/trend/plot/hadcr…) has more comforting colours.
Mechanical Engineers like Girma receive very little teaching of statistical analysis at university.
Girma:
@Girma
I check back in on this thread and what do I find?
> From the above plot, we see the following trends:
> ...
> 4. Warming from 1970 to 2000
> 5. Plateau since 2000 at about 0.4 deg C
Liar. Out and out, shameless, brazen liar.
You plotted 1970 - 1998, followed by 1998 - 2010(!).
So there you go. A liar. You couldn't even do this simple (and pointless) exercise honestly, you just had to cherry pick and distort. And lie about it.
@1179 Bernard J
> A while back someone (Tamino I think), displayed several graphs illustrating the pattern that occurs when running 10-year, 15-year, 30-year et cetera slopes of global mean temperature are plotted.
> Does anyone recall off the top of their head exactly where these graphs are? I think that it would be instructive for Girma to see just how clumsy and non-scientific his cherry-picked examples are...
I'm not sure if its the same ones, but realclimate did this a while ago with 7, 8 and 15 year slopes.
And I already posted them in this thread, at [927](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew\_england\_challenges\_the.php#c1887943).
And Girma ignored it.
[GLOBAL COOLING](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/to:2010/compress…) since 2005, the data, the science, shows!
I accept that it is not significant. But I just want to put it as a statement of fact that the globe was cooling for the last three years.
MELBOURNE COOLING since 4 pm this afternoon, the data, the science, shows!
I accept that it is not significant. But I just want to put it as a statement of fact that Melbourne was cooling for the last five hours.
Girma you [have found](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/to:2010/compress…) the power of the La Nina and solar minima.
Its also colder this winter than last summer. And that too is not significant. But I just want to put it as a statement of fact that the Australia was cooling for the last three months.
Girma:
What a shameless, blatant hypocrite.
Snap! Chris, you beat me to it.
;)
To all Blogers
Cheers
MONEY!
Girma you are going around in cicles. This questions was addressed [way back here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…).
[Here is](http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?a=19) a bit more detail on water as a greenhouse gas.
Thanks Mark for the H2O link
1155 Girma,
In which case you must also acknowledge the warming of 0.17 between 1875 and 1915 and
0.27 between 1864 and 1900.
1875 -0.41 1915 -0.24
1864 -0.51 1900 -0.24
Girma Orssengo.
Not only is it "not significant", it is a strawman of the highest order.
Using your 'definition', and [data covering the period 1880-2008](http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.txt), there has 'global cooling' on 55 year-to-year occasions, stasis on 6 year-to-year occasions, and warming on 67 year-to-year occasions.
This says rather a lot about the fact that monotonicity in the CO2 forcing is a complete red herring. Throw in [autocorrelation](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…) (a subject about which you have been remarkably silent), and you should be able to see that comments about short-term global cooling are rash at the very least.
So, once and for all, can you let go of the "it's been cooling since 19XX/20XX" canard, and learn to interpret time series in rather a more scientific fashion?
1161 Chris,
I don't think Girma is a liar. I genuinely think that he is too stupid and/or ignorant to actually know that his claims are false.
TS, I don't think he's stupid either. But he is using some poor arguments, poor statistics, and poor science. And I wish he would have looked at both side of the evidence before he weighed in so heavily yet ill informed.
Bernard J. @1143
You wrote,
Of course, this makes a nonsense of the "no warming since 1998 (2002, 2005)" canard of the Denialati. If a stochastic or periodic event occurs that superimposes a temporary downward trend upon the steady upward trend of AGW
Bernard, what is the rate of warming (deg C/year) for what you termed "steady upward trend of AGW"?
0.15k/decade for past 30 years ( [See comment 1012](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…) ).
The world had been [cooling]( http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/to/compress:12) for the last three years, but the public, including myself, before I saw the data, were thinking it was warming. We live in the Dark Ages!
For anyone interested, [HADCRUT3 30-year linear trends in 10-year steps from 1850](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/to:1880/trend/pl…)
It is commonly said there was cooling 1940-1970. I think it is just as valid to say there was warming 1950-1980!
1208 Girma,
No, you live in the Dark Ages, the time when ignorance and religious dogma held sway over rational enquiry!
Cheers TS, very interesting.
[Here it is](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/to:1880/trend/pl…) with the 30 year moving average.
Re: Dave R (post 1158)
"That's pretty strong empirical evidence that you're a moron."
Ah. I believe that is called an "ad hominem".
I have seen this from BOTH sides of the "debate", but in my opinion the warmers tend to use it faster (I note that your "response" came 38 minutes after my post), and with more virulence.
This only adds data to my "If their argument was really as strong as they say it is, they wouldn't need to react like that" hypothesis (unwieldy I know, but I haven't come up with a better alternative yet).
NB : In this thread although there have been some "ad homs" directed at Girma I have been agreeably surprised by the amount of patience people have generally shown. Unfortunately such a reaction appears to be extremely rare in the blogosphere.
...
Re: Chris O'Neill (post 1160)
I agree that Annan & Hargreaves 3 degree estimate of climate sensitivity is probably approximately correct, but ...
Forster & Gregory had a "peer reviewed" paper out at about the same time which said it was about 1.6 degrees.
Schwartz came out later with an estimate of 0.5 degrees (but I think that's pushing it a bit).
Climate sensitivity is an important factor in the debate, but it is not the only one, and there is still some uncertainty surrounding the value.
...
Re: Mark Byrne (post 1164) [ and indirectly Jeff Harvey ]
I meant that part to refer to the general legal term used in criminal trials, not as a specific quote.
Re-reading my post I agree that my use of quotation marks was confusing. I apologise for that.
...
Re: Mark Byrne (post 1166)
The "simple" regression shows that 60% of the temperature anomalies can be attributed to CO2.
Random factors will affect the "real" value, so it could in fact be less, or more (!), than this.
Ignoring these factors, this indicates that (at least ???) 40% of the anomolies were due to something, or more likely somethingS, else !
While we know what many of those "somethings" are, we are unable to quantify them precisely. In addition to these "known unknowns", to coin Donald Rumsfeld's famous phrase, we do not know what all of the "unknown unknowns" are (by definition).
...
Re: Jeff Harvey (post 1175)
I have a paper copy of the TAR WG1 report, and I downloaded the AR4 WG1 as PDF files in 2007, which I have read through a couple of times.
The actual report has "proper" scientific caveats in many places, which tend not to appear in the various "Summaries".
ALL of the "scenarios" in AR4, using the "best" models at the time (2006/7), indicated monotonically rising temperatures until 2100. At the beginning of 2008, when annual data for 2007 was released by GISS and CRU, people noticed that temperatures for "the last decade" (1998 -> 2007) had COOLED, a possibility which had not been predicted by ANY model up to that time.
My understanding of the "Khunian philosophy of science", is that a "paradigm" will be assumed correct, allowing contradictory evidence to be put to one side (but not discarded ! ), until "overwhelming evidence" builds up resulting in a "paradigm shift". The canonical example of this is the rejection of Wegener's "continental drift" in the first half of the 20th century, followed by the "sudden" victory of "plate tectonics" in the 1960s.
In the case of AGW, one paper in the spring of 2008 seemed to change the paradigm from "temperatures will rise by 1.5 to 6 degrees in 2100" to "temperatures could fall until 2015/2020, but then they will rise by 1.5 to 6 degrees in 2100".
For the moment, I remain "sceptical".
NB : I find this thread ... interesting, but I only check it every couple of days or so.
Mark-BLR @1212
You wrote, "If their argument was really as strong as they say it is, they wouldn't need to react like that" hypothesis.
Thanks. That is a GEM that I will use in the future.
I said:
and Girma Orssengo replied:
To use the florid wanking of Monkton (as Denialist wanking seems to be the order of the day on this thread):
Primo - As has been [explained to you before](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…), there is not any expectation at all that there would be a monotonic increase in the mean annual global temperature record, in response to the forcing by increasing concentration of atmospheric CO2.
Secundo - If there were a monotonic increase in the temperature record, it would imply such a strong warming signal swamping the natural noise of the system that the planet would be in a runaway heating more bizarrely outrageous than anything but the most trashy of pulp science-fiction.
Tertio - If there were a monotonic increase in the temperature record, random noise would not be present except for fluctuations in the constantly positive rate of increase, and thus the whole issue of quantifying random noise would be moot. Few physical systems would be so smooth as to lack any appreciable signature of random noise, so your petulant expectation of such is completely unrealistic.
Girma Orssengo, you continue to astonish me with the number of ways that you demonstrate your ignorance. Did you yourself in fact complete the work required for your postgraduate degrees?!
Any scientist or mathematician worth his higher school certificate (or equivalent â the HSC is the senior secondary certificate in Australia) would cringe to make such a silly comment about "...not see[ing]" monotonicity as you did. It is not expected, and it is not required in order to quantify the magnitude of noise in the dataset. In fact, an absence of monotonicity is pretty much a prerequisite for calculating the noise!
At #1206...
If you answer the questions about the noise in the global temperature data, and how this influences the period of time required to comment on statistically significant trends, then I will happily tell you what figure I believe is a reasonable estimation of the rate of CO2-forced warming. I have to admit though that I suspect you do not have the understanding to answer my questions, even given the fact that you apparently used mathematics and modelling in your degrees.
So, to make your job a little more straightforward, can you perform the analyses using just the last 100 years of data? You should note of course that if you are able to manage what is essentially a cinch for any mathematician/statistician, you will in the process answer the question you directed at me.
Perhaps that is your intention â that, by increments, I do your homework for you?
Mark - BLR:
No it is not. But since you've already demonstrated that you can't use a search engine, it's no surprise that you couldn't find out what "ad hominem" means either.
No they did not.
It has been explained over and over again on this thread that you cannot determine a climate trend over that short a period, and that starting with 1998 is cherry picking. Despite that cherry picking, [all four datasets show warming from 1998 to 2007](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1998/to:2007/trend/plot/h…).
Climate models are not used to predict the weather.
If you were sceptical you would have checked whether the claims you've repeated here were true or not before repeating them. The fact that you did not shows that on the contrary, you are totally credulous.
1211 Mark Byrne,
Thanks. I should've thought of that. Makes it clear, doesn't it?
Mark - BLR, @ 1212:
The "scenarios" you are speaking of that indicated monotonically rising temperatures until 2100 were ensemble averages of many (hundreds) model runs, averaging over the stochastic variation in input time series to those model runs which model natural variability in the real world. Essentially, this is equivalent to averaging over the natural variability in thousands of earth-sun systems. I'm certain you'll agree that performing such an average suppresses (indeed, this is the entire idea) such variability.
Many of the individual model runs in fact did show 'cooling' (not on climatic time scales, but whatever) during this period. Many showed fast warming during this period, followed by 'cooling' during other time parts of the century. Etc. Predicting the phase of ENSO and PDO is pretty much beyond us at this point, AFAIK, but that certainly doesn't prevent us from predicting the climate modulo ENSO/PDO phase. This is a not-unusual situation. For example, we can't predict volcanic eruptions, either, so climate predictions are modulo the effects of volcanic particulate emissions.
See the first figure here for a visual look at what I am talking about.
I'm certain you'll agree that the statement that slight 'cooling' on decadal time scales during this century is "a possibility which had not been predicted by ANY model up to that time" is in error.
>"That's pretty strong empirical evidence that you're a moron."
Ah. I believe that is called an "ad hominem".
Wrong. An ad hominem fallacy is 'you are wrong because you're a moron'.
Being consistently and incorrigibly wrong is strong and objective empirical evidence of being a moron (ad rem).
More evidence Mark-BLR is a moron:
>I agree that Annan & Hargreaves 3 degree estimate of climate sensitivity is probably approximately correct, but ...
[A&H's](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/03/climate-sensitivi…) strength is it is a Bayesian analysis of multiple estimates. No buts, no ellipses.
>Forster & Gregory had a "peer reviewed" paper out at about the same time which said it was about 1.6 degrees.
Wrong. The mean value of [F&G](http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F…) is 2.3C. Short term data and anthropogenic aerosol masking are deficits to F&G's prior.
>Schwartz came out later with an estimate of 0.5 degrees (but I think that's pushing it a bit).
Wrong. [Schwartz's](http://www.skepticalscience.com/Stephen-Schwartz-on-climate-sensitivity…) mean is 1.1C. His time constant underestimate, to which he admits, is pushing it a lot.
>Climate sensitivity is an important factor in the debate, but it is not the only one, and there is still some uncertainty surrounding the value.
It is extremely unlikely there a single value for climate sensitivity, but a range of sensitivity, due to the stochastic variability of the differing physical effects and timing of various forcings and feedbacks. The degree of uncertainty as to what that range might be has been mightily reduced.
>ALL of the "scenarios" in AR4, using the "best" models at the time (2006/7), indicated monotonically rising temperatures until 2100. At the beginning of 2008, when annual data for 2007 was released by GISS and CRU, people noticed that temperatures for "the last decade" (1998 -> 2007) had COOLED, a possibility which had not been predicted by ANY model up to that time.
The AR4 scenarios are average means of multiple runs of several models. A statistical technique that smooths short term variability. To a moron, this might create the impression that the IPCC predicts monotonic temperature rise over the 21st century. This is not the case. These are not precise predictions at all. They are general averaged projections. Every single realization of all models simulates decadal scale variability precisely, though not exactly (as in predictive), as it is observed in the physical record, and such is what any reasonable person would expect.
There are many additional errors and misrepresentations of fact in Mark-BLR's screed, but why bother. Mark-BLR is demonstrably a moron.
@Mark - BLR
> Ah. I believe that is called an "ad hominem".
As has been pointed out, you are very wrong on this.
Saying "you are wrong because x, y and z, and you are also a moron" is not an ad hominem fallacy, just insulting.
You are in fact fallaciously labelling a valid argument as a fallacy in order to weaken or dismiss an argument.
> This only adds data to my "If their argument was really as strong as they say it is, they wouldn't need to react like that" hypothesis (unwieldy I know, but I haven't come up with a better alternative yet).
OTOH, you add data to my "boy who cried ad hominem" hypothesis.
Also, if your argument was so strong, Girma wouldn't need to tell lies to support it, would he?
"England says we have already emitted half the greenhouse gases we can if we are to have a reasonable chance of staying below a net 2 degrees Celsius global average warming."
Hmm .. I'm dubious about even that. Water is nice and 'black' as seen from space; remove some ice cover and you start absorbing a lot more energy. The reason images from space seem to have blue oceans is that the atmosphere is scattering blue light and as seen against the black oceans, you get the impression that the oceans are blue. The oceans do reflect some light, but not much at all. Continents reflect much more light so you don't realize there's a blue haze.
1219 Dave,
Could that be:-
"The frequency of usage of ad hominem claims is inversely correlated with the user's knowledge of the true meaning of the term, or indeed of logical fallacies in general."?
I'm sure I could find ample evidence in support of that.
Where has the worldâs common sense gone?
One needs only finish elementary school to see the [Globe Was Cooling]( http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/to:2010/compress…) for the last three years. But you would never ever find this information in the media. Why didnât government departments that collect this information tell us? Why do I have to fish for this information my self in my spare time? Now there is no contradiction with why I am freezing here in Perth, as the globe has been cooling for the last three years.
It is also a fact that the globe has not warmed since 1998. Cooling is cooling. Not warming is not warming. That was the [story of our globe](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/to:2010/compress…) in the last decade, but we were not told about them.
We donât need to talk about jargons, just show us the [actual variation in the mean global temperature](http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/TrueMeanGlobalTemperature…), which cools and warms within a minuscule range of 1 deg C for a globe that has at an instance a temperature range of 100 deg C.
When is the [global cooling]( http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1878/compress:12/plot…) from 1878 to 1909 is going to be acknowledged? This will cancel most of the warming in the past century.
Just show us the measurements and we will use our common sense to interpret them, as you have lost yours by talking about pipelines, forcing, sensitivity, feedback, and other jargons.
Most importantly, without a magnifying glass, there is no [dangerous global warming.]( http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/TrueMeanGlobalTemperature…)
1222 Girma,
The moment that you acknowledge the warming 1864-1900 and 1875-1915.
1864 -0.51 1900 -0.24
1875 -0.41 1915 -0.24
I've posted these examples before and you ignored them. Why is that?
TrueSceptic @1223
Don't you think you should, at least, consider changing your alias to something more appropriate? I thought sceptics donât believe in magnification!
You wrote, The moment that you acknowledge the warming 1864-1900 and 1875-1915.
Could you please show me this as a trend, as I did for the [global cooling]( http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1878/compress:12/plot…) from 1878 to 2009?
TrueSceptic @1223
Don't you think you should, at least, consider changing your alias to something more appropriate? I thought sceptics donât believe in magnification!
You wrote, The moment that you acknowledge the warming 1864-1900 and 1875-1915.
Could you please show me this as a trend, as I did for the [global cooling]( http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1878/compress:12/plot…) from 1878 to 1909?
> Could you please show me this as a trend, as I did for the global cooling from 1878 to 2009?
Ah, on a "linear trend" kick now are we? Dropped the whole "the trend is the difference between an arbitrary start and end point" shtick? You do realise this invalidates everything you said in this thread about the warming trend from 1878 - present being miniscule don't you? (starting way back at post 95 if you can't remember that far).
You can't have it both ways.
I think I have to concede that Girma is right about the cooling, using linear trends on GISTEMP I can show that it has cooled all the time between 1980 and today. It cooled during the following periods
1980-1987
1987-1995
1995-2001
1998-2002
2002-today
Here's [the plot to prove it](http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1960/plot/gistemp/from:1980/t…). And keep in mind, that it cooled from 1969 to 1979, too.
Somehow I think the IPCC broke this graph, because despite all the cooling that was going on the anomaly is higher this decade than it was in the 60s. I'll leave the audit of the IPCC as an exercise for the reader.
Dave @1226
Dave, I am using the trend to observe the behavior of a historical record, not to use the trend to predict the future.
@bluegrue
That's amazing. Clearly the IPCC have not only magnified the graph in evil and insidious ways, but somehow rotated the whole thing to create an impression of an upward trend when as you have shown it can only be going downwards!
M.C. Escher would be proud :)
Girma:
And crazy is crazy. I'm beginning to lean towards this theory in relation to Girma.
Poor Girma, with his unshakable belief in global cooling, is beset by doubt everyday as the sun rises and the globe warms, but is comforted as the sun lowers in the sky.....until the next morning.
bluegrue @1227
You wrote, Somehow I think the IPCC broke this graph, because despite all the cooling that was going on the anomaly is higher this decade than it was in the 60s. I'll leave the audit of the IPCC as an exercise for the reader.
Is an [anomaly of 0.05 deg C]( http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1998/to:2009/compress:12) for last year dangerous global warming?
So do you concede that this statement from way back in the mists of time:
> Temperature anomaly increased by only 0.34 deg C since 1878
Is a crock? You certainly weren't using a simple linear trend to observe the behaviour of the historical record then, were you? Unless by linear trend you mean taking 1878 and 2008 and drawing a straight line between them, ignoring all other points.
Since you like linear trends, and seem to be having so much fun with the woodfortrees site, please justify why you don't look at 30-year trends starting from 2009 and working backwards?
Girma:
It would require a discussion all of it's own to examine the multitudinous idiocies that try to defend themsleves with this term.
1224 Girma,
I suggest you investigate the terms "sceptic", "sceptical", and "scepticism"; then we might progress.
You use the word "trend", which you have refused to accept as a concept every time it's been used here.
Please feel free to illustrate your "trend" and I'll respond with mine (I have a HUGE number I can use).
bluegrue @1227,
Holyshit!
It's 30 deg here, but I'm putting my woolies on and waiting for the first snow fall.
Dave @1232
You wrote, Since you like linear trends, and seem to be having so much fun with the woodfortrees site, please justify why you don't look at 30-year trends starting from 2009 and working backwards?,
Dave, for a given data, for a given reality, do you think working backwards or forwards in our plots should make any difference?
1224 Girma,
And Where is the response I requested?
I cited 2 (cherry picked) data points against your one.
Honestly, I'm losing patience with your demands for answers when you rarely respond to our direct questions.
1227 Bluegrue,
Nice to see you here.
Unless you've read a lot of this thread, you have no idea what "Girma" is. You imagine your "trends" have any meaning, even as a parody?
Girma:
> Is an [anomaly of 0.05 deg C](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1998/to:2009/compress:12) for last year dangerous global warming?
Hmmm, let's take [10 year averages](http://www.woodfortrees.org/data/uah/from:1979/compress:120) to get rid of some of the short term variability:
1979-1988 -0.045 °C
1989-1998 0.042 °C
1999-2008 0.199 °C
In itself this change is not too bad, we've had similar before. However it's the future I'm very worried about, as this is going to continue to go up for quite some time to come.
I also note, Girma, that you suddenly switched to UAH data. Keep in mind that the different anomalies like GISTEMP and RSS or UAH are measured with respect to different base periods, so comparing the raw numbers directly is plainly and simply wrong; it's like saying 220 K is warmer than 0°C because 220 is greater than 0.
1238 TrueSkeptic,
I have no illusions about my impact on Girma, I expect it to be none; that plot is just there to illustrate once more - as have others before - that 7-year trends are unsuitable to discuss climate trends and to have a bit of fun while doing so.
bluegrue,
stop muddying the waters by taking about anomalies,data, variability and such nonsense.
Just Common-Sense (TM) please.
Girma is very apparently a pathological liar. Responding directly to such a demented personality's nonsense is nothing but reinforcing its pathology by providing it with the illusion of social control.
We can discuss why [psychological denial](www.apa.org/releases/climate-change.pdf), the [Dunning-Kruger](http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:vlX_V9SqScUJ:www.apa.org/journals/…) effect and [pathological lying](http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/1162950?pageNumbe…) are endemic in those who would desire to represent themselves as climate sceptics, though, using the gross manifestations of Girma's delusional rants as exemplary material.
Perhaps if Girma is denied the gratification of social interaction that is its apparent psychic reward, the consequent frustration may motivate it to seek professional help.
Doubtful as that may be.
1225 Girma,
[Here](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1864/to:1900/trend/pl…)
What does that tell you?
(This is lesson one in basic stats trend analysis, at zero cost to you.)
Now, explain why, in this case, linear trends are more informative than choosing extreme data points.
Girma can you tell me what the [compress samples](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…) (value 12) does?
Let me [show you](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1998/to:2009/compress:12/plot…). It hides the warming that followed the end of 2008 La Nina. But that warming sort of makes a double nonsense of your flawed argument that relies on short term fluctuations.
bluegrue @1239
You wrote, "In itself this change is not too bad, we've had similar before. However it's the future I'm very worried about, as this is going to continue to go up for quite some time to come."
Why worry about the UNKNOWN future?
Mark Byrne @1244
You wrote, Girma can you tell me what the compress samples (value 12) does?
Mark, It changes the monthly values into a yearly average.
Hat tip [to bluegrue](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…).
Girma is a pathological liar. Responding directly to such a demented personality's nonsense is nothing but reinforcing its pathology.
We can discuss why psychological denial, the [Dunning-Kruger](http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:vlX_V9SqScUJ:www.apa.org/journals/…) effect and [pathological lying](http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/1162950?pageNumbe…) are endemic in those who would desire to represent themselves as [climate skeptics](http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:bntdLiVJR1kJ:www.apa.org/releases/…), though, using the gross manifestations of Girma's delusional rants as exemplary material.
Perhaps if Girma is denied the gratification of social interaction that is its apparent psychic reward, the consequent frustration may motivate it to seek professional help.
Doubtful as that may be.
Girma:
> Why worry about the UNKNOWN future?
IPCC AR4, for a low estimate, but you knew that.
I wish you fun with your continued effort of bait and switch, given the amount of energy you put into your cherry-picking you seem to enjoy this.
Girma writes:
>*It changes the monthly values into a yearly average.*
Girma, [here is](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/to/mean:12/plot/…) the 12 month moving average.
Your transformation chopped [off this.](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/to/compress:12/p…)
Don't you think if you are so interested in such short term temperature fluctuations you should include the most recent?
LB, while I don't know Girma is a liar, I might take your advice.
Happy fathers day! (In Oz)
Mark Byrne,
you've run across a peculiarity of WoodForTrees: _compress_ calculates the mean of the y-data and plots it versus the _left bracket_ of the x-range. This can result in serious shifts as demonstrated in this comparison of
[raw data, 20-year mean and 20-year compress](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:240/…).
Iny my humble view luminous beauty about sums it up. Anyone who writes "why worry about an unknown future" - when it is patently clear that recent and current human activities (climate change being just one process of many) pose a profound threat the future quality of life - should make anyone wonder if any efforts in this debate are worth it.
As I have said, there are volumes of empirical evidence showing that the combined effects of paving, ploughing, damming, dredging, overgrazing, slashing-and-burning, logging, biologically homogenizing, dousing with synthetic organic chemicals, overharvesting, and altering of the chemistry of air and water will have (and already are having) significant effects on the health and persistence of natural systems. Against this background we have an apparently educated man saying, "why worry about an unknown future!?".
Its futile.
Jeff Harvey
You wrote, As I have said, there are volumes of empirical evidence showing that the combined effects of paving, ploughing, damming, dredging, overgrazing, slashing-and-burning, logging, biologically homogenizing, dousing with synthetic organic chemicals, overharvesting, and altering of the chemistry of air and water will have (and already are having) significant effects on the health and persistence of natural systems. Against this background we have an apparently educated man saying, "why worry about an unknown future!?".
Jeff, I agree 100% with the above, because you haven't included CO2 in the passage.
Mark Byrne
Thanks for introducing me to the powerful online mean global temperature anomaly plotting software at WoodForTrees. You have saved me from ever labouring the importing of data and plotting it in Excel. May be I should write an online software that plots the true values instead of the anomalies.
Girma, maybe you should stop annoying everyone with your ignorant, stupid comments. You have contributed nothing of value to this blog and it's clear you never will.
Fuck off.
Gaz @1256
If your argument was really as strong as you say it is, you wouldn't need to react like that! (@1212)
Three nil to Girma!
Janet @1258
Long time no see?
Girma Orssengo.
It is patently obvious that [you are unable to perform very simple statistical calculations](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…).
It is patently obvious that [you are unable to grasp simple mathematical concepts such as the use of anomalies](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…), and also that if "labouring [to] import... data and plotting it in Excel" is a task for you, that your technical abilities in data manipulation are severely limited.
It is patently obvious that [you permit your extreme ideology](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…) filter any and all information before you even begin to apply any of your severely limited scientific understanding to it.
There are many more examples of your incompetence in even basic scientific endeavour, but I will leave the very existence of this lumbering thread as testimony to that.
In addition to your incompetence, I would be very surprised if there was not an underlying [pathological psychology](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…), as [luminous beauty](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…) has also noted.
It is only such a psychology that would explain why someone, with the apparent training that Girma Orssengo has, would repeatedly and recalcitrantly make so many astonishingly non-scientific statements. The only alternative would be that said person does know that he is spouting complete rubbish, but for reasons of his own amusement, and in the face of the fact that he is discrediting his professional competence and the reputation of his almae matres, he continues with his nonsense.
Girma Orssengo, can you give me any reason why I should not enquire of the postgraduate research committee of UNSW what their policies are for the screening of candidates for enrolment into a PhD program, and specifically what criteria for background scientific competence would need to be satisfied in order to engage in a project similar to your own?
Girma Orssengo, can you also give me any reason why I should not enquire of the postgraduate research committee of UNSW about how someone who has had a PhD conferred upon them by said institution can display as much scientific and mathematical incompetence in a public forum as you have, and whether such a display in any way contravenes UNSW policy for a conferee maintaining his/her degree, or indicates that there was a mistake in the granting of the degree in the first place?
You have serious issues mate, and whatever they are I cannot see that you deserve the qualifications that were granted to you.
Justify yourself.
I'm always here quietly waiting, ready to cheer every goal you score!
;)
Climate models, [contrary to the data]( http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/compress:12/plot…), predict a stronger warming trend for the lower-troposphere than the surface of the earth. (Greenhouse warming)
Gaz,
My sentiments towards Girma run closer to pity. LB has pretty much got it right.
*Jeff, I agree 100% with the above, because you haven't included CO2 in the passage*
If you agree with me on the points I made in my last posting, then why did you say earlier that we should not worry about the UNKNOWN future? I think, given the human assaults on the biosphere, that we have quite some indication of what the future is likely to be. By the way, I did not exclude C02 above, anyway; it was included under alteration of the chemistry of the atmosphere, land and water. You ought to read more carefully.
Janet: Don`t you mean Girma scoring OWN goals?
Girma,
@1257
> If your argument was really as strong as you say it is, you wouldn't need to react like that!
If your argument was as strong as you say it was, you wouldn't need to lie about it.
@1236
> Dave, for a given data, for a given reality, do you think working backwards or forwards in our plots should make any difference?
Ignoring the fact that we have 30 years of data leading up to the present readily available makes a difference.
Picking an arbitrary point in the past and working forward in 30-year chunks specifically to leave insufficient data for a complete 30-year trend leading up to the present day is just cretinous. And you even cocked that up, lazily claiming nice round decades as start points when actually your intent was to work forward to land on 1998.
Claiming you're plotting the (meaningless) 9.5 year trend from 2000-2009 when in fact you're plotting the (meaningless) 11.5 year trend from 1998-2009 is (once again) a lie.
Justify why are you mixing 11.5 year trends with 30 year trends.
Jeff,
I can't count that fast.
Janet,
To be honest, neither can I.
Girma, if you started behaving like a sentient being instead of mindlessly cycling through the standard denialist talking points I wouldn't feel inclinded to react like that.
Bernard J. @1260
Contact the publishers of the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology and ask them to withdraw my Orssengo-Pye paper. That is the summary of my work at UNSW.
I cannot say there is global warming when there is [COOLING]( http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1998/to:2010/compress:12) for the last three years, and no warming for the last decade. If I do, I will not be telling the truth. Science is the truth. I am the defender of Science.
But I tend to be rather pessimistic. I sometimes wish that we could have, over the next five or ten years, a lot of horrid things happening -- you know, like tornadoes in the Midwest and so forth -- that would get people very concerned about climate change. But I don't think that's going to happen.
[An Interview With Thomas Schelling, The Atlantic](http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/conor_clarke/2009/07/an_interview…)
You, in your basement, beavering away again thousands of scientists who actually understand the discipline in which you have no training nor any capacity for basic understanding?
I think not.
You are, however, a deluded prat.
I cannot say otherwise when the weight of evidence on this thread supports this conclusion. If I did so, I would not be telling the truth...
/Against
Girma:
That is mathematical/stats nonsense. A trend is not described by drawing a line from an arbritarily chosen maximum to a minimum.
Crack a stats book you complete fool.
Girma:
Your piffle is the antithesis of science.
It's a tough sell. And probably you have to find ways to exaggerate the threat.
[An Interview With Thomas Schelling, The Atlantic](http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/conor_clarke/2009/07/an_interview…)
More disingenuousness from Girma.
We talk about the science (of which he is demonstrably ignorant), he points to what an economist says in a magazine.
1269 Girma,
You lied again, didn't you? "For the last decade" does not include 1998, however you count it.
[Here](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1995/to:2004/trend/plot/uah/f…) is a set of 10-year trends starting in 1995.
Even using such a short period, which is meaningless in climate terms, you are wrong. I already posted a set of 30-year trends, which are significant.
BTW I think it was me who introduced Wood For Trees to this thread.
#1255 Girma:
> May be I should write an online software that plots the true values instead of the anomalies.
I think I know what his preferred plot will look like: [GISTEMP converted to temperature, y-scale from 0K to 300K](http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/offset:287/plot/sine:10/scale:0.00…). "What, me worry?"
>If your argument was really as strong as you say it is, you wouldn't need to react like that!
This passive-aggressive ad hominem fallacy is just too cute.
The last redoubt of a losing argument, but the psychic food of the flame-seeking troll.
1278 bluegrue,
You just beat me to it!
Odd that Girma couldn't find out how to do that...
TrueSceptic @1277
What does âBTWâ stand for?
Thanks for Wood For Trees, powerful online software for plotting mean global temperature anomalies.
Ok, here is the [PLOT]( http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/compress:12) that shows cooling for the last three years, and no warming since 1998.
And you've lost the PLOT Girma.
TS gave you the trend graph for the 10 yrs from 1998. It was the purple one. Have a look at it. Report back on the direction of the slope.
In case you don't bother - it goes up. Warming.
Idiot.
Girma again ditches the data for his beliefs.
TrueSceptic @1277
How about this one?
Here is the [PLOT]( http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/compress:12) that shows cooling for the last three years, and no warming for more than a decade.
Funny how you're suddenly shy of the trend graphs Girma.
Trend 10 yrs from 1998 - warming. Ouch.
It's a commonly used abbreviation for "by the way". You've never seen it before? OTOH, TBH, nothing would surprise me any more.
No need to repeat what WFT is, although there's more to it than that: sunspots, TSI, CO2, PDO, sea ice.
You already showed us something very similar. I showed you a more honest set of trends.
BUT climate is 30 years. Yes, 2008 was a cool year compared with recent ones but it means nothing in isolation.
News flash.
Following Girma-Logic (TM), I can report that the globe is indeed cooling. Here is the data,
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDD60901/IDD60901.94120.shtml
Please look only at the raw data. Use your Common-Sense (TM). Do not use graphs or science or statistics.
Just look.
What do you see? - cooling! Yes, it's been cooling since 2:00 pm. No warming. Cooling. Cooling since 2 pm. Cooling, not warming. Cooling for 10 hrs. There is no dangerous warming, just cooling. Cooling. Cool.
Amongst [many other unanswered questions](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…) (and [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…), and [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…), and [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…), and [here]( http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…), and [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…), and [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…), and [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…), et cetera, et cetera...) I have asked [on a number of occasions](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…):
Girma Orssengo's [best (and only) reply](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…) was:
If this is the extent of your incompetence, then how do you justify making [the comment](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…) that:
Seriously, if you do not know how to do the very basic statistics that will indicate any significant deviation from the noise in the temperature data, how is it that you presume to comment upon trends in those same data?
By the way, I find it amusing that you consider the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology to be one of your almae matres. For the record, a co-authored publication discussing an equation of apparently non-comprehensive utility ([see Optometry 76;9:536-543, here](http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1529183905000965), [J Glaucoma 14;5:337-343, here](http://journals.lww.com/glaucomajournal/Abstract/2005/10000/Evaluation_…), [Invest Ophthamol Vis Sci 2005;46:3208-3213, here](http://www.iovs.org/cgi/content/full/46/9/3208), and [Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci 2005;46: E-Abstract 2716, here](http://abstracts.iovs.org/cgi/content/abstract/46/5/2716), amongst others) has nothing to do with the capacity to independently conduct postgraduate research and analysis â unless of course its shortcomings as reviewed in the literature is an indication of the quality of the work in the PhD...
No, I am curious about the standards for research set by your almae matres, and how your scientific conduct met/meets those standards.
I suspect that there is a good reason why you don't address this question, amongst the many others...
1286 Update!
[Huge scary warming this year!](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2009)
Hi Girma!
woodfortrees is an excellent site!
You should check out the [Trend Line](http://www.woodfortrees.org/notes.php#trends) section.
Let us know what you think.
Girma (any any of his friends)
[Comments](http://tiny.cc/qRk6O)?
Bernard J @1287
You wrote, what period of time would be required to discern a signalâ¦
Let
Then, assuming a linear relationship, period of time required to discern a signal dT is dY = dT/m
Cheers
1291 Girma,
This is even worse than expected. Bernard's question was
Did you deliberately ignore the crucial part? Are you a liar by omission?
Thanks to bluegrue (@1278), we can now use WoodForTrees.org to plot the [TRUE MEAN GLOBAL TEMPERTURE]( http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset:13.97/plot/…), which does not involve the use of the invisible magnifying glass.
1293 Girma,
And we can see the clear rising trend. Thanks!
My old [TRUE MEAN GLOBAL TEMPERTURE]( http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/TrueMeanGlobalTemperature…) plot, which does not involve the use of the invisible magnifying glass.
Girma:
> Ok, here is the [PLOT](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/compress:12) that shows cooling for the last three years, and no warming since 1998.
One cherry-pick deserves another. Let's have a look at [12-month periods starting in April](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1996.3/compress:12). Woohoo, 1998 is no longer the hottest. Ooohh, look, we've had warming for the last 2 years. Wait, you say these are cherry-picks? Hey, you're correct ... and so is yours.
Girma:
>Thanks to bluegrue (@1278), we can now use WoodForTrees.org to plot the TRUE MEAN GLOBAL TEMPERTURE, which does not involve the use of the invisible magnifying glass.
Oh Girma, it grieves me to see you make such a step backwards, using °C instead of K for the TRUE MEAN GLOBAL TEMPERATURE. (Ahhh, all caps feels great.) Of course you are _still_ using a magnifying glass. The TRUE MEAN GLOBAL TEMPERATURE (TM) _must_ be given in Kelvin, as the intensity of the outgoing infrared radiation depends on the absolute temperature, not this pesky temperature according to the Celsius scale, which is fixed to the H2O triple point.
Even huger and scarier last year and this year!
1297 Chris,
This is getting weird. I very nearly did that one myself!
>Then, assuming a linear relationship, period of time required to discern a signal dT is dY = dT/m
Does [this](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl) appear to be a linear relationship?
The old saw is when one assumes one makes an ass of u and me. However, Girma, dwelling as it does in its solipsistic [pseudo]Objectivist paradise, is a singular ass.
Own goal.
>Thanks to bluegrue (@1278), we can now use WoodForTrees.org to plot the TRUE MEAN GLOBAL TEMPERTURE[sic], which does not involve the use of the invisible magnifying glass.
Who needs a magnifying glass when the [OLS datum](http://woodfortrees.org/data/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset:13.97/plot/…) indicates a slope 0.00441563 per year, giving a poorly assumed linear temperature rise since 1850 of 0.7047K. Although, judging the [residuals](http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/plot/hadcrut3vgl/trend) visually, that is a good 0.2K underestimate.
Another own goal.
Cheers reciprocated.
Chris @1927,
That was SCAREY. I'm SCARED.
Where are you Girma? Hiding under your bed?
1300 Michael,
More likely wetting the bed, as Lord Munchkin is so fond of saying.
Bernard J. @1287
The acceptance of an ideas is when they move from a research papers into text books.
Here is my work referred in [text books.]( http://books.google.com.au/books?ei=tFSkSoKPFoTuswPM0bCNDw&ct=result&q=…)
This is the last time I will ever discuss about myself, irrespective of any amount of provocation. I will just ignore it.
Play the ball, not the man.
sorry
The acceptance of ideas is when they move from research papers into text books.
Girma,
What did you think of that graph Chris put up of the warming since 2008. Scarey huh?
Michael @1304
Agree.
One disagreement in the global warming debate is the selection of starting points to estimate the trend in global warming.
[Why is Africa Poor?](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003zt3q)
Girma,
We have played the ball, and you keep swinging and missing or taking called strikes. You have thus struck out several times. The truth is that you are a lousy debater and lost this one days ago. Like all lousy debaters, you ignore the vast majority of points raised by your opponents and keep rehashing those which are already discredited. I debated Bjorn Lomborg in 2002, and, whereas he was also a lousy debater and easy to counter in my opinion, you are even worse.
By the way, as the other posters are saying, this year is going to be much warmer than last year! So, using your own logic, it is warming!!!!
...and another is whether you can "estimate the trend" by drawing a line between your chosen starting and end points and ignoring everything before, after, and in between.
Of course, if you're an ignoramus or an idiot, or simply in denial, you'll decide that you can.
Girma Orssengo at #1291.
You are describing a very simple linear operation, nothing more complicated really than determining rise on run, and an operation in which differential calculus is hardly closer than a bull's roar to the process, so your use of the instantaneous change concepts dT and dY is unjustified - I think you were actually struggling to find ÎT and ÎY.
Whatever erroneous terms you might have employed, you have (as [TrueSceptic noted](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…)) shown NOTHING that determines how long a period of time is required to discern a signal from noise in a dataset.
It is patently apparent that yo do not know how to conduct such a determination, and almost as certain that you do not even understand the question.
It is for reasons such as this that I persist in trying to elucidate the nature of the work you performed for your postgraduate degrees. Your competence in scientific and statistical understanding is demonstrably lacking, and as such queries of this nature are very pertinent to the matters at hand, and are not simply playings of the man rather than the ball.
Such queries get to the very heart of the problems, that you demonstrate to all here, you have with very basic science.
So, once more, in a perverse attempt to see if you are able to redeem yourself: are you able to demonstrate to this thread how you would determine:
For pity's sake man, you have had over a week to crack a text book, or ask someone who knows, and thus to figure out how to do this and pretend that you knew how to all along.
Then there's this precious piece:
Orssengo, I have had both work published in medical texts that I have later demonstrated to be an inadequate description of the reality of the subject, and I have demonstrated other (decades-accepted) textbook ideas to be wrong.
Just because something is printed in a textbook doesn't mean that it is a reflection of reality; it simply indacted that it is a part of the accepted body of understanding at the time of publication. This is why textbooks are revised and updated.
It does not pass unnoticed though that you persist in 'playing the man' when it comes to justifying your stance. I suggest that you get over yourself, and use best scientific practice to support your claims.
To date everything you have posted has shown that not only do you not deserve the qualifications that you have scammed, but that you do not understand anything of the science that you are pathetically and unsuccessfully attempting to refute.
Girma says, apparently with a straight face:
*One disagreement in the global warming debate is the selection of starting points to estimate the trend in global warming*
Here is how that works. Honest scientists start the reference point at a time they realize as a minimum starting point for such a deterministic system as global climate control. In this case that would be 30 years or more.
The dishonest contrarians look at all of the points on a graph and pick the highest one and start their regression from there. It would not matter if that was 1998, 2006, 1983 or 1922, so long as it fits their distorted purpose. As it turns out, they are clutching at 1998, an exceptional year by any standards because of the most powerful El Nino in more than a hundred years which was responsible for 0.2 C of the warming.
Note that concern over climate change predates 1998 and the hockey stick graph produced by Mann et al. in Nature (also 1998) by at least 10 years, and even longer if we go back to the work of Keeling. There was a growing literature base on evidence for warming well before 1998, but the contrarians have decided that the evidence for it hinges on 1998 as a baseline year and to a large extent on data presented in the Mann et al. study.
I think this says a lot about the tactics of the denialists. They distort, mangle, twist, and fiddle with the data to suit their purpose.
Girma:
No.
It's perfectly simple.
Go back 30+ years from now.
Michael @1311
How do you arrive at 30+years?
Let us wait until the mean global temperature anomaly gets to +0.63 deg C before increasing the cost of energy and destroying the now-hardly-surviving billions of our worldâs poor. When waiting for this upper anomaly limit, we might be surprised with low mean global temperature anomalies similar to the 1970s.
If our bodyâs normal temperature range is 1.3 deg C, this same range can not be catastrophic for our globe.
According data at [WoodFreeTree.org]( http://woodfortrees.org/data/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/from:2005) we have:
Based on the above data, choose the most accurate conclusion.
According to data at [WoodFreeTree.org]( http://woodfortrees.org/data/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/from:2005) we have:
Based on the above data, choose the most accurate conclusion.
f) It is not possible to make a conclusion about climate on the basis of three consecutive years.
Or even on four years - as it seems Girma can't even distinguish between the quantities 3 and 4...
Girma Orssengo would know this [if he were able to understand the rationale and the execution of the appropriate statistics](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…).
Girma, I will answer your question to Michael (but Girma, you just DO NOT read!!!). I have said this many times before!!!!
Thirty years is the minimum requirement - the absolute minimum in fact - to be able with any accuracy to make quantitative predictions on global climate trends because the system is highly deterministic. This is common knowledge to virtually all scientists working in the field.
I have said this so many times and Girma ignores it every time. Its like I am speaking to a thick wall.
To your other points: climate change, along with other human-mediated environmental processes, are going to hit the poor countries the hardest. This is on top of the fact that poverty in the developing countries has been largely the result of unconstrained economic expansion in the rich world (see Patrick Bond`s excellent book, "Looting Africa: The Economics of Exploitation"). I have said enough about this point in past posts and do not wish to repeat myself.
Girma,
What is the difference is laws between those which you and Rand agree on, and the laws that existed in England 200 years ago?
At an IPCC Lead Authors' meeting in New Zealand, I well remember a conversation over lunch with three Europeans, unknown to me but who served as authors on other chapters. I sat at their table because it was convenient.
After introducing myself, I sat in silence as their discussion continued, which boiled down to this: "We must write this report so strongly that it will convince the US to sign the Kyoto Protocol."
Politics, at least for a few of the Lead Authors, was very much part and parcel of the process.
[John Christy, Professor of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama]( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7081331.stm)
Girma @1312:
That's the definition of climate. See Jeff's response above and the hundred other times prior to that when this has been explained to you.
Perhaps you may even have noticed it's referred to as 'Climate Change' not 'Weather Change'.
John,
Good to have you on this thread. With respect to your point, doesn`t that cut both ways? Since when has rigid science underpinned the conclusions reached by many of the contrarians? Why do you think so many of the think tanks and the corporations that fund in the United States and elsewhere are so hostile to the conclusions of the IPCC drafts and just about every National Academy of Science on Earth? I suggest that you read Mark Owen`s quite excellent book "Censoring Science" if you want to see how those in power intent on maintaining the status quo are trying to suppress the actual science with respect to climate change. If anyone is playing politics in my view, it is those in the denial camp.
So much for John being on this thread. We are stuck with Girma. My bad.
So, Girma,read my response. Who plays the political game more? You are a prime cherry picker.
Debate over. You lose. Don`t go away mad. Just go away.
Jeff.
If only it were John Christy above... we might have a better chance at meaningful discussion!
Jeff,
I find it striking that Christy's research competence is in one area (where he agrees that AGW is real), but where he differs with the the consensus is in an area outside of his competence (the ecologcial and human impact of that warming and CO2 rise).
Mark,
Yes, that is a very astute observation.I agree fully. This is the problem that many other scientists have - for instance, those who argue that increased atmospheric C02 will generally benefit plant life are not population ecologists but plant physiologists or breeders. They expunge any idea that plants exist in complex natural communities and are therefore dependent on a wide range of other above and below ground processes and interactions in determining their growth and fitness.
I am the first to admit that my understanding of climate science is poor but I defer to those in the field (most of the climate science community) who indeed argue that most of the current forcing has a human fingerprint. I also appreciate your comments along with those by Bernard, Michael, Luminous Beauty, Chris O`Neill et al. who are all making such excellent contributions with respect to the mechanisms underlying climate change (much, much better than my puny efforts).
I can certainly discuss the ecological consequences of warming though, as well as the ecological fingerprint that is over the current warming episode. This is where many of the climate scientists stray into deeper water, especially those who downplay to some extent the ecological consequences.
A few hours of silence....the Girma-Go-Round must be cranking up.
From that woodfortrees we also have:
1911-0.57275
1966-0.15
19890.109333
19980.526333
Thereby proving that there is considerable warming.
Isn't that right, Grima.
If you say you stand for the TRUTH, the science, then let us agree on the answer to my question @1314.
What is the answer?
f) as you've been repeatedly told
1305 Girma,
Exactly. You think it's OK to choose extreme points and draw a line between them, ignoring all other points. We think that is invalid statistically and call it "cherry-picking". We insist on looking at multiple trends using valid methods such as linear least-squares and rolling averages.
1306 Girma,
What does that have to do with the topic?
1312
Perhaps you'd like to explain how that works, as you keep repeating it? How will the cost be increased? Who will pay the extra? How will that affect the long-term availability of fossil fuels?
> What is the answer?
> Posted by: Girma
Yes, what *IS* the answer to the facts in #1327?
Girma,
Observe [Chris's graph](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2008).
Based on the above data, choose the most accurate conclusion.
a) the globe was warming for the last 20 months
b) there is no change in global temperature for the last 20 months
c) the globe was cooling for the last 20 months
d) the globe will warm in the future
e) conclusions can not made about the last 20 months' temperature just by looking at the temperatures of only those months
True Sceptic @1333
According to the graph, as the temperature was not monotonously increasing, the answer is none of the above. However, from the graph, we can say that the coldest month since 2008 was on January of that year.
Girma,
please visit Tamino's excellent blog for information on the way to use [trend lines](http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/embarrassing-questions/).
1334 Girma,
So, you think that only a "monotonous" increase or decrease means anything.
Makes a nonsense of 1314, doesn't it? Why did you ask it?
Eamon
That was very good link. Thank you.
Truesceptic @1336
At post 1314, the temperature monotonously decreases.
[Climate change theory has] been extremely bad for science. Itâs going to give science a really bad name in the future,â he said. âI think science is one of the great triumphs of humankind, and I hate to see it dragged through the mud in an episode like this.â
[Physics professor William Happer, The Daily Princetonian]( http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/01/12/22506/)
1338 Girma,
That is obviously [false](http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2005).
Girma keeps posting opinion pieces in place of science.
Perhaps he's finding it hard to locate the science back the opinions.
TrueSceptic @1340
I was talking about based on the yearly average.
> At post 1327, the temperature monotonously increases.
> Posted by: Girma
Adjusted for truth, Grima.
PS why the "yearly average"? Why not the "century average"? Or the "generation average" (25-30 years)?
Why not the monthly average? Where it's gotten MUCH warmer over the last 20 months.
1342 Girma,
I thought you preferred individual points and distrusted averages.
Girma,
Please answer Bernard's question.
The actual question, not one you made up.
I BELIEVE IN LONG-TERM GLOBAL WARMING
Based on the [TRUE MEAN GLOBAL TEMPERATURE]( http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset:13.97/plot/…) plot, here are my conclusions.
Since 1850, for more than a century and half, the globe has been warming at a constant rate of 0.44 deg C/Century.
Assuming this steady global warming rate continues, the global mean temperature for 2100 would be 0.40 deg C (0.44*92/100) greater than the value for 2008.
From the above plot, superimposed on the steady warming, there are short term cooling and further warming.
From the above plotâs data, relative to the steady global warming value, the maximum short term further warming was for 1998 of 0.4 deg C, and the minimum short term cooling was for 1909 of â0.3 deg C.
Assuming the steady global warming rate to continue, and taking both the short-term maximum warming and the short-term minimum cooling to be 0.4 deg C and it reamains constant, I predict the difference in the mean global temperature between 2100 and 2008 to be within the range of 0 and +0.8 deg C.
The steady global warming seems to be caused by the globe coming out of its little ice age.
Once more Girma ignores directs questions and goes off on yet another denialist meme.
> Based on the TRUE MEAN GLOBAL TEMPERATURE plot, here are my conclusions.
> Posted by: Girma
Pity your conclusions aren't supported by the data.
1911 -0.57275
1966 -0.15
1989 0.109333
1998 0.526333
> The steady global warming seems to be caused by the globe coming out of its little ice age.
> Posted by: Girma
Except it came out of its little ice age over a century ago and is more than half way through the glacial/interglacial cycle and definitely on its way into the glacial cycle.
Which begs the question:
Now that you have agreed that it IS warming (else why coming *out* of an ice age), why is it doing that when it's on the way back into the glacial cycle?
Choosing 1998 as a start date is "cherry picking". Measuring from the last maximum will always show a falling trend.
Choosing "about 30 years ago" as a start date is also "cherry picking" ! Measuring from the last minimum (around 1975) will always show a rising trend.
The instrumental record, for the last 150 years or so, shows alternating warming and cooling periods each lasting 30 or 40 years. It is too early to say whether the (very) recent cooling is just an inflection point or the start of the next cooling phase.
...
Figure 10.26 on page 803 of the AR4 WG1 report (I'll just type "AR4" from now on) shows the "Global Mean Temperatures" for the 6 main IPCC "scenarios" up to 2100. I was aware that these were derived from "ensemble means" of tens/hundreds of model runs, as their extreme smoothness implies.
These all show monotonically increasing temperatures, but they should only be used when comparing "like with like", i.e. with "extremely" smoothed versions of the actual temperature data.
Figure 10.5 on page 763 of AR4 shows "spagetti graphs" of approximately 20 models of 3 scenarios. These clearly show short-term cooling periods for individual model runs.
I seem to remember a (NASA ?) researcher saying recently that a 10-year cooling trend was "unlikely but possible" according to IPCC models, but that a 15-year cooling trend would cause serious questions to be raised. As the smoothed (HadCRUT3) temperature data only "rolled over" around 2003/4, the current "trend" will have to continue until at least 2015 before the IPCC needed to start worrying about this point.
However, if you "zoom in" on a diagram that superimposes the individual frames of Figure 10.26 of AR4, the fact that the model "projections" are all rising while the actual measured temperature is falling means that they may need to start worring sooner, especially if the actual temperature falls below the "95% confidence intervals" zone.
...
PS : "ad hominem" means "against the man", but after verification I agree that in the context of logical fallacies my use of the term was incorrect. Calling me a moron was "just" insulting, and the proper reaction would have been to ignore it.
Mark - BLR:
> Choosing "about 30 years ago" as a start date is also "cherry picking" !
No, we don't choose "about 30 years ago" as a start date.
We choose "30 years ago" as a start date, period. 30 years ago is 1979, not 1975, and certainly not a last minimum. And it still shows a rising trend.
You're just making up your own bogus argument in order to show that it's bogus.
Here is the data I used for my post @1347:
[GLOBAL WARMING]( http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/WoodFreeTreesGlobalWarmin…)
Cheers
[Here](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/plot/gistemp/from:1974/trend:%…) is an approximation of significant linear temperature climatologies in the historical record.
The word that Girma is seeking is 'monotonic'. 'Monotonous' is what its repetitive and repetitively debunked false assertions are. More damning evidence of its pathological lack of truth-telling capability.
The first NEW anomalies plot by yours truly!
[Mean Global Temperature Anomaly Relative to Steady Warming](http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/AnomalyRelativeToSteadyWa…)
Now, the only remaining debate is on what causes the steady global warming of 0.44 deg C/century.
Mark-BLT,
Moron is perhaps a bit harsh, given you have capably discerned the error in your ad hominem assertion. Good for you. More accurate would be ignoramus or fool, though still nominally insulting.
Clinically you are suffering from the [Dunning-Kruger Effect](http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:vlX_V9SqScUJ:www.apa.org/journals/…).
I hope you don't find this too demeaning. It is only human nature. With a little effort and training it is an easily surmountable disability. Unlike poor Girma, who seems intransigently mired in his delusions.
What you are failing to understand is that purely statistical extrapolation of trends, inflection points and so on are meaningless without some understanding of the physical processes involved, especially complex multi-variable non-linear, yet deterministic, dynamic systems like the terrestrial climate. Recent flattening (not cooling) of temperature rise is well explained by the recent solar minimum and La Niña phase of ENSO, as is the 1998 anomalous spike that creates the erroneous impression in some less than complete data sources of a lack of subsequent warming by the largest El Niño in recorded history.
What you need to demonstrate is why the [well known](http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm) and well understood radiative characteristics of human sourced greenhouse gases will have no future effect, given their continued emissions at or potentially above present rates, besides explain what otherwise has caused the gross temperature rise significantly above explainable natural variation since at least the 1990s and quite possibly since the middle of the [19th century](http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/ipcc2007/fig614.html).
Good luck.
ENOUGH
We have tolerated the moronic troll for over one thousand comments.
He has contributed nothing to a ration discussion. He has had his say and the only thing he has had to say was noise.
It was obvious that he was beyond the pail back when he claimed that you couldn't graph temperature in Kelvin because it was measured in Celsius.
Unless he is willing to correct the mistakes he has made in the thread, he should go.
Ban him already
Well, if this was a fight the ref would have stepped in a long time ago for Girma's own protection.
But it is kind of fascinating to watch delusion in action.
Hey Girma, have we at least managed to teach you that climate is a long term (ie > 30 yr) thing??
1355 Girma,
I suggest you write a paper based on your breakthrough analysis and submit it to [Energy & Environment](http://www.multi-science.co.uk/ee.htm).
(Just in case you are not aware of it.)
The approximation of a single [trend line on the anomaly plot]( http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/t…) looks very rough so I failed to accept it. However, the approximation of the [trend line on the true mean global temperature plot]( http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset:13.97/plot/…) looks convincing, with short term warming and cooling about this trend line. This trend line has a slope of 0.44 deg C/ Century. Seeing is believing!
Ah, yes, what a powerful test of statistical significance, the "looks convincing" test.
Bonehead.
Some of the comments directed towards Mark BLT are perhaps misplaced.
Mark I assume you are coping some abuse here because your arguments come bundled with Girma's nonsense. If you bring the same questions/discussion points to another thread you may receive a less frustrated more considered/generous response.
My advice try and pick a thread where the arguments have not deteriorated into such a farce.
Girma, somewhere in this long discussion you asked some rational questions. That was a long time ago. You've now been regressing for some time.
If you think your current direction is sensible I have no desire to save you further emabarressment. Please try and publish. Quadrant would be a good place to start spruking your findings. They also share you right-wing politics.
Also note that Tim Lambert asked you to stop repeating your self. It saves us having to do the same. However if Girma continus to post on this thread I suggest any subsequent lurkers just read backward to find a several rebuttles to Girma's oft repeated nonsense.
Mark Byrne @1362
I learnt where to find data and online software on global temperature, which I found valuable. I thank Deltoid for this. I have stopped talking about percentages of CO2. I thank Deltoid for this. I now believe there is a steady global warming by 0.44 deg C / Century. I thank Deltoid for this. Is it not the purpose of a blog to learn from each other in a subtle way? The road may be torturous, but I am learning and I am grateful. I can now tell you temperature anomaly values from memory!
Girma, point 1: good
Point 2: good,
Point 3: you have not learned this from anyone here. Your task if you choose to accept it; is to come up with the three strongest reasons you can think of for why the IPCC does not believe 0.44K of warming will be the warming over this comming century?
Girma, you appear to have learnt something, at least, about the issues around climate change.
And at what point are you going to recant your support for [this](http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content…)?
And when will you admit the desciption of you as someone who has ["training and/or backgrounds that afford them a good understanding of climate change science, technology, economics and/or policy"](http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content…) may not be entirely accurate?.
Girma has seriously exhausted me with his nonsense. I am tending towards elspi`s position.
Here is the way I think Girma uses statistics with respect to climate change:
You do a regression a data set, and, even if it proves to be statistically significant, as the temperature increase between 1880 and the present is (especially since 1980), you then interpret that data according to (1) your naked eye, and (2) your pre-conceived political views.
In a paper, I expect Girma would writer something like this: "regression analyses reveals a significant positive correlation between time and mean global surface temperature (put F value and degrees of freedom here, P < 0.001). However, a closer look at the long term data reveals that the slope of the regression does not look very much, according to visual inspection (Fig. 1)." In the discussion he would write: "The results of this investigation show that it has apparently been warming since 1880, although to the naked eye the graph plotted does not look very impressive. Moreover, since 1998, the data has plateaued, indicating that the warming has stopped".
I am sure this is the way that Girma would mangle the data to present it in a paper. Of course it would be bounced by a rigid journal faster than a rubber ball, because he would be interpreting the data according to his own person interpretation of scale and significance, while downplaying the actual statistics. I am sure the article would be filled with "ifs", "althoughs" and "buts".
Here is a corallary that would be closer to my own field. Let us say that we are studying the long-term demographics of an aquatic invertebrate. This species requires wetlands in which to survive, and does poorly in high nutrient conditions. We know that two major human-mediated changes in wetlands in much of the world have been their draining and/or eutrophication due to high inputs of nitrogen from fertilizers etc. Let us assume that we have a good data base on the abundance of this species over the past 120 years from many different parts of its range, and we find that there been a general decrease in their abundance, even though some populations have remained stable or even increased. Let us also assume that levels of nitrogen have been measured in wetlands, as well as the extent of wetland loss.
We also find that, although this decrease has occurred, for some reason the census showed in 1998 that the species was found in lower numbers than in numbers in the following 11 years, although this was not statistically significant.
At the same time let us assume there are developers anxious to drain wetlands or powerful corporations that sell nitrogen based fertilizers that we know affect water chemistry. We also know that regulations limiting the amount of wetlands that can be drained or maximum levels of nitrogen that are allowed in wetlands will possibly hit the profits of the developers and fertilizer manufacturers, who will do everything in their power to downplay the scientific evidence showing that wetland loss and eutrophication are the two major factors driving declines in the abundance of the species in question. They will argue that the species is going through a natural decline in its abundance that is due to natural factors such as increased predation or pathogens that have nothing to do with human activities. There of course will be some uncertainty because the ways in which we measure the population dynamics of the species will have changed and improved over the course of time. The denialists will use this to their advantage too, arguing that old methods perhaps exaggerated the abundance of the species.
They will then fiddle with the statistics, saying that there has been no decline since 1998, ignoring the fact that in that year there were mitigating factors, for instance a large drought that hit many wetlands. They will show graphs revealing that, even as mean concentrations of nitrogen increased in wetlands surveyed between 1998 and 2009, the species has not apparently decreased, using 1998 as a starting point. Of course we know that an accurate estimation of the population changes in this species requires a long-term data set, but the denialists will ignore this and use 1998 as their starting point because it fits their narrative.
How would we interpret this scenario? I ask Girma explicitly this point. I admit the corallary has flaws due the much more complex factors involved in understanding climate forcings, but are there not similarities in the way that data sets are being manipulated by a small lobby of individuals anxious to downplay the anthropogenic contribution in both examples?
Girma,
I think you ought to read this in Sourcewatch about the International Climate Science Coalition which you keep trumpeting here:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tom_Harris_%28Canadian_engin…
Harris, the Executive Director of the ICSC has apparently been a corporate lobbyist. That says it all.
Mark - BLR:
The trend for ANY instrumental period at least 30 years long finishing now is always rising.
I think this deserves a place on its own:
>*In a paper, I expect Girma would writer something like this: "regression analyses reveals a significant positive correlation between time and mean global surface temperature (put F value and degrees of freedom here, P < 0.001). However, a closer look at the long term data reveals that the slope of the regression does not look very much, according to visual inspection (Fig. 1)." In the discussion he would write: "The results of this investigation show that it has apparently been warming since 1880, although to the naked eye the graph plotted does not look very impressive. Moreover, since 1998, the data has plateaued, indicating that the warming has stopped".*
What do I get in return for two hours of late night work? Ridicule!
Girma Orssengo.
You are fortuante that is is only ridicule that your 'work' is garnering here.
If you were a student of mine, or of any of my colleagues, it would get a most decided fail, and if you worked for the institutions and departments that I have worked/do work for, you would be called in to explain your incompetence.
If you repeated the quality of 'work' here at the frequency shown on this thread, you would have been shown the door, both as a student and as an employee.
Girma,
Bernard is correct. I drew up a hypothetical example above that appears for all intents and purposes to reflect your approach to climate science data sets. If I did the same thing in my field of research - ecology - then my work would be castigated.
I also do not know why you had to link an industry lobby group as an "authoritative voice" when it appears that one of their senior ranks is a PR man and industry consultant. The IPCC puts this body to shame, as does NOAA, NASA and the Hadley Centre. And what about the position reached by virutally all scientific academies in every country on Earth? Do they not count?
Girma, What in Jeff's satire @1369 do you consider is on a different scale of sensibility to your continued argument about cooling and magnifying glasses?
> What do I get in return for two hours of late night work? Ridicule!
> Posted by: Girma
Indeed.
But you seem to consider ridicule undeserved.
Why is this?
Your insanity DESERVES ridicule, since it is ridiculous.
From your favourite site, the annual anomolies:
1911 -0.57275
1966 -0.15
1989 0.109333
1998 0.526333
Showing that it is warming.
PS on the "30 years" thing, if the standard deviation of the annual temperature from the mean year-to-year and without modification to the climate mean is, say 1C, then the true mean can be calculated to within 1/sqrt(30) C of the correct value. 0.2C. Therefore to see a change in the mean of 0.2C over 30 years (0.015C per year, 0.15C per decade, 1.5C per century) you need to collect at least 30 years worth of data for each "bin" to see the mean change.
It is impossible to believe in the unbelievable.
It is unbelievable for people to say that they know the strength and direction of ocean circulation from the cold waters in the deep oceans, the cold ocean waters near the north and south poles, to the warm ocean surface water in the tropics that have a significant effect on global climate.
> It is impossible to believe in the unbelievable.
But being unbelievalbe doesn't mean it is impossible.
It's unbelievable to think that 100 tons of steel can fly faster than sound.
Please explain why you think it is unbelievable, Grima.
Reading "Because Ayn Rand is great!" should be a larf...
1360 Girma,
They are the same effing thing, except you've altered the scale! I can't believe how stupid you expect us to believe you are.
1370 Girma,
Two hours? On what?
TrueSceptic @1378
This is publishable material. Believe me! I will write up properly and get back to you guys.
1379 Girma,
Oh, good. We'll look forward to it.
Girma Orssengo.
I would suggest that you write it up and submit to Energy and Environment as quickly as you can. Someone else might be reading this thread and decide to gazzump you for the glory, and it really should be you who gets credit for the publication of your analysis.
I would humbly suggest though that you consider asking Jennifer Marohasy if she would co-author your paper. Her techniques are very similar to yours, and having another PhD on board will great expedite your processing by E&E.
The credit will definitely go to you however, and your contention for a Nobel is almost certainly guaranteed.
Mark
You wrote, It's unbelievable to think that 100 tons of steel can fly faster than sound. Please explain why you think it is unbelievable, Grima.
It is believable because of Bernoulli's Equation and Airfoil theory!
There is no theory on ocean currents, so not possible to predict El Nino.
> This is publishable material
WHAT is publishable material?
Girma, when I place a pot of water on the stove I cannot predict the timing of the currents it will induce. Therefore I cannot believe that the water will warm.
Girma Orssengo.
You're on fire.
I think that you should also publish the discovery that it is not possible to predict an El Niño event.
Hop to it man - there are others here who will be reading your material and immediately preparing their own papers, in order to beat you to the finish line.
Again, Energy and Environment should give you a warm reception.
Girma,
Mark thinks you are not upto publishing this material. Is he right about you?
1381 Bernard,
Not only did I already recommend E&E but I nearly recommended Marohasy too! Of course, there's always Watts, always keen to add his name to a list of authors or to host others' work at WUWT. :D
The bad news is that the climate models on which so much effort is expended are unreliable because they still use fudge-factors rather than physics to represent important things like evaporation and convection, clouds and rainfall.
Besides the general prevalence of fudge-factors, the latest and biggest climate models have other defects that make them unreliable. With one exception, they do not predict the existence of El Niño. Since El Niño is a major feature of the observed climate, any model that fails to predict it is clearly deficient. The bad news does not mean that climate models are worthless. They are, as Manabe said thirty years ago, essential tools for understanding climate. They are not yet adequate tools for predicting climate. If we persevere patiently with observing the real world and improving the models, the time will come when we are able both to understand and to predict. Until then, we must continue to warn the politicians and the public: don't believe the numbers just because they come out of a supercomputer.
[Freeman J. Dyson]( http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/199905/backpage.cfm), professor emeritus of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey
1386 Janet,
I'm sure he easily exceeds the standards required by E&E. How could you doubt it?
> It is believable because of Bernoulli's Equation and Airfoil theory!
> Posted by: Girma
Just a theory.
And there are many good papers that say this is NOT the reason for most of the lift.
Heck, that doesn't even explain bee flights!!!
According to you, such uncertainties means that this "Bernoulli's Theory" cannot be the explanation for a 100T metal object flying.
Try again, Grima.
I think Girma is doubting his own ability, he keeps posting opinions from [sick old men](http://deepclimate.org/2009/06/16/freeman-dysons-shadowy-canadian-conne…) instead of publishing real science.
Perhaps Mark and other doubters are correct about Girma? Perhaps its not good enough to publish?
> I'm sure he easily exceeds the standards required by E&E. How could you doubt it?
> Posted by: TrueSceptic
You sell Grima short.
He could fail even the standards of E&E.
And he still hasn't said WHAT is publishable material on this site he spent 2 hours doing.
I suspect even E&E would require actual WRITING in any paper they print, so he's currently failing E&E's standards at the moment...
Is this result publishable?
[Mean global temperature anomaly]( http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/AnomalyPaper.htm)
1392 Mark,
Ah, whereas I'm implying that E&E is so poor that...:D
He's just posted a link to his magnum opus.
1393 Girma,
Where's the rest of it? What am I missing?
No, it isn't publishable.
Even Playschool Science Publishing (if it existed) would want more than one graph with nothing on it apart from a wavy blue line and a wavy grey line.
If that took you two hours, who did you get to do the PhD work..?
Allow Eli to Godwin this thread and remove us from Girmas misery
"Ein Volk. Ein Reich. Ayn Rand"
1392 Eli,
You missed [the rest](http://denialdepot.blogspot.com/2009/08/all-you-need-to-know-about-rece…)
:D
The pertinent question is:
Could Girma get published at DenialDepot?
1399 Luminous,
I fear that DD's exalted standards for Blog Science might be too high even for Girma's very special type of genius.
Girmaâs contribution to this thread:
[New Mean Global Temperature Anomaly]( http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/AnomalyPaper.htm)
Global warming at a constant rate of 0.44 deg C/ Century.
Superimposed on these warming, the globe has a cyclical variation in its mean temperature between the range of +/- 0.4 deg C.
Girmaâs contribution to this thread:
NIL.
Girma,
Mark and Jeff think this is not of good standard. Will you prove them wrong and publish?
Janet @1402
I will check it thoroughly, and if correct I will definitely publish it.
Cheers
I love how on the one hand, Girma objects vociferously to magnification, but on the other has absolutely no qualms about essentially rotating the data to remove any trend.
Girma, Freeman Dyson made those comments [#1388] a decade ago,and even then they were outdated...
> essentially rotating the data to remove any trend.
> Posted by: Dave
Which, if you can do by rotation, shows that there is a trend...
Dave,
You wrote, I love how on the one hand, Girma objects vociferously to magnification, but on the other has absolutely no qualms about essentially rotating the data to remove any trend.
I will find out whether it is me who rotated it, or it was rotated before.
Hmmm.
Grima's "work" of two hours (one graph!!!) and he doesn't even know how he made it...
1408 Girma,
Simple: you just check the rest of your "paper", where you attribute your sources and describe and justify the processing steps you made.
You do have that, don't you?
> I will find out whether it is me who rotated it, or it was rotated before.
Girma, it's hard to say exactly what you've done, but guessing based on your description and your output, what you've done is:
* Take a noisy data series (temperature anomaly relative to a specific baseline value) which shows an average increase over time
* Ignore changes in rate of increase and plot a simple linear trend through the whole series
* Recalibrate the temperature axis such that the values represent the anomaly relative to the linear trend at that point, thereby cancelling any increase
This is a bit like rotating the series through as many degrees as the slope of the linear trend (not quite, but you see why I'm a bit baffled as to what the point is).
1411 Dave,
I haven't checked but [this](http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/WoodFreeTreesGlobalWarmin…) might tell us something.
To All
[Monotonic variation of mean global temperature]( http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset:13.97/plot/…)
[Cyclic variation of mean global temperature]( http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/AnomalyPaper.htm)
Thanks to all of you for a great debate.
What I am trying to do is to separate the monotonic part that shows a linear relationship between temperature and year, from a cyclic part that goes up and down about the trend line.
The cyclic part shows us that the warming in the 1998 is similar in magnitude and trend to that of 1878. That is, if the historical temperature records around 1878 is going to be repeated, the temperature after 1998 will be followed by cooling for a couple of decades.
Another important point that the cyclic plot shows us is that it varies with in the range â0.4 to +0.4 deg C about the trend line. This means that like in 1998, the temperature for 1878 has increased by 0.84 deg C (0.44 deg/Century from monotonic variation + 0.4 from cyclic variation) from 1778 to 1878. As a result, the warming of 1998 is not unusual. It just means that the cyclic variation of mean global temperature was at its maximum.
I thought subtracting 13.97 deg C (the average for 1961 to 1990) to be arbitrary. If you choose an average less than this value, the anomalies on the right side of the anomaly graph will be greater. If you choose an average greater than 13.97, the anomalies on the right side of the anomaly graph will be smaller. As a result, we should not make the selection of the average value (13.97 deg C) arbitrary as when it is subtracted from the measured values, we get the anomaly values. My Cyclic anomaly graph does not have this problem.
Cheers
Girma, the assumption underlying your comments at #1423 is that the movement in the temperature anomaly around its linear trend over the period since 1850 is a regularly recurring cycle. As if to emphasise this you spell cyclic with a capital C.
What makes you think this down/up/down/up is evidence of a regularly recurring cyclical pattern and what do you think the physical mechanisms driving that cycle might be?
Girma appears to have 'normalised'the data by removing a 0.44k/century trend. Thus by removing his chosen trend we can see that the current warming is higher than the 0.44k/century trend. Girma concludes that this must mean current warming is cyclic.
Girma, if you can't think on any other explanation for the result you have produced, my advice: publish Girma, publish.
Gaz @1414
You wrote, What makes you think this down/up/down/up is evidence of a regularly recurring cyclical pattern
Gaz, that is what the recorded data show. I donât mean to say that this cycle will repeat itself in the next 150 years. But for the last 150 years, that is the pattern we see from the data.
You also wrote, and what do you think the physical mechanisms driving that cycle might be?
I really don't exactly know the exact mechanism, but I guess it has something to do with solar cycle, ocean circulation cycle, air circulation cycle, earthâs orbital cycles etc.
Girma writes as if he was Galileo, and has stumbled on something that thousands of qualified climate scientists haven`t. How many of these pretenders have their been in history who claim to "change the course of science"?
It is the Flat Earth Society revisited.
What a laugh.
[Cyclic Variation of Mean Global Temperature]( http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/AnomalyPaper.htm)
The above cyclic pattern shows maximum warming for 1878 and 1998, a range of 120 years.
If we divide this range into four 30 year periods, we see the following APPROXIMATE patterns:
I'll bet you $100 that this year finishes with a final mean global temperature that is warmer than last year's.
"1938 to 1968 => Cooling"
Please Google "Sulphate aerosols" Girma
Hi Bernard,
Good point, and not only that - at the moment it looks like it will come in as the 4th warmest since 1880. The last 4 months will determine that. Also, the pronounced warming did not begin in 1968; it began in the late 1970s. Girma is playing with the data to suit his silly cycle theory. But 1878 is not long enough ago to discern 30 year cycles. One would have to go back a lot longer than that.
Eamon Girma should [also lookup](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1883…) sulface aerosols for *"1978 to 1908 => Cooling*".
In the [form of volcanos](http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1691916&blobtype=…). Especially [one Krakatoa](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v439/n7077/full/439675a.html).
He'd find that learning useful in studying the driver of the MWP.
IPCC: The world has warmed by 0.84 deg C in the last Century.
Girma: No.
Subtract the [cyclic global mean temperature variation]( http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/AnomalyPaper.htm) component of 0.4 deg C, which happened to be at its maximum near the end of the last century, and you will get a global warming of 0.44 deg C in the last century.
IPCC: Right
Grima: Wrong
1911 -0.57275
1966 -0.15
1989 0.109333
1998 0.526333
IPCC: Right
Grima: Wrong
1911 -0.57275
1966 -0.15
1989 0.109333
1998 0.526333
And as to:
* 1878 to 1908 => Cooling
* 1908 to 1938 => Warming
* 1938 to 1968 => Cooling
* 1968 to 1998 => Warming
* 1998 to 2028 => Cooling ???
where did you hide the values?
Ah, you hid them because they show:
* 1878 to 1908 / 1938 to 1968 => Warming
* 1938 to 1968 / 1998 to 2028 => Warming
A cycle requires a return to the starting point. Else it isn't a cycle, it's just variation.
Maybe Grima needs to work out how you can determine a cycle.
This is a *start*:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_frequency
Now, how many "cycles" does Grima's rotated graph have?
Not even one.
The parts that ARE there are not cycles either (Roy Spencer had a lot to say about there being a cycle of "between 30 and 300 years" or something like that, which is nonsense: if you have a cycle where your error in determination of its frequency is that large, you don't have a cycle, you have variation.
Add to that, that the removal of the positive trend of warming (thereby showing Grima's work is proving the IPCC right), you don't remove such a trend by saying "the rest of it is a cycle".
After all, day/night is a cycle, and quite a large one wrt temperature records.
Yet this doesn't mean we don't get warmer going into summer, does it.
Mark @1426
You wrote, Now, how many "cycles" does Grima's rotated graph have?
Mark, I agree, because of the complexity of the earths climate, the [anomaly cycle]( http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/AnomalyPaper.htm) I am refereeing to are not clear cut in the sense of sinusoidal waves. Instead, it is more like counting the local picks like for 1878, 1944, 1998 and the valleys for 1911 & 1976. As a result, from 1878 to 1998, the cyclical component of mean global temperature has completed two cycles.
Cycle 1. Cooling from 1878 to 1911 & warming from 1911 to 1944
Cycle 2. Cooling from 1944 to 1976 & warming from 1976 to 1998
And, hopefully
Cycle 3. Cooling from 1998 to 2028 ???
Mark @1426
You wrote, Now, how many "cycles" does Grima's rotated graph have?
Mark, I agree, because of the complexity of the earths climate, the [anomaly cycle]( http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/AnomalyPaper.htm) I am refereeing to are not clear cut in the sense of sinusoidal waves. Instead, it is more like counting the local picks like for 1878, 1944, 1998 and the valleys for 1911 & 1976. As a result, from 1878 to 1998, the cyclical component of mean global temperature has completed two cycles.
Cycle 1. Cooling from 1878 to 1911 & warming from 1911 to 1944
Cycle 2. Cooling from 1944 to 1976 & warming from 1976 to 1998
And, hopefully
Cycle 3. Cooling from 1998 to 2028 ? (we are 1/3rd way there!)
> . Instead, it is more like counting the local picks like for 1878, 1944, 1998 and the valleys for 1911 & 1976
So it's not a cycle, it's variation.
As in " the variation of a set of values around the mean will alternate between above and below that mean".
Tautological and absolutely no worth whatsoever.
Truly your PhD is worthless.
This spring Dr. (Syun-Ichi) Akasofu presented data to the "International Climate Change Conference" proposing an empirical fit to the instrumental temperature record of a linear warming of 0.5 degrees (C) per century (which he associated with recovery from the Little Ice Age / LIA) plus a "multi-decadal oscillation" (that he associated principally with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation / PDO) plus "natural fluctuations" (or what I would call "noise").
On several websites it says that he later "published" a paper detailing his presentation, but apparently this was only on his webpage ([this link](http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~sakasofu/little_ice_age.php)) and not in a peer-reviewed journal.
Note that even if the "paper" is only on his website, it is effectively in the "public domain", so attempting to publish an "identical" idea could lead to charges of plagiarism ...
After a quick Google search, it looks like Dr. Akasofu has slightly more "street cred" in the general scientific community that Girma has, but I do not know what Dr. Akasofu's reputation is in the smaller "climate science" community.
...
I noticed this "paper" when I saw a graph extracted from it (Figure 2b on page 7) while "randomly" surfing the Internet, which shows the extrapolation of his hypothesis until 2100, plus a line labeled "IPCC Projection" with a form of "error bars" !
I have several minor issues with this graph, including :
1) None of the 6 main IPCC "scenarios" corresponds with his "IPCC Projection". Scenario A2 has the right shape, but its center line ends at +4 degrees in 2100, not +3.
2) It does not say what precision the "error bars" correspond to.
.
What did appeal to me, however, is the basic "Scientific Method" idea of testing your hypothesis against the data, BUT ... checking his "natural cycles" hypothesis would require waiting until about 2060 (will temperatures go down until 2030, then back up again until 2060 (!), then start "rolling over" again), when it is unlikely that I will still be alive to see the results !
Checking against the "IPCC Projection", in contrast, should be possible by 2020 or so, as "down instead of up" would mean the actual temperature data should have exited the "error bars zone" by then.
In the TAR, there is a nice table in Appendix II (section II.4 on page 824) giving the "Model Average Surface Air Temperature Change" for each of the IPCC scenarios, with one line per decade from 1990 to 2100. This made it very easy for "interested amateurs" like myself to just "play around with the numbers" using nothing more sophisticated than an Excel spreadsheet.
In AR4, unfortunately, there does not seem to be an equivalent table. Figure 10.26 of AR4 (page 803) implies the data must exist somewhere, but so far I have been unable to find it on the web. I ended up getting approximate values by zooming in on the PDF file on my 17 inch monitor, measuring with a ruler, and using Excel for the "millimeters to degrees C" conversions. The results were sufficiently close to the TAR curves for me to be sure I hadn't made any major mistakes.
The surprise came when I also plotted the HadCRUT3 data series (offset by about 0.25 degrees to have a "common zero" in 1990), with the horizontal axis only going from 1990 to 2010, and the vertical axis going from -0.2 degrees to +0.7 degrees.
If you reply that this was a "very amateurish" thing to do, and is "cherry picking of the highest order" ... I agree with you 100% !!! The point is that the result is extremely "visually arresting", and I urge you to generate a similar graph and just look at it for 10 seconds.
The main thing that is missing from this graph is a set of "error bars" or "confidence intervals", but I do not have access to the data required to generate those. Figure 10.26 of AR4 has shaded areas representing "mean +/- 1 standard deviation", which if I remember rightly corresponds to about 67% probability (for Gaussian distributions, anyway).
I believe that normally "statistically significant" corresponds to 95% confidence intervals. If anyone has a link to someone who has access to the IPCC "raw data", performed the necessary calculations, and then posted the results on a "public" website, it would be greatly appreciated.
@Mark - BLR
I read your text a * few * times and I was "unable" to * parse * it sufficiently to **discern** your "point".
If someone has access to a "translator", performed the necessary translations, and then posted the results on a "public" website, it would be greatly appreciated.
ABSTRACT
Two natural components of the currently progressing climate change are identified. The first one is an almost linear global temperature increase of about 0.5°C/100 years, which seems to have started in 1800â1850, at least one hundred years before 1946 when manmade CO2 in the atmosphere began to increase rapidly. This 150~200-year-long linear warming trend is likely to be a natural change. One possible cause of this linear increase may be the earthâs continuing recovery from the Little Ice Age (1400~1800); the recovery began in 1800~1850. This trend (0.5°C/100 years) should be subtracted from the temperature data during the last 100 years when estimating the manmade contribution to the present global warming trend. As a result, there is a possibility that only a small fraction of the present warming trend is attributable to the
greenhouse effect resulting from human activities.
[Syun-Ichi Akasofu]( http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~sakasofu/pdf/two_natural_components_recent_…)
International Arctic Research Center
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Fairbanks, Alaska
Note: So, Girma is Wallace, not Darwin.
Girma, WTF are you doing? A 51 meg PDF file is a stretch even for a realtively mdoern computer such as mine.
Your quote makes no argument using any data, and ignores the real work done to pin down climate forcings of the last 150 years. Its so bad it is not even capable of being called science.
Dave,
Ditto for me.
1434 Janet,
Me too. It's odd that someone can type so much and yet tell us so little.
Girma:
No, Girma, actually you don't exactly have an exact fucking clue.
Girmaâs summary of this thread:
Since 1850, hundred years before the automobile, the [globe was warming]( http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset:13.97/plot/…) at the rate of 0.44 deg/ Century.
Superimposed on this linear warming, the [mean global temperature oscillates]( http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/AnomalyPaper.htm) with cooling and warming with in the range of +/- 0.4 deg C as follows:
As shown in the anomaly plot for the oscillation component of global mean temperature, the temperature for 1998 is nearly equal to that for 1878. As a result, the warming of 1998 is not unique, except the linear warming of the globe at 0.44 deg/ Century, which makes the temperature for 1998 the highest in recorded history.
Fasten your seat belts, dear bloggers, for global cooling in the coming couple of decades.
Wish you health, happiness & prosperity (to those who are not against prosperity).
With all my best wishes, which is as deep as the ocean & as high as the sky, to you all, including those who bashed me.
Bye Girma,
All the best.
So, Girma, are you going to take [my bet](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…)?
We can revisit it every year if you like, using last year as the reference point: you claim that temperatures will, on average, decrease relative to 2008 and I claim that they will increase.
I bet $100 that 2009 will be warmer than 2008. On completion of that bet I am willing to bet $100 (assuming that both you and I are still lurking the corridors of Deltoid) that 2010 will be warmer than 2008, and so on with 2011 through to 2015, all relative to 2008.
In order to maintain my privacy I would perfer that Tim Lambert act as arbiter, and also that he holds the money until completion of the bet. I am happy for Tim to subtract whatever costs he deems appropriate from the winnings of the successful bet-placer.
Let the betting and the seat-belt fastening begin.
Dear Bernard #1437
Can we change our bet a bit. Here is what I suggest.
For 1998, the oscillations component of the [mean global temperature was 0.4 deg C]( http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/WoodFreeTreesGlobalWarmin…).
Our most recent [global cooling]( http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/AnomalyPaper.htm) was from 1944 to 1976, for 32 years.
The one previous to the last one was from 1878 to 1911, for 33 years.
As a result, similar cooling should occur from 1998 onwards.
If the oscillations component of the mean global temperature for 1998 of +0.4 deg C is exceeded with in the next 1 to 32 years, I pay you $100 USD. If not, you pay me. You can win any time from today. But for me to win, I have to wait 32 years. I agree to all of the financial arrangement you proposed.
Good luck, as you desperately need it.
Cheers
Girma,
I had actually given up on this thread because your posts were not only becoming repetitive, but something of an embarrassment. However I could not resist this parting shot.
I actually wush that you would win this bet with Bernard. But you won`t. Given the lags in the system of climate control at the global scale, and the well-defined link between atmospheric C02 levels and temperature, Bernard would win hands down whatever way the bet is structured.
As we have said many times, the so-called cooling between the late 1940s and the mid 1970s was due to the masking effect caused by particulate pollutants (aerosols). In effect, they overcompensated levels of C02. This was not part of some natural cycle. As governments began putting through legislation greatly reducing airborne particulates in the 1960s and 1970s, the hitherto effects of greenhouse gases became apparent. Climate scientist Stephen Schneider discussed this way back in 1976. He suggested that we may expect warming as the concentrations of aerosols are reduced.
Also, most of us here are getting fed up with you using 1998 as a benchmark for warming. How many times must it be repeated: 1998 was exceptional by any standards. It was very significantly warmer than any year preceding it due to the biggest El Nino in a century which amplified the warming by as much as 0.2 C. You and your denialists ignore this every time.
Some advice Girma: stick to your computer or whatever it is you do, leaving science up to scientists.
Girma
I'm a practising scientist who follows this debate closely. Anyone who tells you that that AGW science is unequivocal is not practising science.And I've been reading all the drivel posted here. Paul Levenson mounts the strongest case except even he uses wobbly data or resorts to pure theory, neither of which is particularly useful in this instance.
Having dropped in here a few times and I strongly suggest that you dont bother with this bunch of wankers.
You can tell by the tenor of debate that most of the contributors here are not interested in the pursuit of the truth. All you do is fuel the fire of their prejudice. and that goes for the host unfortunately who you would think should act like a chairman.
You are far better off mobilising elsewhere.
Wong is wrong and off with her head at copenhagen I say.
Shorter hagar:
'm prctsng scntst wh fllws ths dbte clsly
hagar, mis-represents himself when he say he is "a practising scientist". Whether his job title says scientist may or may not be so. But there is no doubt ain't practising science when he says, "*Wong is wrong and off with her head at copenhagen I say.*" Nor is he practising science when he insinuates who is and isn't seeking clarity and evidence.
You can judge hagar by the strength of his evidence. Nice try at with strawman "unequivocal".
Girma, ask hagar why he needed to make up that "unequivocal" strawman if he had confidence in his own argument?
Just a reminder: I have already offered a $100 (USD) bet with Girma that the next decade will be warmer than this one.
> For 1998, the oscillations component of the mean global temperature was 0.4 deg C.
What does this mean, Grima?
Is how you got your PhD by spouting gibberish that *sounds* science-y and hope like hell the professor doesn't spot it??
Why do you insist on bad maths, Grima.
The 30 year mean isn't the difference between two numbers at 30 years apart.
> * 1878 to 1911 => Cooling by 0.7 deg C
what's the AVERAGE temperture 1879-1911?
> * 1911 to 1944 => Warming by 0.53 deg C
what's the AVERAGE temperture 1911-1944?
> * 1944 to 1976 => Cooling by 0.48 deg C
what's the AVERAGE temperture 1944-1976?
> * 1976 to 1998 => Warming by 0.67 deg C
what's the AVERAGE temperature 1976-1998?
Now how has the AVERAGE temperature changed over time?
You also seem to have moved the goalposts. Your 1944 figure isn't 22 years on from the 1911, but you've used 22 years elsewhere.
Why is that?
Let's see:
1878 to 1910 (22 years): -.52C
1910 to 1932 (22 years): +.38C
1932 to 1954 (22 years): -.08C
1954 to 1976 (22 years): +.00C
1976 to 1998 (22 years): +.77C
Now, what happened in 1907-1911?
TrueSceptic noted:
I have wondered why Girma has not already responded to TS's challenge. One would think that Girma would jump at the chance to accept both TS's bet and mine, if he so strongly believes in his climate modelling.
After all, it should be like taking candy from babies if his 'science' is correct.
Which is really what these bets are about - attempting to see how much Girma is really thinking about the science underlying the temperature trend. I find it curious, in this light, that Girma tries to alter the terms:
Picking the second highest extreme GISS residual over his trendline as his reference is not quite the same as simply predicting whether future years will be (after noise) colder, as according to Girma, or warmer, as suggested by most everyone else. As a consequence of autocorrelation effects, this makes it much harder to resolve the bet within the next 5 or even 10 years, or even longer, and it also allows for quite a considerable AGW signal to occur without breaking the strictures of his proposal.
Perhaps all Girma is attempting to do is to postpone the probable time of an acknowledgement of loss long enough that TrueSceptic and I might lose interest in engaging in bets.
Or perhaps he just wants to stack the odds much more in his favour, even if his theory is valid.
Girma.
In all of your mucking around with cherry-picked temperatures, and with bogus fittings of imagined causes for the spread of the temperature dataset, how much consideration of the physics of greenhouse gases have you engaged in? What of the science since Tyndall do you accept, and what do you reject, and upon what bases do you do so?
How do you incorporate the abiotic integration of temperature trends into your ideas, and most importantly, how do you incorporate the biotic integration of temperature trends into your notions? Jeff has repeatedly spoken of altered phenologies/life histories, and of shifts in ecosystem interactions and functions â on what evidence do you discount the large body of research that repeatedly connects such to unprecedented rates/magnitudes of temperature increase?
Hagar had me on the floor with this howler:
*I'm a practising scientist who follows this debate closely. Anyone who tells you that that AGW science is unequivocal is not practising science*
Well, Hagar, I am a practising (actually working, no practise involved) scientist and your statement is a complete strawman. Nobody here said the warming is *unequivocal* We argue that the evidence in favor of AGW is very strong and is getting stronger as new data comes in. In other words, *beyond a reasonable doubt*.
Given Girma`s continual cherry picking and fiddling with data to draw his conclusions, combined with an ability to understand time lags and the concept of scale, if you claim to be a "practising scientist" and do not recognize this, then you are in my opinion either (1) driven by a political ideology and blind to the science, or (2) working in a field miles away from this discussion. Either way your comment had no substance whatsoever.
I am writing a proper article on my interpretation of the mean global temperature anomaly data, and you will be the first to read it and bash me.
That is what I am doing the whole weekend.
Cheers
1449 Bernard,
I'll go a step further so that we don't have to wait so long: I will bet 10 USD each year for the following decade that that year will be warmer that the one 10 years before. This way, it's not all or nothing and we get regular updates.In other words, I bet $10 on each of these:-
2010 warmer than 2000
2011 warmer than 2001
2012 warmer than 2002
2013 warmer than 2003
2014 warmer than 2004
2015 warmer than 2005
2016 warmer than 2006
2017 warmer than 2007
2018 warmer than 2008
2019 warmer than 2009
2020 warmer than 2010
BTW, I don't think anyone has taken Tamino's [long-standing bet](http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/01/31/you-bet/).
[New Interpretation of Mean Global Surface Temperature Anomaly](http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/MyAnomalyPaper.htm)
By Girma Orssengo
Grima, how in the fuck did you ever earn a PhD?
Here is your analysis:
Create a "linear trend line fit" by some unspecified method.
Subtract the trend to get the residuals around the trend (this step is fine).
Pick the 2 extreme high and 2 extreme low residuals in 150 years of data, and ignore everything else (uhhhh.. WTF???)
Connect those 4 dots and deduce (?!?!?!) from that a cyclic component in the residuals (with less than 2 cycles in the total period?!?!) based on a total of 4 cherry picked years from the 150 annual values (?!?!?!?!).
Claim predictive value for that analysis (on what possible fucking basis?!?!?!)
Substitute your absurdly unsupported cycle for the actual trend that you subtracted out (you aren't smart enough to try to be tricky, Grima).
Predict that temperatures will cool because this alleged cyclic component of the RESIDUALS (not the trend!!) is in an alleged down phase.
---
If you really think this is a potentially valid analysis - and you are offering it under your own name on a thread with links to your professional web page, so I can only think you must - I have to say I truly don't understand how the hell any organization awarded you a PhD.
I'll make it even more immediate. I will bet $1 (USD) that each month is warmer than the corresponding month 10 years earlier, so
Jan 2010 warmer than Jan 2000
Feb 2010 warmer that Feb 2000
etc.
I know that's $12 per year, not $10, of course. I also don't expect to win every month!
hagar:
I think I know who the wanker is.
Mechanical Engineers like Girma are taught very little statistics and nothing about the statistics of regression. You don't need to know anything about those subjects to design machines.
To all leg kickers in a foot ball game:
Kick the ball, not the man!
Then act like a man Girma, not a ball.
Girma:
Take your own advice and stop being a hypocrite. If you want to "kick the ball", engage with some real climate scientists and stop trying to fool amateurs.
Everyone has the right to explain why you're so ignorant. Your ignorance, while not a fault on its own, is an essential ingredient of your arrogance.
Girma,
What about my bets? You have not replied to any of my suggestions. Why is that?
You have also failed to answer other direct questions.
TrueSceptic
I am trying to figure out what the most likely temperature in ten years will be. Until then I am not betting.
But I still maintain that the oscillating component of the anomaly for 1998 of +0.4 deg C will not be repeated in our life time.
> I am trying to figure out what the most likely temperature in ten years will be.
Because drawing a naive straight line through 150 years of one available set of temperature data and projecting it into the future without any reasoning for doing so whatsoever - all the while ignoring every single physical reason for temperature changes in that century and a half and all the supporting analysis and observation conducted by thousands upon thousands of dedicated individuals in that period - is a *clearly* going to give you a far more robust answer than *just checking the IPCC report*.
I'd like to see you apply your insane approach to analysis to a different statistic over that same time period, such as population growth, or rate of production of VHS tapes. What case could you make for plotting a straight line to represent the increase in silicon chip manufacture between 1850 and 2010?
1463 Girma,
Some time ago you said
Is that still your view?
TrueSceptic @1465
As the increase in the linear warming of the mean global temperature in 10 years is only about 0.04 deg C, if the temperature in the next ten years again reaches or exceeds the 1998 value of 0.55 deg C, I donât have any choice but to join the AGW camp with tails between my legs! Then the globe has stopped to behave the way it used to before, like 1878 or 1944.
I believe 1998 is a local maximum for the oscillation component of the mean global temperature anomaly like the one in 1987.
Sorry
I believe 1998 is a local maximum for the oscillation component of the mean global temperature anomaly like the one in [1878].
Dave @1464
You wrote, What case could you make for plotting a straight line to represent the increase in silicon chip manufacture between 1850 and 2010?
I believe in the cycles of the earth, the moon, and the sun. I don't, however, believe in the cycles of silicon chip manufacture.
[THE COOLING WORLD]( http://www.denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf)
There are ominous signs that the earthâs weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production -- with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. ⦠The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard pressed to keep up with it.
Girma,
I suggest you got to the primary sources rather then magazine stories. [This paper](http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0477/89/9/pdf/i1520-0477-89-9-13…), Cites the papers and reports on the science of the day. You can also use this to help understand the balance between GHG and aerosols to aswer [this earlier question](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…) that you had.
Mark,
Thanks for the definitive peer-reviewed article demolishing the "global cooling" myth that is nauseatingly perpetuated by many of the contrarians. I did not know of this article.
Girma`s problem is shared by many of the sceptics: they often do not consult the primary data or peer-reviewed articles but instead rely heavily for their disinformation on newspaper and magazine articles written by journalists.
I would like Girma to respond to this, now that appears he has embarrassed himself on this thread yet again. I am sure that he will try and wriggle his way out of it.
Mark Byre
Do you remember in my discussion with you I guessed the range for the mean global temperature to be 0.65 deg C based on the range for the human body?
Mark, is increase or decrease in the mean global temperature by 0.7 deg C natural or man made? Has this change ever recorded in history?
Cheers
Jeff @1471
Public opinion is primarily formed in the "information on newspaper and magazine articles written by journalists"
You call "disinformation" our attempt to bring out the truth to the public that a change in mean global temperature of 0.7 deg C is NATURAL.
I wonder who does the disinformation.
This is like trying to teach a snail to juggle.
Gaz, you are not kidding. I told you he would try and wriggle out of his last gaffe too. He has - and badly.
Girma, do not get me started on the mainstream corporate media. I am in Japan right now, it is late and I just do not have time to take you to task on your latest comedy routine. Heck, it was you who put up that shoddy old clip from 1975. What did you expect? It was wrong. As the NOAA study Mark put up showed, the concern of warming has dominated the climate science community from 1965 and onward with only a few exceptions. You are citing disinformation when you and other contras keep dredging up the throbbing corpse of the "global cooling" myth.
As for your frankly absurd comparison of the mean range of global temperature and that of the human body, this is like comparing apples and oranges. Let us get down to the nitty gritty: the most significant increase in the mean surface temperature on the planet has been since 1980. The evidence that this is due to human activity is immense and growing.
Stop beating around the bush with your silly pedantics.
> I believe in the cycles of the earth, the moon, and the sun.
But you ignore them totally in your "analysis".
> I don't, however, believe in the cycles of silicon chip manufacture.
Which just goes to show. How about you google "cycles of silicon chip manufacture". The industry goes through regular cycles of rapid growth and slowdown.
> a change in mean global temperature of 0.7 deg C is NATURAL
Idiot. The magnitude of the change does not determine the cause. Just because I am moving at a speed of 10mph, well within human running speed, does not mean that I cannot therefore be in a car...
[Helpful link omitted from post above](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=cycles+of+growth+in+silicon+chip+manufacture&l=1)
Dave @1476
For my comment, âa change in mean global temperature of 0.7 deg C is NATURALâ
You wrote, Idiot. The magnitude of the change does not determine the cause.
[OSCILLATIONS OF MEAN GLOBAL TEMPERATURE]( http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/Figure2MyAnomalyPaper.gif)
There was a 0.7 deg C DECREASE in global temperature between 1878 and 1911. Was this natural or man-made?
There was about 0.5 deg C INCREASE in global temperature between 1911 and 1944. Was this natural or man-made?
There was about 0.5 deg C DECREASE in global temperature between 1944 and 1976. Was this natural or man-made?
Jeff @1476
Could you please explain what caused the [COOLING]( http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/Figure2MyAnomalyPaper.gif) from 1878 to 1911?
**** Was not the magnitude of this cooling 0.7 deg C? ****
For a globe that is governed by cycles, is it ever possible for what went down must come up again?
Girma,
These questions have been [answered here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…) and many other times in this thread.
And your other question [answered here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…).
1469 Girma,
Why did you link to an article from 1975?
Dave @1476
The cycle of the earth, the moon and the sun are governed by the Universal Laws of Gravitation.
Could you please tell me on what law the "cycles of silicon chip manufacture" are governed by?
1466 Girma,
You have claimed many times that it is cooling and will continue to do so.
I have offered several simple bets on this. I'm not interested in theories about pseudo-cycles with no causal mechanism; I want to see if you will put some money where your mouth is.
You can choose month-by-month, year-by-year, or decade-by-decade.
BTW McLean, de Freitus, and Carter recently published a [paper](http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008JD011637.shtml) that should interest you.
Mark Byrne@1480
Monotonic cooling since 2005 (for annual mean temperature)! Should I thrust the data or your predictions?
We also know that 1998 is the pick of the oscillating global temperature cycle.
When do you start to believe in the data, in the science? Religion is hard to give up!
> Monotonic cooling since 2005 (for annual mean temperature)! Should I thrust the data or your predictions?
Incorrect: there has been no monotonic cooling since 2005.
And when did you decide that we should talk about the weather rather than the climate?
> The cycle of the earth, the moon and the sun are governed by the Universal Laws of Gravitation.
And you know what happens to these cycles?
They return to a previous value.
You know what else these cycles have that your "cycles" don't have? Regular periodicities.
You are deliberately mislabelling variations about the mean which BY DEFINITION goes above and below the mean alternately (but without a regular pattern) and cycles which go above and below the mean alternately (but WITH a regular pattern).
Either that or your PhD was written by someone else, 'cos you're an idiot, unsafe when left with a pen.
TrueSceptic @1484
Thanks for the link.
From previous cooling, I noticed that though the temperature is decreasing, the decrease is not monotonic. The decrease has a saw tooth shape. So I cannot bet on this.
What I can bet is if the temperature anomaly reaches 0.53 deg C from today to any time in our lifetime, I will deposit $100 USD into your bank account.
My prediction for the next maximum temperature cycle is around 2050! (1944=>1998=>2052)
Girma,
Your prediction ain`t worth beans.
1485 Girma,
2005 was warmer than 1998 according to GISTEMP. Do you stand by your declaration that
?
A simple yes or no, please.
Will you take any of my (or Bernard's) bets?
Yes or no?
TrueSceptic,
Girma`s answer will be no. Why? Because deep down he knows he is wrong. He is just fighting against the tide.
Girma, your comment is not only [wrong](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/mean:12/plot/wti/compress:12/plot/…) but irrelevant.
Now look at the data and set aside for the moment the fact that you made your mind up before you properly informed yourself on the evidence.
It is rude to ignore our comments, questions and suggestion and then repeat the same discredited nonsense. It is doubly rude to do so then suggest that you are doing science and we are basing our arguments in religion.
Now can you understand why several people, (Lee, Bernard, Mark, and others) have asked you to calculate the length of time required to discern the change in a of 0.15k/decade trend when it occurs in noise and cycles that force temporary changes of +/-0.50k/year?
When you answer this questions, you will know why depending on 3 years of data is not justified (or in your words its religion not science).
Girma, you really are floundering again.
> The cycle of the earth, the moon and the sun are governed by the Universal Laws of Gravitation.
This is just flat wrong. There is no "Universal Law of Gravitation" that governs anything. Perhaps you could put that phrase into google, read the wikipedia page that no doubt comes back on the first page, read how eg. general relativity fits into the mix, and then apologise for describing gravity in such ridiculously absolutist terms.
Perhaps you could then explain - in detail - how your reference to the orbital cycles of bodies in the solar system is in any way related to the warming or oscillation you *think* you've identified in your crazy bit of "analysis".
> Could you please tell me on what law the "cycles of silicon chip manufacture" are governed by?
Aside from your idiotic point-missing there, if I were feeling facetious I'd take a stab at that being the "law of Supply and Demand". In any case I was originally illustrating that if you're forcing a straight line to fit a noisy data series which does not have a simple underlying linear trend, without justification, and without any reference to what may be causing changes in that trend at different periods in time. If you plotted a straight line to represent the exponential growth in silicon manufacture, you'd get an equally ludicrous result. You skipped that by claiming that silicon manufacturing is not cyclic - which unfortunately for you it is.
Your tautalogical justification for the warming trend being linear and monotonic seems solely to be that you've drawn a linear trend.
Mark @1486
You wrote, Incorrect: there has been no monotonic cooling since 2005.
What do you call this: [Yearly Anomaly since 2005](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2005/compress:12)
Dave @1493
Does not the moon pull the oceans as it revolves around the earth thus affecting ocean circulation and therefore mean global temperature?
I cannot believe people still believing in global warming when the trend clearly shows for cooling. Look the right side of this [anomaly plot]( http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/Figure2MyAnomalyPaper.gif).
So cooling is warming. Warming is cooling. No body knows when the temperature is increasing or decreasing. This is mysticism, not science.
1488 Girma,
I hope you realise that the sawtooth shape doesn't matter. If the trend is up, I win most of the time; if it's down, you do. You don't really expect a monotonic rise or fall, do you?
I will take your bet, but:-
1. The loser to pay the money into a charity of the victor's choosing;
2. We agree on which data series.
1998 averages (Wood For Trees Compress 12 samples)
HADCRUT 0.526
GISTEMP 0.562
RSS MSU 0.551
UAH NSSTC 0.514
Note GISTEMP shows that 1998 has already been exceeded twice.
2005 0.619
2007 0.564
but we'll ignore those.
PS could someone have a look at 1998 [here](http://woodfortrees.org/data/wti/from:1979/compress:12) and see what they think?
1488 Girma,
I'll be(?) 99 in 2050. You do realise I could win any year but you can not win until one of us dies?
1491 Jeff,
I dunno. He's so convinced by his analysis (cyclomania?
1494 Girma,
Once more: 3 years is meaningless, but if you insist it means something then I assert that [this](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2005) is equally valid.