Recurring dreams of memes

A reader observed

You do know that satellites do not measure the surface temperature? The data is subject to considerable manipulation.
You do know the surface thermometers are reliable and show Earth surface [sic] has warmed around 1.2C — depends on the start date.
You do know Christy and Spencer at UAH made a mess of it and had to be shown what to do?
You do know most of the energy is heating the oceans?
You do know you are wasting your time? It’s not a scientific problem any more, it’s a political problem. Trump has gone.

I respond for the umpteenth time

For 17 years this blog has answered these and related questions, but these new answers are not cut and pasted, they are created afresh. A NASA article last updated on 22 July, 2020, talks about the UAH satellite measurements: Continue Reading →

Visits: 214

Climate models get energy balance wrong

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (July 26, 2011) — Data from NASA’s Terra satellite show that when the climate warms, Earth’s atmosphere is apparently more efficient at releasing energy to space than models used to forecast climate change have been programmed to “believe.”

The result is climate forecasts that are warming substantially faster than the atmosphere, says Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Read more…

Visits: 351

Record warming caused by El Nino, not us

Global Warming Science Fiction cartoon

One or the other, but not both

Our warming nerve has been over-stimulated. Every time we hear of warming we get defensive and/or afraid for the future.

But there’s an important feature to the latest “record high” years we would do well to remember — humanity had nothing to do with them.

Dr Roy Spencer discusses the 2010 global average temperature on his web site, concluding that the difference between 2010 and the previous record high year, 1998, is hardly worth mentioning.

In 1998, the world experienced the greatest El Nino ever recorded, pushing temperatures to a new record.

In 2010, the world again experienced a very strong El Nino. Fuelled by that alone, 2010 might have been another record year but for the end-game intervention of a very deep La Nina, which immediately dragged temperatures down so they did not exceed the high temperatures of 1998.

But it’s rather obvious that neither record year owes anything to man-made global warming. The high temperatures were caused by the natural cycles of the ENSO.

This is non-controversial and nobody denies it.

If anyone disputes this, and says it’s all been “exacerbated” by our emissions of CO2, they must answer this:

In 2010, the global average temperature anomaly was about +0.411 °C. How much of that was caused by human emissions?

If human emissions were responsible for, say, 0.4 °C over the last hundred years (which is disputed), that’s the same as an annual increase of 0.004 °C, which was neither here nor there in determining whether 2010 set a record temperature.

Be neither guilty, nor afraid.

Visits: 333

Cooling forecast comes true

crystal ball

NIWA, where are you?

The Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, is calculated from the monthly or seasonal fluctuations in the air pressure difference between Tahiti and Darwin.

In July last year three climate scientists published a paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research. “Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature” concluded that nature, not man, was responsible for “recent global warming.”

The paper, by John McClean, Chris DeFreitas and Bob Carter, shows that what the SOI does now, the temperature will do in between five and eight months’ time.

Simple. But does it work to predict global temperatures? Continue Reading →

Visits: 2064

The Great Global Warming Blunder

How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists

I’ve reposted Roy’s announcement because the book sounds stunning and because of the penetrating comments he makes, such as:

“Believe it or not, [a] potential natural explanation for recent warming has never been seriously researched by climate scientists.”
“Clouds are the Earth’s sunshade, and if cloud cover changes for any reason, you have global warming — or global cooling.”
“When properly interpreted, our satellite observations actually reveal that the system is quite INsensitive.”
“We already know that nature is gobbling up 50% of what humanity produces, no matter how fast we produce it. So it is only logical to address the possibility that nature — that life on Earth — has actually been starved for carbon dioxide.”
The Great Global Warming Blunder

Continue Reading →

Visits: 361

IPCC’s ‘lack of skill’ — scientific malpractice?

Dr Roy Spencer

In a dramatic recent article on his blog, Clouds Dominate CO2 as a Climate Driver Since 2000, Roy Spencer sets out clear evidence for internally-forced changes in the climate system. An internal forcing is a feedback, as when a change in temperature causes some other change which itself also changes the temperature.

For example, when temperature rises, it may cause an increase in atmospheric water vapour; that water vapour may condense into clouds, which in turn, by reflecting the incoming sunlight back to space, may cause the temperature to drop.

Such a process might be termed a thermostat, a natural regulator, keeping the temperature within its natural bounds, much as it has done for half a billion years and more.

In our example, the forcing was a temperature increase and the feedback was a temperature decrease – a negative feedback, moving the temperature in the opposite direction from the forcing. A positive feedback would move the temperature in the same direction as the forcing.

To date, the IPCC assumes two vital things: that climate sensitivity is high and internal forcing (feedback) is positive.

I do not follow every detail that Dr Spencer describes, but, after challenging these two assumptions and showing them to be wrong, his conclusion pulls no punches.


 

Clouds Dominate CO2 as a Climate Driver Since 2000

Last year I posted an analysis of satellite observations of the 2007-08 global cooling event, showing evidence that it was due to a natural increase in low cloud cover. Here I will look at the bigger picture of how the satellite-observed variations in Earth’s radiative budget compare to those expected from increasing carbon dioxide. Is there something that we can say about the relative roles of nature versus humanity based upon the evidence?

What we will find is evidence consistent with natural cloud variations being the dominant source of climate variability since 2000. Continue Reading →

Visits: 77

The audience strikes back

Emptiness of AGW theory

Dan Satterfield is an experienced TV meteorologist in Huntsville, Alabama—the town which is also home to the world-famous team led by Dr Roy Spencer that tracks the Earth’s temperature with satellites.

Despite his credentials, despite the fact that he deals with climate information every day and despite the fact that he parrots warmist dogma and calls it “climate science”, Dan evinces no actual knowledge of climate facts. And confronted with that fact, Dan finally confesses (by retreat) that he cannot debate the issues on which he claims to be passionate. In withdrawing, he demonstrates the emptiness of the AGW hypothesis.

When the audience strikes back, he cannot mount a defence. His incompetence is great, though he had poor material to work with. Still, alas, he doesn’t make a notable opponent; he is only today’s. One down, thousands yet to go.

Dreary and detailed

Dan’s post tries to describe the imagined “psychology” of “the deniers of climate change”, rather than accepting that there do actually exist real-world observations which fail to support the AGW hypothesis. Everybody believes the evidence of their own senses, and it has nothing to do with having a particular psychology.

What follows is dreary and detailed; I write it because I can, not because I imagine anyone will hasten to read it. Oh—and because I care about the truth. Observing Mr Satterfield squeezing and pinching the truth of global warming out of shape inspires me to pen this lone refutation, dreary and uninspiring though it may be, whose only reward might be a faint righteousness. Continue Reading →

Visits: 94

Set phasers on stun

Spencer claims that climate sensitivity has been “grossly overestimated” because of confusion over cause and effect between cloud cover and temperature. All the computer models now wrongly treat cloud cover as a positive feedback, amplifying warming. But some clouds directly cause warming (a forcing) and are not the result of warming (a feedback). He gives details and says they’re having to fight to get it published. more…

Visits: 76

Arctic Fairy Tale

The polar bear is now a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. It’s a major victory for environmentalists, who have been looking for a legal back door to limit carbon-dioxide emissions, but Roy Spencer reflects on what else it might mean. Will the bears now be saved? Did they ever need saving? What about freedom and prosperity? more…

Visits: 73