Michaelyya/contrarian-claims huggingface dataset:
In a new book worth reading, The Whole Story of Climate by E. Kirsten Peters, the author brings a wealth of knowledge to the subject from the standpoint of a geologist. As to the claim that carbon dioxide emissions are the cause of a warming that is not happening, she points out that The fact is, if human beings had remained hunter-gatherers throughout our entire history, never producing a single molecule of greenhouse gases through agriculture or industry, climate today would still be changing. It would be lurching toward higher temperatures, crashing toward vastly colder temperatures, or at least swinging toward something different from what has been. Thats just the nature of Earths climate.
We cannot stop carbon emissions because most of them come from volcanoes, he said. It is a normal element cycled around in the earth and my science, which is looking back in time, is saying we have had a planet that has been a green, warm wet planet 80 per cent of the time. We have had huge climate change in the past and to think the very slight variations we measure today are the result of our life we really have to put ice blocks in our drinks.
Michaels, Knappenberger, Lindzen, along with most of us, recognize that global temperatures have been warming in fits-and-starts since the "little ice age" ended in the mid-1800s.
As the widget shows, my model predicts for the imminent future a slight warming trending from 2011 to 2016. This modulation is due to the 9.1 year (lunar/solar) and the 10-11 year (solar/planetary) cycles that just entered in their warming phase. This decadal pattern should be distinguished from the fast ENSO oscillations that are expected to produce fast periods of warming and fast period of cooling during these five years as it happened from 2000 to 2012. Thus, the fact that during LaNina cooling phase, as right now, the temperature may actually be cooling, does not constitute a proof that my model is wrong as Leif claimed.
The variations in cloud water show some interesting low-frequency behavior. I have previously discussed the fact that these cloud water variations are correlated with CERES-measured net radiative flux, and so provide a proxy measurement for the net radiative imbalance over the ocean which suggest some portion of recent warming was simple due to a natural decrease in cloud cover.
We have heard a million times that if we dont stop emitting greenhouse gases, our inexcusable actions will result in a warmer earth, and the warming of the planet will cause icecaps and mountain glaciers to melt and sea level to rise. Island nations will be drowned, coastlines around the world will go underwater, Florida will cease to exist, and the World Trade Center Memorial could someday be a sight seen only by scuba enthusiasts. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says very clearly in the Summary for Policymakers Global average sea level rose at an average rate of 1.8 mm per year over 1961 to 2003. The rate was faster over 1993 to 2003: about 3.1 mm per year. Whether the faster rate for 1993 to 2003 reflects decadal variability or an increase in the longer-term trend is unclear. There is high confidence that the rate of observed sea level rise increased from the 19th to the 20th century. The IPCC crew reminds us that Global average sea level in the last interglacial period (about 125,000 years ago) was likely 4 to 6 m higher than during the 20th century, mainly due to the retreat of polar ice. It seems that sea levels fell and rose many times in the past and long before humans had any chance interfere with the natural order of things. There is no reason whatsoever to expect sea level to remain constant it never has and it never will.
Since there is no evidence of a manmade component in the warming of the global oceans over the past 30 years, the natural additional warming of the sea surface temperature anomalies of the North Atlanticabove the natural warming of the sea surface temperatures for the rest of the global oceanshas been a major contributor to the natural loss of Arctic sea ice over the satellite era. Add to that the weather events that happen every couple of years and we can pretty much dismiss the hubbub over this years record low sea ice in the Arctic basin. Personally, Id find it comicalif the desperation on the parts of AGW proponents wasnt so evident. That makes it sad.
Examination of ice cores suggests that it takes several hundred years for Earths vast oceans to fully adjust to cycles of global warming and cooling. Thus todays oceans may be still warming, expanding and degassing in gradual adjustment to the medieval warm era which peaked about 700 years ago.
Update: I am intrigued by the argument made by Professor Murry Salby in a lecture here (and discussed by Judith Curry here ) that the increase in carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere over the past century or so may be attributable 80% to the warming of the oceans rather than to fossil fuel emissions. In other words that the warming generated the CO2, rather than vice versa -- as happened in most of the Vostok ice core record from Antarctica. He points out that the rate of increase dropped sharply after Mount Pinatubo in 1991 and rose sharply after the very warm El Nino in 1998. He also takes issue with the argument that the ratio of carbon 13 to carbon 12 is necessarily a fingerprint of fossil fuels.
The current warm period is no anthropogenic product, rather it is the natural result of a repeating 1000-year cycle that goes back far into the past. Todays warm period does not even reach the temperatures seen in the past warm periods, which at times were 1 to 2C higher. Moreover it is important to note that during both of the past temperature maxima of 1000 and 2000 years ago, the CO2 values were at 280 ppm while today they are at 400 ppm. This indicates that the earlier warmer periods likely were related to natural solar activity and not to a rise in CO2 because there was no CO2 rise during those warm phases.
Yes, climate really does change. It was likely just as warm during the Roman warm period 2,000 years ago . . . followed by the Medieval warm period 1,000 years later. Global mean temperatures have since been rising in fits and starts since the little ice age ended about 150 years ago. Overall, this amounts to about 1.5 F since the mid-1800s averaging about 0.1 F per decade. Recent increases have been less than half of the rate predicted by more than 100 IPCC computer models.
As Ryan Maue responded, the IPCC might have better expressed this as "we have high confidence that natural variability dominates any AGW influence in observed/historical TC records". Pielke continues...
He told WND that weather does change over time and that the global system goes through cycles, some slightly warmer and some slightly cooler than others.
Anyone who has followed my posts over the past 4 years about the natural warming of satellite-era sea surface temperatures understands there is nothing in the data to indicate that manmade greenhouse gases played any part in the warming. That is, the data indicates Mother Nature, not manmade greenhouse gases, was responsible for the warming over the past 31 years. The same holds true for ocean heat content data.
But then something happened. The climate swang back the other direction (like it always does.) This was not a CO2 driven monotonic trend, but rather a cycle.
As I have often stated, this is an interglacial period, ice is supposed to melt. Otherwise there would still be a mile of ice on top of New York City. But despite evidence to the contrary, warmists continue to claim that glaciers are disappearing at an alarming rate.
The simple truth is that the world is driven by the sun and the climate has natural cyclical oscillations longer than our memories. Some run out to about 1500 years, and there is even evidence for a 5000 year cycle. When we define climate as 30 year average of weather, we are simply fooling ourselves that our puny lifespan matters.
Isotope data from Greenland ice cores and historic atmospheric and oceanic temperature records show a consistent pattern of fluctuating 25-30year warm and cool periods over the past 500 years. During the past century, five of these climate fluctuations can be tied to glacial oscillations, oceanic temperature changes, atmospheric temperature changes, and solar variation.
"In the absence of a convincing explanation for warming since the mid 19th century, as well as the multi-decade hiatus periods, I find the extremely likely confidence level to be logically insupportable." "JC message to Gavin Schmidt (as per our discussion on Dan Kahans blog): No I am not making things up re the 50-50 attribution argument. I regard it as a fundamental flaw in logic to infer high confidence in attribution since 1950, without understanding the warming in the early part of the 20th century and the mid century hiatus."
It also points out an essential feature of most credible thermometer records that cover many decades. Our climate is highly cyclical , driven in fact by ocean and solar cycles, not carbon dioxide.
The more logical explanation is that there are natural cycles in cloud cover which cause multi-decadal periods of global warming or global cooling.
The sea level in Israel has been rising and falling over the past 2,500 years, with a one-meter difference between the highest and lowest levels, most of the time below the present-day level.
Possible extraterrestrial origins of the observed cyclicities and one off major climate events are discussed, and the natural variation of climate is emphasized at all timescales including our modern epoch. The internal oscillation of energy flows through the ocean are well considered and run as a constant theme throughout the work. Concurrently, the atmospheric processes which result from the interaction of these oceanic energy flows and the direct input of solar energy on the diurnal, seasonal and longer timescales weaves a narrative which supports the often unspoken contention that wind is a powerful and poorly understood driver of climate at all timescales.
Has some corroborating evidence to suggest that cosmic rays are affecting the climate, with the extent.
The American scientists also performed afrequency analysis of the climatic fluctuations and found the characteristic cycles with periods of 1500, 90 and 60 years ( Figure 3 ). Schmidt and his colleagues interpreted the 1500 year cycle as those that Gerard Bond described earlier. The data set also contained the 60-year cycle, which likely mirrored the Atlantic Decadal Cycle.
Kamis doesn't think the air above the Pacific Ocean has enough energy to heat such large swaths of ocean by more than the 0.5 degrees Celsius for such a prolonged period. He also thinks these vent gases have a profound impact on our climate that's only now being understood. "The emphasis here is that the ocean is vast and largely unexplored. As such, we are finding more and more vents in the most unlikely of places," Kamis writes in an email. "These vents are very big climate controllers. Not everything can be attributed to the trace gas carbon dioxide."
???The amount of the sun??s energy that reaches the earth??s surface is the main driver of the earth??s temperature. Clouds are one of the least understood aspects of climate change. They can block the sun, but light can also bounce off one cloud into another cloud??s shadow and increase the solar energy hitting earth,?? said PNNL atmospheric scientist Evgueni Kassianov.
Following the demise of what has been called the Roman Warm Period, the authors note the existence of three consistently cold events that were centered at approximately 500, 700 and 900 AD, during what is sometimes referred to as the Dark Ages Cold Period. Then, from 1100-1300 AD, they report "the 18 O of Hongyuan peat cellulose increased, consistent with that of Jinchuan peat cellulose and corresponding to the 'Medieval Warm Period'." Finally, they note that "the periods 1370-1400 AD, 1550-1610 AD, 1780-1880 AD recorded three cold events, corresponding to the 'Little Ice Age'." Regarding the origins of these climatic fluctuations, power spectrum analyses of their data revealed periodicities of 79, 88 and 123-127 years, "suggesting," in the words of the authors, "that the main driving force of Hongyuan climate change is from solar activities." What it means
Now Piers has a very good record of forecasting the weather. He has been bang on about these cold winters. Like JMW Turner and the Aztecs he thinks we should be paying more attention to the Sun. According to Piers, global temperature depends not on concentrations of CO2 but on the mood of our celestial orb.
In my enthusiasm to pitch the importance of being explicit about the role of equilibrium, my email suggested that it could provide a test of which theory is right. If these scientists could show that the temperature gradient of the oceans had reached equilibrium by 1970, or 1986, then their grounds for dismissing a solar explanation for late-20th century warming would be upheld. If equilibrium was not reached, that would support the solar warming theory.
Report shows UN admitting solar activity may play significant role in global warming | Fox News
This paper discusses the effect of the greenhouse phenomenon and CO2 on global climate and suggests that numerical models that lack adequate knowledge of fundamental related factors cannot be used to extract "sound" conclusions. A very basic demonstration of this is done through a simple comparison between estimates of the forecast for global temperature increase obtained by various independent studies. Observing the global temperature and the CO2 atmospheric concentration though the geological aeons implies no obvious correlation. Physical observation on other planets like Mars and Venus, needing no numerical modeling, demonstrates the effect of the atmospheric-CO2 partial pressure on the temperature of the atmosphere. Moreover the CO2 role as a factor of danger or a benefactor for life is also addressed. On the other hand the role of the sun in the presently observed global warming has been greatly underestimated. Scientific evidence shows that the orbit of the earth and the Milankovitch cycles greatly affect the climate. A discussion follows pointing out the prime role that the sun should have on the earth's climate with regard to solar cycles' activity and irradiance, cosmic rays and cloud formation. The conclusion drawn here is that a natural signal of solar forcing has been mistakenly overlooked for an anthropogenic change, maybe owing to their quite similar effects on climate. For the moment science does not really have a complete and total understanding of the factors affecting the earth's complex climate system and therefore no sound conclusions can be drawn.
Secondly, this paper finds strong evidence of a 30-40 year lag between solar activity and temperature response. So what happened ~40 years after the 1960 peak in sunspot activity? Why that just so happens to be when satellite measurements of global temperature peaked with the 1998 El Nino , followed by the "pause" and cooling since.
"The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said.
Khabibullo Abdusamatov , mathematician and astronomer at Pulkovskaya Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Global warming results not from the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but from an unusually high level of solar radiation and a lengthy almost throughout the last century growth in its intensityAscribing greenhouse effect properties to the Earths atmosphere is not scientifically substantiatedHeated greenhouse gases, which become lighter as a result of expansion, ascend to the atmosphere only to give the absorbed heat away.
The IPCC mentioning the possibility of a GCR link to clouds is important here. Prof Nir Shaviv in his JGR paper on Using the Oceans as a Calorimeter found a large amplification by empirical study. Cloud change is likely to be proportional to solar change because otherwise our solar planetary model wouldnt successfully hindcast a good match to the paleo reconstructions.
That is the total global output by humanity. If the prescriptions of the Kyoto Accord were universally implemented they would reduce it by 0.035 per cent. Diligent mathematicians may, if they wish, apply themselves to calculating Scotlands contribution to that minuscule CO2 production, harmless in any case since solar activity is the likeliest cause of cyclical climate change. That is the threat to our existence in response to which Alex Salmond is destroying the landscape of his country and imposing hardship on its people. To the faithful, of course, this is the Great Leap Forward.
That actually shows high-temperature excursions in absolute measure is due to the fact that this episode of relative warming is superimposed on a relatively higher level of solar activity than the others, and from that point of view this observation may be a reason for claiming that the present period of global warming is exceptional.
In terms of F10.7 flux, Solar Cycle 24 peaked two years ago. The relationship between F10.7 flux and sea level rise indicates that a flux of 100 is the break-over between climate warming and cooling. The flux level has been at about that value for the last three years.
The reduction in Arctic sea ice and increase in Antarctic sea ice has happened before and is called the polar see-saw or polar anomaly. (See Svensmarks attached paper.) The polar see-saw occurs during Dansgaard-Oscheger events (also called Bond events). It is now apparent the later 20th century warming was a Bond event. Gerald Bond found evidence of cosmogenic isotope changes at each of a long series of warming followed by cooling events (he has able to track 25 events through current interglacial Holocene and into the last glacial period, at which point he reached the limit of the range of the proxy analysis technique) which indicates a solar magnetic cycle change caused the warming followed by cooling cycle.
The first paper to suggest the hypothesis that the sunspot number time-integral is a proxy for a substantial driver of average global temperature change was made public 6/1/2009. The discovery started with application of the first law of thermodynamics, conservation of energy, and the hypothesis that the energy acquired, above or below breakeven (appropriately accounting for energy radiated from the planet), is proportional to the time-integral of sunspot numbers. The derived equation revealed a rapid and sustained global energy rise starting in about 1941. The true average global temperature anomaly change -trend is proportional to global energy change.
My interpretation is much more direct. During our solar maximum, we had more UV that raised cloud levels and atmospheric height, leading to warm days. Now that the sun is taking a nap, UV has plunged, the atmosphere shortens, and we get lower clouds with colder days. Dont see any need for a CO2 thesis at all.
Well, the word "only" is somewhat cute in comparison with the "mainstream" fashionable ideology. The IPCC said that they saw a 90% probability that "most" of the recent warming was man-made. The present paper would reduce this figure, 90%, to less than 50% because the Sun itself is responsible for 1/2 of the warming and not the whole 50% of the warming could have been caused by CO2 because there are other effects, too.
Recall that the CO2 warmists in their half-baked models stubbornlykeep focusing only on total solar irradiance (TSI), which itself varies only about 0.1% over an 11-year cycle (and thus by itself is no real climate driver) and ignore all the other amplification mechanisms. Well, the results of this study, as do dozens of others studies, show you cant do that. Like it or not the sun is a real player. Eventually the CO2 warmists will have to admit this, as anyone with even just an inkling of intuition would do.
Indeed, Gerald Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) presented persuasive evidence that solar variability is leaving an imprint on climate, especially in the Pacific. According to the report, when researchers look at sea surface temperature data during sunspot peak years, the tropical Pacific shows a pronounced La Nina-like pattern, with a cooling of almost 1o C in the equatorial eastern Pacific. In addition, there are signs of enhanced precipitation in the Pacific ITCZ (Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone ) and SPCZ (South Pacific Convergence Zone) as well as above-normal sea-level pressure in the mid-latitude North and South Pacific, correlated with peaks in the sunspot cycle.
Abdussamatovs theory is that long-term variations in the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth are the main and principal reasons driving and defining the whole mechanism of climatic changes from the global warmings to the Little Ice Ages to the big glacial periods.
We hypothesise that Saturn and Jupiter provide the background drumbeat which governs the solar cycle. The modulation of that beat by the other heavy gas giant planets and magnetically active inner planets is the subject of further investigation which has been taking place on this blog and others. We are getting closer to solving the puzzle and being able to predict the future evolution of solar activity levels with a high degree of confidence. That will revolutionise climate science, because once we can confidently predict solar activity, climatologists will rediscover the Sun as an important climate driver. Watch this space.
In conclusion, the claim that the global surface temperature record is a fractional random signal fundamentally different from the harmonic nature of the astronomical signals is not supported by the data and careful analysis. The global surface temperature record appears to be made of natural specific oscillations with a likely solar/astronomical origin plus a noncyclical anthropogenic contribution during the last decades. Indeed, because the boundary condition of the climate system is regulated also by astronomical harmonic forcings, the astronomical frequencies need to be part of the climate signal in the same way the tidal oscillations are regulated by soli-lunar harmonics.
Some solar scientists claim that 20th century solar activity was merely ??? high ?? without warranting the ???grand maximum?? label, but that is a distinction without a difference. Whether ???high?? or ???grand,?? since we don??t yet understanding all of the ways that living inside the sun??s extended corona might affect global temperature (and there is the rub, that this understanding is still very immature), 80 years of any high level of solar activity could very well account for most or all of the modest warming over this period.
In sum, the attempts by warmists to dismiss the role of the Sun in climate change are based upon oversimplified and elementary analyses which conveniently ignore hundreds of peer-reviewed papers finding an increase of solar activity over the 20th century to a solar "Grand Maximum" at the end of the 20th century, solar-driven ocean oscillations -which have profound and lagged effects upon climate, and many other solar amplification mechanisms described in the literature, all of which provide plausible mechanisms and explanations for all or most of the global warming of the 20th century, as well as the current 18-year global warming "pause."
The sun has both direct and indirect effects on our climate. Solar activity changes on cycles of 11 years and longer. When the sun is more active it is brighter and a little hotter. More important though are the indirect effects. Ultraviolet radiation increases much more than the brightness and causes increased ozone production, which generates heat in the high atmosphere that works its way down, affecting the weather. Also, an active sun diffuses cosmic rays, which play an important role in nucleation of low clouds, resulting in fewer clouds. In all these ways the sun warms the planet more when it is active. An active sun in the 1930s and again near the end of the last century helped produce the observed warming periods. The current solar cycle is the longest in over 100 years, an unmistakable sign of a cooling sun that historical patterns suggest will stay so for decades.