Reader “Hal” posted this comment in response to my “Coldest Summer in Chicago” article :
OOOOO a cold summer. How about looking at overall trends. You might see that it is warming. Don’t do big oils bidding. Educate yourself.
Fair enough – let’s do that.
Since the start of the NCDC record, summer temperatures in Illinois are falling at a rate of 0.2 degrees F per century.
Since 1930, Illinois summer temperatures are falling at a rate of 2.2 degrees F per century.
Hal – do you feel “educated” now?
Love it. When you buy the lie, a smack down is waiting to happen.
I’m afraid you are still limiting yourself to summers, instead of checking overall trends as suggested.
Using annual temps instead of summers: Annual 1895 – 2009 Trend = +0.04 degF / Decade. One reason for this may be the often-quoted general principle that GW is more evident in winter than in summer.
Starting after the artificial sulfate particulate (smog) cooling of the 40s-70s: Annual 1970 – 2009 Trend = 0.34 degF / Decade.
This is a fun tool, thanks. One question: why 1930? Oh, wait – Dust bowl, record droughts = record temps. Never mind.
Really, you must try harder than that.
You can’t claim cooling due to sulfates upto 1970 and then use 1970 as your base point . If sulfates were responsible for cooling, then getting rid of them must explain at least some of the warming since.
Look up 2000-2010 on the tool and you will see a 0.64 degree per decade drop in temperature.
No, I’m afraid 1940-1970 is a widely accepted period for midcentury sulfate cooling. A few examples:
http://tinyurl.com/lotta70s
But I’m curious as to your conclusion – if sulfate cooling is widely accepted as abating by 1970, how is that responsible for any heating since 1970? Feel free to replace 1970 with another number here if you like.
If sulfates were responsible for cooling, then when they disappeared the temperature would have risen to a natural level.
I actually don’t believe in such black + white explanations anyway but I might be wrong!
I believe similarly. After all, there are so many climate inputs and forcings – all the many GHGs, particulates graded by color, black soot deposits, etc. The list is probably endless.
From what I can figure, the best insurance is to use instrumental temperature records, carefully cross-checked and globally averaged. Temps integrate everything, by definition.
And preferentially, satellite data – though the US satellite monitoring programs were fairly severely damaged by cuts during the Bush administration, which has recently led to problems in data from selected spacecraft.
So, just use the whole year…make it simple as that is what the AGW people do, use only CO2.
Doing so still leaves the 30’s as being far warmer than present, and the Temp trend as negative. Daaaa…
1. AGW people don’t only ‘use’ CO2. They also use methane, water vapor, even sulfur hexafluoride. AGW denialists, however, tend to only gripe about CO2. It’s spawned an acronym – “ABC:” Anything but Carbon Dioxide. =)
2. The 1930’s were only warmer than the present if you limit yourself to the US (hello again, dust bowl). Globally, the meat falls off that one like a roast chicken.
Much of the planet was warmer in the 1930s, one of the more notable places being Greenland.
Since the huge El Nino spike of 1997-1998, the Illinois 12-month temperatures (ending in August 2010) have declined at rate of minus 1.13 degrees per decade, which translates into a -11.3 degrees per century trend. Note, this figure includes the warmest decade evaaar! ending in 2009, plus the warmest year-to-date evaaar!
I wonder if the big oil guys paid off the NOAA/NCDC folks to exaggerate cooling in these charts over the last 10+ years. Damn, those ‘BO’ dudes are just so devious and conniving. 🙂
They’ll never put a dent in that mysterious AGW cabal that spans across every national government (no nation now extant refutes AGW theory), every scientific society (same story), 97% of climatologists, etc. etc. all conniving to convince you that they should be funded for more research when they could probably make more cash predicting long term weather trends for the military. Nyaah-ah-ah! 😉
Bottom line: Sometimes it trends up, sometimes it trends down. Down since 2000, up since late 70’s, down since mid 30’s, up since late 1800s, down since MWP. But one thing we do see: Nothing unusual since the industrial revolution. In fact, more years trending down than up. But hey, I want to “do the bidding” of Big Oil. Please? Call me!
CMB said:
I’m afraid you are still limiting yourself to summers, instead of checking overall trends as suggested.
The original topic was summer temps. and the referenced article was put forward as a counter argument to the news that this summer was the hottest on record and that is what was predicted by AGW theory, so get used to it. See: http://yubanet.com/enviro/2010-Summer-is-Preview-of-Future-Climate-Destruction.php
“Fall may be here but we should not forget the Summer of 2010 as a harbinger of things to come,” said Dan Lashof, NRDC’s climate center director. “And this should come as no surprise to anyone because scientists have been warning us for years to expect this kind of climate destruction as a result of carbon pollution.”
So, let me make sure I understand you correctly – you are indicting summer figures averaged across the globe using summer figures in Illinois..? Astounding scientific acumen. =)
The thread did start on Illinois temperatures not global.
And if you are measuring changes on a graph, you measure from peak to peak, or trough to trough, not trough to peak.
Your link:
http://yubanet.com/enviro/2010-Summer-is-Preview-of-Future-Climate-Destruction.php
Sorry, not Illinois. So, let me make sure I understand you correctly – you are indicting summer figures averaged across the globe using summer figures in Illinois..?
Oops – HIS link. But you see my meaning. =)
New York’s hot summer is described as proof of global warming.
http://www.climatehotmap.org/namerica.html
You should probably start reading from the beginning of this discussion, so that you have the context to understand what we are talking about.
Is this it?
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/summer-of-2009-was-the-coldest-in-chicagos-history/
Sorry for the bold text. Not my usual style.