Baby Steps

Uninteresting Putz admits the US is cooling. One baby step at a time.

ScreenHunter_727 Jun. 30 22.33

About Tony Heller

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32 Responses to Baby Steps

  1. _Jim says:

    Hmmm …. he connects with a line drive just outside the left field line marker? Ball one.

  2. Dave N says:

    I just checked their follower stats: 6.. is that right? If so, you have too much time on your hands 😉

  3. Eric Simpson says:

    As has been said by Steven himself, the US temperature record is the most complete and reliable. The spotty global record is more easily manipulated by the fear mongering Chicken Little Brigade. Indeed, because the US record is more reliable, it is quite likely that the US record is actually a better reflection of the global reality than the global record itself.

    And Uninteresting Putz is going to say that US temperatures, cooling since the ’30s, doesn’t matter… because the deep ocean has been eating the missing heat. Yeah right. But, considering the ocean, the flip side to that, as far the apparently feckless CO2, is that even if CO2 had some kind of punch, as Joe Bastardi said: CO2 has 1/1000th the heat capacity of the ocean, and next to the affects of the sun, oceans and stochastic events probably can not be measured outside the noise.

    • Brodirt says:

      That can’t be true,it doesn’t fit the US as anti-science, bible slapping, backwards luddites paradigm they’ve all been taught.

  4. au1corsair says:

    Did Big Brother tell him that 2% plus 2% equals 0.04%?

  5. Matt L. says:

    Unfortunately that hyperbolic 2% stat can do a couple things when it’s incessantly repeated worldwide: 1) convince numskulls (like me) that cooling of the USA isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme 2) paint anyone who believes it is a big deal with a jingoistic tint.

    However, if I take only one thing from this blog it’s: always verify the data. So I did and learned while the USA is 2% of world area it is 6.26% of land area and ranked 4 out of 259 in land area. (Russia, Antartica and China are bigger.)

    Alaska gives the USA a boost up the land area rankings. Since it’s geographically far away from the other 48 states, I’m not sure how this plays into climate science models/debate, but expect that it does.

    I threw together a quick spreadsheet that helped put it into perspective. May be helpful for other numskulls: http://1drv.ms/Ty9xyX

    • Eric Simpson says:

      Solid points, Matt. And the perspective I added a couple of comments up is that the US temperature is by far the most extensive and reliable. So, yes, the US record has to be given a lot of weight.

      • Gail Combs says:

        The US record has to be given a lot of weight because that is where most of the readings are taken.
        Graph 1

        Take a good look at this GRAPH 2 and note that when they dropped out stations in ~1990 it left mostly N & S American stations.

        You can really see how North and Central America dominate in this Graph 3.

        Now look at Raw data stations in North and Central America and you can again see it is the USA stations that dominate.
        Graph 4

        This graph makes it very clear it is the USA with a bit of help from Canada that make up the “North and Central America” stations that dominate the world data.
        Graph 4

        A very big thanks to KevinUK, Ex-nuclear physicist now self employed software developer, and Verity Jones for hosting his work.
        Graphs are from his article: The ‘Station drop out’ problem

      • Brodirt says:

        The US record should also be heavily weighted because of the 6 “super” countries we have the 2nd highest population density and the highest per capita wealth, thus our human activity, given the Malthusian’s contention, should have the most derogatory effect on the world climate. China is slightly smaller than us, but much more densely populated; given their comparative low population wealth/consumption rate, even with the Gov’t running the show, I would say that we equal them.

    • Ben Vorlich says:

      That’s a useful spreadsheet, more reliable than Wiki 😉

    • emsnews says:

      The real scandal is, these 2% yappers forget that CANADA which is as big, also had a very cold winter, too.

    • Brian H says:

      Re: Matt L. (Jul 1 04:09), The US is generally cited as the country with the highest quality and density of weather station coverage. Hence the intense effort to edit, manipulate and corrupt its data.

  6. Ted says:

    Matt L-

    Could you be missing a country, eh?

    As to the oceans hiding all the missing heat, I have a question. Has sea level rise accelerated since the “pause” started? As with everything else, water expands as it’s temperature rises.

  7. gofer says:

    If a headline read that July of ’12 was 2/10ths of a degree hotter than July of ’36, people would laugh so they always declare “the hottest on record” but never tell the public the actual temps. People would not believe this whole curfluffle is over tenths of a degree spanning decades. I will never believe in such accuracy. Besides who cares. They have determined that a global emergency is the way to obtain control over the “means of production”, energy, and thus the entire populace.

    Does anybody think tyrants vanished forever in the 40s? The history of the world is tyranny and the efforts to vanquish it. It never really goes away.

  8. Justa Joe says:

    .04% max irrelevancy = 400ppm of CO2

    • daveburton says:

      400 ppm CO2 is only twice as “relevant” (i.e., has only twice the warming effect) of 30 ±10 ppm CO2 (according to MODTRAN and the NCAR Radiation Code), not because there’s so little CO2 in the atmosphere, but because there’s so much: the relevant absorption bands are already largely saturated.

      CO2 in the atmosphere is a dye. It “colors” the atmosphere in non-visible parts of the light spectrum, and it greatly affects the passage and absorption of light at those wavelengths. But additional CO2 has only a small greenhouse effect, because the atmosphere is already nearly opaque in the affected absorption bands, because there is already so much CO2 in the atmosphere. MODTRAN calculates that 50% of the warming effect of current (400 ppm) CO2 level would be accomplished by just 20 ppm CO2 (for a tropical atmosphere w/ constant relative humidity). The NCAR radiation code says that 40 ppm CO2 would be needed to get 50% of the current CO2-caused warming, rather than 20 ppm, but, either way, the lesson is clear: we’re well past the point of diminishing returns w/r/t the warming effect of CO2.

      • Eric Simpson says:

        And what’s the effect on temperature of a move from 300ppm to 400ppm? I think near zero. Same with going from 400 to 500ppm.

        • daveburton says:

          Actually, going from 400 ppm to 500 ppm will have much less warming effect than going from 300 ppm to 400 ppm, due to saturation of the CO2 absorption bands in the atmosphere.

          “How much less?” is an interesting question, however. I played with another “model” tonight, to try to answer that question, using the U. Chicago’s web interface for RRTM:
          http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/rrtm/

          I tweaked the default parameters slightly to get reasonable temperatures, then plugged in 300, 400, and 500 ppm CO2, with all other parameters remaining the same, except that I tweaked the “Surface Temp (K)” parameter to find the temperature at which RRTM says that incoming and outgoing radiation would be equal (it reports, “it loses as much energy as it gains”):

          Direct sunlight (W/m2) = 1300
          Surface = “Earth’s average”
          Albedo (fraction) = 0.3
          Lapse Rate (K/km) = 6
          Stratospheric Height (km) = 15
          CH4 (ppm) = 1.8
          Relative Humidity (%) = 70
          Low Cloud (fraction) = 0.40
          High Cloud (fraction) = 0.15
          Drop radius (10-6m) = 10
          Aerosols = “Ocean”

          CO2 (ppm) = 300
          Surface Temp (K) = 286.4 – 286.8 (286.6 ±0.2 °K)

          CO2 (ppm) = 400
          Surface Temp (K) = 287.6 – 288.0 (287.8 ±0.2 °K)

          CO2 (ppm) = 500
          Surface Temp (K) = 288.2 – 288.6 (288.4 ±0.2 °K)

          Note #1: The ±0.2°C range of values in each case is due to rounding in the RRTM web interface.

          Note #2: Holding relative humidity constant at 70% effectively incorporates positive water vapor feedback into the calculations, which increases the warming effect of CO2 (or any other forcing).

          RRTM calculates that going from 300 to 400 ppm should have boosted temperatures by 1.2°C, but that going from 400 to 500 ppm should boost temperatures only 0.8°C.

          Conclusion: Due to saturation of the relevant IR absorption bands, which reduces the greenhouse effect of additional CO2 in the atmosphere, going from 400 to 500 ppm CO2 will have only about 2/3 of the warming effect that going from 300 to 400 ppm CO2 had.

          Caveat: Based on the historical temperature record, 1.2°C is obviously too high. CO2 was at 300 ppm around 1900, and it is at 400 ppm now. Even with pervasive jiggering of the temperature records, which has boosted the recorded warming over that period a bit, it still only totals about 0.8°C, rather than 1.2°C. Also, MODTRAN and the NCAR Radiation Code both calculate much smaller warming effects. So either other factors were at work (such as negative feedbacks or other forcings) which reduced the warming, or else RRTM miscalculated it (or both). But comparing the calculated 300-to-400 ppm warming to the 400-to-500 ppm warming is still useful, and the conclusion, that the next 100 ppm CO2 will have only 2/3 of the effect of the last 100 ppm CO2, is still probably correct.

        • daveburton says:

          Plugging in 1.2°C of warming relative to current temperatures, i.e. Surface Temp (K) = 290.0 °K, I found that RRTM says 568 to 685 (626 ±59) ppm CO2 would be required.

          I doubt we can ever get atmospheric CO2 levels above 600 ppm, so we’ve probably already seen most of the warming that the world will ever see from anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

        • Eric Simpson says:

          I appreciate your work here David. My opinion is the current temperature record and the longer term historical record (as ice core data) simply does not support the notion that CO2 has a major, or even a minor, warming effect. The warmists have got something completely wrong, like the feedbacks are negative, and / or with logarithmic absorption, beyond 100ppm certainly, CO2 just is not adding anything of significance. The truth should be told that there’s actually no evidence that CO2 causes warming, and this extended period of non-warming and the dramatic failure of ALL their climate models is reason enough to conclude that the warmists are just completely wrong… about CO2.

        • daveburton says:

          Eric, the warming effect is small, but real. You can verify it experimentally, in the laboratory. Add a dye to a clear gas or liquid, and then shine a bright light through it, which contains wavelengths that are absorbed by the dye. The gas or liquid will warm measurably due to absorption of the light, compared to its temperature without the dye, and a few ppm of dye is plenty to see the effect.

          I explained this at much greater length here:
          http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/24/water-vapor-feedback/#comment-1597598

          Here’s a great web site where you can learn much more about this, from a couple of excellent scientists who are true experts, and aren’t blinded climate activism ideology:
          http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com/

        • cdquarles says:

          That’s exactly right for conditions in a bottle. In the real atmosphere those conditions don’t or can’t operate in the same manner at all times. By looking at normalized S-B curves, people have come to believe that incoming solar during the day has no intensity at 15 micron centered wavelengths. Wrong. Using the Intensity version of S-B and comparing an approximately 6000K source to a 300K one, you’ll see that while the 15 micron is the peak for a 300K emitter, the intensity is some three orders of magnitude lower than the 6000K emitter, even though this part of the spectrum for the 6000K one is far away from the peak.

          “Greenhouse gases” clip the diurnal range of the skin temperature (skin composition being equal) of a body with an atmosphere containing them to one without, where the main energy source is a star. Depending on the time shape of the curve, the ‘average’ might be raised a bit. Given the meaninglessness of a global average in such cases, it isn’t a useful exercise.

        • daveburton says:

          cdquarles wrote, “people have come to believe that incoming solar during the day has no intensity at 15 micron centered wavelengths. Wrong.”

          Who thinks that? Low intensity is not “no intensity.”

          “Using the Intensity version of S-B and comparing an approximately 6000K source to a 300K one, you’ll see that while the 15 micron is the peak for a 300K emitter, the intensity is some three orders of magnitude lower than the 6000K emitter, even though this part of the spectrum for the 6000K one is far away from the peak.”

          That’s irrelevant, because the vast majority of the radiation from the hot source (the sun) misses the earth. You’ve forgotten that, even though the Earth is much colder than the Sun, the Earth emits as much radiation as it absorbs.

          On average, the total radiant energy emitted from the Earth is very nearly identical to the total radiant energy absorbed by the Earth, but the spectrums are different. In the “hot” short-wavelength part of the spectrum there’s much more incoming radiation than outgoing radiation, but in the “cool” long-wavelength part of the spectrum (including CO2’s ~15 micron absorption band) there’s much more outgoing radiation than incoming.

          “‘Greenhouse gases’ clip the diurnal range of the skin temperature (skin composition being equal) of a body with an atmosphere containing them to one without, where the main energy source is a star. Depending on the time shape of the curve, the ‘average’ might be raised a bit.”

          Sorry, I didn’t understand that.

          “Given the meaninglessness of a global average in such cases, it isn’t a useful exercise.”

          I disagree. The fact that temperatures on the Earth very widely, making it challenging to define a meaningful average, doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter whether those temperatures go up or down, on average. If they go down too much we could end up with all of Canada, New England, and the Great Lakes under thousands of meters of ice.

        • daveburton says:

          s/very widely/vary widely/

  9. Gail Combs says:

    Even the Russians cried FOUL:

    The Death of global thermometers GRAPH

    The Russians damning comments from the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA)

    Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations
    …Controversy arose after various allegations were made including that climate scientists colluded to withhold scientific evidence and manipulated data to make the case for global warming appear stronger than it is….
    the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.

    The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory.

    Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports.

    Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.

    The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.

    The HadCRUT database includes specific stations providing incomplete data and highlighting the global-warming process, rather than stations facilitating uninterrupted observations.

    On the whole, climatologists use the incomplete findings of meteorological stations far more often than those providing complete observations.

    IEA analysts say climatologists use the data of stations located in large populated centers that are influenced by the urban-warming effect more frequently than the correct data of remote stations.

    The scale of global warming was exaggerated due to temperature distortions for Russia accounting for 12.5% of the world’s land mass. The IEA said it was necessary to recalculate all global-temperature data in order to assess the scale of such exaggeration.

    Global-temperature data will have to be modified if similar climate-date procedures have been used from other national data because the calculations used by COP15 analysts, including financial calculations, are based on HadCRUT research.
    http://en.ria.ru/papers/20091216/157260660.html

    So it is not 2% of the land mass mucked up it is 14.2% and then you have to include New Zealand and Australia where citizen groups have found similar problems with the temperature data sets.

    Niwa sued over data accuracy
    The country’s state-owned weather and atmospheric research body is being taken to court in a challenge over the accuracy of its data used to calculate global warming.

    The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition said it had lodged papers with the High Court asking the court to invalidate the official temperatures record of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa)….

    The response? The Goat Ate The Data

    Australian Temperature Records Shoddy Inaccurate Unreliable Surprise!

    Announcing a Formal Request for the Auditor General to Audit the Australian BOM

    Threat of an AO audit means Australia’s BOM Throws Out Temperature Set Starts Again gets Same Results

    New paper finds adjusted temperature data in China has significantly exaggerated warming
    A paper published today in Theoretical and Applied Climatology finds that the data homogenization techniques commonly used to adjust temperature records for moving stations and the urban heat island effect [UHI] can result in a “significant” exaggeration of warming trends in the homogenized record.

    According to the authors, “Our analysis shows that “data homogenization for [temperature] stations moved from downtowns to suburbs can lead to a significant overestimate of rising trends of surface air temperature.”….

    The actual paper: Effect of data homogenization on estimate of temperature trend: a case of Huairou station in Beijing Municipality February 2014

    Phil Jones and Wei-Chyung Wang had in 1990, tried to make a paper fly that said the Urban Heat Island Effect accounts for a neglible portion of the warming trend found in temperature records. An amateur climate analyst, Doug Keenan accused Jones and Wang of fraud after Jones finally released some of the data. Doug Keenan said the claim that “there were ‘few if any changes’ to locations is a fabrication”. Then Jones and Wang admitted that the rest of the data are lost. Surprisingly the Guardian actually reported on this.
    http://reason.com/blog/2010/02/02/climategate-update-1-the-china

    • Gail Combs says:

      Steve I got booted into a snowbank again @ July 1, 2014 at 10:43 am

      Too many links but I wanted to make sure they were clickable – baby steps {:>D

  10. A C Osborn says:

    What the gullible don’t seem to realise is that WE live on the land surface of the Earth, that is the Climate/Weather that affects us directly, it is what we feel and experience.
    Satellites measure the lower troposhere and we don’t live there either.
    I doubt very much if the Fish/Whales/Dolphins/Penguins etc notice a 0.001 degree rise in the Ocean temperatures and I doubt it will affect the Climate very much either.

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