This year has seen the lowest frequency of hot days on record in the Midwest (MN, WI, IA, IL, IN, OH, MI) Less than 4% of readings have been over 90 degrees, compared to more than 50% in 1934 and 1936. The frequency of hot days in the midwest has declined by almost 50% since the 1890’s.
10.000 years of cooling.
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c015433918153970c-pi
Yes, but each of those 90 degree days was just a weather event, not climate. Sheesh.
I’m not a scientist, but logic seems to tell me that the hypothesis of the “greenhouse” effect of the trace gas CO2 has got to be wrong and greatly overstated.
Did the warmists claim to establish that hypothesis through actual laboratory testing and measurements or is it merely based on tree rings and ice core samples from the past?
That seems like very flimsy “proof”, at best.
If the direct correlation between CO2 levels and warming is as powerful as they claim it is, how do they explain no globl warming for 17 years if CO2 levels have continued to increase.
Again, not as a scientist, it seems to me that they had a pre-conceived opinion about CO2 and the “evils” of burning of fossil fuels and they are just trying to convince themselves.
If that is the case, it has nothing to do with science.
Daveandrews,
“Overstated” is actually understated when considering the temperature effect of adding more CO2 to the atmosphere. Here is how I understand it. The CO2 effect in the lower troposphere is saturated. What difference is it going to make if the mean free path of an infra red photon is 4 m or 3 m? The IR emitted by the earth’s surface is instantaneously thermalized in the lower atmosphere. The kindergarten image projected by some warmists of the CO2 as warming by “delaying” the escape if infra red energy to space is simply bogus. The actual CO2 greenhouse effect occurs in the upper troposphere where the atmospheric density is low enough for CO2 to radiate an appreciable portion of IR energy directly to space. That altitude fixes the top of the great thermal convection engine that is our troposphere. So an increase in CO2 from present concentrations will cause atmospheric warming only to the extent that it raises the height of the tropopause. And the tropopause height being not a function of CO2 density but mainly a function of total atmospheric density, a change from 300 ppm to 600 ppm is a density change of .0003 which would raise the tropopause (say 10 km altitude) by .003 km. For a lapse rate of 10C / km, this is a temperature change of .03C. A rough first order calculation to be sure but it shows that the man made CO2 greenhouse warming theoretically exists but is ridiculously trivial. I could be wrong but, I am not an atmospheric physicist, but after following this subject for seven years, I think that H2O is the only so called greenhouse gas that matters, and it matters not only for its radiative properties but because it exists in three phases with high latent heat properties in phase transitions..
Thanks for the info. You understand the physics much more than I do. It seems to me that the warmists are trying make “science” fit a social agenda. I think this will be looked back upon as one of the darkest periods of science, not one of the more enlightened.
daveandrews,
Actually, I am not sure that anybody understands the physics in spite of the radiative physics allegedly being well understood in the lab. The leap from lab to planetary atmosphere is maybe a “bridge to far”.
I would amend our elaborate on my statement above, that H2O is the only greenhouse gas that matters. I should have qualified the statement as follows. The greenhouse gas CO2 has a significant warming effect as concentration rises from 0 ppm to 20 ppm. At the present 400 ppm, we could burn all fossil fuel reserves with resultant miniscule to undetectable change in global temperature due to an “enhanced greenhouse effect”. I like the paint on window pane analogy by a skeptic scientist who’s name I can’t recall at this moment. The first coat of paint blocks 90% of transmitted light (which might correspond to 20 ppm CO2). Doubling or 2 coats of paint blocks 99% of transmitted light. And so on.
We can respect our elders as they laugh at how us youngin’s talk about hot weather.
The greater part of the 1930’s were simply torturous. Of course those same elders can now rest comfortably in air conditioned retirement homes now—that is until the EPA decides to take away the energy needed for cooling for all but the elite.
We did have in MN, ice in ice houses, cut from the lakes in the winter.
My folks often talked of trying to sleep partly submerged in the lake, trying to not let the mosquitoes get them.
As Tony presented earlier, most of MN had long stretches of 100 degree days in MN.
Robert–adding a little– the hypothesis (I do not accept it as a theory) suggests that the real culprit would be the feedback of water vapor- a stronger greenhouse gas. In effect the there would be greater downward radiation and (again hypothetically) more vapor at lower elevations. However, observations do not match the models.
The larger amount of humidity would keep the temps higher at night, making things more miserable.
Also, higher altitudes would see more cooling. Therefore in the tropics, over the oceans, a cold spot was predicted at high attitudes but it has not happened, another failure of the models.
It is the temperature gradient of warm surface to cool upper atmosphere that causes the atmosphere to move and thus to have weather. Without the greenhouse effect, no movement, no weather and no life on earth.
The alarmists predict that with that larger temperature gradient, there would be more movement and more extreme weather. But, it AIN’T happening.
Aside from the cooling trend, the most obvious fact derived from that chart is that Hansen’s congressional testimony created a lot of hot air.
GISS Think Tank: “Hmmmmm. We have to find a way to adjust individual data points! We can adjust averages and anomalies to hide the cooling, but histograms are going to be tough!”