Good Piece on "Global Warming"

Mostly stuff you've read before, but it's nice to see it out there.

Indeed, one overlooked mystery is why temperatures are not already higher. Various models predict that a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere will raise the world's average temperature by as little as 1.5 degrees Celsius or as much as 4.5 degrees. The important thing about doubled CO2 (or any other greenhouse gas) is its "forcing"—its contribution to warming. At present, the greenhouse forcing is already about three-quarters of what one would get from a doubling of CO2. But average temperatures rose only about 0.6 degrees since the beginning of the industrial era, and the change hasn't been uniform—warming has largely occurred during the periods from 1919 to 1940 and from 1976 to 1998, with cooling in between. Researchers have been unable to explain this discrepancy.

Modelers claim to have simulated the warming and cooling that occurred before 1976 by choosing among various guesses as to what effect poorly observed volcanoes and unmeasured output from the sun have had. These factors, they claim, don't explain the warming of about 0.4 degrees C between 1976 and 1998. Climate modelers assume the cause must be greenhouse-gas emissions because they have no other explanation. This is a poor substitute for evidence, and simulation hardly constitutes explanation. Ten years ago climate modelers also couldn't account for the warming that occurred from about 1050 to 1300. They tried to expunge the medieval warm period from the observational record—an effort that is now generally discredited. The models have also severely underestimated short-term variability El Niño and the Intraseasonal Oscillation. Such phenomena illustrate the ability of the complex and turbulent climate system to vary significantly with no external cause whatever, and to do so over many years, even centuries.

That bit about expunging the medieval warm period from the record was, to me, one of the most egregious abuses of science that occurred in this religious crusade. It's incontrovertibly documented by both scientific temperature proxies as well as thick historical record, and yet the global warming catastrophists simply pretended it didn't exist because it was so very inconvenient.

That's science?

Global Warming Quiz: Fun little widget. Thanks to RobG for that.

Did you know...

The world's natural wetlands produce more greenhouse gas contributions annually than all human sources combined.

Well, now I "know" it, in the sense I read it on the Internet. If true, it sorta put things in perspective.

Destroy the world's natural wetlands. 1, they're destroying the world, 2, they're friggin' petillent swamps filled with mosquitoes and crocodiles.

Really Good Blog Post On All Of This: A round-up of criticism and links.

Here's very muddy and unclear gif of a chart comparing solar activitity with temperature change:

Here's a better one that's been floating around on the Internet for a while:

I assume "solar wind" is a proxy for solar irradiance (light/heat output). Seems to, uhh, correlate pretty well, huh?

Thanks to Larwyn.

posted by Ace at 02:14 PM

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