Global Warming or Bad Data? Garbage in...

[Chris]

I addressed the central question: global warming or bad data. I chose global warming. I wanted to make my post short so I picked the change in ocean energy storage as the best evidence for

global warming. Approximately 92% of any energy imbalance of the earth goes into heating the oceans. During the 2005 to 2010 time period James Hansen of NASA measured an energy

imbalance of +0.58 +/- 0.15 watts per square meter. That measurement took place during a prolonged solar minimum so the energy imbalance was biased low. This is a very significant finding

and it indicates that global warming was obviously happening, it was not caused by internal variation or natural causes, and that there was additional warming in the pipeline in 2010 because the

earth's surface had not finished responding to the planetary energy imbalance.

Both paragraphs and Figure 2 are from skepticalscience.com, "Are Surface Temperature Records Reliable"

In 2009 some people worried that weather stations placed in poor locations could make the temperature record unreliable. Scientists at the National Climatic Data Center took those critics seriously and did a careful study of the possible problem. Their article "On the reliability of the U.S. surface temperature record" (Menne et al. 2010) had a surprising conclusion. The temperatures from stations that critics claimed were "poorly sited" actually showed slightly cooler maximum daily temperatures compared to the average.



In 2010 Dr. Richard Muller criticized the "hockey stick" graph and decided to do his own temperature analysis. He organized a group called Berkeley Earth to do an independent study of the temperature record. They specifically wanted to answer the question is "the temperature rise on land improperly affected by the four key biases (station quality, homogenization, urban heat island, and station selection)?" Their conclusion was NO. None of those factors bias the temperature record. The Berkeley conclusions about the urban heat effect were nicely explained by Andy Skuce in an SkS post in 2011. Figure 2 shows that the U.S. network does not show differences between rural and urban sites."

Figure 2. Comparison of spatially gridded minimum temperatures for U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) data adjusted for time-of-day (TOB) only, and selected for rural or urban neighborhoods after homogenization to remove biases. (Hausfather et al. 2013)

Frankly, I don't see that claim in the OP, only that bad input results in back output. You're just arguing your favorite climate change argument.

[Crepitus]

Hmmmm.

Glacier Bay glaciers were retreating in the 1700s - Ice ...

https://www.iceagenow.info/glacier-bay-glaciers-were-retreating-in-the-1700s
Glacier Bay glaciers were retreating in the 1700s. “Notice that those glaciers were retreating in the 1700’s, nearly two centuries before humans had much effect on CO2 levels,” says Burton. “Note the large deceleration ( reduction) in rate of glacial retreat during the 20th century, despite a dramatic increase in human CO2 emissions. “Advance &...

Denier site that goes against all current science.

Not a credible source.

[MMC]

Denier site that goes against all current science.

Not a credible source.

Oh.....because history makes your pseudo scientists look foolish, huh?

[skepticalmike]

Hmmmm.

Glacier Bay glaciers were retreating in the 1700s - Ice ...

https://www.iceagenow.info/glacier-bay-glaciers-were-retreating-in-the-1700s
Glacier Bay glaciers were retreating in the 1700s. “Notice that those glaciers were retreating in the 1700’s, nearly two centuries before humans had much effect on CO2 levels,” says Burton. “Note the large deceleration ( reduction) in rate of glacial retreat during the 20th century, despite a dramatic increase in human CO2 emissions. “Advance &...

Glaciers all over the world started retreating around the year 1850. The cause of this retreat was natural in origin (warmer sun and less volcanic aerosol forcing), but the decline in glacier mass

over about the last 50 years is due largely to increased greenhouse gas forcing.

"In its 2011 report, the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) measured 136 glaciers from Antarctica to Canada and from Bolivia to Japan, and found that almost 90% are shrinking." from skepticalscience.com


vertical axis is in units of meters water equivalent (MWE) which is volume divided by area, the depth of the melt water spread out over the glacier's surface area

Figure 4: Cumulative mass balance curves for the mean of all glaciers and 30 'reference' glaciers (WGMS 2008). from skepticalscience.com

2 paragraphs below were taken from skepticalscience.com "Are glaciers growing or retreating"Both approaches show consistent results (with all glaciers showing a slightly faster drop in mass compared to the 30 reference glaciers). There is strong mass loss in the first decade from 1945. Note that at this time, there were only several glaciers monitored - not quite a global sample. The mass loss slows down in the second decade so that around 1970, global mass balance was close to zero. Glaciers were in near equilbrium which indicates glacier shrinkage in the late 20th Century is essentially a response to post-1970 global warming (Greene 2005)

.After 1975, glacier shrinkage continues to accelerate until present. The mass loss from 1996 to 2005 is more than double the mass loss rate in the previous decade of 1986 to 1995 and over four times the mass loss rate over 1976 to 1985. When you narrowly focus on a few cherry picked glaciers, you can be misled into an incorrect view of global glacier trends. When you take in the broader picture, you see that globally, glaciers are shrinking at an accelerating rate.

From NOAA.climate.gov

Among the most dramatic evidence that Earth's climate is warming is the dwindling and disappearance of mountain glaciers around the world. Based on preliminary data, 2017 is likely to be the 38^th year in a row of mass loss of mountain glaciers worldwide. According to the State of the Climate in 2017,

[skepticalmike]

How are our glaciers doing? (from World Glacier Monitoring Service)

.

[Chris]

Denier site that goes against all current science.

Not a credible source.

Nice ad hom but it misses the mark.

5 Surprising Scientific Facts about Earth’s Climate

3. The Arctic and Antarctic Are Doing Better than Ever!

Yes, you read that right. The 10,000-year Holocene paleoclimatology records reveal that both the Arctic and Antarctic are in some of their healthiest states. The only better period for the poles was the 17th century, during the Little Ice Age, when the ice mass levels were higher than today’s. For the larger part of the past 10,000 years, the ice mass levels were lower than today’s. Despite huge losses in recent decades, ice mass levels are at or near their historic highs.

Source not good enough for you? It refers to Stein et al's 2017 Holocene variability in sea ice cover, primary production, and Pacific‐Water inflow and climate change in the Chukchi and East Siberian Seas (Arctic Ocean)

In this study, we present new detailed biomarker‐based sea ice records from two sediment cores recovered in the Chukchi Sea and the East Siberian Sea. These new biomarker data may provide new insights on processes controlling recent and past sea ice changes. The biomarker proxy records show (i) minimum sea ice extent during the Early Holocene, (ii) a prominent Mid‐Holocene short‐term high‐amplitude variability in sea ice, primary production and Pacific‐Water inflow, and (iii) significantly increased sea ice extent during the last ca. 4.5k cal a BP. This Late Holocene trend in sea ice change in the Chukchi and East Siberian Seas seems to be contemporaneous with similar changes in sea ice extent recorded from other Arctic marginal seas. The main factors controlling the millennial variability in sea ice (and surface‐water productivity) are probably changes in surface water and heat flow from the Pacific into the Arctic Ocean as well as the long‐term decrease in summer insolation. The short‐term centennial variability observed in the high‐resolution Middle Holocene record is probably related to solar forcing. Our new data on Holocene sea ice variability may contribute to synoptic reconstructions of regional to global Holocene climate change based on terrestrial and marine archives.

Read the graph backward, the left side is now, the right side 10000 years ago.

The sea ice extent was much lower before...before man could affect it.


Once again, it's a matter of scale. Alarmist show graphs going back 100s of years and it's alarming. But look back 10000 and it's not.

[skepticalmike]

This is in response to the article "5 Surprising Facts About Earth's Climate". I wrote it for another forum and then copied and pasted it here. I would like to say more about Arctic sea ice. About 50% of

the recent decline in Arctic sea ice is believed to be the result of natural causes and what happened thousands of years in the past is not very relevant to what is happening now. There was greater

solar incident radiation in the Northern Hemisphere during the Holocene Optimum and that can be accounted for by a greater orbital tilt and the precessional motion of the earth.



The first 2 "facts" are true but irrelevant to whether or not there is man made global warming that could result in a catastrophe. The other 3 "facts" are false.

1.) Climate doesn't change very much unless there is some external "climate forcing" to cause the change.

2.) Global temperatures in the first century and during the 10th century were not as warm then they have been during the last 50 years..Those past warming periods were not globally synchronized phenomenons.

3.)The Arctic and the Antarctic are not doing better than ever.
The 2 paragraphs below are from realclimate.org "The Antarctic ice sheet is melting and it probably is our fault"

"There’s been a nearly continuous stream of evidence supporting the view that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is in serious trouble – perhaps already undergoing the beginning of “collapse”, which John Mercer presaged more than four decades ago."
"The key finding is that we now have evidence that the increasing loss of ice from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is a result of human activities — rising greenhouse gas concentrations in particular. Now, some may be surprised to learn that this wasn’t already known. But the argument that humans are responsible has rested largely on the grounds that there must be a connection. After all, why should melting have increased only in the late 20th century, precisely when the impacts of anthropogenic climate change were becoming more and more apparent? It seems an unlikely coincidence." (realclimate.org)

Arctic sea ice has been declining rapidly during the past 50 years and the IPCC
is projecting that all summer Arctic sea ice will be gone by 2050.

4.)
The scientific consensus in the 2014 IPCC Fifth Assessment Report is that:

A large fraction of both terrestrial and freshwater species faces increased extinction risk under projected climate change during and beyond the 21st century, especially as climate change interacts with other stressors, such as habitat modification, over-exploitation, pollution, and invasive species (high confidence). Extinction risk is increased under all RCP scenarios, with risk increasing with both magnitude and rate of climate change. Many species will be unable to track suitable climates under mid- and high-range rates of climate change (i.e., RCP4.5, 6.0, and 8.5) during the 21st century (medium confidence). Lower rates of change (i.e., RCP2.6) will pose fewer problems.

— IPCC, 2014


5.) Carbon dioxide is the principle control knob and that is evident from paleoclimate studies and during recent decades. In fact. there is an article in Science magazine that explains it.
Abstract:
"Ample physical evidence shows that carbon dioxide (CO2) is the single most important climate-relevant greenhouse gas in Earth’s atmosphere. This is because CO2, like ozone, N2O, CH4, and chlorofluorocarbons, does not condense and precipitate from the atmosphere at current climate temperatures, whereas water vapor can and does. Noncondensing greenhouse gases, which account for 25% of the total terrestrial greenhouse effect, thus serve to provide the stable temperature structure that sustains the current levels of atmospheric water vapor and clouds via feedback processes that account for the remaining 75% of the greenhouse effect. Without the radiative forcing supplied by CO2 and the other noncondensing greenhouse gases, the terrestrial greenhouse would collapse, plunging the global climate into an icebound Earth state." (from Science magazine)

There was no global warming pause during the 2000-2016 time frame. Ocean energy storage continued unabated during that time and 92% of the earth's energy imbalance ends up in the oceans.

The IPCC did report that some extreme events like flooding and more powerful cyclones had occurred as the result of climate change and the IPCC projects with high confidence that
extreme weather events will occur in the future.