Saturday 8 March 2008

When the wind rips the roof off my house and the sea drowns my front yard....

It seems that every time I look around some self-proclaimed Expert On Everything decides to deny global warming.
 
Tim Blair was at it again at the end of February. As was Andrew Bolt.
Andrew really gave it his all , including a link to Watts up with that? showing graphs (which perversely appear to disprove his case).
As usual Tim and Andrew have not allowed facts to get in the way of a sensationalised blog, showing a propensity to confuse relatively short-term observable weather patterns with real evidence against global warming.
 
NASA, taking a more balanced view of the methodology, reveals that when limiting temperature comparisons to a single month across a few years or to a particular location there will inevitably be a wide variation.
 
There is no getting away from the fact that all the graphs used in the Blair-Bolt denialist argument show a warming trend over the last 100 years, as evidenced by the following anomalous temperature graph. 
 
Global Annual Mean Surface Air Temperature Change
 
Fig A2 Line plot of global mean land-ocean temperature index, 1880 to present. The dotted black line is the annual mean and the solid red line is the five-year mean. The green bars show uncertainty estimates. [This is an update of Fig. 1A in Hansen, et al. (2006)]
Figure available as large GIF, PDF, or Postscript. Also available are tabular data.
(Last modified: 2008-01-11)
 
So Tim and Andrew - put a sock in it or I will be knocking on your doors when increasingly severe storms, flooding and saltwater inundation make it imperative that I have help in stacking sandbags around my house.

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

"There is no getting away from the fact that all the graphs used in the Blair-Bolt denialist argument show a warming trend over the last 100 years"???

Actually they show a warming trend to about 1940, from 1940 to about 1975, there was a cooling trend, which is a little strange since that's when global production of CO2 (the gas that is supposed to be causing the warming) sky-rocketed. (By the mid-70's, some scientists were predicting a new Ice Age.) From 1975 to 1998 the trend was upward again. From 1998 to 2007 the trend appears to have plateaued and now the trend seems to be towards cooling. Drops in the average global temps have in just the past year wiped out the entire '100 year' increase. Why? Because the proposition that global warming is being controlled by CO2 emissions is computer-model driven hype (and computer-models that have already been proven to be inaccurate at that). Solar activity is the principal determining factor in world climate and always has been. We are just going through the same warming and cooling cycles that the planet has always done. The difference is that today, as opposed to centuries or millenia ago, we have reasonable accurate means of determining the temp, records going back in time which record the trends and people drawing erroneous conclusions from those records. Plus scientists and news media making the most of the global warming hype to further their own interests.
Coastal areas have always been subject to erosion and storms. We've gone through a cycle for the past few decades of fewer storms than there used to be. Nothing in the climate stays the same for ever. That's the fundamental mistake people make about it. T.A. Yates

Anonymous said...

My understanding is Messrs Bolt and Blair are NOT saying temperatures aren't higher now than say 50 years ago, merely that it is not higher CO2 emissions that have caused it. Secondly as TA Yates points out in more recent times temperatures have at worst plateaued maybe even started a slight decrease.
You'd do better tyo attack Blair and Bolt for what they do say not what you hope they say.
The Nailgun

Anonymous said...

Why don't you just sell your property, at the greatly discounted price YOU think it's worth, (drowning front yard and all?)

Anonymous said...

Fortunately, the climate change armageddon that you so sanguinely predict will never happen.
For instance, will the oceans rise? Well, maybe, but as of right now, they're not rising. (oh, there's a fluctuation of about 2mm/year, within normal bounds of variability).
When those oceans really take off and swamp us all, then you can say "I told you so."
I'm not holding my breath.

Anonymous said...

You believe all the global warming hysteria and still live on the coast?

Moron.

Anonymous said...

"I live in the Northern Rivers. I like Green Power, green cars, recycling and leaving a small environmental footprint."

You could always stop using the computer, phone, TV, hot water service, car, various plastics products and any other manufactured item that requires the consumption of fossil fuels for it's prime production. Or else you'd come off sounding like a hypochondric hypocrite.

Anonymous said...

So what? So two people disagree. If you and all the other climate change advocates are right, why would you ever worry about 2 dissenters, let alone bang on their doors? Unless of course they are making people think and that worries you. If climate change is already here, why blame those two?

Anonymous said...

You prove that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Have you any idea how GISS calculates its data? It's an unproven method which uses data from stations up to 1200km away (Melbourne to Newcastle). The website you mentioned says "showing that the correlation of temperature change was reasonably strong for stations separated by up to 1200 km". Only "reasonably strong"? Is that the best they can do?

One major problem is wind. It could easily be cooling or warming one location but not another up to 1200km away.

We also find in one of the papers that the GISS site refers to "at low latitudes the correlation falls off more rapidly with distance for nearby stations". That's a major problem when 50% of the earth's surface is between latitudes 30N and 30S and a large chunk of Africa between those latitudes has poor coverage of historical temperature data.

How well does the GISS method incorporate sea surface temperatures? That's a vital point given the 30N-30S situation.

The GISS site relies on the work of James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt, two well known scientists-activists who are unwilling to consider the claims of other scientists.

You'll also find that GISS says of implies that it cannot account for warming by any causes so it must be man-made. It is utter arrogance to claim that scientists know everything there is to know about natural climate forces.

And if in the final analysis GISS does say that temperatures are rising then how can they determine if the measurements are a true reflection of the global situation or merely a consequence of local environmental changes (e.g. urban heat island effect, changes to vegetation in the local area, nearby buildings ...)

Repeat after me.... evidence of warming is NOT evidence of man-made warming.

WaterDragon said...

Knock yourselves out, kiddies.
Haven't enjoyed myself this much in weeks.
So many assumptions, so many misquotes in this comments thread!

Minicapt said...

"... so many misquotes in this comments thread!"
You, having quoted some entity "Hansen et al", are able to identify misquotes? I'm impressed. Keep up the good work.

Cheers
JMH

Anonymous said...

Au contraire bone head, I think I quoted you perfectly.

"I live in the Northern Rivers. I like Green Power, green cars, recycling and leaving a small environmental footprint."

You've certainly left a small intellectual one. Make you happy having all these commenters here, does it? Bet you bang your head against the wall because it feels good when you stop too.

clarencegirl said...

I should point out that NCV admin is able to identify when multiple comments come from a single source.
It would appear that at least one "Anonymous" likes the echo.
Hoping to appear a small crowd perhaps? Tut, tut.

Anonymous said...

"I should point out that NCV admin is able to identify when multiple comments come from a single source.
It would appear that at least one "Anonymous" likes the echo.
Hoping to appear a small crowd perhaps? Tut, tut."

You mean someone posted as "anonymous" and then did so again so as to appear more than the single person that she is? Hah, you got her good!

Cleo said...

http://www.escapeartist.com/OREQ14/Architects_Of_The_Floating_World.html

You need to adapt if you want to live by the water and you have signed up for the new religion.

Anonymous said...

which part of this poem aren't you twits getting?

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of rugged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.


This was published 100 years ago this year. Before man tried to kill the planet.

Anonymous said...

I like your graph. It's real pretty.

Perhaps you could extend it back to 18,000 years ago to prove that our ancestors in 17,000 year-old SUVs kick-started global warming?

Maybe you could also explain why the Vikings installed thousands of coal power generation plants to cause a global warming that by forensic evidence shows to be hotter than the present?

Or maybe you could understand that despite the fact that we know the world is getting warmer, there is zero evidence/proof to show that humans are responsible for a known quantity of it?

We know we contribute - after all CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but how much do we contribute? 1%, 2%, 90%? Do you know? I don't. Real scientists don't. All you got is two lines that happen to look pretty similar. That's not science.

As for this consensus of scientists. Well that's wonderful. If there was a scientific consensus about the tooth fairy, we're supposed to believe that too?

50 years ago there was a scientific consensus that the atom was the smallest particle in existence. It didn't take a consensus to prove that theory wrong. It took just a few men.

Don't get me wrong. I know global warming exists and I can see the graphs and historical evidence for it just as well as you, but here's one thing I know and you don't. Non Causa Pro Causa. Look it up.

Anonymous said...

You do realize that Hansen's temperature data was proven incorrect, yes? There was a Y2K bug in his program:

http://www.blogrunner.com/snapshot/D/6/2/46BBF5C701BDB62A/

Also, I might suggest that instead of whining for manly conservatives to literally bail you out, you might sell your house and move inland. Just a crazy thought.

Anonymous said...

Well, I'm html ignorant, so if you want to see that link (though I'm sure you don't, it being inconveniently factual), just Google "nasa temp data y2k bug".

richard mcenroe said...

Waterdragon translated

Anonymous said...

Run for the hills girly man.

Anonymous said...

What are you, a plant? You have roots and can't leave?

Jayzus, if you're dumb enough to build and live in a house on the water, knowing that the tide's coming in, how is that someone else's problem?

Here's a tip, swampy. Move inland when the water starts coming over the floorboards.

Unknown said...

Nice post. The graph from Giss clearly shows a warming trend.

The growing man made CO2 in the atmosphere is going to cause havoc with the weather in upcoming years.

A lot of the Bolt/Blair supporters cannot read a graph correctly. Some of them cannot even put a sentence together. They get confused.

Anonymous said...

Moron, bone head, girly man?
Do the flying monkeys also count with their toes or do they have to rely on Blair and Bolt to point out that they indeed have toes?