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The Spectacle Blog
I appreciate Bill O’Reilly informing his large audience that cap-and-trade is a con, as he has for the past two evenings. And I’m not unused to the ritual “hey, I believe in global warming but…” preface to certain skepticism that so many feel compelled to offer for reasons unique to each, one of which reasons is surely on occasion sincerity and equally as often a vain attempt to curry favor or credibility with those who will never afford it.
What’s sticking in my craw is O’Reilly’s insistence that since the 1970s it has warmed one dgree (F or C, he didn’t say, but as you’ll see it makes no difference). Specifically, it is that his vehemence is accompanied by a shrug and “look, it’s just what the stats say” or something very close to that, even sneering at others who disagree as unable to read a thermometer. OK. Let’s look at the thermometer.
Doing so we see that this claim is simply made up. Whether he’s making it up, is sure he heard it somewhere, his staff wrote it, etc., I of course do not know. But he’s clearly sticking with it, so let’s get something straight: no it hasn’t warmed a degree since the 1970s, or anything within a cannon’s shot of there. Thanks to the continued cooling we’ve even arrived right on the nose of the 30-year average for that period, which is another way of saying no warming at all, let alone anything statistically significant.
You don’t even get a degree since the 1970s by taking Jim Hansen’s torturing-slash-corruption of the data by emphasizing surface thermometers — hundreds of which have now been exposed to be placed on airport runways, above air conditioning units venting hot air and even above a BBQ grill, and the vast majority of which instruments in the U.S. violating applicable siting standards.
In short, that is to say that you can’t really even make that claim up. It’s pulled from thin, cooling air.
Here’s the totality of the satellite record (h/t for the mock-up to AlGoreLied and plotted data courtesy of Dr. Roy Spencer), which runs to 1979 because that’s when we launched these babies in response to equal certainty about Man-made cooling. You may be interested to know that that also was the end of a three-decade-plus cooling and the coldest decade of the century. Even given that, do you see a degree, or even any appreciable warming or a trend in there anywhere?
Let’s stick to facts. But drop the sneering at those who disagree and whose dispute is grounded in actually looking at the thermometer.
View all comments (17) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Chris Horner
http://spectator.org/blog/2009/07/15/the-fudge-factor
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MikeN| 7.15.09 @ 4:32PM
There are lots of different temperature indexes.
NASA's GISTEMP shows about 1F since 1970, as does Hadcrut.
Atmospheric temperatures is different from surface temperatures.
Bob| 7.15.09 @ 5:43PM
This is NASA's graph which shows a vastly different result:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.pdf
This aligns closely with HADCRUT:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/old-temperature/hemglob.gif
So, Horner, how do you explain the variation of data? From what I understand, there are times when you see a decade or two of slight cooling before you see a rise again. Look at the NASA data and you will see this temporary decline between 1940 and 1970 before the significant rise starts again. Showing a short term (like a decade) decline does not mean we are not in a phase of global warming in the longer term. This is why most scientists still believe in global warming. From a mathematics probability perspective, there is a high probability that the curve will rise significantly again given the longer term trend.
Unfortunately, political hacks like you haven't had a significant background in scientific method and mathematical probability theory. This is what you get with an undereducated populace. Unfortunately, the selected data used in the satellite measurements show what occurred after the downtrend prior to 1970 and is thus misleading in the longer term.
Roy| 7.15.09 @ 6:34PM
Ah yes, the Bob style of "argument".
First attack an argument that was not made(Horner did not argue anything about us not being in a long term warming trend; he argued against one particular alarmo-factoid, and even according to the chart you linked, from the coldest year in the 1970's to today has not been a degree of warming; still less from 1979).
Then spend paragraph after substance free paragraph declaring your opinion to be the result of superior education.
Still translating the Bible from the original Aramaic, eh?
Angel| 7.15.09 @ 7:05PM
Poor Bob--hoist with his own petard once again. LOL!
Joe| 7.15.09 @ 7:17PM
The NOAA GISS and Hadley data bases have dropped out 80% of the stations used in 1970s. NOAA/GISS/Hadley now using 1079 stations compared to well over 6000 i n 1970. Most of the lost are rural. There is virtually no coverage of Canada, Africa, Brazil. Threse data bases make no adjustments for urbanization although dozens of peer review papers suggest it is a serious contaminant including one by Hadley's own Phil Jones whom found the contamination for China was 0.1C per decade (1C per century).
Anthony Watts has found 90% of the nearly 1000 US climate stations surveyed rate poor to very poor in siting using the governments's own criteria and each isue leads to significant increasing warm bias (locations on rooftoops, parking lots, waste water plants, near AC exhaust, etc)
Satellite data measures the lower atmosphere but that correlates well with tempersatures. It is the only trustworthy measurement of temperatures. It has shown most recent months are in top 50% coldest in the 30 years of record while NOAA et al rank the months in top 5 of 10 warmest in the entire 120+year records.
With the right siting and corrections, probably only 1998 and maybe 2005 make it into the top ten.
Bob| 7.15.09 @ 7:37PM
Actually, Roy, he was making an argument against global warming. Nice try, but read it again.
Biblical Aramaic? Here's the wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Aramaic
Angel, it would be nice if you knew what you were talking about -- but alas, you've proven several times again that you don't.
Joe, the satellite data correlates generally with the other data. But it seems you missed the point. The long term warming trend has had downturns before that lasted a couple of decades but didn't counteract the longer term trend line. The satellite data did not exist during that period of time. It seems as if you're knowledgeable, so you would know that probabilities indicate we are in another short term (a couple of decades) turndown. There is no evidence of a trend reversal. Evolutionary trends occur over long periods of time -- and you do know that, don't you?
Angel| 7.15.09 @ 7:37PM
O'Reilly is such a pompous ass that I can't help laughing at him.
O'Reilly and Bob both went to Harvard.
Bob| 7.15.09 @ 7:39PM
One more point, guys and gals.... while it is clear we are in a long term global warming trend, I can find no strong evidence how much of it is manmade. That is really the important issue, isn't it?
c.j. acworth| 7.15.09 @ 7:54PM
Bob says "I can find no strong evidence how much of it (warming trend) is manmade." Yes, Bob that is the really important issue. I get so sick of all the shouting about the precise temperature of the planet, when it is abundantly clear that is has been much warmer and much colder than now at many points in the earths history, long before we showed up and started to burn dead dinosaurs. The good news is that global climate change has nothing to do with us. The bad news is that if the change is really bad, say another ice age, we probably can't do anything about it.
Joe| 7.15.09 @ 8:05PM
Bob,
Thanks, I agree with what you said. I personally believe we are in one of those 2-3 decade cool downs part of the 60 year cycles in the oceans and sun. In the cool phase, there are more La Ninas and global cooling. The current El Nino should be relatively brief if indeed we have entered this new cold Pacific phase.
Satellites as was noted started unfortunately after the last cold phase and won't help with long term trends.
There is likely some long term up (century scale) trend that relates to increased solar after the little ice age (Maunder and then Dalton Minima). We can't know for sure when that cycle will end and we revert to longer term deeper cooling . This solar cycle is behaving like those of the early Dalton, but we won't know for a few years.
The point is there is no clear irrefutable evidence that man is the main climate driver if we can have these cooling periods even as emissions increase globally.
Also two decades or so of colder temperatures instead if warming will hurt the world's economies by affecting agriculture and increasing energy needs while we have a misguided focus on carbon emission control and energy sources not ready for prime time.
MkeN| 7.15.09 @ 8:16PM
Bob, 1940-1970 is 30 years. Perhaps 1970-2000 should be called a temporary incline before the cooling trend starts again.
Barbarian Heretic| 7.16.09 @ 10:04AM
Great discussion. Here's a trend however, that I find maddening:
The AGW enthusiasts have of late begun to hedge their bets by identifying the cooling trend as a 'short term' decline within a long-term increase in global temps. The term has been most often defined a decade- but within this very comment thread Bob and Joe casually stretch the term to "a couple of decades" and "2-3 decades" respectively.
If this was REALLY science, the hedging would be less necessary...