NASA Reports Astonishing Uptick In Surface Temperature

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We knew October was going to be hot. Only hours ago the Japanese Meteorological Agency came out with their data showing October 2015 to be the hottest October in their database. I’ve not checked yet to see if it was the hottest month in their database. October 2015 was the hottest month in that entire database, which goes back to 1891.

October 2015 was the Warmest Month in the Entire NASA Dabase

Now, NASA GISS, which also keeps track of these things, has come out with their numbers. The predictions from experts like John Abraham indicated that October 2015 might be in the 90s (that’s the anomaly value used by them, and that I use in the graphs here). If the temperature anomaly were to be high enough in the 90s, it would equal or break the record for warmest month ever in the entire direct temperature measurement database.

But it didn’t do that, exactly. Nope. The temperature of the Earth’s surface as measured by thermometers at heat height over land, combined with the sea surface temperature, was not in the 90s. It was 104.

SO, we are one full degree warmer than the NASA baseline, which is NOT the proper pre-industrial baseline. NASA uses 1951-1980 as their baseline, and that includes global warming that has already happened.

So here is the global average temperature anomaly for the entire NASA GISS database expressed as a running 12 month average, though October 2015:

giss_12-month_moving_average

And, here is the NASA GISS surface temperature anomaly for January through October, for all the years in the database, so you can see how 2015 stacks up so far:

giss_FirstMonthsOnly

The graphic at the top of the post is for all the Octobers only. If you want to use any of the graphs somewhere else, consider GOING HERE to get a higher resolution (just click on the graphic at that post and a higher res version will pop up).

Here are the warmest 20 months in the NASA GISS record of monthly temperature anomalies. Note that October 2015 is the warmest, and it beats out the previous warmest month, January ’07, which was during a strong El Nino year:

2015 OCT 104
2007 JAN 97
2010 MAR 93
2002 MAR 91
2015 MAR 90
2014 SEP 89
1998 FEB 88
2015 FEB 87
2010 APR 87
2014 OCT 86
2014 MAY 86
2015 JAN 81
2014 AUG 81
2013 NOV 81
2015 SEP 80
2005 OCT 80
2015 AUG 79
2014 DEC 79
2014 APR 79
2012 OCT 79

(Note that these are temerature anomalies, not temperatures. Boreal summers tend to be the warmest months globally, so the warmest month in actual temperatures is probably June or July. But climate change is tracked with anomalies for obvious reasons.)

Sou at HotWhopper has more, including the graph she makes every month showing surface temperatures in yet another way, HERE.

Andy Skuce has a post discussing October’s temperature reading, with another graph showing temperature anomalies across the months for several years, HERE.

And, R. Stefan Rahmstorf has posted the following graph here and here, for yet another look.
CT-egYtUwAAcDzC

Eli Rabett has taken Rahmstorf’s graphs for the last several months and turned them into a moving GIF, HERE.

Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:

In Search of Sungudogo by Greg Laden, now in Kindle or Paperback
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67 thoughts on “NASA Reports Astonishing Uptick In Surface Temperature

  1. It sucks. On the plus side, my wagers on the international predictions markets regarding this year setting a record high temperature will likely end in my favor. On the negative side…. we’re royally fucked if El Nino persists.

  2. time to invest in land in Alaska, Sakhalin etc – even here in southern New Zealand will probably be too hot, wet, windy and overrun with climate refugees. Good thing the process is soooo slowwww

  3. The top graph has the Y-Axis labeled correctly “degrees C/100” the next two graphs have what I believe to be an error in the Y-Axis “degrees C/1000”

    That incorrect bug in the script. Fixing now- Ed.

  4. The leading skepticualists probably won’t find this more than a minor speed bump on the exit ramp of reality.

    Nigel Tufnel of Brenchley: You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You’re on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you’re on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
    Interviewer: I don’t know.
    Lord Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
    Interviewer: Put it up to eleven.
    Lord Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.

  5. “I’ve been coming to this circle for about five years, and measuring it. The diameter and the circumference are constantly changing, but the radius stays the same. Which brings me to the number 5. There are five letters in the word Blaine. Now, if you mix up the letters in the word Blaine, mix ’em around, eventually, you’ll come up with Nebali. Nebali. The name of a planet in a galaxy way, way, way… way far away. And another thing. Once you go into that circle, the weather never changes. It is always 67 degrees with a 40% chance of rain.”

  6. We’ve also just had the last week in human history (probably?) with an atmosphere under 400ppm Co2 :

    http://blogs.agu.org/mountainbeltway/2015/11/09/the-final-days-of-sub-400-ppm-carbon-dioxide/

    (Apologies if you’ve already posted on this before & I haven’t yet seen it, just really struggling for time currently.)

    Oh & here, we’re seeing our bushfire season already starting and homes already under threat. My boss (& an ecologist who is a really great bloke) was called in to fight the Kyeema fire after our usual workday finished today :

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-17/fires-crews-busy-as-blazes-burn-across-sa/6948226

    Its only Novemeber and I’m already sick of summer and 34 celsius day today and 38 forecast for tomoorow here.

    See : http://www.metric-conversions.org/temperature/celsius-to-fahrenheit.htm

  7. If you look at the temperature chart over a span of 10,000 years you will see the trend has been steadily moving upwards. The earth is in a natural phase of warming – though the acceleration now occurring is the real concern. It will be interesting to see what research is cited during the Paris conference.

    1. Thomas Simon: “If you look at the temperature chart over a span of 10,000 years you will see the trend has been steadily moving upwards.”

      Er, you mean “downwards.” Earth has been cooling for the past 5,400 years up until the Industrial Revolution. If not for human-produced greenhouse gases, Earth would still be cooling.

  8. Thomas Simon sez:

    If you look at the temperature chart over a span of 10,000 years you will see the trend has been steadily moving upwards.

    And which planet would that be on? Here on Earth, We started to slide slowly into the next ice age around 5000 years ago, until we added so much CO2 to the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution that we’ve essentially put that next ice age on indefinite hold. Viz:

    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/paleoclimate-the-end-of-the-holocene/

    Thomas’ opening statement is demonstrably false.

    1. metzomagic: “And which planet would that be on? Here on Earth, We started to slide slowly into the next ice age around 5000 years ago….”

      Some times I wonder what flat, circular, disk-shaped planet denialists live on. They really do believe scientists are plotting against them: it isn’t an act. I see a few “flat Earth” videos posted to YouTube every week, with people insisting Earth is flat— and these videos are popular, and hundreds of comments are left with people who agree. There are even videos about the “hate” from “globalists” (people who accept the oblate spheroidal evidence) and how butt hurt we are when THE TRUTH is explained.

  9. @Thomas Simon

    OK, I’m looking at a graph of Holocene temperatures. The overall trend of the various reconstructions rises to a maximum about 7000 years BP then slowly cools until about a century ago.

    So much for your “natural phase of warming.”

  10. The third graph (GISTEMP year to date temperature anomaly) stops at 2014. As expected, the value for 2015 stands out well above past years.

    2010…73
    2011…61
    2012…63
    2013…64
    2014…75
    2015…82

  11. Back in mid-April I speculated that 2015 might pass 2014 by a substantial margin and by the end of August had settled on 0.10°C as the likely upper limit of the record-setting increase. That looks like it will be the actual margin for 2015, give or take 0.01°C.

    Too bad I was arguing with a particularly stupid denier rather than someone trustworthy that I could have had a bet with.

  12. The denier is betting with you. He’s betting that nothing will happen to the environment that’s sustaining his life/lifestyle/spending habits.

    What he is not willing to face up to is that Science is telling him that there’s a 95+% chance that he’s in the processing of losing his bet.

    And that losing will cost him lots of $$$$… And he will not allow the purchase of insurance. He’s stated that he thinks it “will be a needless expense”.

  13. Breaking Bad…

    Just yesterday the local TV station did a piece on El Niño, pointing out that the current one, at +3.0 °C, beats 1998 by 0.2°C.

    I have mixed feelings on that since it’s bad news for Eaarth but is likely to bring rain to California.

  14. Oh & they’ve also upgraded our forecast to 39 degrees (102 Fahrenheit for the Americans reading) and we’re not even in officially in summer here yet. (Our summer = Dec-Jan-Feb.)

  15. October was unbelievably hot and humid in Southern California. The ocean was as much as 10 degrees above average leading to the muggiest weather I have ever experienced in the 38 years I’ve lived here. My AC bills were much higher than usual. On the plus side, we had tomatoes all the way through the first week in November …

  16. StevoR, I feel your pain. Last week, Gauteng had a heatwave. Temperatures in Johannesburg and Pretoria were higher than Durban. There were fire warnings. Thankfully, the rain has started to fall.

  17. Why would you use GISS when it is composed of sparsely located sensors covering a small fraction of the earth using varying devices which are constantly breaking down, having exogenous events, being moved and are subject to 5 different adjustments when there are several satellites that measure hundreds of thousands of locations uniformily over the earths surface land and ocean, use the same instruments across the entire dataset and don’t have many of the problems of all these thermostats and the controverseys over their adjustments?

    Maybe because the satellites show that the pause in temperatures has been going on for almost 20 years and that last year was actually cooler than the year before unlike the land records which are diverging from all the satellite records by more and more.

    1. John Mathon: “Why would you use GISS when it is composed of sparsely located sensors covering a small fraction of the earth using varying devices which are constantly breaking down, having exogenous events, being moved and are subject to 5 different adjustments when there are several satellites that measure hundreds of thousands of locations uniformily over the earths surface land and ocean….”

      Please look up the logical fallacy “begging the question.”

      By the way: at least one RSS scientist told people to stop using their data when citing absolute global temperatures. At best the system is good for relative temperature changes… maybe.

      “Maybe because the satellites show that the pause in temperatures ….”

      No.

  18. Chris, same “type” of instrument. Sorry.

    Gullible? Have you analyzed why you might accept the numbers from a ragtag set of devices from hundreds of manufacturers built over a century with different underlying technologies sparsely distributed over the earth in some cases with 5 readings for everything south of 70 degrees south and a few thousand devices covering 70% of the earth which only come up once every week or so and devices which are relocated constantly, go offline for inexplicable reasons, with all kinds of other unknown things affecting their results requiring 5 separate types of “adjustment” to make them more reasonable over satellites which ….

    Why would you ever trust that other way of doing things superior to the point that you wouldn’t even MENTION the other way of doing it which is obviously so much better and confirmed by multiple overlapping satellites? unless you simply liked the results better from all these people and machines playing with the numbers from the ground?

    It’s so transparent that you have no objectivity or otherwise you would at least admit the other data. No real scientist would ignore the competitive information.

  19. Desertphile, you seem concerned with El Nino. Good news. El Nino will bring much needed rain to california. The downside is storms. However, during the 20th century we were industrious. It turns out using better building codes, predictive capabilities, monitoring, fast response, better communication systems, better practices, better transportation and more wealth in general we have cut the death rate from natural disasters by 98%. Yes, thats right. The millions who died in floods, droughts, pandemics, earthquakes, tropical storms, twisters and other natural disasters all over the world have been cut to 2% of the early part of the century. We are on a fast track to keep improving these numbers. In 1998 15,000 French died from a heat wave. A worse heat wave 3 years later in France saw only 10 deaths. It turns out a little information, some fans, calls cut the death rate by 99.9% in 3 years. Also a peer reviewed study reported in the lancet earlier this year which reviewed 74 million deaths found that cold killed 20 times more than warmth. A few degrees warmer will save millions of lives around the world a statistic rarely mentioned. 15% more people die in the winter than the summer because it stresses the heart lungs and causes pheumonia and other diseases which don’t survive in warm weather. So I don’t see the we’re F**d part? Maybe you could elaborate?

    1. John Mathod: “Desertphile, you seem concerned with El Nino. Good news. El Nino will bring much needed rain to california….”

      Er… it is “good news” for a tiny percent of humanity, bag news for a much larger percent. Flooding in the USA Southwest may be “good news,” but El Nino means drought in regions of the planet where many tens of millions of people are already living marginal and life-threatening lives.

      I am a healthy adult human being: I therefore don’t accept an event as good when it only benefits me, yet harms others.

  20. same “type” of instrument

    They may be the same type of instrument, but they were fourteen separate instruments that often had little overlap in time and all required their own separate adjustments.

    Good luck with trying to get a long term trend out of all of those.

    It’s so transparent that you have no objectivity

    You just can’t make up irony like this.

    1. Chris O’Neill: “They may be the same type of instrument, but they were fourteen separate instruments that often had little overlap in time and all required their own separate adjustments.”

      If I recall correctly, the NASA9 data still have not been corrected for the anomalous solar heating bias.

  21. Oh, boy, we got ourselves another software engineer who thinks he’s smarter than the entire body of professionals working in climate science.

    But but … startups! IPOs! What scientist can compete with a resume like that?

  22. John Mathon:

    “It turns out using better building codes, predictive capabilities, monitoring, fast response, better communication systems, better practices, better transportation”

    Adapations, all cost-free, and since they’re cost free, no worries!

  23. John Mathon

    No real scientist would ignore the competitive information.

    Nor would a competent scientist indulge in asymmetrical scepticism. Chris and dhogaza have already pointed to issues with the satellite LT product, which, remember, is modelled, not directly observed. There is more:

    Weng et al. (2014) ) Uncertainty of AMSU-A derived temperature trends in relationship with clouds and precipitation over ocean (emphasis added):

    Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) and Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-A (AMSU-A) observations from a series of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellites have been extensively utilized for estimating the atmospheric temperature trend. For a given atmospheric temperature condition, the emission and scattering of clouds and precipitation modulate MSU and AMSU-A brightness temperatures. In this study, the effects of the radiation from clouds and precipitation on AMSU-A derived atmospheric temperature trend are assessed using the information from AMSU-A window channels. It is shown that the global mean temperature in the low and middle troposphere has a larger warming rate (about 20–30 % higher) when the cloud-affected radiances are removed from AMSU-A data. It is also shown that the inclusion of cloud-affected radiances in the trend analysis can significantly offset the stratospheric cooling represented by AMSU-A channel 9 over the middle and high latitudes of Northern Hemisphere.

  24. I’m guessing our IPO wonder is a drive-by, based on his shotgun posts trotting out denialist talking points one after the other, which of course could only be answered in detail by folks willing to take a fair amount of time composing posts.

    Which, of course, would be ignored by Mr. Mathon anyway.

    Best answer to Mathon is that the answers lie in the scientific literature, not JoNova’s blog (an alternative universe which he inhabits at times, at least).

  25. I guess my problem is I don’t “respect” academics. Jeesh, I didn’t know we still lived in the 5th century.

    If the AMSU transponders had systematic bias’s I expect that the competent professionals at both the institutions that compute these would be fixing them.

    In any case, even if you take your land records which diverge from not 1 but 2 different satellite sources over 14 satellites which cross check each other you get a number that is still too small to worry about. In the last 70 years with all the CO2 we have poured in the runup is 0.6. To get to 2 by 2100 or 620ppm CO2 would require another 1.4 in the next 80 years. That’s almost 3 times what we’ve gotten which implies an acceleration of temperature trend. Given that CO2 is a logarithmic function of Co2 concentration it is almost impossible to get to even 2 C but we were told that we were going to get to 3, 4, 5, 6 even 10C by 2100!!!! They said the lower bound on TCS was no way less than 2.5 and yet we see now that 2.0 is impossible, even 1.5 looks hard to get to. It is more likely 1 or less. I am simply stating what the “academics.” The geniuses you so revere told us. They said 3 maybe even 10. I’m sorry if it is hard for me to get past that but I don’t see how it is remotely possible to get beyond 1C TCS just given what has happened. Show me. How do you get 2C by 2100? Tell me how that happens? It’s more like a religious belief you guys have than an academic belief.

  26. Let’s say HADCRUT/GISS is vindicated and the satellites are wrong. That would be huge news. Wow. Satellites wrong. There has been DOUBLE the heating they missed. Wow, that must prove all the critics WRONG, right? So, let’s assume that happens. Now we have 0.6C change from 1945 not 0.3C. Does this save the day? Do we get 2C by 2100? No. No. It still too crazy. To get to 2C by 2100 requires nearly 0.2C/decade for 8 decades in a row without stopping. First, even during this period the rate is 0.11C/decade, so immediately we need to double the rate of change of temp. Then we have to continue without stopping for 8 decades. Or we need to have more pauses with 4 times the rate of change now. What is the physical explanation for that other than some religious belief system you may have? Where will all this heat come from? It’s not possible. You’re talking about miracles not science.

    Okay, let’s say the miracel happens and we do go through this horriific thing and temperatures are escalating at 2, 3, 4 times the rate of now and we reach 2.0C by 2100 then what? Do the ocrans rise meters? Do storms increase, does food stop growing? Do tropical diseases take off?

    I’m saying this is insane. We have cut the number of deaths from natural disasters by 98% in the 20th century. We are on track for achieving much the same improvement this century. Nobody will die from any storms regardless of how many or intensity. Food production drop? Really? With all the exponential increase in science and agriculature, genetics you believe there is one chance in a million we won’t adapt and benefit from the extra heat?

    I just don’t see it. It’s not that I don’t want to see it. It doesn’t seem possible, not even remotely possible that these things will come to pass. Look at it this way. I think a lot of people are having problems understanding these negative consequences. This is evidenced by the extrmeely low rating global warming initiatives are given by the public. It is routinely rated as the LOWEST priority of anything to worry about. People say they believe what you are saying because it seems they are being brow beaten into looking like fools if they say they don’t believe it but the fact is if the earth really was in danger and people believed it then it wouldn’t be last priority. They don’t believe it. They just won’t say it because they think someone will ridicule them for saying that. So, what you folks who think there is some really horrific future need to do is lay out the scenario in some realistic way that actually shows how this is possible. This is a really hard problem because technology changes so rapidly now that almost anything is solvable if we spend 10 minutes thinking about it.

    1. John Mathon: “Let’s say HADCRUT/GISS is vindicated ….”

      You should look up what the word “vindicated” means before you attempt to use it again.

  27. One last word. I am NOT a fossil fuel advocate. I am the most vociferous spokesman against fossil fuels. That is for 2 reasons which DONT include global warming.

    1) Fossil fuels are dirty and kill millions of people every year NOW. Every part of the process of dealing with fossill fuels is deadly and kills. Discovery, mining, transportation, refining, distribution and usage … even indirect effects on people who aren’t involved. Okay, we need the energy but I advocate anything which gets us away from an unsustainable dirty deadly source of energy

    2) Every year we give billions and billions even trillions to people who do not believe in freedom of religion or freedom of speech. People who claim they want to hurt us. Even if you suggest that some of these people might not be so bad. Maybe some of them don’t hate us but they are still funding schools and people who preach these antiquated and evil notions (from my perspective and belief). I do not want us to fund them one penny more.

    I have gotten a tesla and I have cut my home electricity and gas bill in half. I am doing this not to save the planet but because it makes economic sense to me and reduces my use of fossil fuels and the attendent consequences which don’t include dangerous global warming, just moderate freindly helpful warming. I also strongly believe that nuclear energy can be made safe. I believe that solar will be cheaper than fossil fuels in less than 5 years and that fusion reactors will be possible in 10-20 years.

    I think we will get off fossil fuels in the next century for simple economic reasons. Whether we get any more warming or not it is going to be barely noticeable. I say this because it seems almost impossible to imagine us using fossil fuels like crazy in 50 years or 80 years. Such a scenario to me would mean that something has seriously gone wrong in the world, like the world has sustained massive nuclear bombardment and we are pummeled back to the dark ages in which case we also won’t be producing as much CO2 either.

  28. Is Mr Mathon aware that satellite and surface measures are expected to be ‘divergent’, as they are sampling different layers of atmosphere? This ‘GISS/wrong-satellite/right stuff’ is not even getting close to worth discussing without context.

  29. John Mathon:

    “One last word. I am NOT a fossil fuel advocate. I am the most vociferous spokesman against fossil fuels. That is for 2 reasons which DONT include global warming.”

    Ah, the old “some of my best friends are black” argument …

  30. John Mathon:

    “If the AMSU transponders”

    you don’t even know how the sensors work, do you? They’re not transponders. in fact, the word doesn’t even make sense in this context.

    “…had systematic bias’s I expect that the competent professionals at both the institutions that compute these would be fixing them.”

    you’re not even aware of the long and twisted history involved in trying to get meaningful data out of these instruments that weren’t designed to measure temperature in the first place.

    And as Nick mentions above, they measure very different things in the first place, and trends are not, and never have been, predicted to being identical. One more case of a denialist taking a prediction of science, noting it is true, then declaring the underlying science is proven wrong as a result.

    Tch tch.

    Enough.

  31. #29

    Americans aren’t people:
    1. Good for California!

    “Desertphile, you seem concerned with El Nino. Good news. El Nino will bring much needed rain to california.”

    “Combined with the already dry regions in eastern and southern Ethiopia, El Niño could create extreme drought in some regions, and flooding in others, causing crop failures and cases of malaria. Experts say that this El Niño event could rival the record 1997 storm, which caused international stress, scarcity, and disasters.”
    http://harambeetoday.org/index.php/economics/item/1597-el-nino-may-worsen-food-insecurity-in-ethiopia/1597-el-nino-may-worsen-food-insecurity-in-ethiopia

    “Ethiopia is suffering its worst drought in more than a decade, a condition exacerbated by El Niño, the water-warming phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean that has affected weather patterns and reduced rainfall levels across a large chunk of Africa, hitting Ethiopia particularly hard.”
    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/opinion/el-nino-strikes-ethiopia.html?_r=0

    #36
    Americans aren’t people:
    2. Up with ignorance!

    “I think a lot of people are having problems understanding these negative consequences. This is evidenced by the extrmeely low rating global warming initiatives are given by the public. It is routinely rated as the LOWEST priority of anything to worry about. People say they believe what you are saying because it seems they are being brow beaten into looking like fools if they say they don’t believe it but the fact is if the earth really was in danger and people believed it then it wouldn’t be last priority. They don’t believe it.”

    “Uanset hvor længe danskerne har gået i skole – og uanset hvor gamle eller unge de er, så bekymrer de sig om klimaforandringer og global opvarmning. Det viser en Epinion-undersøgelse foretaget for DR Nyheder.”
    https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/klimaforandringer-bekymrer-os-alle-sammen
    (No matter how many years Danes have gone to school, and no matter how old or young they are, they’re worried about climate change and global warming. This is shown by an Epinion survey taken for Danish Radio News.)

    When it comes to climate change, Americans like John Mathon aren’t the norm. They’re freaks of provincialism and ignorance.

    1. cosmiccomics: “When it comes to climate change, Americans like John Mathon aren’t the norm. They’re freaks of provincialism and ignorance.”

      It horrified me, also. If I find a wallet with currency and credit cards in it, it is *NOT* “my good fortune” that I found it— it is my bad fortune, because I am then required to expend my time, effort, and resources to return the wallet to its owner. The whole concept of an event benefiting one group of people at the expense of other groups of people being considered “good” is just…. fucking incomprehensible.

  32. JM writes:

    In the last 70 years with all the CO2 we have poured in the runup is 0.6. To get to 2 by 2100 or 620ppm CO2 would require another 1.4 in the next 80 years. That’s almost 3 times what we’ve gotten which implies an acceleration of temperature trend. Given that CO2 is a logarithmic function of Co2 concentration it is almost impossible to get to even 2 C but we were told that we were going to get to 3, 4, 5, 6 even 10C by 2100!!!! They said the lower bound on TCS was no way less than 2.5 and yet we see now that 2.0 is impossible, even 1.5 looks hard to get to. It is more likely 1 or less. I am simply stating what the “academics.” [said]

    This a hell of a mess.

    First, there’s been >0.5C warming since 1975. Second, the forcing increase from CO2 is non-linear because the rate of emissions increase during the C20th was non-linear. So using past rates of warming as a guide to future rates of warming is simply wrong, which might explain why JM so frequently resorts to the logical fallacy of argument from personal incredulity.

    Then JM trots out the old confusion about logarithmic CO2 forcing which he could have resolved easily with a single search.

    Then he appears to confuse transient response and equilibrium sensitivity, which never helps. Finally, he says that the entire dog’s breakfast is no more than what “academics” (in mocking quotes) have told us, which is a falsehood.

    I’d find engaging with “sceptics” a good deal more stimulating if what they said was correct, or at the very least, imaginative enough to be interesting.

  33. … but the fact is if the earth really was in danger and people believed it then it wouldn’t be last priority.

    So climate change isn’t a danger because people don’t view it as one, but if they did believed it was dangerous then it would be.
    Is it common for denialists to couch their arguments in nothing more than the Law of Attraction that Oprah loved?

  34. BBD: “I’d find engaging with ‘sceptics’ a good deal more stimulating if what they said was correct, or at the very least, imaginative enough to be interesting.”

    It would be awesome if deniers were skeptics instead of deniers, but that would be far less entertaining.

    As for “John Mathon” and his anus-produced numbers, which he attributed to unnamed and non-cited “academics” (hint: he means “educated liberal elites”), he claimed +1.5c “looks hard to get to,” which shows he lacks even the most rudimentary understanding of the crisis. He has no knowledge of how much anomalous warming has already occurred due to human activities; he has no interest in learning. It therefore makes me wonder why he’s posting his falsehoods here, on a science blog.

  35. Desertphile

    he claimed +1.5c “looks hard to get to,” which shows he lacks even the most rudimentary understanding of the crisis.

    You remind me that I should have included at least one simple calculation so that JM could see that his concerns were misplaced:

    ?T = S ln(CO2/CO2(t=1750))/ln2

    Where:

    ?T = new equilibrium surface temperature
    T = pre-industrial temperature (~1750CE)
    S = equilibrium sensitivity best estimate
    CO2 = future atmospheric CO2 concentration (ppm)
    CO2 (t=1750) = pre-industrial CO2 concentration (280ppm)

    ?T = 3ln(560/280)/ln(2) = 3C

    1. BBD: “?T = 3ln(560/280)/ln(2) = 3C”

      Indeed, if we know “S” to high confidence, then we know “T” for the target of +2.0c (given current rate of increased CO2). If “S” is 2.9 to 3.1, and the yearly average CO2 increase is 2.10 ppmv, we have from 18 years to 23 years to stop burning fossil fuels. Heh! that will not happen, so…. we’re fucked, and not in a good way.

      Thermal equilibrium between Earth and Sun will take another 120 to 180 years (if mid Atlantic conveyor belt goes back to normal), with an additional 0.6c to 0.8c already “locked in.” I would love to see how “JM” here reconciles his “it’s not a problem” dismissal of the facts, when observed (i.e., measured) reality shows +2c is already unavoidable.

  36. Typical responses folks. Sorry. None of you provided even a modicum of a reason to discard the satellite temperature records or my points its impossible to get to 2C or that the consequences anyway are trivial. It’s more diatribe and put downs. That is typical of people with low confidence who argue from a crowd mentality based on insecurity not from sound reasons. So, there’s not much here to continue except to start trading insults I suppose. Nevertheless, let me try one last time to explain.

    You don’t get to count the temperature rise prior to 1945 for many reasons which even the IPCC agrees with since it talks almost exclusively about the post 1940-1945 period as the start of major CO2 output. So you DONT get to count the 0.5C change from the early part of the century like some give away bonus. That heating even the IPCC agrees was majorly caused by SOMETHING ELSE.

    It sounds ominous. 0.6 since 1975. That’s 0.2 /decade but again you don’t get to look at only since 1975 because you are ignoring a 30 year haitus in which temperatures actually fell and CO2 was going up linearly and significantly.

    If you go back and try to rationalize why you will use the rate from 1975 on or count the early part of the 20th century rise as the basis then that is the argument of someone clearly cheating and trying to decieve and I will have nothing more to do with this.

    The period is 1945 … 2100 which is CO2 310 to 620 (or whichever occurs sooner)

    During this period everyone including the IPCC who is a CAGW believer says the rate is roughly 0.11C/decade. To get 2.0C (Transient Climate Sensitivity) means adding 1.4C on top of the 0.6C (by land records not satellites which are still more accurate and trustworthy) If we use satellites it’s another 1.7C. The problem is whether you use land or satellite you have to show me how you get 1.4 or 1.7 in 8 decades consider we’ve been going for 7 decades at 0.11C or 0.6. Any way you look at it you are projecting a rate that is double or triple the current rate and that new rate better kick in damn fast because if it takes another 10 years to start showing this your problem is going to be exponentially harder to achieve so you better hope this is a hot el nino this year and we don’t get the typical kick back we’ve gotten from every other el nino on record where the temperature the following years falls off dramatically.

    So, that’s your first problem. Your suggesting something which seems completely impossible to “happen” and certainly isn’t science. You see the problem is the models predicted temps would be 0.5C warmer than they are today. That would make your job a lot easier because then you would only need to get 0.9C in 8 decades. That’s actually believable especially if we were 0.5C higher now we wouldnt’ even be having this debate. Nobody would be questioning this. But that didn’t happen.

    Let’s forget that for the first 4 IPCC reports they said 3.0 TCS. That’s obviously completely ridiculous. And the 4, 5, 6 those are obviously to be mistakes of the prior reports to be forgotten. We will forget that AR4 said with 95% certainty that 100% of the heat from 1975-1998 was from CO2. That was a mistake. We’ll ignore that. There are some other real wacko things in those reports we’ll just ignore. Everybody makes mistakes. The fact nobody in your camp will ever admit a mistake is more like what a religion does but let’s ignore that.

    So, now we get 2.0C. This requires a leap of faith and religious belief in my logical mind but let’s say you get it. Everyday we read about these consequences of global warming. Asthma attacks of the presidents son will increase. The middle east will be 170 C. Seas will be 3 meters higher, Food production will fall off a cliff as farmers are unable to relocate farms to cooler regions. We will be getting huge ultra powerful storms and heat waves and the plankton will die off. The polar bears of course. Islands will be gone and people relocating, diseases from elephantiasis and malaria rampant, productivity in the world will decline dramatically as people can’t work at higher temperatures, Skiing will be a sport practiced in a couple places at high altitude in the world. You will need an air canister to find snow to ski on. 500 million of the worlds people will be displaced whose buildings and homes were flooded oh and half the worlds species of 20 million will have become extinct. The coral reefs will be blanched and destroyed.

    All of these “consequences” are not believable. Each of them suffers from being the most unproven crappy science ever written. Some fly directly into the face of all data and common sense. The whole thing from beginning to end looks like a religious rant. The more temperatures diverge from the precious “proven” models the more ridiculous and religious the rants and science looks.

    I ask you to look at the Lancet article that analyzed 74 million deaths worldwide and concluded that there is 23 times greater death from a degree colder than a degree warmer meaning that millions will be saved by higher temperatures not lower. I ask you to consider how with higher levels of CO2 food source plants use directly to convert into carbon for their growth and increased temperatures which will increase the growing season and the arable land there is going to be a food decline. I ask you to find any evidence of any increase in storms of any sort after putting in 1/3 of the CO2 we will see before a doubling. I ask you to find any evidence of accelerating sea rise which could get us to 12″ let alone 36″ when the tide guage measurements in most of the world show literally NO increase in sea level and even the IPCC admits that sea level rise is not likely to go over 0.3mm/year. I have not seen a shred of evidence that any island anywhere is losing land. Most recently debunked crap science prediction is the coral reef “scares.” It turns out coral reef have no problem at all adjusting to warmer temperatures or higher acidity (actually more neutral). The storm theory was the first prediction made that even made it into early IPCC reports. Debunked. There is NO increase in storms. 170C in middle east is the most ridiculous prediction. Every part of CO2 physics says its effect is LEAST in warmer regions and more in cold because CO2s emissions aren’t efficiently transmitted at much above 0C.

    Does it occur to you guys that all these failed predictions, bad science and what appears as hysterical arguments that not even a moron could believe is disheartening?

  37. Typical responses folks. Sorry. None of you provided even a modicum of a reason to discard the satellite temperature records or my points its impossible to get to 2C or that the consequences anyway are trivial.

    There are three falsehoods regarding what I alone posted in your first sentence. I do not speak for other commenters.

    You don’t get to count the temperature rise prior to 1945 for many reasons which even the IPCC agrees with since it talks almost exclusively about the post 1940-1945 period as the start of major CO2 output. So you DONT get to count the 0.5C change from the early part of the century like some give away bonus. That heating even the IPCC agrees was majorly caused by SOMETHING ELSE.

    There are two serious problems with this. First, the increase in CO2 prior to 1945 *did* contribute to the centennial warming trend so *you* don’t get to dismiss this matter of fact.

    Second, while there were indeed other forcings at work earlier in the C20th, you would have to show that they are still operating at the same level today or violate conservation of energy. Put another way, once the forcing is reduced, the climate system cools down but it did not do so when viewed on a centennial scale. The only way that can happen is if the change in net forcings on a centennial scale is sufficient to create a sustained energy imbalance within the climate system. Anthropogenic influence on climate (predominantly but not exclusively CO2 emissions) has done exactly that. In order to discuss physical climatology, it is necessary to understand at least the basic concepts.

    Let’s forget that for the first 4 IPCC reports they said 3.0 TCS.

    Rubbish. The best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) to a doubling of CO2 was given as ~3C. You are *still* confusing transient climate response (TCR) (formal definition) with ECS. You cannot make authoratitive arugments if you clearly don’t understand the topic. So perhaps a less strident tone would be appropriate.

  38. We will forget that AR4 said with 95% certainty that 100% of the heat from 1975-1998 was from CO2. That was a mistake. We’ll ignore that.

    The attribution statement is that the warming is anthropogenic not purely CO2, so once again the error you ascribe to climate science is yours.

  39. “typical of people with low confidence”

    Mr Mathon may want to look up “Dunning Kruger effect” and see how it applies to himself. Oh wait…people who suffer from DK are the least likely to recognize it.

    For those who are interested, John Mathon shows quite some confidence in his own abilities, to the extent that he cannot see his own repeated failures. BBD points out a few of those, John Mathon will ignore them or double down (you can call that a prediction).

  40. Gish Gallops such as yours are a tedious rhetorical tactic. Rather than expend time and effort addressing the errors point by point I will pick one and return serve:

    The storm theory was the first prediction made that even made it into early IPCC reports. Debunked. There is NO increase in storms.

    Please substantiate this claim. Provide a reference (quote and link to primary source) to the IPCC report(s) where it is claimed that storms (presumably tropical cyclones?) will increase (in what? frequency? intensity? both?) that will be detectable now.

  41. Desertphile / John Mathon

    Indeed, if we know “S” to high confidence, then we know “T” for the target of +2.0c (given current rate of increased CO2).

    This is a vexed question. Personally I have no doubt that ECS / 2 x CO2 falls fairly close to 3C. This is based on 65Ma of climate behaviour (Rohling et al. 2012) and the LGM / Holocene transition (Hansen & Sato 2012).

    The insistence of “sceptics” on the uncertainty in the range of estimates ignores the fact that a best estimate exists and that it is compatible with palaeoclimate behaviour. This is in contrast to the low estimates for S which are not.

    I’m not sure what the link limit per comment is here, so I’ll post the third link separately.

  42. Cont…

    The low estimates “sceptics” prefer derive from simplified methodology that produces low estimates because it does not incorporate nonlinear feedbacks. This is accessibly described (as in, I can follow it 🙂 ) in Knutti & Rugenstein (2015) Feedbacks, climate sensitivity and the limits of linear models.

  43. I don’t believe anyone here has suggested discarding satellite temperature records. Could you document where someone has?

    It is a known fact, confirmed by Carl Mears of RSS, that satellite measurements are less reliable than surface measurements. Spencer, Christy and Braswell have acknowledged some of the problems:

    “If we had satellite instruments that (1) had rock-stable calibration, (2) lasted for many decades without any channel failures, and (3) were carried on satellites whose orbits did not change over time, then the satellite data could be processed without adjustment. But none of these things are true. Since 1979 we have had 15 satellites that lasted various lengths of time, having slightly different calibration (requiring intercalibration between satellites), some of which drifted in their calibration, slightly different channel frequencies (and thus weighting functions), and generally on satellite platforms whose orbits drift and thus observe at somewhat different local times of day in different years. All data adjustments required to correct for these changes involve decisions regarding methodology, and different methodologies will lead to somewhat different results. This is the unavoidable situation when dealing with less than perfect data.”
    http://www.drroyspencer.com/2015/04/version-6-0-of-the-uah-temperature-dataset-released-new-lt-trend-0-11-cdecade/

    Re. reliability:

    “He [Ben Santer] and other researchers contacted for this column noted that there have been several instances when Christy and Spencer have had to correct their datasets for factors such as changes in satellite orbits over time, and with each correction the data has come into better alignment with surface warming and model projections.
    For this reason and others, Andrew Dessler, a climate researcher at Texas A&M University, says he is skeptical of the satellite data’s reliability…’Measuring temperature from a satellite is actually an incredibly difficult problem. That’s why, every few years, another big problem in the UAH temperature calculation is discovered. And, when these problems are fixed, the trend always goes up.’
    ‘It’s also worth noting that there have not been any similar revisions to the surface temperature data, despite the fact that people have looked at it very, very carefully.’ ”
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/the-satellite-temperature-record-questioning-shaky-claims-after-33-years/2011/12/20/gIQAd8KE7O_blog.html

    Regarding your reference to the Lancet article, it’s nice that you for once referred to a source. What isn’t so nice, is that you’re incapable of specifying the source. If it’s the article I think it is, a further problem is that you don’t understand what you read. Here’s some help:
    http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2015/05/21/the-risk-of-hot-and-cold-weather/
    http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2015/05/death-from-cold-and-heat-its-different.html

    The latter post has some enlightening graphs. I very much doubt that you’ll understand them, as you haven’t already. Had you shown evidence of genuine curiosity and comprehension, I would also have recommended An adaptability limit to climate change due to heat stress
    http://www.pnas.org/content/107/21/9552.full.pdf
    and this
    http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/…/20111110_NewClimateDice.pdf
    and this
    http://climatesight.org/2012/04/03/climate-change-and-heat-waves/
    and this
    http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2833.html
    and this
    http://www.climatecouncil.org.au/…/9901f6614a2cac7b2b888f55b4dff9cc.pdf ,

    but seeing as you don’t get your science from scientists, but from sciolists with scientific pretensions, I won’t bother.

  44. NOAA GISS shows the error of taking a global average is that the Northern Hemisphere is markedly Warmer. There is an anomaly over the ESAS that is 10.7 C. The graph runs off the chart at 5C. Arctic temperatures are increasing at an increasing rate because of methane releases which are not included in the data seta

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