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Archive for January 4, 2012

Fred Singer: Fake! Fake! Fake! Fake!

January 4, 2012 by Walter Schneider.

Monday, January 2nd 2012, 4:14 PM EST

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

In discussing the recent release of some 5,000 Climategate e-mails, blogger Anthony Watts uses the clever headline “They are real — and they’re spectacular.” He credits Jerry Seinfeld as the source. Following his example, I choose the headline “Fake! Fake! Fake! Fake!” — also taken from a Seinfeld episode — in discussing the surface temperatures generally reported for the latter part of the 20th century; they form the science basis for prosperity-killing international climate policy….(Full Story)

After I had posted the link to that article to my Facebook wall, someone commented:

That looks like a quality site. Interesting that only land-based temperature sensors show a rise in temperature and not sea or atmospheric sensors. Could the rise be because of the rise in concrete? Cities act like storage heaters and are always a bit warmer, if the thermometers are nearer cities then there is your answer.

Yes, concrete in cities has a lot to do with hot and somewhat rising land-surface temperature records, but that is not all. The circumstances involved are complicated. Here is my response to the man:

Yes, it not only looks like but it is a respectable website. It presents primarily the views of skeptics who do not deny that there is a warming trend in global temperatures but who are doubtful that much of the increase of about 0.7 degrees C during the past century was caused by anything that was done by people.

Your question deserves a long answer, and it is essential that before and after reading all of this comment by me, you have a look at some of the graphs and comments shown at http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150216691769443.332265.591619442&type=3
They strongly relate to many of the issues discussed in the following.

The vast majority of skeptical climate scientists feels very strongly that our sun, a variable star, modulates climate trends on Earth. They should know. Most of them had long careers in climate sciences, meteorology and such. Fred Singer, for example, the author of the lead-in article in this discussion thread, has very respectable credentials.

He, “…(born September 27, 1924) is an Austrian-born American physicist and emeritus professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia.[1] Singer trained as an atmospheric physicist and is known for his work in space research, atmospheric pollution, rocket and satellite technology, and as an outspoken critic of the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming….” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer

About concrete, roofs, parking lots, etc. in urban areas affecting temperature trends, yes, they do. A very large number of official temperature measurements are being taken in weather stations that are in urban areas or at airports. About 0.5% of the global land surface is considered to be urban. A very disproportionately-large portion of weather stations is located in urban locations. It would be ludicrous to assume that all of the temperature values measured at those stations are representative of or close to global, average temperature values, however one may decide how such a hypothetical global average can be accurately determined.

The effect that the urban environment has on temperature values is real, it has been measured, and allowances and adjustments have been made for it in the official temperature record — with frequent revisions as the debate of the effect progressed from initial denial to tacit acceptance. It is called the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect.

One of a number of research studies targeting the UHI effect addressed California. The results from that study support what you surmise. The issue of the UHI in California is very well illustrated by this graph: http://prntscr.com/4sm9m
(quoted at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/22/climategate-2-0-phil-jones-calling-a-scientist-the-jerk-over-his-uhi-discoveries-in-calfifornia/ )

There is much disagreement between climate scientists who consider their science in constant need of refinement (something that applies to all true science) and those who oppose them and insist that mankind is to be blamed for the current global warming — even though there have been many and often much greater intervals of global warming throughout human history, long before any SUVs were even a gleam in the eyes of automakers, even long before there was any industrialization at all, not only on earth but even on other planets of the solar system.

The one camp feels that correlations exists between hundreds and thousands of aspects of the incredibly complex global climate system. They seek to measure all possible climate factors and to gain an understanding of the roles they play, their correlations and of the mechanisms that drive them.

The other camp feels that the global climate is essentially stable and would remain stable if it were not for mankind mucking things up. They seek to build computer models that are to game their theories, with the outcomes being hoped for to match what their theories predict, even though reality increasingly diverges from the predictions that result from those theories.

There is a much, much better correlation between the variations of solar radiance and global temperature variations than there is between global atmospheric CO2 trends and temperature trends.

While the mechanisms that make the sun such a large influence on global climate are being increasingly better understood, global temperature trends have miserably failed to come even close to reaching the enormously escalating temperature increases that the proponents of the man-made global warming theory had insisted on predicting. In fact, while atmospheric CO2 levels keep rising (quite likely as a result of the Sun’s influence and increasing solar activity since the end of the Little Ice Age in about 1850 and before), global temperature trends have remained flat for the last decade.

Puny man remains puny, and there is little reasonable doubt that the climate on Earth is driven, dominated and controlled by the largest source of energy in our solar system, our sun. Mankind’s influence appears to be pocket change in the enormously large, astoundingly complex and nested systems of energy flows affecting climate on Earth. Nevertheless, the proponents of the theory of man-made global warming promote their beliefs with religious zeal and, in the name of “the precautionary principle”, pursue their goals that cost many trillions of dollars and the systematic deconstruction of the economies of the developed nations.