Alarmists, what should the climate have done for the last 30 years?

Question

The little ice age (LIA) appears to be a natural event, so it would appear that the global warming that ended the LIA was natural, so temperatures over the last thirty years should have:

A) Remained flat.

B) Increased Slightly

C) Cooled.

D) Continued warming at the same rate that ended the LIA.

Answer 1

Cooled slightly.

Solar radiation (which is what counts, NOT "activity"), has been decreasing slightly.

"Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface

air temperature", Lockwood and Frolich (2007), Proc. R. Soc. A doi:10.1098/rspa.2007.1880

And we were in a slight cooling trend for a long time.  The MWP and the LIA were minor bumps in that:

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Ima...

By the way, if you want to call the National Academy of Sciences "alarmists", I'm delighted to be in that basket.  But this seems more like calm reason than alarmism to me:

"The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to begin taking steps to prepare for climate change and to slow it. Human actions over the next few decades will have a major influence on the magnitude and rate of future warming. Large, disruptive changes are much more likely if greenhouse gases are allowed to continue building up in the atmosphere at their present rate. However, reducing greenhouse

gas emissions will require strong national and international commitments, technological innovation, and human willpower."

Answer 2

Absent greenhouse gas increase, the 1978-2007 temperature would have cooled, by about 0.1° C.

The late '70s and early '80s were marked by unusually persistent El Niño conditions that have now reversed. Also 1978 was near solar maximum, while 2007 was near solar minimum.

But that cooling is actually a statistical artifact based on picking a specific year (1978) as a starting number. In other words, that's weather, not climate; sort of like the denialists claim that "warming stopped in 1998". Which is a load of c**p that we correct by running a regression line. Overall, after removing the statistical noise, the 30-year trend would have been flat, with no statistically significant slope.

So the correct answer is (A).

Answer 3

O U R O P I N I O N

An alarmist’s solution to criticism

    Unless you’re among those who follow the global warming controvery with considerably more intensity than the average citizen, the name James Hansen probably doesn’t ring any bells. But it should.

    Hansen is the original global warming alarmist. He is currently the head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Twenty years ago, in an appearance before several Congressional committees, Hansen warned that increasing human-generated CO2 content in the earth’s atmosphere was pushing up global temperatures, and that if generation of CO2 wasn’t cut back, we would face a “tipping point” from which there could be no return, and that the result of warming would doom life on earth as we know it.

    He was called to testify in the early ’80s because in 1981 he and a team of scientists at Goddard had concluded that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would lead to global warming sooner than previously predicted. While other climatologists had already predicted that a trend would be apparent by 2020, Hansen predicted, in a paper published in Science, that the change was already occurring and that there would be record high temperatures as early as 1990.

    In June of this year Hansen again testified before a Congressional committee, on the anniversary of his first alarmist appearance. And what has happened to global temperatures in the intervening 20 years? According to the University of Alabama at Huntsville, global satellite temperature data show that earth’s temperature has indeed changed; it’s gone down by half a degree (Fahrenheit). So much for Hansen’s prediction about tipping points, and carbon dioxide dangers, etc., etc.

    But Hansen also did something else at in June. At an informal media event hosted by Worldwatch Institute, an environmental activist group, he called for criminal trials against scientists, corporate executives, and public policy advocates who disagree with him. He said skeptics are guilty of “crimes against humanity.” If you oppose his theories, in other words, you’re no better than Hitler, Stalin, Robert Mugabe, Papa Doc Duvalier, and the rest of history’s mass murderers, and ought to be sent to jail — or worse — for holding such views.

    Much of the above is from the August issue of Environment & Climate News, a Heartland Institue publication. The Heartland Institute, you may not know, is a non-profit environmental organization that challenges global warming theories. Two letters to the editor today take note of a story published in the Sunday Press Dispatch (albeit buried on D7) that some 31,072 American scientists have signed a petition rejecting Hansen’s — among others — assertions that global warming has reached a crisis stage that is caused by human activity. The story about the petition originated with the Heartland Institute.

    The petition puts the lie to claims such as the one by Al Gore (“The debate is over”) that there’s any sort of general agreement among the world’s scientific community about global warming, either as to what is causing it, that it’s in fact happening, or that there’s anything humanity can do about it.

    Hansen, you might also want to know, is indeed a scientist. He’s an astronomer. But stifling dissent of his theories by shouting, “Off with their heads” does not exactly comport with scientific method. So it’s no surprise to also learn he’s Al Gore’s adviser on science. Uh huh.

    Steve Williams

Victorville Daily Pres

7-29-08

Answer 4

Ken said it all.  For alarmists it is all about assigning blame and typically they point their fingers at American prosperity.  

Let me get this straight, if a fire is caused by lightning, its fine.  If it is caused by humans then it is somehow worse.  Nevermind that extremely short sighted poor management has caused much of  the problems with all fires no matter what caused them (OK, I am blaming humans on this one but mostly environmentalists and lawyers).  There are places in Yosemite that haven't burned in a hundred years.  This is certainly not natural.  But I digress

I suspect that it would have warmed about a half degree which is consistent with the warming trend that was present after the LIA, in other words not significantly different.  Until there is some evidence that CO2 drives temperatures in a significant way, why would anyone conclude otherwise.

Answer 5

nONE OF THE ABOVE. every ONE KNOWS YOU HAVE TO STOP GIVING AWAY PLASTIC BAGS IN San Fransisco and sell them for $.25 cents if you want TO LOWER THE GLOBAL TEMPERATURES.Geeeezzzzzz!!!!!!

Answer 6

And the earth goes threw a hot and cold spell it is kind of like the earths own seasons

.. ... ..

When the earths orbit is circular it is a hot time

When the earths orbit is elliptical it is a cold time

.. .. ..

We are in earths circular orbit time and don't worry the cold days of summer will soon be upon us and then they will say that all this

-------------  GO GREEN ------------

is back firing

.. .. ..

Then what will happen Smog days once again

To try an warm it back up

.. ... ..

Answer 7

B.

Over that period solar output has remained unchanged.  There have been more El Nino events than La Nina.  Overall if there were no anthropogenic effect and you factored in all of the natural effects, my guess is that there would have been a very slight warming.  Probably less than 0.1°C.

Answer 8

The temperature data is old and uncalibrated. That makes it impossible to tell...

Answer 9

The LIA did last about twice as long as the MWP, and we don't understand the causes of those periods (though we do understand some of the factors that caused mini-trends within those periods, such as the Maunder Minimum), so I don't think anyone can say for sure what "should have happened."

Natural events DO have natural explanations, Ken's right about that.

The point is, we don't KNOW what all those explanations are.

That's why we cannot argue that just because we can't prove a known natural cause or set of causes of the 20th century warming, that equates to proof that it wasn't natural.

Answer 10

Natural events have natural explanations.  The fires in northern CA last month were caused by natural lightening, but some of the fires in southern CA last Fall were caused by human activities.

When the climate is changing (as is the current case) and there is no natural explanation (as is the current case), but there's a clear and well supported scientific explanation involving human activities it's quite obvious what's causing the change.

Answer 11

Lol, I like the way you address them as "alarmists."  I agree with Randall--it can't really be predicted.