ADDENDUM BELOW (with answers from Christopher Monckton)
The December SPPI monthly report came out on Jan 23. As usual, it contains graphs of the latest juiciest data: sea levels, ice, sunspots, cyclones, global temperature trends and the latest papers. Here’s a few snippets that caught my eye.
Get ready for 1.4 degrees (or more… or less).
Global Temperature Trends 1981-2009
Call me a cherry picker, but going by the full satellite data record we have and drawing a simplistic straight line, we are rocketing towards 1.4 degrees of warming by 2100, (but only if that trend of the last 30 years doesn’t change, which it is, every year). For those who are new to this, there are two interpretations of the satellite data and this neatly combines both of them (UAH and RSS) and makes one wiggly line out of masses of data. Not surprisingly, the SPPI team have chosen to ignore the surface record of airports and air-conditioners, “ground based thermometers”.
…
Just look at the wild rising uptrend in global cyclones. We could extrapolate that…
Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index
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Let’s feel-good about paying trillions to control the weather. It’s a spiritual thing right?
Waxman Markey
There is a whole lot more in the full 37 page report.
ADDENDUM: Fierce debate in the comments below. There are questions about Moncktons “straight line”. My answer in #144 here. There are very informed comments going in at #192 co2isnotevil and onwards. Skeptics can pull out log equations to explain why Moncktons graph is reasonable. The bluff that fans of The Big Scare pull, crumbles under discussion.
To those who say it’s inaccurate, those baseless accusations are thrown out like so much bluster ad infinitum, as people said in comments before mine:
- Show us what the IPCC predicted (as in “in the past”). Links to graphs they have post hoc redrawn from 2007 hardly count. The IPCC are not big on giving anything “firm”, and they keep their predictions so far in the future (like all good politicians do) that they will be safely 6 feet underground before anyone could prove them wrong.
- How much of a curve can you throw on the end of a hockey stick without breaking laws of maths? Cyber forester incisively wrote: “So let me get this straight (so to speak). We have a temperature trend a la Mann that shows a hockey stick shape over the last 1000 years and then it goes flat for the next 50 years and then exponential in the following 50 years?”
- Baa humbug is doing a great job #42 and #59. “The IPCC should be aware that if they fail to clarify these things, others will nevertheless examine the data and draw their own conclusions. Climate scientists may or may not agree with those conclusions. However, absent clear verifications with full documentation of verification methods by the IPCC, those who wish to inform themselves have no alternative but to perform their own.”
- Christopher Monckton replied to criticisms of an earlier version of this graph posted here in May 2009 on my site, as follows:
“the IPCC predicts CO2 concentration rising exponentially to 836 [730,1020] ppmv by 2100 on business-as-usual scenario A2, which is the scenario closest to actual emissions worldwide at present. It also predicts equilibrium warming at 4.7 ln(C/C0) Kelvin degrees, where the bracketed term is the proportionate increase in CO2 concentration over the chosen period – in this case the 21st century. Since the CO2 prediction is exponential and the predicted warming caused by the added CO2 is logarithmic, the resultant prediction is of course a straight line – which is what is plotted in my temperature graph, which is actually generated by quite a sophisticated computer program that first calculates the exponential increase in CO2 year by year to replicate the IPCC’s curve and then uses the calculated data, month by month, as the basis for calculating the consequent equilibrium warming. The IPCC, of course, pretends that there is a huge lag in the system, allowing it to pretend that temperatures ought to be rising far slower initially and far more rapidly later than the straight-line prediction produced by its own warming formula on the basis of its own CO2 projection. However, measurements by the ARGO buoys show none of the ocean warming that would be essential to demonstrate the “radiative imbalance” that Hansen, Schmidt and Willis (2005) conjured up by computer modelling. Therefore the system response to any forcing is near-immediate, from which the straight-line prediction follows.”
So all those bellowing about lies and dishonest graphs, and to those who demand immediate answers and laud silence as “success”, marvel at the irony. I work on your behalf demanding answers from people who spend your tax dollars, and demand nothing from you, bar good manners.