Six Apart started a working group in February 2006 to improve the Trackback protocol with the goal to eventually have it approved as

Very resourceful information.

The page about “Empirical evidence for a nonlinear effect of galactic cosmic rays on clouds” has been moved to:

http://secamlocal.ex.ac.uk/people/staff/dbs202/publications/2006/harrison2006.pdf

Nothing as fast changing as the Internet…

Ferdinand

The response of Shaviv, Svensmark and others are direct critiques of the original Lockwood and Frohlich article. That is a kind of real peer review (don’t know who did the original peer review), again, as the best peer review is by competing scientists. The most important point is that L&F used a different satellite composite than the original authors of the satellite software, which caused a lot of discussion. And important too is that a third (neutral) party, the Belgian KMI, has a similar conclusion as the ACRIM specialists, thus not confirming the L&F findings.

About Svensmark: please read the response of Svensmark… He was attacked by Peter Laut about his galactic cosmic rays (GCR) hypothesis:
soleil_031223_Laut_Solar_activity_climate_hypotheses.pdf

Peter Laut, co-author of the article against GCR, has something personal against solar scientists and even discusses graphs he makes himself, but says that solar scientists have made them!

From: http://www.dsri.dk/getfile.php3?id=290

Then DL go on claiming that Lassen and Friis-Christensen (2000) (LFC) provided an update of their original paper. This is true, but it is certainly not the figure that DL show in their Fig. 1b! DL postulate that the figure is “an update as presented by LFC” and state that “they [LFC] arrive at a different curve (Figure 1 b)”. The figure is, however, actually produced by Laut himself (!) (see Laut (2003)), which makes the subsequent discussion by DL on what LFC “draw special attention to” in the figure and whether the curve “exhibits … the claimed agreement” an almost surreal experience to read.

More in-depth reaction: http://tinyurl.com/24o93o

I am not fully convinced of the GCR hypothesis, but there is some empirical evidence:
http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/cag/publications/2006/harrison2006.pdf

Anyway, whatever the pathway is, there is a clear influence of solar cycles on climate.

About climate sensitivity: Arrhenius was wrong, see:
http://home.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/arrhrev.htm

The sensitivity of 3 K for 2xCO2 is far from settled, and is mainly what current climate programs incorporate. There are different estimates for climate sensitivity, see: http://home.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/howmuch.htm

The base warming from CO2 doubling is less than 1 K, 1.2 K including water vapor feedback. Other feedbacks (especially clouds and aerosols) are very unsure, even their signs…

Climate scientists like Hansen based the 3 K/2xCO2 on the ice ages, as he assumes that without CO2 feedback, the temperature change would be smaller. But there is no measurable CO2 feedback, neither during the end of the Eemian (the previous interglacial), nor at the LGM-Holocene transition. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/eemian.html and
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/epica5.gif
The latter graph with thanks to André van den Berg.

There is only one temperature record (as far as reliable) for the past century. If natural variability was more important, then the sensitivity for CO2 must be lower, or one can not reproduce the temperature record of the previous century without overshoot. That implies a lower sensitivity for CO2 than for other (natural) forcings. And that is exactly the discussion between Hansen/Mann/Schmidt at one side and a lot of European climate specialists at the other side…

Just a couple of quick responses for now – time for bed after – I’ll try to come back again tomorrow.

You and your colleagues argue that Climate Audit does a valuable job because even peer-revised science requires audit of the figures? And then you rely upon Svensmark (look at the history of his “solar causes warming” papers) – writing in a non-peer reviewed article? It is to laugh.

You’ve drawn the wrong conclusion. Given that we have a reasonable fix on the science which produces climate sensitivities to CO2 in the region of 3K (starting with Arrhenius at 6K et seq), the implication of recent warming not resulting mostly from CO2 is that we’ve got a lot more to come than we thought. That wouldn’t be comforting, if it were true.

I have read the article by Spencer too. Was highly surprised that he believes in ID. But as long as that doesn’t influence his science, I have no problems with that. The same for the houswive in my neighbourhood, but she has shown more not-so-intelligent believes…

Again, the solar-earth climate connection largely depends of what type of solar reconstruction one uses… The Lockwood and Frohlich paper was questioned by other solar scientists, not at least because they based their conclusion on one way the different satellites measuring TSI were combined: they used the PMOD composite (calculated by Frohlich, which found decreasing minima), while the original calculations of the satellite measurements, the ACRIM composite, were done by Willson and indepently confirmed by my own good old KMI (not owned by me, but I pay taxes for them) which both find increasing minima.
The SPPI (I know right-wing deniers…) has a good summary

More comment from Svensmark and Friis-Christensen: http://www.spacecenter.dk/publications/scientific-report-series/Scient_No._3.pdf
And from Shaviv:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/07/nir-shaviv-why-is-lockwood-and-frohlich.html

About your question: If the influence of natural variations is larger than now is incorporated in the models, that has as consequence that the influence of greenhouse gases is less than incorporated, and the influence of 2xCO2 is smaller and probably below the 1.5-4.5°C range of IPCC “projections”.

I know that several climate scientists disagree. They believe that the sensitivity of climate for all types of forcings is near equal. But I am in good company. From:
http://www.wsl.ch/staff/jan.esper/publications/QSR_Esper_2005.pdf

So, what would it mean, if the reconstructions indicate a larger (Esper et al., 2002; Pollack and Smerdon, 2004; Moberg et al., 2005) or smaller (Jones et al., 1998; Mann et al., 1999) temperature amplitude? We suggest that the former situation, i.e. enhanced variability during pre-industrial times, would result in a redistribution of weight towards the role of natural factors in forcing temperature changes, thereby relatively devaluing the impact of anthropogenic emissions and affecting future predicted scenarios. If that turns out to be the case, agreements such as the Kyoto protocol that intend to reduce emissions of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, would be less effective than thought.

I couldn’t have said it better…

On solar-climate relationship:
Of course thetre is a relationship between solar variation and climate; but that isn;t the issue. Your Nature referenece pointed out “that solar variability is unlikely to have been the dominant cause of the strong warming during the past three decades”. Lockwood and Frohlich have published a paper In the Proceedings of the Royal Society, this year, shooting the idea down.

On ID/anti-AGW
You may be right, although I’d be surprised if our creationist evangelicals like McIntosh would accept AGW. One titbit I’ve noticed recently – Spencer, of Spencer & Christy, appears to subscribe to a particularly creationist form of intelligent design:

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=080805I

To my previous question:

“Have you actually thought through the implications of the current warming being only partially a result of anthropogenic CO2?” you answered “yes” – what conclusion did you reach?

Solar reconstructions were made for the pre-satellite era, not only for the pre-industrial history. Even then, it is quite uncertain if direct sunlight (TSI : total solar energy income at the top of the atmosphere) gives the best indication for solar induced climate changes. E.g. the change in ozone layer thickness and jet stream position/rain patterns is directly correlated to the amount of UV-B/C in incoming sunlight, which has a variation of +/- 10% vs. only +/- 1.5% for total solar energy. And (low) cloudiness may be connected to GCRs (galactic cosmic rays) which are inversely correlated to the sun’s magnetic field (still heatly debated…). Although there is a good correlation between TSI and the sun’s magnetic field/GCRs, that is not a perfect match…

Ferdinand

About solar-climate relations:
The short-term solar cycle (9-13 years) is visible in a lot of climate data, including temperature (+/- 0.1°C globally), sea surface temperature (+/- 0.3-0.5°C within a few years in the tropics), jet stream position, rain patterns (from the Mississippi delta to the Po in Italy and the Nile) and global (low) cloud cover. For the latter, see fig.1 in Kristjánsson ea.:
http://folk.uio.no/jegill/papers/2002GL015646.pdf
Low cloud cover induces cooling, high altitude cirrus clouds induce warming. The latter seems to be reduced in recent years. See:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071102152636.htm
There is no correlation between the increase in GHGs and cloud cover found until now.

For long-term changes: that depends of the reconstruction chosen. Anyway, we are now on a 8,000 years high of solar activity. See:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v431/n7012/abs/nature02995.html
The different reconstructions all use slightly different ways to reconstruct solar activity of the pre-industrial past. Some use sunspot (group) number, some use cycle length or a mix of both number and length, some use cosmic rays isotope data. Although all show similar behaviour, there are differences in times when there is little change, like the current period. Even satellite data are difficult to interprete: one team find no increase in recent times, another team found a slight increase in minimum of the previous cycle, that would be enough to induce 30% of the most recent increase in temperature. See Scafetta and West:
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/2005GL023849.pdf

They tested two solar reconstructions in the HadCM3 model for attribution purposes. One of the reconstructions was made by Hoyt and Schatten and its shape closely resembles the previous century’s temperature record until 1993, including the 1945-1975 cooling, without the help of (highly uncertain) human-made aerosols or (more certain) GHGs. See 10xHS in fig.1 of Stott ea.:
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/2005GL023849.pdf
Of course 10xsolar is a way too high effect, but 3-5xsolar should give a near perfect fit…

About the ID-AGW/sceptics connection:
IDers are very rare in Europe, I don’t know of anyone at the sceptics side here. Things are pretty different in the US, I suppose, as the IDers are in both camps and the left/right divide is much sharper. Probably due to the Anglo-Saxon way of elections, where minorities have little chance to be elected. In most of Europe, there are much more possibilities for any minority to be heard…

Quiet Desparation:
Thanks for the lesson…

Headers?

Good lord, man, be scientific! Test!

Now testing!

HTML
Bold
Italic
Underline
http://michaelscomments.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/hello-kitty.jpg

That other stuff with the square brackets
[b]Bold[b]
[i]Italic[/i]
[u]Underline[/u]
[img]http://michaelscomments.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/hello-kitty.jpg[/img]

In short, yes a lot. Somewhat longer: I have read a book some 30 years ago about the impact of solar cycles on the earth’s climate.

And what is your conclusion?

BTW, which solar cycles are you talking about; the 11 year one doesn’t match the current warming, and solar activity generally hasn’t increased over the last 30 years.

Btw, can html tags be used in this blog?

I hope so, or all these blockquotes I’m using won’t work.

…Later she declared that she was a fervent fan of ID…

To match your single ID/AGW blend, I give you DaveScot and the Uncommon Descent crowd. Pure ID cut with pure AGW denialism. UD’s front page currently sports two posts on AGW; one, by DLH, entitled “Pathological consequences of Darwinism vs ID”, and one, by the one and only DaveScot called “Weather Channel Founder: “[Global Warming] is the greatest scam in history””. You wouldn’t like DaveScot’s views though – the last time I was paying attention, to what he was saying, his claim was that GW was caused exclusively by Black Carbon…

In my neighbourhood a housewive saw Gore’s film and made a case in the media to gather more than thousand politicians, including the prime minister and the rest of the government to see the film. She succeeded with that and was interviewed on TV, newspapers and magazines all over the country.

Later she declared that she was a fervent fan of ID, which is a near extinct species in Europe (should be protected as endangered?).

After that, she declared in a womens magazine that the chemical industry was using lots of energy to make their products, as these need some 20,000°C in their processes, I have sent a letter to the editors of the magazine to check for the accuracy of this kind of remarks, as even the sun’s surface is not that hot…

“Have you actually thought through the implications of the current warming being only partially a result of anthropogenic CO2?”

In short, yes a lot. Somewhat longer: I have read a book some 30 years ago about the impact of solar cycles on the earth’s climate. Had a huge impact on my interest in climate. Not that I believe that solar can explain everything, but I am pretty sure that solar has more influence than current models imply. See e.g Scott ea. about the probability that the HadCM3 model underestimates solar with a factor 2 (within the constraints of the model, like a fixed influence of aerosols):
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/StottEtAl.pdf

“This is the best bit. Presumably CA can pack up and go home then; or are you suggesting that these are the only two groups that check each others’ work?”

Sadly yes. In the Hockeystick case nobody ever had checked MBH’s work, nobody even asked for the data or methods used, which were necessary to obtain the endresult, before Steve McI asked for them. Even the data which were sent to him contained errors and the methods used were never revealed in sufficient detail to reproduce what was really done. Only with a lot of trial and error and approximations the results could be replicated with a minimum of difference… This revealed the odd statistic method Mann used and the influence of strip bark pines on the endresult. Mann never admitted that his method was wrong, neither that strip bark trees affect the results in that way that these are invalidated.

The only way to have (real) scrunity by some of your colleauges, is if you differ in opinion with them (or especially with the mainstream). But even then, be careful: next time they can be the peer-reviewers of your article… In the case of RSS vs. UAH, UAH differed too much from the mainstream, thus must be audited by mainstream scientists. The same when ocean buoys present a cooling of the oceans (some error was quickly found). Or the radiosonde data which beg to differ with the ground stations. But have you heard of any official audit of the surface temperature network? That is good for amateurs, no interest from the official side…
Please have a look at GISS and find something reliable rural in the whole equatorial band… http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/

Ferdinand

Btw, can html tags be used in this blog?

It doesn’t bear directly on the scientific case for or against athropogenic global warming (AGW) but the connection between the lunatic fring and people involved in the climate contoversy is overwhemingly between AGW believers and wackos – not sceptics and wackos. As an exercise, Google “Global Warming UFOs”. There are millions of hits. In the fifties it was a popular myth that the aliens were visiting us to help us with nuclear war. Today those same kind of people think the lights in the sky are ships bringing us relief from global warming.

Or listen to Art Bell’s radio show any evening (somebody else runs it now). I heard a discussion recently of UFOs, astral projection and global warming. Art Bell of course is the author of the book that the movie “The Day After Tommorow” was based on. Bell is the king of the loonies. He believes in Goat Vampires.

Climate Audit is a very serious blog that addresses serious methodological issues. I used to teach statistics and I often have trouble with some of the posts. This blog seems to focus only on easy issues. It doubt if it would be very interesting to the core CA readership few of whom believe in ideas like creationism or the Apollo Hoax.

The problem with trends like these is that they are quite sensitive to begin and endpoint bias.

You don’t say! That of course is exactly why denialists choose 1998 as the starting point…

…if you include the 1978-1982 period, the satellite trends are much flatter…

Indeed – and the discrepancy with surface measurements is greater.

…if you look at 1998-current period, there is a decreasing “trend”…

See above; starting from a spike caused by known mechanisms is the obvious way for denialists to make their case. It doesn’t explain why we in the UK had the hottest year on record ending in April 2007, but presumably someone somewhere had an exceptionally cool year somewhere to balance it out – it’s only regional variation.

…after 2002 it is flat (and if one corrects for Enso events, the whole period 1998-current is flat, but on a higher level than the previous period)…

This is the bit I can’t see. I admit I’m eyeballing rather than crunching the numbers, but I can see warming in this period.

…Is the increase the result of more CO2? At least in part…

Have you actually thought through the implications of the current warming being only partially a result of anthropogenic CO2?

In the case of UAH/RSS, the two groups did independent calculations of each other, with different results. No better audit than two groups which try to catch the error the other has made…

This is the best bit. Presumably CA can pack up and go home then; or are you suggesting that these are the only two groups that check each others’ work?

The problem with trends like these is that they are quite sensitive to begin and endpoint bias. For the long-term trend: if you include the 1978-1982 period, the satellite trends are much flatter, if you look at 1998-current period, there is a decreasing “trend”, if you start from 2000, there is a warming trend and after 2002 it is flat (and if one corrects for Enso events, the whole period 1998-current is flat, but on a higher level than the previous period)… Anyway, there is a cycling trend around the increase, probably linked to the solar cycle. Is the increase the result of more CO2? At least in part, but the models don’t show the decrease in clouds at all. The difference indeed is about 1% in cloud cover, but that is a difference of 2 W/m2 extra heat input for the 33N-33S band. That is, as far as I remember from highschool a long time ago, 50% of the earth’s surface. And of the same global order as the total influence of GHGs since the start of the industrial revolution.

That models significantly don’t catch any (natural) cycle between 10-100 years is proven: see the graph S1 in Barnett ea. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/data/1112418/DC1/1
Moreover, if you look at the increase of heat content of the oceans, the largest increase is at the subtropics, where the largest decrease of clouds is/was measured (there may be a recent reverse in cloud cover trend…). See fig.2 from Levitus:
ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/woa/PUBLICATIONS/grlheat05.pdf
This again points to changes in cloud cover from natural (internal or external) origin. Direct influence of CO2 should be more evenly distributed over the latitudes…

In the case of UAH/RSS, the two goups did independent calculations of each other, with different results. No better audit than two groups which try to catch the error the other has made… There still is an unresolved difference, but as said, that is from a difference in interpretation of the bias between two non-overlapping satellites. This will remain unresolved, but it’s influence will diminish over time.

steven mosher, I agree with most of what you have said, but I will defend Phil on one thing.

Stuff like Moon hoaxers and astrology *are* easy targets… to you and me and Phil and most posters here. The problem is that the really stoopid stuff totally permeates our culture and acts to generate anti-science sentiment.

(stoopid = REALLY stupid)

I have heard people with *multiple* graduate degrees question the moon landings. I cannot figure out how that happens. I’ve read Dawkins. I’ve studied meme theory (which led me to realize rigid ideologies are a mental illness). I present these people with the facts (like clavius.org), but you can see them still having doubts no matter WHAT you show or tell them.

This crap sticks to people’s minds, and it sticks harder than Groilla Glue. Someone needs to counter it.

It’s “low hanging fruit” for skepticism, but also in the sense that it’s easy for the masses to consume.

The graph indeed is from UAH, but have a loof at Wiki, where the three temperature trends are plotted (including the corrected UAH temperature): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Satellite_Temperatures.png
Thus Carter is right that there is no trend after 1998.

That Wikipedia article doesn’t support your claim. The three temperature trends plotted show that the two satellite interpretations bracket the surface temperature trend, crossing in c1994; and eyeballing the graph (not the best way, I accept) shows an apparent upward trend in temperature after 2000 in all three curves.

The basics of CO2 warming require that the atmosphere should warm faster than the surface, especially in the tropics. But while the global trends are nearly the same, the tropics atmosphere shows less warming than the surface.

That depends on the timescales considered, as I understand it; on short timescales there appears to be good agreement between measurement and model, while on longer timescales there isn’t. There is more than one potential reason for this, one being that there remain errors in the radiosonde data.

Moreover, there is/was a negative trend in cloud cover over the period 1985-2003, in the (sub)tropics, which induces about 2 W/m2 more sunlight hitting the surface…

From the Wielicki paper:

“The missing variability in the models highlights the critical need to improve cloud modeling in the tropics so that prediction of tropical climate on interannual and decadal time scales can be improved.”

Do climatologists say that they know everything yet?

If GCM’s don’t catch cloud variations (the difference between overcast and direct sunlight can go up to 200 W/m2!), what is their value for any “projection”?

Relevance over decadal timescales – or even monthly or interannual? Climatogists might not be able to model cloud variability very well, but they can model average cloud cover reasonably well; and the difference between that and the actual cover would be a small percentage of the instantaneous difference – your figures show 1%. That error also affects only a fraction of the earth’s surface.

There was no need for CA to audit the UAH calculations, as that was done by a team from RSS + UAH.

That doesn’t follow. CA’s self-imposed job is to audit climate science – why should it trust an audit of figures by a team which includes those producing the figures to be audited?