Will the IPCC resign?

The data for the Briffa et al. version of the hockey stick looks to have been selected to support the IPCC position. This follows a pattern.
Dr. Hansen, GISS leader adjusts their temperature records constantly, disproportionately favouring warming.
NOAA has been accused of omitting unsupportive data.
Both venues are favoured by the IPCC.
Now the Hadley CRU, another IPCC favoured org is under the microscope.


I waited till today to see what sort of defence would be mounted. None so far.
The AGW zombie staked with another hockey stick. Jump to the end for links to the original articles in full.
(Layman's guide to the intrigue link)
Steve McIntyre, nemesis of warmist scientists has uncovered and deduced evidence of either enormous incompetence or outright deception on the parts of the hockey stick team and Climate Research Unit of the Hadley Centre associated with the UK Met. Office. Data used to produce the hockey stick came from that archived by the CRU. That data appears to have been selected from a much larger sample. When all the data is considered, something remarkable comes to light. Warming disappears. This truly remarkable piece of detective work demands at the very least a nobel peace prize, preferably that which the IPCC and Al Gore will be returning.


From Steve's post - Yamal: A "Divergence" Problem link:



Red, using the data selected for the hockey stick, black using the non selected data and green using both.


Ross McKitrick Sept 27th, 2009 link
Here's a re-cap of this saga that should make clear the stunning importance of what Steve has found. One point of terminology: a tree ring record from a site is called a chronology, and is made up of tree ring records from individual trees at that site. Multiple tree ring series are combined using standard statistical algorithms that involve detrending and averaging (these methods are not at issue in this thread). A good chronology–good enough for research that is–should have at least 10 trees in it, and typically has much more.
1. In a 1995 Nature paper by Briffa, Schweingruber et al., they reported that 1032 was the coldest year of the millennium - right in the middle of the Medieval Warm Period. But the reconstruction depended on 3 short tree ring cores from the Polar Urals whose dating was very problematic. www.climateaudit.org/?p=877.
2. In the 1990s, Schweingruber obtained new Polar Urals data with more securely-dated cores for the MWP. Neither Briffa nor Schweingruber published a new Polar Urals chronology using this data. An updated chronology with this data would have yielded a very different picture, namely a warm medieval era and no anomalous 20th century. Rather than using the updated Polar Urals series, Briffa calculated a new chronology from Yamal - one which had an enormous hockey stick shape. After its publication, in virtually every study, Hockey Team members dropped Polar Urals altogether and substituted Briffa's Yamal series in its place.
www.climateaudit.org/?p=528. PS: The exception to this pattern was Esper et al (Science) 2002, which used the combined Polar Urals data. But Esper refused to provide his data. Steve got it in 2006 after extensive quasi-litigation with Science (over 30 email requests and demands).
3. Subsequently, countless studies appeared from the Team that not only used the Yamal data in place of the Polar Urals, but where Yamal had a critical impact on the relative ranking of the 20th century versus the medieval era.
www.climateaudit.org/?p=3099
4. Meanwhile Briffa repeatedly refused to release the Yamal measurement data used inhis calculation despite multiple uses of this series at journals that claimed to require data archiving. E.g. www.climateaudit.org/?p=542
5. Then one day Briffa et al. published a paper in 2008 using the Yamal series, again without archiving it. However they published in a Phil Tran Royal Soc journal which has strict data sharing rules. Steve got on the case. www.climateaudit.org/?p=3266
6. A short time ago, with the help of the journal editors, the data was pried loose and appeared at the CRU web site. www.climateaudit.org/?p=7142
7. It turns out that the late 20th century in the Yamal series has only 10 tree ring chronologies after 1990 (5 after 1995), making it too thin a sample to use (according to conventional rules). But the real problem wasn't that there were only 5-10 late 20th century cores- there must have been a lot more. They were only using a subset of 10 cores as of 1990, but there was no reason to use a small subset. (Had these been randomly selected, this would be a thin sample, but perhaps passable. But it appears that they weren't randomly selected.)
www.climateaudit.org/?p=7142
8. Faced with a sample in the Taymir chronology that likely had 3-4 times as many series as the Yamal chronology, Briffa added in data from other researchers' samples taken at the Avam site, some 400 km away. He also used data from the Schweingruber sampling program circa 1990, also taken about 400 km from Taymir. Regardless of the merits or otherwise of pooling samples from such disparate locations, this establishes a precedent where Briffa added a Schweingruber site to provide additional samples. This, incidentally, ramped up the hockey-stickness of the (now Avam-) Taymir chronology.
www.climateaudit.org/?p=7158
9. Steve thus looked for data from other samples at or near the Yamal site that could have been used to increase the sample size in the Briffa Yamal chronology. He quickly discovered a large set of 34 Schweingruber samples from living trees. Using these instead of the 12 trees in the Briffa (CRU) group that extend to the present yields Figure 2, showing a complete divergence in the 20th century. Thus the Schweingruber data completely contradicts the CRU series. Bear in mind the close collaboration of Schweingruber and Briffa all this time, and their habit of using one another's data as needed.
10. Combining the CRU and Schweingruber data yields the green line in the 3rd figure above. While it doesn't go down at the end, neither does it go up, and it yields a medieval era warmer than the present, on the standard interpretation. Thus the key ingredient in a lot of the studies that have been invoked to support the Hockey Stick, namely the Briffa Yamal series (red line above) depends on the influence of a thin subsample of post-1990 chronologies and the exclusion of the (much larger) collection of readily-available Schweingruber data for the same area.
_____________________________
Calls for an explanation or resignations have been made. I would go further, I believe that on an issue of such importance, let's face it, the world has been inconvenienced to a huge degree and people have died as a direct result of policies based on the data, the veracity should be tested in court.
Leading UK Climate Scientists Must Explain or Resign link
by Jennifer Marohasy
[...] Mr McIntyre’s analysis of the data – which he had been asking for since 2003 – suggests that scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the Hadley Centre associated with the UK Met. Office  have been using only a small subset of the available data to make their claims that recent years have been the hottest of the last millennium.   When the entire data set is used, Mr McIntyre claims that the hockey stick shape disappears completely. [1]  


Mr McIntyre has previously showed problems with the mathematics behind the ‘hockey stick’.   But scientists at the Climate Research Centre (CRU), in particular Dr Briffa, have continuously republished claiming the upswing in temperatures over the last 100 years is real and not an artifact of the methodology used – as claimed by Mr McIntyre.     However, these same scientists have denied Mr McIntyre access to all the data.    Recently they were forced to make more data available to Mr McIntyre after they published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society  -  a journal which unlike Nature and Science has strict policies on data archiving which it enforces.


This week’s claims by Steve McIntyre that scientists associated with the UK Met. Office have been less than diligent  are serious and suggest some of the most defended building blocks of the case for anthropogenic global warming are based on the indefensible when the methodology is laid bare.  


This sorry saga also raises issues  associated with how data is archived at the UK Met. Office with incomplete data sets that spuriously support the case for global warming being promoted while complete data sets are kept hidden from the public –  including from scientific sceptics like Steve McIntyre. (continues)


From the comments:
Richard S Courtney Oct. 1st, 2009 link
[@] Nick Stokes: You wrongly assert to me:
"Richard “Briffa failed to state any criteria he used for his selection.”
This just isn’t true. He said
“Siberian larch (Larix sibirica) data from the area immediately east of the northern Ural Mountains, previously used by Hantemirov & Shiyatov (2002), were used as the Yamal regional chronology”
He’s using a data set which was previously used in the literature, and has made that clear. So you have to make a case that it was nonetheless necessary for him to use this alternative data. And I just can’t see it.”
Sorry, but your claim supports my statements that you dispute.
I said:
“Data which were in the possession of Briffa have been obtained for scrutiny by the scientific community. This revealed that there was a large data set and Briffa selected from that data set for conduct of his analysis. He published that analysis and its results.
But, importantly,
Briffa failed to state that he had selected from a larger data set
and
Briffa failed to state any criteria he used for his selection.
These failures invalidate Briffa’s analysis. Indeed, they are a severe scientific malpractice that is tantamount to fraud in that they misrepresent the analysis which Briffa conducted.”
It does not matter that Hantemirov & Shiyatov (or anybody else) had used that selection: perhaps that is all the data that was available to them.
But it does matter that Briffa had the full data and chose to use a sub-set of it for an unstated reason. His paper could, for example, have claimed that he used that sub-set for comparison to Hantemirov & Shiyatov (2002) but, of course, that comparison study would have been a different study for a different purpose than the paper Briffa published.
Clearly, you have not grasped the point, so compare these two statements:
“We analysed the available data”
and
“We analysed a selection from the available data but we are not stating our reason(s) for making that selection and we will not allow others to see the data we chose not to use.
Can you not understand the difference?
The statement of a prima facia case of scientific malpractice against Briffa is not – as you assert – “ridiculous”: it is simply fact.
Richard
______


vg Oct. 1st, 2009 link
I think resign will be the minimum. I would not be surprised if major lawsuits are initiated worldwide for damages etc… once the reality of this sinks in. I still think it will take a few more days or weeks. The AGW are of course hoping this will go away with time.. so no discussion on this allowed. Im sure this is their policy currently. There is no choice for them now.
______

So there you have it. Strong evidence that harmful AGW aka climate change is at  least a misconception and very likely the result of malpractice. The IPCC must be aware that the data was dodgy because of their excellent review procedure. What say you Ban ki-Moon?
Jennifer Marohasy's post link
Steve McIntyre's posts
Briffa's Avam-Taimyr Series link 1
Fresh Data on Briffa's Yamal #1 link2
Yamal: A "Divergence" Problem link3.


The prettiest contrarian, Jo Nova condemned it with vigour: link
DT writer James Delingpole commented on the HS a couple of days ago: link
Mail and DT columnist Chistopher Booker wrote earlier in September: link
Physicist Lubos Motl: link
WUWT: link
Air Vent: link


.

Brown Rot, Gorebull, Gang Green

A nation deceived. No wonder Brown chews his digits. Deception is a big cause of stress.

“But it is the awareness itself that will drive the change and one of the ways it will drive the change is through global governance and global agreements.” (Editor's Note: Gore makes the “global governance” comment at the 1min. 10 sec. mark in this UK Times video.). (Source)
Gore is a club of rome member and friend of Maurice Strong.

Strong was co author of Kyoto. Strong was obliged to leave the UN when he was found to be involved in the oil for food Iraq scam.

What is happening in the world today, constant weakening of the stock market, currencies destabilized, the gang green plot, commodity destabilization, disease panics all hyped out of proportion to reality are exactly in line with the club of rome manifesto.

The EU/EC in collusion with the UN and various other NGOs (under club of rome guidance I believe) has expressed a strong desire to rule the world. Joining the EU, no-one voted for world government. Brown's moves, selling the gold, devaluing the pound, running up UK debt and making sure the public is in no position to do anything about it all point to putting the UK in a position where we are dependent on the EU. The green dream to control climate and stop warming has never been more than a fantasy but very, very useful in bringing governments together to discuss steps towards world governance as a fait accompli and how to get there. Having a secret agenda that is detrimental to UK is treason or something very close. The only way I will be reassured is when there is a categorical statement by the EU that distances it from Maurice Strong/club of rome's UN and stops funding it.

The only way I will ever trust Brown is when hell freezes over. If giving Britain away by the euro is treasonable, could EU/EC puppet Mandy and Mandy puppet Brown have their strings cut?

The question has to be asked, Cameron must know, why hasn't he come clean? Oh, that is right. He's in on it.

We need out of the EU fast.

eulab and eucon can no longer be trusted.

In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome.
The real enemy then, is humanity itself.

Club of rome manifesto Link

Bring the divided nation together to face an outside enemy, either a real one or else one INVENTED for the purpose…

HOW ABOUT THE EU AS THE COMMON ENEMY?

Democracy will be made to seem responsible for the lagging economy, the scarcity and uncertainties. The very concept of democracy could then be brought into question and allow for the seizure of power.

Some Current Members of the Club of Rome triad:

Al Gore – former VP of the USA, leading climate change campaigner, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Academy Award winner, Emmy winner, lead the US delegations to the Rio Earth Summit and Kyoto Climate Change conference, largest shareholder in the Chicago Climate Exchange.

Javier Solana – Secretary General of the Council of the European Union, High Representative for EU Foreign Policy.

Maurice Strong – former Head of the UN Environment Programme, Chief Policy Advisor to Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the Rio Earth Summit, co-author (with Gorbachev) of the Earth Charter, co-author of the Kyoto Protocol, founder of the Earth Council, devout Baha’i.

Mikhail Gorbachev – CoR executive member, former President of the Soviet Union, founder of Green Cross International and the Gorbachev Foundation, Nobel Peace Prize winner, co-founder (with Hidalgo) of the Club of Madrid, co-author (with Strong) of the Earth Charter.

Diego Hidalgo – CoR executive member, co-founder (with Gorbachev) of the Club of Madrid, founder and President of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Ervin Laszlo – founding member of the CoR, founder and President of the Club of Budapest, founder and Chairman of the World Wisdom Council.

Hassan bin Talal – President of the CoR, President of the Arab Thought Forum, founder of the World Future Council, recently named as the United Nations ‘Champion of the Earth’.

Sir Crispin Tickell – former British Permanent Representative to the United Nations and Permanent Representative on the Security Council, Chairman of the ‘Gaia Society’, Chairman of the Board of the Climate Institute, leading British climate change campaigner.

Kofi Annan – former Secretary General of the United Nations. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

Javier Perez de Cuellar – former Secretary General of the United Nations. .

Robert Muller – former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, founder and Chancellor of the UN University of Peace.

David Rockefeller – CoR executive member, former Chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, founder of the Trilateral Commission, executive member of the World Economic Forum, donated land on which the United Nations stands.

Stephen Schneider – Stanford Professor of Biology and Global Change. Professor Schneider was among the earliest and most vocal proponents of man-made global warming and a lead author of many IPCC reports.

Bill Clinton – former President of the United States, founder of the Clinton Global Iniative.

Jimmy Carter – former President of the United States, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

Bill Gates – founder of Microsoft, philanthropist

Other current influential members:

(these can be found on the Club of Rome, Club of Budapest, Club of Madrid and/or CoR National Association membership pages)

Ted Turner – American media mogul, philanthropist, founder of CNN

George Soros – multibillionare, major donor to the UN

Tony Blair – former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Deepak Chopra – New Age Guru

Desmond Tutu – South African Bishop and activist, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

Timothy Wirth – President of the United Nations Foundation

Henry Kissinger – former US Secretary of State

Barbara Marx Hubbard – President of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution

Betty Williams – Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Marianne Williamson – New Age ‘Spiritual Activist’

Robert Thurman – assistant to the Dalai Lama

Jane Goodall – Primatologist and Evolutionary Biologist

Juan Carlos I – King of Spain

Prince Philippe of Belgium

Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands

Dona Sophia – Queen of Spain

Karan Singh – Chairman of the Temple of Understanding

Daisaku Ikeda – founder of the Soka Gakkai cult

Eduard Shevardnadze – former Soviet foreign minister and President of Georgia

Richard von Weizsacker – former President of Germany

Martin Lees – CoR Secretary General, Rector of the UN University of Peace

Ernesto Zedillo – Director of The Yale Center for the Study of Globalization

Frithjof Finkbeiner – Coordinator of the Global Marshall Plan

Vaclav Havel – former President of the Czech Republic

Hans Kung – Founder of the Global Ethic Foundation

Ruud Lubbers – United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

Mary Robinson – United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

Jerome Binde – Director of Foresight, UNESCO

Federico Mayor – Director General of UNESCO

Tapio Kanninen – Director of Policy and Planning, United Nations

Konrad Osterwalder – Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations

Peter Johnston – Director General of European Commission

Thomas Homer-Dixon – Director of Peace and Conflict
Studies, University of Toronto

Emeka Anyaoku – former Commonwealth Secretary General, current President of the WWF

Wangari Maathai – Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, founder of the Green Belt Movement
******************************
Dejan Lucic Link

The dolts in charge of the EU/EC in charge of the world? What a nightmare. No wonder Obama doesn't like Brown. Bush must have been in on it of course.

Royal Commission necessary

I'm making myself tired for nothing.

Top Aussie scientists have proposed a Royal Commission may be the answer to determining the veracity of IPCC opinions on carbon dioxide poisoning the climate.

"Parliament should defer consideration of the CPRS bill and institute a fully independent Royal Commission of enquiry into the evidence for and against a dangerous human influence on climate."

Read and believe: Link or copy-paste this into the address bar -

joannenova.com.au/2009/07/03/scientists-call-for-royal-commission-into-climate-change-science/

The paper - Minister Wong’s Reply to Senator Fielding’s
Three Questions on Climate Change – Due Diligence
Contributors:
Bob Carter
David Evans
Stewart Franks
William Kininmonth

They pretty much conclude what I did. (Gis a job).

Heaven forbid such a thing could happen in the UK, the government wouldn't have the balls. Would they?

Cost-benefit of political membership of the EU? Nah, no way.

From Motl's blog - link

I hope. For everyone's sake.

Australian Senator Responded 3

Question 3

Is it the case that all GCM computer models projected a steady increase in temperature for the period 1990-2008, whereas in fact there were only 8 years of warming were(sic) followed by 10 years of stasis and cooling.

Correct answer - Yes

If so, why is it assumed that long-term climate projections by the same models are suitable as a basis for public policy making?

Correct answer - Bad advice

It is not the case that all GCM computer models projected a steady increase in temperature for the period 1990-2008.

As noted above, air temperatures are affected by natural variability. Global Climate Models show this variability but are not able to predict when such variations will happen.

The Global Climate Model data presented in the IPCC Fourth Assessment are averages of many individual simulations. By averaging across simulations natural variability is 'smoothed over' and the result shows only the underlying trend due to large-scale forcings such as greenhouse gases. This is illustrated below. The coloured lines are individual 'realisations' or simulations of global average temperature over the period 1950 to 2020 using a particular model (called 20C3M). The dark line is the average of the individual realisations.

The figure below shows that GCM simulations do capture the decadal patterns of variability evident in the temperature record. They do not predict a steady, uninterrupted increase in air temperatures. The left panel shows two periods - 1977-1985 and 1981-1989 - in the global average air temperature record where no substantial warming was observed, although they are embedded in the longer term trend that does show substantial warming. GCMs reflect this type of pattern. The right panel shows a GCM-based projection of 21st century global average air temperature using a single realisation. Note that the 2001-2010 period and the 2016-2031 period show no significant trend although the century-scale trend is one of strong warming - between 3 and 4°C.

Globally averaged surface air temperature for land and ocean based on the data set by Smith et al [2005]

One realisation of the globally averaged surface air temperature from the ECHAM5 coupled climate model forced with the SRES A2 greenhouse gas increase scenario for the 21st century

Therefore, GCMs can and do simulate decade-long periods of no warming, or even slight cooling, embedded in longer-term warming trends.

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

A simple question. Model forecasts are supposed to become more accurate the further into the future from the initiation of the model we get. How can that be true for homogenised wrong model projections that increasingly diverge as is obvious even in this illustration that only shows to 2020?

If all the model projections were aligned at a common point such as the temperature in June 1988, how diverse would the results be at 2020? That there is no common point suggests graph-craft, manipulation to show the best result.

Models are useless for climate prediction because they don't predict.
Models are useless for projection because assumptions are obligatory for climate factors such as atmospheric nuclear bomb detonations, solar variation, ocean oscillations, air current changes, aerosol variation, cloudiness, water vapour, precipitation, ice extent, volcanic and tectonic activity, land use change and others.

Aspects of climate science are scorned because the science has become a political football. It gets funding inappropriate to its value. Opinion and modelled projections take preference over reality. Climate science is advancing. Maybe in a few decades it will be somewhere near useful for long term policy decision making. As of now, it isn't. Bigger computers merely get the wrong results faster.

In the situation we have at present, insufficient data to compute, ongoing investment in climate projection is akin to investment in astrology.

CO2 is a component of the atmosphere that as a whole moderates climate. Warmed air rises and cools. That is the biggest climate temperature factor. Yet a gas of 0.038% of the whole atmosphere that reacts to radiation that is barely identifiable as measurable heat is given higher importance. Human additions at 3.4% of ~2 parts per million p.a. additions to 0.038% is fancied to influence the climate detrimentally. 0.07% is fancied to cause the sky to fall.

Wanna buy a bridge?

***************************************************

Finally, if the aforementioned is insufficient to show the wrongness of the IPCC support for CO2 "greenhouse" hypothesis, then the following should.

Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Link
A non technical summary that should be read in conjunction with the full paper - link. The average Joe/Jolene may be overwhelmed by the mathematics. Skip them. They are the mathematically logical steps to illustrate and evidence the accompanying texts. The document is not difficult to understand and the points covered leave little room for dispute.

From the n-t summary:

Section 3.6 the classic hypotheses of Fourier, Tyndall and Arrhenius are analysed in detail, followed by modern versions of it, and it is concluded that :
• In the 70s, computer simulations of the "global climate" predicted for a doubling of the CO2 concentration a temperature rise of about 0.7 – 9.6 degrees Kelvin.
• Later computer simulations pointed towards a null effect.
• In the IPCC 1992 report, computer simulations of the “global climate" predicted a global temperature rise of about 0.27 - 0.82K per decade.
• In the IPCC 1995 report, computer simulations of the “global climate" predicted a global temperature rise of about 0.08 - 0.33K per decade
• In 2005, computer simulations of the “global climate" predicted for a doubling of the CO2 concentration a global temperature rise of about 2 - 12K, whereby six so-called scenarios have been omitted that yield a global cooling.
To derive climate catastrophes from these computer games and to scare mankind to death is a crime.

Section 5 is the final section of the paper and contains the ‘Physicist’s Summary’, which the reader of this non-technical summary is again urged to review in its entirety. Simply quoting these few lines do an injustice to the entire paper, but set the tone for discrediting the fallacy the UN IPCC is perpetuating, aided in no small measure by many a skeptical scientist who also fails to grasp the fallacy of the so-called greenhouse effect with its double-counting of radiant energy.

Ends with: “The natural greenhouse effect is a myth, not a physical reality. The CO2-greenhouse effect, however, is a manufactured mirage.
Horrific visions of a rising sea level, melting pole caps and spreading deserts in North America and Europe are fictitious consequences of a fictitious physical mechanism which cannot be seen even in computer climate models.
More and more, the main tactic of CO2-greenhouse gas defenders seems to be to hide behind a mountain of pseudo-explanations that are unrelated to an academic education or even to physics training.
The points discussed here were to answer whether the supposed atmospheric effect in question has a physical basis. It does not.
In summary, no atmospheric greenhouse effect, nor in particular a CO2-greenhouse effect, is permissible in theoretical physics and engineering thermodynamics.

It is therefore illegitimate to use this fictitious phenomenon to extrapolate predictions as consulting solutions for economics and intergovernmental policy.”

See also: jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/03/radica...

Australian Senator Responded 2

Re. Response to Q2.

Question 2

Is it the case that the rate and magnitude of warming between 1979 and 1998 (the late 20th century phase of global warming) was not unusual in either rate or magnitude as compared with warmings that have occurred earlier in the Earth's history?
Correct answer - Yes.

While the Earth's temperature has been warmer in the geological past than it is today, the magnitude and rate of change is unusual in a geological context.

The Little Ice Age was an usual event in its depth and brevity. A comparable event has not been found. Comparing emergence to real ice age events is not appropriate and to say the rapidity of emergence is unusual is to state belief thus:

Evidence from ice cores shows that between ice ages and warm inter-glacial periods temperatures increased by 4 to 7°C. However this was a gradual process taking approximately 5,000 years. More rapid changes in temperature, such as those associated with the well-known Dansgaard-Oeschger events during the last ice age, are not global but rather highly regional in character. Globally, the Earth has already experienced warming of 0.76°C since 1850, a very rapid change in geological terms.

Ice cores are also regional. Cores of ice laid down in sub zero temperatures record discrete events (snow) that at the very least have a problem of resolution due to compression causing smoothing or smearing that defies identification of rapid events. To suggest certain knowledge is simply propaganda.

In terms of timescales of importance for humans, the last 2,000 years are most relevant, because this is the period over which our civilisations have developed. 2 steps forward in warm eras and one step back in cool eras.

www.longrangeweather.com

The figure below shows an 1800-year northern hemisphere air temperature record including a variety of estimates of past temperature trends. The light grey shading indictes the uncertainties surrounding these estimates and thus represents the envelope of natural variability over the past 1800 years. The red line at the right is the instrumental record since 1850. The broken red line is the "committed" additional temperature rise due to the thermal inertia of the ocean.
This highly contested claim was covered in "Re. response to 3 questions. Q1". The relevant links were "anomalous-spike-in-ocean-heat-content", "Have Changes In Ocean Heat Falsified The Global Warming Hypothesis?" and "Comments On A New Paper “Global Ocean Heat Content 1955–2008 In Light Of Recently Revealed Instrumentation Problems".
Even without this additional rise, the current observed temperature is now outside the envelope of natural variability over the past 1800 years and thus would certainly be considered "unusual".

Trends in Northern Hemisphere air temperature for the past 1800 years.
Note that this is the top panel of Fig T.S 20 of the AR4 WG1.
Depending on the choice of proxies of course. Has no-one told
the Senator the hockey stick was busted not least by NAS?
(Also commented on here.)
Ongoing research by a variety of contributors not only prove the
global extent, they also strongly support warming at least
as strong as modern day.
Proxies, decide on your case, choose your proxy. As with models
there is a proxy that proves every condition conceivable.
Vostok though is certainly reliable.

The only reference to historic and prehistoric times we have is
proxies that don't give good resolution. The best that can be
said is there have been much hotter times and with low CO2
and much colder times and with high CO2. The warmest
temperature measured at Vostok in recent times is -12.2°C.

Isn't it? Which one is faulty (and how/why)?
Another demo.



Both images originated from an excellent article that discusses
proxy variation and especially why hockey stick types based on
tree ring data are far from appropriate for use by an
organisation that has a shred of integrity.

The final example I'll show supports the MWP temperature being
comparable to present times.


This article discusses MWP as a solar driven phenomenom and
cites a number of papers.
Medieval Warm Period (Solar Influence - Temperature)
The Medieval Warm Period Project lays to rest the fancy that
the MWP was regional.
It is unnecessary to prove the global extent of the LIA, it is
accepted that it affected the N. hemisphere and that is where
global warming has occurred.
That the MWP was warm and not due to CO2 is sufficient to cast
reasonable doubt on any IPCC selected proxy support of their
position.

If the warming was not unusual, why is it perceived to have been caused by humans carbon dioxide emissions;

The correct answer is - justification of existence, justification of funding and achievement of agenda, profit being one of the many.

and in any event, why is warming a problem if the Earth has experienced similar warmings in the past?

The correct answer is - Polar bears don't look as pretty on bare earth.

As noted above, the current warming is unusual as past changes have been triggered by natural forcings whereas there are no known natural climate forcings, such as changes in solar irradiance, that can explain the current observed warming of the climate system. It can only be explained by the increase in greenhouse gases due to human activities.

The aforesaid is unsubstantiated opinion. Cloudiness, water vapour, changing currents in the air and water, ocean oscillations, ozone, methane levels, aerosols, biomass expansion, urban heat islands etc. etc. etc. all contribute to warming. Not least solar influence that is the only source that can actually raise the energy available in the system is gaining increasing attention.

Image from Ice cap used to illustrate the paper "Evidence for a solar signature in 20th-century temperature"

Meanwhile on another planet: .
The greenhouse effect is a well-understood physical phenomenon, like gravity.
The theory of the incorrectly named "greenhouse" effect is well understood. There is scant real world observational evidence to support it.
Greenhouse gases have a known ability to absorb heat emitted from the Earth's surface and re-emit it in the lower atmosphere.
Greenhouse gases have an estimated ability to absorb energy (dependent on ambient temperature) of low frequencies emitted from the Earth's surface that escapes the troposphere in various ways at various frquencies due to various factors such as friction and collision. Energy in the lower atmosphere is in constant flux between energy forms.
The net effect - measured as "radiative forcing" - is to increase the heat content at the Earth's surface.
The net effect is "radiative forcing" that is an estimate of how much of the estimated energy that is radiated from the Earth's surface is intercepted by the atmosphere. The calculations use hypothetical numbers such as 41% of the Earth's total energy emission is transmitted as infrared. That is very, very high and is guessed so to produce the volume necessary to make CO2 a significant GHG. Real world measurement of IR emission by the surface, especially in CO2's range has never been undertaken despite its ease because? Satellite measurements are of IR that is not intercepted. A value for emission by the surface is assumed.

Radiative forcing is the common currency for the effect of all factors that influence the heat content at the Earth's surface - solar irradiance, surface reflectivity, greenhouse gas concentrations, and so on. Analysis (modelling) of the climatic shift between the last ice age and the present warm period gives the wrong quantitative relationship between the change in radiative forcing because the assumed numbers are biased by lack of data and need for funding etc. and the resulting change in global air temperature that is a lengthening of the time it takes for energy to escape that shows as a longer time at the same temperature, i.e. a day longer at the same temperature would show as a higher average giving the misleading idea that temperature height has increased; this relationship includes all known feedbacks within the climate system, the value of those whose value isn't known being estimated, in an empirical way that is derived without using models (guessed). Applying (force fitting) this relationship to the post-1850 warming shows that the magnitude of the warming at equilibrium (that is when the system settles into a stable state) is in proportion to the contrived change in radiative forcing, which in turn is largely due to (piracy, the cost of postage and) the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases (that is, solar irradiance and surface reflectivity have not changed significantly over this period on planet Gore whilst here on Earth solar irradiance increased throughout last century and albedo changed greatly every year between summer and winter and decade to decade).

Correlation does not prove causation. Besides, CO2 does not correlate.

The volume and effects of cloud, aerosols and ozone that regulate incoming solar radiation, of water vapour that is the main regulator of Earth radiation, the variation and effect of albedo such as ice, crops, water, the values for energy leaving the Earth's surface by conduction, convection, evaporation, radiation etc. are unknown. They have to be guessed, input to models and jiggled to produce a result that is claimed to be of value.

Still on another planet:
The evidence is thus very strong that the post-1850 warming trend is primarily caused by the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activities.

The reason that the post-1850 warming trend is guessed to be important is because it is guessed to be moving the Earth outside of the guessed climatic envelope - the guessed patterns of natural variability - within which contemporary civilisation has developed and thrived and within which the ecosystems on which we depend have evolved. For example, many plants and animals will be unable to adapt quickly enough to the warming trend (i.e. the same temperature for longer), guessed to be placing them at risk of extinction. The increased temperature of days that were below the maximum will also alter natural systems such as the hydrological cycle, changing the rainfall patterns that constantly alter without help from humans on which humans have become dependent.

That contradicts the logic that says longer growing seasons with higher productivity due to higher CO2 levels makes for higher crop yields, extends habitat that increases wildlife numbers and makes almost everyone better off than in a cooling climate.

Selected Research shows that Australia is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and that these impacts will become increasingly severe over time. River flow in the Murray-Darling Basin may decline by 10 to 25 percent by 2050 and by 2100 irrigated agriculture may decline by 92 percent. The Garnaut Review based on biased IPCC science also found that the climate change impacts on infrastructure will have a significant effect on Australia's output and consumption of goods and services, and that the costs of adaptation could be high. In summary, if the current warming trend is allowed to continue unabated (said as if we could influence it without a shred of evidence that we can) through the rest of this century and beyond, the risk of impacts to which contemporary society cannot adapt rises sharply.

Prof. R. M. Carter (PhD BSc) in his Sept 2008 essay wrote;
Before human-caused global warming can become an economic problem, it first has to be identified by scientific study as a dangerous hazard for the planet, distinct from natural climate change.
This notwithstanding, a number of distinguished economists have recently written compendious papers or reports on the issue, for example Nicholas Stern (2006) and William Nordhaus (2007); in Australia, Ross Garnaut is currently undertaking a similar analysis. These persons, and many other public commentators and politicians as well, have indicated that they accept that there is a scientific consensus that dangerous, human-caused global warming is occurring, as set by the views and advice of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The IPCC is the United Nations body whose second chairman, John Houghton, wrote in 1994 that ‘unless we announce disasters, no one will listen’. From that point forward, it was obvious that IPCC pronouncements needed to be subjected to independent critical analysis;
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Science funding has for decades been biased towards efforts that support the AGW hypothesis. The IPCC has selected science that supports its position. Contradictory science has been suppressed or ignored. The notion CO2 as a gas that is harmful to climate in tiny volumes remains devoid of observational support after decades of research by the best minds. That is a powerful indication that there is none to be found. Average temperature increased. A combination of increased input and a planet response is all that is certain. That greenhouse gases do not produce energy is a given. They cannot raise the level of existing energy. Allocation of responsibility is the purest of conjecture. STILL.
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Australian Senator Responded 1