Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Monckton of Global Warming
While I think he's a bit of a loose cannon, I rather like this letter and paper by Monckton for being able to describe (and refute) numerous aspects of the science of Global Warming in terms that I think are understandable by a layperson with relatively little familiarity with scientific terminology.
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When it comes down to it, it isn't science or logic that will decide our fate, but feelings.
Then we're doomed!
I have only read the first couple pages -- the guy is a very good writer -- but unless I am missing something otherwise glaringly obvious, he has made a barking mad mistake right from the git-go.
From the caption beneath the first graphic:
Beneath the spline -curve,
the bright red straight line, the least-squares linear regression trend on the data, shows a (largely-unreported) global cooling
for seven years at a rate equivalent to 3.5 F°/century.Ummm, I don't think so. Instead, it shows a decrease in the warming rate.
The linear regression trend line would have to go south of zero before one could actually say there is cooling.
Hey Skipper,
I think the left axis in the graph you mention is the global temperature difference relative to the global temperature in 1980 (or perhaps some other date).
So it's relative temperatures (which are falling), not temperature rates.
After a few minutes more research, I believe that zero is the mean global temperature recorded when the NOAA satellites started measuring thermal emissions in 1979.
True, it is.
However, the IPCC predicted and observed trend lines represent each represent both an instantaneous deviation and rate of deviation from the baseline (which could be anything, including absolute zero).
So each of the boundary lines in the IPCC prediction say that in a given future year, the deviation will be some amount from the baseline, and summing over a century yields a total deviation at the end of the century.
The LMS depiction of observed temperatures pretty clearly shows that IPCC models predict a rate far in excess of what actually happened.
However, what actually happened is not cooling, but rather an increase of roughly .32 deg C over the period, instead something like .56C.
(Yes, I know that is a lot of precision for an eyeball guesstimate.)
So, if he had said that the IPCC model greatly exaggerates climate change, I'd buy it.
If he was to say that climate is cyclical, and a decreasing rate of change is just what one would expect prior to an inflection point, I would buy that, too.
But to conclude from that chart that the globe is cooling is dead wrong.
Unless, of course, I am dead wrong. I have been known to be completely blind to the bloody obvious.
Never mind -- I'm dead wrong.
The slope of the observed LMS regression line is negative, so year on year temperatures must be approaching the baseline. So while recent temperatures are warmer than the baseline, they are getting closer to it; hence, cooling.
If I was slightly more proud, or slightly less honest -- please don't ask me to interpret the trend line -- I would delete my previous post.
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