Month: December 2016

By Andy May

Chapter 10 of the 2013 IPCC Working Group 1 Assessment Report (WG1 AR5) report on climate change deals with how man-made climate change is detected and how much of the total change is due to man. They call the chapter “Detection and Attribution of Climate Change: from Global to Regional,” but in the critical calculation they assume the natural contribution is zero, so we consider “man-made” an appropriate addition to the title of this post. In summary, it says that the Earth’s surface has warmed since 1880 and over half of the warming from 1951 to 2010 is due to man. That humans have some influence on climate is not in dispute, all major species have some influence on climate. Phytoplankton occupy most of the Earth’s surface and, since they photosynthesize, they consume CO² and produce sugars and oxygen. In all probability, they have…

Guest Post  by Kip Hansen

Science is a wonderful thing.  As time moves on, in a single direction,  Science, as an endeavor, discovers new things and improves our lives.

With a “hat tip” to the inestimable Jane Brody, health journalist at the NY Times who covers the story here, we are reminded of the study [free .pdf]  from Antonio Gasparrini et al. which was published in The Lancet,  July 25, 2015, with the [way too long] title:  “Mortality risk attributable to high and low ambient temperature: a multicountry observational study”.

The bottom-line finding, the take home message, might surprise even readers here at WUWT, quoted in the side-bar of the journal article:

Interpretation: 

We report that non-optimum ambient temperature is responsible for substantial excess in mortality, with important differences between countries. Although most previous research has focused on heat-related effects, most of the attributable deaths were caused by…

Guest essay by Bevan Dockery

Here is 38 years of empirical data clearly showing a relationship between the satellite temperature and the rate of change of atmospheric CO2 concentration at the Mauna Loa Observatory.

Figure 1. Mauna Loa Observatory

Figure 1 shows the monthly lower tropospheric satellite temperature for the Tropics-Land component in blue and the annual change in CO2 concentration in red. The obvious correlation between the two raises the possibility that there may be some common causal factor whereby the temperature drives the rate of change of CO2 concentration. It is not possible for the rate of change of CO2 to cause the temperature level as a time rate of change does not define a base. For example a rate of 2 ppm per annum could be from 0 to 2 ppm in 12 months, 456 to 458 ppm in 12 months or any other pair of numbers…

Example of eight random walks in one dimension starting at 0. The plot shows the current position on the line (vertical axis) versus the time steps (horizontal axis). Image: Wikimedia

Previously on WUWT, I covered this contest. At that time, Doug J. Keenan stated:

There have been many claims of observational evidence for global-warming alarmism. I have argued that all such claims rely on invalid statistical analyses. Some people, though, have asserted that the analyses are valid. Those people assert, in particular, that they can determine, via statistical analysis, whether global temperatures are increasing more that would be reasonably expected by random natural variation. Those people do not present any counter to my argument, but they make their assertions anyway.

In response to that, I am sponsoring a contest: the prize is $100 000. In essence, the prize will be awarded to anyone who can demonstrate, via statistical analysis, that the…

All global temperature data sets confirm that global temperature has fallen rapidly in recent months as the recent El Nino ended.

Guest essay by Dr David Whitehouse, The GWPF Science Editor

Over the last couple of years there have been many articles about how they have been record-breakers in global temperature. It’s often sold as a simple ‘the planet is getting warmer only because of us’ story. As I have discussed before the concurrent El Nino was dismissed by some climate scientists as having an insignificant contribution to that record. However, there is a great deal of confusion and diversity in the assessment of its contribution. Some scientists maintain that it was the recent very strong El Nino that elevated the temperature to record levels.

Nevertheless some maintain that warm records would have been broken without the El Nino (although the significant contribution made by the highly unusual warm “Pacific…