The Link to the story here

Global warming fanatics have exaggerated the rate of temperature rise by a whopping 40 percent

Scientists Pour Cold Water on Global Warming Stats

NewsMax.com Monday, January 15, 2001

Global warming fanatics have exaggerated the rate of temperature rise by a whopping 40 percent, casting even more doubt on the theory that the earth is heating up to the danger point, new studies show. Proponents of the global warming theory have been citing temperature records going back over 100 years that seem to show that global warming is underway. But an international team of scientists has found serious discrepancies in these temperature measurements, suggesting that the amount of global warming is much less than previously believed.

The team’s findings, reported in the influential journal Geophysical Research Letters, concluded that the traditional measurement of global warming has been based on sea temperatures when they should have been taken from measurements of the air above the sea.

Crews have taken the temperature by dipping buckets into the sea or using water flowing into the engine intakes. Scientists have assumed that there is a simple link between the temperature of seawater and that of the air above it.

According to Sunday’s Electronic Telegraph, after studying years of data gleaned from buoys in the Pacific that measure sea and air temperatures simultaneously, the team found no evidence of a simple link.

"Instead, the seawater measurements have exaggerated the amount of global warming over the seas, with the real temperature having risen less than half as fast during the 1970s than the standard measurements suggest,” the Electronic Telegraph reported.

According to the Telegraph, the results of the study "have major implications for the climate change debate because the sea temperature measurements are a key part of global warming calculations. According to the team, replacing the standard seawater data with the appropriate air data slashes the overall global warming rate during the last 20 years, from around 0.18¡C per decade to 0.13¡C.

"This suggests that the widely-quoted global warming figure used to persuade governments to take action over greenhouse gases exaggerates the true warming rate by almost 40 per cent. The team is now calling for climate experts to switch from seawater data to sea-air temperature measurements.”

The latest findings add even more doubt about the extent, if any, of global warming. They add to the confusion created by the fact that satellites measuring the temperature of the Earth have detected little sign of global warming - despite taking measurements during supposedly the warmest period on record.

-- Uncle Bob (unclb0b@aol.com), January 15, 2001

Answers

Good article Bob.

I remember a PhD of somesort being interview on the news not too long ago. He claimed that the hole in the ozone is shrinking because of the galiant efforts to reduct florocarbons in the upper atmospher. Yes indeedy! We humans have soo much control over our environment we can, in an instant, destroy it and heal it. What utter nonsense!

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), January 15, 2001.

Dumb and Dumber

-- (lol@2.morons), January 15, 2001.

Here is the bottom line for the whole article:

"...replacing the [...] seawater data with the [...] air data [changes] the overall global warming rate during the last 20 years, from around 0.18¡C per decade to 0.13¡C."

Now, how the author gets from that factual statement to this conclusion is beyond me (emphasis added):

"The latest findings add even more doubt about the extent, if any, of global warming."

Isn't it Uncle Bob who complains so much about "spin"?

-- Observer (this_does_not_refute@global.warming), January 15, 2001.

Observer, I noticed that too. If global warming is happening, who is the 'fanatic' -- the one whose original estimate was 40% too high, or the person who denies that any warming is taking place?

I can't say for sure one way or another whether global warming is real. When I see articles about it, pro or con, I read them. I have to question the objectivity of the author of Uncle Bob's article though because of the use of the word 'fanatic.' It tends to make me think the author's viewpoint is based more on his politcal opinions than on his scientific opinion.

-- (Global@warming.agnostic), January 15, 2001.

It's not-t-t-t warm here.

-- helen (b@r.f), January 15, 2001.

Isn't it Uncle Bob who complains so much about "spin"?

Yes, I do....Point?

-- Uncle Bob (unclb0b@aol.com), January 15, 2001.

UB- I notice you often post articles from NewsMax and WorldNetDaily. I'm curious... Do you feel these two organizations report objectively or do you feel they tend to add a degree of "spin" to their stories?

-- CD (costavike@hotmail.com), January 15, 2001.

UB- I notice you often post articles from NewsMax and WorldNetDaily. I'm curious... Do you feel these two organizations report objectively or do you feel they tend to add a degree of "spin" to their stories?

Actually, If you look really, really closely at most of the stories, they are from AP or UPI and are culled from WND or NewsMax. I could copy/paste from Yahoo, Excite, etc but do prefer the slant from the more conservative web-rags.

I've always said I'm right-wing and have always said the mainstream spins to the left. You have to admit that left-spin reporting is more easily obtained than right-spin reporting. Ultimately I would like to see no-spin. Report the story with a $6.25 per hour report reader. Let the viewer listen, research, and decide for him/herself. That will never happen though...

-- Uncle Bob (unclb0b@aol.com), January 15, 2001.

One of the problems when the popular press reports scientific or medical news is that they don't provide a reference to the article. Here is the link to Geophysical Research Letters for Jan 1, 2001. Scroll down to the 47th article (about 85% of the way). They don't provide the text of the article. I guess you have to buy it. Happy reading.

GRL

Tropical temperature trends buoyed

Christy et al. [183] add buoy data from the tropical Pacific Ocean to the existing set of sea surface and atmosphere temperature data used to detect trends over the past two decades. They identify relationships and differences in the sea surface, boundary layer, and lower tropospheric temperature trends. In the eastern tropical Pacific region, the buoy data indicate that the trend of the near-surface air temperature (3m altitude) is significantly less positive than that of the collocated sea surface temperature (1m depth). These findings demonstrate that the dynamics between the sea surface and lower troposphere need to be better understood

-- L;ars (larsguy@yahoo.com), January 15, 2001.

The story as reported in Daily University Science News

Validity Of Global Climate Change Study Tool Doubted

Temperature data from scientific buoys scattered across the Pacific Ocean are raising doubts about the validity of one of the most important tools used by scientists to track global climate change. The "lock step" link between sea water temperatures and air temperatures may be less rigid than presently thought, according to data analyzed by scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and the Hadley Center of the United Kingdom's Meteorological Office.

Results of their research are reported in the Jan. 1, 2001, edition of the scientific journal, Geophysical Research Letters.

The supposed link between sea and air temperatures let climate scientists use sea surface temperatures as a "proxy" for air temperature data over large ocean areas for which air temperature data are not available, said Dr. John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science and director of UAH's Earth System Science Center.

"The global surface temperature datasets -- the data that people commonly use to track Earth's climate -- are a mixture of near- surface air temperatures over land and sea water temperatures over the oceans," Christy said.

Taking the sea surface data out of the global climate record would have a significant impact on climate tracking and forecasts. When scientists take sea surface temperatures out of the global temperature record for the past 20-plus years and replace them with air temperature data gathered by ships and buoys, the global warming trend at Earth's surface drops by about one-third -- from 0.19 to about 0.13 degrees Celsius per decade.

Using high-precision temperature data gathered by 19 buoys moored throughout the tropical Pacific Ocean and monitored by NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Christy, his British colleagues and a Danish scientist compared long-term (8- to 20-year) trends for temperatures recorded one meter below the sea surface and three meters above it.

"For each buoy in the Eastern Pacific, the air temperatures measured at the three meter height showed less of a warming trend than did the same buoy's water temperatures at one meter depth," Christy said. "These are from thermometers separated vertically by only four meters and monitored at the same time. And the Eastern Pacific plays an important role in global temperature variations, through the El Niño heating and La Niña cooling events."

In the Western Pacific, it was a "murky picture," Christy said, with little correlation between water and air temperature changes. Buoy-by- buoy, seasonal temperature variations in the sea water explained less than 40 percent of air temperature changes.

That means if seawater temperatures in the Western Pacific go up from one season to the next, the air just above the sea surface doesn't necessarily follow.

By comparison, water temperatures explained more than 90 percent of the air temperature fluctuations in the Eastern Pacific.

Over the tropical Eastern Pacific Ocean, buoy data shows a near- surface seawater warming trend of 0.37 degrees Celsius per decade, while air temperatures three meters above the surface were warming by only 0.25 degrees C per decade during the 20-year test period -- a change of 0.12 degrees C per decade in slightly more than 12 feet.

"It's odd that over the past eight to 20 years, the air just above the surface isn't warming at the same rate that the sea water is," said Christy.

The supposed link between sea surface temperatures and air temperatures is an integral part of both the historic surface temperature record and the computerized models used to predict what Earth's climate might do in the future.

Because reliable low-level air temperature data from over the oceans are more scarce and more difficult to assess than water temperatures, scientists monitoring Earth's climate have used sea surface temperatures as a proxy for air temperatures, assuming that the two rise and fall proportionally.

"We found that in the short term, they go up and down essentially simultaneously," said Christy. "Over the long term, however, we start to see differences."

More than 20 years of data gathered by microwave sounding units on NOAA's TIROS-N satellites shows global warming in the atmosphere from Earth's surface up to approximately five miles to be about 0.045 degrees Celsius per decade, a trend confirmed by data from "radiosonde" thermometers lifted through the troposphere by helium balloons.

The apparent disagreement between climate trends at the surface and in the troposphere has been the subject of an often heated scientific debate over the validity of the two datasets. The buoy data offered the UAH/UKMO/Danish research team a rare opportunity to test the accuracy of the sea-water-for-air-temps proxy using scientifically calibrated, co-located instruments.

By comparison, much of the historic sea water temperature record was generated by military and commercial ships, which recorded the temperature of sea water as it was taken aboard as an engine coolant. While calculated into the temperature record as sea "surface" temperatures, most modern ships draw in cooling water from as much as ten meters below the surface.

The authors looked at the tropicswide difference between the sea water temperatures and upper air temperatures not only from the satellite data but from balloons and global weather maps. All three records indicated the tropical air between the surface and five miles actually cooled at a rate of about 0.05 degrees C per decade, while the sea water was warming by about 0.13 degrees C per decade.

The tropicswide near-surface air temperature (from ships and buoys) warmed at a rate in between the sea water and the upper air -- about 0.06 degrees C per decade. These differences were all statistically significant. - By Phillip Gentry

-- Malcolm Taylor (taylorm@es.co.nz), January 15, 2001.

Nice find Malcom. Looks like NewsMax had it right.

From the article--

The apparent disagreement between climate trends at the surface and in the troposphere has been the subject of an often heated scientific debate over the validity of the two datasets. The buoy data offered the UAH/UKMO/Danish research team a rare opportunity to test the accuracy of the sea-water-for-air-temps proxy using scientifically calibrated, co-located instruments.

Science be damned, there are careers at stake here!

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), January 15, 2001.

Lars: "Looks like NewsMax had it right."

NewsMax: "Global warming fanatics have exaggerated the rate of temperature rise by a whopping 40 percent [...]"

I saw nothing whatsoever in Malcolm's article that justifies that lead sentence of the NewsMax article. This was a story about untrustworthy data. NewsMax turns it into a story about untrustworthy "fanatics" with questionable motives, thereby showing a very deep misunderstanding of how scienctists use data to test and to correct their hypotheses.

-- Observer (this_does_not_refute@global.warming), January 16, 2001.

This issue seems to be following the same pattern as always...

The Conservative: "You say 'global warming is real?' Hey, wait a minute, you're the same people who want to take my guns and give all my tax money to welfare cheats! I therefore disagree with anything you agree with, and thus global warming is ridiculous."

The Liberal: "You say 'global warming is ridiculous?' Hey, wait a minute, you're the same racist people who spilled the oil on all those seals and want to criminalize abortions! I therefore disagree with anything you agree with, and thus global warming is an absolute undeniability."

It's just another side-picking circus, with the facts mostly lost amid the emotion, mainly because as with all other issues like this you can pick the "facts" you want to believe from sources you're comfortable with and disregard the rest.

Here are some facts - middle of the road, sorry, no smoking guns:

1) Climate models have predicted global warming, to varying degrees depending on the model, due to man-made emissions (hydrocarbons, etc) being introduced into the atmosphere. These are just the predictions, not talking evidence yet. The scientific method follows hypothesis and model building with experimentation and/or evidence gathering to prove the model. This is what climatologists have been attempting the past couple decades.

2) There seems to be some pretty hard evidence that both sea and air temperatures have been increasing per decade stretching back to the first recorded temp readings.

3) Most of the reliable historical temp readings only go back 100 years or so - some further, but the pool of data gets smaller and the readings understandably less accurate.

4) The models suggest the changes in temp will mostly happen in the last 50 years, and much more in the next 50, as emissions increase to very high levels comparatively.

5) The actual size of the temp delta in the last 50-100 years is debatable at this point.

6) The physical effect on the global environment of the actual temp delta is debatable at this point.

7) The ability of the atmosphere and climate to adjust itself to the temp changes is debatable, and depends directly on the size of the delta.

8) It is debatable whether or not the changes we're seeing are evidence of the models' accuracy, or a coincindental natural cycle.

I take the facts above and have to think that there is no coincidence - we're warming the atmosphere; but what that means from there is anything but clear. It looks to me like we should think about reducing industrial emissions more than we are, and maybe get some more electric/hybrid cars on the road in the next 30 years (or maybe everyone will be riding IT by then? :^)

Now to some of you I know that means I must also want to give your guns to gay whales, but let me assure you that's not the case.

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), January 16, 2001.

Gay whales mostly cruise near Santa Barbara. According to an article in NewsMax, they constitute 4% of the whale community. They are readily identified by a pink ring around their blowhole.

-- (MobyDyke@thar_goes.flukes), January 16, 2001.

Bemused:

In the hopes of keeping my guns out of the, uh, control of the gay whales:

If the long-term climate is actually warming, the evidence is ambiguous and regional. But this is as you'd expect, since changes have been very slow, very small, and very hard to measure globally. We do have strong evidence, however, that over the last few billion years or so, the global climate hasn't been particularly stable. When not getting warmer, it's getting cooler.

We have some evidence that climate changes in the pre-historical past have been amazingly sudden, taking place in decades rather than millennia. The implication is a phase change of some kind.

Now, the degree to which human activity contributes to long term changes in global temperature is plainly a crapshoot when we're not even sure what such changes even are. In terms of changes to the atmosphere, humanity might someday challenge volcanos for sheer tons of pollutant per year. One theory holds that volcanos ended ice ages, according to models implying phase changes again.

However, without question we are belching lots of bad stuff into the air, and washing even worse stuff into the oceans. We have a fairly well documented knack for making deserts and acid rain and non- biodegradable disposables. It seems clear that there must be *some* limit to the number of people the world can support, although "Club of Rome" types of linear extrapolations are based on discredited assumptions.

Human beings are a very serious infection being suffered by Mother Nature. This situation will ultimately be self-correcting, and humanity will self destruct. I think the odds of Mother Nature herself surviving the infection are even money right now. For what it's worth.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 16, 2001.