sunny starry skies

Lovely selective viewing glasses you have there - can I order a pair? Yellow's warmer than average too - so on the latest chart (see Dev's link) that takes in most of North Africa, the entire Med, Arabia, the 'stans/central Asia, parts of China, SE Asia, NE Canada, SW USA, Bering region, Japan. A pretty significant land area with above-average temperatures I think! How about we all wait for the mean temperatures to be calculated? And Aussie-land looks pretty average to me - slightly above and slightly below average temps over the landmass. Oh, Paul Tall - "the other bloke" would be interested to know in what industry you work? Do you have any vested interests to declare? Just because you state "there is." doesn't make a statement true. Care to back it up? Or to discuss quantitavely any of the science? or will you dismiss it all as being part of the great conspiracy? sss

The only one I think! Shocking decision by the RCCC - surely waivers signed before going on the ice would have been fine, and they've now spoiled the possibility of a unique event happening. sss

nope. Though I'm unsure what you would mean by a 'climate change industry'. Renewable energy?? Hydrocarbons [there's a climate change industry!]? If a climate researcher wanted to make a large amount of money he/she would not work in an academic setting. He/she would go where the money is and work for big oil or some such, and make a mint. Funny they don't seem to do that isn't it? Maybe it's because they actually believe in their work and the supporting evidence for it? I do work in a university (hence why I saw Bill Ruddiman's talk amongst many others), and I've met many a researcher directly into present/future climate change. I've also seen glaciers retreat substantially in the Arctic over the time I've visited it, so it's not just news on the TV for me. While I do not deal with CO2, or present/future climate change, I do understand the mechanics of climate change, what constitutes climate (past, present or future), and what constitutes a change of it. Therefore when I see deluded people on here and elsewhere gullibly gobbling up misinformation from the internet and spouting it as fact to other credible people I tend to get a wee bit frustrated! Be skeptical, yes, but be skeptical and open-minded in equal measure, and don't just believe what you want to believe unless there is sound corroborating evidence. sss

BFTP, the whole focus of the article was to separate the weather from the AGW climate argument, which is probably not something that the average layperson is likely to do. the temp map is of course in line with a -ve AO setup, as that is what we have! It's still possible that the NH as a whole might post average or above average temperatures though for December or this month, though it may not feel like that to us. The reporter was saying that you need to look at the whole globe and preferrably over many (I think he said 30) years before you worry about climate, specifically to separate out what happens in this individual month from any discussion about the climate. It does not, however, sit well with reports in the past that have said XX weather in YY place is due to gobal warming (and the BBC has had a fair few of those). Again that's weather, not climate and the media need to separate out the two or they get into these kinds of knots. sss Edit: The report was only misleading BFTP if you were looking for it. I've just looked at the monthly global temperature anomalies for the last 10 years and can't see anything to suggest that last winter was spectacularly cold. It was cold here, but that's just weather. And if we have such perfect conditions for cold in terms of PDO etc why has it not got cooler this decade and temperatures are far above 1960s values?

Sorry BFTP but you were clearly being quite blinkered in watching that. What he was saying was just what I've been trying to say to people here the last few days. There is a fundamental difference between weather and climate. It is very unusual weather we are having, but when all is done and dusted, practically nothing to do with global climate. It was quite a good graphic to show that some parts of the Northern Hemisphere were warmer than average and others cooler. Remember that places such as North Africa are in the Northern Hemisphere too (and were warmer than average I think), quite apart from the other side of the globe that he didn't show. Good chart Dev - please, people, look at the NH and try and say that it's all cold?!?! Some people seem a little quick to take a few years that are not as warm as the hottest years ever recorded as a cooling trend, when they were quite unwilling to take 30 years of mostly warming trend as evidence of warming! Just a tad hypocritical perhaps? Remember 2009 is still comfortably in the top 10 ever warmest years, so no real sign of "cooling". Some papers coming out now that appear to be demonstrating the "missing link" in observations of AGW: if the theory goes thus: 1: CO2 (and methane etc) is a greenhouse gas, 2: we are emitting vastly more of them into the atmosphere, 3: we observe a significant global temperature increase, then 4: we most likely cause GW. Most people ageee with steps 1 to 3, but some have trouble with 4, maybe beacause they think perhaps we haven't actually observed the CO2, methane etc actually doing the warming. Well it seems that we have: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JD011800.shtml http://landshape.org/enm/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/philipona2004-radiation.pdf http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html ...to name but a few. Basically the concept is that we can actually observe the outgoing longwave radiation (a measure of Earth's cooling to space), or observe from the surface of Earth the downward longwave radiation increase that is the signature of warming due to increased GHGs. You can tell it's the GHGs doing the warming because of the specific wavelengths that the radiation is emitted at. These papers are suggesting direct observations to prove the theory of AGW. And they are not just hearsay on a random blog either, they're in JGR and Nature. I'm sure there are more out there but I've no time to look just now. I would expect more articles in the future to corroborate these observations. Oh, mike Meehan - I think you need to get some global climate 101 before you waste too much time on inaccurate pieces. It's a well-known fact that CO2 changes followed climate rather than leading it during ice ages, and on a geological scale there is even more going on, such as weathering of carbonates. But that's old news, as we know there is more than one way to force the climate of the earth. Some of those ways are (whisper it) natural in origin, likely including the source for the MWP, which was NOT global, or the mid-Holocene Optimum. The key argument is that today we're forcing it in one particular way, with CO2 this time leading, not following. If you really want to get your knickers in a twist, how about this one: http://www.springerlink.com/content/h328n0425378u736/ http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8014.html Bill Ruddiman has spent some significant time with this theory, and having seen a talk by him it's actually quite reasonably convincing... that our impact on the climate system actually began 6-8000years ago with the dawn of agriculture. He showed a graph at that talk connecting small sudden declines in atmospheric CO2 concommitant to episode of devastating war or disease around the world over the past 1000 years or so. Interesting theory. For me the best evidence is the comparison between global temperature during the past half-dozen or so interglacials, insolation levels and how the Holocene temperature just does not decline as it should have. It sounded like Ruddiman's having trouble convincing some of his colleagues, but he's got some quite persuasive evidence. Food (or agriculture) for thought! sss

Some greaphotos there - particularly like the Glen Affric ones Someone posted the 1km res satellite image of the UK from MODIS - for those who don't know, you can also see a 250m per pixel resolution version of the same image if you follow the relevant link from this page: http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/ Very pretty! sss

morning all, lovely sunny day in Edinburgh - beautiful! A good view of the feeezing fog burning off the south side of town from the Edinburgh Uni webcam, but view it soon as the loop dynamically updates: http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/abs/Weathercam/wcam.html Chilly night in the Highlands too - wonder if it will stay clear enough for another shot at remarkable cold temperatures tonight? sss

I would have thought that the emails issue could be put to bed by now. Can anyone honestly say, hand on heart, that there is anything that alters the underpinning science or data supporting AGW in the stolen emails? Because when the various supposedly damning excerpts are viewed in their proper context, there is nothing that changes the scientific basis or the evidence. They refer to already published research, well-known issues, well-known problematic journal/editors. They have been deliberately taken out of context so they sound bad (I wonder why...), but if you place them back into context there is nothing untoward. Even the FOI issue is not as bad as it sounds, as organisations like the CRU did not have the permission to give out the data as requested so could not allow the FOI requests. Though some of Phil Jones' comments were at best injudicious and crass. But still we have deniers on here flagging the emails up like they are some kind of insight into bad science being done by climatologists. Well, given that the thieves nicked 10+ years of emails and failed to find any actual bad science or genuine admission of wrongdoing, it can very reasonably be said that the emails go to support the fact that these top climatologists are actually doing very good, rigorous science! /rant Anyway, back to a little real science. http://www.realclima...sons/#more-1810 Interesting comparison between recent model runs, old model runs and real data. Looks like they are pretty happy with the way the models are shaping up too - the La Nina blip during this decade still keeps us within the 95% confidence range, with a justified expectation of a warmer 2010 that would probably take us back above the mean of the AR4 predictions. And as an aside - 1998-2009 temperature trends for HADCRUT3 reported as positive (just to respond to Stewfox). A nice discussion of how you can cherry-pick short-term data (such as 2002-2009 in GISTEMP to report a negative trend. So it's pointless to cherry-pick a few years here or there - you need to look at longer-term trends. If I pick carefully I can find negative trends in the 1980s and early 1990s for short spells, yet when they are placed into their context of a longer timescale they are merely part of an upward trend. When you look at the longer-term trends (>15 years or so) they are resoundingly positive and there's no reason to suggest that the last few years of levelling off was any more than a La Nina-induced wobble in the overall trend. Something else for the deniers - we know there is year-to-year variability within the climate system, but can you go and find me anything where climate scientists predicted a uniform year-on-year increase in global temperature. Because it seems that this is what is demanded before some deniers will accept a general trend of warming, let alone that it is caused by us! sss Edit: you got there first and more succinctly Pete on Climategate!

That's a great example of bad journalism right there. I actually felt sorry for the Met Office bloke as he was not allowed to give a straight answer. There's a whole world of difference between each of short-term, seasonal and climatic forecasting. He was rightly beaten up over the seasonal forecasts though! I would, however, be very interested to know whether the Met's seasonal forecast does influence grit stockpiling, or whether that is merely based on the experience of past winters? If it's based on the seasonal forecast then there's a significant issue there... Back to Scottish weather, and enjoying a frosty sunny day in Edinburgh today, not expecting any more snow soon tbh, even from that feature out east. Am more intersted in watching the temperature readings over the next few nights. After some impressive readings down south last night, where English stations finally approached the chillier Highland ones, it's intriguing to watch the likes of Loch Glascarnoch drop to below -10C during this morning. One of the key things is clear skies over these stations - when the cloud clears away the tempeature can fall rapidly. I remember that as a young astronomer during the 1995-1996 winter freezing my nuts off in superb observing conditions in Perthshire (somewhere in the region of -25C ). When it clouded over it would rise to a balmy -10! sss

Nobody's trying to, ah, hide a decline, stewfox, and a few years that qualify as fractionally less hot than 2005 / 1998 a declining trend do not make! Sure it looks like we hit a peak if you look at the last five years or so, but the same happens if you look at previous 'peaks' in the general warming trend of the last 40 years - namely you'll get a hot year, followed by a few years not as hot, before the increase continues. It will only be if we get a sustained decline (and preferably substantial decline, which we've not seen) in temperatures over many years can you talk about a trend that is anything other than the observed upwards trend of the last 40+ years. BTW, Toronto is not 'most parts of canada', in fact is it rather close to USA. I'm talking about the greater part of Arctic Canada as you could see on Dev's chart at the end of the last thread. You can't just cherry-pick individual locations, you must look at the hemisphere as a whole. Much of the heat at present is trapped beneath the jetstream, which as you'll know is well south, producing those above-average temperatures in southern / Eastern Europe and North Africa. I imagine it'll be released northwards eventually. Err, SC: have most of the winters of the past 20 years been warmer and wetter than average or cooler and drier? Seems in both cases here there's a tendency to highlight individual occurrences rather than long-term trends. There is no such thing as a uniformly warming trend, and there never has been one predicted. So you can't just say "AGW is wrong because it's been cold for a year or two". "The tide is turning (at long last., I think we are starting to see more level headed journalism now actually, news presenters asking more probing questions, to the climate science elite. About bloody time really! " That's OK if the presenters do their research and understand what climate science is really about. And they allow the interviewees to answer the questions fully. If they don't and ask the knee-jerk-dumb-journalist-type questions then there will be a lot of patient explaining to be done by the poor climate scientists on the front-line! Given that in terms of the science the probing questions are already asked at universities / conferences and suitably dealt with. sss

er no, selected regions of the NH are cold, by no means all of it. Other regions are unusually warm (SE Europe, Arctic Canada etc). Every winter there is a specific amount of heat to be distributed around the globe (effectively in two hemispheres). It is never distributed evenly, but it all aggregates up to approximately the same total heat budget. It is the year-to-year change in this total heat budget that is what we're interested in in relation to climate change. The spatial distribution of the heat budget, ie where the blue (cold) patches and where the orange (warm) patches are and move to, gives us our winter (or summer) weather. Normally the blue patches would be over Arctic Canada, Russia etc, but this year, the unusual weather patterns have moved the cold air to be over us, E China and other such areas experiencing noteworthy winter weather. It is internationally newsworthy beacause these areas do not usually have the blue patches! The areas that are warm are not making the news to the same extent because mild winter weather does not generally make news and because the normally really cold bits of the NH are more sparsely populated, with good reason! We know background signals can't account for the recent warming trend, and the deniers have yet to provide a coherent, physically viable theory that accounts for the recent warming. LG, fair enough, we'll agree to disagree, but please always have an open mind and be skeptical of all claims, be they from prominent deniers/skeptics or be they from climate scientists. Agree with whoever has the best theory, supported by physics, and crucially by the observational data. Too many denier claims / strawmen / half-truths / ad hominem arguments / plain old lies are taken too much at face value and regurgitated by many on the internet for other credulous people to see. sss

Yeahbabyyeah - "weather" not "climate" is what we're experiencing. Brooker is one of the biggest deniers of the lot of them, surely you can see that everything he writes is laced with agenda and tabloidish hyperbole. Anyway, back on topic, lovely day in Edinburgh today, felt almost a bit green when I saw the snow on the radar slide past Edinburgh overnight, but looks like tough conditions in the borders. There's some big depths reported around the country, particularly the NE - over 60cm in places, 50cm in the Borders. Funny weather forecasts on News24 - the first one warning of (oh my god) -10C in parts of the south tonight... when the temperature int the N Highlands was a brisk -11C in mid-morning! The last one had a big comedy -20C plastered over Scotland for the end of the week... Nice one John Hammond! sss

I'm quite sure that's not what GW is saying. But do you understand the concept that GW is suggesting - that the Arctic circulation is now different to what it was before, and that this might perversely increase our chances of getting cold weather? Too complex a mechanism perhaps? You seem so desperate to cling to the hope that the world isn't warming up as to cling to every last straw, even unusual weather! "The AGW brethren are doing a sterling job of convincing only themselves.", you say. And all the data is meaningless? The fact that 97.5% of climate scientists agree with the mechanism (basic physics really), and the observations are unequivocal? And the data for the polar climate does show that it has warmed, and the mechanism is straightforward - it's us that have changed it. "Now that we have (and how),some are linking it as a result of said warming,it's weather not climate,or it doesn't register in the 'trend' blah blah. It's getting to the point when I've all on to resist projectile vomiting when I hear these people....." Seriously, laserguy, if you do not understand the difference between weather and climate, and clearly you do not (or don't want to), why do you bother trying to post on a climate forum? I could post that "November 2009, only six weeks ago, was the warmest on record (which it was), therefore global warming etc etc." I won't because the reporting of every extreme event (weather) is not the same as the long-term trend (climate), and on that note I hate the media reporting that is like that. The Pit (or any others credulous enough to believe that the leaked emails proved anything): Suddenly a few emails that were deliberately taken completely out of context makes you think that all climate scientists are in on a grand hoax? Oh yes, you'll never apply any skepticism to the way that segments of the emails were posted without their supporting context. There's a trick to learn here - always read the context to any segment of text. Only then will you understand the full meaning of what was said. I am entirely comfortable with nearly all quotes (al all the onces about the science), when they are placed in their proper context, though some of the ones about FOI requests were seriously injudicious (but probably made in the face of significant provocation). sss

Started snowing in central Edinburgh, immediately lying on all pavements and nearly all roads. Let the usual chaos begin! Very pretty though... I hope everyone drives safe etc, even main roads getting a covering. sss

Met Office radar looks promising for Edinburgh tonight. No red warnings of course, even though if there is a dump here then it will be as much chaos as anywhere else in the UK! But gold stars to gritters in the Highlands - I was all over from the N Isles to the NW to Tayside over Christmas and only got stuck once, that with summer-type tyres on a small car! The scenery in the northern Highlands is awesome at the moment too Those are brilliant pics of the Tay - it looks properly Arctic . BTW, good to have somewhere to post where we know that it's been cold and snowy for a solid 3 weeks! sss

Been a while since I've replied, but thought I'd take a moment away from enjoying this recent wintriness to comment. Some people on here still seem to be confusing "weather" with "climate". I'll pick on Stewfox (nothing personal!) just because his is the most recent comment - regarding the exceptional cold events being recorded in a variety of population centres across the NH. This is "weather", and relates to the spatial distribution of the overall heat budget across the globe. "Climate" (in a global sense) is the overall pattern of change of the aggregated heat budget as it varies from year to year, and more importantly from decade to decade, still on the way up according to the relevant databases. We have an unusual weather pattern this winter in which Arctic air is displaced from its usual haunts and is migrating to areas that don't normally see it. It is a hemispheric-wide phenomenon as you can't alter the pressure pattern fundamentally in one part of the NH (say, the North Atlantic) without altering it elsewhere (say, Asia, N America). Hence areas that are normally warmer, and in which a lot of people live record unusual weather, but this is not the whole story. You need to look at the corresponding areas that are warmer than average to get the full picture. What is clearly not newsworthy is that Arctic Canada is far warmer than it usually is, SE Europe/W Russia is similarly so, as is Alaska - see Dev's image above. These warmer places will go a long way towards balancing the hemispheric heat budget. So the cold is not necessarily that unusual, it's just in different places. It may lead to a slightly cooler NH temperature if larger proportions of land relative to sea are unusually cool, due to differential rates of land/sea heating/cooling, but we must not be IMBYs when thinking about climate. But this is all just the vagiaries of weather. If you can sum the mean for the whole of the hemisphere or globe, and find that it is far above/below normal, then you can make a comment on how this relates to the overall climatic pattern. But you can't do this as an IMBY, and say silly things like "Britain's (or insert your favourite place) had a cold winter therefore AGW doesn't work" AGW does not preclude cold winters in the UK. It makes them less likely to happen for a couple of reasons - (1) warmer hemispheric temperatures and notably sea surface temperatures means that it may be harder for cold air to reach and get established over the UK. Not impossible though! It just takes a more 'perfect' winter setup to do this, like the one we have at present. (2) There was a prediction of more sustained NAO positive regimes, thus limiting the UK's likelihood of cold weather (the "modern" winter). This winter, once again, demonstrates that the cold synoptics are still possible. Only well into the future will we be able to tell whether cold synoptics have become less frequent. It is interesting that there have been occurrences of cold synoptics for the UK in the last couple of winters - something not generally predicted in a warming world. However that does NOT mean that the world is cooling, just that the UK has had favourable synoptics for some reason. Once again "weather" not "climate". OK, rant about "weather" and "climate" over. I for one am really enjoying the cold and the snow - was playing in over a foot of powder over Christmas and New Year in places like Aviemore and Assynt! Happy New Year all sss

Hi VP, apology accepted! And cheers for the posts - not new to me, but I see where you're coming from (I think). Though I will respectfully disagree that the use of higher order polys is absolutely essential. It depends on what you are trying to understand in the dataset at hand. In this case, I was trying to show that long-term global mean temperatures are still increasing, despite stochastic-scale wobbles. That said, I accept that in the HadCrut3 dataset the wobble downwards is more pronounced than in the GISS dataset. Were it to continue in that trend, I could not argue for a long-term linear trend in the hadley dataset for much longer. But... You do have a trend in the HadCru or GISS or other global temperature. Your rate of change graph shows that the long-term trend is neither accelerating nor decelerating, though I would expect deceleration to show up as meaasured over the past 5 years, given the few cooler years we have had. Lastly, I would expect low r2 values with these kinds of datasets, even those going back 30-50 years. The climate system, as we know, is prone to significant stochastic variations, and there is more than one driver at work here, hence why the relationship is not a neat linear increase year-on-year. That you can place a linear trend over the past 50 years suggests that one driver (whatever it is!!) is dominating, forcing an upward trend. The r2 for the trend since 1969 is a very respectable 0.77 for a stochastic system. And yes, I know you can select your independent variable start point, but the point is to assess and understand the change over that period, and not the change over the much longer period, which of course requires the use of a polynomial! Though your polynomial will show the same upward trend between 1969 and 2009. The sum of accumulated year-on-year temperature anomalies must equal the last year's temperature, assuming you start at an anomaly of 0, unless you've made an arithmetic error? Or, did you sum the rates of change (probably not!) to get 0.22? I'm not trying to be funny here, just that it's logically impossible to get a total anomaly any other way than summing the year-on-year changes? sss

I'll bite too, for the sake of the lurkers. There is visibly less ice in the polar regions over the last decade, as recorded by ice extent maps. Oddly enough, that is perfectly consistent with thinning of the remaining pack ice. Watch snow of varying depths melt in your back garden - the thin stuff will go quickly, while the deeper snow remains... but is thinner. As Gray Wolf says, you clearly know nothing of remote sensing, how it operates, or how we can determine ice thickness without sticking a pole through the ice. On a brighter note, it's really good to see a significant increase in the second-year ice extent, though that is tempered by the record low in multiyear ice. The pack is still very vulnerable, but if it were given a few good chilly years (if it's possible), could recover a bit. sss

Pretty basic climatology badboy. Only it wasn't 'most of the globe' (minor point). You can do some reading about our best ideas about why ice ages occurred in the last 2 million years or so (geologic, orbital forcing etc). It seems clear from ocean and ice core records that the Milankovitch orbital cycles are the key driver of ice ages. As far as the melting of the last one - use the same overall driver, and follow it up with a series of positive feedbacks to remove the ice relatively quickly. These include lowering albedo, lowering elevation of the ice sheets as they melt, among other things. Increased CO2 also happens and would enhance the change, but it followed the change and didn't start it. I know you were on the wind-up, but there are more processes than Man to cause large-scale climate change! We know that large CO2 increases follow large-scale deglaciations, and we know that physics tells us CO2 traps heat in the Earth's atmosphere... but we also know that we have come up with a novel way or releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, quite unrelated to past large-scale glaciations. And of course unrelated to the MWP too! VP - presumably you were having a go at me for my graphs? of course calculus is important, but I think you'll find the first step is a linear analysis (where dy/dx = constant). It's a little foolish to suggest that linear regression is not a valid scientific technique! I understand a point that says that the rate of change may be declining, based on the last few years, but the data since the mid-1960s shows a very respectably linear trend. I would not be inclined to put a curve through it. And my point was to show that the recent trend is still upwards, despoite a few recent cooler years. The only way you see a declining rate of change is if you consider the last 3 years, which on the fuller dataset is well within the bounds of stochastic noise. However.... if 2010 and 2011 show distinct downward trending then maybe the near-linear trend will break, but even then you can look back at periods with sharp temperature drops (post-Pinatubo 1992-93 for instance), and where a maximum was not re-exceeded for many years (1981-1987, 1990-1997) which still lie within the steady upward trend. sss

I think Gray-Wolf has it right here. It's a bit of a head-scratcher, but what we're interested in is the date at which refreezing passes some specified point, not just when it starts across the Arctic. If this date gets later into the autumn, then the area is ice-free for longer, and it is not as cold at that location. This could be thought of as the median line on the NSIDC charts. I've not time to search the archives, but it's reasonable to think that the date ice extent passes the median line will get later and later, as Gray-Wolf said, you have to regrow the ice from a more and more restricted position. Meanwhile, that dark open water continues to absorb some heat. But... the observed date of minimum total ice area may still be the same, year on year, and tells you little about trends in the Arctic. That would make sense as the point at which the Arctic begins to cool for the winter is ultimately driven by the regular-as-clockwork lowering in altitude of the Sun in the autumn. sss

Super post Iceberg! And thanks to John and others those who said 'welcome'. Just catching up on the 4 pages of this thread since friday! Jethro - I study environmental change as a postdoc. Before anyone shoots me down for having too much of a vested interest, I'm not directly in the climate change field, though my studies have crossed over (notably glacier reconstructions) from time to time. Higrade - I believe Jethro and others have answered your questions quite nicely, and to follow from Redshift's point - what do you mean by "so-called honest scientists"? You, and one or two others, seem to think that the 'scientists' or ('boffins' to the Sun) are people with huge agendas and are trying to unfairly make extra money out of the subject. I think you'll find that much of the greatest arm-waving is done by media outlets trying to sell a story, much like your various health scare examples, quite legitimately worries for the incumbent chief medical officers or academics of the time, but which I bet were made to sound a lot worse by the media. As I've said before, the media are responsible for overinflating too much, the consequence of which is that people do not know what is reliable (or true) and what is not. On a similar note - La Bise - good post #43! Some of you on here seem to think that Stephen McIntyre is an 'honest scientist' with no axe to grind, and that therefore 'Climate Audit' is a great place to find legitimate criticism of scientific writing. Well, given the slandering of Mann, Briffa and others on here, some information about McIntyre. From Wikipedia (yes, I know it's wiki, so with due reservations): "He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the University of Toronto. He studied philosophy, politics and economics at the University of Oxford. McIntyre has worked in hard-rock mineral exploration for 30 years, much of that time as an officer or director of several public mineral exploration companies. He has also been a policy analyst at both the governments of Ontario and of Canada. He was the president and founder of Northwest Exploration Company Limited and a director of its parent company, Northwest Explorations Inc. When Northwest Explorations Inc. was taken over in 1998 by CGX Resources Inc. to form the oil and gas exploration company CGX Energy Inc., McIntyre ceased being a director. McIntyre was a strategic advisor for CGX in 2000 through 2003." So for balance, I think it is fair to say that Stephen McIntyre has had pretty substantial (probably millions of dollars substantial) reasons to attack climate science and any move to reduce our output of CO2 through the use of hydrocarbons. And that is not even making any aspersions about the fact he's not a climate scientist. I'm not going to suggest that everything he says is bunkum (he has published in GRL, and like anyone else, deserves respect, not ad hominem critique), but merely that what he says deserves every bit as much scrutiny as anyone else, and there seems more reason to suspect him of vested interests than most, and therefore think carefully about what he is saying and why. I find it intersting that people are looking for so much 'certainty', especially when looking at past reconstructions. We can be reasonably 'certain' (or at least have a very small error margin) when it comes recent global temperatures, as we have the instrumental data with sufficient coverage to say so. Uncertainties clearly increase the further back you go in the palaeoclimatic record, and so far as I am aware these uncertainties are made clear in the great majority of palaeoclimatic studies. It does not make them 'wrong', nor does it make them useless. Scientists are, as TWS says, fallible human beings, but there is no reason to doubt them until good quality new data, or a good quality new theory arrives, something not seen yet for AGW. Maybe we are, with AGW, in the position of 19th Century physicists, who thought they had it all worked out with Newtonian mechanics, which fitted nearly all observations very well (only quantum mechanics did the job slightly better). But the Newtonian scientists were hardly 'irresponsible', were they? But for now, we have a scientific consensus, and we should act accordingly. VP - your 'leaky integrator' does look really intriguing. I have all the time in the world for approaches using real data, and I will be interested to see if it ultimately, erm, holds water :lol:. Science moves forwards by the finding of alternate theories that fit the evidence. Maybe yours will, maybe not, but it's a rational approach and that is good to see! laserguy - see ealier links re your link. Same old delusions reprinted in a renowed place for climate science I see. sss

I don't think you'll get a straight answer - that would involve dealing with real data... AS TWS has commented, and is the focus of the first of the RealClimate articles, the hockey stick, and most importantly, the late 20th century rise, appears in a plethora of different records and will not disappear because of an internet character assassination job on one tree ring record. It still stands, despite the rantings of people like McIntyre or, god forbid, Crichton (should have stuck to the story writing he was actually good at, rest his soul), who are not capable of putting together a climate argument cogent enough to get published. Unsubstantiuated blog opinions like those of Watts do not qualify as cogent criticisms of recent climate change or the 'hockey stick' either. That people on here believe such unsubstantiated arguments and are so opposed to taking on board views (including those of most trained palaeoclimatologists) contrary to their own is frankly depressing. I would strongly encourage everyone to read both sides of the argument, but avoid the rhetoric, and look carefully for the real, verifiable data. It is particularly telling that deniers spend their time nit-picking holes in individual records, the nit-picks themselves don't then stand up to examination, and no new data clearly supporting alternate hypotheses are put forward. The most depressing thing of all is that the internet becomes the vehicle for unsubstantiated character assasination attempts, where the author who has suceeded in publishing work in journals and therefore survived the academic review process, has no opportunity or means to defend themselves. The rumours spread like viruses around the web for the uninformed and weak-minded to read, and even the less rigorous/scrupulous journalists see a story. Strangely enough, the rebuttals of the 'critiques' rarely make such a media-worthy story and so many people are left with the (wrong) opinion on the state of the science. I'm happy to discuss reasoned arguments, but not to discuss unsubstantiated slander of honest scientists. I want to be wrong about all this. I want iot to get cooler, and for the current solar inactivity to spark a new 'Little Ice Age'. I've even given talks about the sun's connection to climate some years ago, but the trouble is the data is very clear, and so yes, SC, my mind is made up... until new, better evidence comes forward, which do date it resoundingly hasn't. There is an excellent test of some ideas given the current deep solar minimum and negative PDO, but so far no discernible impact on temperature. SC: "It cast doubt on the honesty, and integrity of climate scientist." Erm, no it doesn't. The scientists in question are quite happy to be proved wrong if new, better data comes along, but if they are proven wrong they are no less honest as scientists than they were before. That is the core of the scientific method, or do you not believe that either? Dishonesty is the deliberate falsification of results, something that hasn't happened. A very serious accusation, levelled apparently by you at nearly all palaeoclimatologists. AF: "Nobody is saying there hasn't been any empirical evidence for warming in the late 20th Century. But there is no evidence for this warming being a "historic" hockey stick shape. It's just regular old warming, and there has recently been some cooling and there might be more. There's no hockey stick. It's an irrelevance that believers in AGW should ditch as it does not help their cause. (Nor does a lack of hockey stick 100% kill their idea, but it certainly doesn't help it...)". Erm... yes there are plenty independent lines of evidence - see the first of the links in my previous post. And temperatures are still rising on average. SC, I did not specifcally call you a denier. But... if you're going to deny that palaeoclimate science in all it's myriad independently verifiable forms can reconstruct past climate (to varying levels of accuracy and resolution), then it will be very hard to have a cogent debate! AF: You might want to retract the comment: "up until September 09 nobody knew global warming rested on just 12 trees (and out of that twelve, one in particular). Twelve, which from about 1995 became five trees." If you seriously believe this then you have absolutely not read any of the literature on the topic, and are not in a position to comment. It is comments like these that mislead those who have no prior knowledge of the topic. sss

cheers for providing the updated graph pottyprof - it is always relevant to provide the up-to-date data, and I didn't manage to find it. There's a wee glimmer of hope in the last two years' sea ice values, but I'll want to see a continued recovery and more multiyear ice before I'll start counting the swallows and declaring the season. Re 1998 temps - it's clear that 1998 was an outlier in the continued warming trend, as 1980/1981 and 1990, or as 1976 was a cooler outlier. The whole picture of temperatures is still an upward trend though...

The problem is that the last six years are all remarkably low in relation to longer-term data. As seen at http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ the 2009 minimum is 24% below the long-term average, which is an awful lot of white shininess lost from the top of the world. Also, a lot of the more stable multi-year ice was lost in 2007. We can only hope that in future years the levels can recover, but you can see the long-term interannual trend in minima (to 2007) below... {EDIT: Graph to 2007 removed - updated graph to 2009 posted by pottyprof below} Figures from NSIDC. sss

I'll repost the links I put in the general discussion thread here, so those who don't want to understand a bit of science can actually go and do some easy research: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/09/hey-ya-mal/#more-1184 It's really important to stress that while the tone of the piece is quite (understandably) combative, the information contained within it is verifiable. The crucial point to the deniers (and I will use that word to describe a few posts above) is that AGW does not just depend on 12 specially selected trees. Rather, it depends on a multitude of independent lines of evidence (glaciers, borehole temps, instumental data, to name but a few), of which tree rings are only one. If you have an open enough mind, read that article carefully. You'll also be interested in this one: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/what-if-the-hockey-stick-were-wrong/ ...the upshot of which is that it does not change our assessment of 20th century climate change. There are no 'nails in the coffin of AGW', because little or none of the mud hurled round the internet actually sticks to the data provided by thousands of independent scientists, independently producing the same results, at least not when you look at the data with an unclouded mind.