How Bad Is Global Warming?

[Ben D]

Ben no one but you disputes what I said. If they did you'd be able to show it.

Because Joe is not aware of anyone who questions his claims except me, Joe draws the conclusion that his is a consensus view which thus negates any need to back up his claim for just one denier ....now that's the real agw scientific method....

[Joe Hillshoist]

And yet you still can't do it.

I help train rural fire service volunteers across the region i live in, I'm the second highest ranked firefighter in my brigade and will be the next brigade captain when the current one steps down, i've been responsible for allowing fires in my brigade area as a fire season permit officer for nearly 20 years, in that time not one fire I've authorised has gotten away. I'm qualified to run section 44 emergencies in certain circumstances. I'm well aware of bushfire behaviour and which one's have happened in the last 20 years and their historical context. I'm not gonna ask you to guess which if any of the fires I listed i was present at. In my time as a firefighter and especially since the 2009 Black Saturday fires, a regular topic of conversation among my colleagues, various academics, other emergency services personnel, anyone the topic comes up with and I is how many fucken firestorms there are now, how regularly they happen and how scary that is. When i started you could count the number of documented firestorms on one hand, now you need more than 3.

[Ben D]

And yet you still can't do it.

I help train rural fire service volunteers across the region i live in, I'm the second highest ranked firefighter in my brigade and will be the next brigade captain when the current one steps down, i've been responsible for allowing fires in my brigade area as a fire season permit officer for nearly 20 years, in that time not one fire I've authorised has gotten away. I'm qualified to run section 44 emergencies in certain circumstances. I'm well aware of bushfire behaviour and which one's have happened in the last 20 years and their historical context. I'm not gonna ask you to guess which if any of the fires I listed i was present at. In my time as a firefighter and especially since the 2009 Black Saturday fires, a regular topic of conversation among my colleagues, various academics, other emergency services personnel, anyone the topic comes up with and I is how many fucken firestorms there are now, how regularly they happen and how scary that is. When i started you could count the number of documented firestorms on one hand, now you need more than 3.

Good to hear about your impressive contribution to the rural fire service in the Lismore area Joe...you're certainly making your mark and congratulations are in order. In the context of bushfire statistics, I hear, understand, and give due importance to these anecdotes, but I would point out that from a national scientific pov, which I understand was the context of your original claims, we need to look at Australia wide statistics. There are Australian government departments as you know who gather statistical data and do studies concerning location, frequency, intensity, etc., wrt bush/grass fires and it is these organisations who would provide the sort of evidence, if any, to support your claims. Some of these studies make it into the msm, especially if they make it into a peer reviewed scientific journal, but most don't. Btw, I did a web search for anything that resembled your three claims and found nothing, so that's why I was asking where your information came from.

Fwiw, an anecdote of my own....I worked in Alice springs in the 80s as the supervising tech at a Landsat tracking and data acquisition station and worked among CSIRO scientists, one of which was assigned to study WA, SA, and NT desert scrub/grass fires. He was assigned to do research of the infrared remote sensed satellite images, and he learnt to be able to date and map fire scars going back decades, even the ones over which there had been regrowth and repeated burns. He told me the aboriginals have traditionally started scrub/grass fires from time to time to improve the grass for hunting. Anyways....he had a good part of Australia analysed in this way back them, so I suspect the relevant gov departments have generated a lot of statistical data with Australia wide Landsat coverage since then.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Good to hear about your impressive contribution to the rural fire service in the Lismore area Joe...you're certainly making your mark and congratulations are in order. In the context of bushfire statistics, I hear, understand, and give due importance to these anecdotes, but I would point out that from a national scientific pov, which I understand was the context of your original claims, we need to look at Australia wide statistics.

Plenty of people do what i do, i'm not the only one and only brought it up to because its not just anecdotal ... we use what happened in other fires to plan for the next ones. But I honestly thought its accepted "common knowledge' that the rate of severe intense fires and firestorms is increasing across the country. They are massive events and are documented, by media and informal communications. To me its inconceivable that a firestorm in SE Australia has happened in the last 100, even 150 years and not been documented, simply because someone would notice somewhere, and I don't think they have happened anywhere else in the country because afaik there isn't the necessary fuel load. So no it wasn't scientific .. but not everything needs to be - sometimes observations are enough on their own (you don't need a control bush region to determine wildfires happen.)

Btw, I did a web search for anything that resembled your three claims and found nothing, so that's why I was asking where your information came from.

Me too, and I'm actually chasing them up via emails - the response today was "we'll get back to you when we can" so it may take some time.

He was assigned to do research of the infrared remote sensed satellite images, and he learnt to be able to date and map fire scars going back decades, even the ones over which there had been regrowth and repeated burns. He told me the aboriginals have traditionally started scrub/grass fires from time to time to improve the grass for hunting. Anyways....he had a good part of Australia analysed in this way back them, so I suspect the relevant gov departments have generated a lot of statistical data with Australia wide Landsat coverage since then.

If you compare the amount of fire in Australia the north is pretty much on fire most of the time. The amount of burning in northern Australia far exceeds the amount in southern Australia, but the intensity of the fires and the energy released for the same area doesn't. I would agree with your friend - aboriginal fire/land management was pretty interesting and very effective - it was a fairly constant practice that involved v low intensity burning across large areas of the land. And I imagine its possible to track the use of fire via satellites pretty easily once you know what to look for. It changes soil composition and vegetation in an area. (I really don't know of any tracking of large scale fires in the last 200 years using that method tho. Google earth can show some interesting results in the Alpine areas between Vic and NSW.)

Firestorms are a different matter. They only occur in the South east (as far as i know) because of the terrain and the vegetation. They occur when the fire gets hot enough to generate its own wind. This can happen on a small scale with a grass or scrub fire, but its not really a 'storm' and it isn't always self sustaining, it can be stopped with water from a truck often. The fuel loads necessary to generate a fire storm are very high*, the weather conditions are specific. It has to be very hot, very dry and very windy, and the only places i know with the necessary fuel loads to regularly generate this sort of fire behaviour are the eucalyptus forests in SE Australia and parts of California, however the forests throughout the US may be capable of doing the same thing. Its not just dry material that contributes - not just the leaves and twigs - the volatile oil released by the plants is a major contributor to the process. They evaporate due to the fire's heat but also the ambient air temperature. Steep hills also contribute as the rising heat acts on fuel on the hillside above the fire. Eucalyptus plantations and eukes as weeds around the world are contributing to firestorms elsewhere these days, but pine forests and the evaporating resin contributed to the Canberra firestorm in 2003. I think similar process with burning resins and oils contributed to the Peshtigo fire but couldn't really say.

*That fuel can include vapourised eucalyptus oil. I don't know of the details wrt to pine oil/resin but eucalyptus oil has a flash point of 49 deg C, and it evaporates(/transpires?) from vegetation below that temperature. Thats why we get blue looking forests in australia - its the presence of eucalyptus oil in the air, even on days of low temperature.

[Ben D]

Thanks Joe...understood....it's an interesting field.

[Iamwhomiam]

Ben wrote,
Joe...science does not work like that.....if you make a claim based on your research about firestorms...you need to back it up with evidence that supports the claim...that's the whole purpose of peer review....to weed out claims prior to publication, that are not matched by the data provided, so as to not waste everyone's valuable time. It's not up to the peer reviewers to do the work of the researcher.

Good lord, man! Now you've made me spray my tea and brandy all across my screen! I can't believe you're advising Joe about how science is conducted and how to read data and the purpose of peer review!
Did I die?

[Ben D]

^ Why hello Iam....it's nice to know that you expect me to be present on the other side, always on the side of truth and justice as on this side......

[Belligerent Savant]

.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... story.html

It’s official: 2014 was the hottest year

Planet Earth set an ominous record last year as global temperatures rose to the highest level since modern measurements began, scientists said Friday in a report that heightened concerns about humanity’s growing toll on the natural systems that sustain life.

The year 2014 was declared the hottest year in a joint announcement by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, based on separate analyses of weather records dating back to 1880, when Rutherford B. Hayes occupied the White House.

Driven in part by steadily warming oceans, average temperatures edged past the previous records set in 2005 and 2010. The 10 hottest years in modern times have all come since 1997, NASA scientists said.

“This is the latest in a series of warm years, in a series of warm decades,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. While fluctuations are possible in any given year in a system as chaotic as weather, Schmidt said, “the long-term trends are attributable to drivers of climate change that right now are dominated by human emissions of greenhouse gases.”

The grim milestone was recorded in a year in which large portions of the American West baked under epic droughts and heat waves, and glaciers and Arctic ice sheets continued a decades-long retreat. Historic droughts threatened drinking-water supplies across large swaths of Brazil and Australia, and thawing Arctic tundra opened up vast sinkholes in parts of Siberia and northern Canada.

In one of the rare exceptions to the warming trend, 2014 was cooler than average in the eastern United States, as an unusual dip in the Jet Stream sent waves of Arctic air plunging southward. Eastern U.S. states were among the coolest areas of the world, compared with seasonal temperature norms.

But while Americans were shivering, the rest of the world experienced record warmth in seven of 12 months in 2014 — including December — a NOAA analysis found.

Most surprising about the new record was the fact that it appeared in a year that did not witness an El Niño, the warm-weather pattern associated with unusually high ocean temperatures in the east-central Pacific, NOAA and NASA scientists said.

“This is the first year since 1997 that the record warmest year was not an El Niño year at the beginning of the year, because the last three have been,” Schmidt said.

The data reviewed by the U.S. agencies confirmed that much of 2014’s warming was driven by the oceans, the planet’s great repository of heat. Ocean temperatures were more than 1 degree above average, reaching the highest levels ever recorded, NOAA said. Land temperatures weren’t quite record-setting, but still ranked fourth-warmest since the start of the data set in 1880. California, much of Europe, including the United Kingdom, and parts of Australia all experienced their warmest years.

Climate scientists said the streak of hot years was further evidence of human-induced warming caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. While the Earth’s climate has warmed and cooled throughout history, the recent warming correlates with sharply rising levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, scientists say.

“The temperature record is yet another brick in the massive wall of evidence that the climate is warming due to human activity,” said Simon Donner, associate professor of climatology at the University of British Columbia. “Of the 20 warmest years in recorded history, 19 happened in the past two decades. Our entire idea of ‘normal’ is changing.”

The widely anticipated finding deflated — but did not fully dispel — a perception that the rate of warming has slowed since the 1990s. Several scientists noted that 2014 was not a blowout, statistically speaking. The year surpassed the next runners-up by only a few hundredths of a Celsius degree, averaged across the globe. Some also noted that rising temperatures have not kept pace with computer simulations that predicted even faster warming, given the 40-percent rise in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution.

“With 2014 essentially tied with 2005 and 2010 for hottest year, this implies that there has been essentially no trend in warming over the past decade,” said Judith Curry, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “This ‘almost’ record year does not help the growing discrepancy between the climate model projections and the surface temperature observations.”

But other scientists said the spate of record-setting years should put to rest the notion of a global-warming “pause.”

“Viewed in context, the record 2014 temperatures underscore the undeniable fact that we are witnessing, before our eyes, the effects of human-caused climate change,” said Michael Mann, a professor of meteorology at Penn State University. “It is exceptionally unlikely that we would be seeing a record year — during a record warm decade, during a multidecadal period of warmth that appears to be unrivaled over at least the past millennium — if it were not for the rising levels of planet-warming gases produced by fossil fuel burning.”

The joint announcement by NOAA and NASA followed a careful, collaborative effort in which experts closely compared analyses. Last year, NASA and NOAA also worked together on an analysis of 2013, which ranks within the top-10 hottest years on record.

The new findings are also consistent with an earlier, preliminary analysis by the Japan Meteorological Agency, which pronounced 2014 the hottest year in its records, which go back to 1891. Another analysis based on satellite temperature recordings of the lower atmosphere or “troposphere,” conducted at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, found that 2014 was only the third-warmest year for this part of the planet. Still another leading agency that keeps temperature records, Britain’s Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research, has not yet released its 2014 results.

However, the joint NASA and NOAA statement will likely carry considerable force in a year in which world leaders will gather in Paris to negotiate a new global agreement to ratchet down greenhouse gas emissions.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry seized on the report in calling for “ambitious, concrete action” to address the causing of climate change.

“This report is just another sound in a steady drumbeat that is growing increasingly more urgent,” Kerry said in a statement. “So the question isn’t the science. The question isn’t the warning signs. The question is when and how the world will respond.”

[Ben D]

^ Nevertheless this does nothing to change things wrt failed agw predictions as the CO2 levels increase each year while the pause in globing warming is continuing and the deviation between agw predictions and observed global temperatures grows larger each year...

[DrEvil]

If there's a pause (there isn't. Hint: The oceans), then why is 2014 the warmest year on record?

[Ben D]

^ Despite any conjecture about where the missing heat is going....the pause is based on reality, not agw computer models, ie. actual temperature observations!

What you have to understand that the average global temperature is staying fairly constant and 2014 is not much different to 1998, 2004, and 2010....it is not increasing as predicted by CO2 agw. Do please note that NASA gave a caveat to go with the press release concerning 2014 was the warmest on record and that was that this claim is based on a statistical 48% probability of being true due to uncertainties in the data coverage and methodologies used.......and note also that satellite atmospheric global temperatures show 2014 as the third warmest.

[Joe Hillshoist]

The entire 21st century is in the warmest 20 years on record. Most of the rest come after 1985.

Does anyone know when the last year the average temp was below 20th century averages actually happened?

[zangtang]

might be able to extrapolate from this.........

http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2014- ... on-record/

i'm sure animations and the data itself can be word-fucked any which way, but it LOOKS significant

[Joe Hillshoist]

It looks like its about 40 years since a below average 20th C temperature was recorded.

What are the odds on that?

[zangtang]

well obviously, the data's faulty.........................