Below are my replications of Figure 4 and Figure 5 of the controversial paper "Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature" by J. D. McLean, C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter. Above is the comparison of global atmospheric temperature (RATPAC-A) with the SOI, smoothed with a flat 12 month filter. Above is the comparison of the 12 month differences (not derivative) of global atmospheric temperature (RATPAC-A) (lagged) with the SOI, smoothed with a flat 12 month Read more [...] 69 com

A potential AGW buster, attributing decadal temperature variation largely to internal oceanic effects, ENSO and over the longer term the 1976 Great Pacific Climate Shift, as we did here, is a new paper by Australian John McLean, with New Zealander Chris de Freitas, and Australian ex-pat Kiwi Bob Carter. That mean global tropospheric temperature has for the last 50 years fallen and risen in close accord with the SOI of 5–7 months earlier shows the potential of natural forcing mechanisms Read more [...] 110 com

A new page in the "abouts" section lists my non-self-published contributions to discrediting AGW since my transmogrification in 2004 to a skeptic remarkably similar to the one described by Luboš Motl in his review of Ralph Alexander's new book. Just like a majority of books on the subject, Dr Alexander makes the readers understand that the global warming alarm is almost completely an artifact of manipulation with the human psychology and with the data. But unlike the case of many other books, Read more [...] none

The Hon Wilson "Ironbar" Tuckey MP on the ETS. Worth a read. ETS doesn't have the numbers in the Senate -- via Crikey. Sent: Tue Jul 21 12:58:50 2009 Subject: Emissions Trading Scheme - Confidential The issue of the arrogance and inexperience of our Leader on the issue of the Emission Trading Scheme has to be addressed. As a simple example of the negative politics of an ETS has anyone asked why Labor now titles it’s legislation the ‘Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme’. As Read more [...] 3 com

The revision of the Copenhagen Synthesis Report was advertised at the ANU Climate Change Institute, directed by Prof. Will Steffen. But they just can't seem to get it right. The ANU web site refers to Stefan Rahmstorf as Stefan Rahmonstorf. Ian Castles on the July 5th, 2009 compiled the list of amendments of errors. Below is an update of the current situation. A summary chronology: (1) According to the first sentence in the caption to Figure 3 of the Copenhagen Synthesis Report, as released Read more [...] 7 com

Swanson's projection for future temperature using presumed regime shifts can be compared with our projection. The above figure was posted at RealClimate (note this figure is not contained in their paper) with flat temperature intersecting with an extrapolated underlying rate of around 1C/Century seen between 1950 and 1998 at around 2020. Our projection for temperature, from figure 3 of our paper archived at arXiv and submitted to IJF, Structural break models of climatic regime-shifts: claims Read more [...] 13 com

The replication of the highly influential Rahmstorf 2007 A Semi-Empirical Approach to Sea Level Rise, one of the main sources of projected sea level rise, was reported in the previous post. In a now discredited (and disowned) Rahmstorf et al 2007 publication, Steve McIntyre showed that Rahmstorf had pulled an elaborate stunt on the community by dressing up a simple triangular filter with "singular spectrum analysis" with "embedding dimensions", I can now report another, perhaps even more spectacular Read more [...] 6 com

RealClimate was so concerned with our paper Structural break models of climatic regime-shifts that they felt compelled to post a paper by Swanson and Tsonis in response ;-), see Warming, interrupted: Much ado about natural variability. There are a number of similarities and differences. Firstly, ST09 uses a very different method, fitting periodic fluctuations in ocean temperature to spatially distributed data. Regime-shifts are recognized with a measure of coherence between areas, and their theory Read more [...] 76 com

Renewable energy is a nice idea, but Peter Lang crunches the numbers and finds solar and wind power are crushingly expensive, do little for greenhouse gas reduction, and are ecologically dangerous. Cap and trade is actually a giant scheme to tax and redistribute, for the benefit of political insiders. A letter submitted by Peter Lang argues that the numbers prove nuclear power is the only way. Solar realities: Solar power is uneconomic. The capital cost of solar power would be 25 times more Read more [...] 36 com

Published in Science, this Rahmstorf 2007 article provides a high-end estimate of sea level rise of over a meter by the end of the century (rate of 10mm/yr). Linear extrapolation puts the rate of increase at only 1.4mm and 1.7mm per year depending on start date (1860 or 1950). The paper was followed by two critical comments, both bashing the statistics, and these are attached to the link above. Rahmstorf replied to those comments. The issues raised are familiar to readers of this, CA, Lucia, Read more [...] 21 com

Download: Structural break models of climatic regime-shifts: claims and forecasts Anthony asked if it would be difficult to statistically justify the breaks in temperature between 1976 and 1979 proposed by Quirk (2009) for Australian temperature. He has an interest in oceanographic regime-shifts and climate change. Sure, I said, a simple Chow test. We ended up rebutting the Easterling & Wehner (2009) claim that describing temperatures since 1998 as declining is 'cherry picking', finding a Read more [...] 49 com

Just for clarity, the influential Rahmstorf 2007 paper that is contradicted by published evidence here, was irrevocably discredited by his own admission here, that apparent increased climate sensitivity was only due to 'weather'. In hindsight, the averaging period of 11 years that we used in the 2007 Science paper was too short to determine a robust climate trend. The 2-sigma error of an 11-year trend is about +/- 0.2 ºC, i.e. as large as the trend itself. Therefore, an 11-year trend is still Read more [...] 115 com