Wood Romances

 For fun I've been collecting hockey sticks. The following are not complete, but I think they're pretty representative. In fact, I even collected the much maligned Loehle 2008 reconstruction, which has been the darling of contrarian "science." There are numerous issues with that reconstruction, which I document here , but I'm including it because doing so doesn't change the fact that all known temperature reconstructions covering anywhere from NH-extratropical temperatures to global mean temperatures have a hockey stick shape if you include the 21st century. I decided to break this up into three graphs, one showing GMST reconstructions, one showing NH and NH-extratropical reconstructions, and one showing NH-summer and/or NH-growing season reconstructions. I'm showing each with their respective instrumental counterparts (global, NH, and NH-summer). For reconstructions with annual resolution, those are shown faded, but I show running 10-year means for all of...

A little while ago I watched a short lecture  by R.B. Alley  that did a marvelous job of explaining why geologists have overwhelmingly concluded that greenhouse gases (and in particular CO2 ) are the primary drivers of climate changes on geologic time scales. This presentation was given prior to the publication of Judd et al 2024 ,[1] so I thought it might be fun to show how his argument would be enhanced even more with the more recent data we now have about Phanerozoic temperature and CO2. But let me set the stage. GMST is set by a balance between incoming absorb solar radiation (ASR) and outgoing longwave radiation (OLR). ASR is affected by changes in how much sunlight reaches the earth ( solar variability ), where and when sunlight reaches the earth ( orbital cycles ) and how much is reflected vs absorbed ( albedo ). Outside influences can also at least theoretically play a role in affecting process on earth ( galactic cosmic rays ) that could change how much incoming s...

GMST  Follows  CO2 Forcings , not  Solar Forcings You could be forgiven for looking at the above graph and thinking that quite obviously temperature (GMST) is following CO2 forcings and not solar forcings. But these facts are inconvenient for the "It's the Sun, stupid" crowd, so they have to figure out a way to turn this on its head. The most common way I've seen is for contrarians to say we have causation reversed. It's actually the increase in GMST that causes CO2 to increase, since warming temperatures causes the oceans to outgas CO2. The mantra I hear from this crowd is that " CO2 always lags temperature ," usually followed with "by hundreds of years." Let's examine if this claim makes any sense, looking first at the paleoclimate evidence (where this myth originated) and then the historical evidence, where this claim can be conclusively refuted. Paleoclimate Evidence The "CO2 always follows temperature" myth has its origin a m...

Accounting for Climate Forcings Puts ECS Near 3 °C From ClimateBrink The so-called "Climate Working Group," hired by the Department of Energy to write what Roger Pielke Jr termed a "red team" response to climate science  (my initial response is here ) is predictably critical of the central scientific estimate for ECS. The first ECS estimate I know of was calculated by Arrhenius, who concluded that 2xCO2 would cause between 4-6°C warming. This value was revised downward by Gilbert Plass in the 1950s to ~3°C, and since the 1970s this has become the standard estimate. The IPCC currently says the likely range is 2.5-4.0°C, largely as a result of Sherwood et al 2020 (S22),[1] which is still to date the most comprehensive assessment of ECS (Sherwood's likely range was 2.6-3.9°C). There is a growing body of scientific literature arguing that recent observational evidence is more consistent with an ECS closer to 4°C, suggesting that the IPCC may be a bit conservative on...