Wood Romances

The CO2 Coalition 's Fact #5 is titled, "CO2 emissions began accelerating in the mid-20th century." This one doesn't even get its title superficially correct. The explanation that goes with this is rather short, so I'll share it all. "Global man-made CO2 emissions began accelerating in the post-World War II economic boom and continue increasing today. If CO2 is the primary factor driving a warming planet, we should see indications of an acceleration of warming beginning in that period and continuing today." The graph associated with this "fact" is below. There are at least two obvious problems with this. First, you can detect acceleration in emissions by an upward curve - that indicates that emission rates are increasing. Clearly this curve is present in the late 19th century, then flattens early 20th century and increases again in the 1930s or so. But second, and more importantly, the CO2 Coalition  did not show any emissions from land use c...

The CO2 Coalition claims to exist "for the purpose of educating thought leaders, policymakers, and the public about the important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy. The Coalition seeks to engage in an informed and dispassionate discussion of climate change, humans’ role in the climate system, the limitations of climate models, and the consequences of mandated reductions in CO2 emission." And if you think there's even a grain of truth in that, we can dispel with that right here.  On their website, they have what they consider educational resources, including a series  of "facts" that ostensibly would help us get past media propaganda to the scientific evidence about AGW. Their second "fact" has the following title: "The warming effect of each molecule of CO2 declines as its concentration increases." As is typical in these "facts," the title is superficially true; the disinformation comes in the way it...

Ole Humlum published a paper about 10 years ago attempting to show that CO2 always lags temperature and therefore the increase in CO2 substantially comes from an increase in temperature, not the other way around. In the words of Humlum's paper, As cause always must precede effect, this observation demonstrates that modern changes in temperatures are generally not induced by changes in atmospheric CO2. Indeed, the sequence of events is seen to be the opposite: temperature changes are taking place before the corresponding CO2 changes occur. and  CO2 released from anthropogene [sic] sources apparently has little influence on the observed changes in atmospheric CO2, and changes in atmospheric CO2 are not tracking changes in human emissions.  What I want to show two things here. First, Humlum's argument is fatally flawed logically, and he has to hide that flaw with by detrending the data. Second, even if we were take his claims, it leads to absurd conclusions. Humlum's Fatal Log...

A paper was published in 2013[1] that reconstructed intermediate water temperatures (IWT) for an area of Indonesian waters around the Makassar Straight and the Flores Sea. The study includes two reconstructions, one at 500 m depth and another at 600 m to 900 m depth in an effort to show how Pacific IWT ha sbeen affected by high latitude source waters. The reconstruction somewhat predictably found that during the HTM, average IWT in this area were warmer than in 1970. Given the misuse of this paper by contrarians (see below), I think it best to quote directly from the paper so you can see precisely what this paper is actually about. The early Holocene warmth and subsequent IWT cooling in Indonesia is likely related to temperature variability in the higher-latitude source waters. To assess the mechanisms that caused these hydrographic variations, we estimate down-core salinities and densities for the 500- and 600- to 650-m depths. A temperature-salinity-density plot suggests that althoug...

A few days ago, Dr. Roy Spencer wrote a piece for the Heritage Foundation called, " Global Warming: Observations vs. Climate Models " ( PDF ) essentially arguing that models show too much warming compared to observations, and if we stick to observations, "global warming offers no justification for carbon-based regulation." He claims to frame his argument in terms of answering three questions: Is recent warming of the climate system materially attributable to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, as is usually claimed? Is the rate of observed warming close to what computer climate models—used to guide public policy—show? Has the observed rate of warming been sufficient to justify alarm and extensive regulation of CO2 emissions? We should keep in mind that this is a political document intended to support the political aims of the Heritage Foundation, and Spencer has carefully selected what he says and doesn't say to fit the political agenda of the Heritage Found...

The popular contrarian blog No Trick Zone has made a name for itself for compiling lists of papers that are claimed to demonstrate that some aspect of climate science is all wrong. The papers in these lists generally fall into a few categories: Papers published in junk (pay-to-play) or predatory journals. Papers published in legitimate journals that don't say what NTZ claims they say. Papers published in legitimate journals that do in fact challenge some aspect of AGW. Studies show that papers in the third category total less than 1% of the recent peer-reviewed literature, so you have to wade through a ton of papers in the first two categories to find the one(s) that belong in the third. It used to be when people promoted these NTZ blogposts on social media, I'd go through the trouble of looking up the papers to confirm that the general principle I describe above still holds true. I no longer waste my time with that (Brandolini's Law and all), but occasionally WUWT picks u...

In March 2000, the Independent ran a story by Charles Onians with the title, "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past." The article begins by noting trends over the last 30 years for UK winters. "The first two months of 2000 were virtually free of significant snowfall in much of lowland  Britain, and December brought only moderate snowfall in the South-east. It is the continuation of a trend that has been increasingly visible in the past 15 years: in the south of England, for instance, from 1970 to 1995 snow and sleet fell for an average of 3.7 days, while from 1988 to 1995 the average was 0.7 days. London's last substantial snowfall was in February 1991." The overall point of the story is that snow frequency has been decreasing in the UK. However, Onians reported some content from Dr. David Viner, a scientist with CRU at the University of East Anglia. It reads like it was taken from an interview, with some statements coming from Onians summarizing the interv...