date: Fri, 8 Feb 2008 12:22:10 -0700 from: "Wayne P. Kraus" subject: RE: IPCC Statements to: "'Phil Jones'" Phil: Thanks for your reply. I will review your comments carefully. Just based on the geological analog I would expect that if we had a perfect "yardstick" to measure long-term global temperature trends we should expect to see that over the past 10,000 or 15,000 years the "global" temperature should be increasing. So I infer that the crux of the man-made global warming theory is that the rate of increase in the 20^th century is too steep to be caused by the natural solar cycle variations. So you and the IPCC are alarmed by a change of slope in the 20^th century "global" temperature versus time curve. The leap to man-made GHG in the 20^th century as the cause is still a major leap of faith without verifiable proof that the trace of CO2 among the GHGs is what is driving climate. The enormous financial cost to adopt the IPCC plan to remove atmospheric CO2 requires more proof than a temperature correlation. What if the change of slope is driven by the major GHG, water vapor, would the IPCC demand that we dehydrate the earth? How have you confirmed that the 20^th century change in slope of the "global" temperature versus time plot is not simply an artifact of the urban island effect associated with the terrestrial temperature stations? The NCAR inventory of the 460 USHCN stations to date shows that 70% of the instruments inventoried show pronounced urban island elevated bias. This alone could easily account for a 20^th century change of slope with timing in perfect harmony with the flight to suburbia following WW II. At this time I cannot really conclude that until I look at the data from the rest of the world, a collection that has to include data from the atmosphere over the oceans. The references I have found from publications so far indicate this is a rather sporadic collection of voluntary reports from merchant shipping isolated to the well traveled shipping lanes. At this time I don't know how far back this temperature record goes or what fraction of the oceanic area of the globe has data coverage. With the oceans covering 70% of the globe, I suspect this is a major statistical hurdle to deal with when averaging to obtain a single number "global" average temperature. Next the one map of southern hemisphere historical reporting stations I have seen to date, covering a global area far more vast than the US, appears to be very sparse in comparison to the 1221 USHCN instruments covering just the US. I expect this disparity in the number of reporting stations will be another major statistical hurdle when averaging to find a single number "global" temperature. I am also concerned how the diurnal and seasonal temperature change at any historical temperature recording station is filtered out of this statistical analysis. As you know the diurnal/seasonal swings in temperature can exceed 100ºC. That data scatter could easily swamp the trend line of about 2ºC over a period of time exceeding 10,000 years. If we plotted the entire collection of raw data on a daily basis versus the last 150 years I would expect to see something like the hole in a target created by a shotgun blast. Have you looked at this kind of presentation? All things considered I expect to find the analysis of this collection of data to be a major statistical challenge. Perhaps you can comment on these concerns? Wayne Kraus Littleton, Colorado ___________________________________________________________________________________________ From: Phil Jones [mailto:p.jones@uea.ac.uk] Sent: Friday, February 08, 2008 10:34 AM To: Wayne P. Kraus Subject: RE: IPCC Statements Wayne, Off home now. It is a case of reading the IPCC Report, and understanding about radiative forcing. Read Ch 2 of the IPCC Report. We know why Ice Ages occur - Milankovitch forcing. The timescales are know. There is no dispute about them at all. Milanovitch forcing doesn't have any effect on 30-year timescales. Solar forcing hasn't changed in the last 50 years. We've had more volcanoes in the last 40 years than since the early-20th century, so we should be cooling. We are warming - and at a faster rate than ever before. Also read Chapter 9. Back Monday Phil At 17:00 08/02/2008, you wrote: Phil: Thank you for the links to data which you have sent. I will begin to pull in the data and review it before attempting an analysis. Over my career I have worked with many geologists and I have worked with and mapped lots of geological data. That was the reason for my query which you have not answered. Can you give me a simple explanation why you and the IPCC conclude 20^th century release of greenhouse gases can be the cause of climate change that began thousands of years ago? While this is a proxy temperature record, the geological record of multiple cyclical ice ages and interglacial melting and thawing over the last 1,000,000 years appears to be an exact analog for the glacial melting we are seeing today. I have great difficulty understanding that a time series analysis of the recent 150 years of terrestrial temperature data that you used to construct the plots provided to the IPCC proves that 20^th century greenhouse gases is the cause of this temperature increase. At best I expect my analysis of this data will provide a correlation (which I expect will be very weak given the difficulties with the data that have already been cited by other scientists). A correlation does not prove causation which I know you realize. Whenever, I have been presented with conclusions of causation based entirely on correlation I like to relate the following example from my personal experiences. When I lived and worked in Houston, Texas I bicycled as often as my work load permitted in a rural wooded park near my home. After a while I noticed that every time there were heavy rains in our area I would encounter poisonous snakes on the bicycle path. The correlation was perfect! So I told my friends that I reached the conclusion that the snakes fell from the sky with the rain. No one believed me despite the fact that the correlation was perfect! As you know a scientists has to look beyond a simple correlation to find cause and effect. That seems to be missing from the IPCC findings. Please answer the question linking past ice ages that have come and gone to 20^th century anthropogenic GHGs. Wayne Kraus Littleton, Colorado ___________________________________________________________________________________________ From: Phil Jones [[1] mailto:p.jones@uea.ac.uk] Sent: Friday, February 08, 2008 3:57 AM To: Wayne P. Kraus Cc: susan.solomon@noaa.gov Subject: Re: IPCC Statements Wayne, I've given you starting points about the temperature data in a message recently sent. As for this one, I suggest again that you read the IPCC volume from the web site given previously. The quotes you have given here are a couple from the many in the SPM of the WG1 AR4 2007 Report. In the SPM volume each summary bullet refers to a section in the main report and/or the Technical Summary where you can find the background supporting information. For example, the first of your quotes refers to Chs 3,4 and 5. As I said in the earlier email, IPCC assesses the scientific literature. This literature has all appeared in peer-reviewed journals. I know the IPCC volume is large (996pp) but there is a lot of literature to assess from a lot of climatic-related fields. Best Regards Phil At 23:42 07/02/2008, you wrote: Professor Phil Jones: I have been researching some of your publications. I just ran across this information which I assume you have reviewed. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change in its most recent report in 2007 stated: 'Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.' 'Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations12. This is an advance since the TAR's conclusion that "most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations". Discernible human influences now extend to other aspects of climate, including ocean warming, continental-average temperatures, temperature extremes and wind patterns' Please explain how you reconcile the fact that the present temperature increase began at the end of the last ice age and that the glaciers have been melting for tens of thousands of years with the claim that this is being driven by 20^th century production of greenhouse gases? How can present release of greenhouse gases be the cause of climate change that happened thousands of years ago? This conclusion seems entirely unjustified if only based on the actual geologic record of earth history. Have you had a peer review on this conclusion with the geological community? This conclusion seems completely illogical. Please do explain your conclusion! Regards, Dr. Wayne Kraus, PhD Littleton, Colorado ___________________________________________________________________________________________ From: Wayne P. Kraus [ [2]mailto:KrausWP@comcast.net] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 3:52 PM To: 'p.jones@uea.ac.uk' Subject: Release of IPCC Temperature Data Importance: High Professor Phil Jones: A colleague and I have been researching the temperature data which IPCC has used to suggest the theory of man-made global warming. We have been searching for the raw data from all historical temperature reporting stations used to construct the IPCC temperature plot. I guess this has become known as the hockey stick. We would like to do our own analysis of the raw data. We have lots of questions about the data you have used. Here are a few of the questions we have. 1. We have found the list of the 1221 USHCN stations from information posted by NCAR. We have noted that urban island effects began to influence the temperature readings during the flight to suburbia following WW II. Did you correct USHCN data to account for that bias? 2. Where can we find the raw data from historical temperature instruments covering the oceans? The oceans cover more than 70% of the surface of the earth and we expect that data to show significantly less variability (data scatter) than terrestrial temperature stations? 3. Where can we find the raw data for all historical temperature data outside the USA which you used when calculating your global averagetemperatures for the IPCC plot? 4. I anticipate the distribution of temperature recording instruments in remote and third world nations is more sparse than in western industrial nations. How did you adjust your global averagevolumetrically? What I mean is if there are 20 USHCN instruments covering the entire state of Kansas and 100 USHCN instruments in the densely populated area near New York City, the averaging technique has to remove that kind of bias. How did you do this? In short, I would be most grateful if you will direct me to an IPCC site where I can retrieve the entire raw data collection you used to develop your analysis. I would also like to see a comprehensive report on the techniques you used to compute your global averagetemperature used in your plot. Based on the many comments I have seen regarding your analysis of this recent temperature history, I believe this data and those conclusions require greater peer review than they have received. I hope you will cooperate in completing the scientific process of peer review and verification. Best regards, Dr. Wayne Kraus, PhD Littleton, Colorado Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ----------------------------------------------------------------------------