Guest ridicule by David Middleton

“Film at 11” is a US idiom from television news broadcasting, where the viewers are informed that footage of a breaking news story will be screened later that day.

–Wikipedia

Eric Worrall’s brilliant ridicule of a Toronto Now article about imminent human extinction due to climate change elicited an even more ridicule-worthy comment (H/T Tony McLeod), citing a yet-even more ridicule worthy blog post on an even more imminent threat of climate-driven extinction.

Figure 1. 10.02 °C of warming by 2026? Source: Arctic News

There really is no way to describe this sort of nonsense without using a word that rhymes with petard.  The author, Sam Carana, presents this table to itemize the sources of 10.02 °C by 2016.

Figure 2. That’s it then. Source: Arctic News

So… According to Mr. Carana, 1.62 °C of warming has already occurred and an additional 8.4 °C of warming will likely occur over the next 9 years.

Life is too short to tackle Mr. Carana’s predictions about 8.4 °C of warming over the next nine years; however, the 1.62 °C of warming from 1900 to February 2016 (cherry pick much?) can be easily and quickly shot down in flames.

February 2016 rise from 1900 (1.62°C)

The magenta element at the top reflects the temperature rise since 1900. In February 2016, it was 1.62°C warmer compared to the year 1900, so that’s a rise that has already manifested itself.

Following Mr. Carana’s link…

A polynomial trend can reduce variability such as caused by volcanoes and El Niño events. The graph below was created with the NASA L-OTI monthly mean global surface temperature anomaly, which has a 1951-1980 baseline, and then with 0.29°C added, which makes the anomaly 0°C in the year 1900 for the added polynomial trend.

This gives an idea of how much temperatures have risen since the year 1900, with a rise for both February and March 2016 showing up that was more than 1.5°C, as also illustrated by the image below. The trend further points at temperature anomalies that will be more than 1.5°C (from 1900) within a decade and more than 2°C soon thereafter.

Arctic News

Show of hands… How many readers can identify the most egregious error in Mr. Carana’s claim of 1.62 °C of warming since 1900?

Figure 3. GISTEMP LOTI global mean temperature anomaly (°C) 1900 to February 2016. Source: Wood for Trees.

If we look at the raw values, we get:

• January 1900 -0.39 °C
• February 2016 1.34 °C

This actually works out to 1.73 °C of warming… It’s worse than previously thought!!!

Setting aside the fact, that point-to-point measurements are not the way temperature changes over time are determined… What has happened since February 2016?

If we look at the raw values, we get:

• February 2016 1.34 °C
• February 2016 0.80 °C

This actually works out to 0.54 °C of cooling since February 2016… It’s better than previously thought!!!

If we look at GISTEMP from a scientific perspective, we would throw it out… Short of throwing it out, we would look at the trend exhibited by the data, in order to determine how much warming it shows since 1900.

Figure 5.  About 1 °C of warming since 1900… in the data set which exhibits the most warming.  Source: Wood for Trees.

GISTEMP LOTI exhibits a trend of just under 1 °C of warming per century.

While the fact that Mr. Carana’s aseertion of 1.62 °C of warming from 1900 to February 2016 conclusively demmonstrates that he is either scientifically illiterate or dishonest to the point of disregarding anything he says, it doesn’t necessarily disprove the rest of his “theory”… 8.4 °C of additional warming over the next 9 years, would require a trend of 9.3 °C per century, 10 times the trend of HadCRUT4… nearly 10 times the trend if GISTEMP LOTI.  Quite frankly…

If I find the time and patience, I might tackle Mr. Carana’s forecasts… If they are half as bad as his hindcasts, it might be fun.