1/8》
The temperature indexes are inconsistent, but you can't tell that from Priscian's misleading graph.
An honest graph would offset the traces so you can tell them apart, or else start them at the same temp. Instead he aligned the full-period averages, to hide the spread.
Here's what he's hiding:
What Jim Java / Priscian doesn't want you to notice is that the GISS (and Berkeley Earth, etc.) surface temperature indexes show much more warming than the UAH and NOAA STAR satellite-based lower troposphere measurements.
Land "surface" measurements are air temperatures measured with thermometers in Stevenson screens, usually 1.25 to 2 meters above ground. Satellite "lower troposphere" indexes (UAH, NOAA STAR, RSS) are from higher altitudes. Due to "lapse rate feedback," the (higher) altitudes where satellites measure temperatures should see a slightly greater warming trend than is seen 1.25 to 2 meters above the surface. Instead, they see less.
So, UAH6 & NOAA STAR satellite-based measurements suggest that those high-end surface temperature indexes are reporting at least 56% too much warming.
But even if it is exaggerated, the warming isn't worrisome. After all, humans are a tropical species, and most of the Earth is much too cold.
Warming saves lives, and excess cold causes many times more human deaths than excess heat — even in tropical counties, believe it or not! Here are some recent papers about it:
1. Masselot et al (2023).
2. Gasparrini et al (2022).
Composite of two figures from the paper:
3. Zhao et al (2021).
Discussion:
Summary:
4. Gasparrini et al (2015).
Fig. 2:
Are you familiar with the term "climate optimum?" If you go to ResearchGate or Google Scholar, and search for "Climate Optimum" (or Eemian Optimum, Mid-Holocene Optimum, Roman Optimum, or Medieval Optimum), you'll find thousands of papers using that terminology. Those "optimums" were warm periods.
The reason so many academic papers call the warmest periods in history "climate optimums" is that there is a consensus among historians and scientists that those warm "climate optimums" — including periods warmer than now — were, by all objective measures, better than colder periods.
Or, look at the flip side: cold periods, like the Dark Ages Cold Period (DACP) and the Little Ice Age (LIA). There's a broad consensus that those cold periods were, by all objective measures, worse for humanity than the warm "optimums."
Here's a 1974 CIA study about the threat of global cooling:
This graph from that study shows how cooling temperatures threaten food supplies:
3/8》
Depending on whose temperature index you use, we’ve seen an average of between 0.59 and 0.92 °C of warming since 1958 (when Mauna Loa CO2 measurements began).
That warming has shifted growing zones and “temperature isotherms” slightly toward the poles (northward, in the NH). So, the obvious question is, how far?
That’s easy to answer, by looking at an agricultural growing zone map. Here's one, shared by permission from the Arbor Day Foundation:
From eyeballing the map, you can see that 1°C (1.8°F) = about 50-70 miles latitude change.
Here's James Hansen and his GISS colleagues reporting a similar figure:
Excerpt: "A warming of 0.5°C... implies typically a poleward shift of isotherms by 50 to 75 km..."
4/8》
In most places that much warming can be compensated for by farmers, simply by adjusting planting dates. For example, in Kansas, 1°C of warming can be compensated for by planting about 6 days earlier in springtime:
Obviously, the slight measured warming trend does not support the "climate emergency" narrative.sealevel.info/wichita_spring…
5/8》
Worse than the disagreement between different temperature indexes is the disagreement between different versions of the SAME temperature index, due to revisions made to the "measured" data.
That's one of the main reasons Tony Heller @TonyClimate (and others) think there's a thumb on the scale.
Do you remember this?
"...it is clear that 1998 did not match the record warmth of 1934..." [in the USA]
– James Hansen et al (circa 1999)
1/4. Rising CO2 levels improve plants' water use efficiency and drought resilience, through reduced stomatal conductance. Simply put, plants need to process less air to get the carbon they need for growth, and thus they lose less water to transpiration. x.com/ncdave4life/st…
That's one of the reasons that catastrophic famines no longer happen. For all of of human history, until recently, famine was one of the great scourges of mankind: the "Third Horseman of the Apocalypse." But widespread famines are fading from living memory, and rising atmospheric CO2 concentration is one of the reasons for that.
That's a very, very Big Deal. For comparison:
● COVID-19 killed about 0.1% of the world's population
● The catastrophic 1918 flu pandemic killed about 2%
● WWII killed 2.7% of the world's population
● But the nearly-worldwide drought and famine of 1876-78 killed about 3.7% of the world's population.
@Panta_Rhei06 @simonmaechling --
2/4. Improved water use efficiency and drought resilience are especially beneficial in arid regions, like the Sahel, which is one of the reasons that region of Africa is "greening" even faster than most other places.
3/4. I asked ChatGPT about that benefit of CO2 emissions and rising CO2 levels:
"With reference to the agronomy literature, quantify how elevated CO2 helps plants use water more efficiently, and increases crops' drought resilience, by reducing stomatal conductance and water loss through transpiration."
ChatGPT replied with a very good answer:
In agronomy, the effects of elevated CO2 on plant water use efficiency and drought resilience are extensively studied. One of the key mechanisms through which elevated CO2 levels improve water use efficiency is by reducing stomatal conductance and, consequently, water loss through transpiration.
Stomata are small pores on the surface of plant leaves that regulate gas exchange, including the uptake of CO2 for photosynthesis and the release of water vapor through transpiration. When CO2 levels are elevated, plants can maintain the same or higher rate of photosynthesis while reducing stomatal conductance. This reduction in stomatal conductance leads to a decrease in water loss through transpiration without significantly affecting CO2 uptake, resulting in improved water use efficiency.
Several studies have quantified the effect of elevated CO2 on stomatal conductance and transpiration. For example, a meta-analysis published in 2013 (Kimball et al., 2013) found that under elevated CO2 levels, stomatal conductance decreased by an average of 22%, while transpiration decreased by only 17%. This indicates that plants under elevated CO2 levels were able to reduce water loss more efficiently than they reduced CO2 uptake, leading to an overall improvement in water use efficiency.
Improvements in water use efficiency due to elevated CO2 levels can increase plants' drought resilience by allowing them to maintain adequate hydration during periods of water scarcity. This can be particularly beneficial in arid and semi-arid regions where water availability is limited.
Overall, the literature suggests that elevated CO2 levels can improve water use efficiency in plants by reducing stomatal conductance and water loss through transpiration, which can enhance their resilience to drought conditions.
1/6》 Marcus, please tell me that you're not fooled by a fake "study" of a three-day-old event, from a climate industry propaganda outlet. Do you know how long real studies take?
1/8. Gov. Newsom's press release falsely blames "a hotter, drier world." In fact, the world is warming only very slightly & slowly, and it hasn't gotten at all drier. Here're the facts: sealevel.info/learnmore.html…
As you can see from the graph, the fraction of the globe in drought has decreased slightly, not increased.
Oh, and BTW, NCA4 (circa 2018) estimated that global average temperatures have risen only 1.14 ±0.13°C since the 1800s, and the warming is disproportionately at chilly high latitudes.
2/8. Also, higher CO2 levels greatly reduce drought impacts, by making plants more drought-resistant and water-efficient, through reduced stomatal conductance. That's very beneficial in arid regions, like the Sahel & much of California. Here's an article. web.archive.org/web/2017061915…
That's is one of the reasons that region of Africa is "greening" even faster than most other places.
@NewScientist reported the "remarkable environmental turnaround," including a “quite spectacular regeneration of vegetation,” and "a 70 per cent increase in yields of local cereals such as sorghum and millet in one province in recent years."
1/8》Doc wrote, "You’re not going to change my mind."
Please do not be impervious to evidence, like trillionofcells. That would make me sad.
2/8》Doc wrote, "Wasn’t Gleick cleared of any wrongdoing?"
No, he was not cleared. That was disinformation from The Grauniad: x.com/ncdave4life/st…
In fact, Gleick eventually admitted the identity theft, and disseminating the forgery & the stolen documents (though only after he was caught & publicly identified).
3/8》Gleick never admitted being the forger, but there can be no doubt of that, either.
It was the incongruous appearance of his name in the document, with the strangely flattering description of him as a "high-profile climate scientist," in a document which said NOTHING positive about ANY other climate activists, which first drew Steve Mosher's attention to Gleick. But it was the idiosyncrasies of Gleick's own writing style, found in the forged document, which Mosher mostly discussed, when explaining why he believed Gleick wrote it.
Note that that was all BEFORE Gleick confessed to being the person who had impersonated the Heartland Board Member to steal the other documents. THAT iced it: there's no question that Gleick was the forger.
1/8. The IPCC authors expect a worsening trend. No such trend is actually detectable, so far.
In fact, here's a paper about the downward trend in hurricane destructiveness, tho I suspect the decrease might be a fluctuation rather than a durable trend. nature.com/articles/ncomm…
2/8. The IPCC authors are sly. They know hurricanes & other tropical cyclones aren't worse, but they dodge & weave to avoid admitting it. Here's a tricky quote from AR6:
"It is likely that the global proportion of Category 3–5 tropical cyclone instances has increased over the past four decades."