What Climate change?

[NotAllThere]

Ooh! It looks like a gert hockey stick...

And how do we know those were the actual temperatures going way back when?

I mean, it's not like there was anyone around to measure them.

The figures are just made up. I mean - these people are scientists and experts, so you obviously can't trust them.

I genuinely don't have a clue.

We are well aware of that.

[pjclarke]

Q: How does one go about reconstructing temperatures in the past?

A: Changes in Earth’s temperature for the last ~160 years are determined from instrumental data, such as thermometers on the ground or, for more recent times, satellites looking down from space. Beyond about 160 years ago, we must turn to other methods that indirectly record temperature (called “proxies”) for reconstructing past temperatures. For example, tree rings, calibrated to temperature over the instrumental era, provide one way of determining temperatures in the past, but few trees extend beyond the past few centuries or millennia. To develop a longer record, we used primarily marine and terrestrial fossils, biomolecules, or isotopes that were recovered from ocean and lake sediments and ice cores. All of these proxies have been independently calibrated to provide reliable estimates of temperature.

Q: Did you collect and measure the ocean and land temperature data from all 73 sites?

A: No. All of the datasets were previously generated and published in peer-reviewed scientific literature by other researchers over the past 15 years. Most of these datasets are freely available at several World Data Centers (see links below); those not archived as such were graciously made available to us by the original authors. We assembled all these published data into an easily used format, and in some cases updated the calibration of older data using modern state-of-the-art calibrations. We made all the data available for download free-of-charge from the Science web site (see link below). Our primary contribution was to compile these local temperature records into “stacks” that reflect larger-scale changes in regional and global temperatures. We used methods that carefully consider potential sources of uncertainty in the data, including uncertainty in proxy calibration and in dating of the samples (see step-by-step methods below).

Response by Marcott et al. « RealClimate

[d000hg]

We'll be glad of all the warming when we get a huge eruption and ensuing volcano winter.

[pjclarke]

Happy Birthday!

Top scientists start to examine fiddled global warming figures - Telegraph

Here are the full results of 2 years rigourous and intensive investigation into that 'fiddled' data, in full:

All submissions — The International Temperature Data Review Project


Some might say an apology of some kind is due. I am not holding my breath.

[SimonMac]

Renewables provide more than half UK electricity for first time - BBC News

[Paddy]

Renewables provide more than half UK electricity for first time - BBC News

Coal is renewable...

...if you wait long enough.

[OwlHoot]

Coal is renewable...

...if you wait long enough.

Not any more - The Carboniferous age started when plants first evolved the ability to make lignin, and ended when the first moulds evolved the ability to digest lignin. Unfortunately those moulds are still around, so dead wood no longer forms coal deposits.

But oil is renewable, forming in marine deposits, if you wait fifteen million years or so.

[PurpleGorilla]

What Climate change?


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...ming-1912.html

[WTFH]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...ming-1912.html

Is this the Mail hedging its bets - if the Tories don't end up winning, then the Mail can point out how Labour is responsible for climate change, but is doing nothing about it...