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Friday, December 20, 2013

Denier weirdness: Russian steam pipes are causing global warming, sez Anthony Watts @wattsupwiththat

Sou | 1:13 PM Go to the first of 30 comments. Add a comment

Shades of "Airport UHI Disease".

Today Anthony Watts muses whether one reason this November was the hottest in the instrumental record is because of Russian steam pipes!

Here's the global temperature anomaly according to NASA GISTemp:

Data source: NASA


Here's a chart of the global temperature anomaly for November 2013:

Source: NOAA

In an article protesting the record warm November, Anthony wrote (archived here):
Addendum: I have been wondering about that Russian red spot for 5 years. I’ve seen this red spot come and go in Russia, and I don’t know what the reason is.
I do know this: neither I nor NOAA has a good handle on the siting characteristics of Russian weather stations. I do know one thing though, the central heating schemes for many Russian cities puts a lot of waste heat into the air from un-insulated steam pipes
...and he proceeded to post a lot of photos of steam pipes in Russian cities.

I guess the Russians only turn on their steam pipes in hot Novembers, not cooler Novembers like last year?

Source: NOAA Nov 2013 and Nov 2012

It looks as if they turn on the steam pipes in outback Australia when it's a cold November worldwide.  This year Alaska (and south west USA) turned on the steam pipes but last November they neglected to turn them on in Alaska.  They didn't turn them on in north east North America this year, either - I bet they were wishing they were in northern Russia last month, where they could warm themselves up with the steam pipes!



Here's more PROOF that the steam pipes are only turned on in hot Novembers:

Source: NOAA Nov 2011 and Nov 2010

Once again, when it's a colder November worldwide, they turn on the steam pipes in Australia - but in different parts of the country.  In northern Canada they are quite inconsistent about turning on the steam pipes.

Here's an animation with a map of world population distribution together with the global surface temperature anomaly for November this year.  Those Russians are dreadfully inefficient piping all the steam into unpopulated areas of the country, aren't they.

Sources: NOAA and Maps.com








Kenji, the scientific dog, is probably feeling rather embarrassed again.







Remember when Anthony decided that China was getting hotter because of UHI disease?  Trouble was that the warm anomalies were greatest in parts where almost no-one lived!



From the WUWT comments

Comments are archived here with the WUWT article.


Justin Hoffer thinks there shouldn't be any anomalous anomalies and decides it must be the Russian military equipment messing with the data says:
December 19, 2013 at 1:11 pm
I should clarify that I mean it could be caused by someone messing with the satellite data in some way, or Russian military equipment possible messing with the satellite data. As is, the very existence of an anomaly like that seems rather odd to me.

vukcevic says b..b..but it was cooler in central England this November:
December 19, 2013 at 3:24 pm
Most of ordinary people are concerned about and judge global warming by events in their area; in Central England both maximum and minimum daily temperatures this November were lower than in 2012

jmorpuss is an ordinary nutter and says:
December 19, 2013 at 3:55 pm
Google giant Tesla coils found in Russia . Once found you will ask what the ****? What are they used for? I don’t think their water slides lol.


mike g is a climate conspiracy nutter and says:
December 19, 2013 at 4:19 pm
If the conspicuous and suspicious temperature anomaly over Russia was a cold anomaly, mainstream science would have corrected it. There is enough information in this post and others on here over the years for any reasonable individual to see the data is suspect and has been for years. Yet, it is accepted without question by warmists.


30 comments:

  1. Someone should get Bob Tisdale to do a back of the envelope calculation on how much coal the Russians have to burn for the satellites (which don't worry about urban heat islands (and the urban density of that part of Russia?) to produce an anomaly of that size and that duration.

    I mean why not compound the stupidity to the maximum? "Secret Russian Program for wide area outdoor heating takes West by surprise- "Heating Gap" will be next big National Security Issue.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not to mention the fact that all these rusty looking Russian steam pipes Anthony postulates have suddenly started affecting the temperature in unpopulated areas must be brand new and only turned on this November. Otherwise they'd have affected the record going back in time.

      It's the same logic error Anthony committed with his UHI disease at Maniitsoq in Greenland.

      Anthony can get very, very weird with some of the "reasons" he comes up with in trying to deny the reality of global warming.

      Delete
  2. What would happen if all of the steam pipes were turned on at once? The horror.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This post is Onion-grade satire. Great work, Sou!

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  4. Not to mention that Russia, with 8.4 inhabitants per sq km is one of the least densely populated area of the world. Those russians sure use a lot of steam pipes!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Looks like there's shedloads of steampipes in Siberia, still firing off...

    http://siberiantimes.com/ecology/casestudy/features/no-snow-in-siberia-locals-marvel-and-worry-at-the-snow-shortage/

    idunno

    ReplyDelete
  6. The rest of the post is about how different baselines produce different anomalies (Watts didn't say it in so few words, although he could have). This is a lesson he probably vaguely remembers from many years ago, when he though the different anomalies were all a big conspiracy.

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    Replies
    1. It's not clear that Anthony has got the hang of anomalies from a baseline yet, the way he goes on about it. It's all a bit too mathematical :D

      Delete
  7. Natural climate change has been hiding in plain sight. http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh noes! Dan's back with his climate conspiracy woes.

      (Don't bother, folk. If your curiosity gets the better of you, start here.)

      Delete
    2. Or, if you are getting tired of wondering why it is not getting warmer, go here http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com/. .

      Delete
    3. Actually, it is getting warmer, just not as fast as previously.

      Do you also explain on your blog why it is not getting colder? What with low solar activity, La Niña dominating, negative PDO. China and India burning carbon as if there's no tomorrow, Arctic warming not properly measured, etc...

      Will it get colder once we get another average El Niño?

      Delete
    4. Five agencies report average global temperature anomalies. I graph them all as shown at http://endofgw.blogspot.com/ through April. The graph through Oct looks about the same. Average global temperature has been flat (actually a bit down) since 2001.

      The decline rate (from the peak in 2005) is approximately 0.1 K per decade while the random uncertainty in reported annual measurements is s.d. approx 0.09 K. It will take a few more years for the global down trend to become obvious.

      Delete
    5. So you expect continued or intensified low solar activity, La Niña domination, negative PDO, carbon burning by China and India, Arctic warming still not properly measured? How do you know all of this will continue or intensify? How long can it continue or intensify until it no longer offsets the long-term greenhouse gas forcing? What if this mix of short-term cooling factors stops continuing or de-intensifies? Do you expect the next average El Niño year to not rank among the 3 hottest on record?

      Delete
    6. Funny how often you read science deniers writing stuff like Dan did:

      "Average global temperature has been flat (actually a bit down) since 2001.

      Down since 2001, eh? Then in the same comment Dan contradicts himself and writes:

      ...from the peak in 2005

      Although the "peak in 2005" was higher than the "down since 2001", Dan pretends it's cooling. (The "peak" in 2005 also appeared in 2010, which Dan neglected to mention. Probably thinks it's too recent.)

      Poor Dan doesn't know if he's coming or going. He thinks up is down. He's also a very patient man - still waiting, waiting, waiting for the ice age that (won't) cometh :(

      Delete
  8. Mr. Watts has inadvertently revealed that Salo, the Tralfamadorian robot in Kurt Vonnegut's "Sirens of Titan" is responsible for global warming.

    Salo is once again manipulating humans in order to communicate with his home planet. This time around, he is sending code by forcing us to selectively switch our steam pipes on and off, thus creating a simple "warm = 1, cool = 0" binary transmitter. Global warming will cease once the observers on Tralfamadore decode his message and dispatch the spare part needed for his stranded spaceship.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Neven – Don’t allow yourself to get mired in the minutia. All of your questions are answered at the agwunveiled web site and sub links.

    Sou - The trend of reported average global temperature measurements (straight line regression) has been flat since 2001 as the endofgw website shows. The peak in 2005 is the calculated peak using the equation that calculates average global temperatures since before 1900 with 90% accuracy and reasonable estimates back to 1610 using only the sunspot time integral and the net effect of all ocean oscillations.

    Apparently you do not understand the significance of the 0.09 K s.d. uncertainty in reported measurements. http://climatechange90.blogspot.com/2013/05/natural-climate-change-has-been.html explains why true average global temperature cannot change as fast as the yearly reports might lead you to believe. http://globaltem.blogspot.com/ shows the calculation of the standard deviation (s.d.) of reported yearly measurements.

    The uncertainty, s.d., is why reported measurements for any individual year (e.g.2010) can be very misleading.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh Dan, read a paper:
      http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2297/pdf

      Delete
    2. Oh Anonymous, read this http://globaltem.blogspot.com/ and stop grasping for straws.

      Delete
    3. HAHA!!! That had to be the funniest bit of drivel, thanks for that. Here, let's just look at this quote:
      "Average global temperature should, however, continue to correlate with the time-integral of sunspot numbers, as it has ever since sunspots have been regularly recorded (since 1610)."

      Even Leif Svalgaard of WUWT thinks this is BS at this point. Sunspot counts indicate solar radiation has been on a decline for over 30 years, yet temperatures keep going up (this past Nov 2013 was the highest recorded Nov in history).

      Two names: Cowtan and Way. Now read their paper: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2297/pdf . If you know nothing about the coverage biases of the different temperature records, then you really have no leg to stand on when discussing temperature trends. Read the paper and get yourself educated before commenting again.

      Delete
    4. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

      Delete
    5. Be nice people. Don't get too personal.

      http://blog.hotwhopper.com/p/comment-policy.html

      Delete
    6. Anonymous - That link is revealing. It shows no significant difference with or without what they did. Figure 1 of the link I gave you clearly shows that there is no significant difference between all four reported measurement trends that go back to 1880.

      Some people apparently do not understand: Thermal capacitance which is why temperatures can not change as quickly as reported.
      Reported measurements have uncertainty 1895-2012 of s.d. 0.09 K which is greater than any bias that might be perceived.
      That the effect of sunspots on earth temperature is NOT from change to solar radiation but is due to change of magnetic shielding of the planet which effects clouds.
      That change to average global temperature is extremely sensitive to cloud changes.
      That short but wide solar cycles can be just as effective in driving average global temperature as tall but narrow ones. Solar cycles since 1610 are shown in Figure 1 of http://conenssti.blogspot.com/. The time integral of sunspot numbers is shown in Figure 2 of http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com/ .
      That there is a net effect of all ocean cycles, named and unnamed, considered together that, at least since 1895, has a period of 64 years.

      Natural climate change has been hiding in plain sight. Simple equation calculates temperatures since before 1900 with 90% accuracy (95% correlation) and reasonable estimates since 1610. http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com/. CO2 change had no significant influence.

      The CO2 level continues to go up while the average global temperature doesn’t. Apparently, the separation between the rising CO2 level and not-rising average global temperature will need to get much wider for the AGW mistake to become evident to the deniers of natural climate change. The separation is shown in Figure 2 at http://endofgw.blogspot.com/ .

      Delete
    7. Dan, you may amuse some readers for a second or two but your drivel is getting immensely tiring. Seeing that global temperatures have risen by almost ten times your 0.09 degrees since the turn of the century and given you have to include more fudges than the corner shop sells in a year to balance your silly equations, everyone but you knows your hypotheses are crackpottery. Now there's another paper showing that solar forcing even going back 1000 years is minimal compared to volcanoes.

      Hotwhopper has been more than accommodating. You've had your two runs - off topic, too. Go and post an article at WUWT or iceagenow or whatsit galileomovement or whatever it's called.. Anthony Watts and the mad aussie deniers are not at all discerning. You could even put global warming down to insects and they'd buy it.

      I'll spell it out. Any more posts from you will be removed even though it's the time of good cheer. Or more accurately because it's the time of good cheer.

      Go give your family a hug and raise a toast to the hard working climate scientists, without whom you'd have no equations at all.

      Delete
    8. PS That's "since the turn of the 20th century" - not the 21st, of course.

      Delete
    9. Erm, that would be me who used the term "brain damaged" as an alternative for Dan Pangburn's peculiar twisting of science. Apologies Sou - I was particularly peed off on Sunday after a conversation with a denialatus whose bottom line was that if the science is correct, so what, Westerners have the right to live as they like and other countries and people who haven't even been born yet don't get to have a say in our lifestyle.

      My tolerance for such overweening selfishness and sociopathy has worn too thin and consequently similarly risible nuttery like Pangburn's is a red flag to a bull.

      I will try to be nice for Christmas - the last thing I want in my stocking is a lump of coal. Although, better there than burned...


      Bernard J.


      Delete
    10. No problem, Bernard. I share your frustration.

      You know I'm sure that your comments are valued very highly here. Hope your stocking is full of lovely goodies - made without the aid of coal :)

      Delete
  10. Someone needs to brief Dan Pangloss on the fact that the denier movement has silently moved the goalposts from 'CO2 doesn't cause warming!' and 'it's not warming!' to 'it's natural cycles, hiatus, hiatus!'.

    Okay, I wrote this just to make the Pangloss joke. :-)

    ReplyDelete

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