Smaller volcanic eruptions helped slow warming, but deniers at WUWT don't believe it

There was a paper that came out last week that you might have heard about. It was by David Ridley from MIT and a team of others, including some very high profile scientists. What they did was investigate the impact of volcanoes over the past few years. They found that the cooling effect of volcanoes since 2000 could be from 0.05°C up to as much as 0.12 °C, which would be quite a bit more than previously thought.

The Sarychev Peak Volcano, on Matua Island, erupted on June 12, 2009.
Credit: NASA via AGU

There have been other recent studies looking at the impact of volcanoes, including by some of the co-authors of this paper. I've written previously about the article by Gavin Schmidt, Drew Shindell and Kostas Tsigaridis,  in a special edition of Nature Geoscience, "Focus on recent slowdown in global warming". That issue also had an article on volcanoes, two of whose co-authors were also co-authors on the Ridley paper.

This new work was different.

What this team did was look particularly at the impact of volcanic aerosols in the stratosphere below 15 km. From satellite observations, scientists know that above 15 km, volcanic eruptions that are smallish in size can perturb incoming solar radiation. David Ridley found that below 15 km in the stratosphere, there has also been a measurable impact by volcanoes.

Snipped...

Update: see below - Anthony fell for Russell's trick (like me) and has been goaded into completing the censor circle!  Ha ha - good one, Russell!

On WUWT today, Roger Pielke Sr bemoans as "limiting scientific debate" a decision by AGU to not publish what he refers to as his "minority statement" on global warming.

Dr Pielke tells us that AGU did publish his comment on the AGU policy statement on global warming in EOS, and AGU did provide a link in EOS to his alternative statement published elsewhere, so he's really just nitpicking details.

The WUWT mob denounce it as "censorship" and "gatekeeping".  So when I read this comment with some of it censored by WUWT gatekeepers, I thought, "how ironic"!

Source: WUWT

Snipped! What can one say?

The only other thing I can say is that I can't take you to the AGU policy statement on climate change.  I used to be able to.  Today, no matter how I try, whether through Google, the AGU website itself or via links from other websites like  Rabett Run and the Yale Forum, all that happens is I get redirected to a seemingly irrelevant Wiley On-line page.

UPDATE

Ha ha - there's a postscript to this.  Russell apparently wrote "(SNIP)" himself.  Anthony doesn't take kindly to the joke and bans him, completing the censor circle!

Russell says:

August 23, 2013 at 10:57 pm Though WUWT is at liberty to call blacklisting whitelisting, it invites cognitive dissonance when what is read contrasts so vibrantly with its erstwhile site policy:

“Trolls, flame-bait, personal attacks, thread-jacking, sockpuppetry, name-calling such as “denialist,” “denier,” and other detritus that add nothing to further the discussion may get deleted;

Internet phantoms who have cryptic handles, no name, and no real email address get no respect here. If you think your opinion or idea is important, elevate your status by being open and honest. People that use their real name get more respect than phantoms with handles. I encourage open discussion.” – Anthont Watts

Really?

As the subject is consorship, it is noteworthy that we have just seen a comment denying WUWT’s censorship endorsed by a censor whom Tony also suffers to maintain a sockpuppet on the site– ‘Smokey ‘ and dbstealey are one and the same.

The hypocrisy, it amuses .

REPLY: And yet here you are. D.B. Stealey the moderator is right out in the open Dr. Seitz. We find your vain attempts at playing a professional also amusing.

And Dr. Seitz, you are a liar, and a bad one at that. You put that (SNIP) in the comment yourself just so you could make a false claim, the thing is though, servers keep logs and copies, and your comment had that in there in the beginning. You weren’t even smart enough to mimic moderator signatures with your deception. Here is a screencap I made shortly after your comment showed up, since I knew you’d pull this stunt. Note the “cleared by Akismet” that means no moderator touched it, aka it was whitelisted and showed up just as you typed it. Otherwise it would have an “approved” time stamp. That’s inserted by wordpress.com and I have no control over it.

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/seitz_logged.png

So, since you are making things up, and lying about it, kindly take permanent leave from here. – Now run along and photoshop some juvenile ugliness as you are known to do on a regular basis. Do be careful though, since you are using your Harvard email address, network IP, and server for your harangues, I’m not sure that they’ll appreciate that per the Harvard Network AUP.

Now you can say you aren’t whitelisted here sir.
– Anthony

The only surprise is that Anthony blocked out the email address.  I guess he figured he gave enough clues to set his dogs on the scent!

PS I wonder who is the "anonymous coward" of a moderator who hides behind the handle "Akismet"?

PPS Not a single commenter so far has noticed that the policy statement is unavailable.  Shows how much they check stuff out!

PPPS I and HotWhopper have been elevated to "notorious" :)  Nice to know Anthony Watts reads my blog!  Wonder if that is why we haven't heard too much more like "OMG it's insects" lately?  WUWT has been getting rather tame these past few weeks :(  Not getting as hysterical or barking mad quite as often.

REPLY: Russell Seitz of Harvard (who has previously identified himself here) runs one of WUWT’s blog spawn websites – what’s interesting is that he put the (SNIP) in there, that isn’t a moderator signature and there is no record of any moderator interaction with this comment. Looks like the notorious “Sou” at “hotwhopper” fell for the Seitz trick. LOL! – Anthony

PPPPS Looks like I've been "outed" too.  Perhaps by my old buddies who manage HotCopper.  Anthony thinks this was being too "nasty" for the polite folk at WUWT.  Ah well, it was bound to happen sooner or later.  I'm sure I can find him a more flattering photo though :(

Breaking News: Christopher Monckton writes some facts about climate

The potty peer Lord Monckton has drafted an alternative to the new position statement on climate change recently announced by the American Geophysical Union, for the benefit of WUWT science deniers. Surprisingly it includes some factual bits, for example:

Human activities are changing Earth’s climate...The atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased ... caused by burning fossil fuels.  The world has warmed by 0.8 Cº.  Some (but not all) mountain glaciers have receded.  Arctic sea ice has declined since 1979, but Antarctic sea ice has increased.  

Climate models predict that global temperatures will continue to rise, with the amount of warming primarily determined by the level of emissions; that higher emissions of greenhouse gases will lead to larger warming and greater risks to society and ecosystems; and that some additional warming is unavoidable owing to past emissions. 

Climate change is not expected to be uniform over space or time. Deforestation, urbanization, and particulate pollution can have complex geographical, seasonal, and longer-term effects ... on temperature, precipitation, and cloud properties. In the current climate, weather experienced at a given location or region varies from year to year; in a changing climate, both the nature of that variability and the basic patterns of weather experienced can change, sometimes in counter-intuitive ways – some areas may experience cooling, for instance.

Apart from the above, the rest is just another rehash of Monckton's normal nonsense, lies and disinformation so I won't say any more about it other than to selectively quote three WUWT readers.


Justthinkin says (cherry-picked excerpt):

August 7, 2013 at 7:03 am  ...I would only add this quote…
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former. Albert Einstein

Eric Worrall says (cherry-picked excerpt):

August 7, 2013 at 3:44 am  Dear Lord Monckton, if only the world were a little saner. 

 
stan stendera is overwhelmed by being in the presence of "royalty" and writes:

August 7, 2013 at 3:42 am I bow again to you M’Lord.

There is one more comment I'll mention, from the "gone emeritus" professor Don Easterbrook.  Denier Don is as woeful at arithmetic as he is at climate science. Don Easterbrook says:

August 7, 2013 at 7:20 am  The atmospheric CO2 in 1958 was 0.0315% and has risen to 0.0395 in 2013, a rise of 0.008%. Isn’t it amazing that an increase of 0.008% in a gas that accounts for only 3.5% of the greenhouse effect is supposed to cause global warming of 6-10 degrees F by 2100? Even more amazing is that while CO2 rose from 0.0315% to 0.0338 from 1958 to 1980, global temperatures cooled, rather than increased, and the warmest decade of the century, the 1930s (unless you tamper with the data), occurred BEFORE atmospheric CO2 began to soar after 1945! But perhaps most amazing of all is how people who call themselves scientists (AGU) are willing to accept failed model predictions over real-time data.

The arithmetic error:  Denier Don talks of an increase as a percentage.  0.0395% minus 0.0315% divided by 0.0315% equals a 25% increase in the amount of atmospheric CO2 since 1958, not a 0.008% increase.  The increase in atmospheric CO2 since industrialisation is now around 40% or more.


Denier Don's climate science errors:

1. Carbon dioxide accounts for around 20% of the greenhouse effect (not 3.5%) - that is, the greenhouse effect itself, not global warming.  From Schmidt et al (2010):

With a straightforward scheme for allocating overlaps, we find that water vapor is the dominant contributor (∼50% of the effect), followed by clouds (∼25%) and then CO2 with ∼20%. All other absorbers play only minor roles. In a doubled CO2 scenario, this allocation is essentially unchanged, even though the magnitude of the total greenhouse effect is significantly larger than the initial radiative forcing, underscoring the importance of feedbacks from water vapor and clouds to climate sensitivity.

2. Global temperatures did not "cool" between 1958 and 1980.  2010 was the hottest year on record to date, the decade of the 1930s was a lot cooler.

Data Source: NASA