Denier weirdness: Plant food and ice ages at WUWT

WUWT is stuck for ideas so is working its way through the denier memes listed at SkepticalScience. That's good, because I have a lot to do and I can let SkS respond. I've written a bit about the two recycled memes current at WUWT, provided a plot to ponder, and linked to SkS explanations.

The last few days WUWT has had:

• CO2 is plant food, and
• An ice age cometh.

Oh no! Not "it's the sun" again. Recycling regimes at WUWT...

Some of us have noticed that Anthony Watts often recycles stuff.  This time it's with a difference.  He's recycling but shifting goal posts at the same time.

"It's the sun" is the subject of his latest recycle (archived here, update here).  I wouldn't have known it was a recycle except that Anthony himself let us know.  I googled and I came up with lots of references to another professor sadly gone emeritus.  A chap by the name of Sam Outcalt, who used to be an academic.  A Professor of Geography. (Geography professors risk getting a bad name for themselves.  You'll recall that other Professor of Geography - who didn't earn emeritus status but is retired - Tim Ball.)

Anyway, Sam has decided "it's the sun" and Anthony Watts agrees.  Anthony refers us back to an article he wrote way back in 2008, when he also said "it's the sun".  Today he wrote about this supposed "major regime transition":

The major regime transition is at the maximum of the integral at 2005.71, which corresponds to October 2005, the same date I identified.

Clearly the sun entered into a magnetic funk then, and has yet to come out of it. We live in interesting times.

It's worth doing a timeline.

WUWT 2008 Regime

2008 - Anthony Watts says "it's the sun" (archived here).  He also wrote this Watt-ism, which I can't pass by:

If you have ever studied how the magnetic dynamo of the sun is so incredibly full of entropy, yet has cycles

And back in 2008, he wrote:

Some say it is no coincidence that 2008 has seen a drop in global temperature as indicated by several respected temperature indexes compared to 2007, and that our sun is also quiet and still not kick starting its internal magentic dynamo.

Ooh! The temperature dropped in 2008 and it's the sun so we're heading for a Dalton Minimum!  How did that work out?

Here's 2008:

Data source: NASA

Yes.  It looks as if we're heading for an ice age.  2008 was the coldest year since - oh, just for ever - since way back eight years prior - way back almost since records began - it was the coldest year since 2000.

WUWT 2012 Regime

Jump ahead to 2012.  Anthony put up an article by Sam Outcalt (archived here) where he talked about "serial regime transitions" and decided that

The dramatic “hockey stick” trace, which began in 1976 accompanied by a major transition in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, ends at the onset of the 21st Century and might be better termed the modern warming regime. This regime was replaced by a pronounced cooling regime. 

He pronounced, after drawing some curves and digging some holes that: the modern warming regime ended in 1997.  Well, there were two subsequent years that were cooler than 1997, namely 1999 and 2000.  But for the rest?  Where has Sam's cooling regime gone?

If you go to that article, you'll find that Sam looked into three boreholes on along Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain Park, Colorado and decided that

the actual drop in surface temperature over the first decade of the 21st Century is probably more than double the conservative estimate in the realm of 4-6 C.

That is, he reckons it's now 8°C to 12°C cooler than when?  The 1990s?  And no-one noticed?  Talk about the Day after Tomorrow!  Is this what Deluded Sam thinks has happened between 2000 and 2010?

It's possible that he was only talking the "surface temperature" at the boreholes, not the global average surface temperature.  But nothing would surprise me at WUWT.

WUWT 2014 Regime

Fast forward to February 2014.  To today.  Sam has another shot (archived here, update here).  This time he does some more number crunching and reckons that  "The convex inflection in 1998 appears to mark the end of the Modern Warm Regime."

Okay, so now he's shifted up a year.  There have been more subsequent years that have been cooler than 1998.  Still, it's not got any cooler.  Four years since 1998 have been as warm or warmer, 2002, 2005, 2007 and 2010, according to GISTemp.  But hey, wait a minute. 1998 - that rings a bell doesn't it.  Something about a super-El Nino.

According to Sam and Anthony, not only did the Modern Warming Regime stop in 1997 1998, but there has been an "onset of cooling" that onsetted in 2004.  Or, as Anthony wrote, in October 2005.  Why the onset of cooling didn't onset itself at the end of the Modern Warming Regime in 1997 1998, Sam doesn't say.  And why they keep shifting the dates of these regime shifts, heaven only knows.

Summing up the shifting regimes

So to sum up the current state of affairs.

The Modern Warming Regime stopped in 1997 1998.  The onset of cooling onsetted in 2004 or October 2005.  So how many years have been cooler than 2004?  Well, the fact of the matter is only one year has been cooler than 2004 according to GISTemp and that was 2008.  So that brings us full circle to Anthony's 2008 article where he reckons that we were heading for a Dalton minimum.  But then Anthony Watts claims a "major regime shift" in October 2005.  HW readers know that 2005 tied with 2010 as the hottest year on record so far.

It didn't go too well then and it's not doing any better now.  Let's have a look at all this on a chart of global surface temperatures - I've animated the chart starting in 2008.  Here you go:

Data source: NASA

Pity about that.

Back in 2012, Tamino wrote an article about Emeritus Sam Outcalt, with his usual flair.  As did Ben at Wotts Up with That.

Scientists have already looked at what would happen if the sun decided to go very quiet and I've written about that a few times already, such as here - with links to the science.

From the WUWT comments

Not too many are buying this regime shift idea.  Anthony Watts tries to back-peddle and contradicts himself in response to a comment. (Archived here)

Bloke down the pub says:

February 12, 2014 at 3:51 am
Time will tell. I don’t see any big change, but what do I know?

Nylo says something but if you can understand what it is, you deserve a medal:

February 12, 2014 at 3:57 am
Sorry but I don’t think this study has merit. Whether the integral goes up or down depends on where you put the average that you substract from the data, so it is an important value. But we cannot be sure that the average of the last 60 years in particular has any physical significance. We don’t know if it represents the real average status of these solar variables. Other 60 year periods would offer different average values to substract, based on which the integrals would have looked different.

Guy says that capitalism proves that climate science is a hoax or something like that, I think:

February 12, 2014 at 4:35 am
“This is such a simple and obvious point that I really do not understand why the IPCC and the modellers did not see it.” Steven

If it is not caused by man and curable through considerable wealth transfers from the productive to the political class then it is not worthy of inclusion in IPCC reports. They might well have seen it and rejected it. I believe this is the case for historical measurements of CO2 levels other than ice cores, which show concentrations exceeding 400 PPM over a century ago.

Darrel Dorbin says that Steven Goddard (who he calls a "scientist") has shown that the USA (or the world? or maybe they are the same thing to Darrel) hasn't warmed since 1990.  Tell that to the Alaskans! (excerpt):

February 12, 2014 at 5:07 am
Steven Goddard is one of the scientists who was sidelined in the climate scammers’ takeover by non scientists, of scientific reporting on climate.

He recently did a subtraction of all the NASA/NOAA doctored data for the United States,
from the raw data, and showed the United States’ raw data, hasn’t warmed since eighteen ninety, (1890)

The raw data is placed unaltered online by law.

lsvalgaard says:

February 12, 2014 at 5:09 am
kramer says: February 12, 2014 at 4:45 am I’m sure Leif will have something to say about this.

I consider this kind of paper to be voodoo cyclomania, so count me out.

To which Anthony Watts replies that he "thinks not" but in the same comment talks about the "new regime".  And remember his comment in the article itself, where he claims joint ownership of the "major regime transition" in October 2005 or was it 2004!

REPLY: It’s not a paper, its an email posing a question. The question is; “can the TSI data be linked to global temperature”? Like you, I think not, but I’m always willing to ask the question again with new data and analysis.

I note you said pretty much the same thing about the Ap index too, yet here we are with it still bumping along the bottom in this new regime.- Anthony

You're not making sense, Anthony. (Okay, what's new?)

David Archibald's Funny Sunny Prediction

Global Surface Temperature Prediction - David Archibald

David "it's the sun" Archibald has another post and another prediction on WUWT.   Back in 2006 he published a paper in E&E (yes, that's the one) which made a prediction in the abstract (my bold):

Projections of weak solar maxima for solar cycles 24 and 25 are correlated with the terrestrial climate response to solar cycles over the last three hundred years, derived from a review of the literature. Based on solar maxima of approximately 50 for solar cycles 24 and 25, a global temperature decline of 1.5°C is predicted to 2020, equating to the experience of the Dalton Minimum. To provide a baseline for projecting temperature to the projected maximum of solar cycle 25, data from five rural, continental US stations with data from 1905 to 2003 was averaged and smoothed. The profile indicates that temperatures remain below the average over the first half of the twentieth century.

I've no idea why he thought "five rural, continental US stations" be they averaged and smoothed or not would be an adequate "baseline" for global surface temperatures.  But there you go.  I didn't bother with all that because it made no sense. Instead I've charted this prediction using GISTemp (click to enlarge):

That's colder than the coldest time in the Little Ice Age - in less than seven years from now!

Source: Adapted from Jos Hagelaars

Central England Temperature Prediction - Archibald-style

Today he seems to have changed to using the Central England temperature.  He has an optimistic headline: CET cooling in line with solar model prediction, although to my knowledge, he has never previously made a prediction about CET temperature.  The only other paper he references is about the temperature in Svalbard.  I expect he isn't fussy what his prediction is about, anywhere will do.  Might be Melbourne Australia next, or Bundangawoolarangeera :).

In any case, I'm no clearer on what he's predicting than any commenter on the thread, but I'll have a shot.  This is what he writes:

Over Solar Cycle 23 the average temperature of the CET was 10.4°C so the model predicts that the average over Solar Cycle 24 will be 9.0°C. For the first four years of Solar Cycle 24, it has averaged 9.8°C. For the prediction to hold from here, the average temperature over the remainder of the cycle will have to be 8.7°C. The average temperature of 2010 was 8.8°C – only 0.1°C more than what is needed from here. With solar maximum of Solar Cycle 24 now past us, the prediction is in the bag.

Thanks to Richard Altrock’s green corona emissions diagram we can also predict average temperature over Solar Cycle 25. Interpreting that diagram, Solar Cycle 24 will be at least 16 years long. In turn, that means that the CET over Solar Cycle 25 will be a further 1.4°C cooler than the average over Solar Cycle 24.

You'll remark that his optimism about his "prediction" is probably misplaced, if he ever did make a prediction about Central England temperatures.  In any case, what I've done is plotted the temperatures from 2013 onwards to get an average of 9.0°C for Solar Cycle 24 and an average of 7.6°C for Solar Cycle 25.  Here is the result, based on HadCET.

I don't think too many people will be betting his way.  What do you think?

PS Anthony Watts does keep strange company, doesn't he.  It might be a matter of Anthony being "impressed" by the photos on David Archibald's website.  Just like he's impressed by a titled potty peer.  I can't think of any other reason why he'd post their crank ideas - or maybe I can.