Forecast for warming revised downward.
The UK Met Office has revised one of its forecasts for how much the world may warm in the next few years.
It says that the average temperature is likely to rise by 0.43 C by 2017 – as opposed to an earlier forecast that suggested a warming of 0.54C.
The explanation is that a new kind of computer model using different parameters has been used.
The Met Office stresses that the work is experimental and that it still stands by its longer-term projections.
These forecast significant warming over the course of this century.
The forecasts are all based on a comparison with the average global temperature over the period 1971-2000.
The earlier model had projected that the period 2012-16 would be 0.54C above that long-term average – within a range of uncertainty from 0.36-0.72C.
By contrast the new model, known as HadGEM3, gives a rise about one-fifth lower than that of 0.43C – within a range of 0.28-0.59.
This would be only slightly higher that the record year of 1998 – in which the Pacific Ocean’s El Nino effect was thought to have added more warming.
If the forecast is accurate, the result would be that the global average temperature would have remained relatively static for about two decades.
Blog suspicions
An apparent standstill in global temperatures is used by critics of efforts to tackle climate change as evidence that the threat has been exaggerated.
Climate scientists at the Met Office and other centres are involved in intense research to try to understand what is happening over the most recent period.
The most obvious explanation is natural variability – the cycles of changes in solar activity and the movements and temperatures of the oceans.
The forecasts are based on a comparison with the average global temperature over the period 1971-2000A Met Office spokesman said “this definitely doesn’t mean any cooling – there’s still a long-term trend of warming compared to the 50s, 60s or 70s.
“Our forecast is still for temperatures that will be close to the record levels of the past few years.
“And because the natural variability is based on cycles, those factors are bound to change the other way at some point.”
The fact that the revised projection was posted on the Met Office website without any notice on December 24 last year has fuelled suspicions among bloggers.
However the Met Office says the data had been published in a spirit of transparency as soon as it became available from the computer that produced it.
Future forcings
It describes the decadal projections as part of an experimental effort launched in 2004 to fill the gap between daily weather forecasts and century-long estimates for climate change.
But this is an emerging and highly complex area of science because of the interplay of natural factors and manmade greenhouse gases at a time when a key set of temperatures – in the deep ocean – is still relatively unknown.
One aim of attempting to project the climate on this timescale is to be able to rapidly check the accuracy of the models being used.
A paper published last month in the journal Climate Dynamics, authored by scientists from the Met Office and 12 other international research centres, combined different models to produce a forecast for the next decade.
It said: “Decadal climate prediction is immature, and uncertainties in future forcings, model responses to forcings, or initialisation shocks could easily cause large errors in forecasts.”
However the paper concluded that, “in the absence of volcanic eruptions, global temperature is predicted to continue to rise, with each year from 2013 onwards having a 50 % chance of exceeding the current observed record”.
Scrutiny of Met Office forecasts and climate science generally is set to increase in the build-up to the publication of the next assessment by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in September.
Source:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20947224
=========================================================
Re: that last paragraph, with the release of the IPCC AR5 leak #2 today, ya think?
It never ceases to amaze me the way cooler temperatures are always the results of natural variation, but warmer temperatures are always the result of CO2.
I never knew that all of natures variability went one way only.
December 24th…a good day to bury bad news, so the saying goes.
Did you duplicate a couple of paragraphs here or is it my browser?
The way I read the first line it seems like thay are saying we will have a half degree C rise in the next 4 years! Not what they are trying to say, but still!
Mod: part of article is duplicated at the end.
The earlier model had projected that the period 2012-16 would be 0.54C above that long-term average – within a range of uncertainty from 0.36-0.72C.
By contrast the new model, known as HadGEM3, gives a rise about one-fifth lower than that of 0.43C – within a range of 0.28-0.59.
within their stated uncertainties there is no difference between the two predictions…
Two words that hang around their necks like the weightiness of mill stones ‘settled science’
I would bet they love to have never have made such silly claims to begin with for it always clear it was from from ‘settled ‘ and worse its a revision ‘downward ‘ .
The British Met Office? Why do we never get reports from the Zimbabwe Met Office? Or the South Malaccas Met Office? What singles out Britain from these countries?
WOW!! roger harribin will not be a happy chappie, he tweeted that theres still a warming trend?
Could we be seeing the wheels really begining to fall off the AGW wagon,
lets see if the BBC addresses this on it news channels/bulletins/programmes..don’t hold your breath!
…and that lower error bar shows a distinct decline for 16 years and a 22 year flatline albeit with a nice symmetrical hump in the middle.
Anyone in the market for a dead parrot?
If temperatures remain the same, it’s ‘natural variation’. If they increase, it’s ‘man-made global warming’. Funny, that.
Re: with each year from 2013 onwards having a 50 % chance of exceeding the current observed record”.
I am sure they meant to say “with each year from 2013 onwards having a 50% chance of exceeding the previous years temperature”.
To complete the set perhaps another miracle could happen and the remainder of the Climategate
e-mails could be released, RC ?
…and it seems that despite this admission David Shukman wants to take that good old Warmist semantic machine for another spin:
“It says that the average temperature is likely to rise by 0.43 C by 2017.”
That’s nearly a degree a decade
“An apparent standstill in global temperatures is used by critics of efforts to tackle climate change as evidence that the threat has been exaggerated”
– An apparent standstill?
Even when the forecasts are lowered, even when the met office refuse to answer the public questioning them, the BBC still attempt to put a positive global warming spin on the issue. Would expect nothing more from the secretive bunch.
– “used by critics of efforts to tackle climate change as evidence that the threat has been exaggerated”
By definition, if the forecast has been lowered, then this shows that the previous claim was exaggerated?
I object to being labelled a critic.
I am sceptical when the claims of global warming forecasters are used to sell thousands of new boilers (our household was one of them) and increased revenue for big businesses involved in the fitting, servicing, insurance, manufacturing of new boilers, etc.
New boilers may I add, that never pay for themselves over the lifetime of said boiler in bill savings and never match up to the “up to” and “could” savings projected by the energy saving trust and the big six energy companies.
This is without going into the increases in customer bills to pay for the co2 saving perceived industry and the midata scheme (Read: smart meters) currently being promoted by ever stay at home blogger via energy company sponsored posts!
“And because the natural variability is based on cycles, those factors are bound to change the other way at some point.”
remember kids the planet only cools through “natural variability based on cycles” it never warms….
I love this “in the absence of volcanic eruptions, global temperature is predicted to continue to rise…”
Because, you know, volcanoes are not supposed to erupt. They never really do, right? Maybe they should have just said something like something like…. “in the absence of [INSERT UNCONSIDERED NATURAL FORCING HERE], ….” . Or are Volcanic eruptions absolutely the only thing that they don’t consider? They have everything else nailed, right?
Our forecast is still for temperatures that will be close to the record levels of the past few years.
The December anomaly for RSS just came out. It was 0.101. To put this number into perspective, a ranking of 0.101 for 2013 would rank it in 16th place.
With the RSS anomaly for December at 0.101, the average for the twelve months of the year is (-0.060 -0.123 + 0.071 + 0.330 + 0.231 + 0.337 + 0.290 + 0.254 + 0.383 + 0.294 + 0.195 + 0.101)/12 = 0.192. This would rank 11th. 1998 was the warmest at 0.55. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in April of 1998 when it reached 0.857. The anomaly in 2011 was 0.147 and it will come in 13th, and 2008 is 22nd. Therefore three of the last five years are not even in the top ten!
I wonder if any of the expert attendees at #28-gate predicted that?
In its headline, the Beeb can’t bring itself to admit that it’s simply the ‘forecast’ rather than the ‘model’ which needs revising.
the slow climbdown begins?
8 Jan: UK Telegraph: John-Paul Ford Rojas: Global warming at a standstill, new Met Office figures show
The Met Office has downgraded its forecast for global warming to suggest that by 2017 temperatures will have remained about the same for two decades.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/9787662/Global-warming-at-a-standstill-new-Met-Office-figures-show.html
——————————————————————————–
Typical behaviour of a teenager caught lying.
Spin faster, wilder fantasies.
(big stories” everywhere today:
8 Jan: NYPost: Current situation: Staffers talk about first meeting with Al Jazeera
Just call him Al Gorezeera.
Yesterday morning, the still shell shocked staff at Current TV was called to an all hands staff meeting at its San Francisco headquarters, which was teleconferenced to their offices in LA and NYC, to meet their new bosses…
“Of course Al didn’t show up,” said one high placed Current staffer. “He has no credibility.
“He’s supposed to be the face of clean energy and just sold [the channel] to very big oil, the emir of Qatar! Current never even took big oil advertising—and Al Gore, that bulls***ter sells to the emir?”…
How do they feel about Gore the savior of green energy now?
The displeasure with Gore among the staff was thick enough to cut with a scimitar.
“We all know now that Al Gore is nothing but a bulls***ter,” said the staffer bluntly.
We do stories on the tax code, and he sells the network before the tax code kicked in?
“Al was always lecturing us about green. He kept his word about green all right—as in cold, hard cash!”
http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/current_situation_XLE3W50v6I9Gbyqe6Z4pFP
Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle. The planet has warmed by 0.12 deg C less than they predicted. So what do they do? Change their parameters to keep the upward bias but drop the long-term forecast temperature rise by … 0.12 deg C. It’s a lousy joke. Their explanation is natural variability. Where is natural variability in their climate models? It isn’t there. No solar cycles, short or long. No ENSO, PDO or AMO. No GCRs. Just nothing.
And now they are bleating “And because the natural variability is based on cycles, those factors are bound to change the other way at some point.”. This is beyond pathetic. If they did some real science and tried to understand something about those natural cycles, then they could start to work out what the temperature might do next (it looks like it will fall), and when it might start to rise again (around 2030 might be a reasonable guess, but there are plenty of real scientists predicting a longer cooling period).
there’s still a long-term trend of warming compared to the 50s, 60s or 70s.
And in another 30 years they will be saying “there’s still a long term trend of cooling compared to the 80s, 90s and 2000s.”
The earlier model had projected that the period 2012-16 would be 0.54C above that long-term average – within a range of uncertainty from 0.36-0.72C.
By contrast the new model, known as HadGEM3, gives a rise about one-fifth lower than that of 0.43C – within a range of 0.28-0.59.
——
So the old model was wrong. What part of having to discard entirely every climate model ever produced are these people not understanding?
PDO is now negative and Solar activity below average, AMO is still positive. That means only 2 out of 3 natural drivers negative was already sufficient to stop warming. 2 natural drivers negative and 1 positive is just as strong as all man made contributions combined.
Between 1980-1998, when all 3 natural drivers were positive, the same logic implies that those natural drivers have generated most of the warming.
The second to last paragraph states:
“However the paper concluded that, “in the absence of volcanic eruptions, global temperature is predicted to continue to rise, with each year from 2013 onwards having a 50 % chance of exceeding the current observed record”.”
50% chance of going up to my mind is not a prediction of continued rise. They could just of stupidly wrote “global temperature is predicted to continue to fall, with each year from 2013 onwards having a 50 % chance of being below the current observed record”
But then thats not alarmism.
“And because the natural variability is based on cycles, those factors are bound to change the other way at some point.”
Has BBC succumbed to cyclomania infection?
Why are there natural cycles?
Where do the come from?
How long do they last?
Some of the ideas are shown here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NV.htm
Serious formatting problems.
The parapraph under the heading “Future Forcings” is repeated, and a second copy of the paragraph headed “Blog Sucspicions” is intermingled with it, including a duplicate of the “Global Annual Temperature” graph.
Temp still flat, of course.
Love the two decimal points
“…global temperature is predicted to continue to rise, with each year from 2013 onwards having a 50 % chance of exceeding the current observed record”.
And, equally, a 50% chance of NOT exceeding the current observed record. So UKMO spends £82.3 million a year to come up with a prediction no better than a coin toss?
“…. global temperature is predicted to continue to rise, with each year from 2013 onwards having a 50 % chance of exceeding the current observed record …’
Exactly the same odd as flipping a coin.
FFS!
he earlier model had projected that the period 2012-16 would be 0.54C above that long-term average – within a range of uncertainty from 0.36-0.72C.
By contrast the new model, known as HadGEM3, gives a rise about one-fifth lower than that of 0.43C – within a range of 0.28-0.59.
In other words the new model invalidates the old one, as 0.28 is already outside of the previous model minimum lower range of 0.36?
As always, the error in forecasting of their models is blamed on “natural variation”, even though they cannot explain what natural variation is responsible. With all of the natural variation data being available, they are unable to isolate and quantized the cause for a lack of warming. So, really, claiming that their long term models are still correct and that natural variation is the culprit for decadal error is no more than hand waving. And let’s not forget that Trenberth told us that AGW would easily overpower any elements of natural variation. Furthermore, if they cannot account for the effects of natural variation after the fact, it is highly doubtful that their models are complete enough to be accurately predictive.
So, they have moved from one extreme to another. The system is incompletely characterized and unwieldy. Its behavior is notably chaotic. That is to say bounded with intermediate behavior modeled as a stochastic process. It cannot legitimately be described as either “static” or constant. It is also not monotonic.
Static. What happened to “Catestrophic??
I guess we need to generate a new terminology:
“Cat-e-static”: Missing heat stored in the deep trenches of the ocean, ready to strike the moment funding is cut, to our worthless, yet essential, forecasting models.
The other issue is that they displayed only 5 years of their 10 years forecast, just as their projected curve was heading down.
I would bet that the missing 5 years show an unconvenient drop.
“It says that the average temperature is likely to rise by 0.43C by 2017 – as opposed to an earlier forecast that suggested a warming of 0.54C. The explanation is that a new kind of computer model using different parameters has been used.”
—————————————————————–
So all that is needed to avert disaster is to use a computer model that says everything is going to be okay…
I posted this last week on another track
It looks like the Met Office have changed their previous decadal forecast of 0.8C by 2020 to that shown below but their forecast for 2013 seems at the high end of their decadal forecast. They are using different base periods or averages which confuse the issue . The decadal forecast seems to say that the global temperatures will be flat but the annual forecast calls for significant or record warming in 2013 ? Confusing what?
Latest MET Office decadal forecast dated December 24,2012
Global average temperature is expected to remain between 0.28 °C and 0.59 °C (90% confidence range) above the long-term (1971-2000) average during the period 2013-2017, with values most likely to be about 0.43 °C higher than average ).
Latest MET Office annual 2013 forecast dated December20,2012
20 December 2012 – 2013 is expected to be between 0.43 °C and 0.71 °C warmer than the long-term (1961-1990) global average of 14.0 °C, with a best estimate of around 0.57 °C, according to the Met Office annual global temperature forecast.
James Fosser said on January 8, 2013 at 1:30 pm:
Available money, of course. If it’s not there for the asking at all, then asking loudly and desperately doesn’t make it magically available, so there’s no point in issuing these loud desperate reports like the UK Met Office does, so they don’t.
Seriously, the last time the Zimbabwean Met Office pursued a funding drive to obtain a supercomputer for their forecasts, they got enough to obtain a used HP 15C. With manual.
But they had to wait until the next fiscal year to ask for batteries.
Scute says:
January 8, 2013 at 1:40 pm
No, it is not. Read the text:
See the image (fie on WordPress):
[ http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/65157000/jpg/_65157024_65157023.jpg ]
According to that we’re about 0.35, so the projected range 0.28-0.59 says we could have cooling. If we go to 0.43, that’s 0.08 in 4 years, or 0.10 C° per decade.
Oops – 0.20 C° per decade.
have omitted all CAGW alarmists’ comments:
8 Jan: Daily Mail: ‘Global warming is NOT as bad as feared’: Met Office under fire as it claims Earth’s temperature is rising more slowly than first thought (and could even have stalled)
Earlier forecasts predicted a much steeper rise in global temperatures
But latest figures from Met Office show slower rise than previously warned
Figures raise questions about the true danger posed by greenhouse gasses
By Sam Webb and Lewis Smith
These figures are the latest development to pour doubt on green campaigners’ claims about danger posed by greenhouse gasses.
Dr David Whitehouse science editor of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which was set up by climate change skeptic Lord Lawson, was scathing about the Met Office u-turn.
He said: ‘We are at the point where the temperature standstill is becoming the dominant feature of the post-1980 warming, and as such cannot be dismissed as being unimportant even when viewed over 30 years.
‘It is time that the scientific community in general and the IPCC in particular acknowledged the reality of the global temperature standstill and the very real challenge it implies for our understanding of climate change and estimates of its future effects.
‘It is a demonstration that the science is not settled and that there are great uncertainties in our understanding of the real world effects of the greenhouse when effect combined with anthropogenic and natural factors.”…
But last year James Lovelock, a pioneer of the environmental movement and author of The Gaia Hypothesis, which raised questions about the dangers of global warming, unexpectedly revised his own views.
He said: ‘The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago.
‘That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened.
‘The climate is doing its usual tricks.
‘There’s nothing much really happening yet.
‘We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now.’…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2259012/Global-warming-Met-Office-releases-revised-global-temperature-predictions-showing-planet-NOT-rapidly-heating-up.html
But, but we have been noting how inaccurate the Met office is in predicting the weather for a while now. I suppose this statement that that temps will not rise as fast as first thought will mean an inevitable world wide heatwave.
Bob Tisdale has done a great comparison of the old and new graphs.
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/figure-1.gif
They are really on the ropes here. First they denied that it was static. Now they admit it was static for 20 years but still insist that AGW has been in full swing for 20 years. Well if it has been in full swing then it is clearly a very weak process because its effects are wiped out over a 20 year period by other, “less significant” (!?) factors.
Can someone please explain how “natural variability” can be enough to completely offset the increasing CO2 forcing for 2 decades, yet can’t be enough to explain the warming?
Surely, if cyclic natural effects can be enough to negate the warming effect all that CO2 “should be having”, (regardless of whether or not we know all the mechanisms) then, by definition, it can be enough to cause that warming in the first place?
Yet we’re told “it must be CO2 because it can’t be explained by natural variability”. In which case, how can natural variability explain the stand-still?
Can we now have all those “green” taxes back please.
I’ve sometimes wondered if there is some solar component (UV for just throwing out an example) that maybe heats the oceans in some way we don’t yet understand. Or maybe there is some kind of reaction to the salt water or the plankton in the water that reacts to something in the sun changing that can cause warming or cooling in some way.
Maybe these are dumb ideas… 🙂
One thing to consider is that if ‘mistakes’ only ever happen in one direction and that direction in fact is beneficial a one view . Its highly unlikely there mistakes in the first place and much more likley there the result of a bias built into the process in the first place .
It is rather like listening to the inveterate gambler trying to explain his losses.
‘Well you see red has come up every year for the past 16 .It’s bound to change to black soon but I can’t seem to read the wheel and where it has a bias,so I can’t say when.’
Meanwhile they continue gambling with my money and will justify whatever happens with ‘I told you so-it’s all in the model’
It seems to me that Nature has the last laugh in all this with its wheel holding the natural odds of 36:37 in its favour.
I think David Rose of the Daily Mail should now have a proper apology from the Met Office over the “Global warming stopped 16 years ago” article he wrote- instead of that limpid, whining blog post post they put up as a supposed riposte.
Ahhhh, yes.
The Bolshevik Broadcasting Communistic Corporation,
I don’t thinl they realise how out-of-touch they are.
Never mind, if you bear it IN mind,
Thanks.
If you haven’t seen this already, Tallbloke picked up on the change in short-term climate forecast a couple of days ago, and I expanded on it:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/ukmo-lowers-5-year-global-temperature-forecast-and-omits-the-second-5-years-of-the-decadal-forecast/
As has been pointed out (indirectly) by others, by introducing the possibility of natural variability in to the temperature signal, they are essentially eliminating the possibility of the “catastrophic” part of CAGW (bad for the alarmist business & political agendas).
By definition, natural variability is “variable” – stating the obvious but profound also. Variability implies that rising temps are followed by cooling temps followed by warming temps, etc – ie it is not a one way trend. If the reason we are currently not warming is because there is a cooling signal of natural variability superimposed on a warming signal of CO2 / AGW, by definition, this must have been proceeded by natural variability signal of warming – ie we were adding natural warming on top of any CO2/ AGW warming – ie if you look at the warming from the 80s to 2000, it is the sum of some amount of natural variability & a CO2/ AGW signal. By definition, the AGW warming signal has to be smaller than the total warming signal.
Given that the AGW warming is smaller that the total warming from the 80s to 2000, one has to conclude that climate is sensitivity to CO2 is much lower than the catastrophic model projections – ie there is no looming catastrophe. This has been essentially the argument of skeptics all along – and the data is now showing this, the alarmist are even recognizing it, but are so blinded by their belief that they can’t recognize the significance of the data.
I once was in a technical meeting deciding on what should be done on a drilling operation where my technical team completely crushed the opposing point of view with our data. There was no debating it & there was only one logical conclusion. The opposing point of view knew they were defeated but could not admit it. Their only retort was ” Well , just because we are wrong doesn’t mean you are right” (even though it did mean we were right). I am expecting that kind of response to emerge from alarmist camps over the next 5-10 years as the data continues to not cooperate with the models & the true CAGW faith.
The Met has grudgingly lowered their temperature estimates all the while spinning. May be they’ll commit Hari Kiri if we experience another Dalton Minimum, or worse yet, another Maunder Minimum. The toll on lost lives will be monumental as millions will die of starvation as the arable land in northern Europe will freeze over.
pat says: @ January 8, 2013 at 1:52 pm
(big stories” everywhere today:
8 Jan: NYPost: Current situation: Staffers talk about first meeting with Al Jazeera…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
WOW, talk about some ticked off and disillusioned liberals! With Al Gore doing an exit with gobs of Oil money in his fists, I think we just heard all four tires on the CAGW bus blowout.
Good ole’ Al baby couldn’t even be bothered to do the dance.
Told you so.
The jets have been becoming more meridional and / or moving equatorward since around 2000 but only now is the implication sinking in.
CO2 emissions still zooming up but the sun now quiet. Which is the more likely cause?
We cannot expect cooling just yet since the AMO is still positive and the oceans have huge thermal inertia.
This is part of a 1000 year cycle after all and we have only just neared the top.
It is even possible that the natural cycle could go up a bit more if the sun recovers soon enough but that still wouldn’t be good evidence of a human contribution.
MarkW says:
January 8, 2013 at 1:24 pm
Malcolm Miller says:
January 8, 2013 at 1:36 pm
Manfred says:
January 8, 2013 at 1:57 pm
Tilo Reber says:
January 8, 2013 at 2:07 pm
Adam says:
January 8, 2013 at 2:33 pm
Joe says:
January 8, 2013 at 2:36 pm
Kudos to these posters. All profound comments. In a very simple way, in unison, they completely destroy the CAGW argument , all based on the DATA. Yes, DATA.
I challenge any alarmist to try to do the same to the skeptical position.
“…global temperature is predicted to continue to rise, with each year from 2013 onwards having a 50 % chance of exceeding the current observed record”.
Wouldn’t that indicate that they are predicting temperatures to more or less flatline from 2013 onwards? If they were predicting an increase in temperature, wouldn’t each successive year have an increased chance of exceeding this years temperature?
Good Grief, the Huff n’ Puff is even covering the story http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/current-situation-staffer_n_2432385.html
“…. global temperature is predicted to continue to rise, with each year from 2013 onwards having a 50 % chance of exceeding the current observed record …’
5 years ago the same was mentioned for the period that didn’t warm. Based on science that the Met Office and BBC refuse to use when it comes to climate. Unless there is a further decline in global cloud albedo, increase in the sun cycle activity (whole cycle, extremely unlikely) and northward movement in the jet stream this will never happen.
The PDO negative, global cloud albedo increasing a little, jet stream well south across the planet, record NH snow cover for recent years, severe cold winters, increased La Nina’s and SST’s cooling. How can the Met Office miss this, the ignorance is unbelievable. I am glad I don’t have all my cherries in the model basket and use science instead.
“And because the natural variability is based on cycles, those factors are bound to change the other way at some point.”
Never mentioned this before with so much doubt so why now, either got no choice because your science ideas are awful or admitted ignorance regarding climate. Might become scientists when these own up that natural cycles also warm too.
The chance of the model prediction becoming correct seems more like 0-1% until 2017.
“If the forecast is accurate, ”
There’s the trick. Their key word is IF. 5 bucks says soon enough they’ll have a new article “proving” the static forecast is not accurate and that we are indeed headed for catastrophe.
This is a classic propaganda technique. From wikipedia:
“Unstated Assumption is a type of propaganda message which forgoes explicitly communicating the propaganda’s purpose and instead states ideas derived from it. This technique is used when a propaganda’s main idea lacks credibility, and thus when mentioned directly will result in the audience recognizing its fallacy and nullifying the propaganda.”
So what they do is, instead of just coming out and repeating CAGW is real, they go ahead and say ‘Look, here’s some evidence that CAGW might not be happening’.
Then they falsify that. So the reader says, ‘So if it’s untrue that CAGW is not happening… that means it is true! Oh god, time to buy those carbon offsets…’
That’s just what I think will happen, at least. I have unfortunately seen people practicing this first hand, scaremongering to drive business. This tactic usually comes out when people are doing a good job of disproving the lies.
So they go from:
[Horrible Thing] is true!
[Horrible Thing] is true!
[Horrible Thing] is true!
To:
Wait, maybe [Horrible Thing] is not actually true.
And then:
Oh no, that report is false! [Horrible Thing] really IS true!
(Time to bust out the wallet)
Well the CSIRO in Australia reporting that we are getting hotter blaming CLIMATE CHANGE on NSW bush fires and the heatwave that hit us on the 8/1/2013 . http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/records-will-keep-tumbling-with-blistering-heatwaves-here-to-stay-20130108-2cetq.html
Russ R. says:
January 8, 2013 at 2:07 pm
Static. What happened to “Catestrophic??
Don’t worry; both “catastrophic” and “extreme” are still very much alive and kicking. I’ve noticed Sky News has been pretty liberal with both lately, “extreme rain in the UK” and “catastrophic fires in Australia. Methinks the MSM is very busy preparing, (read conditioning) the viewers to link any and all “disasters” to … well, whatever they say is causing it. Mostly its climate change, but sometimes it’s the gun lobby and/or republicans.
2013 is starting with a beautiful bang. Premature I’m sure but then it was a few tourists seeking asylum in an embassy that started the cascade in 1989. Brick by stinking brick. It will fall when it’s friends in the media simply cannot bear it another moment.
How come skeptics have given up the high ground on 1934? It seems to me skeptics should talk about 1934 and the 1930s in general every day, because if we go back that far, there’s been no statistical warming for 80 years. We should make Hansen defend manipulating the raw data to make it appear the 1930s were cooler every day so that story seeps into the common consciousness.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/08/dear-noaa-and-seth-which-1930s-were-you-referring-to-when-you-say-july-is-the-record-warmest/
Maybe that post should be permanently at the top of WUWT.
It IS what they want their listeners to “hear”!
That’s what he wants his listeners to “hear”!
(Who copy-edited his copy?)
=================
I like the looks of the lower-range line on the chart. Make that my prediction.
PS: The head post has been double-posted!
ENSO meter has swung into negative territory.
Have things finally begun to crack with the CAGW narrative? Lets look at the recent data and compare it to the Met office forecasts from just 4 months ago.
What is really going on here is that their sophisticated climate models are being continuously tuned so as to “backcast” and agree with past temperature data. There has been no warming for 17 years. As a result the parameters are now showing little AGW at all for the next 10 years.
A scientist should ask the following question. If predictions of GCM models from just 2 years ago have now been invalidated by the data, how can we now have any faith in new predictions made with the same models but with various fudge factors added ?
Lets look at the new 10 year forecast and compare it to the previous forecast and data compatible with the new forecast.
see graph here
The Met Office seems to be getting desperate to pin something(anything) on rising CO2 levels. Global temperatures have not changed in 17 years, and UK temperatures have not changed in 72 years. The only thing left from model predictions is extreme weather, so I suspect we may hear more scare stories about storms, drought, floods, snow, heat-waves, Plagues of locusts, or ladybird infestations in the coming months !
Let’s not forget that this is really one model disagreeing with another model. They both have an equal chance of being right, ie: none to speak of.
Meanwhile perhaps the BBC would give some consideration to redeeming those much-loved presenters who were ‘un-personed’ because of their scepticism about AGW. Brilliant communicators such as David Bellamy, Johnny Ball and, of course, David Whitehouse.
As for who should be fired, we can start with (cont. p 94).
James Delingpole, is having a lot of fun with the latest events.
Wind industry big lies no 3: wind turbines are eco-friendly <a I"Of all the many lies put out by the subsidy-troughing scum-suckers of the wind industry and their greenie fellow travellers, the biggest porkie of the lot is this: that wind turbines are eco-friendly."
Global Warming? Not a snowball’s chance in hell
Man-made global warming: even the IPCC admits the jig is up
He hasn’t gotten to the Met/BBC news story yet but I am sure he will and it will be as enjoyable as the rest of his essays. I can’t wait.
They are like polar bears on a melting ice floe, aren’t they? 😉
They really haven’t thought this through. If natural variability can suppress the alleged effects of CO2 to this extent, why couldn’t it also explain the alleged warming of the past couple of decades?
The expression “hoist on their own petard” comes to mind.
Lord Lawson (the one who recently won a 100-pound bet) should challenge any and all Met Office employees to a hundred-thousand pound bet on that prediction.
Actually, any lord would do.
Oh sure, he “covered” himself later on with a contradictory statement. That was a necessary CYA maneuver. But his wildly misleading lead planted the seed that much of the audience will retain.
Well halleluiah and jolly hockey sticks! Julia Gillard’s, Greg Combet’s and Christine Milne’s dreams have all come true. We are having a heat wave in Australia and we can justify the carbon tax.
But it is not just a plain, common garden variety heat wave, this is a record breaking, worst by far, super catastrophic, mind blowing, blistering, scorching thermageddon and the MSM has run out of expletives to describe it.
And although it has been claimed that a new national high was established by taking an average of the maximum temperatures across the country, Sydney only reached 42 deg C after it was forecast to break its 1939 record high of 45.3 deg C. (Wonder if they did a 1939 maximum national average?) And the Oodnadatta 50.7 deg C 1960 record also is still standing.
Now before I begin to get criticised for downplaying this extreme event and not waiting until it is all over, let me pause for sincere thoughts for all those affected by the heat and resulting bushfires and all those gallant emergency service personnel, many of whom are unpaid volunteers who have so far done an exemplary job of amazingly preventing any loss of life. Fingers crossed. This pales dramatically with the 1939 heat wave and bush fire where three quarters of the state of Victoria was directly or indirectly affected by the disaster and hundreds of people lost their live because of fire or heat:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_%281939%29
So I suppose we must have learned something. But now we are told that this is just a taste of things to come with records set to tumble in the coming years. That seems a bit funny as I did not have to use the air conditioner here for the past 18 months until a week or so ago and in 2007-8 the temperature never once went above 31 deg C.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/records-will-keep-tumbling-with-blistering-heatwaves-here-to-stay-20130108-2cetq.html
But then again I can pick cherries as well as any-one else. It will remain to be seen whether heat waves are going to be the norm like children are going to have to get used to never seeing snow again in Europe. But I would not be too keen to jump on the prediction band wagon if I were Ben Cubby. Predictions about climate have a habit of coming back to bite you and he better hope that temperatures in 2013 do not quickly get back to normal like in the last couple of years or keep flattening out.
And I would really love to hear an alternative meteorological theory as to why we are having a heat wave this year rather than it is because of increased CO2 in the atmosphere. I am sure that there is one as there was with these others:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Australian_history/Heatwave_disasters
But no-one seems to be keen to explore it.
Met Office news release dated 20 th December giving the 2013 annual global temperature forecast is totally different from Met Office statement in the above article. Notice the best estimate of O.57C , significantly higher from the 0.43 C projected for the period 2013 -2017 and the probable for 2012 of about 0.417C for 2012[ up to Nov 30,2012 HADCRUT3GL].
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2012/2013-global-forecast
It is the fate of True Believers to slavishly adhere to the dogma until the last of them as has been trampled by reality. It simply take geologic time to accomplish it.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 8, 2013 at 1:28 pm
“‘The earlier model had projected that the period 2012-16 would be 0.54C above that long-term average – within a range of uncertainty from 0.36-0.72C.
By contrast the new model, known as HadGEM3, gives a rise about one-fifth lower than that of 0.43C – within a range of 0.28-0.59.’
within their stated uncertainties there is no difference between the two predictions…”
Yes, and the comparison above (that claims it is static) is to the el nino year of 1998.
The headline is misleading.
About an hour ago the BBC announced that according to the Met Office the UK was going to have 10 years of extreme rain. Apparently this is the New Normal.
Strange they didn’t bother to forecast this when they were telling us it was going to be a long drought last year. At least the Met Office are doing long range weather forecasts again.
There’s only one thing to do. Get out the Barbie!
Ric Werme on January 8th 2013 at 2:24 said the following:
Scute says:
January 8, 2013 at 1:40 pm
“It says that the average temperature is likely to rise by 0.43 C by 2017.”
That’s nearly a degree a decade
No, it is not. Read the text:
The forecasts are all based on a comparison with the average global temperature over the period 1971-2000.
See the image (fie on WordPress):
[http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/65157000/jpg/_65157024_65157023.jpg ]
According to that we’re about 0.35, so the projected range 0.28-0.59 says we could have cooling. If we go to 0.43, that’s 0.08 in 4 years, or 0.10 C° per decade.
1) You chose to omit the short sentence I wrote prior to the section you did choose to quote before going on to misrepresent what I said. This omitted sentence completely negates what you went on to interpret of my comment. I had better quote it here.
“…and it seems that despite this admission David Shukman wants to take that good old Warmist semantic machine for another spin:”
It would have been a simple thing to keep it with your copied text as it’s the only other sentence in my short comment. But you actively avoided highlighting it. It is interesting that, by omitting that first sentence, you were able to requote my quote of Shukman, leaving the impression that I had said those words and fallen for the .43 C rise myself. I was simply quoting him to point out his semantic acrobatics- but if you had quoted me in full that would have been blindingly clear.
2) As you can see, that first sentence includes the word “semantic”. That means using words or phrases that have one meaning but which could be interpreted another way. No serious science reporter could write, “It says that the average temperature is likely to rise by 0.43 C by 2017”, without knowing that would prime the average reader, from the get-go, into thinking there would be a 0.43 rise in 5 years. The fact that Shukman goes on to cite the 1971-2000 average doesn’t detract from the fact that he has started off his article with the same old drip-feed spin which is more digestible than talk of averages for non-mathematically minded readers. The reader has been primed and any counterveing statements are more likely to be missed. That is the essence of semantics and spin. Besides, any master of spin needs a counterveiling point as a fig leaf with which to claim he meant one thing all along when he was actively inculcating the exact opposite theme.
3) By quoting me out of context, I think you’ve successfully portrayed me as an SkS type troll, parachuting in to pluck a sentence from an article and spinning it up to make the case for runaway warming. The main reason for my frequenting WUWT is to get to the bottom of how and why the alarmists can keep telling us the temps are going up when they are not. That was quite clear for anyone who read my comment and knows the meaning of the word ‘semantic’.
4) Any who reads WUWT on a regular basis knows that my main concern is researching right to the bottom of complex, highly-spun spats such as the recent IPCC/media mauling of Alec Rawls and the mealy-mouthed Met Office response to the Daily Mail’s “Global warming stopped 16 years ago” article. I then present my findings with closely argued points showing up the spin for what it is- because unfortunately, understanding the spin from first principles is as important as understanding the science from first principles. I certainly shouldn’t have to be directing these energies to my own comments-as-quoted-out-of-context. Please read more carefully in future and quote in full.
Scute
So I’m just wondering where the Met Office thinks all this extra future heat is going to come from?
The Pacific, nope, the Sun, nope, South Atlantic, nope. The only warm spot on the planet at the moment is the North Atlantic (hence the low ice extent in the Barents Sea) and that is headed towards its cooling phase. Maybe they think the hot spots in Australia (it is mid summer down there and oddly enough big dry deserty places have a history of being hot) are going to be shipped around the world? My thoughts are that it will slowly get colder globally, after a period of stasis, but due to lower energy differences we will see weather in certain places that hasn’t been seen there in a lifetime or indeed recorded anywhere. But hey, what would I know, I don’t have a big shiny supercomputer…
So we are now getting (finally), “its not as worse as we thought”
“We thought it was worse!”
Surely the logical headline?
How do you confuse a warmist?
Write 1) on one side of a piece of card and 2) on the other; it will keep he/she perplexed for hours!!
1) “The science is settled” – AGW is happening!………PTO
2) “It’s worse than we thought”- No, AGW has stopped!!………PTO
rogerknights says:
January 8, 2013 at 3:35 pm
> ENSO meter has swung into negative territory.
I forgot to check on Monday. (Let’s blame it on the cold my boss gave me.) Data with too much precision:
data from 00Z24DEC2012 to 00Z07JAN2013
“———-”
-0.045533
-0.228761
9.999e+20
Length of data file 82, most recent value: -0.228761
file_last -0.045533
anomaly -02
That’s pretty substantial for a one week change. Don’t expect that rate to continue!
I’ll change the program to get more weeks of history sometime, it’s fairly interesting, huh?
Such a shame the experts don’t read the actual experts commenting here. After reporting this on the news tonight the final sentence was ‘Of course this does not change the long term man made warming’. How the heck do they know that? What model could override this one? The simple rule in life they have not operated is we only know what we know now, and that is enough. Just stop when they’re ahead, they’ve finally managed to be honest and then ruined it at the end by telling stories again. But people should hear it all and only listen to the first part if they’ve got any sense at all.
Ironically, the above BBC article is obscurely tucked away on the BBC Science pages but the FRONT HOME PAGE of the BBC states
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20953882
2012 ‘hottest US year’ on record
The US sweltered under its hottest year on record in 2012, breaking the previous high temperature record by a full 1F (0.6C).
Quoting from above:
“It describes the decadal projections as part of an experimental effort launched in 2004 to fill the gap between daily weather forecasts and century-long estimates for climate change.”
“But this is an emerging and highly complex area of science because of the interplay of natural factors and manmade greenhouse gases at a time when a key set of temperatures – in the deep ocean – is still relatively unknown.”
=============================
Here they spring open the hinges of their brainpans and allow us to peer inside-
at the mushrooms and beetles.
In 2004, it dawns on them that they really don’t understand how climate works, that daily weather forecasts are not the cutting edge of climate science, so they launch an “experimental effort” [ ! ] to “fill the gap”. Then, after eight years of scratching their heads in confusion, they jettison their current ignorance on the matter into “the deep ocean”, a la Trenberth. There can be no doubt, the “key temperatures” fell overboard and settled into the cold, dark ocean deep where climate research becomes colorless, odorless, and tasteless. Davy Jones’ locker is now the repository for the hopes of the CAGW crowd. We will hear more of the “deep ocean”, I predict. Their aim now is to boil the ocean from the bottom.
Quoting directly from the article…
“this is an emerging and highly complex area of science because of the interplay of natural factors and manmade greenhouse gases at a time when a key set of temperatures – in the deep ocean – is still relatively unknown.”
“Decadal climate prediction is immature, and uncertainties in future forcings, model responses to forcings, or initialisation shocks could easily cause large errors in forecasts.”
…and yet…
“…it still stands by its longer-term projections.”
Sigh!
I quote:
“An apparent standstill in global temperatures is used by critics of efforts to tackle climate change as evidence that the threat has been exaggerated. Climate scientists at the Met Office and other centres are involved in intense research to try to understand what is happening over the most recent period. The most obvious explanation is natural variability – the cycles of changes in solar activity and the movements and temperatures of the oceans.”
This is just about as worthless as a supposedly knowledgeable article can get. First, calling it an “apparent” standstill is misleading. It implies that it is not real which is bullshit. It is very real, all temperature data say so. Temperature is not increasing and shows no sign of increasing in the future, but this is implicit in their use of the word “threat.”. They don’t know what is going on and state that the “most obvious” explanation is “natural variability.” A more honest explanation would be that “we don’t know because we are ignorant.” Ignorant of what the climate is doing now and what it might be doing in the future. And that despite the fact that their “Climate scientists at the Met Office and other centers are involved in intense research to try to understand what is happening…” This research has been going on for years and is costing taxpayers huge amounts of money. Uncle Sam alone spends over two billion dollars each year directly on climate research. If you add departmental and other expenditures it’s more like seven billion dollars. The others – UK, Germany, Australia etc are not far behind. So far there have been no breakthroughs and as far as I am concerned the output of this climate research industry amounts to nothing more than large numbers of technician-level papers. As to the future, they are trusting it to the greenhouse theory of warming which is actually dead. It is dead because its predictions are wrong. In science, a theory that makes wrong predictions is cast off into the trash pile of history. In 2007 IPCC used the greenhouse theory to predict the twenty-first century climate. They knew that just doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will only raise global temperature by 1.1 degrees Celsius. This does not threaten anybody so they brought in water vapor to help out with warming. It works like that: first, carbon dioxide warms the air. Warm air can hold more water vapor and the additional greenhouse warming from this water vapor is added to to original from carbon dioxide. Their computers tell us that this can triple the original warming or more. It is called positive water vapor feedback. Using that method they predicted that warming in the twenty-first century shall proceed at the rate of 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade. We are now in the second decade of this century and there is no sign whatsoever of this predicted warming. Hence, off to the trash pile of history with that theory. That is not the only prediction that it made that has failed. If you put positive water vapor feedback into the computer and let it run it will tell you to look for a hot spot at ten kilometer height in the tropics. Well, radiosondes have been searching for this hot spot but simply cannot find it. The conclusion from this has to be that the positive water vapor feedback simply does not exist. Hence, all the predictions made using positive water vapor feedback are wrong. But worse yet comes from Ferenc Miskolczi. In 2010 he used NOAA weather balloon database to study the absorption of atmospheric infrared radiation over time. The greenhouse theory tells us that carbon dioxide in the air absorbs infrared radiation, that radiation turns to heat, warms the atmosphere, and we get global warming. Miskolczi found that the transparency of the atmosphere did not change over a 61 year period while carbon dioxide simultaneously increased by 21.6 percent. Greenhouse theory requires that addition of this substantial amount of carbon dioxide should show up as absorption, but nothing happened – the atmosphere was as transparent after the addition of CO2 as it had been before the addition of CO2. That is what Miskolczi theory predicted. This observation is a clear win for Miskolczi, and a loss for greenhouse and IPCC. Put that greenhouse into the trash pile for sure now and learn some real climate science! A good place to start would be my book called “What Warming?” that you guys probably don’t know about despite the fact that it has been out for two years now.
What David Shukman did not convey in his article is that the decadal forecast made in December 2011 which predicted the 0.54 C average figure that he refers to in his article, also said the following:
” From 2017 to 2021, global temperature is forecast to rise further to between 0.54 C and 0.97 C with the most likely value of about 0.76 C above the average”. This illustrates how significantly they have lowered their predictions of global warming. It is possible that by 2020 the actual observed global temperature anomaly may even be much lower than the new 0.43 C figure if things continue as is.
Scute says: “December 24th…a good day to bury bad news, so the saying goes.”
You cynic! It was just their way of giving us all an Xmas present we would all appreciate.
“An apparent standstill in global temperatures is used by critics of efforts to tackle climate change as evidence that the threat has been exaggerated.”
An apparent standstill? Surely you mean a very much real standstill.
As for characterizing it as being “used by critics as evidence that the threat has been exaggerated”, how about you be more honest and tell your viewers that the 16 years of non-warming was your own climate alarmist ‘scientists’ metric for proving their own theories and models to be false.
And whats with the shifting goal posts and obfuscation for why your junk science failed? The BBC reporters are clearly science deniers if they want to have a theory that can never be falsified.
What a bunch of crooks – they should have their public funding and broadcast license pulled for their continuing violation of their charter.
“some blogs” is akin to Assad’s “terrorists”. or Stalin’s oft used term “criminals” to describe the opposition. And this passes for professional journalism at the Beeb. Shame. Defund it.
“The Met Office stresses that the work is experimental and that it still stands by its longer-term projections.”
EXPERIMENTAL IS THE KEY WORD
There should be a big red stamp on every Met Office decadal and long range forecast which says . THIS WORK IS PURELY EXPERIMENTAL AND MAY BARE LITTLE RESEMBLANCE TO REALITY. DO NOT USE THIS FORECAST TO SHAPE PUBLIC POLICY IN THE AREA OF ENVIRONMENT OR ENERGY. Unfortunately , in my opinion ,these forecasts are being paraded as “solid” science with 90 confidence or with “most likely” accuracy by the spokespersons for the AGW supporting scientists leading to a tragic waste of money and manpower to solve a problem that is not happening as predicted nor is there an imminent threat . We clearly have the time to do this right , whatever the real problems if any turn out to be.
It is nice to know that the MET Office has discovered that:
1) there exists a natural variability;
2) that there are cyclical patterns in the climate;
3) that it is necessary to take into account this variability to properly interpret and forecast climate changes.
Of course this things are not new and are already published in peer reviewed literature. For example my numerous papers make these things quite clear since at least 2010 with this paper:
Scafetta N., 2010. Empirical evidence for a celestial origin of the climate oscillations and its implications. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 72, 951-970.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682610001495
A summary with realistic climate forecasting using natural cycles (since 2000) is here:
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model_1
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/7E__CV_figure7.png
A more detailed discussion based on the origin of these cycles is here:
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model
I expect Simon Cowell might be pretty good with some of these models.
When the BBC 28 reconvene they should invite him along to the strategy meeting. That’ll be 29. A nice round number by BBC calculations.
Most posters here are missing the point. The MET prediction was dropping/had dropped below the uncertainty bounds of their model. It was, technically, “falsified” using current data. With their updated prediction, so long as global temperatures do not begin a cooling trend, it will not be falsified until around 2020 or longer.
Fluctuation of global average temperature anomaly within 0.8 and 1 degree celsius and the alarmists are in a panic! One can only wonder how life exists in Central Australia where temperature can be 0 degrees C (or lower) early morning and reach 20 degrees C by lunch time. How “Centralia” has avoided a climate catastrophe only God knows!
Al Jazeera reporting severe cold in Syria causing grief in the refugee camps. COLD weather, bad weather and “non stop rain” getting into the tents causing fights in the aid centers.
Who knows, it might even convince them to stop killing each other for a while…
Wonder how the BBC will report it…
King of Cool
What looks to have helped to set up the heat wave in Australia is the fact that the SH Polar jet has pushed well to the south during your summer this year. So it has spent much of the time been to the south of Australia and so blocking off the cooler air from coming up from the south.
Up here in the NH the weather looks set to go the otherway. Because as we move into the second half of January the jet stream pattern looks to be going into “lce age” mode. l expect to see some very bitter winter weather turning up in europe with the USA also at risk.
The phrasing “likely to rise by 0.43 C by 2017” has already been criticized, as it should have been.
However, another of Shukman’s statements is equally inaccurate. He wrote that compared to HadGEM2’s 0.54C anomaly, “the new model, known as HadGEM3, gives a rise about one-fifth lower than that of 0.43C.” The context for “rise” should be “over the projection period”, not relative to the base period. In that context, the HadGEM2 mean projection over 2013-2017 shows a rise of about 0.15°C; the HadGEM3 mean increases by about 0.05°C over those years. That is, the new projection suggests an increase which is *two-thirds* less than the prior one, not merely one-fifth less.
[One could make it out to be even smaller by comparing absolute temperatures: the average is now projected to be 288.43 K rather than 288.54 K, a reduction of about 0.04%. 😉 ]
So that’s two points on which Shukman is misleading.
No problem, next week the data compliance team IPCC TM, will recalculate the estimated global average temperature for 30 yrs as 13.5 C to 100% accuracy, oopes better make that 12.84C .+_0.003C..
Now its warming like never before, the models are perfect, followed by repent oh carbon sinners.
MET, experimental models mistaken.
I would like to think I am being sarcastic. But its govt run climatology.
Our sickening canadian weather channel is all over the catastrophic heat wave in Oz, Floods in Israel, Cold and snow?? nope none of that.
I’m sort of puzzled, assuming naively that everything has an underlying physical explanation. There was the hypothesis of CO2 that was causing the atmosphere to warm, and the hypothesis of a feeback mechanism that made it warm the right amount. What cause temperatures to “stall” and why will they resume? Maybe I missed that explanation.
King of Cool
You maybe interested in having a look at the BBC weather web site where they have got a piece about the heatwave in Australia. They are saying its due to the ending of the recent La Nina.
After 10+ years of reporting AGW will the BBC back down, or even state that they got it all wrong? I doubt it, too many overinflated egos, too much money in the pension fund riding on this story. They daren’t let it fail now.
No they will take every opportunity to propagandize and pump-up the rhetoric. Though if you have the means to watch where the BBC pension fund gets invested you will know when the story will be killed off.
“with each year from 2013 onwards having a 50 % chance of exceeding the current observed record”.
Which means a 50% chance of being less that the current observed record.
Which is another way of saying “we don’t have a clue what the temperature will be”.
Their new high tech computer simulation, flip a coin.
It also means, if true, with half the temperatures being greater than right now, and half less, that for the forseeable future, the average temperature will stay the same as it is now.
Their projections factored in all known variables which affect the climate. They didn’t just discover that solar output varies and that internal variability exists, so if we’re travelling outside the 95 % confidence bounds then they must admit this is not what they expected.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has also just made a humiliating backdown, after announcing that it needed ‘new colours’ for its weather maps to represent unprecedentedly high temperatures.
Sounds to me a classic diversion technique.
Current big story is humungous cold in Asia and searing heat in Australia.
Europe is very boring this winter, very boring.
Mark Luedtke says: January 8, 2013 at 3:22 pm
I agree entirely with Mark Luedtke here.
All this “unprecedented … since the last time it happened..” talk needs to be torn apart.
This is in a few of the articles that were posted in links above:
“This rise would be only slightly higher than the 0.4-degree rise recorded in 1998, an increase which is itself attributed by forecasters to an exceptional weather phenomenon.”
0.4 in 1998??? I thought the record was 0.55 (bozec above) in 1998? Are they revising 1998 down to 0.4 now so they can eventually get another record in the next 5 years?
So where is the left half of that chart.
As in before 1950?
Bet it was cooling.
mpainter says:
January 8, 2013 at 5:05 pm
“We will hear more of the “deep ocean”, I predict.”
Quite so. Almost anything can be claimed for those since there is no multitude of independent observers to catch falsehoods (not on the relevant scales like hundredths of a degree in global averages).
Leif Svalgaard says: January 8, 2013 at 1:28 pm “within their stated uncertainties there is no difference between the two predictions…”
That’s nonsense Leif. The lower end of the range has dropped from 0.36 to 0.28. The upper end from 0.72 to 0.59. There is no equivalence of the two predictions in these non-overlapping parts of the prediction intervals. These are significant differences between the two, so the predictions certainly are different.
It’s not a good sign that lay person needs to help you understand this point.
taxed says:
January 8, 2013 at 7:50 pm
King of Cool
What looks to have helped to set up the heat wave in Australia is the fact that the SH Polar jet has pushed well to the south during your summer this year..
You maybe interested in having a look at the BBC weather web site…
Thanks taxed. The Sky Weather Channel also gave an explanation to-day in that there has been a lower than normal level of cloud across Northern Australia because of the late onset of the wet season resulting in a large pool of hot air accumulating over the middle of Australia and every time we get a synoptic situation causing northerly winds this hot air is moved down to the south east.
Although a southerly change has hit the SE, the hot air will take some time to dissipate. But there is now a cyclone (Narelle) forming off the NW Coast so the whole situation may well change within a week or so and even result in much needed rain in the west.
Yep, we will be glued to every weather forecast down here with much added interest this year. The good Lord is coming. What we really need is a visit from Al.
“50% chance of exceeding….”
That’s like the Shelbyville Sharks beating the Springfield football team “almost half the time”.
🙂
Climate scientists at the Met Office and other centres are involved in intense research to try to understand what is happening over the most recent period.
Keep on trying to understand, lads.
E.M.Smith says:
Al Jazeera reporting severe cold in Syria … Wonder how the BBC will report it…
BBC are leading with “fires in Australia don’t kill anyone”.
Not as bad as some indian press who are reporting: “severe cold around Himalayas is yet further proof of global warming!”
At no stage have I read any report from the BBC along the lines of ‘Hoorah, warming has slowed/stopped, and we can all relax a bit!’ or ‘No current warming means we may not know what’s happening!’, etc, – and yet we still get all the usual suspects mentioning AGW in their various programs – it really gets my goat…
Oddly enough New Scientist…in 2008.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14527-climate-myths-global-warming-stopped-in-1998.html
Oopsie!
And The Daily Telegraph back in…2006
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3624242/There-IS-a-problem-with-global-warming…-it-stopped-in-1998.html
Just to note how the depicted global temperature graph in this article is misleading, as usual, actual global temperature history since the late 19th century is more like the following (inexact, quick, sloppy, and not fancy as I am otherwise busy, yet illustrative):
http://postimage.org/image/wg75gb919/
That is just made by combining a global marine air temperature plot from the inscribed source published before the CAGW movement’s dominance (hence not deliberately dishonest) with satellite global temperature data for subsequent decades.
Particularly since almost nobody is going to click on this buried link and see the image anyway, I didn’t spend much time, not even exactly aligning the pixels in splicing, though the scale is about right. (I did it mostly for myself). But it is still blatantly different from the usual propagandist graphs which give the impression of twice as much meaningful global warming since WWII.
Unless it disappeared into obscurity of the type someone would not find in a thousand hours, nobody (not WUWT nor any other site in the entire internet or offline) ever, ever, ever has bothered to make or publish a global temperature plot which simultaneously has all of the following basic desirable aspects of (a) over more than 3 or 4 decades while (b) global average temperatures more directly than like a O-18 or local tree-ring proxy reconstruction (c) while extending up to include recent years within the past decade, without such being from the known-dishonest well-funded propagandist sources like Hansen’s GISS or the CRU of Climategate.
The quote from the report “It says that the average temperature is likely to rise by 0.43 C by 2017 – as opposed to an earlier forecast that suggested a warming of 0.54C.” is a classic piece of misreporting by the BBC and designed to fool casual listeners. It was also used on the brief segment on this on the BBC 10 O’Clock news last night. It is intended to give the impression that the temperature will rise by 0.43 C by 2017 and I believe is intentionally misleading. In the report above, you have to read a long way down before they start to mention that it is the anomaly they are talking about and that a figure of 0.43 C essentially means flatlining temperature for about 20 years.
In the BBC 10 O’Clock news they showed graphics with a huge up arrow with 0.54 C then a second graphic with a huge up arrow of 0.43 C and then claimed that the the update was therefore small. This is grossly irresponsible reporting designed to give the casual viewer the impression that temperature will rise by 0.43 C by 2017. I do not recall any mention in the broadcast item last night that thihs was an anomaly and therefore temperatures are flatlining. Also, they did not show the flattening temperature graphs, just the big up arrow graphics. BBC bias at its best.
I believe that it was just a few years ago that Trenberth?Jones? were stating that 17 years without statistically significant warming were sufficient to falisfy AGW…
And now they have to admit that they have not accounted for all natural processes in their models. As other commentators have noted, that equally means there could be a natural process acting that has given us the slight warming since 1970, nothing to do with CO2. That’s called a null hypothesis.
“critics”
Wow. Just wow. I mean, thank you. 🙂
Hey Anthony, do you have the article double printed from the chart thru the end “future forcings”?
For some reason Im seeing that same chart 2x and all of the print after it .. is the same 2x.
Jordan says:
January 8, 2013 at 11:55 pm
Leif Svalgaard says: January 8, 2013 at 1:28 pm “within their stated uncertainties there is no difference between the two predictions…”
That’s nonsense Leif. The lower end of the range has dropped from 0.36 to 0.28. The upper end from 0.72 to 0.59. There is no equivalence of the two predictions in these non-overlapping parts of the prediction intervals. These are significant differences between the two, so the predictions certainly are different.
It’s not a good sign that lay person needs to help you understand this point.
****************************************************************************************************
And of course, you Jordan can SIGNIFICANTLY feel this difference? LOL
Shukman: “The most obvious explanation is natural variability……”
“””””””””””””””””””
So Shukman, as the mouthpiece of the Met Office, has parroted the admission that natural variability is strong enough to overwhelm all their prognostications about CAGW.
If Solar Cycle 25 turns out to be even weaker than Solar Cycle 24 and the weakest for 300 years, as predicted by Livingston and Penn, it will be the end of the Modern Warm Period with temperatures falling as the climate of the earth moves into a new Little Ice Age, beginning in the next few years.
I hope the prediction is wrong, but politicians would be negligent if they did not consider this as a serious possibility and start thinking about how such a scenario could be mitigated.
David Archibald wrote about this on WUWT in January last year:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/25/first-estimate-of-solar-cycle-25-amplitudesmallest-in-over-300-years/
The first time I heard this subject broadcast was on BBC lunchtime news when our favourite Harrabin covered it and gave us the usual clap-trap about still-rising temperatures etc. By the time of the evening news Harrabin had been disappeared and replaced by Shukman, whose position was, by comparison, reasonably balanced.apart from the revelation that global warming is a long-term thing (with the unspoken – “so don’t turn your backs on it as it will come and bite you in the posterior”).
If the forecast is accurate, the result would be that the global average temperature would have remained relatively static for about two decades.
———
This doesnt make any sense. Temperate had gone up about 0.4C over the last 3 decades and according to this report we are going to gain an additional 0.04 over about 4 years. In other words the model trend is following matching the observed trend pretty well.
However the paper concluded that, “in the absence of volcanic eruptions, global temperature is predicted to continue to rise, with each year from 1659 onwards having a 50 % chance of exceeding the current observed record” and man made CO2 is the cause.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/Armagh1659-2009.png
Met Office FAIL!
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/yet-another-met-office-fail/
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/yet-another-met-office-fail/
The reason there is such a big range around these predictions is because the UK Met Office HadGEM family of climate models have extremely large variability.
They are using the HadGEM3 version in this latest forecast but the earlier versions from a year ago, HadGEM2 submitted to the IPCC AR5, varies by over 1.0C from month to month and the HadGEM1 version from 5 years ago also varies by the same amount.
It is really pointless to put out a medium-term forecast using the HadGEM model – any version. Its just a random jumble of numbers going up at a certain rate based on the GHG forcing changes programmed into them.
http://s14.postimage.org/oxqcq1iwx/UKMet_Had_GEM_Climate_Models_vs_Obs.png
Well I guess Australia’s Bureau of meteorology also got something wrong. This week they had to introduce two new colours to there temperature maps to represent two new ranges of temperature they didn’t have to worry about before. After, a graduation from blue through to dark red and then black, they had to introduce a purple and pink to represent temperatures up to 54 degrees celcius. These term erasures were rare in Australia but after a record breaking heat wave they are becoming more common.
Its great to see everyone bag the Met Office – I enjoy it too – but at least they have the balls to put a prediction out there. And if after only a couple of years its way out ( ho ho ho!) – it is only by making a firm prediction in the first place that we can see they are way out.
The only person I have seen to make a serious attempt at predictions is Nicola Scafetta
Two others come to mind though they are virtually the same:
Girma Orssengo (http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/predictions-of-gmt.pdf)
And Dr Akasofu (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/20/dr-syun-akasofu-on-ipccs-forecast-accuracy/)
Perhaps its time for some more people to put a line on the paper, because in the absence of an alternative, why wouldn’t you go with the only one you have?
Look at the Met Office forecast:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-decadal/long-range/decadal-fc
It is a “retrospective forecast”. “During 2012 our decadal prediction system was upgraded to use the latest version of our coupled climate model. The forecasts and retrospective forecasts shown here have been updated to reflect this change.”
He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.
I know that this is about global warming rather than the British and I am no climatologist but this is a story about the UK Met Office so I feel justified in raising a point or asking a question, whichever you prefer to see it as.
The Hadley Centre now keeps the Central England Temperature set. Looking at a graph of the temperatures through the years http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/ is quite interesting. The data shown is from 1772 to 2012 and to the untrained eye the average seems to be fairly stable until 1980 when it suddenly shows an unprecedented increase followed by a steep decline. This does not seem to fit with the idea that CO2 causes all the warming at all, rather it looks like the short term effect of some catastrophic event.
Now the UK has been at the forefront of international development throughout this period and so it could be assumed that these measurements are at least as accurate as those from any other country. Is the UK so unrepresentative of global temperatures as a whole or have global temperature estimates been innacurate.? If the latter then are they still telling the wrong story today?
@Lower Up,
Are they becoming more common? Where did you get that idea from, because the last few summers have been wet and coolish, and nothing particularly remarkable has happened in many years. Get a grip. We’re talking about a couple of hot days, in mid summer, in Australia. Crazy stuff huh? 😉
The BBC misquote the Met Office..
The BBC is WRONG to say 2017 will be +0.43C warmer than now..
when in fact the 0.43C is referenced from the baseline temps… ie 2017 will be aboutthe same as now..
Actual Met Office statement (that BBC mess up)
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-decadal/long-range/decadal-fc
“Global average temperature is expected to remain between 0.28 °C and 0.59 °C (90% confidence range) above the long-term (1971-2000) average during the period 2013-2017, with values most likely to be about 0.43 °C higher than average (see blue curves in the Figure 1 below).”
So why does BBC imply that 2017 will be 0.43C higher than now-?!!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20947224
“The UK Met Office has revised one of its forecasts for how much the world may warm in the next few years.
It says that the average temperature is likely to rise by 0.43 C by 2017 – as opposed to an earlier forecast that suggested a warming of 0.54C.”
And the Guardian are now repeating and quoting the BBC’s error:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/jan/09/global-warming-met-office-paused?commentpage=1
Cant’t these journalists read a press release properly..
A Crooks says:
January 9, 2013 at 3:21 am
I think the met off could see the cooling coming. They have stopped this forecast/ projection /prediction at 2017 for a reason and it isn’t to make a prettier picture. They are hedging their bets, IMHO. If they can decrease the forecast temperature over several years and start forecasting extreme weather in the meantime it will boost their reputation with the public and the goverment. All this will allow all of them to keep their posts including the more obscure jobs in the met off. (space weather expert)
Steve B says: January 9, 2013 at 1:29 am: “And of course, you Jordan can SIGNIFICANTLY feel this difference? LOL”
Yes – every time I pay for power and fuel supply because of the political response to these dubious predictions. Not-exactly-LOL
Lower pup says: January 9, 2013 at 3:19 am
Well I guess Australia’s Bureau of meteorology also got something wrong.
================================
We have long heard about that crowd- seems that they can’t get anything right
Brian Awford says:
January 8, 2013 at 2:41 pm
Good synonym. At the end though (because they are using your money) they walk away from the colapse without loss. Great pensions in tact, great redundantcy package etc. The only people that will suffer are the poor and vunerable.
Perhaps its time for some more people to put a line on the paper, because in the absence of an alternative, why wouldn’t you go with the only one you have?
This read like the old “better than nothing ” meme. If it is then it is a very big mistake. Better than nothing is similar to the precaution principle and has no place in any situation what so ever, unless we are all going to die. Won’t happen for another 2b years.
Roger Longstaff says:
January 9, 2013 at 3:37 am
Look at the Met Office forecast:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-decadal/long-range/decadal-fc
It is a “retrospective forecast”. “During 2012 our decadal prediction system was upgraded to use the latest version of our coupled climate model. The forecasts and retrospective forecasts shown here have been updated to reflect this change.”
He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.
I would love to see their version control and new release documentation. I don’t believe them one iota. This may well be the same model but with adjusted tuning parametres.
Just as folks were starting to notice that the lack of warming for 15 years was, you know, looking like a falsification of their models, out jumps the met office to the rescue.
“Look,” they say, “you folks simply can’t use decadal temperatures to draw conclusions about global warming, because natural variations will mask the trend. But be assured, on longer timescales the trend will be up.” So, everyone, we’ll have to take a 15 year time out, and see if their models will be falsified in a 30 year time span, although I suspect a replaying of the same gambit even further out:
“Look, you folks simply can’t use multi-decadal temperatures to draw conclusions, because of multi-decadal variations masking the trend.”
Interestingly, however, they do appear to have made one prediction – there is a 50% chance of any year from 2013 onwards exceeding the global temperature record.
Imagine you toss a coin – you have a 50% chance of it coming up heads. After 2 tosses, the probability of a head is 1 minus the probability of no heads. Ie Ph = 1 – Pnh. The probability of no heads is 0,25 (1/2 x 1/2). After 3 tosses, the probability of no heads is 1/8 (1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2). And so it goes on, with the probability of no heads after n tosses being (1/2)**n. Therefore the probability of at least 1 head after many tosses becomes increasingly high: 1 – (1/2)**n.
It would seem like a bet they can’t loose. The more years go by, the higher the probability of another record temperature (tossing a head), according to their assertion (probability of 50%).
But – this is the interesting bit. What if after, say 10 years, there is no record. Their hypothesis states that the probability of no record after 10 years is (1/2)**10. This is 1/1024. In other words, their hypothesis is asserting that the is only 1 chance in 1024 that one of the next 10 years will not set a new global temperature record.
But what if there is no new global record set after 10 years? Wouldn’t that falsify their hypothesis?
King of Cool says:
January 8, 2013 at 4:19 pm
I would really love to hear an alternative meteorological theory as to why we are having a heat wave this year rather than it is because of increased CO2 in the atmosphere. I am sure that there is one as there was with these others….
But no-one seems to be keen to explore it.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I do not know what is happening in the Southern Hemisphere but in the NH we are getting oscillations between very hot and very cold due to the jet stream moving from a zonal to meridonal flow in the last few years.
Explanation: ZONAL AND MERIDIONAL FLOW
global map
E.M. Smith article:
Of Turbulence, Hadley / Ferrel Cells, and Loopy Jet Streams
Stephen Wilde article:
link
NASA article:
Extreme 2010 Russian Fires and Pakistan Floods Linked Meteorologically (You get blocking Highs from meridonal flow.)
Oh – its all due to a new ‘model’ (HadGEM3)……
What happened to ‘The science is settled’….?
If the forecast is accurate, the result would be that the global average temperature would have remained relatively static for about two decades.
So they admit no warming for the last 15 years then?
And when they factor in the AMO moving into a cold phase, probably in the 2020’s, that will be 30 years or more of no warming.
A Crooks, you write about Girma’s forecast. Somewhere around March 2012, I persuaded Girma to make a one year forecast, with some reluctance on his part. This he did, using HAD/CRU 3 data. The forecast is somewhere in the comments on Climate Etc. I did not keep a copy, though I am sure Girma did. We are about 2 weeks away from getting the HAD/CRU data for December 2013, and Girma can, if he wishes, reproduce the forecast he made early last year, compare it with the actual data, and hopefully, update his data base, and make a forecast for 2014. He probably needs to use HAD/CRU 4 data this time, as the 3 data will probably not be calculated for 2014
I am a great believer is short term forecasts which can be checked on in a reasonable time frame. If Girma’s 2013 forecast turns out to have been accurate, maybe people will take notice of his 2014 forecast, if he makes one.
If the forecast is accurate
hahaha this is the UK Met office after all 🙂
“why wouldn’t you go with the only one you have?”
Why?
It’s quite clever to go with multiple forecasts.
It means you can always be right….
Paul Nottingham,
If you look again at the Met Office link that you give for the the Central England Temperature record then you can see that the baseline choice is entirely arbitrary. They have chosen the difference from the 1961 to 1990 average as the baseline of “0.0”. With such graphs if you choose a different baseline then the apparent “effect” usually looks very different or disappears entirely.
Having spent much of my life a lot closer to Central England than the Met Office, I can say I never noticed any very significant changes at that time. (Other than my home town building a light-house 70 miles from the sea in 1980: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Lift_Tower 🙂
Michael writes :
The full Central England Temperature from 1650 to 2012 can be seen here. The only trend observed in the data is a slow long term 0.03C/decade recovery from the Little Ice Age ! There is no sign whatsoever of AGW in UK temperature data.
The only pattern I see here is the pattern of covering their rear end with modifications to the message in the same way Mayan decendants and scholars come forward at the last minute to downplay the emminent fail on the prediction. This has the effect of calming reactions to their earlier position and tactics so as to buy more time. It is another aspect of the rule of thumb to follow the money–and the personality types. None of that involves science in any form or fashion.
“…global temperature is predicted to continue to rise, with each year from 2013 onwards having a 50 % chance of exceeding the current observed record”.
And, equally, a 50% chance of NOT exceeding the current observed record.
So they’re 100% sure it will be either warmer or colder than the current observed record. BRILLIANT!
Barry Woods says:
January 9, 2013 at 4:21 am
“The BBC misquote the Met Office..
The BBC is WRONG to say 2017 will be +0.43C warmer than now..
when in fact the 0.43C is referenced from the baseline temps… ie 2017 will be about the same as now..”
Exactly, Barry (and others), that is the main point of the Met Office statement.
David Shukman, Science Editor at BBC News, is a geography BA from Durham Univ, UK. Take a look at the current syllabus here:
http://www.dur.ac.uk/geography/undergraduate/programmes/teaching_and_course_information/geography_ba/
Of course, the subjects studied may have changed a bit since Shukman’s day in the late 70’s, but a less charitable person might infer that a BA Geog does not properly equip a writer to properly understand the methodology and statistics that he/she is cutting and pasting.
Thanks – and a wonderfully Happy New Year to all at WUWT.
Reblogged this on This Got My Attention and commented:
Occasionally the fanatics correct themselves.
They had to do something because like everyone else living in the UK we KNOW how horrible and cold the last six summers have been and the Met Office must have realised trying to sell us yet more global warming claptrap was just not on!
It seems they used calculation that stop at year 2000. Haven’t temps been static or dropping through at least 2010? Hmmmmm?
Putting the news out on Christmas eve really shows you what they are thinking.
Keep up the good fight people.
OT slightly – we seem to have a real La Nina starting, as I’ve been predicting for a while now. Also the south Atlantic is very cold – there could be an “Atlantic La Nina” if there is such a thing.
http://www.clivar.org/organization/vamos/Meetings/VPM11_present/We8_Grodsky.pdf
JIM CRIPWELL
Girma Orssengo’s simple statistical model based on historical HADCRUT3 predicted 0.351C for 2012. The actual hadcrut2gl to the end of November 2012 is 0.417. Of the various predictions his seemsl the closest to reality at this point in time anyway and is the only one that correctly shows a decline of temperatures in the near term . . Most others showed rapidly rising temperatures .His model predicts 0.326 for 2013. [ compare this with the o.57 C by the Met Office . Here are some other figures calculated from his model
2014 0.302 C
2015 0.280 C
2020 0.160 C[ 0.8 predicted by the Met Office]
2030 0.06 C
2100 0.63 C
LazyTeenager says:
January 9, 2013 at 2:15 am
—
Are you actually trying to claim that the fact that temperatures have risen over the last 30 years, proves that temperatures have also risen over the last 18?
gail combs
‘I would really love to hear an alternative meteorological theory as to why we are having a heat wave this year rather than it is because of increased CO2 in the atmosphere. I am sure that there is one as there was with these others’….
I think the positive AMO and negative PDO have a lot to do with this like the 1950’s.and before . Also see paper called Pacific and Atlantic Ocean influences on multidecadal drought frequency in the US by G.J.McCabe et al and paper called Key role of the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation in the 20th Century drought and wet periods over the plains states by Sumant Nigam et al.
Maybe. But take a look at this.
clivebest says: January 9, 2013 at 9:56 am
Michael writes :
If you look again at the Met Office link that you give for the the Central England Temperature record then you can see that the baseline choice is entirely arbitrary.
The full Central England Temperature from 1650 to 2012 can be seen here. The only trend observed in the data is a slow long term 0.03C/decade recovery from the Little Ice Age ! There is no sign whatsoever of AGW in UK temperature data.
===================================
Plus, there is no reason to suppose that the Central England Temperature record has been subject to the sort of adulteration that more modern records have been i.e., GISS, NOAA, NCDC, etc.
In other words we have better reason to rely on that record than we have of the others.
Here is an MP from the left wing Labour Party (UK).
The consensus is falling apart I think. As long as temperature continues to stall or even cool then it can only get worse.
I looked up my file again on who else predicted flat global temperatures or cooling global temperatures for the near term . Prof. Don Easterbrook, Prof Syun Akasofu, Dr Clive Best, Dr N. Scafetta , Vukcevic , Joe Bastardi and Joe d’Aleo all predicted cooling rather than unprecedented warming.. I think there is an article listing some 20-30 people who predicted cooling of some type for the next 2-3 decades
Here is a more complete list of various individuals who correctly predicted the coming cooling already several years ago. Agw scientists are only now coming to this realization
.
Ihttp://notrickszone.com/2010/12/28/global-cooling-consensus-is-heating-up-cooling-over-the-next-1-to-3-decades/
Will Nitschke,
Your Comments don’t make sense. The BOM had to introduce the new colours to their temperature maps to represent extreme temperatures we are experiencing this year. This is because of the extreme temperatures we are experiencing now.
They didn’t introduce it because of the temperatures experienced in the last two years.
When I was active in research, I used models to make predictions; these predictions could be tested essentially immediately. If I was wrong, my ideas had to be revised. With climate, perhaps predictions have to be made over some period of time – but this period must be short enough to be meaningful!
Using a model to predicting warming “this century” is useless, because everyone involved will be long dead before the prediction can be tested! There is no way to show that the model is right – or indeed any better than just rolling dice.
If the model in incapable of making a testable prediction for next year or the next five years, it is useless. It doesn’t matter how plausible the model is. Anyone remember the Lorenz Weather Model? It produces perfectly plausible predictions – they just happen to have nothing whatsoever to do with reality.
Lower up:
Will Nitschke wrote at January 9, 2013 at 4:08 am
and at January 9, 2013 at 12:36 pm you have replied
His comments make perfect sense and your reply is plain daft. The BOM adopting an altered colour scheme says nothing about the temperatures the schemes are intended to represent.
Your contributions of nonsense disrupted a previous thread. Please don’t try the same here.
Richard
Jim Cripwell at 6:10am
Sorry about the delay but I work on Aussie time.
I can sympathize with anyone who has to put up a short term prediction (even the Met Office) since the short term is swamped by short term “noise” cycles. There is a 3.75 year cycle which swings about 0.8 degrees C from peak to peak and the chance of finding a warming signal of 0.2 degrees C per decade ( or less!) in shorter than the 3.75 year cycle is, lets face it, impossible. As Girma (and others noted) there is also a 60 year oscillation (0.36 degrees C peak to peak) as well which also is, in fact, just “noise” on the long term trend as well. To see the long term trends you have to see through that as well. The important thing to note is a strong CO2 warming, if it exists, should displace the 130 year long term trend out the “Little Ice Age” – and it isn’t there (yet). For those interested the global anomaly temp data (Climate4you or link from Hockeyschtick) shows a clear 7.5 year cycle in the moving 20 month average which is two 3.75 year cycles – a “weak” one followed by a “strong” one – the strong one causing a dip in the moving average.
Cheers
Herkimer at 11:26am
I guess I’m looking for lines – not just predictions
The problem all these models based on Houghton’s physics have is 8 mistakes. 3 of them are so elementary as to be cringe-making.
1. They wrongly assume the IR emitted from the surface is the same as the Earth would emit as an isolated body in a vacuum and all of it can do thermodynamic work. This is justified by the biggest mass scientific delusion in History, to believe that an instrument used for 50 years, an IR pyrometer called a pyrgeometer, measures a real energy flow, not temperature.
No professional with post-grad physics and heat transfer knowledge accepts this. The bottom line is that the near black body GHG thermal IR from the atmosphere turns off most of the same wavelength IR from the surface. There can be no CO2-AGW or positive feedback.
2. Even if this IR were emitted, it could not be directly thermalised in the atmosphere. The IPCC was warned of this in 1993 when US physicist Will Happer resigned rather than lie for Gore.
3. If (1) and (2) weren’t enough, because Carl Sagan got the aerosol optical physics wrong, the final big lie by Hansen, that polluted cloud cooling exactly offsets present AGW, is untrue. In 2004, to get AR4, NASA switched the partially-correct physics of Twomey who warned that thicker clouds behave differently, with fake ‘surface reflection’ physics.
This ‘science’ has been based on fraud since 1999 (The Mann hockey stick).
Richardcourtney, I am starting to suspect that you are a bot. Your statement is daft as you say.
‘The BOM adopting an altered colour scheme says nothing about the temperatures the schemes are intended to represent.’
Sorry but that is exactly why the BOM introduced them as the previous colour scheme didn’t cater for the new extremes of temperature we are experiencing.
Reading your comment has disappointed me. I thought that you were a thinking person and would accept statements of fact for what they are. But it appears any statement of fact (like the colour scheme change) I make, you have to disagree with. Please do you credibility a favour and think about your response to see if it makes sense. Just contradicting me, makes you look foolish.
Lower up:
re your post at January 9, 2013 at 3:48 pm.
Saying the data must be different because it is plotted in a new colour scheme is at the same intellectual level as your comments in other WUWT threads.
If you think the data shows a significant change then quote the data which shows the change.
The BOM changed a colour scheme (i.e. updated the style) it uses to present plots to the public.
Despite your daft assertion – repeated in your post at January 9, 2013 at 3:48 pm – alteration to the colour scheme says NOTHING about the data presented by the plots.
I may or may not look foolish, but your contributions on several threads demonstrate beyond doubt that you are (deliberately?) foolish.
Richard
Richard in this case you are incorrect. BOM has not changed the colour scheme, it has added two new colours to represent possible temps not seen before. It remains to be seen if they will be needed, I believe one of the two new colours was abandoned almost immediately. No existing colours have been “changed”.
Sorry Richard, reading more carefully it appears “Lower Up” introduced that error.
Richard, take a deep breath and do a littLe research. Enforce calling me foolish. A quick search turns up this:
The Bureau of Meteorology’s interactive weather forecasting chart has added new colours – deep purple and pink – to extend its previous temperature range that had been capped at 50 degrees.
I will adept your apology.
Santer comments to Andy Revkin are at the NY Times Dot.earth blog (I’m merely providing for discussion, don’t shoot at this messenger ha ha):
Revkin quotes email from Ben Santer
Ben Santer has another comment to Andy Revkin which has been placed in the comments section at Dot Earth:
Revkin quotes email from Ben Santer
Maps are colored as a means of propaganda – to alarm the public. Scary bright red is used for normal warm temperatures.
Here is an example of the mendacious use of map colors [source]. Note that the temperatures are always the same.
Also keep in mind that we are discussing a [natural] warming trend of only 0.8ºC over the past 150 years. That is almost flat.
Skiphil quotes typical alarmist nonsense:
“A human-caused warming signal is embedded in the rich, year-to-year and decade-to-decade noise of natural internal climate variability.”
Wrong. There is no testable, verifiable “human-caused warming signal”. That is merely an assertion, not a verifiable fact.
The planet has been warming along the same long term rising trend line for hundreds of years. There is no “signal”, which would necessitate global warming accelerating as CO2 rises.
But that is not happening. The global warming trend is rising at the same ≈0.35ºC per century, with no acceleration. Therefore, the ≈40% rise in CO2 has had no measurable effect, and there is no human-caused “signal”. None. It just is not there.
Assertions are not science. Remember that when someone tries to tell you that global warming is accelerating. It is not. In fact, global warming has stopped for the past sixteen years. Which is why the BBC has had to climb down from its alarmist assertions.
Please don’t associate me with Santer’s comments…. as I said I was merely passing them along for discussion. I am very ‘skeptical’ about anything that comes from Santer’s crew, knowing some of his history in these matters….
D Boehm, maybe in some cases but the BOM here use a gentle yellowish for ‘normal warm’ temps. “Scary bright red” ( to borrow your hyperbole ) in the map is not really what I would call normal temps. Anyway that is beside the point, whatever colour they use it doesn’t change the temp and it is damn hot down here. All sorts of records are being broken by this weather event.
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/temp/index.jsp
Skiphil,
I didn’t intend to imply that the quote was yours. I was just commenting on the quote you posted. I’ve read enough of your comments to know that you’re no alarmist. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
• • •
Nick Kermode,
As I pointed out, they are the same map temperatures. The draft version used normal colors, but the “final” version [the version seen by the public] used bright, scary red for merely warm temperatures.
Finally, what you are experiencing is far from being unprecedented. It’s summer there, so it’s hot. Nothing unusual is occurring. Wait six months and you’ll be complaining about the how cold it is.
DBoehm, the temperatures in Oz are unprecedented that is the reason for the extra colours.
I see that you have snipped my posts. That is ok, but I suspect you are on the payroll of some anti AGW organisation and your job is to confuse the science of AGW, either outright lying about data or publishing half truths. The problem is people are experiencing climate change and your efforts are looking less and less credible with every temperature record broken.
I came to this site hoping to find evidence that AGW was wrong. I found the evidence was lacking. I expected the attemptS to shout me down with ridicule, mockery and out right abuse when I pointed out the errors, and I was truly surprised that it took you so long to snip me.
Still I have wizened up to how you mob operate (loved the attempt at showing the temperature is flat), and bad luck with your efforts to mis-inform. You’ll be finding it more and more difficult as time goes by.
D Boehm,
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/statements/scs43b.pdf
It is very easy to overestimate the importance of ones own opinion.
Lower up,
I see that you have posted dozens of comments. If you lost one it is not because of me. Whether you are inventing stories or complaining, it is just projection. BTW, I have never gotten a single comment approved by any of your alarmist pals, and I’ve tried dozens of times. So enough with your projection. Now, let’s get to the point. You say:
“…the temperatures in Oz are unprecedented that is the reason for the extra colours.”
Wrong. You provide nothing in the way of verification for that assertion. Surface records go back only a short time, but ice cores go back hundreds of thousands of years. Let’s just look at the recent Holocene.
The 2nd Law does not allow one local climate to remain cold for hundreds of years, while the rest of the planet warms substantially. The record I posted shows that the entire planet has been much warmer in the past than it is now. Thus, your assertion that current temperatures are “unprecedented” is provably wrong.
Your entire argument is based on your assertions. Scientific facts are missing. It is all religious True Belief on your part. Read up on the Null Hypothesis, and get educated. Nothing unprecedented is happening. That is a fact.
DBoehm, yes of course it has been hotter once, big deal, but BOM doesn’t report on temperatures back in the Holocene, it reports on current temperatures. This is another half truth on your behalf as you said the temperature of the earth has increased by 0.8 degrees in the last 150 years. This has lead to spikes in temperatures that are unprecedented in the last 150 years.
I have no ‘alarmist pals’, but I do have friends that are concerned about what is happening to the climate. I came here to get see if there was anything to worry about, and I have come away with the feeling there is something to be very worried about, you have not done enough to convince (and in fact have done the reverse).
I am disappointed that you have not had any of your posts approved on other site run by ‘alarmists’ as that does not help anyone. Do you mind letting me know what sites you have attempted to post on?
On the second law of physics you quote, I am afraid you have got that wrong to, the part most people miss is ‘in a closed system’, as in you cannot destroy or create energy in a closed system. Earth is not a closed system.
Lower pup:
You have no idea of “support” or why it is required. You are simply pretension, nothing more. You did not come to learn, but to spew AGW propaganda. You are baffled by healthy skepticism and that is your measure.
Lower up says:
“…yes of course it has been hotter once…”
No, it has been hotter countless times during the MWP, the RWP, the Holocene Optimum, the Minoan Optimum, etc. Current temperatures are on the cool side, and they are not moving.
Next, you opine: “…BOM doesn’t report on temperatures back in the Holocene, it reports on current temperatures.”
We are in the Holocene right now.
Next, you say:
“…another half truth on your behalf as you said the temperature of the earth has increased by 0.8 degrees in the last 150 years. This has lead to spikes in temperatures that are unprecedented in the last 150 years.”
Wrong again. Are you wrong about everything? Seems so. There is nothing unprecedented happening. It has all happened before, repeatedly, and to a much greater degree. Educate yourself on the Null Hypothesis, which has never been falsified.
Next:
“…I have come away with the feeling…”
Everything you believe in is based on your feelings. Fear is a feeling. Being alarmed is a feeling. But science doesn’t work that way. You will never be convinced that the natural global warming since the LIA has nothing measurable to do with human activity; a hallmark of True Believers.
Next:
The alarmist blogs I have commented on [and where my comments were never approved] include RealClimate, SkS, OpenMind, and Tamino [among others; can’t recall them all]. Keith Kloor’s Collide-a-scape is the only blog that has posted my comments.
Finally, you are arguing that one part of the planet at the same latitude can be several degrees warmer or colder than another, for hundreds of years? The 2nd Law doesn’t like that, and would correct it over time. However, that is not the point. The point is that numerous different ice core measurements in both hemispheres show the same warming and cooling during the Holocene. Those measurements show that current temperatures are not unusual or unprecedented. They are routine, normal, and natural.
For a rational perspective comparing current temperatures with those of the past, see here. Watch it a few times. You might learn something.
Randomly quoted Lower Pup…
“I have no ‘alarmist pals’, but I do have friends that are concerned about what is happening to the climate” Lower Pup.
I guarantee none of them would have give a toss before someone was trying to make any money off of them. The Roman warming was cooler that the Minoan warming, the Medieval warming was cooler than the previous period, and modern day is cooler than all of them. That is a long term cooling trend. Short team trends are a blink of an eye in an unpredictable climate system that has existed for 4.5 billion years.
“The problem is people are experiencing climate change and your efforts are looking less and less credible with every temperature record broken.” Lower Pup.
And climate change has only existed for a short term period? As for temp records being broken, I guess it’s only high temp records that are broken right?
“Still I have wizened up to how you mob operate (loved the attempt at showing the temperature is flat), and bad luck with your efforts to mis-inform. You’ll be finding it more and more difficult as time goes by.” Lower Pup
Mob? Hmmm, sounds like someone showing their colours. The record is flat. Maybe you should got talk to the NOAA, UKMET or CRU rather than take the word of someone who has the audacity to question the ‘official’ line and their projections because real world observations don’t match. As for finding it more difficult, I don’t think anyone will bother. Though I dare say someone will quite happily sell you some carbon credits. Do you mind if they are second hand?
DBoehm, my apologies, I thought the Holocene was a log time ago, but my point is still valid, the BOM is reporting on temperature now and how it compares to the recent past (ie when they started using the palette to describe temperature on a map). If the temperatures have been at these levels in the distant past really doesn’t matter because we are now locked into this current climate for food production and the good life we live.
Thanks for the sites. I will check the out and will look at what they have to say that AGW is trivial. Still think it is a shame that they tossed you off their sites, I don’t like getting only one side to a debate.
Checked the graph, now is the whole truth or is it only related to Greenland, as we can see at the moment, America can have winter storms, while the Arctic ice cap is reducing and Australia has extreme hot weather. What is important is the earths temperature as a whole. Does that graph show that?
The BBC has not been “forced” to admit anything.
It reports that the MET office has announced “that the average temperature is likely to rise by 0.43 C by 2017 – as opposed to an earlier forecast that suggested a warming of 0.54C.”
That is an increase of “only” 0.43 C instead of 0.54 C, but still an increase.
Furthermore;
“This would be only slightly higher that the record year of 1998 – in which the Pacific Ocean’s El Nino effect was thought to have added more warming.”
So only slightly higher and not as high as with the superceded forecast, but higher none the less.
The BBC interpretation of this is that “the global average temperature would have remained relatively static for about two decades” if you compare it to a single year, the exceptional el nino year of 1998.
Lower up says: January 9, 2013 at 7:16 pm
DBoehm, the temperatures in Oz are unprecedented that is the reason for the extra colours.
– – –
“Yesterday, the bureau’s forecast maps for Sunday and Monday showed a deep purple area over the South Australian outback.
However, those forecasts have been revised today, with forecast temperatures no longer hitting the purple range.”
So the extra colours have now been recanted.
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/2013-01-09/australias-heatwave-forecast-in-one-animated-map/1071774
Lower Up:
I remind of what I said to you; i.e.
If you think the data shows a significant change then quote the data which shows the change.
A change to the colour scheme used to present the data is NOT indication that the data shows a change.
Nick Kermode says at January 9, 2013 at 5:55 pm [with deletions by RSC to provide amendments stated by Nick Kermode at January 9, 2013 at 5:59 pm]
You have written at January 9, 2013 at 6:00 pm
Lower Up, you are a blithering idiot!
The extension of the colour scheme says NOTHING about how temperatures have changed. Indeed, the lack of need to use the extension suggests temperatures have NOT changed in a manner which required the extension.
And as garymount reports at January 10, 2013 at 12:24 am, the BOM has withdrawn a claim that the extension of the scale was required; see
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/2013-01-09/australias-heatwave-forecast-in-one-animated-map/1071774
Lower Up, I repeat what I said to you before,
If you think the data shows a significant change then quote the data which shows the change.
An unused extension to the colour scheme on a plot of the data is NOT indication that the data shows a change.
I will accept your withdrawal from WUWT where your ridiculous posts have already disrupted two threads.
Richard
DDP, people are taking money from my concerned friends now because of extreme weather events.
Here a few you can consider:
Australians had to pay a $500 flood levy last year to pay for flood damage in Queensland
My electricity bills have increased by 25% to cover infrastructure replacement due to bush fires, and to make existing infrastructure better at preventing bush fires and more fire resistant.
My insurance premiums have increased by 25%, and when I queried the insurance company they told me it was to cover the extra claims by flood and bushfire victims.
People who live in low areas or in high risk bush have had their insurance premiums increase by in some cases by 1,000 percent. Other people cannot get insurance as it is prohibitively expensive.
Numerous people have donated to various disaster appeals, and even if they didn’t donate they still ‘paid’ because other people’s donations were tax deductable.
Various governments had to spend tax money replacing infrastructure destroyed by disasters. This money would have been used to build new infrastructure which now won’t happen.
Food prices have increased (for example bananas became very expensive after a cyclon wiped out the entire crop)
Governments have been providing ‘drought aid’ to farmers, some for over a decade when Australia experienced 13 years of drought.
We have also introduced a nationwide carbon price so we are now paying either way for climate change. No wonder people are worried it is starting to effect them personally.
[snip – “lower up” been banned for repeated violation of site policy (multiple screen names), don’t respond further – Anthony]
Philip Shehan says:
January 9, 2013 at 10:56 pm
“The BBC has not been “forced” to admit anything.
It reports that the MET office has announced “that the average temperature is likely to rise by 0.43 C by 2017 – as opposed to an earlier forecast that suggested a warming of 0.54C.”
That is an increase of “only” 0.43 C instead of 0.54 C, but still an increase.”
Wrong. This is not what the MET office has announced.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/jan/09/global-warming-met-office-paused?commentpage=4#block-50ed7557b5798da9a21a2a4f
If you look in the “article” at what is posted at 1.49pm GMT:
“1.49pm GMT
Richard Betts, head of the climate impacts strategic area at the Met Office Hadley Centre, has posted a comment below to help clear up any possible confusion caused by the BBC article I quoted at the beginning of this Eco Audit:
Please note that, as @bbcbias correctly states, the 0.43C warming is relative to 1971-2000, *not* this year. Also, the 0.43C is the average over 2013 – 2017.”
What the MET office has actually announced is that they are forecasting that the average of temperatures from 2013 – 2017 will be 0.43C higher than the 1971-2000 baseline.
Whereas, as you will note from the graphs posted at 11:19am GMT, the 1998 El Nino year is 0.4C higher than this same baseline.
So what they are predicting is that temperatures over the 2013 – 2017 period will be 0.03C higher than the temperature in 1998, which is the same thing as saying “0.43C higher than the 1971-2000 baseline”.
They are certainly NOT predicting that “the temperature will rise by 0.43C by 2017” FROM NOW, as that would imply a trend of approximately 1C per decade, which is 5 times higher than any previously observed trend. The BBC got it wrong. Hope that clears it up for you.
Graham W says:
January 10, 2013 at 5:22 am
the 1998 El Nino year is 0.4C higher than this same baseline.
So what they are predicting is that temperatures over the 2013 – 2017 period will be 0.03C higher than the temperature in 1998, which is the same thing as saying “0.43C higher than the 1971-2000 baseline
I am still confused. Are they talking about Hadcrut3 or Hadcrut4? And neither shows the 1998 El Nino as being 0.4. Note the bolded parts below.
With the Hadcrut3 anomaly for November at 0.480, the average for the first eleven months of the year is (0.217 + 0.194 + 0.305 + 0.481 + 0.473 + 0.477 + 0.445 + 0.512+ 0.514 + 0.491 + 0.480)/11 = 0.417. This would rank 9th if it stayed this way. 1998 was the warmest at 0.548. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in February of 1998 when it reached 0.756. One has to back to the 1940s to find the previous time that a Hadcrut3 record was not beaten in 10 years or less. The anomaly in 2011 was 0.340 and it will come in 13th.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt
With the Hadcrut4 anomaly for November at 0.512, the average for the first eleven months of the year is (0.288 + 0.208 + 0.339 + 0.525 + 0.531 + 0.506 + 0.470 + 0.532 + 0.515 + 0.524 + 0.512)/11 = 0.45. This would rank 9th if it stayed this way. 2010 was the warmest at 0.54. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in January of 2007 when it reached 0.818. The anomaly in 2011 was 0.399 and it will come in 13th. 1998 was third at 0.523.1998 came in third at 0.523.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/data/current/time_series/HadCRUT.4.1.1.0.annual_ns_avg.txt
I really must defend the Met. Office against these scurrilous attacks regarding their use of apparent standstill.
Everyone is saying they have looked at the data and the standstill is real.
I put it to you that to you it is apparent that there is a real standstill; therefore, the standstill is apparent to you, therefore it is an apparent standstill, QED!
I rest my case. 😛
DaveE.
@Werner Brozek: It’s not terribly clear, but it seems like the 0.4C figure for 1998 is specific to this forecast. See the post at 12.41pm GMT in the Guardian blog (main article text not comments) I linked to with my last post. Sorry I’m not sure it answers your question very well though. I will have to look into it more.
Are temperature variances on other planets due to alien’s CO2 emissions?
[snip. Multiple sock puppetry violations. Permanently banned. — mod.]
[snip]
[snip. This commenter is banned. — mod.]
Here you go, a more useful link!
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-decadal/long-range/decadal-fc
According to Figure 1, the data is from “the Hadley Centre, GISS and NCDC”. So…pretty vague.
from my stats I worked out that we fall 0.3 degrees K in the next 8 years.
that means by 2020 we will be on the zero line.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/#comment-215
such cooling could become a bit of a problem here and there….
Graham W says:
January 10, 2013 at 1:11 pm
Here you go, a more useful link!
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-decadal/long-range/decadal-fc
According to Figure 1, the data is from “the Hadley Centre, GISS and NCDC”. So…pretty vague.
Thank you very much! Unless someone can convince me otherwise, I am becoming increasingly convinced someone is trying to hide something. They say:
“The warmest year in the 160-year Met Office Hadley Centre global temperature record in 1998, with a temperature of 0.40°C above long-term average.” So that means they are talking about Hadcrut3 and not Hadcrut4. I am aware of three different versions of Hadcrut3. They are listed below along with the 1998 anomaly for each. The range is from 0.52 to 0.548. All of these are above 0.40. Can someone please tell me what I am missing?
This version has 1998 at 0.529 and 2010 at 0.470.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3vgl.txt
This version has 1998 at 0.548 and 2010 at 0.478.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt
This version has 1998 at 0.52 and 2010 at 0.50.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2012/hadcrut-updates
By the way, Hadsst2 for 1998 was 0.451.
Werner,
The answer is that they keep changing their baseline average used for the calculation of temperature anomalies !
– The new forecast uses a baseline of 1971 – 2000.
– The published Hadcrut3/4 datasets all use a baseline of 1961-1990.
This would seemingly all be designed to confuse us !
PS: their model comparisons often then use a baseline value of (average(1961-1990) -0.4) as an arbitrary reference point meant to represent pre-industrial temperatures .
“Graham W says:
January 10, 2013 at 5:22 am
Philip Shehan says:
January 9, 2013 at 10:56 pm
“The BBC has not been “forced” to admit anything.
It reports that the MET office has announced “that the average temperature is likely to rise by 0.43 C by 2017 – as opposed to an earlier forecast that suggested a warming of 0.54C.”
That is an increase of “only” 0.43 C instead of 0.54 C, but still an increase.”
Wrong. This is not what the MET office has announced.”
Thank you. You agree I was commenting on the BBC’s interpretation of the Met office statement and that its interpretation is wrong.
I was aware that they were refering to a baseline figure based on an average. I did not assume, nor did I assert that it was from “now”. It clearly could not be as a 0.4c increase in 4 years would be a huge acceleration compared to the warming of about 0.9 C over the preeceding century.
My analysis stands on that basis. Note that in my post I also disagree with “The BBC interpretation of this is that “the global average temperature would have remained relatively static for about two decades” noting this interpretation relies on camparison “to a single year, the exceptional el nino year of 1998.”
Shehan says:
“That is an increase of ‘only’ 0.43 C instead of 0.54 C, but still an increase.”
No, it is not an “increrase”. Note that Shehan is repeating the Met’s prediction, as if it were reality. It is not. There has been no “increase”. They are speculating, and putting a value of exactly 43 hundreths of a degree on their prediction. As if.
Looking at this article’s title, we see: BBC forced to admit global warming ‘static’
Static = no global warming. That is reality.
Philip Shehan says:
January 10, 2013 at 6:45 pm
Note that in my post I also disagree with “The BBC interpretation of this is that “the global average temperature would have remained relatively static for about two decades” noting this interpretation relies on camparison “to a single year, the exceptional el nino year of 1998.”
That partly depends on how precisely you define “about two decades”. For example, see the flat slope below since May, 2000. It has nothing to do with 1998. And if the trend continues to 2017, you have 17 years which could be arguably “about two decades”.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2000.3/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2000.3/trend
D.Boehm Stealy, I am commenting on the BBC’s interpretation of the data. That is not an endorsement, although you again appeal to its authority yourself at the end. What else is meant by the sentence “BBC forced to admit global warming ‘static’” and running a thread on it if the premise is not that the BBC is correct. It should be headed “BBC claims… if you wish to remain impartial on whether the clainms are true.
On the other thread you failed to understand the meaning “for the sake of argument” and then proclaim that I finally agree with your viewpoint. I don’t, and you clearly do not understand what that caveat means.
Your argument there was about a post of mine that has not yet appeared. (You should really explain how you know these things. People have suggested you are also a moderator here.)
@Philip Shehan: Perhaps I was not specific enough in my earlier comment. I was only commenting that the opening paragraphs of the BBC’s report were incorrect, and that you had quoted it without noting that it was incorrect yourself. I was not commenting at all on anything else the report had to say. Fortunately for us all, they have now corrected their mistake themselves:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20947224
Note the revised paragraph at the beginning, and the comment at the bottom of the article: “Update 10 January 2013: The second paragraph of this report has been changed to clarify that the Met Office forecast refers to a long-term average.”
Something from Carbon Brief that may be of interest to some:
“A sentence in the Met Office’s revised global temperature forecast reads “The warmest year in the 160-year Met Office Hadley Centre global temperature record in 1998, with a temperature of 0.40°C above long-term average”. This was quoted by several newspapers.
We queried this with the Met Office, as according to a separate Met Office statement released in December last year, the latest HadCrut4 temperature dataset puts 2010 as the warmest year, followed by 2005, then 1998.
The Met Office told us that the 0.40 degrees figure is “based on a 12-month period which isn’t synchronised with the calendar year – in which case 1998 is the warmest on record”. But they do allow that this isn’t particularly clear, and the reference is apparently going to be updated to be in line with the HadCRUT4 records.
It’s worth noting that the temperature averages in the 2013 Met Office annual forecast and the figures in the revised decadal forecast are comparisons with different long term averages (1961 to 1990 and 1971 to 2000, respectively) – which adds an extra level of complication to comparisons.”
Looks like the UK media is now breaking ranks regarding global warming. We have already had the Daily Mail and Telegraph. The Sun and Express below are daily national papers.
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/369564/Surprise-Surprise-Global-warming-has-stalled-admits-Met-Office
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/4735928/Worlds-cooler-than-we-thoughtand-Chinese-aerosols-stop-global-warming.html
The longer the stall continues the worse it will get. It was only a matter of time.
Clivebest.
You are correct that the selection of years to serve as a baseline data is arbitrary. It is confusing if people change their definitions. Graham W informs me that they have ammended their opening paragraph to stress their figures are relative to a baseline average (1971 -2000). Not before time. Graham notes that I did not say in my post that I thought the opening paragraphs were incorrect. True but I was not actually commenting on whether I though the figures themselves correct or incorrect, only their interpretation of the figures, accepted at face value. What he means is that I did not indicate that I understood that the figures were not relative to now.
Guilty as charged but the point is that what is being discussed in the BBC’s item is the relative position of data points to their baseline, so knowledge of how they have determined their breferred baseline is not really necessary.
The analysis of the relative figures is as valid (or indeed invalid) with all the temperatures readjusted to be relative to “now” or their value for the 1998 el nino year, had they given that figure which unfortunately they don’t other than to say the 0.43 C figure (relative to 1971-2000) is “only slightly higher that the record year of 1998”
With that established i don’t think there is any disagreement between Graham and myself.
Again I am only discussing the numbers given by the met taken at face value, so contrary to D. Boehm Stealy assertion an increase of 0.43 rather than 0.53 is still an increase. He also complains that their prediction is a mere 43 hundredths of a degree .
He would be absolutely horrified if the arbitrary baseline was taken to be the 1998 el nino year (for the sake of argument lets assume that “only slightly higher” means 0.40C) This would make the numbers 0.03 and 0.13.
Now Stealy hates it when I agree with him, but he is correct to question the usefulness of the numbers.The quoted figures are actually be 0.43 in the range 0.28-0.59, compared to 0.54 in the range of 0.36 to 0.72. In other words the ranges overlap to a large degree.
OOPs. Graham says that according to the Met, the 1998 el nino year is 0.40 C above their average. So “for the sake of argument can be stricken from my above post.
It looks that some of the bloggers do not read the earlier posts on this track. I already posted the fact that the Met Office uses different base periods for different forecasts [ see January 8 post 2:22 am] which confuses all the figures coming form the Met Office. In any case i think regardless of which index or base period they use , the trend of their forecast seems to be wrong still as they use faulty models with faulty assumptions leading to too high temperature forecasts. Experimental forecasts should not be paraded in the public media as solid science when they have continuously been shown by their own data to be wrong. We have seen that their annual and decadal forecasts have been too high for some time now. Why would any one believe that their long range forecast of a rise of 4C by 2060 is any better. It actually looks even more wrong than the annual or decadal forecast.
Shehan says:
“…contrary to D. Boehm Stealy assertion an increase of 0.43 rather than 0.53 is still an increase.”
I asserted nothing. Rather, Shehan believes that the Met’s prediction is reality. I have pointed this out before, but Shehan is dense: the putative increase he cited is a prediction. It has no connection to reality. Further, the Met’s prediction is inaccurate to within hundreths of a degree. As if the Met could predict to within ± 1ºC. They are consistently wrong, and even get the sign wrong.
No one in his right mind would quote a prediction as being a real increase in the current debate. People can and do predict anything. But the Met’s predictions in particular are completely inaccurate. For someone to use a wild-eyed prediction as support for their argument shows how desperate they are to convince people of their belief in ‘accelerating global warming’, which is not, and has not, happened since the end of the LIA. Not only is there no acceleration in the long term warming trend, but global warming has now stalled — as even the Met Office now admits.
Jimbo
Thanks for the additional news clippings from Uk. The news seems to be ignored by North American media.
In the article by Express.co.uk, the Met Office chief scientist Julia Slingo said:
“This forecast does not alter long-term climate change.
“This and previous forecasts tell us that the Earth will continue to be in a very warm state compared to, say, the Sixties.
“There’s nothing in these forecasts that undermines the long-term climate change ¬scenario.”
This is pure nonsense and coming from their chief scientist is even more worrisome . If there has been no warming for 2 decades in a row now by 2017, and there is every indication that this may continue for decades more , how on earth is the global temperature going to rise by 4C by 2060. It would require the average decadal temperature to rise by some 0.83 C every decade for the next 4 decades
Their entire long range projection is completely undermined by what has happened over the last 2 decades The center piece of their science has been shown to be completely wrong . Man generated greenhouse gases do not raise global temperatures in any significant way .She is the same scientist who on December 21.2010, in the middle of 2010/2011 UK very severe winter claimed to the Independent that and I quote “ the key message is that global warming continues “
There is another cold spell about to hit UK shortly
This comment is about the media and Met Office handling of the controversy so far. If I may cross-post with what I said at Bishop Hill, some reactions from the Met Office so far are quite interesting. BBC’s Roger Harribin has a tweet which says some anonymous ‘@metoffice insider’ termed the Dec. 24 release ‘naive’ and ‘bloody stupid.’ [yes, inconvenient to the party line, but what happened to the vaunted ‘public right to know’]
I must call attention to Messenger’s recall of (head of Met Office) Julia Slingo’s comments to the Feedback show at 4:30 (over on the BH “Rumbling On” thread). This does confirm that she is responding directly to at least some media inquiry and that she sounds “very cross” about the matter …. so it’s at least plausible to think that Harrabin may be channeling her or someone close to her. Speculation, yes, but why does that aspect matter? Because we should want to know why it is regarded as such a mistake to have published the (half) decadal forecast on Dec. 24, experimental or not. Why was this act described as so ‘innocent’** and ‘naive’ and ‘bloody stupid’??
Why should the public NOT be allowed to know about this research? Whose call is it whether such research is provided to the public? Is it a state secret when there are uncertainties or new projections or model outputs that differ from previous public pronouncements? Is this a scientific organization or a PR organization? etc. So many questions, not enough answers.
My opinion of the forecast is that, since their 90% confidence range includes all values between 0.28 C and 0.59 C, and since according to their graph (Figure 1 in the link I posted previously) this covers the possibility of temperatures declining, remaining stable, and rising over the next four years – that this is not really a forecast at all, certainly not a very useful one.
I think if you look at the graph, at the thick blue line representing their forecast, and the thin blue lines representing the 90% confidence range – the BBC’s statement regarding temperatures remaining static over 20 years is entirely dependent on what happens next (sorry if this is stating the obvious but bear with me). If temperatures end up in the lower part of the range (or outside of it) then actually you could conclude that temperatures had dropped over the 20 years rather than remaining static. If temperatures end up in the higher part of the range (or outside of it) then you could conclude that temperatures had risen over the 20 years rather than remaining static. If temperatures follow the thick blue line then…do you conclude that the temperatures have remained static? Hard to say, because of the variation.
Essentially you then need more data to decide, and then more data…and so on. This is the problem really – you can’t use statistics to “prove” to a degree of confidence the existence of a zero trend. You can only say that results are “statistically indistinguishable from zero” at which point you will be told by some that this analysis is not valid because of the noise and uncertainty in the data, and you in fact need x number of years before you can claim that this is correct (the value of x seemingly increasing as the years go by!). The problem seems to be at what point can you accept the data suggests the trend is ‘flat’…is it in fact possible for temperatures to be flat? Surely they are always rising or falling to different degrees.
Either way the next few years are certainly going to be interesting. It’s certainly also an interesting change to see the mainstream media even contemplating the idea of a pause in global warming. It’s not been so widely reported or discussed in these channels before I think it’s fair to say. I think we can conclude that whatever your opinion on the issues at hand, there is a general growing acceptance even in the MSM that the rate of global warming has slowed over this millennium. Many will not go so far as to say “paused” of course, but even The Guardian would agree with “slowed”, it seems, from the other link I posted further back.
Thank you Clive!
– The new forecast uses a baseline of 1971 – 2000.
– The published Hadcrut3/4 datasets all use a baseline of 1961-1990.
This would seemingly all be designed to confuse us !
Then how are we supposed to easily see if they are on track with their forecasts?
Presently, Hadcrut4 says 1998 was at 0.523. Yet they do not seem to be even using this value since the following is from:
Graham W says:
January 11, 2013 at 5:20 am
The Met Office told us that the 0.40 degrees figure is “based on a 12-month period which isn’t synchronised with the calendar year – in which case 1998 is the warmest on record”.
Here is what I calculated quite a while ago which agrees with the above.
As we are aware, Hadcrut4 has replaced 1998 as the hottest year with 2005 and 2010 being warmer. The average anomalies for these three years are as follows according to the woodfortrees numbers: 0.523, 0.535 and 0.5375 respectively. However when one digs a bit deeper, an interesting fact emerges. The hottest consecutive 12 month period is still from the previous century. The hottest 12 month period around 1998 is from September 1, 1997 to August 31, 1998. Here, the anomaly according to Hadcrut4 is 0.5675. 2005 is not changed by adding or subtracting months. However for the period around 2010, the hottest 12 month period is from August 1, 2009 to July 31, 2010. And for this period, the average anomaly is 0.565, which is 0.0025 below the 1998 value. Of course I am not going to suggest any significance to this, just like there is no significance to 2010 being 0.0145 warmer than 1998 with the error bar being about 0.1. But it is something to keep in mind in case someone comments that 2010 was the warmest year due to the “fluke” of how our calendar is constructed.
You can also see it here that 1998 was warmer by a line width:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1980/mean:12
Now 0.5675 – 0.43 = 0.1375. So to answer my own question above, if I want to know how each month compares to their prediction, I have to subtract 0.1375 from their latest anomaly and see if this is below 0.43. Is that correct?
So assuming this is correct, the average anomaly through the first 11 months of 2012 on Hadcrut4 is 0.448. Subtracting 0.1375 gives 0.3105. Since this is way below 0.43, 2012 is way below their prediction for future years. On what basis, other than their models, do they expect a sudden turnaround?
herkimer says:
January 11, 2013 at 7:39 am
In any case i think regardless of which index or base period they use , the trend of their forecast seems to be wrong still as they use faulty models with faulty assumptions leading to too high temperature forecasts.
That’s for sure!
Update (h/t Alex Cull at Bishop Hill)
Julia Slingo, head honcho at the UK’s Met Office, regrets that the model forecast slipped out lacking the ‘appropriate messaging’ around it…. This transcript on the BBC is well worth a read:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20130111_fb
Graham W:
In your thoughtful post at January 11, 2013 at 11:56 am you rightly say
Yes, and that is why one discusses whether the trend is discernibly positive or negative at a stated confidence.
In principle, an observation can have any confidence. But a science defines the confidence which an observation is required to possess for that observation to be accepted as valid.
Climate science uses 95% confidence (i.e. 2-sigma confidence). More rigorous disciplines use 99% confidence. But climate science has decided by ‘custom and practice’ that climate trends need to be observed with 95% confidence for them to be valid.
So, in climate science, if a trend is different from zero at 95% confidence then it is a valid observation that the trend is either positive or negative. But if a trend is NOT different from zero at 95% confidence then it is a valid observation that the trend is indistinguishable from zero.
In other words, if a global temperature trend cannot be discerned to be different from zero at 95% confidence then it is a valid observation that no global warming or global cooling can be discerned over the time period of the analysed trend.
There has been no global warming or global cooling discernible at 95% confidence for ~16 years.
This is important because in 2008 NOAA reported that climate models “rule out” a period of no global warming discernible at 95% confidence for ~16 years. Hence, the recent global temperature data falsify the climate models.
Richard
D Böehm Stealey says:
January 11, 2013 at 9:39 am
Shehan says:
“…contrary to D. Boehm Stealy assertion an increase of 0.43 rather than 0.53 is still an increase.”
My apologies. That should have read “…contrary to D. Boehm Stealy’s assertion, an increase of 0.43 rather than 0.53 is still an increase.”
My misrepresentation of your position was entirely unintentional and clearly counter to the thrust of my argument. I apologise to all readers for my frequent sloppiness in failing to correct typos and edits before hitting the submit button. Will try to do better.
That said, Stealy’s complete inability to understand that commenting on results implies neither acceptance nor rejection of the results is… I was going to type “astonishing” but using that word to describe his arguments is becoming a habit.
The full (corrected) sentence reads:
“Again I am only discussing the numbers given by the met taken at face value, so contrary to D. Boehm Stealy’s assertion, an increase of 0.43 rather than 0.53 is still an increase.”
Then there are these comments of mine:
“D.Boehm Stealy, I am commenting on the BBC’s interpretation of the data. That is not an endorsement, [of the data itself]…”
And this:
“On the other thread you failed to understand the meaning “for the sake of argument” and then proclaim that I finally agree with your viewpoint. I don’t, and you clearly do not understand what that caveat means. Your argument there was about a post of mine that has not yet appeared. (You should really explain how you know these things. People have suggested you are also a moderator here.)”
(To clivebest) “I was not actually commenting on whether I though[t] the figures themselves correct or incorrect, only their interpretation of the figures, accepted at face value.”
Astonishing.
richardscourtney says:
January 11, 2013 at 3:05 pm
There has been no global warming or global cooling discernible at 95% confidence for ~16 years.
For this analysis, data was retrieved from SkepticalScience.com .
For RSS the warming is NOT significant for 23 years.
For RSS: +0.130 +/-0.136 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1990
For UAH, the warming is NOT significant for 19 years.
For UAH: 0.143 +/- 0.173 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
For Hacrut3, the warming is NOT significant for 19 years.
For Hadcrut3: 0.098 +/- 0.113 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
For Hacrut4, the warming is NOT significant for 18 years.
For Hadcrut4: 0.098 +/- 0.111 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995
For GISS, the warming is NOT significant for 17 years.
For GISS: 0.113 +/- 0.122 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1996
Werner Brozek says:
January 10, 2013 at 8:59 pm…
Sorry Werner. Meant to get back to you but got tied up discussing other matters.
I agree that the term “about two decades” is too flexible. But presenting data sets defined by tenths of a degree is way too specific. Within the two decades since 1993 you can produce varying trends.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1993/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2000.3/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1993/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1996/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1999/trend.
Trends with start points differing by as little as 3 years can produce distinguishable results.
The trend from your start point of 2000.3, (the green line) is almost indistinguishable from the trend from 1998 (purple line). Yet the line beginning between those values (1999) is quite different, but similar to the line beginning 3 years earlier (1996).
In other words a period of two decades or less is too short for a selected subset within that period to be taken as representative even of that period, let alone the long term record, say from 1880.
D.Boehm has berated me incessantly for not accepting his proposition that the last 16 years of that long term record (and numerous other subsets he selects) is representative of the entire trend since 1880.
When I ask him (this is the fourth or fifth time now) why the 16 year trend from 1940 to 1956, or indeed any other subset with a negative slope, cannot be used to claim that the global temperature has been falling, he says that I am not smart enough to trap him into answering.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/to:2010/trend/offset/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/to:1956/trend
Astonishing.
@richardscourtney: Thanks for the clear explanation. That’s similar to how I understood it but it’s helped to clear up a few things. The trouble I have in communicating these ideas to some people, is that they refuse to accept the idea that the x number of years flat trend, or rather the x number of years of trend that is statistically indistinguishable from zero, means anything. More specifically, they will argue that because the global warming trend we’re trying to detect is so small (typically we’re talking about 0.1 – 0.2 of a degree C rise over a decade, or less more recently) and because the noise in the data is so great, that x years cannot be enough to time to “see” the trend emerge. In fact, they argue, you need at least y number of years for the trend to be statistically valid.
This is one of the points I was making in my last comment. They will always argue, if I said for instance x=16 years, that for the result to be meaningful I would instead need y=20, or 24, or 30 years to be able to say that the trend is truly “at zero”. This seems to me to be a poor argument on their part, because the requirement of y number of years is surely only conditional to the statistical validation of a positive or negative trend and NOT for the statistical “rejection” of a trend. In other words you surely don’t need 20 or 24 years, or indeed any specific number of years, to say that a trend is statistically indistinguishable from zero. This could be true of a trend that is over one year or over a hundred years, if no trend can be shown at 95% confidence over that time period.
Why then, do they refuse to accept the significance of the trend being statistically no different to zero? They will simply say, for example “you must look at periods of 30 years”…and you can argue all you like that over the last 30 years, for the first half of that time temperatures were rising comparatively rapidly, then in the second half of the 30 years this trend seems to have slowed or stalled…and they will simply say “statistically speaking, over the 30 years as a whole, which is a more valid amount of time to use, the trend is positive and is this amount, ergo the world steadily warms”.
This is what I find frustrating. Clearly there exists some kind of disconnect in their mind between actually looking at the data, and seeing what it is doing, to relying solely on statistical analysis which ignores short term changes in the trend. Those changes are surely still important and worthy of investigation regardless, but they say they are not significant.
Shehan, quit being such a crybaby. My central point is, and always has been, that you are flat wrong to claim that global warming is accelerating. It is not accelerating. In fact, global warming has stalled. Correcting your ‘acceleration’ misinformation is my only concern.
Skiphill
Thanks for posting the transcript of the Julia Slingo comments with respect to their new forecast. She maintains that their forecast is “experimental and work in progress”. I agree that experimental to me means PROBATIONARY, TRIAL AND ERROR or PRELIMINARY. If that is the case why is all this agw science and their associated decadal and long term forecasts being sold to the public as SOLID SCIENCE with a 90% confidence level. . There is a real disconnect here to the public. Billions of world dollars are being urged to be spent based on science that is barely exploratory and which is proving to be so wrong year after year that it should be reclassified as CONCEPTUAL only and all funding for this work by the public should be halted for all implementation work until such time that the science is truly proven in actual field tests and is properly worthy of refunding. That point may be decade or two away still in my opinion.
From the AGW bombshell thread:
Philip Shehan says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
January 11, 2013 at 6:00 pm
D. Boehm is commenting on anything but the content of my 2.30 post, and it is easy to understand why. He is a consummate ducker and diver…
To quote further from that post:
‘I agree that that the correlation, or model if you prefer, explains nothing about the last 15 years or anything prior, in the sense D. Boehm enunciates:
“Layman is correct when he says that we can’t really tell anything from the past 15 years from that model. As I have repeatedly pointed out, the only way to see if global temperatures are accelerating is by using a long term trend chart, based on verifiable data.” Examination of the last fifteen years of the data set, or prior to 1880 cannot substitute for an examination of the entire data set from 1880-2007.“
[This is a ‘Gotcha’ as Boehm completely reversing himself having interminably berated me for making exactly this point. He insisted over and over again that the last 15 years could substitute for that entire set. Astonishing.]
Philip writes:
Lets look at the entire data set:
Lets also assume an AGW forcing term S=ln(C/C0) giving approximately: DT = 2*Ln(C/C0) i.e. today C=400ppm C0=280pmm.
If you fit now the HadCrut3(4) global temperature data from 1850 to 2011 to a logarithmic dependence on CO2 levels, you observe a clear 60 year oscillation and a smaller 11 year oscillation present in the data. see analysis here. The 60 year cycle was responsible for 2 cooling periods 1880 – 1910 and 1940-1970. This indeed seems to be superimposed on a gradual warming due to increasing CO2 DT=2.5Ln(C/C0). So AGW is “true” but it is much more benign than IPCC would have you believe.
The rapid warming from 1970-2000 which generated the IPCC hype was mostly caused by the upturn in this oscillation. We have now entered a downturn (natural cooling) period which will last until 2030. The net result will be that globally temperatures will remain static until 2030. Assuming that CO2 levels continue rising until the end of the century, we can expect a further rise of ~0.5 C between 2030 and 2060, followed by another stalling on temperatures until 2100. So in total a rise of about 1.5C – no big deal.
What is the cause of this oscillation? One theory is that a resonance of Jupiter and Saturn’s orbit around the sun induces both tidal effects and a shift in the solar barycentre (Scaffetti). Another proposal is that it is caused by changes to the thermohaline circulation (AMD oscillation) in the Atlantic.
The fact is that all IPCC GCM models were tuned to the observed rapid rise between 1950 to 2000 on the assumption that the only driver of climate was CO2 enhanced by positive water feedback. Temperatures have now stalled for about 17 years, and as a result their predictions are proving to have been over-exaggerated. Hence why the Met Office has downgraded its prediction.
Conclusion: It is not worth dismantling western civilization in order to save ~0.5 degree rise in temperatures. There are about 80 years to develop nuclear fusion – the only realistic alternative to fossil fuels. Unfortunately the UK spends 25million on Nuclear Fusion research, 200 million on the MET Office and 8 billion subsidizing daft wind farms. Biofuel is even more daft. The UK hit “peak Wood” crisis in the 16th century !
I see that Shehan is still being a thin-skinned crybaby. Good. I like the amusement. Someone please hand him a hanky.☺
My one and only point is that Shehan is wrong when he falsely asserts that global warming is accelerating. It is not. Shehan cannot credibly refute the temperature record, so he cries and rants. That’s OK. We know the truth about global warming.
Global warming is not only NOT accelerating, it has stalled — as everyone on both sides of the debate except Shehan now acknowledges.
Philip Shehan says:
January 11, 2013 at 4:35 pm
Temperatures go up and down like a yo-yo, whether from 1940 to 1956 or many other times. The sun also goes up and down like a yo-yo with the sunspot cycles. However CO2 went up slowly at the start of the century and it went up faster after about 1945, but temperatures were all over the place going up and down and no where. Perhaps it is the sun that is the major driver and not CO2?
The trend from your start point of 2000.3, (the green line) is almost indistinguishable from the trend from 1998 (purple line).
It sounds like the La Nina in 1999 balanced out the 1998 El Nino. Then what is wrong with starting a slope in 1997?
Graham W:
In your post at January 11, 2013 at 4:43 pm you say to me
YES! “This could be true of a trend that is over one year or over a hundred years, if no trend can be shown at 95% confidence over that time period.”
That is the crucial and important point.
If something is too small for it to be detected then it is not a cause for concern because it has no effects (observation of its effects would be its detection). And discernment from ‘noise’ is defined as needing 95% confidence for an observation to be valid.
1.
An inability to discern warming or cooling over one year is of no concern.
2.
Observed global warming of 0.8deg.C over one century is of no concern.
3.
Possible future global warming of more than 2.0 deg.C over the next century may be of concern.
4.
Global warming of 0.2 deg. C over a decade can be observed if it happens.
5.
An inability to discern warming or cooling over the most recent (at least) 16 years indicates that possible global warming of more than 2.0 deg.C over the next century is very improbable so is of no concern.
Idiots pretend that something which is too small to be detected is a real and present danger (e.g. see the posts by Philip Shehan in this thread).
Richard
Thanks Richard. Your responses and particularly points 1 – 5 have made everything crystal clear for me now. This has been a very useful conversation for me anyway, I’m sure everybody else already “got” everything in the first place, but for me it’s been very illuminating.
Thanks all, a very useful and informative website and a pleasant place to debate.
clivebest:
I do not disagree with much of what you write. But as I pointed out in my post to Werner it is possible to overinterpret the data by going into too fine a detail.
The central issue I am interested in (as discussed in the “AGW Bombshell?” thread is the APPEARANCE (Don’t mean to shout. How do you do italics or bold on this site anyway?) of the temperature record from 1880 to 2007. Specifically whether or not a linear or nonlinear curve best fits the graphical presentation of the entire temperature data set
This does not require a detailed examination of all the factors including solar cycles, aerosols, particulates, greenhouse gas concentrations el nino and la nina events etc contributing to the appearance of the final temperature graph. Nor does it require a theoretical or cause and effect explanation for the curve function, linear or otherwise, chosen to fit the data. (There is no reason to assume a priori that a linear fit, any more than a nonlinear function describes the underlying physical reality of the temperature data. Linear fits are easy to do and given the noise levels of data sets of a century or a few decades or less they give an acceptable quick and dirty visual summary of the trend, so we all use them.)
In my post to Werner I argue and present links to graphs which indeed show that short term linear fits to 15 or 10 year sections of the long term temperature data can go every which way (like a yo -yo as he says in his reply) and are therefore not a good guide to the appearance of a fit covering the whole data set.
And Werner, in response to your question:
It sounds like the La Nina in 1999 balanced out the 1998 El Nino. Then what is wrong with starting a slope in 1997?
Absolutely nothing. Your explanation about the la nina 1999 event balancing out the el nino of 1998 is probably correct, and is precisely why you need to look at the long term where such events balance out as much as possible. Starting with 1997 would just be another short term section indicating nothing about the whole data set. I can add it to my earlier plot. As 1997 also includes the southern hemisphere el nino summer of 1997-98, the linear fits are unsurprisingly very similar:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1993/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2000.3/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1993/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1996/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1999/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997/trend
Werner Brozek,
Isn’t it satisfying seeing Shehan post a chart that refutes his ridiculous claim that global warming is accelerating?
clive best
I notice that there are no typical historical significant temperature dips during the two cool cycles in your projected curve to 2100, just flat temperature periods basically. Hence you show continuous temperature rise to 2060.The hadcrut historical curve shows significant temperature dips of about 0.4C on a smoothed overlay basis or about 0.2 to 0.3 on an average decadal basis for both past cool phases. Why do you think this kind of temperature drops will not happen again. Our latest decadal global temperature trend already shows that we are starting to drop temperatures like we did in the past . I think the impact of Co2 is being over estimated by most forecasters .That is why they all show the temperatures rising when in fact they are dropping.. Also the sun seems to have a 90-100 year cycle where the output drops as we have seen at the start of each of the last 3 centuries . This can further disrupt the typical 60 year cycle which i think is caused primarily by the global SST ocean cycles. If you plot global SST and global surface air temperature on a decadal basis , this becomes clear… I think it is the sun that gives the steady rise in global temperatures of about 0.7 C per century [ involving the sunspot cycles by yet to be explained mechanism] The sun also gives the energy to the oceans via normal irradiance mode which give it back in a lagged 60 year cycle. Any comments?
herkimer,
I take a sort of middle road here. The is a sound physics basis for an enhanced CO2 greenhouse effect. You can calculate how much radiation escapes to space in the main CO2 absorption band ~15 microns and how it reduces slightly by adding more CO2 in the atmosphere. The net result is (that if nothing else changes) the temperature of the surface would increase (in deg.C) as approximately as ~ 1.6ln(C/C0). This is roughly +1C if CO2 reaches 600ppm or +2C if (impossibly?) CO2 reached 1200ppm.
Of course there are other factors apart from CO2 effecting climate such as solar cycles etc. There is also evidence from the Central England Temperature series (HADCET) of a slow recovery from the little ice age from 1650 of ~ 0.026 deg.C/decade.
So I simply looked at the data and “assumed” that there is ONLY a logarithmic dependence on CO2. As others have already noticed, you then need a 60 year oscillation to explain past temperature data. Fitting HADCRUT3 data to measured Mauna Loa CO2 data and a 60 year oscillation gives a rather good fit. Then extrapolating to the future results in the curves – and assuming emissions scenario B1 results in about 1.5 C warming from 1850 -> 2100.
This is simply curve fitting assuming that AGW is real. If we accept the LIA recovery hypothesis then about 0.6C of this rise is natural. So the oscillation superimposed on this logarithmic increase results on flat temperatures rather than decreasing temperatures from 2000 – 2030.
Now it may be the case that clouds. solar cycles etc. are also important effects in the long term. In fact I strongly suspect that the overall effect of a 70% ocean surface on Earth acts to stabilize temperatures to any external “forcing” whether that be meteorite impacts, super volcanoes, solar variation or whatever. Otherwise the oceans would have boiled away billions of years ago.
From another thread:
Quoting from the paper:
“3.1 Time series properties of the data
Informal inspection of Fig. 1 suggests that the time series properties of greenhouse gas forcings (panels a and b) are visibly different to those for temperature and solar irradiance (panel c). In panels a and b there is evidence of acceleration, whereas in panel c the two time series appear more stable.”
Informal inspection of the temperature data of panel c does show acceleration, matching that of the greenhouse gas forcing plots in a and b. The temperature rise appears less dramatic due to different scaling factors used in the 3 plots…
In support of my eyeballing of the accelerating nature of the data from 180 to 2007 (based on over 3 decades experience in examining such graphs):
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/11901124/img/Anonymous/hadsst2-with-3rd-order-polynomial-fit.jpeg
Compare this to the data set Stealy presents and the linear fit:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/to:2010/trend/offset
Philip,
Using IPCC’s new interpretation of calculus – temperatures are now decelerating !!
see here….
clivebest says:
“…temperatures are now decelerating !!”
You know that. I know that. Most everyone here knows that. The IPCC knows that. The Met Office knows that. But Shehan just won’t listen. ☺
clivebest, Again I don’t see any point of difference between us on the data, or the interpretation over the short time period you mention.
As I wrote earlier:
“Philip Shehan says:
January 12, 2013 at 7:04 am
clivebest:
I do not disagree with much of what you write. But as I pointed out in my post to Werner it is possible to overinterpret the data by going into too fine a detail.
The central issue I am interested in (as discussed in the “AGW Bombshell?” thread is the APPEARANCE (Don’t mean to shout. How do you do italics or bold on this site anyway?) of the temperature record from 1880 to 2007. Specifically whether or not a linear or nonlinear curve best fits the graphical presentation of the entire temperature data set…
Boehm in his hyperventalation is fixated on short term periods of the 1880-2007 data set. I am not.
Thoughtful of him to post his portrait though.
Philip Shehan says:
January 12, 2013 at 11:42 am
In support of my eyeballing of the accelerating nature of the data
Please explain the following. Over the entire life of RSS, there is an increase in average temperature. But the derivative, or rate of change is 0 since 1979 (actually -0.000134889 per year
). But since December 1996, the temperature slope is flat and the derivative is -0.000805452 per year. I know this is very small, but certainly no acceleration.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979/plot/rss/from:1979/trend/plot/rss/from:1979/derivative/plot/rss/from:1979/derivative/trend/plot/rss/from:1996.9/trend/plot/rss/from:1996.9/derivative/trend
clive best
Thanks for your reply. I understand where you are coming from. In my judgement CO2 is not a major climate forcer as many have commented and argued on the various other WUWT blogs. I can see us all blogging on this topic again in a year or two as the global temperatures continue a slow and steady decline of global temperature anomalies to around 0.0 C by about 2030 and the Met Office and IPCC are forced to further lower their decadal projections. When solar cycles and ocean SST cycles are both declining and in sync, as they are doing now, it can only lead to one result as they have done countless times before — lower global temperatures as the major sources of heat are turned down. Rising CO2 levels will do very little when confronted with these two prime climate factors. Even the temporary impact of El Ninos may not be enough as we saw during the period 1880-1910 when despite 4 El Ninos, the global temperature anomaly continued to decline after a short blip until 1910 and even into the early 1920’s. Good to have your input into this debate, Clive
Werner, Again, I am refering to the appearence of the data set from 1880 to 2007 as discussed by the authors of the paper, not analalysis of the subsets of that data.
At the risk of repeating myself:
In support of my eyeballing of the accelerating nature of the data from 180 to 2007 (based on over 3 decades experience in examining such graphs):
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/11901124/img/Anonymous/hadsst2-with-3rd-order-polynomial-fit.jpeg
Compare this to the data set Stealy presents and the linear fit:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/to:2010/trend/offset
Werner Brozek says:
” I know this is very small, but certainly no acceleration.”
Shehan appears to be the only one left at WUWT who believes in accelerating global warming.
Ignore him, he is nuts.
Note that D. Boehm advises Werner (and many others elsewhere) to ignore me, but is incapable of doing so himself.
Shehan, as long as you keep peddling your lie that global warming is “accelerating”, I’ll be here to point out to other readers that you are lying.
Philip Shehan says:
January 12, 2013 at 3:56 pm
How do you do italics or bold on this site anyway?
To ital something, put “” before the start and “” at the end. To bold, put “” before the start and “” at the end.
Now as for the acceleration, of course it depends on the length of time. However NOAA says important conclusions can be drawn if certain things do not happen in 15 years. And Santer talks about 17 years. So why should we care if there is an acceleration over 160 years if there is none over the last 15 or 17 years when CO2 has been higher than for 600,000 years?
Sorry!
To ital something, put “less than ()” before the start and “less than, slash (/) i, greater than” at the end. To bold, replace b with i both times.
Sorry again! See formatting in http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/index.html
Thank you Werner.
I don’t at all object to your opinion that the last 160 years should be viewed in the context of the last 600,000.
However I am only commenting on the appearence of the data set in figure 1 c of the paper as chosen by its authors:
Polynomial cointegration tests of anthropogenic impact on global warming
M. Beenstock1, Y. Reingewertz1, and N. Paldor2
To be precise the data set choen by these authors in Fig 1 c is the gistemp dataset from 1880 to 2007 shown below. I am unsure of what the NOAA or Santer (Sorry, who is he?) would make of an assertion that examination of the 17 year period 1940 to 1957 indicates a decline in the entire data set.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp-dts/from:1880/to:2007/mean:12/plot/gistemp-dts/from:1940/to:1957/trend/plot/gistemp-dts/to:1880/to:2007/trend
(D Boehm may disagree with my assessment regarding what comparison of the whole data set with the linear fit reveals but that does not make me a liar.)
Nice to have a respectful discussion with someone who does not so personalise points of difference.
Philip Shehan:
At January 12, 2013 at 7:54 pm D Böehm Stealey wrote
In your post at January 13, 2013 at 12:10 am you say
The recent deceleration has been explained to you in several ways an you have personally linked to a graph which shows the DEceleration. Indeed, the trend has decelerated to zero over the most recent 16+ years.
Please explain how it is possible for D Böehm Stealey (or anybody else) to be “respecful” when pointing out the clear an indisputable fact that you are lying.
Richard
Shehan,
You are either an intelligent individual, or you are deluded. I suspect that you are intelligent, and therefore you know that there has been no acceleration of global warming.
Therefore, you are peddling deliberately false propaganda by claiming non-existent “acceleration” in global warming. That is simply not happening. So why are you lying about it?
As we see, the long term global warming trend is decelerating [the green line]. Long term, the naturally rising temperature trend is gradually moderating. There is not – and there never has been – any acceleration of global warming since the end of the LIA.
Even the warmist crowd now acknowledges that there has been no “acceleration” in global warming. You are alone in your prevarication. Why is that? Everyone else here can see that there has been no acceleration in global temperature. More than that, global temperatures have stopped rising. So tell us: why are you pretending otherwise? Is it because your fragile ego cannot allow you to admit you are wrong, even in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence?
You are truly embarrassing yourself, Shehan, by your insistence that War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, and Global Warming is Accelerating. It is not. No one else believes you. So why do you keep insisting that something non-existent is real?
It does no good to argue with shehan, even if he admits a point, he will later deny such an admission. This has happened with me several times. For instance, regarding the product of climate models, which Shehan has changed his position on several times in discussions with me.
@Philip Shehan: I will chip in with a layman interpretation of how I see this argument has been developing. I freely admit I am clearly not as educated in matters of statistics as everyone posting here but still…here goes. In your response to Werner you mention the 17 year period 1940 – 1957 and the cooling trend over this time. You then say what would Santer make of this representation of the overall trend. I think this is the crux of where you are in disagreement with others. You are looking at it from the point of view that these 17 year periods are “samples” if you like, of the overall trend. For you there is one overall trend and no matter where you take a “sample trend” ie 1940-1957, 1970-1987, or 1996-2013, all these samples should be representative of the overall trend.
Because they differ you take this as evidence that 17 years cannot be a long enough time period to get a true estimate of the overall trend and hence only the entire period can be examined to truly get a sense of the entire trend.
What others are saying is that it is not one simple overall trend. There are many different things happening over the entire time period, stalls in the rise, periods of time where the trend is negative, periods of faster increase, periods of slower increase, and a recent period of no increase. Their opinion is that all these different periods require analysis of their own rather than treating the entire time period as if it were one continuous rise (correct me if I’m wrong everybody). By doing this you are effectively ignoring that things like the recent pause (or at the very least deceleration) in temperature increase is happening. What they are saying is that they believe their interpretation more accurately reflects reality than your own, since it is looking at the overall trend in more detail by breaking it into smaller “chunks”. Whereas you believe said “chunks” are only samples, and should all effectively show the same trend, and if not they cannot be of sufficient sample size.
For instance, what Werner said was that regardless of whether the overall trend was accelerating for 160 years (and he did not concede that it was, he was just saying for the sake of argument lets assume it was), the most recent 17 years of the trend suggest that temperatures are no longer increasing. Hence the overall claim that the rise in temperatures is still accelerating cannot be true. He is saying that the last 17 years alone negate the possible existence of a continuing accelerating trend.
Philip Shehan:
At January 12, 2013 at 5:53 pm you say
Oh! The “appearance”! At last I understand your claims!
I strongly advise that you visit an optician with a view to obtaining needed spectacles.
Richard
Here’s something I just sent to NPR:
NOAA posted an announcement that 2012 was the warmest year on record IN THE US. Here’s the link: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2012/13
Your show (Wait, Wait, don’t Tell me) left out those last words. Twice.
The effect was to mislead a portion of your audience into thinking that it was the warmest year GLOBALLY. (Globally, it’s the ninth warmest year on record. I.e., 2012 is well off the average of earlier years in this century.)
Surely you didn’t intend to mislead.
Or am I wrong?
Maybe you just didn’t notice “IN THE US,”
Or maybe you thought it a trivial detail, not worth mentioning.
Or maybe you thought nobody would notice your omission.
Or maybe you thought that nobody decent (i.e., politically correct) could object to your way of putting it, so their opinion doesn’t count. Maybe you rather enjoy treading on their toes.
Wait, wait, don’t tell me. It’s all of the above.
Philip Shehan says:
January 13, 2013 at 12:10 am
Santer (Sorry, who is he?)
See below or google Benjamin Santer 17
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011JD016263.shtml
By the way, RSS now shows 16 years and 1 month of no warming, since December 1996.
And when combining the two satellite data, we get 15 years and 1 month of no warming, while CO2 has been going up steadily. See:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/plot/rss/from:1997.9/trend/plot/uah/from:1997/plot/uah/from:1997.9/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.9/trend/detrend:-0.0735/offset:-0.080/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/trend
Philip Shehan says:
“Santer (Sorry, who is he?)”
This is hard to believe. Shehan has never heard of Ben Santer?? That can only mean that Shehan is brand new to the debate. Like a teenager, Shehan believes he knows everything climate-related. But when he grows up, he will begin to understand that the world does not revolve around his personal belief system.
It’s a big world out there. Do a search for “Climategate” + “Santer”. Learn the players, and what they are saying.
Werner:
Thanks for the link. Will read it later.
Entirely understand that CO2 content continues to increase while temperature goes up down and sideways.
I presented the following
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1950/to:2013/mean:12/scale:10/normalise/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1950/to:2013/mean:12/scale:5/normalise
as an alternative to D. Boehms chart where his use of the isolate function means he is plotting noise (from the WFT site – Isolate (months) Does the same running mean as ‘mean’ but then subtracts this from the raw data to leave the ‘noise’)
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/isolate:60/mean:12/scale:0.25/plot/hadcrut3vgl/isolate:60/mean:12/from:1958
In my response to Boehm regarding this graph and his claim that it demonstrates that CO2 concentration is caused by temperature, I acknowledged that there are many forcing factors other than CO2 which are responsible for temperature. D. Boehm failed to answer my question regarding this (put several times) and says I am not smart enough to get him to answer. He also says that in relation to my question regarding why the downward slope in temperature from 1940 to 1957 (or 55 or 56) does not mean that the entire temperature record shows a decline.
He is right of course. I am not smart enough force him to answer questions which for obvious reasons he does not wish answer.
“Given the complexity of the climate system which involves solar cycles, volacanic eruptions, el nino and la nina events, aerosols and particulates, etc, how does such a near perfect cause and effect relationship between CO2 concentration and temperature operate?”
richardscourtney;
You are well aware that in the other thread, for the benefit of the the slow learners, I have been repeating with the periodicity of a chiming clock that I am commenting only on what the authors of the paper claim an “informal” eyeballing of temperature data from 1880 to 2007 appears to show.
So what do your eyeballs say when comparing how well the linear fits both for the period 1880 to 2007 and the selected 17 year subset
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1880/to:2007/trend/offset/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/to:1956/trend
matches the data and the upward trending curves match the data in these two plots:
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/11901124/img/Anonymous/hadsst2-with-3rd-order-polynomial-fit.jpeg
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/AMTI.png
Shehan has never heard of the notorious Ben Santer, but he pontificates as if he knows which end is up regarding global warming. He doesn’t.
For example, Shehan posts this chart, and claims that it shows accelerated warming. As anyone can see, it doesn’t show any such thing. It simply shows a straight linear rise in natural global warming. And the bogus SkS charts that Shehan keeps posting are not fooling anyone here.
Isn’t it about time you stopped lying about global warming “accelerating”, Shehan?
NASA says get ready for even more global cooling:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/01/nasa-we-may-be-on-the-verge-of-a-mini-maunder-minimum.html
I have never claimed to be an expert on global warming. It appears to D.Boehms life’s work to the point of pathological obsession. Does he do anything else with his day?
I have claimed to be an expert, with over 3 decades experience in looking at graphs of the kind being discussed here.
Boehm presented a graph which, again based on over three decades of experience I can confidently assert that had it been presented at a scientific conference or to a scientific journal would have been met with scorn and derision. It is this one:
http://tinyurl.com/bkoy8or
He has introduced various devices scale factors and offsets, in particular the horizontal yellow line from the final series 7, for no other purpose than to manipulate the y axis and compress the appearance of the temperature lines. Try it for yourselves. Delete series 7 and replot the graph.
Why has he engaged in this subterfuge? Because he hopes to disguise what he says is not happening in what he describe as “this chart” above.
“This chart” is in fact from Boehm’s own graph from which I removed the extraneous camouflage, leaving a plot of one temperature data set in his chart. I removed the original trend line in Boehm’s graph and substituted two shorter trend lines there but here I reinstate Boehm’s own trend line:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/to:2010/trend/offset
Now you can see what he is so anxious to camouflage the data set by compression of the y axis. He asserts above
“Shehan posts this chart, and claims that it shows accelerated warming. As anyone can see, it doesn’t show any such thing. It simply shows a straight linear rise in natural global warming.”
He needed to compress and flatten the appearance of the temperature data, but it doesn’t work. The uncompressed data clearly shows that it is not well fit by a straight line. The early and late sections are above the linear fit, evidence of acceleration, and a much better fit is obtained with the non linear curve for the same period:
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/11901124/img/Anonymous/hadsst2-with-3rd-order-polynomial-fit.jpeg
And yes, Boehm has been “too smart” to explain his use of camouflaging functions to manipulate the y axis and so flatten the appearance of the curve.
Philip Shehan:
re your post at January 13, 2013 at 3:56 pm
The only “slow learner” seems to be you.
It does not matter what you think the graph looks like: others may think it looks like an elephant.
What matters is what the data shows, and the graph is a pictorial representation of the data. And many pictorial representations can be constructed.
As several people have explained to you, the data shows that global warming is decelerating (i.e. the opposite of the acceleration you assert).
Richard
Well, even though I have the advantage of over thirty years experience in examining precisely this kind of pictorial representation, I cannot believe even the most untrained of eyes would match the temeperarture data to an elephant, unless they were on some serious mind altering subsatances.
In my humble, make that professional, opinion, I think any objective observer would agree that this fit
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/11901124/img/Anonymous/hadsst2-with-3rd-order-polynomial-fit.jpeg
is superior to this fit
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/to:2010/trend/offset
Philip Shehan writes:
Philip Shehan: When drawing a straight line through the data from 1880 to 2007, compared to an exponential curve through the same data…Yes, the exponential curve fits the data better than the straight line. However, neither fit is as accurate as breaking down the curve into sections and analysing the trend in each section. When doing so you will note that temperatures are no longer increasing/rate of increase appears to have dramatically slowed (delete as per your own personal bias) according to the data from the last 17 years. So while you can possibly claim the rate of temperatures DID increase, you can no longer claim that the rate of increase continues to accelerate. I think if you just conceded this last point you would encounter far less opposition to your analysis.
Graham,
You wrote.
Philip Shehan: When drawing a straight line through the data from 1880 to 2007, compared to an exponential curve through the same data…Yes, the exponential curve fits the data better than the straight line.
Thank you.
That is the only point I have been making. Because I have been discussing the authors comment concerning the appearance of the entire data set from 1880 to 2007.
Now try to explain that to Boehm and Richard Courtney.
To go back to my first comment on this:
‘Quoting from the paper:
“3.1 Time series properties of the data
Informal inspection of Fig. 1 suggests that the time series properties of greenhouse gas forcings (panels a and b) are visibly different to those for temperature and solar irradiance (panel c). In panels a and b there is evidence of acceleration, whereas in panel c the two time series appear more stable.”
I have no argument whatsoever with the rest of your comment, except the last sentence.
I have never claimed that examination of the last 17 years shows continued acceleration. It does not. But the point I have been making over and over and over again is that choosing subsets of data, whether they go, up, down or level (and you can choose multiple subsets that do any of these things) simply cannot be generalised to a statement of the about 1880-2007 as a whole. Again, the 17 year period from 1940 to 1957 does not show an increase in the upward slope of the data (acceleration). It does not show an upward slope at all. It actually shows a decrease in temperature over that time. It is multidecadal trends I have been discussing.
I disagree with your last sentence: “I think if you just conceded this last point you would encounter far less opposition to your analysis.”
Boehm and Courtney are incapable of understanding this point or pretend not to no matter how many times I make it, and calling me a liar and/or suffering from a visual impairment (which you apparently share).
“Philip Shehan:
At January 12, 2013 at 5:53 pm you say
Werner, Again, I am referring to the appearance of the data set from 1880 to 2007 as discussed by the authors of the paper, not analysis of the subsets of that data.
Oh! The “appearance”! At last I understand your claims!
I strongly advise that you visit an optician with a view to obtaining needed spectacles.
Richard”
And Boehm himself, in a comment to Layman Lurker makes spectacular reversal of his claims about the validity of using the last 15 years of the entire data set to me, writing that we can’t tell anything from a 15 year subset.
“As I have repeatedly pointed out, the only way to see if global temperatures are accelerating is by using a long term trend chart, based on verifiable data. When we view such a chart, it is clear that there is no acceleration of global warming. [The green line shows the long term global warming trend.]”
The chart he produces again has the temperature data artificially compressed in the y axis
http://tinyurl.com/ch49ytb
to camouflage the upward trend away from green line whn the compression is removed.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/to:2010/trend/offset
Philip Shehan:
Your post at January 14, 2013 at 7:11 am is – to put it as politely as possible – disingenuous.
You say
Absolutely not!
Your major claim – disputed by D Böehm and myself – has been that global warming IS accelerating.
You have peddled that lie on two threads. That is what we have been discussing.
Now you say, “I have never claimed that examination of the last 17 years shows continued acceleration. It does not.”
YES YOU DID!
Your claim has been that global warming IS accelerating: it was NOT that global warming WAS accelerating.
I could search the threads and quote your pertinent statements but it is not worth the bother (unless, of course, you choose to contend the matter).
Richard
clivebest:
re your curve-fit provided in your link at January 14, 2013 at 8:02 am.
Your curve does NOT indicate what you think because it only assesses “a natural 60 year oscillation”and attributes all other rise to caused by CO2. But if you accept the possibility of recovery from the LIA (which you do) accept, then ALL the rise could be attributed to that.
The most that can be said is that your explanation of the curve is one possible interpretation of it.
Richard
Richard,
I agree with you.
But I think it does kind of put an “upper limit” on the assumption that only AGW is occurring.
The alarmists also claim that there is built up “thermal inertia” hidden in the Oceans. I also looked at that one http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=3729. Temperatures peak at between about 2.5C above pre-industrial levels around 2200. Thereafter they relax slowly back to pre-industrail levels, just in time for the next Ice Age hits us !
clivebest:
In answer to my post at January 14, 2013 at 8:39 am, at January 14, 2013 at 10:10 am you say
Clearly, I misunderstood you, and I apologise.
If I misrepresented you then that was not my intention and I can only hope that my post resulted in your providing useful clarification. Anyway, sorry.
Richard
Shehan says:
“I have never claimed to be an expert on global warming.”
That’s for sure. Good thing, too, for someone who admittedly doesn’t even know who Ben Santer is.
Shehan has painted himself into a corner by insisting that global warming is accelerating. It is not. Even NASA/GISS and the Met Office contradict Shehan, who only has a fabricated John Cook chart as his ‘authority’.
Even though he is brand new to the global warming discussion, Shehan certainly must be aware that global warming is not accelerating. Thus, Shehan is deliberately lying about it. That is what happens to people who take the word of Pseudo-skeptical Pseudo-science: they start lying on behalf of SkS.
Noble cause corruption is still corruption.
Philip Shehan – It may be helpful to put the last few decades in a longer-term context…..
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/hologisp2.png
…..and then to put that into an even longer-term context
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_cHhMa7ARDDg/SsVwqCgB-LI/AAAAAAAABKo/U92CnYMmeSU/s1600-h/Vostok-400Kd.jpg
The tiny short term temperature fluctuations that you guys are arguing about don’t seem all that significant.
FWIW, I think the temperature is likely to be at the top of a short term cycle right now …
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/amopdoustemp.jpg?w=960&h=720
(NB. This graph ends in 2000, and is CONUS only.)
… and the visible flattening of the graph over the last decade, following an earlier rise, is just what one would expect at the top of a natural cycle.
Notice how Boehm, the consumate ducker and diver, has yet again failed to explain his clearly deceptive manipulation of time-temperature graphs, one of the many questions he tells me he is “too smart” to answer.
Yet he again claims the graph appearing on the skeptical science is “fabricated.” He has claimed that it is a hand drawn cartoon. Actually it is produced by Robert Way.
[snip. Take the ad hominem attacks on Lord Monckton elsewhere. — mod.]
He is also “too smart” to explain how this graph, which shows temperature data which is the mean of 10 temperature global data sets fitted with a mathematical function, can be any more fabricated than any of the graphs of temperature data from any of these data sets or combinations thereof, or other legitimate data sets fitted by mathematical functions displayed on this site. It is decidedly less fabricated than Boehm’s own deceitfully manipulated graphs.
I realise that in Boehmworld, John Cook is the antichrist and therefore everything in skeptical science is heresy, but that does not justify callling the map fabricated or a cartoon.
But I do not have only this graph as “authority”. I have posted this one many times;
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/11901124/img/Anonymous/hadsst2-with-3rd-order-polynomial-fit.jpeg
Mike, I have no problem whatsoever with your assertion. As I wrote earlier:
Philip Shehan says:
January 13, 2013 at 12:10 am
Thank you Werner.
I don’t at all object to your opinion that the last 160 years should be viewed in the context of the last 600,000.
What I am discussing is the authors interpretation of Figure 1 in the following paper,
Polynomial cointegration tests of anthropogenic impact on global warming
M. Beenstock, Y. Reingewertz, and N. Paldor
which is the subject of a post by Mr Watts on January 3.
My comments relate to that Figure covering the period 1880 -2007.
A couple of the most obtuse individuals I have ever met on any website anywhere simply cannot comprehend that point no matter how often it is repeated.
(Graham W gets it:
Graham W says:
January 14, 2013 at 5:35 am
Philip Shehan: When drawing a straight line through the data from 1880 to 2007, compared to an exponential curve through the same data…Yes, the exponential curve fits the data better than the straight line.)
I have not said that any graph covering any other time period shows acceleration. I have not said the temperature “is” accelerating.
On the contrary:
clivebest says:
January 12, 2013 at 1:30 pm
Philip,
Using IPCC’s new interpretation of calculus – temperatures are now decelerating !!
see here….
Philip Shehan says:
January 12, 2013 at 3:56 pm
clivebest, Again I don’t see any point of difference between us on the data, or the interpretation over the short time period you mention.
As I wrote earlier:
“Philip Shehan says:
January 12, 2013 at 7:04 am
clivebest:
I do not disagree with much of what you write. But as I pointed out in my post to Werner it is possible to overinterpret the data by going into too fine a detail…”
Mike Jonas,
Thank you. I have posted each of those graphs on WUWT a number of times in the past. They show that there is no acceleration in global warming — the lie that Shehan keeps flogging. As Doug Huffman said today on another thread:
First ethical rule: If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud. [Huffman’s bolding]
It has been shown numerous times that the false claim that global warming is accelerating is fraudulent. Even the ultra-alarmist Joel Shore posted a graph today showing no acceleration in global warming. Shehan is the only person here perpetuating that fraud. The fact that he continues to lie about global warming “acceleration” tells us all we need to know about Shehan’s lack of ethics. Global warming is not only not accelerating, it has stopped for the past decade and a half. Lying about it will not make it magically resume.
Boehm: As the expert on fraud here, explain why you have presented this doctored graph with totally irrelevant lines flattening the data with respect to the y axis, if not to deceive people lest an undoctored version reveals that the data curves away from the linear fit at both ends?
Boehm’s graph:
http://tinyurl.com/bkoy8or
The unadulterated version:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/to:2010/trend/offset
Shehan,
As I have explained to you before, your second link is the same as the first link, except for the re-scaling of the y-axis. Neither one shows any acceleration in global warming. Lying about global warming “acceleration” does not make it true.
Boehm:
Nonsense.
What is the purpose of the totally superfluous series 7 on your chart if not to place an irrelevant horizontal line at 9 units on the y axis when the entire temperature line covers only 1.2 units, if not to “squash” the temperature data so that deviations from the linear fit are also compressed and thus camouflaged.
http://tinyurl.com/bkoy8or
It simply leaps out from the chart to any professional scientist.
Go on. Answer the question you would be asked at any scientific conference or by any journal referee:
What is the purpose of series 7 and the horizontal yellow line at 9 units on the y-axis?
Answer it, or be exposed as a fraud.
Shehan says:
http://tinyurl.com/bkoy8or
That chart shows unequivocally that there has been no acceleration in global warming. None at all. Why does Shehan keep lying about it? Even NASA/GISS and the Met Office now admit that global warming has stalled.
Once again, Boehm refuses point blank to answer a direct question:
What is the purpose of series 7 and the horizontal yellow line at 9 units on the y-axis?
.
Shehan is avoiding the central issue as usual: there is no acceleration in the natural global warming trend. None. In fact, the natural warming trend is decelerating.
That is why the BBC has been forced to admit that global warming is ‘static’.
Where is the ‘accelerated’ global warming??
Answer: there is no such thing.
Once again, Boehm refuses point blank to answer a direct question:
What is the purpose of series 7 and the horizontal yellow line at 9 units on the y-axis?
Just to reinterate, the “anomaly” is from the long term average, not a change from the present. Saying 2017 will be +0.46 is to say almost no change from the present, which is about 0.43, IIRC. Don’t be surprised, but be very worried, if it actually begins to decline below present values, say into the +0.3x range. You won’t like cooling. It is violent and deadly.
Just to reinterate, the “anomaly” is from the long term average, not a change from the present. Saying 2017 will be +0.46 is to say almost no change from the present, which is about 0.43, IIRC. Don’t be surprised, but be very worried, if it actually begins to decline below present values, say into the +0.3x range. You won’t like cooling. It is violent and deadly.
mods- delete if dupe. WordPress is playing footsie games again.
Shehan says:
“What is the purpose of series 7 and the horizontal yellow line at 9 units on the y-axis?”
So long as global warming has stopped, I do not care to waste my time on “series 7 and the horizontal yellow line”. To be honest, I’ve paid no attention to it from the start, and I did not read the link since it would be a time sink. I am only interested in correcting one misconception: the provably false notion that global warming is “accelerating”.
Shehan falsely claims that global warming is accelerating. But his only ‘authority’ is the notoriously unreliable alarmist blog SkS — while the rest of us have posted numerous charts and links from many different sources, showing that there is no “acceleration” of global warming. Readers can decide for themselves who is credible regarding this question.