Climatologists now require 20 to 30 years to even consider any climatic trend: Is that really honest, or is it just very convenient?
Guest essay by Stephane Rogeau of France
So that’s it: the 15+ years period of no temperature increase is, according to the IPCC, a non-event, barely worth mentioning in the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM). The explanation is simple: we are just witnessing short usual natural variations of the climate that are consistent with climate models. The question about whether those models had foreseen this so-called “hiatus” is just irrelevant: move along!
But let’s just imagine for a while that since around 2000, the world had seen a warming bigger than everything the IPCC had ever predicted. I mean a situation just opposite to what we have been experiencing until now with regard to model forecasts. What would have been the analysis proposed by the IPCC in its SPM report?
First possible analysis:
“The long-term climate model simulations show a trend in global-mean surface temperature from 1951 to 2012 that agrees with the observed trend (very high confidence). There are, however, differences between simulated and observed trends over periods as short as 10 to 15 years (e.g., 2000 to 2012). Due to natural variability, trends based on short records are very sensitive to the beginning and end dates and do not in general reflect long-term climate trends. As one example, the rate of warming over the past 12 years (2000–2012; 0.23 [+0.13 to +0.33] °C per decade), which begins after the effect of a strong El Niño disappeared, is bigger than the rate calculated since 1951 (1951–2012; 0.12 [0.08 to 0.14] °C per decade).
The observed extra increase in surface warming trend over the period 2000–2012, as compared to the period 1951–2012, is due in roughly equal measure to an increased trend in radiative forcing and a warming contribution from internal variability, which includes a possible redistribution of heat within the ocean.”
Second possible analysis:
“The rapid increase in surface warming during the last period of more than 12 years is a clear sign that, although climate models have gained in precision in their description of climate behavior, several factors had been under-estimated by the scientific community in the AR4. There is strong evidence that both lower and upper limits of the former estimation of transient climate response should be risen by as much as 1°C (very high confidence).
Projections for annual mean surface temperatures for the period 2081-2100 have therefore been reviewed to take into consideration the change in observed trend over the last period of 12 years. All different scenarios now show a very likely increase of global mean surface temperatures of more than 1.5°C by the end of the century, relative to 1985-2005, and up to 6°C in the RCP8.5 scenario.”
Let’s be honest: does anybody believe the IPCC would have chosen to write anything close to the first analysis?
Related: To the IPCC: Forget about “30 years”
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they haven’t a clue, they know we know they haven’t a clue but still have their fingers in their ears, waggling their palms and sticking their tongues out as us cos at the moment they know they have all the useful idiots on their side. One less useful idiot felt the wrath of the populace recently – Australia, and it is a beacon of hope.
I don ‘t think your first or second is correct.
If we had had warming, even as bad as the models, but especially if it had been higher than the models, the clarion call would have been to shut off fossil fuel usage immediately. The headlines would have read, “New IPCC report Confirms that it is Worse than we Thought; Global Temperature spiraling out of control due to man’s Fossil Fuel Usage”.
There would have been zero mention of “natural variability”.
Like other cases of social madness, it is the lens created by the obsession of the madness that governs how evidence is viewed. Indeed, the obsession controls what is even considered evidence. For those obsessed with CO2, any weather event is seen as evidence that human caused CO2 is working its evil on Earth. Likewise, a lack of a weather event or even a series of weather events, like temperatures not fulfilling their predicted role, is not reason to question the obsession over CO2, Instead the lack of evidence is more of a test of faith in the obsession that must be overcome. Until the last year or so surface temperatures were the gold standard of proof of AGW predictions. Now when those temperatures do not cooperate, the evidence is ignored.
Just a few years ago AGW obsessives were stating things along the lines of how a long term pause would make them reconsider their position. Now we have not only a pause. We also see a track record of tropical cyclones, floods, droughts, winters and summers not acting as AGW predictions claimed they would. We see Antarctic ice at record levels. Some glaciers starting to grow again. Arctic sea ice growing.
But none of that matters to the CO2 obsessive.
We witness the IPCC become even less of a science based document, and more of a cheap politically driven sales prop.
But none of that matters to the CO2 obsessive.
All that matters is their strange obsession on the idea that CO2 caused by humans is triggering a climate catastrophe…and the power and money pushing that obsession brings to those who claim to be ‘doing something’ about their concerns.
There is definitely an asymmetry here.
One bad storm, or one warm summer in one country, is evidence of global warming. (Or even a cold winter, to some people.)
However, 15 years of no warming is just short-term natural variability.
Stephane Rogeau: Let’s be honest:…
a good start
un bon début
Remember that in Marxism the end always justifies the means, no matter how many are sacrificed along the way. It is all for the cause. And Marxists are never wrong so have no need to debate and certainly no need to provide any evidence, just a loud voice to shout you down.
The way to answer the question is to look at how they responded to the faster than forecast ice loss in the arctic. All we have heard is how dire the situation is.
Some years ago Russian and Ukraine scientists using instruments aboard the Russian part of the International Space Station started monitoring and measuring the sun. They predicted the hiatus in the temperature the hibernation of the sun over coming cycles and a cooling period much like the Maunder minimum. Thus far they have been correct, the next hundred years may be a tad cold. The science boss of the monitoring of the sun is Habibullo I. Abdussamatov. he gives a new take on what controls our temperature. Leif will not be happy.
I can see why they left out mention of Antarctica in the SPM. Ice extent has surpassed 16Mkm^2 as it did last year and only a few other times in the satellite era, all in the new century. I think the rebound in the Arctic and continued increase in Antarctic ice extent is cementing in a long cooling period, longer than the warming period over which there has been all this fuss. Indeed, if this turns out to be so, the period from 1980 to 1998 on a historical chart will look very “cherry-picked” to the mystification of climate science of the future. The CAGW crowd has had to drop the “unprecedented” warming meme, the ice-free arctic, the extinction of the polar bears, the high climate sensitivity and have had to perforce embrace significant natural variability, the hated sun-behaviour contribution, change the sign on cloud feedback, lower climate sensitivity and fill up the sky with aerosols with no help from recent volcanoes to provide oxygen to their dying patient.
Stephane, you are too kind with your alternatives. They would have pushed any warming to the limit and had violence in the streets by managed useful idiots if that were necessary to kill off western civilization. I’m grateful that the theory was falsified before despotic “policymakers” could take up a more aggressive stance.
Alarmists were salivating at the prospect of ramping up the fear and would have gone way beyond version 2 above.
Their frustration is seeping from every word they utter or print.
Shouldn’t they be happy that they were wrong?
“We need some more money so that we can reprogram our models”
“Tone down those adjustments, Jimmy. People might start getting suspicious”
Declare global martial law. Prepare for the final solution to global warming!
I don’t think that the temperatures COULD have varied HIGHER than the model predictions.
Many of the earlier models had wacky predictions of tipping points, at which point the temperature would go up vertically. Lovelace was saying that humans would only be able to live in the Antarctic.
All that would have happened was that the modellers would have said that the extreme models were the true ones, and that the temperature was in line with predictions…
Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I remember the heatwave of ’76, and a couple of other ‘warm’ summers. I don’t recall the deep freezes of the early 60’s (was too young) but I do recall the last few cold winters!
In short, here in the UK, I defy anyone to (honestly) say that they notice (as in feel) that the climate has gotten any warmer. Other than short term monthly variations, and folk saying stuff like, ‘ain’t it cold/warm/wet/dry for April, etc’ – I find it amazing how anyone ‘believes’ that there is this alleged 0.8degC warming when we all experience the vagaries of climatic variation much greater than that. I am sure a good degree of it (any belief in ‘warming’) is probably psychosematic (sp?) – it makes me wonder how much the world would actually need to warm before folk could genuinely ‘feel’ a difference?
All AR reports are written with one direction in mind: Sheeple…meet cliff.
Here’s an interesting item from the UK’s Daily Telegraph on the subject of Arctic ice ( see Letters to the Editor, p23 Tuesday October 1st 2013):
Sir – I was a meteorologist during the Seventies when glaciers in Europe and other continents had been growing for the previous ten years, and pack ice had been increasing during winters to cover almost all of the Denmark Strait between Iceland and Greenland. Scientists were then warning that the Earth could be entering another ice age.
The current deliberations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have conveniently overlooked this. Before insisting that humans have been the main cause of global warming an explanation of this apparent anomaly should be promulgated.
From: Captain Derek Blacker RN (retd), Director of Naval Oceanography and Meteorology, 1982-84
What would the IPCC have written if there had been 12 years of rapid warming?
3000 scampering chickens without heads?
What would we have seen had warming been more than predicted?
The same thing we see every time some region has a slightly warmer than average summer.
Total hysteria.
What about the sun? It’s hardly mentioned.
I particularly enjoyed the “It occured to me”;
http://drtimball.com/2013/ipcc-climate-a-product-of-lies-damn-lies-and-statistics-built-on-inadequate-data/
You get what you pay for.
And now onward and upward……..to retirement
Clever analysis. It’d be nice if the US government shutdown could somehow be extended all the way to the IPCC. I just read this morning that only 6.6% of the EPA employees have been deemed essential and will be retained during the shutdown. The remainder will be furloughed. What a glorious way to begin the day. Just think of how much better off we’d all be if the same could occur at the UN. After all, the US does pay for 40% of the UN’s budget. [Imagine that, only 2% of the world’s population paying for 40% (not 25%) of the world’s UN’s budget.]
If the IPCC was truly worried about catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, they would greet the news of no warming for the past 15 years with relief rather than excuses.
The IPCC is just like the rest of the UN – full of nothing but beggars, thieves and con men. It is time for the US to renounce its UN membership and withdraw its financial support. In so far as I can see, the UN has never accomplished enough to justify its existence or the financial support it receives.