17 years, 3 months with no global warming
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The Long Pause just got three months longer. Last month, the RSS monthly global mean lower-troposphere temperature anomalies showed no global warming for exactly 204 months – the first dataset to show the full 17 years without warming specified by Santer as demonstrating that the models are in fundamental error.
The sharp drop in global temperature in the past month has made itself felt, and not just in the deep snow across much of North America and the Middle East. The RSS data to November 2013, just available after a delay caused by trouble with the on-board ephemeris on one of the satellites, show no global warming at all for 17 years 3 months.
It is intriguing, and disturbing, that WattsUpWithThat is just about the only place where you will be allowed to see this or any graph showing the spectacularly zero trend line through 207 continuous months of data.
CO2 concentration continues to climb. Global temperature doesn’t. Absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation. Game over, logically speaking.
On any objective test of newsworthiness, the fact of 17 years 3 months with no global warming is surely of more than passing interest to audiences who have been terrified, over and over again, by the over-confident proclamations of the true-believers that catastrophic global warming was the surest of sure things.
Yet the mainstream news media, having backed the wrong horse, cannot bear to tear up their betting slips and move along. They thought they had a hot tip on global warming. They were naïve enough to believe Scientists Say was a dead cert. Yet the spavined nag on which they had bet the ranch fell at the first fence.
The inventiveness with which They wriggle is impressive. Maybe all that air pollution from China is like a parasol. Maybe the warming somehow snuck sneakily past the upper 2000 feet of the ocean so that it didn’t notice, and perhaps it’s lurking in the benthic strata where we can’t measure it. Maybe it’s just waiting to come out when we least expect it and say, “Boo!”.
Anyway, so the wrigglers say, The World Is Still Warming. It must be, because The Models Say So. They say our adding CO2 to the atmosphere is the same as Blowing up Four Whole Atom Bombs Somewhere On Earth Every Second!!!! Just imagine all that HEAT!
Well, it isn’t real. “Imagine” is the right word. If the world were warming, the most sensitive indicator of that warming would be the atmosphere itself. Since the atmosphere has not been warming for 17 years 3 months, an awful possibility is beginning to dawn on even the dimmest of the climate extremists – or, at least, those of them who have somehow found out about the Long Pause.
Maybe natural influences are still strong enough to pull in the other direction and cancel the predicted warming. Maybe the models got the forcing wrong, or the feedbacks wrong, or the climate-sensitivity parameter wrong, or the amplification equation wrong, or the non-radiative transports wrong.
Maybe – heresy of heresies – CO2 is just not that big of a deal any more.
Yet it ought to be having some effect. All other things being equal, even without temperature feedbacks we should be seeing 1 Celsius degree of global warming for every doubling of CO2 concentration.
It is more likely than not that global warming will return eventually. Not at the predicted rate, but it will return. It would be wisest, then, to look not only at the now embarrassingly lengthening Long Pause but also at the now embarrassingly widening Gaping Gap between the +0.23 Celsius/decade predicted by the models for the first half of this century and the –0.02 Celsius/decade that is actually happening.
Meanwhile, Scotland has been enjoying one of the mildest Decembers of recent times. But February is when it usually turns really cold up here. John Betjeman recalled our winters in one of his verses, and raised what has become for climate extremists everywhere the Great Unanswerable Question. Whither went the warmer weather?
Highland Winter
As we huddle close together,
Wrapt about in fur and feather,
Shod in sopping, sodden leather,
Sloshing through the hidden heather
Smothered under feet of snow;
As we curse and blast and blether,
Whither in the regions nether –
Whither went the warmer weather?
Whimpering we wonder whether
Anyone will ever know.
‘Absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation. ”
wrong.
Reblogged this on By the Mighty Mumford and commented:
Take THAT…you environmentalist mind-numbed hysterical robots!!!!!
Seems to me the total time global temperatures increased while CO2 also increased has been only 20 years, from about 1978 to 1998. The total time temperatures have not increased is 17 years.
What does it take to stick a fork in this theory?
Mr. Mosher.
17 years ago we were told that if mankind allowed the CO2 to rise to 400 ppm that the temperatures would skyrocket. The situation would turn the earth into a veritable hell of heat. Life itself was in peril!
So, a grand experiment was conducted by mankind in association with mother nature. CO2 was cranked up to 400 ppm and the temperatures held steady even with Hansen and others “adjusting” the heck out of the data. Any honest man with an IQ above that of an ape would understand that the CO2 hypothesis of the alarmists has failed. Failed as badly as the one that said the earth was the center of the universe.
‘Absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation.’
Almost right. Implies, does not prove. I’d go further and suggest does not invalidate correlation. The is an unfortunate slice of wiggle room left. That said, lack of correlation, lack of back testing confirmation, lack of trend all pretty much box in the warmist theories into a very tiny corner.
Why this is not proof. Any random series of datums can show no correlation over long periods of observation even when there is a trend bias underlying. Think of a weighted coin. 102% it “should” come up heads but it can come up trending tails 20-30% across a span with no violation of any law or even being unusual. We saw a spike in temps culminating with 1998. We’ve seen a pause since. Neither series invalidates the other. The pause does not invalidate the rise and vice versa.
Mosher, those of us who remember you from the CA days know over time you’ve become delusional at worse and pig headed at best.
No amount of time will convince you the models are crap or that the AGW hypothesis is seriously screwed up. The absolute fact is the troposphere did not warm as advertised it would for the past 25 years when all this fear mongering starting about the “greenhouse” effect. It’s bunk, it’s junk, it’s happening.
The great thing about this scam is mankind has, for a while an infallible yardstick for politicians, scientists and journalists, we now know who is corrupt and whom we might trust! I cannot think when we have ever been in this position! We also know who should loose their career, qualifications and all assets and be banished for the taxpayers purse!
That should be, it isn’t happening.
Anyway, I want to see which data set supports the main tenets of AGW. The warmastrologists don’t want to talk about the data anymore.
Incomplete, meaningless, and juvenile until you’ve said why it is wrong, by which I presume you mean by wrong that you have quoted can never be right.
So have global temperatures fallen? No? Then they have still risen, what has happened is the rate of rise has flattened, but the long term trend is still up, until there is a reduction in temperature. I would not dance on the grave of majority climate science just yet.
Thanks, Christopher. That was an enjoyable read.
You might have noticed that a number of warmists, professional and amateur, are tip-toeing away from cAGW and merging into lukewarmers.
I am just waiting for the ‘Young Turks’ to stand up and go all Maoist on their elders.
“Absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation”.
Perhaps not ‘implies’ but it’s not looking good for the GCMs. They have been wrong, wrong, wrong. Now if I could just get my liberal friends to listen to something other than NPR and read something other than the NYTimes. They haven’t said this, but I think they believe that if doesn’t come from these two sources, it’s just not trustworthy.
The simplest explanation is of course that a severe natural cooling trend is already underway but unnatural (and naturally highly amplified) greenhouse warming is merely canceling it out. This natural cooling phase also falsifies the whole alarmist horse race tip too though, so mum’s the word. That massive statistical fraud was clearly found at the very center of climate “science” makes the likes of Steve Mosher into immoral enablers of that criminal fraud, as they were the best informed citizens, unlike policy makers and laymen.
I would like to go on record with the following prediction:
Some have a difficult time with the idea that anthropogenic emission is largely irrelevant to atmospheric concentration. Their thinking seems to them to be indisputable. i.e. Since we know that atmospheric enhancement is only about ½ our human emission, then removing our human emission would more than account for a reconciliation.
According to some using this thinking, cutting our emission in half might yield a near perfect reconciliation. As if a reconciliation of any sort might produce some meaningful benefit to climate variations (and it would only be, at most, geologically momentary till some natural event changed things again, one way or the other). The cartoon below attempts to illustrate why it is that our contribution is not particularly relevant using some very rough personal yet rational guestimates to make the point.
During the Little Ice Age, natural sinks had overtaken sources so atmospheric CO2 fell (caused by cooling). The warming since then has stimulated natural sources which, in turn, have stimulated natural sinks. And the sources are now out in front, with our modest help to be sure. But both sources and sinks have been growing far more rapidly than our anthropogenic contribution in absolute terms. So if our contribution were to be removed in its entirety, there would be little identifiable change. Microbial and insect emissions would more than make up the difference if we let them**. And had we not contributed our 2%, the vegetative sinks would have been most likely under-stimulated by a somewhat similar amount such that there would be little identifiable change. (The water tub analogy where a spigot is filling the CO2 tub, while a drain is draining it, is entirely misleading in the way it is often presented as there is a clearly coupled relationship between changes to the rates of input and output – at least till a saturation event occurs.)
And if the Earth continues to be warm but then starts to cool, at some likely predictable point the photosynthetic sequestering sinks will saturate (so that their increasing capacity to sink CO2 will quit increasing; and then for the same continued cooling causes, these sinks will subsequently and rapidly reverse to a decreasing capacity to absorb CO2; while the emission sources more slowly respond; and the oceans, in particular, fail to respond for many decades). Then very steep atmospheric spiking will ensue just as it so often has in the past. It is very likely that photosynthetic sequestering (biological response) provides an enormous (geologically real-time) negative feedback to additional atmospheric CO2 until such time as it saturates. This predicted saturation event is not likely very near if the planet continues to slide sideways on temperature. However, a near-term solar-driven mini ice age may likely accelerate this predictable spiking event into the near term (i.e. atmospheric CO2 will likely increase sharply soon).
**If, for some inexplicable reason, we somehow came to rationally conclude that the Earthly atmospheric CO2 content should rightfully be driven down by our future anthropogenic actions, the most obvious (and simple) actions we could take would involve our further limiting the exponentially growing contribution coming from our competitors in this arena: microbes and insects. A yet further global reduction in their competitive contribution by only ~6% would more than account for the otherwise complete elimination of our anthropogenic CO2 contribution in its entirety. And while this course of action is loaded with potential pitfalls, it is trivially within our anthropogenic means. We have already accumulated a great deal of experience in this regard and already have great insight to its pitfalls (something similar to but certainly much less drastic than what we have done in the lands we use for cultivation and occupation might be performed in certain other lands that we do not currently treat as such). It could likely be done in such a way as to yet further increase crop yields while further minimizing the spread of disease. And it likely is far less subject to unintended consequence than many (all) geo-engineering proposals on the table at this time that I know of – none of which make any sense to me – including this particularly obvious and simple suggested course of action. Why in the world would we choose it inhibit the proliferation of all life on Earth by offsetting our 2% Vitamin C(O2)? Especially when Nature will continue to wield its 98% in ways totally out of our anthropogenic control.
Climate is a very complex phenomena. One of the main problem with AGW is the narrow mindedness focus on the impact of carbon dioxide on climate. That is T= f( CO2). Climate could be a function of a wide range of variables and feed backs which are discussed in various scientific papers. If T= f( CO2, solar activity, changes in earth tilts, etc), the concentration of carbon dioxide could increase dramatically and still T will go down or remain constant if the effects of the other variables are more more significant during this period. Hence, Mosher’s comment, absence of correlation dues not necessarily implies absence of causation.
Def: “To be hoist by one’s own petard.” (in more ways than one)
Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails – 5th July, 2005
“The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant….”
Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails – 7th May, 2009
‘Bottom line: the ‘no upward trend’ has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried.’
All very true. I would suggest one wee modification.
“Yet the spavined nag on which they had bet the ranch fell at the first fence.”
As Bertie Wooster would have called it: ” A scratched at the post non-starter.”
Your challenge to the media is exactly what is needed now. It should be repeated until there is a media response. By “media response,” I do not mean another interview with Alarmists who repeat the same dogma. I mean an honest statement by the media of the criteria that they use to judge statements by Alarmists. If they cannot think of any, they could at least adopt an Alarmist standard, namely, Santer’s Seventeen Years. The media must now explain why there is reason for them to continue beating the drums of alarm.
Thank you, Christopher Monckton. Do remember to take some prescription vitamin D supplements. You are way up there. You are as far north as Latvia.
‘‘Absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation. ”
Perhaps – but I learned a long time ago, never bet against dumb when global warming is the topic.
Gareth Phillips says:
December 16, 2013 at 4:20 pm
We are not dancing on the grave of AGW but on the grave of CAGW. Monckton said so. Read him again.
– – –
Global temperatures rose during a time that anthropological CO2 could not have had an influence, they rose again at the same rate during a time that it could, and temperatures have not risen for 17+ years. Thermometers were invented and used for the first time during a cold phase of the planet. To get a negative trend over the temperature record, even if CO2 has no influence at all on temperatures, could take hundreds or even thousands of years. Or it could take 10 years.
If it’s a negative trend you are looking for, there is one if you start somewhere around 2005 :
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/03/has-the-world-started-cooling-hints-from-4-of-5-global-temperature-sets-say-it-might-have/
Is it my imagination or did the warming stop about the time satellite measurements became available and which could not be ‘adjusted’?
Rob Dawg says:
December 16, 2013 at 4:00 pm
“The pause does not invalidate the rise and vice versa.”
No one claimed the rise did not happen, just that it wasn’t unprecedented.
What the pause invalidates is the claim rising CO2 would surely cause continued warming.
SR
Gareth Phillips;
I would not dance on the grave of majority climate science just yet.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Dance we shall, for we know full well that we dance on the grave of the Undead, and that the spectre of CAGW shall rise and rise again to haunt us all. We take solace in knowing full well that no matter how frightening the nightmare, it is, nonetheless, a dream. Those of us who studied the physics knew from the outset that CAGW was a horror story, but just a story. Yet such is the human condition that horror stories and nightmares keep us awake at night, for despite having looked many times to ascertain the facts, every little sound sows suspicion in our minds that perhaps, just perhaps, there are in fact, monsters under the bed.
So dance. Dance upon the grave of the Undead CAGW. Dance, knowing that it will rise to haunt us all again and again. Dance because there are no CAGW monsters under the bed, there never were, there never will be. Dance because every year that passes is like looking under the bed one more time and observing perhaps a lost sock, or balls of dust, a dried up piece of food, or maybe even a harmless mouse, but as for the Monster CAGW:
Hey! There’s nothing there!