Global temperature update: no warming for 18 years 6 months
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
For 222 months, since January 1997, there has been no global warming at all (Fig. 1). This month’s RSS temperature – now beginning to feel the effects of the current el Niño, which will eventually cause temporary warming – shows the Pause sticking at 18 years 6 months, with a global temperature anomaly higher than for two and a half years.
It is becoming ever more likely that the temperature increase that usually accompanies an el Niño will begin to shorten the Pause somewhat, just in time for the Paris climate summit, though a subsequent La Niña would be likely to bring about a resumption and perhaps even a lengthening of the Pause.
Figure 1. The least-squares linear-regression trend on the RSS satellite monthly global mean surface temperature anomaly dataset shows no global warming for 18 years 6 months since January 1997.
The hiatus period of 18 years 6 months is the farthest back one can go in the RSS satellite temperature record and still show a sub-zero trend. Note that the start date is not cherry-picked: it is calculated. And the graph does not mean there is no such thing as global warming. Going back further shows a small warming rate.
The divergence between the models’ predictions in 1990 (Fig. 2) and 2005 (Fig. 3), on the one hand, and the observed outturn, on the other, continues to widen. If the Pause lengthens just a little more, the rate of warming in the quarter-century since the IPCC’s First Assessment Report in 1990 will fall below 1 C°/century equivalent.
Figure 2. Near-term projections of warming at a rate equivalent to 2.8 [1.9, 4.2] K/century, made with “substantial confidence” in IPCC (1990), for the 305 months January 1990 to May 2015 (orange region and red trend line), vs. observed anomalies (dark blue) and trend (bright blue) at just 1 K/century equivalent, taken as the mean of the RSS and UAH v.6 satellite monthly mean lower-troposphere temperature anomalies.
Figure 3. Predicted temperature change, January 2005 to May 2015, at a rate equivalent to 1.7 [1.0, 2.3] Cº/century (orange zone with thick red best-estimate trend line), compared with the near-zero observed anomalies (dark blue) and real-world trend (bright blue), taken as the mean of the RSS and UAH v.6 satellite lower-troposphere temperature anomalies.
The Technical Note explains the sources of the IPCC’s predictions in 1990 and in 2005, and also demonstrates that that according to the ARGO bathythermograph data the oceans are warming at a rate equivalent to less than a quarter of a Celsius degree per century.
Key facts about global temperature
Ø The RSS satellite dataset shows no global warming at all for 222 months from January 1997 to June 2015 – more than half the 438-month satellite record.
Ø The entire RSS dataset from January 1979 to date shows global warming at an unalarming rate equivalent to just 1.2 Cº per century.
Ø Since 1950, when a human influence on global temperature first became theoretically possible, the global warming trend has been equivalent to below 1.2 Cº per century.
Ø The global warming trend since 1900 is equivalent to 0.8 Cº per century. This is well within natural variability and may not have much to do with us.
Ø The fastest warming rate lasting 15 years or more since 1950 occurred over the 33 years from 1974 to 2006. It was equivalent to 2.0 Cº per century.
Ø In 1990, the IPCC’s mid-range prediction of near-term warming was equivalent to 2.8 Cº per century, higher by two-thirds than its current prediction of 1.7 Cº/century.
Ø The warming trend since 1990, when the IPCC wrote its first report, is equivalent to 1 Cº per century. The IPCC had predicted more than two and a half times as much.
Ø Though the IPCC has cut its near-term warming prediction, it has not cut its high-end business as usual centennial warming prediction of 4.8 Cº warming to 2100.
Ø The IPCC’s predicted 4.8 Cº warming by 2100 is well over twice the greatest rate of warming lasting more than 15 years that has been measured since 1950.
Ø The IPCC’s 4.8 Cº-by-2100 prediction is four times the observed real-world warming trend since we might in theory have begun influencing it in 1950.
Ø The oceans, according to the 3600+ ARGO bathythermograph buoys, are warming at a rate of just 0.02 Cº per decade, equivalent to 0.23 Cº per century.
Ø Ocean warming over the 11 full years of ARGO data from 2004-2014 inclusive, is equivalent to just 1 C° every 430 years.
Ø Recent extreme-weather events cannot be blamed on global warming, because there has not been any global warming to speak of. It is as simple as that.
Technical note
Our latest topical graph shows the least-squares linear-regression trend on the RSS satellite monthly global mean lower-troposphere dataset for as far back as it is possible to go and still find a zero trend. The start-date is not “cherry-picked” so as to coincide with the temperature spike caused by the 1998 el Niño. Instead, it is calculated so as to find the longest period with a zero trend.
The satellite datasets are arguably less unreliable than other datasets in that they show the 1998 Great El Niño more clearly than all other datasets. The Great el Niño, like its two predecessors in the past 300 years, caused widespread global coral bleaching, providing an independent verification that the satellite datasets are better able to capture such fluctuations without artificially filtering them out than other datasets.
Terrestrial temperatures are measured by thermometers. Thermometers correctly sited in rural areas away from manmade heat sources show warming rates below those that are published. The satellite datasets are based on reference measurements made by the most accurate thermometers available – platinum resistance thermometers, which provide an independent verification of the temperature measurements by checking via spaceward mirrors the known temperature of the cosmic background radiation, which is 1% of the freezing point of water, or just 2.73 degrees above absolute zero. It was by measuring minuscule variations in the cosmic background radiation that the NASA anisotropy probe determined the age of the Universe: 13.82 billion years.
The RSS graph (Fig. 1) is accurate. The data are lifted monthly straight from the RSS website. A computer algorithm reads them down from the text file and plots them automatically using an advanced routine that automatically adjusts the aspect ratio of the data window at both axes so as to show the data at maximum scale, for clarity.
The latest monthly data point is visually inspected to ensure that it has been correctly positioned. The light blue trend line plotted across the dark blue spline-curve that shows the actual data is determined by the method of least-squares linear regression, which calculates the y-intercept and slope of the line.
The IPCC and most other agencies use linear regression to determine global temperature trends. Professor Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia recommends it in one of the Climategate emails. The method is appropriate because global temperature records exhibit little auto-regression, since summer temperatures in one hemisphere are compensated by winter in the other. Therefore, an AR(n) model would generate results little different from a least-squares trend.
Dr Stephen Farish, Professor of Epidemiological Statistics at the University of Melbourne, kindly verified the reliability of the algorithm that determines the trend on the graph and the correlation coefficient, which is very low because, though the data are highly variable, the trend is flat.
RSS itself is now taking a serious interest in the length of the Great Pause. Dr Carl Mears, the senior research scientist at RSS, discusses it at remss.com/blog/recent-slowing-rise-global-temperatures.
Dr Mears’ results are summarized in Fig. T1:
Figure T1. Output of 33 IPCC models (turquoise) compared with measured RSS global temperature change (black), 1979-2014. The transient coolings caused by the volcanic eruptions of Chichón (1983) and Pinatubo (1991) are shown, as is the spike in warming caused by the great el Niño of 1998.
Dr Mears writes:
“The denialists like to assume that the cause for the model/observation discrepancy is some kind of problem with the fundamental model physics, and they pooh-pooh any other sort of explanation. This leads them to conclude, very likely erroneously, that the long-term sensitivity of the climate is much less than is currently thought.”
Dr Mears concedes the growing discrepancy between the RSS data and the models, but he alleges “cherry-picking” of the start-date for the global-temperature graph:
“Recently, a number of articles in the mainstream press have pointed out that there appears to have been little or no change in globally averaged temperature over the last two decades. Because of this, we are getting a lot of questions along the lines of ‘I saw this plot on a denialist web site. Is this really your data?’ While some of these reports have ‘cherry-picked’ their end points to make their evidence seem even stronger, there is not much doubt that the rate of warming since the late 1990s is less than that predicted by most of the IPCC AR5 simulations of historical climate. … The denialists really like to fit trends starting in 1997, so that the huge 1997-98 ENSO event is at the start of their time series, resulting in a linear fit with the smallest possible slope.”
In fact, the spike in temperatures caused by the Great el Niño of 1998 is almost entirely offset in the linear-trend calculation by two factors: the not dissimilar spike of the 2010 el Niño, and the sheer length of the Great Pause itself.
Curiously, Dr Mears prefers the much-altered terrestrial datasets to the satellite datasets. The UK Met Office, however, uses the satellite record to calibrate its own terrestrial record.
The length of the Great Pause in global warming, significant though it now is, is of less importance than the ever-growing discrepancy between the temperature trends predicted by models and the far less exciting real-world temperature change that has been observed. It remains possible that el Nino-like conditions may prevail this year, reducing the length of the Great Pause. However, the discrepancy between prediction and observation continues to widen.
Sources of the IPCC projections in Figs. 2 and 3
IPCC’s First Assessment Report predicted that global temperature would rise by 1.0 [0.7, 1.5] Cº to 2025, equivalent to 2.8 [1.9, 4.2] Cº per century. The executive summary asked, “How much confidence do we have in our predictions?” IPCC pointed out some uncertainties (clouds, oceans, etc.), but concluded:
“Nevertheless, … we have substantial confidence that models can predict at least the broad-scale features of climate change. … There are similarities between results from the coupled models using simple representations of the ocean and those using more sophisticated descriptions, and our understanding of such differences as do occur gives us some confidence in the results.”
That “substantial confidence” was substantial over-confidence. For the rate of global warming since 1990 – the most important of the “broad-scale features of climate change” that the models were supposed to predict – is now below half what the IPCC had then predicted.
In 1990, the IPCC said this:
“Based on current models we predict:
“under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A) emissions of greenhouse gases, a rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century of about 0.3 Cº per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2 Cº to 0.5 Cº per decade), this is greater than that seen over the past 10,000 years. This will result in a likely increase in global mean temperature of about 1 Cº above the present value by 2025 and 3 Cº before the end of the next century. The rise will not be steady because of the influence of other factors” (p. xii).
Later, the IPCC said:
“The numbers given below are based on high-resolution models, scaled to be consistent with our best estimate of global mean warming of 1.8 Cº by 2030. For values consistent with other estimates of global temperature rise, the numbers below should be reduced by 30% for the low estimate or increased by 50% for the high estimate” (p. xxiv).
The orange region in Fig. 2 represents the IPCC’s medium-term Scenario-A estimate of near-term warming, i.e. 1.0 [0.7, 1.5] K by 2025.
The IPCC’s predicted global warming over the 25 years from 1990 to the present differs little from a straight line (Fig. T2).
Figure T2. Historical warming from 1850-1990, and predicted warming from 1990-2100 on the IPCC’s “business-as-usual” Scenario A (IPCC, 1990, p. xxii).
Because this difference between a straight line and the slight uptick in the warming rate the IPCC predicted over the period 1990-2025 is so small, one can look at it another way. To reach the 1 K central estimate of warming since 1990 by 2025, there would have to be twice as much warming in the next ten years as there was in the last 25 years. That is not likely.
But is the Pause perhaps caused by the fact that CO2 emissions have not been rising anything like as fast as the IPCC’s “business-as-usual” Scenario A prediction in 1990? No: CO2 emissions have risen rather above the Scenario-A prediction (Fig. T3).
Figure T3. CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, etc., in 2012, from Le Quéré et al. (2014), plotted against the chart of “man-made carbon dioxide emissions”, in billions of tonnes of carbon per year, from IPCC (1990).
Plainly, therefore, CO2 emissions since 1990 have proven to be closer to Scenario A than to any other case, because for all the talk about CO2 emissions reduction the fact is that the rate of expansion of fossil-fuel burning in China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, etc., far outstrips the paltry reductions we have achieved in the West to date.
True, methane concentration has not risen as predicted in 1990 (Fig. T4), for methane emissions, though largely uncontrolled, are simply not rising as the models had predicted. Here, too, all of the predictions were extravagantly baseless.
The overall picture is clear. Scenario A is the emissions scenario from 1990 that is closest to the observed CO2 emissions outturn.
Figure T4. Methane concentration as predicted in four IPCC Assessment Reports, together with (in black) the observed outturn, which is running along the bottom of the least prediction. This graph appeared in the pre-final draft of IPCC (2013), but had mysteriously been deleted from the final, published version, inferentially because the IPCC did not want to display such a plain comparison between absurdly exaggerated predictions and unexciting reality.
To be precise, a quarter-century after 1990, the global-warming outturn to date – expressed as the least-squares linear-regression trend on the mean of the RSS and UAH monthly global mean surface temperature anomalies – is 0.26 Cº, equivalent to 1 Cº/century. The IPCC’s central estimate of 0.71 Cº, equivalent to 2.8 Cº/century, that was predicted for Scenario A in IPCC (1990) with “substantial confidence” was two and a half times too big. In fact, the outturn is visibly well below even the least estimate.
In 1990, the IPCC’s central prediction of the near-term warming rate was higher by two-thirds than its prediction is today. Then it was 2.8 C/century equivalent. Now it is just 1.7 Cº equivalent – and, as Fig. T5 shows, even that is proving to be a substantial exaggeration.
Is the ocean warming?
One frequently-discussed explanation for the Great Pause is that the coupled ocean-atmosphere system has continued to accumulate heat at approximately the rate predicted by the models, but that in recent decades the heat has been removed from the atmosphere by the ocean and, since globally the near-surface strata show far less warming than the models had predicted, it is hypothesized that what is called the “missing heat” has traveled to the little-measured abyssal strata below 2000 m, whence it may emerge at some future date.
Actually, it is not known whether the ocean is warming: each of the 3600 automated ARGO bathythermograph buoys takes just three measurements a month in 200,000 cubic kilometres of ocean – roughly a 100,000-square-mile box more than 316 km square and 2 km deep. Plainly, the results on the basis of a resolution that sparse (which, as Willis Eschenbach puts it, is approximately the equivalent of trying to take a single temperature and salinity profile taken at a single point in Lake Superior less than once a year) are not going to be a lot better than guesswork.
Unfortunately ARGO seems not to have updated the ocean dataset since December 2014. However, what we have gives us 11 full years of data. Results are plotted in Fig. T5. The ocean warming, if ARGO is right, is equivalent to just 0.02 Cº decade–1, equivalent to 0.2 Cº century–1.
Figure T5. The entire near-global ARGO 2 km ocean temperature dataset from January 2004 to December 2014 (black spline-curve), with the least-squares linear-regression trend calculated from the data by the author (green arrow).
Finally, though the ARGO buoys measure ocean temperature change directly, before publication NOAA craftily converts the temperature change into zettajoules of ocean heat content change, which make the change seem a whole lot larger.
The terrifying-sounding heat content change of 260 ZJ from 1970 to 2014 (Fig. T6) is equivalent to just 0.2 K/century of global warming. All those “Hiroshima bombs of heat” of which the climate-extremist websites speak are a barely discernible pinprick. The ocean and its heat capacity are a lot bigger than some may realize.
Figure T6. Ocean heat content change, 1957-2013, in Zettajoules from NOAA’s NODC Ocean Climate Lab: http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT, with the heat content values converted back to the ocean temperature changes in Kelvin that were originally measured. NOAA’s conversion of the minuscule warming data to Zettajoules, combined with the exaggerated vertical aspect of the graph, has the effect of making a very small change in ocean temperature seem considerably more significant than it is.
Converting the ocean heat content change back to temperature change reveals an interesting discrepancy between NOAA’s data and that of the ARGO system. Over the period of ARGO data, from 2004-2014, the NOAA data imply that the oceans are warming at 0.05 Cº decade–1, equivalent to 0.5 Cº century–1, or rather more than double the rate shown by ARGO.
ARGO has the better-resolved dataset, but since the resolutions of all ocean datasets are very low one should treat all these results with caution. What one can say is that, on such evidence as these datasets are capable of providing, the difference between underlying warming rate of the ocean and that of the atmosphere is not statistically significant, suggesting that if the “missing heat” is hiding in the oceans it has magically found its way into the abyssal strata without managing to warm the upper strata on the way. On these data, too, there is no evidence of rapid or catastrophic ocean warming.
Furthermore, to date no empirical, theoretical or numerical method, complex or simple, has yet successfully specified mechanistically either how the heat generated by anthropogenic greenhouse-gas enrichment of the atmosphere has reached the deep ocean without much altering the heat content of the intervening near-surface strata or how the heat from the bottom of the ocean may eventually re-emerge to perturb the near-surface climate conditions relevant to land-based life on Earth.
Most ocean models used in performing coupled general-circulation model sensitivity runs simply cannot resolve most of the physical processes relevant for capturing heat uptake by the deep ocean. Ultimately, the second law of thermodynamics requires that any heat which may have accumulated in the deep ocean will dissipate via various diffusive processes. It is not plausible that any heat taken up by the deep ocean will suddenly warm the upper ocean and, via the upper ocean, the atmosphere.
If the “deep heat” explanation for the Pause were correct (and it is merely one among dozens that have been offered), the complex models have failed to account for it correctly: otherwise, the growing discrepancy between the predicted and observed atmospheric warming rates would not have become as significant as it has.
Why were the models’ predictions exaggerated?
In 1990 the IPCC predicted – on its business-as-usual Scenario A – that from the Industrial Revolution till the present there would have been 4 Watts per square meter of radiative forcing caused by Man (Fig. T7):
Figure T7. Predicted manmade radiative forcings (IPCC, 1990).
However, from 1995 onward the IPCC decided to assume, on rather slender evidence, that anthropogenic particulate aerosols – mostly soot from combustion – were shading the Earth from the Sun to a large enough extent to cause a strong negative forcing. It has also now belatedly realized that its projected increases in methane concentration were wild exaggerations. As a result of these and other changes, it now estimates that the net anthropogenic forcing of the industrial era is just 2.3 Watts per square meter, or little more than half its prediction in 1990:
Figure T8: Net anthropogenic forcings, 1750 to 1950, 1980 and 2012 (IPCC, 2013).
Even this, however, may be a considerable exaggeration. For the best estimate of the actual current top-of-atmosphere radiative imbalance (total natural and anthropo-genic net forcing) is only 0.6 Watts per square meter (Fig. T9):
Figure T9. Energy budget diagram for the Earth from Stephens et al. (2012)
In short, most of the forcing predicted by the IPCC is either an exaggeration or has already resulted in whatever temperature change it was going to cause. There is little global warming in the pipeline as a result of our past and present sins of emission.
It is also possible that the IPCC and the models have relentlessly exaggerated climate sensitivity. One recent paper on this question is Monckton of Brenchley et al. (2015), which found climate sensitivity to be in the region of 1 Cº per CO2 doubling (go to scibull.com and click “Most Read Articles”). The paper identified errors in the models’ treatment of temperature feedbacks and their amplification, which account for two-thirds of the equilibrium warming predicted by the IPCC.
Professor Ray Bates will shortly give a paper in Moscow in which he will conclude, based on the analysis by Lindzen & Choi (2009, 2011) (Fig. T10), that temperature feedbacks are net-negative. Accordingly, he supports the conclusion both by Lindzen & Choi (1990) (Fig. T10) and by Spencer & Braswell (2010, 2011) that climate sensitivity is below – and perhaps considerably below – 1 Cº per CO2 doubling.
Figure T10. Reality (center) vs. 11 models. From Lindzen & Choi (2009).
A growing body of reviewed papers find climate sensitivity considerably below the 3 [1.5, 4.5] Cº per CO2 doubling that was first put forward in the Charney Report of 1979 for the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and is still the IPCC’s best estimate today.
On the evidence to date, therefore, there is no scientific basis for taking any action at all to mitigate CO2 emissions.
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An excellent summary.
I would second that. Only it isn’t a “pause” or “hiatus”. It is a HALT until such time as an upward or downward trend is present…
Yep. “Pause” implies knowledge of the future. It’s a boole sheet word.
In Britain the road signs used to say “Halt at Major Road Ahead.” Not “Pause at Major Road Ahead.”
No, by definition it is a “decline”. That is the definition of what is being calculated. The longest period of “decline”, trend less than zero.
Thank you for the report!
There seems to be some confusion as to which version of UAH you are using. On the graphs for both Figure 2 and 3, it says UAHv6, but the writeup says UAH v. 5.6.
Moderators, please change “UAH v5.6” to “UAH v6” in the captions to figs. 2-3. I used the new version of the dataset. Thank you, and thanks to Werner Brozek for noticing the error.
[done -mod]
Well done. There is no pause; it is clearly a plateau. It may even be a peak with temperatures set to tumble.
I would discourage this sort of thinking.
Absent human influence, significant or not, we are still in a warming world. It is extremely likely that the long term trend will continue, and that is up.
Will that go on forever?? No, but the odds of the peak being any given year are very long indeed, and we would not know it was a peak until long after. Remember that the granularity of our temperature data in geologic time is very, very coarse.
@CKB:
Um, I would discourage calling where we are now a ‘warming trend’.
We are cooling since the Holocene Optimum and the Roman Optimum. Both were warmer than now. We are in a very long term decent into the next Ice Age Glacial and can expect the ice to come, and not go, very shortly in geologic terms. The W/sq.meter above 65N is already in the ‘unstable to the cold side’ range. The orbital changes that will force us into the next glacial are inexorable and can not be overcome with CO2 (or anything else, for that matter). The only real question is “exactly when”.
Best as I can tell, there’s a set of oscillations based on harmonics of the 1500 year Bond Event frequency of 1500 (ish) years. The last plunge (the Little Ice Age) was about 1/2 of a Bond Event after Bond Event 1. Now is a full cycle. So it could be now. Or it might be 350 years from now. Or it might be 1500 years from now. Each of those times will be a cold spike. One of them will be just enough larger than the others and will ‘stick’. Then it’s “ice ice baby” for the next 100,000 years.
BTW, historically there is a hot spike just before the cold plunges… Just sayin’…
(Look up Heinrich Event…)
So yes, we agree that “It is extremely likely that the long term trend will continue”. Just you are looking at way too short a period to be even remotely close to a “long term trend”…
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/intermediate-period-half-bond-events/
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/8-2-kiloyear-event-and-you/
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2015/01/03/atlantic-boreal-cycles-and-events/
Since the past is continuing to cool, it increases the possibility that this will be a peak in warming.
So far, the peak was 1998
Re : “we are still in a warming world.”
Which bit of the world is warming? The earth’s core/mantle/crust/oceans/atmosphere? Perhaps you mean that small fragment of the atmosphere about 6 feet above the local surface, a small fragment of which has been measured by thermometers? If you insist, that we are living in a warming world, then please inform us which of the these two claims is false?
(A) The annual global surface temperature of 1997 is 16.92°C, and 1997 has the highest annual global surface temperature since 1900.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/1997/climate97.html
(B) The annual global surface temperature of 2014 is 14.59°C, and 2014 has the highest annual global surface temperature since 1880.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201413
At least one of these two claims must be false. Maybe both are false. If either one of them is false, then please explain why it is false. If you cannot offer any such explanation, then why on earth should we believe even for one second your claim, that we live in a warming world?
@EMSmith: You are of course, correct, on geologic time and it terms of geologic cycles. My “long term”, was a just a few hundred years at most, I should have been more clear and used the term “local trend” or something.
@Nick Boyce: Both of the statements you mention are almost certainly false…the -true- error bars for all those “measurements” completely swamp the actual data. The only air temperature data for climate measurement worth considering (for me) is satellite data, lower troposphere. I think it is the best we can currently do. Especially comparing year-to-year, the actual number is less relevant to trends.
The context of my original comment was for the current media-driven information cycle. My concern is that we will see media reporting that every year is always “hotter” or very nearly “hotter” than the next. They can be using surface data or satellite data – it will be true in either case. Every year we add to the satellite data is very likely (talking odds here, “sticky” climate trends) to be in the top 10 (of the admittedly too short 40+).
My point is that this warming is expected absent any human influence. The climate is “sticky”, meaning trends usually continue, and “local” year-to-year trend we are in is up. It’s bad to be wrong. Calling 1998 the peak or the current plateau the peak is a mistake. Could it be, sure. Is it likely, no. That’s all I’m saying. I expect next year to be hotter or nearly hotter than the last. Until it isn’t.
The world has been in a short-term (centennial scale) warming trend since the depths of the LIA over 300 years ago during the Maunder Minimum. But it has been in a long-term (millennial scale) cooling trend for the past more than 3000 years, since the Minoan Warm Period, or 5000 years since the Holocene Optimum.
@ur momisugly EM Smith
” The only real question is “exactly when”. ” I think somebody knows. Let me tell you how warm you feel on a 50F day eating ice cream, ” if you think it’s hot, you’d be right”.
After 6 months, the average is 0.304, and this would rank in 6th place if it stayed this way. However it will probably go up to third place before the end of the year. But a new record is virtually ruled out since the anomalies for the rest of the year would then need to average 0.796. This was only beaten once and that was in April 1998 when it was 0.857. It cannot be ruled out that the June anomaly of 0.391 may rise to 0.796 by December, but there is no way that 2015 could end up in first or even in second place on RSS.
UAH6.0 is in a very similar situation.
Indeed! Heat is curious in the atmosphere, when it is gone, it is gone. Since 1998 the atmosphere has cooled. This is conclusive and indisputable.
One of history’s greatest bureaucratically-inspired blunders: since all the doom and gloom about global warming was taken up by many governments in the late 1990s, there has been barely, or even any, global warming at all.
Must go down in history as one of the worst-timed, ill informed, premature, self-deluded, and largely government-sourced and institutionally self-interested predictions of all time.
You mean uit is politically inspired
One of my literary ‘Titular Heroes’ [and I now find the little grey cells flooding out so I cannot remember who it was]** wrote, and I think repeated:
“There is no situation so bad, so dire, that Government interference cannot make it worse.”
** Candidates include: –
Patrick Hutber – of ‘Hutber’s Law’
Richard Feynman
Peter Simple, London ‘Daily Telegraph’ columnist of yore
Boris Johnson
Havelock Vetinari, Patrician of Ankh -Morpork
Jim Slater – the Slater of Slater Walker, not the union leader
But it was so long ago that I have no confidence that any listed above was the progenitor of the epigram.
“There is no situation so bad, so dire, that Government interference cannot make it worse.”
But – think – might this have a scintilla of truth, somewhere within its core?
Auto – in rather small-government mood. Oddly!
The CAGW religious worshippers will all rejoice if The Pause is interrupted by El Nino.
Then they’ll need reminding of how loudly they’ve squealed that the pause is only possible due to the El Nino in 97-98 which was an anomalously warm spike. Can’t have it both ways.
Lord M is entirely right to identify the biggest error – the increasing discrepancy between models and observations, which is quietly destroying alarmists predictions of planetary doom.
Yes, but if it’s another ‘step up’ in temps then it will be us trying to explain it away. If you look at the temp since 1998 it is quite clear to everyone except Mr Grant Foster (aka Tamino), that temps flatlined after that step, and didn’t follow model predictions. BUT, you can see the ‘step up’ after 1998’s El Nino all the same. If we see solar factors reduce the anomaly then we can say for absolute certainty that natural factors outweigh CO2 forcing, and so the whole scare is/was a total scam and poor science. But if this is simply a step up to 15 years of an elevated temp again, then we have some explaining to do. The next 10 years is going to be very interesting, as will be the Arctic in the same time period.
If you had to make a balanced observation, you’d have to say that there is evidence of raised temps, howsoever caused, that is nothing like the scare stories, but it’s there all the same. Where governments (and scientists) have gone wrong is to over-blow it. I don’t think there is a climate scientist alive who, if you went back in time and told them today’s temp, wouldn’t be shocked that we aren’t in a much warmer world. Their predictions were wrong, but they can’t explain why.
WRT steps up and down
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/07/scandal-bom-thermometer-records-fiddled-by-month-mysterious-square-wave-pattern-discovered/
Big Jim Cooley says we may yet have to explain another El Niño-driven up step in global warming as the present Pause ends. No, we won’t. The warming is predicted by greenhouse-gas theory. The significance of the current Pause is that it has lowered the overall warming trend.
Warming will eventually continue, and sooner rather than later, if anyone wants my untutored guess. But it will continue to be far below prediction. Slow warming, even if it eventually reaches 3 degrees, is harmless.,
The current rare 3-yr El Niño event will likely end this December.
Based on previous historic ENSO cycles, since this was a relatively long and warm El Niño event, the subsequent La Niña cycle in 2016/17 should be quite cool, especially because the 30-yr PDO cool cycle started in 2005.
Through raw data manipulation (like Karl 2015) and silly pal-review papers suggesting global warming causes global cooling, warmunists will try to keep the CAGW hypothesis limping along for as long as possible, but “The Hiatus” should hit 20+ years by the end of the next La Niña cycle, which should be sufficient duration and disparity to effectively disconfirm the notion that CO2 has the potential to cause catastrophic: global warming, sea rise, ocean acidification, severe weather events, etc.,
We’re getting tantalizingly close to the demise of the CAGW hypothesis; providing, of course, the Scientific Method still exists in the future…
“We’re getting tantalizingly close to the demise of the CAGW hypothesis; providing, of course, the Scientific Method still exists in the future…”
Since the Scientific Method doesn’t exist in the present for CAGW, why would you think it would apply in the future for CAGW?
Also, since the almighty governments are pushing this political agenda, I do NOT expect a demise. Governments will see their country go down in flames before abandoning their ideology.
Kokoda–How I see this playing out is that other branches of science and math outside climatology: chemists, physicists, mathematicians, statisticians, biologists, etc., will eventually find the CAGW hypothesis so embarrassing and detrimental to their reputation (and access to government grants) it will be in their best interests to speak out against CAGW.
We’re already starting to see this happen.
Regardless, the polls show voters are growing skeptical and weary of CAGW, and once CAGW becomes a political liability, it’s dead…
I’m thinking of adding a Freedom Clock to these postings, counting down to 20 years without global warming. That threshold -two full decades without warming – will, once crossed, bring the scare to an end.
Monckton of Brenchley says
July 3, 2015 at 2:31 am
I’m thinking of adding a Freedom Clock to these postings, counting down to 20 years without global warming. That threshold -two full decades without warming – will, once crossed, bring the scare to an end.
Personally, I think that’s a bit of a risky manoeuvre. It only needs the anomalies to stay at current levels for a few more months, and both satellite datasets’ pauses will vanish. It doesn’t even need to get any warmer. UAH V.6 just makes it into next year, and RSS to July 2016. The huge el Nino spike in 1998 keeps the start of the pause (as calculated by this method) firmly in 1997 until the very last minute.
So unless you are pretty confident of some cooling in the next few months, it would be an anticlimax to have a big countdown clock.
The science is certainly settled that the sensitivity to forcing must be far lower than the IPCC claims. Unfortunately, the truth doesn’t fit the narrative and it will be difficult for many to accept, especially due to the political consequences to the left of being so obstinately wrong for so long. Yet another reason why subjective politics (and religion) must never have a role in determining what is and what is not objective science.
well said.
Even this, however, may be a considerable exaggeration. For the best estimate of the actual current top-of-atmosphere radiative imbalance (total natural and anthropo-genic net forcing) is only 0.6 Watts per square meter (Fig. T9):
In short, most of the forcing predicted by the IPCC is either an exaggeration or has already resulted in whatever temperature change it was going to cause. There is little global warming in the pipeline as a result of our past and present sins of emission.
The most recent OHC data (with a April-June update pending) shows a surface TOA value closer to 1.0 to 1.2 Watts per meter squared.
The 0.6 value was from Hansen and Sato 2010 and showed a median value from the study period with the median correlating to 2007. The rate of warming is rapidly increasing, doubling in only 8 years, expect this to increase even more rapidly as china and other countries work to reduce their pollution.
What is a “surface TOA” and how does one calculate it from OHC?
surface TOA = Top of Atmosphere energy imbalance. It is derived from taking the total heat absorbed by the oceans as ~ 93% of the total global energy absorption. This total energy accumulation is then divided by the surface of the earth at the troposphere and by the seconds in the period of study to get an averaged value of watts per meter squared.
This value then indicates the total incoming energy minus the outgoing energy to space. It is an indication of the current amount of additional warming that is locked in and will lead to future temperature increases until the earth does reach a new, higher temperature, equilibrium.
Quit making stuff up Jai.
Also remember one needs to take the X.X 10^22 joules OHC figures and divide by 1.13 to convert the ocean area to a Y.Y W/m2 per year. And it should really be 1.62 given the land/atmosphere/ice is not accumulating any kind of significant figure so the 1.62 division is the real entire earth energy imbalance.
Ocean heat content data do not give us the top-of-atmosphere radiative imbalance. The data are in any event derived from ocean temperature measurements at very poor spatial resolution.
When the “blob” s included, then the SST globally are at a record, and their divergence from the below surface ocean heat content is likewise, at a record.
In summary, although the atmosphere is now well below 1998 T, the ocean contribution is higher then in 1998, but the ocean below surface T will in all likelihood modify that, as the AMO is turning, and the below surface ocean T likely to affect future ENSO flux has not warmed at all.
Please re-review the the Stephens et. al. (2012) paper: An update on Earth’s energy balance in light of the latest global observations You will find that they do indeed rely on OHC data for their estimates. The OHC data are measured to a very high degree of accuracy since temperatures of water can be accurately found at scales of .005C. Since spatial anomaly values are not globally averaged values these temperature measurements can be measured very accurately and correlated with high-resolution surface level measurements from satellites. They are extremely accurate.
Jai, I’ve studied this issue extensively. Using OHC estimates to calculate TOA energy imbalances is pure hokum. Given Argo’s inability to accurately measure the average temperature of the world’s oceans at any given time, there’s no way we can measure change in average ocean temperature between any two meaningful periods. The incredible mass of the ocean means that OHC numbers are overly sensitive to tiny changes in average ocean temperatures. Sorry, but claiming that Argo can measure the average temperature of the world’s oceans.
It’s pure optics that the people pushing this nonsense always express OHC change instead of expressing the hundredths of a degree in average ocean temperature change that they are claiming. Did you spend any time scrutinizing this for yourself, or were you content to just swallow these claims whole?
Mr Mitchell is incorrect in his assumption that ocean heat content data are accurate. Errors of up to 2 K have been found in ARGO measurements. Also, each float, taking just three readings a month, must try to represent 200,000 cu. km of ocean. Given the very large uncertainties, it is not clear that the ocean is warming at all. If, however, ARGO is correct, then the rate of warming is only 1 K in 430 years.
Only about 10% of the longwave radiation leaving the top of the atmosphere comes directly from the surface including that from the oceans. This is because the atmospheric window (the wavelength band with no greenhouse action) covers about 25% and average cloudiness in about 60%. So 40% of 25% gives 10%, or about 40 Wm-2. For some reason Stephens shows only about half of this. Most of the rest comes from cloud tops through the atmospheric window, water vapor and CO2.
Actually, the Earth’s Energy Imbalance IS determined by the Argo Ocean Heat Content data.
The orbiting radiation satellites cannot measure radiation flows accurately enough to arrive at a reliable imbalance estimate. The CERES satellite, for example, is missing about 4 W/m2 of outgoing radiation that its sensors are not picking up. Design flaw, measurement error in the instruments, whatever the reason, it is NOT accurate enough.
So, it has become practise to estimate the energy imbalance based on what we can actually measure and that is the energy accumulating in the 0-2000 metre ocean, and then adding the estimated accumulation in the land surface, the atmosphere and in melting ice. The land/atmosphere/ice-melt is a very small number at just 0.7 10^22 joules per year or 0.035 W/m2/year.
Jai is right that the Argo floats are measuring a slight uptick in the 0-2000 metre ocean heat content recently, but it is not enough to sway the numbers much.
When calculated properly, the Earth’s Energy Imbalance from 2005 (when Argo become reliable enough) to the First Quarter of 2015 (including the land/atmosphere/ice accumulation) it is STILL …
… 0.61 W/m2/year.
http://s10.postimg.org/vrrkn432x/OHC_0_2000_Metres_1955_Q1_2015.png
Data for the 0-2000 metre ocean is here (divide this accumulation rate in 10^22 joules by 1.61 to arrive at what is being accumulated across the entire land surface –> 0.9 10^22 joules/year / 1.61 10^22 m2 Earth surface area (and add 0.035 W/m2/year) to arrive at 0.61 W/m2/year energy imbalance.
http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/3month/ohc2000m_levitus_climdash_seasonal.csv
Sorry 1.61 10^22 joules/year = 1.0 joule/second across 510M km2 Earth Surface area over 31.55M seconds/year.
1 joule/second = 1.0 Watt
1.61 10^22 joules/year = 1.0 W/m2/year over 1.0 full year over the entire Earth surface.
Bill,
?w=640
The estimate you give for land/ice/atmosphere accumulation is a guess, not based on reality. You also are using data that is over 6 months old. the last update to the heat accumulation shows a massive spike in warming over the last 6 months. instead of taking an average value based on guesswork and over a long time period. Use the last 4 years of data, then address that land/ocean/ice energy accumulation is not a static value but changes with the difference in TOA.
The observed changes in the rates of ocean heat content makes your assumption of a static value for non-ocean heat gains invalid.
from 2010 to current OHC values, with a value of 93% of total heat gain by the oceans, the TOA is slightly over 1.0 Watts per meter squared but the average value is from 2012 (median)
(there will be another 3-month update to this graph later this month).
Sorry, Jai you are right, there was error in one my formula.
… energy accumulation is 0.66 W/m2/year
http://s10.postimg.org/wj37zxdax/OHC_0_2000_Metres_1955_Q1_2015.png
Bill,
Just curious, with your own methodology and using the most recent data, http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/3month/ohc2000m_levitus_climdash_seasonal.csv
what do you get for the 2010-present value?
Jai Mitchell
July 2, 2015 at 8:39 pm
Jai, as far as I can tell, what you say shows clearly what I call the very classical mistake off the AGWers.
When what you say may possibly be correctly meaning an increase of the energy that atmosphere is subjected to due to increase of RF (Radiative Forcing), that in its own does not really or necessarily mean always and forever an increase in atmospheric warming (as per climate).
According to the paleo-climate data, a similar condition seems to have happen at the very top of interglacial optimum (~10K years ago) when the trend turned from a long one of warming to a long one of cooling, initiating with a kinda of plateau, when at the same time actually CO2 emissions and concentration still went up for a little longer and still increased the RF and the energy the atmosphere was subjected to, with no any result of further warming but instead with a turn towards the cooling..
What you say and the way you imply it does not really or necessarily mean the atmosphere should or must warm further than experienced as up to the present, is not a certain given, only an assumption…. ………clever at a point but not full proof or unchallengeable, far from it I will say.
cheers
Whiten,
Thanks for your response but the paleoclimate models clearly show WHY there was an increase in northern hemisphere radiative forcing and that the forcing went away as the earth’s orbit and precession cycles turned. This is why you call it a “long one of cooling”.
Since we are currently at the lowest solar minimum in over 100 years and there are significant amounts of air pollution that reflect the sun’s energy, this measured radiative forcing imbalance can be directly attributed to greenhouse gasses, much less that this radiative forcing, in the spectrum of CO2 absorption has been directly measured.
Jai Mitchell
July 3, 2015 at 2:01 pm
Thank you for the reply, Jai.
But from my point of view, your argument is still no more than an assumption, based in the “clarity” of models against the clarity of the data.
The “similar” period I mentioned as an example for a comparison is of much significant length than the period you based your argument, and as far as I know the turn of the trend ~10K years ago was not due to any “turn” of the earth’s orbit and precession cycle (you will be the first I hear this from), and also your point of ‘Sun is causing’ the “cooling” or “preventing’ the warming holds not much water, the “pollution” effect holds even less.
A long chain of assumptions, weak ones, can not be served as clarity or certainty or as a strong argument especially when data suggests otherwise.
Probably wrong, but as far as I know albedo does not play any role in any climatic projections with the GCMs,,,,,,,,,the effect is like very very minor and ends up “cancelled” as meaningless, no matter how much wished for from some to be otherwise…….(.but maybe I am not that correct with this information.)
If this true than I can’t see how any “paleoclimate model” can be taken seriously as a “compass” of the truth in the point of deciding with clarity and certainty what caused climate change and changes of climate trends thousands of years ago.
Besides, your own logic and reasoning suggest that Sun’s variations and the mentioned “pollution” seem to be more significant than the albedo change,,,,, especially, in the case as you may have heard also of the runaway global warming which was based also on the albedo change too.
The pollution and the Sun must be not only “blocking” the RF forcing effect on climate, but the albedo change effect also that resulted from the so much melting of the Arctic and shrinking of the glaciers, supposedly.
Is no where either in paleclimate data or any model runs, either GCM ones or otherwise, proved or suggested strongly with some kind of clarity or credibility that Sun’s periodic changes or any “pollution” has ever had in the past or have at the present or is ever going to have in the future projections any significant climatic effect or impact as you claim above.
Please feel free with your assumptions, nothing wrong there, but please try not to serve these assumptions as clarities and certainties or as some so obvious facts and evidence of truth and reality.
Thanks again.
cheers
Mr Mitchell is not correct that we are at a solar minimum. We have only just left the 11-year maximum. In general, solar activity has been declining since the near Grand Maximum of 1925 to 1995 (Solanki et al., 2005). Nor is it at all clear what effect particulate aerosols have.
What is clear is that, on all measures, the world has been warming more slowly – indeed, much more slowly – than predicted. On present trends it is unlikely that we shall see even 1 K warming this century.
This is why the Energy Imbalance really matters.
One can say that energy is still accumulating but at 0.66 W/m2/year that is far, far below what is supposed to be happening.
The net forcing from all sources (natural and human-induced) is supposed to be 2.29 W/m2/year in 2015 according to the IPCC AR5. So where is the Energy going?
http://s24.postimg.org/vbpihi8n9/Missing_Energy_Q1_2015.png
There is the planck negative radiative feedback???, as energy and temperatures goes up, more outgoing radiation to space results (but the science says all this does is move the radiation outflow to balance off the solar radiation inflow higher up in the atmosphere so it does not matter. The surface will get warmer but the level where 240 W/m2 outgoing radiation balances off the incoming solar will just be higher up in the atmosphere).
But we also know this is NOT happening. The troposphere is not warming as fast as the surface and the mid-troposphere, where the hotspot is supposed to be, is NOT warming at all.
Well, the plank negative radiative feedback must actually be happening from the surface up and not concentrated in a higher level of emission from the troposphere at all. The Planck radiative feedback is -(2.29 W/m2 – 0.66 W/m2) / 0.7K of temperature increase = -2.32 W/m2/K
So what we have is the real feedbacks in global warming of:
–> +2.3 W/m2/K (water vapor IPCC estimate)
–> +0.7 W/m2/K (cloud radiative IPCC)
–> -0.9 W/m2/K (lapse rate IPCC)
–> +0.25 W/m2/K (albedo IPCC long-run)
–> -2.33 W/m2/K (planck radiative feedback, Bill Illis but not included by the IPCC)
and now the math works for +2.29 W/m2 of direct forcing –> 0.6C temperature increase (pretty close to the real temperature increase taking into account how much of the warming is adjustments that are in error).
Doubled CO2 is only +1.145C with this feedback included.
Trenberth even included a similar concept is one of his “missing energy” papers. Negative Radiative feedback here.
http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/8098/trenberthnetradiation.jpg
Please provide both of the average world ocean temperatures and the dates at which they were estimated that created the value you are claiming.
Btw, please provide the answer in degrees.
[snip – OTT -mod]
Sorry, perhaps I got a bit carried away.
Would you say the total area under the curve above and below the straight line are equal? Or is it possible the total area above or below is greater? That area would represent total time the temperature was either above or below the the line.
The least-squares linear-regression trend line is determined as that straight line which minimises the sum of the squares of the residuals, a residual being the difference between the data point and the line. The algorithm tends to exaggerate the effect of outlying data points, so that the areas between the data curve and each side of the line may not be quite equal.
If we were to go to the tables and plot the number of days above and below the line then we would have a good picture of the kind of weather the world experienced, either mostly warm or mostly cool, and which would be a kind of misery index (or comfort index if we won’t wish to appear negative).
And while I’d like to think the comfort index would reveal a nice balance, my Mark I eyeball says the days were warmer for most of those 18+ years, but a closer examination would be needed to see if the comfort index is trending warmer or cooler along the path of the given trend line.
I also think over a short snippet of time air temperature is not a good indication of the energy balance of the Earth system and doesn’t inform us if we are receiving more energy from the sun than we are returning to the darkness of space, and the PDO/ENSO are good reminders of that. This 18+ year trend line, taken in isolation, is a better political tool than it is good science.
Nice try, but no. The official US State of the Climate Report for 2008 says that periods without warming of 15 years or more are not expected. It does matter that there has been no global warming for so long a period: since it is an indication that the overall rate of warming is far less than predicted – a point confirmed with Figs. 2 and 3 of the head posting.
If you don’t like evidence, of course, then you’re probably at the wrong website. That the scientific evidence ought to have a political effect is undeniable: that it is not thus far having much effect is also undeniable. But that will not stop us from telling the truth here.
“If you don’t like evidence, of course, then you’re probably at the wrong website”
..
I guess you don’t like this evidence.
.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/plot/gistemp/trend
…
Christopher, you need to look at other evidence besides RSS
Joel,
GISSTemp is a pack of lies. It is evidence only of the corruption of so-called “climate science” produced by the Government-Industrial-Complex about which Ike warned.
Mr Jackson is perhaps new here, or he would know that I do a six-monthly round-up of all five principal global-temperature datasets. However, I am considering dropping NASA GISS from the round-up because it gas been tampered with in an indefensible manner so as to create a false impression that there is more warming than in fact there is.
sturgishooper & Monckton
..
I get it. Both of you have “cherry picked” the RSS data.
..
Do you pick it because it supports your point of view, and the other data sets don’t?
I agree the trend is zero but I’m also aware that peak temperatures, low and high, can clutter the picture. I would have bet a vital organ the number of warm vs cool days would be an excellent indicator of the state of the climate that everyone can agree on regardless of what the peak temperatures may have been on any particular day. But I’m just a skeptic and can’t be expected to understand any of this.
What the foolish official US State of the Climate Report for 2008 might mean in 2015 is probably unimportant. If nothing else they’ve likely learned not to say things that can be used against them. Their claim means they didn’t understand any better then what they don’t understand today. If they have not since amended that statement (not because it isn’t true but because it’s become inconvenient) then they’re still dumb as rocks. If the purpose of your graph is to expose their devious use of data then you’ve accomplished that. Not convincingly, but good enough for the Facebook/Twitter echo machines.
[snip -OTT -mod]
Do any of the models in T1 approximate the measured data ?
It looks like one model may be close after 2000 but I can’t tell as the models plot as a mass of intertwined spaghetti
“the models plot as a mass of intertwined spaghetti”
That’s why they are called….’computer muddles’
Remember, oceanic heating during an El Niño is attributable to a drop in cloud cover and tropical albedo, not CO2 and the imaginary hot-spot. The Pause abides.
The endpoint is now. Then you count back until the trend becomes significant.
Dr Mears must know this.
Dr Mears is merely repeating a true-believers’ talking point. The 2010 El Niño near fully offsets the 1998 event in determining the slope of the temperature trend since the late 1990s. Dr Mears ought to know that too.
The 2010 event is not even needed. The 1997-98 El Nino is fully offset by the La Nina that followed in 1998-2000. This can be seem by comparing the trend from 1998 with the trend from 2001. They are nearly identical.
You maths boffins might nod your heads the “trend” of 1.4C per century on the RSS graph from 1990. Me, I just notice that the temperature today is exactly the same as it was in 1991.
Sorry, the “trend” was 0.45C on that graph, not 1.4C. Point still stands
Come’on guyes, should we start from scratch???
It is obvious by watching the solar affect on our atmosphere for the last several months that the sun is reducing its energy.
It doesn’t matter what the temperature was 400 years ago to know that the sun is unpredictable. That is the nature of the beast….All the research in the past should be looked upon as suspicious. Because the “beast” will constantly change. The computers are designed for patterns, just like calculus, has no brain. Without the brain, GIGO…
All the research papers seems to draw on past research to use as evidence. That is an invalid assumption.
And WWF, you are right the temperature where you are is exactly as it was in 1991. But for the last several years my little valley has had terrible cold snaps that occur each morning just before the sun came up, then the days got hot. That is what got my attention. So did that average out to be warm?
And BOOMER, wanta play?
Get your own weather station and start recording.
LeeO
Much as I hate to admit it, then it looks like c’sest si bon for the IPCC so far on the road to Paris and they are going to be ecstatic in a few hours time when the Solar Impulse lands in Hawaii.
Still believe that solar will never have a future in commercial aviation – but I guess it could revolutionise the gliding fraternity. I am sure that we all hope that André Borschberg pulls off a safe landing and if he does, all I can say it will be a damn fine effort by all concerned.
BBC World Service last night – daily global climate change – poison edition:
Some female expert(?) on about the Oceans/Seas going to rats and part way broke down and cried about her kids not experiencing nice Oceans and Seas. Harrabin was interviewing..nuff said? Nobody on then or later to counter it.
I saw that tripe from Harrabin. What a superficial report about this subject. But that is how BBC conduct their business these days. All superficiality and omitted facts.
I always tell my wife that tears are cheating, when we are having a marital discussion. Not that she doesn’t feel free to employ them, and not that I am hardhearted and don’t respond, but we know negotiations have left the lounge of logic. Only once was I so exasperated about something (which was big at the time but actually so trivial that I now can’t even remember what it was) that I faked tears myself. To my astonishment, it worked.
Ever since then I have thought about employing tears as a counter-argument to people who seem to feel becoming teary has a place in debate, including the Global Warming debate. I am fairly certain it would be effective, but somehow, when it comes down to it, I lack the necessary nerve.
Caleb,
I’ll have to try that next time someone tells me ‘carbon’ (i.e. CO2) is a pollutant and must be eliminated.
“*sob!* How could you possibly *sob* live with yourself *sob*sob* knowing that you are deliberately *sob* starving *sob* all those poor little baby plants of their food supply!? *sob*sob*”
I am fairly certain it would be effective
================
remember not to peek at the other person to see if the tears are working.
I suppose it will take some practice, The first time will be hardest.
CO2 is not the primary climate driver. Therefore after this El Nino has run its course the pauze will return, or rather the onset of a cooling period will become clearer.
Lord Monckton, don’t worry. I expect a full scale blizzard to hit Paris around the time of the conference. Or perhaps record low temperatures! Lol!
Record cold temperatures for the time of year, in Paris, is not outside the range of possibilities, with the AMO swinging to its colder phase. They are close to the colder Atlantic, and a long way from the warm El Nino. And they do have a history of having an uncanny ability of bringing a sort of “hex” down upon themselves.
It is probably wrong to introduce the subject of a “hex”, especially as Lord Monckton has labored so hard laying out the Truth in its most logical and factual form, however, if there is actually such a thing as “Supernatural Powers-That-Be”, I wonder what their attitude towards Paris might be. Here you have a bunch of mere mortals who think they are gods, and control the weather. Hmm.
There is a race going on – How far will the CAWG madness proceed before there is significant in your face cooling which ends the climate wars.
Solar observations continue to support the assertion that the solar cycle has been interrupted. There are cycles of warming and cooling in the paleo record that correlate with solar magnetic cycle changes.
There is a physical reason why (a mechanism that is delaying/inhibiting)there has not as of yet been significant cooling due to the solar cycle interruption.
There is now observational evidence that the mechanism that was inhibiting the solar cycle modulation of planetary cloud cover (low level and cirrus) is now starting to abate.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2015/anomnight.7.2.2015.gif
http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.0252
http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/440/1/012001/pdf/1742-6596_440_1_012001.pdf
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/davis-and-taylor-wuwt-submission.pdf
http://cio.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/FILES/root/1999/QuatSciRevvGeel/1999QuatSciRevvGeel.pdf
I still remember the genuine anxiety that gripped me when I was a TV documentary on the BBC, around the year 2000, in which I was told that warming would lead to bulk methane releases, leading to further warming etc. Of course, to a trusting mind this is a shocking proposition.
Now that no such feedback has been detected, I assume that the BBC will show a documentary which provides information that is in line with current scientific knowledge.
I know that balance is too much to ask for these days. But a depiction of reality might be refreshing. Or is the reality of non-accelerating low trend in methane now officially classed as a “denialist talking point”. i.e. one of the growing list of aspects of the real world that must under no circumstances be mentioned to the general public.
Apologies, the above should read “was watching a TV documentary”!! Of course.
“A depiction of reality might be refreshing.”
Which is why we come to WUWT.
Some people say, “Truth hurts”, but that only occurs because there is something to gain from dishonesty, (even if, as you describe, the hurt is because you trusted, and the faith was broken (by the BBC).
In the long run Truth is refreshing and, as the poet Keats stated, “Truth is Beauty”.
There seems to have been a shocking failure of logic in the BBC decision to give free reign to those such as Stern and Deben, who would wish to continually make frightening prognostications.
The flawed reasoning can be summarized as follows:
“The majority of climate scientists are believed to have concluded that it is reasonable to assert that most of the measured post-industrial warming has been caused by humans…(and now the non-sequitur)…THEREFORE…any representative person (including non-climate scientists) must be given access to the BBC to present their visions of doom and their preferences for the most ineffectual and expensive “solutions”, without permitting even a weak pretense of criticism or balance. Even if the theories postulated are not supported by mainstream IPCC conclusions. And even if the proposed “mitigation” has the capacity to make a bad situation worse.”
i.e. we believe there is a consensus about A. Therefore we will now allow people to assert B and C without query or criticism. And seemingly refuse to allow people to make the criticism that B and C are quite evidently not the thing A, about which there was even a claimed consensus.
Why can they not see that this is severely flawed thinking?
Isaiah spoke of the politically correct 2750 years ago, “See ye indeed, but perceive not.”
The one thing I’ve learnt with forecasting temperature is that mother nature abhors a confident person!
It is almost as if she sits there and says: “which group of people are far more confident than they ought be that they are winning the debate”.
You’ve just go to love mother nature – because she’s the perfect sceptic – letting everyone know she knows more about the climate than we can ever hope to know!
Yes, mother nature can be a real Mother sometimes. 🙂
god is the biggest practical joker in the universe
I would not worry. I don’t think the Paris Conference will be interested in just cherry-picking the RSS TLT dataset.
It’s a good thing that the Paris conference is not occurring now, in the record heat wave.
If it had been, then we’d probably find that we had committed to total economic self-annihilation by 2025. Or at least, that we would have scrapped base-load capacity completely and turned the E.U. into a giant solar park. Hence requiring the mandated provision that lights could only be used during day-light hours!!
It can’t very well ignore it though.
Either the models match reality or they don’t.
And they don’t.
The RSS dataset is not cherry-picked. It is nearly always the first of the five datasets to report, so I have made a regular feature of it. The UAH dataset now shows broadly similar results, so both satellite datasets are in agreement not only with each other but also with the radiosonde datasets and also the ARGO record for the upper or surface strata of the ocean, which show no warming either.
It is only the terrestrial datasets that show warmng over the past decade or so, and only then after repeated and often questionable upward-only adjustments.Even on these datasets, however, the rate of global warming in recent decades is very considerably below what had been predicted. The bureaucratic class, however, senses the opportunity to establish a global “governing body” with immense powers of taxation, regulation and enforcement (or, in UN-speak, “facilitation”).
As always with dictatorships, its success will be temporary, and will depend on the willingness of a host of useful idiots to support it. However, because its pretext for existence is in essence a freud, it will perhaps not endure as long as some of the dictatorships of old (such as the Chinese, Persian and Roman empires).
No doubt it will do as the EU tyranny-by-clerk did, inventing new purposes for itself when the original purpose was exposed as nonsense, but – thanks to the precedent set by the now-hated EU – it will find that trick a little harder to get away with than before.
So there will be a “historic” “agreement” at Paris, and the “governing body” will be conjured into being, and it will begin at once to exercise the very wide powers that the bureaucratic class will assign to it. But, like the EU, it will not long endure. The days of the dictators are now done, whether the world-government wannabes of the UN and their many cronies and useful-idiot supporters realize it or not.
Monckton of Benchley.
Considering you come across as some sort of Elitist (m’Lord?), I guess you might know more about the “bureaucratic class” than most.
I guess NOAA did not get your memo about UAH and RSS being the same. From their May 2015 report:
UAH anomaly +0.32C
RSS anomaly +0.23C
I do accept that the satellites measure what they measure, and they can then synthesis a TLT free air measurement from that. It useful to know what the upper atmosphere is up to, especially the stratosphere. Once the teams figure out how to synthesis a surface temperature, it will be even more useful.
It is good you mention adjustments, Dr Roy Spencer continually adjusts his UAH dataset (what version is he up to now?). But are calling Dr Roy Spencer’s adjustments “questionable”.
One should not cherry-pick individual months. It is the trend we are interested in. The UAH and RSS trends are broadly similar.
The UAH dataset is at v.6. The adjustments from version to version have been sometimes up, sometimes down. The GISS adjustments, though, always have the effect of apparently increasing the warming trend. Even then, the trend in the past decade or two is a lot less than the IPCC had been predicting.
TLT stands for Temperature Lower Troposphere. That is the air directly above the ground. Prof. Phil Jones of the UEA has done a trend comparison showing that the surface and satellite TLT trends are close to one another. He uses it in his talks to defend his Hadcrut4 dataset.
And yes, I know something if the bureaucratic class. It is growing and ought to be diminished.
No warming for 18 and 1/2 years
Well, that is the way I see it; but there was a fellow I was “discussing” this with said that “global warming” went “on top” of natural variation and it was way warmer than it would have been if we had not “polluted” the atmosphere with CO2. He actually said “carbon pollution”.
I don’t see the present 18.5 years without any statistically significant warming to mean diddly-squat to those who will gather in Paris, France to try and fleece the poor people of rich countries to make richer the rich people of poor countries while taking a major cut themselves as part of the bargain.
I also don’t see the warmists ever giving up (in this life at least) on the idea that CO2 warms the planet and hence any CO2 we add to the atmosphere is “unnatural”. Unnatural even given that most of science sees mankind as just monkeys with tools and hence part of nature as opposed to mankind being specially created by a God. So, since anthropogenic CO2 is said to be “unnatural”, they will continue to claim that we are “changing the climate”.
The fact is that I part ways with my warmist friends and my luke-warmist friends on the issue of CO2. The laws of thermodynamics plus the razor of Occam tells us that there is no warming due to CO2 at all. Water in all its forms, CO2, and other gases do have an effect on our climate, but not the one that the present
delusionparadigm claims. My friends, in the lower atmosphere we see that conduction, convection, advection, ocean currents, winds, storms, and so forth rule the day. Radiation is the ultimate weak sister in moving heat around the surface of the planet. Now in the upper atmosphere — well, then H2O and CO2 get to work and radiate heat out to space.My point of view, dominate in the days I went to university those decades ago, will again be the dominate view: but not in time for the Paris party. In Paris, all logic, factual data, and common sense will be suspended so as to further the goal of taking money from the industrialized nations. (and keeping the poor nations poor — why they want that I just don’t know)
I see this comment has gone on for way too long but I do have one question for the group here. Why Paris, France? It would be cheaper to meet in Paris, Tennessee.
Don’t forget that whilst we appear to live in a period during which the atmosphere is experiencing a very slight and non-worrying overall warming trend – had we discovered that we were living during a period of slight cooling, then alarmists would have made exactly the same presentation.
You would have found yourself discussing this with people who claimed that: ‘“global cooling” went “on top” of natural variation and it was way cooler than it would have been if we had not “polluted” the atmosphere.’
Momentarily in the 1970’s we did seem to be on the verge of developing precisely this “global cooling” delusion.
In other words, since the earth’s climate seems to always have been in a state of flux, it is hard to envisage any scenario in which a global panic could not have been manufactured in the minds of many. And that is the wicked genius of the new paradigm of “climate change”.
There is in fact, no set of circumstances that could offer evidence against it.
Which is shocking to contemplate.
It would be even cheaper in Paris, Texas. The Texas Paris has a replica Eiffel tower to hang the climate sign from. And cheapest of all might be Perris, California.