August RSS Global Temperature – holding steady, still cooler than 1 year ago

There will be no evidence of “global cooling” until there is a plausible mechanism for such a reversal of phenomenon, and until there is a significant, multi-decadal negative trend to the temperature record.
You mean like your “plausible mechanism” for AGW, C02? Oh wait, that was never proven, and in fact has been thoroughly debunked. Oops.
Significant, multi-decadal trend, eh? How convenient, counters. Until then (whenever that is), the fall-back theory is AGW – oops, nope, never proven, and in fact debunked. Guess we’ll just have to look at the climate record to see what has happened over thousands of years. Oops, AGWers don’t like history. Sorry, I forgot.

Counters,
“There will be no evidence of “global cooling” until there is a plausible mechanism for such a reversal of phenomenon.”
I think you need to rethink that statement. So what you’re saying is that even if temperatures drop over the next 20 years to levels not seen since the Little Ice Age, that this would not constitute evidence of global cooling because we don’t have a plausible mechanism to explain it? This is most decidedly not a statement a scientist should ever make. It’s the equivalent of putting you’re fingers in your ears and chanting, “I can’t hear you!” over and over again.
I guess then that noctilucent clouds don’t exist because we ‘don’t have a plausible mechanism to explain it’.

Counters: You suggest we isolate the 97/98 El Nino because it was significant outlier. How would you propose we remove the long-term effects of the 97/98 El Nino? It created significant step changes in multiple indices, some of which have begun to return to pre-97/98 values. Others have not. The 97/98 El Nino caused step increases that are clearly visible in:
1. The annual maximum land surface temperature anomaly for the Northern Hemisphere,
2. The annual maximum global temperature anomaly,
3. The Pacific Warm Pool SST anomaly,
4. The Arctic Temperature (combined) anomaly,
5. The Mediterranean Sea SST Anomaly, and
6. The Gulf of Mexico SST Anomaly, to name a few.
Again I’ll ask, how do you propose to remove the long-term effect of the 97/98 El Nino?
Or would you prefer to continue to claim that the post 97/98 El Nino warming was a result of anthropogenic influences?

I see three posts replying to mine, so I’ll address them in reverse order:
Jared:
I’m not giving any leeway to AGW. Several factors have indeed been compiled into a handful of explanations for why the global warming signal has, prima facia, appeared to “stall.” The best explanation is that various weather, or short-term oscillations of the climate system have lined up to sort of “down out” the warming signal. Skeptics deride this for some reason, because they tend to fail to visualize it using the principle of superposition: If you have two waves defined on an interval of time T, then the law of superposition states that the sum of those two waves is the sum of the amplitude of both waves each point along the interval T. If you think about it this way, you have an AGW wave which steadily slopes positively at about .2 degC/decade, and you have another one which might dip down at some points and then dip back up. Play around with this on a graphing calculator, and you’ll see very quickly how natural oscillation + warming signal can equal flat periods at times.
Furthermore, I’m unfamiliar with the specific claim about 2009-2015. If you could please cite it for me, I might be able to explain what they mean.
Bruce Cobb:
Just because you say AGW is debunked doesn’t in fact mean it is. As a matter of fact, research has continued to proceed at a fast pace and is constantly churning out data and revelations which help us tweak our understanding of the theory, verify predictions of it, and verify the underlying principles of it. Perhaps you should spend less time verbally abusing AGW and more time perusing the pertinent scientific literature. And by the way, your best friends MBH just published a new “Hockey Stick.” Funny, that – you’d imagine that Mann, the fraud-king of AGW himself, would at least change the names of his pyramid scheme when he attempted to sell it to the public (although in this case “sell it to the public” really means “produced new research which took into account a new decade’s worth of proxy records and other temperature records to weed out poorly performing older ones, thereby cleaning up the paleo-climate record to a level of accuracy far greater than what had previously been attained, all the while stumbling across the fact that dramatically altering the content of the record seems not to have affected the shape of it very much”).
Robert:
Much has been written on the subject of the “Solar Theory of Global Warming/Cooling.” I defer to the expert summary of Spencer Weart here.

counters:
A dramatic reversal of CO2 trends would also signify global cooling; cold waters can dissolve more gas before becoming saturated, and a lowering of atmospheric CO2 is considered one of the necessary conditions for an ice age to occur.
Not necessarily. CO2 lags temperature change; it doesn’t drive temperature.
Deep-sea temperatures rose 1,300 years before atmospheric CO2, ruling out the greenhouse gas as driver of meltdown, says study in Science.
“The finding suggests the rise in greenhouse gas was likely a result of warming and may have accelerated the meltdown – but was not its main cause.”
“If CO2 caused the warming, one would expect surface temperatures to increase before deep-sea temperatures, since the heat slowly would spread from top to bottom. Instead, carbon-dating showed that the water used by the bottom-dwelling organisms began warming about 1,300 years before the water used by surface-dwelling ones, suggesting that the warming spread bottom-up instead.”
Ice Sheets Drive Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Levels, Inverting Previous Ice-Age Theory
“Ruddiman concludes (as Milankovitch proposed) that ice sheets are initially driven by the Sun, but then the ice takes control of carbon dioxide changes, producing its own positive feedback (the amplifying effect) at the 41,000-year cycle.”
And here’s another interesting post:
Sun controlls CO2 levels and Ice age periods and some charts

“… and until there is a significant, multi-decadal negative trend to the temperature record.”
Uhmm, the last several multi-decadal negative trends (Little Ice Age, 1878-1910, 1944-1978, 1998-2008) are totally ignored by the global warming community. In fact, they are doing their best to write them out of the historical record so …
… I believe your point is completely moot.

An interesting story was in the “Bristol Press” this morning with a comment from a meteorologist stating, no one knows if there is a link between solar activity and weather… My story on this is here: http://www.cardenchronicles.com/2008/09/link-between-solar-activity-and-weather.html
The main reason for providing this information to you is I do recommend WUWT to all my readers and suggest they volunteer or donate to surface stations.org. If after review of my article you wish me to withdraw my recommendation, endorsement, I will.
Thanks,
Matt Carden
The Carden Chronicles
REPLY:Thanks for the kind words and the link – Anthony

John,
No doubt about cooling in Colorado. As a soccer player, I am keenly aware that autumn has been arriving progressively earlier over the last three years. We have had lots of games snowed out. This year it turned cool the first week in August, and it already feels like October.
The last two winters have been brutal. Parts of the state are more than five degrees below normal for the year, which I’m guessing is even larger than Mann’s 0.6 degree hockey stick.
http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/products/maps/acis/hprcc/co/YearTDeptHPRCC-CO.png
The amazing thing is that Boulder and Denver are full of AGW obsessed liberals who are oblivious to what is occurring right outside their window.

counters (10:46:32) :
“The bottom line is that you have two things: evidence and empiricism/analysis. Evidence trumps the other, but in the absence of both, you have nothing. “Global Cooling” has neither.”
Let’s see what AGW has for these two points. Evidence? The earth is indeed warmer than it has been in the last 100 years, but not warmer than it has been during mulitple other peroids in earth’s history. We’re humans resposible for those other warm peroids? Conclusion – evidence is not conclusive.
Empiricism/analysis? All current data has been proven flawed in some way. No model of this data has ever been able to match the actual climate.
It looks as if AGW also has neither. Yet, we are relying on these models and precidented temperature increases to push through changes that will destroy economies around the world. If this was just about a science debate, no one would get so hysterical about it. Let the scientists gather more (unbiased/politicized) evidence until a theory can be proven.

welcome to the heat Counters:
“There will be no evidence of “global cooling” until there is a plausible mechanism for such a reversal of phenomenon”.
1)
Fact is, the temperatures in the ocean down to 2 km depths has been measured to be slightly falling since 2002.
Oceans holds 300 times more heat than the atmosphere.
Therefore i find it rather PLAUSIBLE that a significant increase in atmosphere temperatures is NOT around the corner.
Tell me, Counters, If you find it plausible that temperatures will be raising, where is the heat for this to happend when not found in the oceans?
6 years of measurements of ocean temperatures says more than even longer periods of atmosphere measurements, that you seem to rely on.
2)
Plausible:
ITS A FACT THAT COSMIC RAYS ARE DEPENDENT ON SUN ACTIVITY. Take the Oulo monitor and compare with sun activity. No doubt what so ever!
Its a fact that lower cloud formation oscillates very closely to kosmic rays.
its a fact that lower clouds mostly cools the planet.
So YES i find it very plausible indeed that the SUN controls temperature.
Some people then try to say that we don’t know 100% HOW this link work precisely, but no one can with solid arguments deny sun as a temperature controlling participant.
3) – And counters, here is your “plausible” CO2 theory:
The CO2 theory fell to earth 100 years ago, since adding extra CO2 hardly has any effect when you have more than around 50 ppm. The frequency is already blocked by the first CO2.
And yes, also by water.
The CO2 hypothesis then woke up again around 1950 because it was shown, that CO2 frequency was slightly different at much lower pressures. This could to some degree make CO2 spectra more free of ground CO2 and water.
Therefore, it was later “predicted” in models, that we would see a special warmer layer around 10 km up in the atmosphere especially around the tropics. The so called “HOTSPOT”.
But reality has shown, that the only place CO2 in theory could warm the air, 5-15 km up, no warming has taken place, on the contrary, these layers has cooled down.
So how plausible is a theory that is proven not to work at ground level AND not to work in higher layers?
And more: IF there had been this 1 degree Celsius warming in 10 km height around the tropics, this warm bubble would rather seek to move up than move down. That a law of nature, heat moves up.
Is your CO2-theory more plausible now?
OK, then some says: ITS the radiation from this warmer air up there…
Ok, air at 10 km height is around – 60 degrees Celsius, was supposed to warm to say -59 degrees C. Any material at these extreme low temperatures will radiate very very very weakly !
So Counters, how Plausible is it that a non-existing heating of 1 degree Celsius, that should have taken place 10 km up, in very thin airlayers, should be able to melt ice at the surface?
Counters, if this CO2-hypothesis – the poorest theory in modern science ! – is “plausible, then ANYTHING is plausible. And the sun theory is DEFINITELY more plausible that this embarrassing Co2-theory.