Guest Post by Steven Goddard
It appears that global cooling recognition may be starting to make headway in the scientific community. We have this Discovery/MSNBC article about a NOAA scientist titled “Warming might be on hold, study finds”
“It is possible that a fraction of the most recent rapid warming since the 1970’s was due to a free variation in climate,” Isaac Held of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Princeton, New Jersey wrote in an email to Discovery News. “Suggesting that the warming might possibly slow down or even stagnate for a few years before rapid warming commences again.”
And Swanson thinks the trend could continue for up to 30 years.
Here’s the complete story from The Discovery Channel via MSNBC:
For those who have endured this winter’s frigid temperatures and today’s heavy snowstorm in the Northeast, the concept of global warming may seem, well, almost wishful.But climate is known to be variable – a cold winter, or a few strung together doesn’t mean the planet is cooling. Still, according to a new study, global warming may have hit a speed bump and could go into hiding for decades.
Earth’s climate continues to confound scientists. Following a 30-year trend of warming, global temperatures have flatlined since 2001 despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and a heat surplus that should have cranked up the planetary thermostat.
“This is nothing like anything we’ve seen since 1950,” Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. “Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn’t have one.”
Instead, Swanson and colleague Anastasios Tsonis think a series of climate processes have aligned, conspiring to chill the climate. In 1997 and 1998, the tropical Pacific Ocean warmed rapidly in what Swanson called a “super El Nino event.” It sent a shock wave through the oceans and atmosphere, jarring their circulation patterns into unison.
How does this square with temperature records from 2005-2007, by some measurements among the warmest years on record? When added up with the other four years since 2001, Swanson said the overall trend is flat, even though temperatures should have gone up by 0.2 degrees Centigrade (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) during that time.
The discrepancy gets to the heart of one of the toughest problems in climate science – identifying the difference between natural variability (like the occasional March snow storm) from human-induced change.
But just what’s causing the cooling is a mystery. Sinking water currents in the north Atlantic Ocean could be sucking heat down into the depths. Or an overabundance of tropical clouds may be reflecting more of the sun’s energy than usual back out into space.
“It is possible that a fraction of the most recent rapid warming since the 1970’s was due to a free variation in climate,” Isaac Held of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Princeton, New Jersey wrote in an email to Discovery News. “Suggesting that the warming might possibly slow down or even stagnate for a few years before rapid warming commences again.”
Swanson thinks the trend could continue for up to 30 years. But he warned that it’s just a hiccup, and that humans’ penchant for spewing greenhouse gases will certainly come back to haunt us.
“When the climate kicks back out of this state, we’ll have explosive warming,” Swanson said. “Thirty years of greenhouse gas radiative forcing will still be there and then bang, the warming will return and be very aggressive.”
© 2009 Discovery Channel
That is strange. We hear from highly respected authorities that we were in a period of “unprecedented warming.” How can it be both warming and cooling at the same time? Maybe those DC protesters didn’t need to stand out in the cold and try to shut down their primary source of energy today.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
Aileni has nailed this in the response to ‘a cold winter, or a few strung together doesn’t mean the planet is cooling.’ and wrote “Surely the converse is true also.” Bingo. “A hot summer, or a few, strung together does not mean the planet is warming at a rate anything other than can happen by natural forces.”
B Kerr (03:35:51) : (Discovery Channel – “Ways to Save the Planet”)
“place lenses into space and these lenses will reflect/refract the suns rays”
Typically negative thinking if you ask me, why reflect? Why not concentrate the rays (within safe environmental limits of course). Providing the focal point could be varied and moved around the planet, cities and even entire countries could pre-order their weather. Using mirrors it could even be ordered for the night time hours when, of course, it would be cheaper.
Lets hear you Australians and Californians mock the UK when we have a pleasant and sunny 23C year-round, even at night. Not laughing so loud now are you?
Roger H,
I think you have hit the nail on the head. Obama is using cap and trade to generate revenue for his social programs. This is about getting people to willingly submit to fear-based confiscation of their income.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2009/03/_one_of_the_challenges.html
The budget made a dramatic, smart and little-noticed pivot from his campaign-trail promise to cut taxes on 95 percent of Americans. Candidate Obamas original plan — a plan I criticized at the time as unduly expensive and poorly crafted — provided for tax credits of $500 per individual or $1,000 per couple; couples making as much as $200,000 annually would qualify for a partial credit. The size of the credits was scaled back in the stimulus package, to $400 and $800. But the big switch came when now-President Obama released his budget last week. The Making Work Pay tax credits were there — but for the first time they were contingent on revenue from auctioning permits in the administrations proposed cap-and-trade program to alleviate climate change. In other words: no cap-and-trade, no tax credits.
If they “don’t know what’s causing the cooling” they are admitting that they also don’t necessarily know what was causing the warming. If the mighty greenhouse power of co2 is so easily overcome by “free variation”, don’t they realize their models are now useless, because they can’t identify a variable which is stronger than the strongest climate forcing agent inthe model.
The house of cards is wobbling.
It looks like the staff at NOAA are finally being honest about the natural variability of the real climate. However they still have the false notion that once this latest cooler phase is finished in 30 years, that only global warming will again prevail or continue. Climate records show that alternating warming and cooling cycles are the real pattern not warming only. ICECAP and Anthony have posted countless posts to explain this and to account for the natural variability of the climate going back as far as historical records go.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/US_Temperatures_and_Climate_Factors_since_1895.pdf
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/29/don-easterbrooks-agu-paper-on-potential-global-cooling/#comments
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~dbunny/research/global/glocool_summary.pdf
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/PDO_and_AMO_Are_the_Real_Pacemakers_for_Climate.pdf
I can’t find where Kyle Swanson is a member of the NOAA. Anybody have a link where I can verify this? (I need it so I can send this story in to our newspaper)
The esteemed Dr. Hansen (who spent the day yesterday freezing with a bunch of Hippies) has reportedly forecast that 2009 or 2010 may be the hottest year on record.
I don’t like this one bit and if a skeptic were to ever use the line “think a series of climate processes have aligned, conspiring to chill the climate,” what do you think the result would be?
They admit they dont understand how the planet can be cooling, but don’t understand how, then make the statement that when it is over – in 30 years – the warming will be “explosive”.
What this reveals is ignorance, pure and simple. And brings to mind that Kansas song, “Carry on My Wayward Son” –
“Masquerading as a man with a reason
My charade is the event of the season
And if I claim to be a wise man, well
It surely means that I don’t know”
“I don’t know” screams from this article, but Held is still strongly advocating for CO2. I don’t see any hope yet folks.
Jari:
With all due respect, this article does not appear to be based on any empirical data whatsoever and is simply an exercise in modelling.
Free climate variation. Love that. The other kind will be taxed. The admition of this basic tenent of weather, that there are natural variations, makes them look so far behind the eight ball, they appear to be playing tiddly winks instead of pool.
On the other side of the debate, please don’t say it’s the Sun folks. Those that do are no more informed than the folks that point a finger at CO2. Do these people not know that we are surrounded by water? It’s instructive that people East of the Great Lakes call their weather patterns “Lake Affect” snow, rain, sleet, wind, heat, whatever. But we just can’t seem to say “Ocean Affect” whatever. Why is that? A relatively tiny pond of water has a larger affect than a relatively HUGE pond of water?
Damn. I just answered my own question. Of course. People look for tiny, tiny obscure substances to explain really big weather pattern variations (the free kind as well as the taxed kind). Now just in case someone sees an opening there, don’t be tellin me that the Sun is a really big substance. To make a difference in what the Sun does to us, we would have to move CLOSER to or FARTHER away from it. By a bunch. Our stable orbital pattern around the Sun does not produce enough variation in what we get from the Sun to change anything. In fact, I would hazard a guess that CO2 has a larger affect than the Sun. But that isn’t saying much. There is a long list of weather pattern variation affect sources above CO2 and the Sun that diminish both to no more than a knat’s ass of an affect on warming or cooling in the interglacial period.
Does this mean Hansen & Gore will now go into hibernation for 30 years, only to re-emerge with superhockeysticks?
30 years? Thats two 15year long solar cycles, of which the maxima can’t be that hot (grin).
But just what’s causing the cooling is a mystery
Me thinks the sun went on vacaction for a few, and turned down the thermostat as it walked out the door.
I seem to recall that 100% is technically a fraction.
This is just fudging and excuse making. They haven’t changed their tune, they’re just trying to cover up for the fact that they can’t make the climate match the models.
I thought heat gets stored in the oceans? The last 5-6 years worth of data shows no increase in ocean temperatures. If cooling continues for the next 30 years it would take years or decades after that to replace ocean heat during a 30 year cooling period. I would think someone who works at NOAA would understand that.
Here’s something that I did not know until yesterday. The GCM’s are not capable of accurately predicting average global surface temperatures in “non-anomaly degrees C” for the entire 20th Century. Almost all underpredict temperature significantly more than the “measured” .6C increase that’s been quoted. See link at http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/fact-6a-model-simulations-dont-match-average-surface-temperature-of-the-earth/
If the GCM’s cannot even get the temperature correct is it any wonder they cannot get the cycles correct?
Charlie (03:59:14) :
The global cooling we are experiencing is caused by a lack of sun spot activity…
And lack of solar flux, solar wind. And an increase in cosmic rays and an SSW or two tossed in for good measure.
As a retired TV meteorologist and a long time skeptic of AGW, I find an article like this in the mainstream media somewhat encouraging. What is amazing to me is their lack of understanding of what can cause cooling. I wonder if they have ever heard of the PDO or AMO? Perhaps they should read some of Joe D’Aleo’s articles. With the PDO in a cold mode let’s be sure and hold Dr. Hansen’s feet to the fire, so to speak, about his forecast of another upcoming strong El Nino event in the next two years that will boost temperatures to their highest levels of record.
Mildly off topic but relevant as to why the double speak
http://popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=2139
I thought that when theory and observation collide, observation always wins.
We were told in the 90’s that warming would continue and continue until we all roasted alive. Then, after the turn of the millenium temperatures flatlined or even dropped. Yet in the face of contrary observation, the AGW nuts haven’t budged an inch. AGW the only “scientific” theory I know of where the proponents twist observation into a pretzel to make it fit the theory.
Does this mean than the debate,which never took place to begin with, may not be over?I think Mijaga said it best having thier cake and eating it too.Once Obama gets all the global warming resolutions in place then the media will say thanks to Obama we have stopped global warming.I’ll give it less than 2 years befoe we hear this.
Now THIS is the change I’ve been waiting for!!!!
What they say is like a fairy tale. It is almost as if they are trying to convince politicians (must keep the money rolling in) that all the CO2 is building up and up and will suddenly spring out and grab the climate and force up the temperature after, um, thirty years of natural cooling.
For pity’s sake why does someone not insist that they carry out some meaningful experiments and, for example, find out if clouds/water vapour induce positive or negative feedback. Also really try to determine just how long is the residence time for CO2 in the atmosphere, 5-10 years or 50-200 years or what.
Robert, please inform me of the solar calculations you are using to state that these Sun-sourced variations are to a degree necessary to cause trended weather pattern variations. We know how a body of water can affect weather, but you seem convinced that the Sun is much stronger in its affect. How so?
I’m looking forward to how the BBC gets out of its position. Maybe a few hacks on the Dole!
Ferdinand Engelbeen (01:35:42) :
Baseline conclusion: as models used the last decades of the past century to attribute most warming to the increase of GHGs, and the current trend is flat, one can say that the warming was about 50% natural, 50% GHG induced (the current natural cooling is as strong as the supposed GHG warming). Thus current models with 3°C/2xCO2 are a factor 2 too high, and the real increase is 1.5°C/2xCO2 (or less)…
You are giving the models too much credit. Just because the models purport to attribute most of the warming of the past few decades to the increase of GHGs doesn’t make it so. I suspect that most of it was natural climate variability, i.e. the result of the Great Climate Shift of 1976. And that only constitutes “short-run” variability on decadal or bidecadal time scales. Some of the 20th Century warming reflects oscillations that are on centennial time scales. And then there are the 1500 year cycles.
When natural climate variability is properly acknowledged, it becomes impossible (using current knowledge) to extract a signal clearly attributable to GHG from the noise.
I do not see this as a concession to the skeptics. I see this more as a rationalization. They of course hedge their bet with the “in 30 years, it’ll come back stronger than ever” B.S. of which there is absolutely no proof at all. Except for the models, of course. The same models that have completely 100% failed to predict the current stagnation of global temps for the last 10 years….
Unfortunately, to get such a unanimous and official declaration of surrender by the combined academic and political elites who are intent on using the AGW doctrine for ideological ends (and to gain control of the world’s economy) will take a counter-movement. And for that we need leadership. Where will that come from?
In the United States the push for ‘climate change’ and ‘carbon’ legislation is coming mostly from the Democrats (yes, John McCain endorsed Cap and Trade, but we all know he’s a ‘maverick’), the leadership most likely has to come from the Republicans, unless a true maverick like Ross Perot emerges to challenge the status quo. A likely possibility is Mitt Romney, who to my knowledge never signed on the ‘global warming’ bandwagon (in the debates he always turned the question back to ‘energy independence’). But it is hard to imagine Mitt leading any kind of crusade.
Absent any leadership, Ron de Haan’s conclusion that “the political machinery is too far on track to be halted” may well be correct. So long as the AGW priesthood can airily dismiss evidence that contradicts their doctrine (lets not dignify it with the terms ‘hypothesis’ and ‘theory’) as ‘temporary anomalies’—where ‘temporary’ can mean three decades!— and get away with it in the media and the halls of Congress, the Alarmist train won’t be stopped. Someone prominent has to stand up and cry, “Stop this train!”
/Mr Lynn