Left to Right: Dr. Gavin Schmidt (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), Dr. Paul Knappenberger (President of the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum), Dr. Wally Broecker (Columbia University), and Dr. Ray Pierrehumbert (University of Chicago) pose for a photo after the first of the Global Climate Change forum. Forum I was held at the Adler Planetarium.
From Roger Pielke Jr.’s blog.
Two Decades of No Warming, Consistent With . . .
Over at Real Climate they are busy giving climate skeptics reason to cheer:
We hypothesize that the established pre-1998 trend is the true forced warming signal, and that the climate system effectively overshot this signal in response to the 1997/98 El Niño. This overshoot is in the process of radiatively dissipating, and the climate will return to its earlier defined, greenhouse gas-forced warming signal. If this hypothesis is correct, the era of consistent record-breaking global mean temperatures will not resume until roughly 2020.
Imagine, twenty-two or more years (1998 to ~2020) of no new global temperature record. What would that do to the debate?
Real Climate does say something very smart in the piece (emphasis added):
Nature (with hopefully some constructive input from humans) will decide the global warming question based upon climate sensitivity, net radiative forcing, and oceanic storage of heat, not on the type of multi-decadal time scale variability we are discussing here. However, this apparent impulsive behavior explicitly highlights the fact that humanity is poking a complex, nonlinear system with GHG forcing – and that there are no guarantees to how the climate may respond.
As I’ve argued many times, uncertainty is a far batter reason for justifying action than overhyped claims to certainty, or worse, claims that any possible behavior of the climate system is somehow “consistent with” expectations. Policy makers and the public can handle uncertainty, its the nonsense they have trouble with.
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Hmmm, I seem to remember making that conjecture awhile back (you published a graph I had made).
I just commented on a way earlier post. Anthony, you are posting so fast — I think this belongs here, if accepted. As this article emphasizes, it is the GHG-forcing fantasy that must be dismantled.
pyromancer76 (08:02:20) :
As many WUWT have been urging, it is not the cold or the warm at the heart of our existence today, it is the falsity that human-origin CO2 or incorrectly labeled Greenhouse Gases (get rid of that term and people’s confusion would lessen) has much of anything to do with climate change, or CO2 with pollution.
I think we should relax about our Sun, the bringer of warmth to Earth. Every hundred years or so (~Gleissberg), for the last few hundred years, it cycles “down”. Leif Svalgaard has pointed to 1912-13 as being similar to today — so far. Also take a look at the early 1800s. I counted the months in all three periods with less than 4 and less than 2 sunpots. 1807-1813 less than 4, 44 months; less than 2, 37 months. 1911-1914 less than 4, 25 months; less than 2, 12 months: 2007-xxxx less than 4, 20 months, less than 2, 10 months. We have had no months at 0 sunspots — yet, I think. In the 19th C there were 3; in the 18th C, 26. Also, we do not know exactly how a lower number of sunspots affects temperature/climate.
If I am correct in my other internet readings, Leif finds somewhat significant cycling on 108 years — don’t know how far back he goes. Basil finds some significance at 104 years.
I am still interested in Ann V’s question — what are the conditions that enabled to emerge from the “Little Ice Age”.
Re Real Climate’s K Swanson claiming that after this cooling, we will return to the dirty warming deeds of CO2 (Randall 20:25), remember the 1930s. How long was that after 1911-1914? The main issues seem to be the essential nature of CO2 and what makes for a “warm period”. How long might this one continue? Can we help it along in any way?
So how far after 2020 do we have to wait to see if their AGW hypothesis pans out? 30 years for a ‘real’ climate system buggered by human carbon emissions to roar its ugly head?
The insanity continues.
I assume that the 1997/8 overshoot is entirely consistent with the GCMs.
And how many months do we now have to save the planet ? Quick, someone call the Palace !
Why is it that professors of French origin so often look like contestants in a game of who can look the most ridiculous?
That can’t be right … because every year since 2000 we have been told that we have “only 10 more years” to “save” the planet from burning to a crisp or something.
What I fear they are doing is getting the people spring-loaded to cry “global warming” when the next natural warming cycle comes along. Considering that we saw warming until the late 1930’s, cooling until 1976, warming until about 2006, and cooling since, there is some evidence of longer term cycles involved. If that is so, then sometime between 2025 and 2035 we have a good possibility of seeing a return of a warming period. The object here is going to be to try to scare the bejezuz out of people when that comes around again and just as soon as we get a few years trending upwards again, turn the chicken-little act back on.
“Nature (with hopefully some constructive input from humans) will decide the global warming question…”
There’s a “question”? That’s new from them. I thought it was “settled”.
…based upon climate sensitivity, net radiative forcing, and oceanic storage of heat, not on the type of multi-decadal time scale variability we are discussing here.
Really? I thought the climate did what the computer models told it to do.
One can only laugh at such buffoonery
This gives them 20 years of more government grants while we wait to see if their “new” models pan out.
“..established pre-1998 trend..” – eyeballing the UAH trend, 1979-1997 is basically flat except the volcanic events.
Doh, El nino spiked the ‘trend’, and now that naughty radiation is dissipating the GHG ‘trend’, no warming (we think) till 2020?
“there are no guarantees to how the climate may respond”.
Succinctly and pithily put – are they joining the real (climate) science debate?
Its all mere HYPOTHESISING! – are you listening Al?
This new RC hypothesis makes perfect sense to me… In fact I think we should wait til 2050 before we decide that AGW is a crock of (snip). Yeah! That’s the ticket… Meanwhile, we can give all our worldly possessions to our betters, the scientists and politicians, while we freeze in the dark.
It makes perfect sense…
So what does the hockey stick look like now ?
So much for the attribution argument-namely “Given that our models realistically simulate natural variability [HA!] they need anthropogenic forcing to explain warming” Hence the IPCC statement “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”
Oops, major problem. Model internal variability is NOT well simulated by models, as this research itself shows!
My eyes can’t detect much trend growth in the graph of continuously monitored sites (the 2nd graph in http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/07/warminginterrupted-much-ado-about-natural-variability/ ) between 1940ish and 1997….60 years when anthropic CO2 was taking off. Why should I suddenly expect growth after 2020. Am I right in deducing that the growth in the global chart (post 1950) comes from the addition of the non-continuously monitored sites? What is so special about those sites to give such growth? If the non-continuous sites were presented without the continuous sites I guess the growth would appear to be even higher? Is such a difference chance?
That gives the Alarmists (Hello, Mr. Hansen?) 20 years to RETIRE and still save face.
Very unusual of them to actually look at measured temperatures. I look forward to their explanation of why their favorite computer simulations are nevertheless correct. I’ll get a cold one and watch.
As ridiculous as this situation seems, Swanson is actually heading in the right scientific direction.
I’ve written a reply to his post, here:
http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/swansons-not-so-novel-post-at-realclimate/
The dwarf looks cheerful.
All they do is try to justify the cooling that we are experiencing but their El Nino “overshoot” hypothesis is not supported by the amount of cooling we’ve had will will get. How can ONE year of a warmer El Nino packed so much energy that it wouwld take 20 years of constant cooling to “get rid” of the heat? If that was the case, what would have been the actual global temperature that year?
The alarmist’s method is to predict the ridiculous and when it doesn’t come to fruition, to push out the date.
The alarmist have been making predictions my entire life, at least since I can remember, be it population, food or now temperature. They are fortunate that the majority of the population and it’s elected representatives have short memories for these chicken littles hung for continually screaming fire when there is not even smoke.
So Gavin Schmidt really is short. Since he gave that as the reason he lost his debate with Viscount Monckton, maybe he should quit slouching.
Stand up straight, Gavin. Head up, shoulders back! You look beaten down in that picture.
“We hypothesize . . . blah . . . blah . . . ”
Translation: “We never did know what was going on, don’t know now, and it is unlikely we ever will.”
I think when NOAA claim they understand everything from the bottom of the ocean to the surface of the sun, yeah it might be true, but the most important part, they obviously don’t understand: The Interior of the Sun. And so, they must find another explanation and the best they come up with… is us. It’s totally shortsighted to think that the sun has always been constant and will always be constant… when in fact it is the biggest VARIABLE in the whole equation.