The BBC posted a surprising story this past weekend that has skeptics cheering and alarmists hopping mad.
Here’s the opener:
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
The headline?
What happened to global warming?
By Paul Hudson
Climate correspondent, BBC News
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
So what on Earth is going on?
Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man’s influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.
They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?
During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly.
Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth’s warmth comes from the Sun.
But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences.
The scientists’ main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.
And the results were clear. “Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can’t have been caused by solar activity,” said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.
He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.
He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.
If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.
Read the complete story here at the BBC
Gene Nemetz (22:46:49) :
I like that the article opens with this and it is in bolds : …the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
Craig W (13:40:58) :
Wasn’t 1998 bumped to “second warmest year on record” by 1934, due to NASA’s incompetence?
1934 was the warmest, “before” adjustments.
Houses should be built on stilts to avoid flooding, scientists recommend
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6308141/Houses-should-be-built-on-stilts-to-avoid-flooding-scientists-recommend.html
a jones (22:52:34) :
I am sure that the BBC allowed this report to show how unbiased they were.
I am equally sure they were surprised if not horrified by how much attention it got. Which suggests word is spreading fast.
I am equally sure that the Sunday Times, sister to the London Times, which published a rather snide but more or less well informed article today did so to test public reaction.
This may all be straws in the wind or it maybe that they sense the British public is tired of this hobgoblin and wants a new one.
I may be wrong mind, it may be wishful thinking, but I think something strange happened this weekend. I don’t know how, why or what.
You cannot see beyond the bundobust. You can only sense: and may well be wrong. But it has my whiskers twitching.
indeed if it is so be sure the AGW story will be dead as mutton in months and the BBC and Grub St., not that it physically exists anymore, will have found some new apocalyptic scare to frighten the public.
No idea what it would be mind. Any guesses? A glass of champagne in my London club to the best suggestion offered by some worthy winner.
Kindest Regards
How’s this for a new Hobgoblin…
…. Repeated lack of investment in reliable and cost effective baseload electricity generation will result in UK economic and social collapse…
…. industry and jobs will be sent over seas ….
…. Tens of thousands of britons will freeze in unheated homes in winter ….
…. Angry mobs of hungry, cold, unemployed britons will storm their parliament ….
Scary enough.
Pleasant news for a change. Here in Australia our dear old Aunty ABC (BBC equiv) persists in allowing warmists open blather while sceptics use the web and a few opinion writers who are invariably considered dinosaurs,deniers, you know the rest. The latest opinion poll here shows that the sample have reduced AGW/CC from #1 to #7 on their worry list since the 2007 election with percentages down from 70% to 56% believing it to be important. Callers to radio talkback among the older population at least are very sceptical about both the science and politicians agendas. Ego seems the driving force with our PM. The govt are trying desperately to introduce an Emissions Trading Scheme before Kevin (PM) goes to Copenhagen. They call it the Carbon POLLUTION Reduction Scheme. Strange that carbon is now officially declared a pollutant. And this from a bunch of tree huggers. Do they know all living things contain carbon? Oh. Even worse our pre-eminent science body, the govt funded CSIRO, lists RealClimate as a research source for their decision to back AGW. Now that is a worry.
Jerry Haney12:22:51
Bravo! Well put.
This story is still top of the page at Drudge.
http://www.drudgereport.com/
He has added this to the list at the top :
Austria: Earliest snowfall in history set to break records…
at the link :
Austria’s provincial capitals are expected to see their earliest snowfalls in history today (Mon) as Arctic air sweeps the country….Arctic air would probably result in the first snow cover in provincial capitals before 20 October in history…
As ‘Bulldust’ mentioned above, the ABC in Australia is never going to behave in this sort of heretical fashion.
Indeed, the chief science (?) presenter is still running around like a headless chook proclaiming that a 100 metre sea rise is possible by the end of the century, he he. He is a narrative man, and his ‘status’ seems highly dependent on him name-dropping a few of his AGW scientist friends.
One thinks it may not be too long before such associations are rather less fashionable!
BBC is getting kicked from both sides now (Joni Mitchell.) They’re being investigated for misrepresenting skeptics including Lord Monckton in a documentary. Previously they were cited for unfairly fingering alarmists. Could they be struggling to regain a semblance of balance??
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3358634/BBC-investigated-over-climate-change-documentary.html
The media Dam breaks……..
Indiana Bones (18:08:43) :
Thanks for the link.
“I have no doubt Ofcom will act. The BBC very gravely misrepresented me and several others, as well as the science behind our argument. It is a breach of its code of conduct,” he (Lord Monckton) said.
It is starting to perk up in the land of Oz too, what with the imminent legislation deadline (November, before Copenhagen love-in).
Lowy institute shows support for climate change policy dropped to 7 out of 10:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/national/6209974/coalition-takes-heart-from-climate-poll/
Find the poll here:
http://www.lowyinstitute.org/
Plus the Aussies are starting to take interest in the ole hip-pocket issues:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26202241-11949,00.html
I just hope that somehow we can delay the legislation till the love in, because I don’t want to be the laughing stock of the world if the rest of yuze end up seeing the light before we do.
“The UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre […] incorporates [natural] cycles into its climate models […] nothing new […] all of which are accounted for by its models.”
2 words: B.S.
Show me the ENSO tables that work like tide tables.
I contend that the only thing “incorporated” at this stage is B.S.
I gather that the BBC article is currently the most visited page on the BBC website.
The public’s thirst for real knowledge, or the WUWT effect?
Time will tell.
Re: Bulldust (22:48:51) :
It is starting to perk up in the land of Oz too, what with the imminent legislation deadline (November, before Copenhagen love-in).
Lowy institute shows support for climate change policy dropped to 7 out of 10:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/national/6209974/coalition-takes-heart-from-climate-poll/
No worries, that’ll go up again coming summer as reality gets felt again. The hottest winter on record would’nt have made to much impression yet as the heat in that season could not yet be smiting.
Monbiot is back from the Welsh hills this morning:
“Britain has the world’s best climate policy: that’s good news, and bad news”
Fairly weak incoherent stuff. More noticeable is the almost withdrawn tone of comments from the usual suspects. Turning a shot of cooling towers into an alarmist’s view of the world, as one commentator has remarked, is about the only thing worthy of note.
Focus seems to have shifted to politics: “Electoral reform could save the climate”
Comments worth a read. Illustrates what Greenpeace et al are really all about. They’re still on the roof this morning, more at the Telegraph here.
Perched high on the roof of Westminster Hall, full-time Greenpeace activist Anna Jones, 28, from Headingley in Leeds, said on Monday morning: ”We can’t stress enough how important this is. The clock is ticking – scientists are telling us we have just a few years left to act to save the planet.
It would appear rent-a-mob has now moved up in the world and found permanent employment! If you want to change a political system you do it by legitimate means through the ballot box – not by performing circus stunts, causing hassle and breaking the law. Stand for election and see how many votes you get … then please shut up!
Having had free reign in New Labour’s third way la-la land for a decade, eco minority interest groups like Greenpeace are now out of control and must be put back in their box. The sensible first step would be to remove their charitable status, cutting off the cash they draw from the tax system via pledge kick-backs. They are effectively being subsidised by a majority that disagrees with them. Greenpeace isn’t a legitimate charity, it’s a political movement pure and simple.
Unfortunately party political think-tanks are the same, realistically we are unlikely to get politicians to do anything along these lines. Does anyone know their way around the Charity Commission and legal side of all this? On what basis are such organisations able to register themselves as charities?
A decade or so ago I used to commute by train and occasionally struck up a conversation with a Greenpeace accountant. The numbers were big then, I dread to think what they’re like now. What a scam!
Re: David Ball (12:26:14) :
ajones, does the silencing of dissent not frighten you in any way? Same question for RRKampen. You both seem reasonably intelligent and are aware of the result of the elimination of freedom of speech throughout history. Please do not deny that dissenters have been muzzled. I will shout from the rooftops that no one, and I mean no one is able to show that we are outside natural variations in the climate. What is it that is hoped to be achieved by the silencing of dissent, other than control of the people? History shows what comes next. Again, does the silencing of dissent not set off alarm bells with you?
Much dissent against AGW has not been muzzled, but dismissed because the arguments are bad. For an example look at the discussion as to the globally warmest years, either 1998/2005 or 1934. Some people tend to forget that 1934 was only in the States the warmest year, and that the USA encompasses only a tiny fraction of the globe. Those who keep calling 1934 as warmest year won’t be silenced, but won’t be listened to either.
The climate discussion has become thoroughly politicized. The sharper edges of this has been introduced by the so-called ‘skeptics’, or let us say e.g. ExxonMobile. On the other hand there is a kind of AGW-alarmism around that is just as bad, in fact so bad it sabotages any serious message AGW-proponents could make.
My stance in this is to keep to realism and forget the bicker about persons, institutions or subsidies. We have to try to look and evaluate for ourselves. Given the freedom of global travel we have nowadays, we can e.g. check for ourselves what is happening with glaciers over the world. On the other hand, we can gain some sound physics knowledge with which we can think on the basis of sound assumptions about e.g. the radiation-absorbtion behaviour of GHG’s.
This sort of neutral perspective will attract FLAK from all directions, of course. Nice, hit me, ooo 🙂
Since autumn 2004 I believe the AGW-hypothesis is true (until then: ‘it has to be the sun’). My presence on this forum should gain me some respect, I’m throwing myself to the lions here. What I am trying to do is sift the real arguments that may still remain against AGW from all the BS here. Because if there is any place where such arguments may be found, it is on WUWT. For instance I learnt here about the AMO and temperature of the Barentzsea (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/08/new-paper-barents-sea-temperature-correlated-to-the-amo-as-much-as-4%C2%B0c/), which has had considerable consequences for my thinking about the decline of Arctic sea ice.
Warming in Holland is outside of natural variation and that is statistically provable. I mean by this an even stronger situation than ‘statistically significant’. We’ve had a couple of months (like July 2006 or April 2007) that were simply impossible until say 1988. We have this situation for the distribution of daily temperature records: http://benlanka.tweakdsl.nl/climate/datumrecords.png .
But let us discuss this another time as this post mainly wishes to adress the ad hominem way the climate discussion is done.
Gene Nemetz (21:56:38) :
the story is a year old—DOH!
Paul Vaughan
The UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre […] incorporates [natural] cycles into its climate models […] nothing new […] all of which are accounted for by its models.”
2 words: B.S.
I tend to agree with your comments . I have asked the Met Office to tell me what natural cycles are included in their model and there is total silence . They state that” We found about one in every eight decade has near zero or negative global temperature trends….”. That tells me that cycles like AMO, PDO /ENSO , NAO, have been excluded or given minor weight so that the Co2 effects dominate . The latest temperature prediction curve[straight lines nearly] shows no cooling whatsoever right up to 2100.The approximate 30 year cycles were present in all past global temperature records
RRKAMPEN
You said ” Warming in Holland isoutside of natural variation…”. Just wait a few years. You may think differently then.
While North America’s winters have been getting colder since 2006 already, Europe has had its two warmest winters ever during 2007 and 2008. First significant cooling was evident during this past 2009 winter as both the winter NAO and AMO went briefly negative. All this may be changing soon and for the next 2-3 decades. Europe‘s winter climate seems to be affected more by AMO and the winter NAO. Both the winter NAO and AMO are heading negative in their cycle and this is associated with cooler Atlantic Ocean surface temperatures and cooler weather in Europe and eastern North America, like the 1960-1970’s. See the charts below showing the declining winter NAO since the 1980’s and the AMO which peaked in 1998 and has been declining ever since and is headed into the cool mode. The numbers below illustrate how the number of negative WINTER NOA years has affected our climate. The bracketed figure is number of negative NAO years
1920-1940 [ 9] negative or cool Winter NAO years [WARM PERIOD]
1950 -1970 [14] negative or cool Winter NAO years [COLD PERIOD]
1980- 2009 [ 8] negative or cool Winter NAO years[ WARM PERIOD]
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Winter-NAO-Index.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amo_timeseries_1856-present.svg
. Thus the next several decades could be headed for cooler temperatures again in Europe like the 1960-1970’s].
RE: Monbiot is back from the Welsh hills this morning
Has now gone into mod delete mode per realclimate again. Usual suspects rapidly returning to type too. Guess the tranquilisers are wearing off 🙂
That didn’t take long! Go here if anyone fancies firing a few more darts!
Usual suspects seem to work 9 to 5 UK time, not around much outside these hours. Full time employees somewhere perhaps?
RRKampen, you did not answer my question, and I would like you to prove we are outside natural variation. Use the entire time scale and not just a scale of 100 years, as this is a cherry-pick. I do not deny warming, what I deny is the scale of reference. I also admit the predictions of a looming ice age by some here are alarmist, but as you stated, both sides have this. Many debates are held here on past threads, so do not use that as a dodge. My arguments are as salient( as many who post here are) as yours, so tell me that I am not being muzzled if I can not post on RC or climateprogress, but you can post on this site. I think you are in denial yourself and cannot answer my questions directly. I think you are also aware of the historic significance of silencing of free speech and are in denial of this. The foundation of your arguments have taken a severe bashing of late. You need to acknowledge that your assumptions have to be re-assessed. Skepticism is growing and it is because of evasive answers like the one you gave me. And by the way, it was the AGW side that made this a political discussion. I would prefer it was not.
David, I use the Dutch temperature record going back to 1706 plus what is known about climate in this country as witnessed and written by people back to 1200 mainly (we have a number of catalogs for that).
That is of course as much ‘cherry picking’ as is taking a timespan of ten years or 4.5 billion years.
The record for Holland is simply hockeystick-like. Can’t be helped, can’t be denied.
‘Natural variation’ is a statistic based on a record of a certain length of time and an arbitrary choice of what will be natural variation. Based on ordinary analyses of distributions and trends my statement is pretty straightforward to prove, given a reasonable interpretation of natural variation (e.g. if we expect natural variation to mean annual average temperature to lie between -300° C and +6000° C then there is no climate change at all, you know).
We on the better Dutch-language fora for weather/climate also ban some people, especially those who trouble us continuously with the same disproved arguments and show nil intent to learn.
Free speech is no issue in this, because fora – including this one (where I found one or two posts of my own snipped, probably because I used a generalization like ‘denialists’) – are moderated according to intent of fora and taste. Fora are NOT democratic institutions. Being kicked off one does not hamper you on other fora and it does not stop you from setting up a forum of your own. Yet I do know free speech in the west IS suffering from increasing pressure and this worries me considerably (as some Dutch fora bear witness!). But I don’t see how this affects the climate discussion; what I mean is more about geopolitics (e.g. Middle East).
The foundation of my arguments has received no bashing at all. Yet. There is a lot of noise but no substance. RC-articles show this clearly. Unlike ‘skeptics’ (here, I don’t mean real skeptics) they tend to keep themselves to analysis of subject instead of politics, institutions or the issue of free speech.
A direct answer to your question (I can see only one) would be: I see no silencing of dissenters. You are posting on a site that has won an award, see? Even if I get banned from this forum, I would see no silencing of me in general. I would just shout ‘stupid forum’ 🙂
matt v.,
the waiting is over.
2008 was just number six in the record of warmest, thus a rather ordinary 21st century winter.
It is great the winters of recent years in the US have become somewhat less milder than normal than some earlier ones, but who would expect warming to be something of an exact straight upslope? Trends cannot be derived from incidents; the cold winter of 1996 Holland does absolutely nothing to the fact temperature generally is rising very fast. Actually the question should be whether that winter wouldn’t have been even much colder were it fifty years ago.
There may be some cooling according to the oscillations you mention, but I submit the general warming superposes on this to never make a sixties/seventies decennium possible – unless Yellowstone blows up. Just as a combination of very strong Niña and very deep solar cycle dip could not keep 2007 or 2008 out of the top ten warmest years in the global record.
RR Kampen says:
Ah. I see. The “better” alarmist blogs censor the comments of skeptics, because you, in your wisdumb, decree them to be “disproved.”
And because they show no attempt to learn?? Have you looked in the mirror lately? It is the alarmist contingent that refuses to learn. Skeptics have always asked the same thing: please show us verifiable, testable evidence supporting CAGW. Not computer models; show us empirical, real world evidence that CO2 controls the climate. Show us, with experiments that are testable and falsifiable, that CO2 causes measurable AGW. We want to measure it too. Try to explain convincingly why the planet is cooling as CO2 rises. [And if you claim a hypothetical “heat in the pipeline”, show us exactly where that putative heat is lurking.]
Why don’t alarmist blogs allow all points of view, like WUWT does? Answer: because the skeptics would tear the alarmist conjectures apart. So alarmist blogs censor — not because anything is ‘disproved’ [remember that skeptics need prove nothing; the burden is on the alarmists] — but because the truth has always destroyed the CO2=AGW conjecture in honest debates. Censorship protects alarmist propaganda from being debunked. And they need that protection to keep them from becoming a laughingstock.
It is the CO2=AGW defenders who must answer skeptics’ questions, not vice-versa. But they cannot. And it is the alarmist crowd that must show that the climate is outside of its historical natural variability parameters. But it is not. The MWP was significantly warmer than today’s climate, and those were pre-SUV, pre-coal power plant days with low CO2. Now with CO2 rising, the global temperature is falling. Time to find another conjecture. The claim that CO2 causes anything but the most minor warming is being falsified by the planet.
Finally, it has been repeatedly explained to you that even though the planet is now cooling, it has come off of a recent natural warm cycle. When going over a hill and heading down, you are still up on a hill. The valley floor is far below. So the claims of being the X warmest year are meaningless. What matters is that the planet’s temperature is heading down.
Smokey, if you don’t know what Pi is, I wouldn’t be able to prove to you that it is an irrational number.
You cannot do ‘experiments’ re AGW just like you cannot experiment with Darwin’s hypothesis for the simple reason we can’t create earths like God could.
So what kind of experiments do you envisage?
If the earth is cooling, please explain to me why 2009 is rising in the ranks of warm years as per July, and how come September already made second place notwithstanding a shortage of sunspots… Explain to me how 2007 and 2008 were top ten warmest years while they were labouring under a big Niño and the solar dip of the century. Actually those two years evidenced GW far more convincingly than did 1998.
“it has come off of a recent natural warm cycle.” – Natural, so: unanalyzable? I always found allusions to Mother Nature somewhat religous… Apparently some undescribable phenomen leads you to believe the earth is going to cool substantially whereas ordinary physics of over a century old are just fantasies… Tell you what: if you were an insurance company having to accustom differently to either warmer or cooler future conditions I am very certain where you would put your money. Even if you would remain silent about it…
The MWP’s amplitude was about a third of warming since 1900. Apart from this, there are more drivers of global temperature than only CO2. The change in the latter has merely become the most dominant driver. That’s why 2007 and 2008 still got so warm.
O and by the way, I learnt in 2004. Before that I believed it had to be the sun, but I learnt, see, from evidence.
RR KAMPEN
I am a patient man and I do my homework. Like I say , come back in the future and lets see what your weather really was like. Your statement “Natural variation’ is a statistic based on a record of a certain length of time and an arbitrary choice of what will be natural variation”, shows that you do not understand natural cycles.