Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out
By Gerald Traufetter
At least the weather in Copenhagen is likely to be cooperating. The Danish Meteorological Institute predicts that temperatures in December, when the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, will be one degree above the long-term average.
Otherwise, however, not much is happening with global warming at the moment. The Earth’s average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.
Ironically, climate change appears to have stalled in the run-up to the upcoming world summit in the Danish capital, where thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists plan to negotiate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Billions of euros are at stake in the negotiations.
Reached a Plateau
The planet’s temperature curve rose sharply for almost 30 years, as global temperatures increased by an average of 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) from the 1970s to the late 1990s. “At present, however, the warming is taking a break,” confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany’s best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. “There can be no argument about that,” he says. “We have to face that fact.”
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Again I ask people on both sides, why is 30 years significant? Why is it not 0.3 or 3 or 30 or 300 or 3000 or 30 000 or 300 000 or 3 000 000 ?
I must apologise, as people have kindly tried to answer this before but I’ve never understood the answer.
The graph linked above covers 1945 – 2005, or just two intervals of 30 years. Just two. But it is referred to as a “trend”.
You know if you stand far enough away you can’t see the difference between a triangle, a square, and a circle. They are all just blobs.
Unless someone has a concrete, real world justification for 30 years as the minimum period for “climate”, y’all are just turning everything into blobs, and arguing over whether that blob you see is a square or a triangle.
This doesn’t seem to have baffled Dr William Gray, our foremost hurricane forecaster. In March 2008 he stated:
“We should begin to see cooling coming on,” Gray said. “I’m willing to make a big financial bet on it. In 10 years, I expect the globe to be somewhat cooler than it is now, because this ocean effect will dominate over the human-induced CO2 effect and I believe the solar effect and the land-use effect. I think this is likely bigger.”
He seems to hold a high opinion of Dr Hanson as well, calling him “the most egregious abuser” of data. According to Gray, Hansen’s alarmism is exaggerated because the models he uses to predict the increase in global warming count on too much water vapor in the atmosphere.
RR Kampen (00:49:21) :
Re: “Natural climate variations cause warming. ” – ah, so warming has no causes at all. Just happens.
——————————————————–
Being obtuse are we?…. Clearly the context is between natural mechanisms involving global climate changes and that of anthropogenic global warming as per the flawed Hypothesis of AGW….
“Why should we trust a weather prediction from these people? The man-made-we-are-all-burning-up people have made any weather predictions nearly impossible in the modern age. I read that the British predictions are laughable these days”
http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews09No87.pdf
Piers Corbyn, astrophysicist of WeatherAction gives the latest developments around the WeatherAction Red Weather Warnings driven by WeatherAction’s Solar Weather Impact Periods (SWIPs) of 11-13 Nov & 17-19 Nov (dates to within a day from about 100 days ahead and re-confirmed mid Oct)
WeatherAction key extreme event forecast statements – and comments so far – in double-storm periods 11-13 Nov (‘prelude’) & 17-19 Nov; as in issued forecasts:
– for damaging winds; deluges; thunder/tornado risk; and coastal flood risk in Ireland, Britain & Scandinavia & Benelux (espec Holland) .
– and specific forecasted extreme events around the world 17th-19th Nov
By no means perfect but given the weather Britain has had over the past week or so not bad, especially if the forecast really was made 100 or so days ago.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8369934.stm
RR Kampen (00:49:21) :
“”Re: “Natural climate variations cause warming. ” – ah, so warming has no causes at all. Just happens””.
RR kampen,
We have just been offered a peek into a “criminal conspiracy” cooking up our climate data in support of AGW. And here you are, bud naked by a total lack of scientific arguments preaching your warmists believes. Isn’t it frustrating to see your entire thermogeddon doctrine collapsing?
Climate drivers:
Our sun, our oceans and our volcano’s. That’s it.
We are just a spec on the bud of an elephant.
Kampen
What’s laughable is trying to invoke a solar downturn after spending years saying the effect of the sun was minimal and declining anyway. What’s laughable is invoking the cooling part of the pdo/enso cycling and neglecting to notice that the warming part of that same cycle was previously attributed to an amplified CO2 effect. If you’re going to just make things up, at least be consistent!
I found it particularly ironic that the previous scare story was based around a diminishing natural variation leading to ever-increasing CO2 domination as predicted by simplistic models and now that the models are falsified the team suddenly rediscover natural variation exists after all. The new scare story invokes an entire century of warming as if it was all manmade, yet ignores the official IPCC start data of AGW in 1950 and the Solar debunking start date of AGW in 1985 (Lockwood & F.).
Of course the real story, fully revealed at last, is that the IPCC team are perfectly aware of all these limitations of the science and the contradictions of the real life evidence but put on a different face for those lumpen drones who don’t apparently have enough grey matter to notice that the new story contradicts the old one.
I haven’t slept a wink all night.
If the MSM won’t do their jobs, it’s up to us to spread these emails and data so pervasively that no one can claim ignorance.
I eagerly await Mr. McIntyre’s analysis of the raw data.
NastyWolf (01:00:19) : Clearly only 1990’s was the decade of rising temperatures.
Clearly not –
https://sites.google.com/site/europa62/climatechange/yvtayto200
You don’t need a computer to tell you the trend here. The data speaks for itself. Just in case you do though, here it is, using your chosen data series:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2008/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2008/trend
Hmmm … mus’ be somp’n’ somebody doesn’t understand.
Espen (01:36:01) : Icarus: Yes, look at the data, but don’t conveniently start your graph in 1949 as you do.
Where would you like it to start? How about 1880? –
https://sites.google.com/site/europa62/climatechange/sngtaco21870
Puzzled? Of course they’re puzzled. They still don’t get it.
Their dear AGW ideology is circling the drain, and they don’t know why and are absolutely frantic about it.
Chris P (02:13:18) :
“Nothing in the last ten years looks like any change at all from the warming trend of around 0.2C per decade. Just look at the data”
Good idea, just look at the data.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/nhshgl.gif
Thanks for that. It just reinforces my point that there is nothing about temperatures in recent years to suggest any significant change in the long-term warming trend – just the familiar ‘noise’ (interannual variation) superimposed on the warming trend of around 0.2C per decade.
You could argue that the dip in the ‘moving average’ at the end of the graph represents a change in the warming trend, but the point is that you can’t possibly know that until after the event – until about another 10 years have passed. If this were not the case then you could have declared global warming to be over in 2000 (you’d have been wrong), in 1990 (you’d have been wrong), in 1982 (you’d have been wrong) and so on. Conversely someone could have claimed that global warming was accelerating in 1998, 1980 and so on, and they’d have been wrong too. You simply can’t declare anything about long-term trends from one or two years of data. The ‘noise’ doesn’t allow you to do that. Moreover, when the data for the next several years is added to that graph, the dip you see *now* in the moving average may completely disappear anyway, if it’s being averaged with several warmer years.
RR Kampen (00:44:21) :
Your argument is supported by a litany of poor assumptions: Do you really think someone can walk outside, hold up a thermometer, and take earth’s yearly average temperature? With the sources of temperature records in a constant state of change, records more than a few decades old limited to land masses, drift of that measured collective in altitude and latitude, there are countless arguments remaining over how to calculate a single number to represent this, if not for current numbers (for we now have satellites) then for the baseline.
Then there is this glaring reality: The Global Climate Models you guys so fervently look to in predicting doomsday didn’t see this downward shift in global temperatures coming. And they (along with everyone else) can’t tell us (exactly) why it is happening. This offers a stunning revelation, for if they could not see this oscillation coming when they were directly upon it, they have no chance of predicting what will happen in the next century. And more importantly, since they can’t quantitatively measure and explain the mechanisms causing the decline, they can’t discern if the same mechanism was not responsible for the 20 odd year warming spell that preceded it. Game over.
Lets add one other revelation: Our climate is cyclical. Absolute fact. If you doubt this, merely look to the day, the seasons, the lunar cycle, the tides. On the other end of the spectrum, we have precession of the planet, oscillations in the ellipse of our orbit, both relative to the sun and jovian planets. We observe ~30 year oscillations in ocean currents, and warming patterns in the oceans, but we really can’t explain the mechanism which causes them.
But those who would have us believe they are the masters of this universe, and can unequivocally state C02 caused it all, were DENSE enough to ignore all cyclical evidence, and instead predict a LINEAR trend in temperatures. Now they have egg on their faces, and so too, all the blind AGW faithful. The church is revealing its true nature, and it isn’t science. I’ll say it again, Game over.
Ron de Haan,
Aren’t you the one that uses terms like “totalitarian world government”?
Spector (02:13:40) :
In my opinion, the real issue is “Do we have a Carbon-Dioxide Crisis?” The problem, as presented, is that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is dangerously near a “tipping point” where it will cause a run-away greenhouse effect cooking the planet.
Scientists argue that there are ‘tipping points’ – i.e. positive feedbacks that would kick in as the global temperature rises – but I’ve never heard a genuine climate scientist asserting that this will ‘cook the planet’ (presumably you mean something along the lines of what happened to Venus). Have you read anything that claims this could happen?
The answer, of course is from the Hadley e-mail archive dump:
People are only surprised about the normalcy of the way climate is behaving because those who claim to be the arbiters of climate truth have been lying.
Re: Ron de Haan (03:35:25) :
“We have just been offered a peek into a “criminal conspiracy” cooking up our climate data in support of AGW. ”
I do recognize a hoax when I see one. And what conspiracy is melting the glaciers?
“Climate drivers:
Our sun, our oceans and our volcano’s. That’s it.”
There exist no greenhouse gases? Well, let’s forget physics then, and remember that the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle is exactly 1.1!
“We are just a spec on the bud of an elephant.”
This ‘speck’ can blow up the earth, end most life here and plunge the planet into nucleair winter. And this ‘speck’ can change the atmosphere’s chemistry dramatically, burning up stuff that took tens of millions of years to accumulate. The ‘speck’ you are can fly around the elephant in a day and a half.
You are underestimating the most dominant and agressive living force the solar system has ever endured. Why? Get some pride!
Icarus,
Please, just stop it.
You are repeating proven lies.
There are no great tipping points, there is no looming CO2 crisis.
There is only a bunch of corrupt people pretending to be scientists fabricating stuff to make themselves feel important.
AGW is to climate science what Bernie Madoff was to investments.
From the full article:
“… We have to explain to the public that greenhouse gases will not cause temperatures to keep rising from one record temperature to the next, but that they are still subject to natural fluctuations,” says Latif. For this reason, he adds, it is dangerous to cite individual weather-related occurrences, such as a drought in Mali or a hurricane, as proof positive that climate change is already fully underway.
“Perhaps we suggested too strongly in the past that the development will continue going up along a simple, straight line. In reality, phases of stagnation or even cooling are completely normal,” says Latif.
****
Absolutely right, they should not have done it, and they should not have remained so quiet while others made leaps of the imagination that linked every temperature peak or extreme weather event to AGW.
They have made dog’s dinner out of the data and I expect it must hurt. I also expect that they are trying to clear the decks and put some distance between themsleves and their past performance in the media.
Obviously this leaves many people feeling confused and cheated. They ought to have been more cautious, they ought to have said that the 1970-2000 rise needed to be treated with caution as it might be partially or largely just natural variation. Perhaps it started from a low base and ended on a high note. Perhaps they should have said that the system can quite quickly jump by .1 or .2C up or down for no predicable reason and that they were not at all certain what the long term trend due to AGW was. What they are saying now just makes them look a little foolish. Perhaps they were saying this all the time and they were just not being quoted.
What would be good at this point would be some firm predictions that put a floor under the future trend. Average Global figures for each future year that the record must equal or better to be consistent with AGW. Then, given that there are no more volcanoes, we can make some sort of judgment.
I wonder what temps people would bet the careers on. I guess that some might think it prudent to say that global temperatures could decline in the next decade.
All in all this was an accident waiting to happen.
Alex
Re: Layne Blanchard (05:16:05) :
“.. didn’t see this downward shift in global temperatures coming.”
Of course not. There is no downward shift.
“Then there is this glaring reality: The Global Climate Models you guys so fervently look to in predicting doomsday…”
You are adressing who? Not me. So I feel I should not react.
Icarus: Yes, 1880 is a better start since you then reveal the warm period in the first half of the 20th century, but it’s also very conveniently chosen, since 1880 probably was very close to an extreme minimum. Hadcrut goes back to 1850, which reveals another wave. It looks like this (but who knows how much the CRU boys have doctored it to dampen those earlier waves?):
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl
But, suppose for the sake of argument that the difference between the 1930-1940 warm period and the current warm period is indeed 100% due to AGW, and suppose (also unlikely, but for the sake of argument) that CRU actually got it right: Then we’re looking at 0.4 degrees C warming over these years. And if we make the assumption that CO2 was at 310 ppm back then (this is also debatable), we get 0.4 degrees out of the increase from 310 ppm to 390 ppm. That corresponds to 1.2 degrees C of warming per doubling of CO2, not quite what the alarmist tell us!
And, it should be obvious from the above that the real value is more likely to be lower 1.2 degrees than higher.
Icarus (04:46:23) :
Espen (01:36:01) : Icarus: Yes, look at the data, but don’t conveniently start your graph in 1949 as you do.
Where would you like it to start? How about 1880? –
https://sites.google.com/site/europa62/climatechange/sngtaco21870
Sure, Icky, start when we were just coming out of the LIA. How convenient. By the way, just what caused us to warm then? Horse manure? How about if we start from the MWP? Hmmmm? What does that do to your Warm-o-graph? Oh, right, you people don’t “recognize” the MWP. Sorry.
What continues to annoy me is not just that mainstream media all over the world totally ignore the facts about missing sun-spots and the possible direct correlation to cooling of our atmosphere and surface areas, they also ignore new research that links the inflow of cosmic rays from our galaxy as it (possibly) affects the production of cloud cover. As well, no words of the active volcanoes on Antartica, no words, none, about the affect of the Icelandic (constant) volcanism as it could (possibly) affect air and water currents in that part of the world. Nothing. Mass media filters the message to reflect the current politically correct notion that we humans are more responsible for our demise and trillions should be spent to do something about it. With so much profit to be made, you can be sure that big business will stoke the “we are doomed” fires for a long time to come. Speaking of which, mass media also says very little about the constant illegal burning of the Amazonian forests….etc.
RR Kampen (05:31:12) :
“Then there is this glaring reality: The Global Climate Models you guys so fervently look to in predicting doomsday…”
You are adressing who? Not me. So I feel I should not react.
And yet, you did. Telling.
And what conspiracy is melting the glaciers?
You are simply grasping at straw men as well as revealing your own ignorance about glaciers. When in a hole it is usually wise to stop digging.
But then, you AGWers aren’t known for your smarts.
Wow , actual debate on this site!