By Steve Goddard
Back in January, our friends were crowing about the warmest satellite temperatures on record. But now they seem to have lost interest in satellites. I wonder why?
Data: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
It probably has to do with the fact that temperature anomalies are plummeting at a rate of 0.47 °C/year and that satellite temperatures in 2010 are showing no signs of setting a record.
The attention span of our alarmist friends seems to be getting shorter and shorter. They lock in on a week of warm temperatures on the east coast, a week of warm temperatures in Europe, a week of rapid melt in the Arctic. But they have completely lost the plot of the big picture.
The graph below shows Hansen’s A/B/C scenarios in black, and GISTEMP overlaid in red.
Note that actual GISTEMP is below all three of Hansen’s forecasts. According to RealClimate :
Scenario B was roughly a linear increase in forcings, and Scenario C was similar to B, but had close to constant forcings from 2000 onwards. Scenario B and C had an ‘El Chichon’ sized volcanic eruption in 1995. Essentially, a high, middle and low estimate were chosen to bracket the set of possibilities. Hansen specifically stated that he thought the middle scenario (B) the “most plausible”.
In other words, actual temperature rise has been less than Hansen forecast – even if there was a huge volcanic eruption in the 1990s, and no new CO2 introduced over the past decade! We have fallen more than half a degree below Hansen’s “most plausible” scenario, even though CO2 emissions have risen faster than worst case.
Conclusions:
- We are not going to set a record this year (for the whole year)
- Hansen has vastly overestimated climate sensitivity
- Temperatures have risen slower than Hansen forecast for a carbon free 21st century
So what exactly is it that these folks are still worried about?
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@joel Shore says: July 21, 2010 at 8:15 pm
“So, whose projections from back in 1988 has done a better job in capturing the reality? I’ve never seen Lindzen’s prediction or Monckton’s or Anthony’s or Roy Spencer’s.”
Which version of “reality” are you talking about?
In real reality, climate is a random walk and we just don’t have the knowledge to do “a better job”.
The climate just keeps on doin’ whatta climate’s gotta do. And no amount of playing about on supercomputers will change that.
All the four you name understand that and have way more sense than to pretend they can make skilled predictions. And none of them are advocating spending trillions on solving a problem that almost certainly doesn’t exist using technology that factually does not work and passing laws that will lead to damage to the economy that makes the Credit Crunch look like a hiccup..
899 says:
July 21, 2010 at 9:01 pm
Mike G says:
July 21, 2010 at 4:01 pm
@toby
Since the planet is always either warming or cooling, I’d say the cooling comes after the warming peaks… Then it will cool for thirty or forty years. All this superimposed on longer term trends…
True, true.
….After that, the high priests in the temples of arcane knowledge and moolah got together to connive and machinate.
They set about to analyze the meteorological, astronomical, and geophysical historical records from long past, and connected the dots.
Just as the high priests of old had used arcane knowledge of the Solar eclipse –known to but a few– to scare the hoi polloi (the commoners) into submission, by declaring that they would allow the moon to ‘swallow’ the sun and cast the Earth into eternal darkness if they didn’t acquiesce to the demands of the high priests, so too we witness that same scheming on the part of the high priests of the climate temple walking hand-in-hand with their pay masters in the banking sector.
All anyone really has to do is read history in order to comprehend where this path leads: The road to ruin for the common man, and untold riches for the cadre and their fellow travelers.
Again, as I’ve stated more times than I’d care to recount: WHY do you think it is that THEY are pushing like mad to enact Cap and Trade?
Why? Because they want to make sure such gets enacted before the REAL cooling sets in, and then they will crow that it worked even though the cooling happened all without ANY reductions of CO2.
Artificial eclipses, anyone?
______________________________________________________________________-
Yes It is real interesting to look at the time line of global warming. There was a whole bunch of research done around 1965 to 1975 including a CIA report in 1974 on “global COOLING” Key was the low maximum predicted by Gleissberg (1971) for cycle 21. As well as the work that validated the Milankovitch Hypothesis.
I have often wondered if the politicians and very wealthy think we ARE headed into another Ice Age shortly and are preparing themselves (not us) to survive it… Seed Banks, DNA banks, transfer of resources to southern climes (India & South China& Africa & North S. America) HMMmmmm
Here is some of the research from the time period supporting the Milankovitch Hypothesis.
1967 Nicholas J. Shackleton, “Oxygen Isotope Analyses and Pleistocene Temperatures Re-Assessed.” Nature 215: 15-17.
1968 Wallace S. Broecker, et al., “Milankovitch Hypothesis Supported by Precise Dating of Coral Reef and Deep-Sea Sediments.” Science 159: 297-300.
1968 Wallace S. Broecker, “In Defense of the Astronomical Theory of Glaciation.” Meteorological Monographs 8(30): 139-41.
And this one has to be a classic:
1972 Stephen H. Schneider, “Cloudiness as a Global Climate Feedback Mechanism: The Effects of Radiation Balance and Surface Temperature of Variations in Cloudiness.” J. Atmospheric Sciences 29: 1413-22.
Then on the political side you have:
Obama’s Science Czar John Holdren who advocates “de-development of the United States”
1971 Paul R. Ehrlich and J. P. Holdren, “Impact of Population Growth.” Science 171: 1212-14.
1972 Donella H. Meadows, et al., The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind. New York: Universe Books.
And of course the start of it all, the UN First Earth Summit speech by Maurice Strong on Global Warming and pollution.
Can we please stop bringing recorded facts to a model fight, hard cold numbers have no place in a computer model and the paper clip is handy because he gives out free PR advice.
On a side note Anotny i have a 3in square of foam with a bit of string attached for you, I thought you could tie it to your forehead to help with the banging of your head against that very stubbon wall.
So what exactly is it that these folks are still worried about?
December 21, 2012
Steve goddard said:
“The point is that the dire predictions aren’t happening – and the people who made them haven’t generated much confidence in their skills.”
Whether you believe in the predictions or not seems to be depend on your “prior predisposition” – if you are a non-believer in AGW, you can rationalise away anything that undermines your world view. The reverse is also true of course, there are those who will be less inclined to question the evidence.
I think there are enough signs of the “dire predictions” (I am not sure if anyone made dire predictions for 2010 and before) to justify taking serious action. And I find climate scientists reasonably sound on the science. My personal justification is more the “precautionary principle” or the “prudence principle” – that one should take sensible steps to prepare for the worse events that may happen. I think that springs from a conservative view of life and the earth, not a wild eyed radical “left-wing” perspective.
It’s worse than we thought, the amount of lying by the warmists I mean, but not only, the cooling is worse than we thought too.
What are the warmists worried about? Many said it before me but its worth repeating a million times: Their pay cheque following the imminent collapse of the AGW/CC pyramid scheme. There are three props holding up this pyramid scheme:
The pseudo-scientists (paid by the politicians’ grants)
The politicians (supported by the pseudo-scientists’ reports in return for these grants)
(Leftist) Journalists ( who are riding on the wave of fear-mongering, hyping the issue and selling their monster-eats-babies stories to the gull(ible)s.)
It only takes one of these three props for the scam to collapse, and it is collapsing and they are worried and they are trying to push the thermometer up by hyping a hotter than average month in a few countries in the NH, while hiding the decline in the rest of the planet.
It is my opinion, based on the many and continuous reports of record colds all over the world, that the current warmist reports saying that 2010 will be the hottest ever is a BIG LIE, contrived to prop up the collapsing scam. Let’s be real, one hotter or colder than normal place is weather, two also, three…. but hell, if its freezing all over the planet all the winter times and even in summer times, continuously, is it weather or climate? And where is the truth? I am convinced that one day, all these warmist ‘scientific’ reports will be revealed as what they really are: LIES. Time will tell, or is it already telling us so?
Gail Combs
“All anyone really has to do is read history in order to comprehend where this path leads: The road to ruin for the common man, and untold riches for the cadre and their fellow travellers.”
Too true.
Why did NOAA/NASA announce the ‘hottest year ever’ 6 months into the year?
Because they know that the rest of the year will be getting colder.
And , just how wrong were they?
Roy Spencer and REMSS show that every month’s anomoly in 1998 was greater that the same month in 2010.
Mike G says:
July 21, 2010 at 4:01 pm
@toby
Since the planet is always either warming or cooling, I’d say the cooling comes after the warming peaks… Then it will cool for thirty or forty years. All this superimposed on longer term trends…
And conversely, when it’s cooling and there is an ice age coming c.1974 it will start warming. Unless of course the team have been through and deleted that particular warming or cooling.
Martin Brumby says: “Which version of “reality” are you talking about?
In real reality, climate is a random walk and we just don’t have the knowledge to do “a better job”. “
Martin, in reality we only have 150 years of climate data from which to assess the noise profile (and much of that is noisy!). Random walk which gives rise to Brownian noise (aka Red Noise) has a 1/f^2 frequency distribution.
From memory I think the noise spectrum of the climate is closer to pink noise or 1/ƒ noise which is a signal or process with a frequency spectrum such that the power spectral density is inversely proportional to the frequency. In pink noise, each octave carries an equal amount of noise power. The name arises from being intermediate between white noise (1/ƒ^0) and red noise (1/ƒ^2).
However when you are dealing with something that can’t be measured in periods shorter than a year, and for which we only have 150years worth of records, it really is quite difficult to determine exactly the nature of the noise signal (particularly when part of that signal is presumed by some to be induced by external factors like CO2).
So, I’d prefer you said something like: “In real reality, climate is like a random walk”, or better still: “In real reality, climate has changed in a way not too dissimilar from a random walk”.
Or better still, the climate signal in the last 150 years appears to show a 1/f^n noise profile (where there was too little data to give an exact value for n but it could be 1)
Are you sure about the GISSTEMP overall? It doesn’t seem to match with the observation overall on the Real Climate website.
I wrote overall when I meant overlay. Your second graph, if the predictions are that wrong compared to the observations wouldn’t many people be shouting about this? I’ll try again with the correct English.
Are you sure you got the overlay of the GISTEMP record on Hansen’s predictions correct?
That’s interesting, so it is essentially a problem with the institutions using their authority and members naturally wishing to remain loyal to their field? It comes down to job security?
So this is what people mean when they say “denialists are anti-science” — they don’t take kindly to challenges to their wisdom or authority. Anti-science is anti their science.
They know what is at stake, but the thing is, theirs is a harder position to defend. I mean, they have a 50/50 chance of the world warming for a period, but they appear to be already running out of luck.
This is a bit silly. 1998 Was the strongest El Niño ever recorded. It’s quite clear that the satellite measurements overestimate temperature compared to the instrumental record during El Niño events. However, as we are now approaching a LaNiña event, and the satellite record is approaching record levels, while the surface record is breaking records, your analysis appears to fail to take account of the complexity needed to interpret this data.
rbateman says:
July 21, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Maybe they should hire BP to stop the leak?
My personal justification is more the “precautionary principle” or the “prudence principle” – that one should take sensible steps to prepare for the worse events that may happen.
My personal justification is the “precautionary principle” too. I don’t like to spend money unless it is on something that works. I take precautions that I don’t get sold a pup.
So I find spending on reducing CO2 to be precisely the opposite of precautionary. I am concerned that 1) we cannot hope to get political agreement to reduce CO2; and 2) that CO2 is not correct culprit.
The real drive to cut CO2 is not the “precautionary principle”, but the thought that we are consuming too much and headed for economic and social disaster. AGW is a useful way to blackmail the hesitant into agreeing. If you don’t buy into the “we are consuming too much” meme then AGW is a very hard sell.
CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
July 21, 2010 at 5:27 pm
Al Gore is going to be in a lot of trouble.
toby says: “Whether you believe in the predictions or not seems to be depend on your “prior predisposition” – if you are a non-believer in AGW, you can rationalise away anything that undermines your world view. The reverse is also true of course, there are those who will be less inclined to question the evidence.”
Toby, a very valid point, but you are forgetting that the whole basis of science is to remove the subjective judgement of the individual. Worse still, by pretending climate “science” is a science and then allowing whole realms of the subject to be determined by personal judgements such as you are expressing, really prevents proper analysis by the types of rational arguments that are used in pseudo sciences like economics and market research.
In real science the subjectiveness of the observer isn’t a problem, because in real science the subject acts to remove the subjectiveness of the observer so that all observers following the methodology arrive at the same result. You cannot simultaneously say that climate “science” is a science and say that it all “depend(s) on your “prior predisposition””
I think there are enough signs of the “dire predictions” (I am not sure if anyone made dire predictions for 2010 and before) to justify taking serious action. And I find climate scientists reasonably sound on the science. My personal justification is more the “precautionary principle” or the “prudence principle” – that one should take sensible steps to prepare for the worse events that may happen.
So based on this so called “precautionary principle”, the worst event that will happen is the next ice-age which we know (based on proven scientific facts not guesses) is going to make large parts of the world uninhabitable. Based on the precautionary principle we would therefore try to warm the climate as much as possible to prevent any possibility of a new ice age.
Or to put it another way … if you can’t prove your position by the facts, scare people into doing what you personally think based on your own judgement seems to be what your own political nouse seems to think is the worst possible scenario.
Well what is your precautionary principle for:
1. 6billion population that is increasing?
Oil reserves depleting which will likely plunge us into a world economic depression probably leading to world war.
The abuse of low level antibiotics in animal farming promoting the development of antibiotic immune bacteria whose proliferation through the animal meat trade is being spread throughout the world so that “based on the precautionary principle”, we won’t have any tools to tackle common infections within a few decades.
Or perhaps your personal worst case scenario is that the climate may change so dramatically that as Dr David Viner of the CRU put in 2000 within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”, “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.
When I was a child, I got an infection that a generation before could have killed me but I was lucky to be born at a time when antibiotics were available and we hadn’t so abused them that antibiotic immune bacteria were not rife in society. When I was a child, I did not want for warmth or food, because I lived in a society rich from fossil fuel.
If we are going to change the world based on the “precautionary principle” well lets at least base that precautionary action on some real problem not the imagined problem of a bit less snow.
its funny reading threads like this. Prior to about 2005 warmists contemptuously ignored talk of oceanic and solar cycles as benighted antedeluvian phenomenology. But now with increasing frequency they are scurrying for refuge in ENSO, decadal oceanic and solar cycles to explain non-warming. WUWT?
AGW proponents always ignore two important facts:
1. Our planet’s natural climatic cycles – the circa 0.7 degrees C increase in global temperature since the 1850s – is mostly/all due to these cycles.
2. There is no evidence of CO2 forcing or feedback in the geological record.
Joel Shore says:
July 21, 2010 at 8:15
Maybe they are honest enough to say they don’t know?
The main stream media is claiming that the first half of this year is the warmest on record.
Jan.-June warmest first half of year on record
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38263788/ns/us_news-environment/
I realise that predicting future trends in climate is difficult but surely it should not be impossible to verify or refute claims about a short period that has just finished. Is the claim true or not, and if not why not?
Another recent claim concerns Lake Tanganyika.
African lake warmest in 1,500 years
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2010/07/21/African-lake-warmest-in-1500-years/UPI-59601279754870/
I think this second report is more important than the first because if it is true then presumably it casts doubt on the worldwide significance of the Medieval Warm Period.
Kdkd:
At July 22, 2010 at 1:46 am you assert:
“1998 Was the strongest El Niño ever recorded. It’s quite clear that the satellite measurements overestimate temperature compared to the instrumental record during El Niño events. However, as we are now approaching a LaNiña event, and the satellite record is approaching record levels, while the surface record is breaking records, your analysis appears to fail to take account of the complexity needed to interpret this data.”
OK. So try this data.
The global climate sytem seems to vary in cycles that are overlayed on each other. The cause(s) of these cycles are not known but some suggest these cycles may relate to solar behaviour.
Several lines of evidence from history and from archaeology suggest there is an apparent ~900 year oscillation that caused the Roman Warm Period (RWP), then the Dark Age Cool Period (DACP), then the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), then the Little Ice Age (LIA), and the present warm period (PWP).
And the various estimates of mean global temperature (MGT) each suggest there is an apparent ~60 year cycle that provide cooling from ~1880 to ~1910, then warming to ~1940, then cooling to ~1970, then warming to ~2000, then cooling since.
If these patterns continue then the ~60 year cycle can be anticipated to revert to a warming phase around 2030, and the ~900 year oscillation can be anticipated to revert to a cooling phase during this century.
So, if these patterns continue, then either
(a) MGT will revert to rising because these two oscillations will both be in a warming phase around 2030,
or
(b) MGT will fall back to the levels it had in the DACP and MWP because the ~900 year oscillation has reverted to a cooling phase.
Does your “science” exclude explanation of observational data? If not, then how does your “science” explain these apparent oscillations, and does your science predict their future development and/or cessation?
Richard
Hey guys just wait for Tipping Point.
He’s coming soon
Sorry guys Mr Point crashed his car off a cliff on the way here, Mrs Point will be here soon though
…
Excellent post, Steve and many thanks.
Dr PH and Ric Werne, your links are enlightening!
Some of my antedecedents fled the witch-sniffers and the generally joyless dogma-ridden nastiness of the Puritans and emigrated to the new colonies in America during the 17th century. By the beginning of the 20th century, most of my once-English family had become Canadians, Americans, Australians and New Zealanders. Knowing something of my own family history and its well-documented love of music, literature, learning and fun is a part of why I tend to have a sceptical attitude to what ‘authorities’ tell me is going to happen in the future and and expect me to do in preparation. The climate cartel who are promoting the ridiculous and scientifically dishonest canard that Man is causing the majority of climate change are the new Puritans, who are as arrogant, devious and self-serving as they ever were. Being aware of what they are is a good beginning to avoiding the new Dark Ages they wish to impose on us.