David Whitehouse: The Climate Coincidence: Why is the temperature unchanging?

So increasing levels of CO2 don’t cause increasing temperatures. How many negative counterexamples of a theory does it take to falsify it?

“Scientifically suspicious” is awful charitable.

“I know few who would argue that we don’t live in the warmest decade for probably a millennium ”
So you know few people that believe the medieval warm period was warmer than now? It seems the hockeystick team achieved their goal.

“I know few who would argue that we don’t live in the warmest decade for probably a millennium”
1) The satellite data and the ground station data have not been properly cross calibrated to make a “one instrument” temperature history. The ground data on its own points out that the 1940s may well have been the hottest decade. May.
2) When you move to to tree-rings, you’ve shifted into a realm that’s reliant on odd math. Temperature reconstructions of individual proxies that are calibrated into temperature prior to being combined into a global average show both a strong MWP and a LIA. But taking the pool of all vaguely plausible proxies and weeding for “those that fit the temperature records we’ve got” and then making the assumption that those self-same proxies are also good prior to the calibration period (although they aren’t after the calibration period) leads to a flat temperature profile.
I expect there are more than “a few” that have sympathy for one or both of the caveats I’ve listed.

In the past decade the atmospheric CO2 levels have increased from 370 ppm to 390 ppm and using those figure the IPCC once estimated that the world should have warmed by at least 0.2 deg C. The fact that the world has not warmed at all means that all the other climatic factors have had a net effect of producing 0.2 deg C of cooling.

Or it could be that the IPCC is wrong. Considering how accurate they have been on a whole slew of other positions, that would be my choice. Trying to find cooling agents or processes may be as much a waste of time as trying to find Trenberth’s missing heat.
(Note how this lack of warming won’t deter the warmer’s enthusiasm one bit–sorta like Nancy Pelosi’s plans for a grand party celebrating… celebrating… I’ll let Nancy answer that one, for the reason eludes me.)

“The Devil is in the details”. Then, as long as we look at the details we will see, (As Briffa) a single tree and not the forest as a whole. That is called by ophthalmologists “nearsightedness” .
We are used, overused and tired, of hearing : “….it was caused by a low pressure front”. Our questioning minds however, do not obey courtesy laws, and ask, following Socrates “maieutics”(derived from the Greek “μαιευτικός”, pertaining to midwifery.)…”.but what did it cause that low pressure?”, and so, on and on.
What we need NOW is real, actual causations, and not “tranquilizing pills” or “Brave New World” ‘ s “Soma”.
There are already people who speak about causations, but these theories/approaches are not well received as “disgusting” or rather “offensive” to established dogmas or “settled science”.
We prefer to be heretical, doubtful, followers of doubt as a method, only driven by our inner gut’s feelings and seeking general laws beaconing from the lighthouse of truth.
Then, what is it really behind climate?

Gaia is preventing us from destroying her. 🙂

Northern extratropics give good enough trend, not disturbed by ENSO events.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/icrutem3_hadsst2_0-360E_30-90N_n_1990:2011a.png
Present times (warmest year ever) are on the level of 1990 and accelerating downhill. According to the models, NH should be already warmer by 0.5-1 °C. All this per IPCC own global record HadCRUT.

“This means that for 10-15 years the combined effect of all the Earth’s climate variability factors have increased in such a way as to exactly compensate for the rise in temperature that the increased CO2 would have given us.”
So maybe, just maybe, when the “climate scientists” fully understand “all the Earth’s climate variability factors”, and the GCMs be modified to include those “climate variability factors” then the “truth” will be known.
To admit that there are “climate variability factors” seems to open the door a crack. It seems to be an admission that their is still a lot of uncertainty or unknowns in what drives the Earth’s climate.
So isn’t it just too early to advocate any action by humans?

He assumes AGW is a fact and that natural factors have prevented the warming.
The possibility that the warming was natural (caused by positive PDO and AMO) doesn’t seem to be on the cards. As our oceans begin their negative, colder cycle it seems likely that temperatures will follow. Should make an interesting follow up to this essay.

I agree that the cease of the warming trend looks very bad for AGW, and I think sooner or later it will be fatal. Buti also think you overstate the case somewhat.
It is true that this year looks set to hit the average for the past decade. But of course it is nonsense to infer from that that the temperature has been a “flat line”. It hasn’t, it has varied up and down.
If the temperature has not been constant then of course there is no reason to suppose that cooling factors have been a “mirror Image” of warming; the best we can say is that there is too much variability to say.
Apologies for typos – I am posting from my phone, outside on an English evening and it is jolly cold! A sign of things to come?

@Tim Williams (November 9, 2010 at 11:07 am):
This 10-15 year standstill !!
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/hadcrut3.html

“”””” In the past decade the atmospheric CO2 levels have increased from 370 ppm to 390 ppm and using those figure the IPCC once estimated that the world should have warmed by at least 0.2 deg C. The fact that the world has not warmed at all means that all the other climatic factors have had a net effect of producing 0.2 deg C of cooling. “””””
Who writes this drivel ?
Their conclusion is simply false. The IPCC estimated (from climate models that don’t properly model water and clouds) that the world should have warmed by 0.2 deg.
The fact that it hasn’t means only that the IPCC was wrong; the Earth should NOT have warmed 0.2 deg and it didn’t; because Mother Gaia, knows what Temperature it should be; and that’s exactly where it is !
So humans cause climate change aka climate variability; and natural factors cause climate variability aka climate change.
Simply wonderful.
Why aren’t they honest; and simply say we don’t know what is happening or why it happens. But even though I don’t know what is happening or why; I do know what causes it;
IT’S THE WATER !!

“But what does this 10-15 year temperature standstill mean?”
It probably means that we haven’t adjusted for UHI. It’s painfully obvious to me that we have little more than ancedotal evidence regarding the surface temperature record of the planet.
“Am I alone in thinking that in the dynamically changing global climate this looks like a contrived, indeed scientifically suspicious, situation?”
You’re not alone, and you’re being too kind.

Tim Williams says:
November 9, 2010 at 11:07 am
“”So are we to believe that the accumulated data from 160 research bodies, in 48 countries, using state of the art field measurements are incorrect in their assessment that…”Global average surface and lower-troposphere temperatures
during the last three decades have been progressively
warmer than all earlier decades […]”
Yeah, of course, that’s hogwash. Have you never heard of the Holocene Climate Optimum. I think there were decades back then.

Sun Spot says:
November 9, 2010 at 11:49 am
@Tim Williams (November 9, 2010 at 11:07 am):
This 10-15 year standstill !!
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/hadcrut3.html
Oh yeah. Like all those other little standstills in the ,long term, increasing trend.

Occam’s razor suggests: CO2 has no effect and we are merely cresting the temperature hump of the current mini-cycle. Down should be next. Great piece of writing, tongue fully in cheek. L

I thought attribution in IPCC reports said there was only a slight positive natural forcing? I guess you CAN have your cake and eat it, too.

A simple explanation of why the offset equals the CO2 caused rise would be that the feedback is negative not positive. If the feedback reduces the CO2 rise by a factor of 3, rather than increasing it by a factor of 3, then the net CO2 rise would be 1/9 th of what the IPCC says. That rise is so small that it’s not noticeable in the natural variability.

Jim G says:
November 9, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Perhaps the “Federal Reserve Bank” of Climate is pumping out cooling agents to “devalue” the CO2 increases supposedly caused by people
As Carbon trade goes, it seems to be the case….Next Christmas song about to be changed from “Silent Night” to “Frozen Night” 🙂

To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes
“…..when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? ”
The Team fail again and again because rather than eliminating the impossible they attempt to eliminate the possible and get caught doing it.
It seems highly unlikely to me that given the many faceted and often multi decadal influences on climate that any series of changes could combine to exactly negate the supposed warming effect of CO2.
To a logical person this would suggest that the supposed warming effect of CO2 is the weak link in the above supposition and at best it deserves to be regarded with great suspicion and probably eliminated as a theory.

@ L says: November 9, 2010 at 12:23 pm;
You have it spot on. A classically understated but devastating piece of logical writing which destroys the CAGW hypothesis, but spiced with a ‘tongue-in-cheek’ humour hidden just below the surface.
“Am I alone in thinking that in the dynamically changing global climate this looks like a contrived, indeed scientifically suspicious, situation?” is the fatal and very witty blow!

“Some -eminent- climatologists, such as Professor Phil Jones …”
… and then I stopped reading.
( I might pick it tonight, but dealing with left word usage right now will put me off my lunch.)

Charles Higley says:
November 9, 2010 at 1:13 pm
I think you have it. Take only proven, reliable, sites with 1st class metadata and scrap the rest. Create a new network of surface stations and calibrate with the existing 1st class stations and satelite data and provide funds to support that network and finally cease all government climate funding and hand it to private sources with the govs buying the data collected. Then sack, Mann, Hansen, Steig, Schmidt et al.

David,
Perhaps you would care to share the numbers you use when you claim that temperatures have not increased in the last 15 years? The numbers I see show a measurably increased temperature. These numbers are NOAA’s data for the last 15 years, not including 2010 because, well, it ain’t over yet. Rounded to hundredths.
1995 anomaly: .40
2009 anomaly: .56
1995-1999 average anomaly: .42
2005-2009 average anomaly: .55
decade of the 1990s anomaly: .35
decade of the 2000s anomaly: .53
That looks like warming to me. Of course, you may be playing the ‘statistically significant’ angle, in which case you should include a longer data set and have a more robust discussion of the overall trend.
It’s also worth noting that the anomaly for this year, if it holds, would be a record temperature in the NOAA dataset. Currently it stands at .65. And in the last few months we’ve set the record for the warmest 12 month span in modern history (since late 1800s).
Finally, your statement that since the decade of the 1940’s only 2 decades have showed warming is interesting. Again, what data did you use and how do you count? If you are counting decade over decade warmth (ie was the decade in question warmer or cooler than the previous decade) then NOAA shows that 6 decades have been warmer than the previous (only the 1950s were cooler). If you are using absolute anomaly by decade then the count is 4 decades.
From a casual observer it seems your conclusions are highly dubious if not worthless and your methods need some explaining.

Mark S
Data that shows world has not warmed in the past 15 years and the impeccable sources that say so.
http://www.thegwpf.org/the-observatory/1626-nothing-wrong-with-our-graph.html

Maybe the theory is wrong.

How many years of a standstill will it take for AGW proponents to start abandining their theory ?

“Am I alone in thinking that in the dynamically changing global climate this looks like a contrived, indeed scientifically suspicious, situation?”
Interesting premise and one that could well be correct. I think Charles Higley hit the nail on the head in the post above:-
Charles Higley says:
November 9, 2010 at 1:13 pm
“Three, five, no, six things:
1) The assumed 0.2 deg of warming due to CO2 for such a small CO2 increase indicates that Beer’s Law is being ignored. The IPCC wrongly assumes a linear effect when in fact CO2′s effect plateaus and is >90% exhausted…”
All six of Charles’s detailed points are worth a re-read. True science demands hard proof from experiment or solid observation, not assumptions based on glossing the facts.
I’m also aghast about some of the big ‘elephants in the room’ which the current cabal of IPCC climate scientists don’t want us to see, let alone question. How can 30y be considered a suitable climate period when this is much shorter than natural climate oscillations as seen in the historic record? Any period shorter than the 200y de Vries solar cycle, say, will clearly lead to variations to climate metrics like temperature, for example. It is then possible by picking the correct period of the cycle to highlight a warming or a cooling ‘trend’.
1410-1500 cold – Low Solar Activity(LSA?)-(Sporer minimum)
1510-1600 warm – High Solar Activity(HSA?)
1610-1700 cold – (LSA) (Maunder minimum)
1710-1800 warm – (HSA)
1810-1900 cold – (LSA) (Dalton minimum)
1910-2000 warm – (HSA)
2010-2100 (cold???) – (LSA???)
It has been known that climate acts very much like a forced pendulum, and exhibits deterministic chaos which is responsible for the quasi-cyclical behaviour we see (example above). It also leads to an effect called maximum entropy production (MEP), which means that a complex non-linear system will select the trajectory (or assemblage of trajectories) out of those available which maximise the dissipation of energy.
So as climate warms due to the myriad of observed quasi-cycles, the total system changes to become more efficient at losing energy (mainly through turbulence and changes to boundary conditions). The reverse happens when cooling occurs, but it is important to remember that there will be over-shoot (like the 1998 temperature peak) and undershoot as the system is constantly, but unsuccessfully, forced to find thermal equilibrium.
Current science tries to deal with this complex, highly interlinked system as if it were a simple linear one. It makes too many invalid assumptions. It refuses to acknowledge the ‘elephants in the room’. Because of this situation it will continue flounder, with no real worthwhile progress made.

You do your case no good by selective misquoting. Phil Jones did not say there has been no warming since 1995. He said,
“Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming”
“Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods. ”
The quote is from an interview with the BBC in February this year http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
His reply is a little more nuanced than your article indicates.

Theodore said: “Do you think it is merely a coincidence that the warming stopped at the same time that sceptics started looking at the data?”
Another possibility is that it stopped after they made the adjustments (homogenisations) that showed the upward trend in the first place.

This article is quite amazing. There are N natural forcings, some are known and some/many/most are unknown, finally we have the CO2 forcing.
This article seems to say: We’ve had constant temperature over the last 15 years and for this to happen, assuming AGW is true, the N natural forcings would have to exactly cancel out the CO2 forcing. Since this is highly improbable, therefore, AGW is false. QED
OK, so let’s assume AGW is false and CO2 forcing is essentially zero, and then go through this cunning argument again. Now, instead of (N+1) forcings canceling each other out we instead have only N forcings canceling each other out. And THAT is supposed to somehow be more probable?
Do you see how utterly brain dead this article is, the whole premise is BS. Embarrassing.
Look, I really like this site, but some of the stuff you post is just complete junk. Why don’t you reduce the posts and keep only the good stuff (yes, I know you didn’t personally write this piece).

Yer, Tim Williams the temp trace up and downs and standstills follow solar-nino-ocean -volcanic trends, as does the current 10 to 15 year standstill. None or extremely little CO2 is needed for that!

“The manmade factors are postulated to be responsible for climate change whereas the natural factors are taken to be agents of climate variability.”
That is incredibly bad writing, like somebody talking while asleep. It needs to be edited, or translated, into English. If climate experts are actually talking that way, they need to be chained to luminous, beeping dictionaries.
What is the difference between being responsible for climate change and being an agent of climate variability?

To put this is the simplest terms possible, …
… the energy is escaping the Earth at exactly the same rate that the Sun’s energy is coming in – exactly that is.
In other words, there is no extra radiative forcing from GHGs or any net change in any other climate factor.
Very simple and no climate model should be able to argue with the climate on its very simplest terms.
Been playing around with the daily radiation budget numbers – this is how close the energy escaping is versus the energy coming in.
At about noon, the solar radiation is at a maximum – Earth average 960.0000 watts/m2/second.
The energy escaping/rising to the colder atmosphere at noon – 959.9983 Watts/m2/second. There is just an extremely small difference so that there is slight accumulation until the temperature peaks at about 3:00 pm or 4:00 pm.
After that, the energy escaping starts to exceed the energy coming in (again just a very small difference – unmeasureable really). After the Sun sets, about 0.001 Watts/m2/second is escaping to the colder upper atmosphere and to space. [Of course, the energy flowing out exceeds the back-radiation as the global warming set like to call it so the back-radiation does not really describe the real activity in the real atmosphere which makes it a red herring].
There is just a tiny differential throughout the day, in every second in the 24 hour period.
For the 15 year period in question, it is a ZERO difference.
Simple.

Glad to see someone thinking about climate history. I have analyzed the available data and made comparisons between satellite and ground-based measurements. They do not agree because huge sections of temperature curves overlapping satellite data have been cooked. As in falsified; and I show how it was done in my book. But here let me just outline what the real climate history looks like. First, the three primary sources of world temperature – NASA, NOAA, and Hadley Centre – all show a phony warming in the eighties and nineties that starts in the late seventies. I can tell that from the satellite record which begins in late 1979 and continues to the present. There was no warming in the eighties and nineties at all, just a temperature oscillation, up and down by half a degree for twenty years. But there was also real warming which started in 1998 when a super El Nino arrived. Global temperature rose by a third of a degree in four years, and then stopped. This warming was not carboniferous. A third of a degree is half of what has been allotted to the entire twentieth century. That is why the current decade is the warmest on record. There was no further warming but temperature stayed near the El Nino maximum point for six years, the twenty-first century high. That ended with a La Nina cooling in 2008 which inaugurated the present oscillating climate period. The temperature oscillations in the eighties and nineties were not random but consisted of El Nino peaks of which there were five in twenty years. The valleys in between were La Ninas and together they outlined the course of the ENSO oscillation that has a global climate influence. They are present in all temperature curves if some idiot did not wipe them out with a running average. There is a superstition among these “climate” scientists that a thirty year average has some magical properties. The only magic I see in a thirty year average is that it destroys data they should be interpreting. ENSO oscillations began when the Isthmus of Panama rose from the sea and they are expected to continue in the foreseeable future. They were interrupted in 1998 by a super El Nino which was not part of ENSO and which brought much warm water with it across the ocean. The result was that warming continued after the El Nino was over and produced the twenty-first century high I mentioned. The La Nina of 2008 was simply the restart of the ENSO oscillations that were suppressed in the aftermath of the super El Nino. Since then we have had the El Nino of 2010 which has peaked and the next La Nina is already on the way. I expect this to continue indefinitely if nothing unusual does not interrupt it. The IPCC dream of seeing a steady increase of temperature is simply out of the question. If you now look at the temperature curve for the last thirty years as a whole you will see two parallel sections. On the left is the oscillatory period whose center line lines up nicely with NOAA’s chart from the fifties to the seventies. That part goes back before they started their fakery. On the right is a horizontal section starting in 2001/2002 that can be extended to the center line of the new oscillating climate. And in between them is a transition region that starts with the super El Nino. This is just the basics and I highly recommend that you get the rest from my book.

There are some quite silly comments here.
Jimmi –
the answer that Prof Jones said to the question as to if there had been no warming since 1995 in the BBC interview was ‘YES” – the qualifications Jones gives are actually irrelevant and express his wish the answer was not yes but providing no scientific or statistical evidence to change it. Nuanced or not the answer to the question id ‘YES”
Ben U –
I saw the point Dr Whitehouse is making – climate change he applies to man-made influences that act only one way. Climate variability he attributes to climate variations that can act both ways (warming and cooling). It’s like the difference between global warming and climate change was once used before those advocating GW changed it to CC because the world wasn’t actually warming at all in the past decade.
Mark S.
Read the GWPF article. Whitehouse goes into the debate about cherry picking and DOES NOT choose 1998 as you say.
Tim Williams.
On choosing small time periods is not the point. The temperature standstill since 1995 is now of longer duration since the 1980 – 95 warming spell so if any climatic event should be regarded through the prism of too short a time period to be of long-term climatic importance then the 80-95 warming ranks lower than the 95-2010 stasis.

I was wondering, what has been the fate of Anthony and Pilke Sr.’s paper? Is it caught in the web of peer review?

Peterc says:
November 9, 2010 at 7:40 pm

There are some quite silly comments here…..Ben U -I saw the point Dr Whitehouse is making – climate change he applies to man-made influences that act only one way. Climate variability he attributes to climate variations that can act both ways (warming and cooling). ….

That is not the difference of meanings between “change” and “variability”. So he uses some sloppy, debased English, and you with complaints of silly criticism want to make a shibboleth of it. I’d say it’s best to avoid aberrant usage of everyday English addressed to the general reader, whether it’s a result of linguistic incompetence as in the present case or of obfuscatory intent as in the warmist case.

Ben u
don’t agree. David Whitehouse is clearly a more sophisticated writer than you perceive.

Thanks for posting this Anthony. As other’s have pointed out, there’s some rather subtle irony in there which some appear to have missed.
The summary by Charles Higley also hits the nail on the head. Arno Arrak makes some good points also – particularly about the nonsense of smoothing out the 30 year mean.
p.s. Sun Spot – I assume that the earlier essay by David Whitehouse you read in 2008 but now can’t source is this one: http://www.newstatesman.com/scitech/2007/12/global-warming-temperature
It caused such a stooshie in the New Statesman that they felt it necessary to give a right of reply to Mark Lynas.
I have flagged this on the tips page but surprised that there’s still no link to it from WUWT – a great letter from Matt Ridley to David MacKay, the UK Government’s Chieg Scientific Advisor: http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/best-shot

So, just because natural variability can hide a 0.2 degree rise, it can also hide a 2 degree rise? Interesting theory.

Here is the flat global mean temperature trend since 1998:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/to:2010/trend:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/to:2010

Ah yes,so the trend is essentially flat from 1979 to 1997 according to Singer, and also flat from 1998 to now…..
Anyone see the snag in this type of analysis? Or is a discontinuity of 0.22C on the Jan 1st 1998 a physically believable occurrence?

Well, lies again and again… The temperature is rithnow right where the IPCC models predicted. See for example
http://www.climat-evolution.com/article-prevision-de-la-variabilite-climatique-60540587.html
I also see it difficult to state that the temperature has not increased in the last 15 years
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1995/offset:-0.15/mean:12/plot/gistemp/from:1995/offset:-0.24/mean:12/plot/uah/from:1995/mean:12/plot/rss/from:1995/mean:12
What Jones meant to say is that trends done over short periods (such as 10 or 15 years) are not statistically significant.

Sorry, I posted before I’d read the article:
This article is utter crap and based on warmist nonsense and a misunderstanding of climatic variation
Climatic variation is a 1/f type noise. For those who don’t understand what it means: 1/f noise appears on a graph like a very drunk person with amnesia walking down the street … they walk as if they have a purpose … they walk forwards with vary little short term variation, but just as you think you know where they are heading they veer off and go somewhere else, and the longer you look the less clear it is where they are heading.
In contrast the typical noise on which this article is based is the “bee-bop” noise of some disco dancing roller skating youth who shows a great deal of variation in their momentary position but whose direction, speed and final destination are very very predictable.
What this article fails to understand is that if the young disco dancer were to change direction and cross the road, it would indicate a change in behaviour, whereas if the drunk had been walking along the sidewalk and then crossed the road, … there’s absolutely no change in behaviour! They’re still drunk, they’re still going in random directions and they are as likely to cross back over the road as head over the sea wall (not knowing the cliff was on the other side …. oh for the good old days of University).
The point people just can’t seem to get into their thick skulls, is that all the changes in that there is nothing at all inconsistent with all the changes in the last 150 years being entirely random variation (of 1/f noise).
If I knew how to post an image here, and I could find my diagrams I sent to the Science and Technology committee of the house of commons, I could make it clearer:
Climatic noise isn’t like “ordinary noise”! It is 1/f noise where it is incredibly difficult to separate “signal” from “noise” and treating climatic variation as if it were “ordinary” noise where the “signal” is what is left after simple filtering of the “noise” is why we’ve spent the last 10 years being fixated by climatic noise as if it were a signal”

I am sure that their are negative feed backs in water vapour and clouds as has already been said but if co2 is to succeed in driving world temperatures up then it has to melt the ice at both polar ice caps,I know that the level of ice is probably determined by ocean and sun cycles and wind also,co2 is not really doing a very good job of that.Antarctica has grown in size recently and the arctic summer minimum has declined up to 2007 since then it has leveled off like world temperatures .

And … you know what is the worst possible way to measure 1/f noise variation? (with large amounts of long term variation) To use a short-term proxy like trees whose growth shows the variation in rate of growth of an individual for a few decades … for which it provides a relatively clear signal, but which is subject to long-term environmental nulling of change as the rest of the forest around the tree adapts. So , over the lifetime of the tree, the general tree canopy will change so as to increase or reduce competition as the climate improves/worsens, so that even though one individual tree may do well/worse if there is a step change in climate, eventually the other trees will grow or die so as to provide the optimum competition.
So, whilst we are told tree ring proxies are a measure of the climatic effect on an individual tree, in the long run other trees will grow and/or other tree die until the optimum rate of competition/growth is achieved for the given climatic conditions.
Let’s give an example: if e.g. the climatic conditions allowed 1000tonnes of wood to grow per year in a forest of 10,000 trees, and then the climate changed to permit 1100tonnes, then obviously the trees in the forest would have additional growth with an average of 110kg instead of 100kg. However, that increased growth would also apply to younger trees who will be less likely to die out and more likely to mature, so that we would expect the density of tree to increase. If that does so until there are 11,000 trees, then that 110kg/tree will reduce back down to 100kg/tree even though the climatic conditions would favour more tree ring growth for an individual tree!
Of course, the “balance” of tree density and tree growth may not be the same in the new climate, and the long term proxy is a combination of effects on individual trees LESS the canopy nulling effect.
But in summary: tree are a good short term proxy for climate, but a pathetic even useless long term proxy because tree rings show the growth of one tree on its own, and climate affects the rate of growth of the whole canopy/forest .

H2O….. It’s wonderful stuff…. 🙂

If Willis has read this post, he must be quietly smiling to himself. I find his tropical thunderstorm ‘thermostat’ theory utterly fascinating.

Reply to Samoht: 02.56
Agreed, there has been substantial warming since the mid 1980s. However, there’s absolutely no proof it has been from CO2-AGW.
This is because the models are wrong in their calculation of the largest ‘correction’ to the observed ‘CO2 signal’, median 0.4 W/m^2 in Figure 2.4 of AR4. This is the ‘cloud albedo effect’ of -0.7 W/m^2. It’s entirely imaginary, no experimental or theoretical justification except for thin clouds with very low total albedo.
So, one must consider the much more likely explanation of AGW, heating from lower albedo of thick clouds as aerosol pollution reduces direct backscattering at the upper surface. The implication of course is that net CO2-AGW is controlled by strong negative feedback.

RE: Alexander says:
November 10, 2010 at 3:32 am
Agreed, there has been substantial warming since the mid 1980s. However, there’s absolutely no proof it has been from CO2-AGW.
The mid-1980s is a strange reference point. There was a step increase prior to the 1998 El Nino event. An increase which would be / is hard to attribute to CO2-AGW. Since that time, of the step increase, I do not see any substantial warming. Another thing about the step-increase. Since that time the way the temperatures have acted is quite a bit different from any time during the last century. A long deep cooling headed our way?

Everything you need to know about global warming in the UK but were afraid to ask:

Theodore says:
November 9, 2010 at 11:02 am
Do you think it is merely a coincidence that the warming stopped at the same time that sceptics started looking at the data?
You could also say that this started about the same time as computers and there models, although now people have had a look at these models and are starting to compare it with real world data they are shaking there heads and realising how worng they where.

Jim T says:
November 10, 2010 at 5:34 am
Silly video.
What is this ‘anthromorphogenic (?) ‘ climate change Barnett talks so ill informedly about?
Chris Huhne, by the way, doesn’t really give a monkeys what your opinion on climate change is he’s moved on…
“Regardless of the public consensus on climate change, it is clear that relying on increasingly rare fossil fuels is not a long-term option. We cannot be exposed to the risk of resource conflict. Nor can we afford to remain at the mercy of volatile fossil fuel markets.
Not only are we vulnerable to interruptions in supply, we are also exposed to fluctuations in price. Oil or gas price shocks could reverberate throughout our fragile economy, hampering growth.
“A more sustainable supply of energy is not an expensive luxury. It is a critical component in our national and economic security.”
In the face of fiscal austerity, is it clear that greening our economy is the best way build a more balanced economy – and to secure more sustainable growth. With thousands of jobs in whole new industries, it is one of the brightest prospects not just for economic recovery, but for growth.”
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/huhne_globe/huhne_globe.aspx

@Andrew P. says:
November 9, 2010 at 10:00 pm
Yes Andrew that is the article that gave me pause to examine AGW for myself and not just believe. I read it in spring of 2008 even though it was published in 2007.

BillD: ‘The upward trend in the earth’s temperature has continued since the turn of the century. Mr Whitehouse’s conclusions seem to be based on nonscientific, statistically challenged reasoning.’
Evidence about the failure properly to correct for the UHI effect is accumulating fast, e.g.: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/29775
‘The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) admits it was wrong about urban heating effects as a professional statistical analysis by Andrew Barnham exposes a BOM claim that “since 1960 the mean temperature in Australia has increased by about 0.7 °C”; the BOM assertion has no empirical scientific basis.’
I’ll be surprised if the World temperature rise will stay at 0.74 K. We could lose a third.

“”””” Smokey says:
November 10, 2010 at 11:46 am
BillD,
Tamino?? You’re kidding, right? L. Ron Hubbard would be more scientific.
If you want a trend since “the turn of the century,” here’s one: click It nicely explains the recent cessation of warming.
Hey Smoky,
Thanks for that nifty graph of solar irradiance; that’s the first time I have seen that information. It’s amazing that during the Maunder Minimum, not only did the sunspots vanish; but the TSI variation did too. I’ver heard or read, that the sun still did go through its 22 year magnetic cycle during those years; but I can’t point to any citation of that. Perhaps Leif Svalgaard could enlighten us.
I love correcting graphs; that one is a keeper.

David Whitehouse’s article starts off with two major assertions which are supposed to underpin the rest of the article. But they are both demonstrably incorrect. The first one:

“Some eminent climatologists, such as Professor Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, suggest the global annual average temperatures haven’t changed for the past 15 years.”

Most readers here seem to feel quite content in believing that, but how many realise that this is cherry picking perfected to a fine art (because the original question was a ‘loaded’ one to begin with, and most of Dr. Jones’ response is intentionally omitted whenever it hits the blogosphere)? Others have already stated this, but it bears repeating. Because I happen to know the background behind why Dr. Jones was asked this particular question in the first place:

BBC: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?
Phil Jones: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

Of course, the only part of Dr. Jones’ answer that usually gets repeated, because it suits some people’s ideology to do so, is the “Yes” part. In fact, the trend is just short of being statistically significant by a mere percentage point or two. What that means in practicality is that instead of there being a 1 in 20 chance that the Earth is *not* actually warming (that what we’re seeing is ‘noise’), there’s something like a 1 in 19.5 chance. Not a lot of difference at all.
Turns out that for that interview, the BBC solicited questions from prominent climate skeptics. That particular question was carefully framed by Richard Lindzen and Lubos Motl specifically to make Dr. Jones look bad. The year 1995 was chosen as a starting point not because it makes a nice round 15 years ago, but rather because if you start even 1 year prior to that, in 1994, then the warming trend of .12C/decade *is* statistically-significant to the 95% level. Lindzen and Motl were, of course, well aware of this. Motl happily discusses his disingenuousness (as he is prone to do) on his blog here:
Insignificant warming trends: why 1995 was chosen
In fact, if you want to look at statistical trends regarding climate *properly*, you need to examine trends of at least 22 years in length. Because that is the time for one complete solar irradiance cycle. So you see, you can’t just use statistics in isolation. You have to combine statistics with a knowledge of climate science.
I will refute the 2nd incorrect assertion that David Whitehouse made in the article in another post, or this one will be tl;dr.

HenryP says:
November 10, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Super stuff Henry. Thanks for the link…”God is good! He meticulously made earth to be at the exact right temperature for life to exist and develop and then He gave us the ability and means to stop earth from falling back into an ice age again….. ”
Certainly food for thought. Did God forget to set the thermostat 50,000 years ago?
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2010.01009.x/abstract;jsessionid=FF1B12860D24A364D1045F93D2101629.d01t01

I believe the answer to Mr metzler’s points are dealt with earlier in the thread of comments and in no way dilute Mr Whitehouse’s point. It is Mr metzler that is misrepresenting the science, though of course he is doing it unintentionally.

john f says:
November 10, 2010 at 3:33 pm

I believe the answer to Mr metzler’s points are dealt with earlier in the thread of comments and in no way dilute Mr Whitehouse’s point. It is Mr metzler that is misrepresenting the science, though of course he is doing it unintentionally.

Firstly, point #2 has *nothing to do with science*. It is just a demonstration of how David Whitehouse misquoted (deliberately or otherwise), the IPCC 2007 report.
Point #1 has to do with the statement made by David that:

Some eminent climatologists, such as Professor Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, suggest the global annual average temperatures haven’t changed for the past 15 years.

Again, that is misrepresenting what was actually said by Dr. Jones. He said that there was no *statistically-significant* warming in that period, but that it only *just missed* being statistically-significant. He did *not* say that “the global annual average temperatures haven’t changed for the past 15 years”. I’ve also explained how Richard Lindzen and Lubos Motl deliberately phrased the question for the BBC so that in answering honestly, Dr. Jones would be made to look foolish to the public. Did you even read the entry on Lubos’ blog that I linked to earlier?
So please explain to me how you imagine that my points are dealt with “earlier in the comments”. Could you be more specific?

jimmi says:
November 10, 2010 at 5:18 pm
“Thus it cannot be responsible for the warming of the 70′s and 80′s…”
Quite the contrary, system responses typically have a lag time from input to output. How long does it take water to boil from the time you put the kettle on the stove?
“…95% confidence level”
I HATE it when I see people applying trend regression confidence intervals, which only have meaning for actual trends corrupted with independent measurement errors, to a complex time series with cyclic and autoregressive components.

Bart,
Yes there will be a delay – but 50 years?
Re “95%” , to an extent I agree – this type of analysis should not really be done on a time series which looks like (to first approximation) a steadily increasing term superimposed on a cyclical component. But having said that, nearly all those diagrams which plot a trend over a short part of the sequence (and there are lots of those on this site) are basically meaningless, as was the question to Jones, who should have had the wits to realize it.
Smokey,
Make up your mind what the solar activity looks like – the first graph you offered had the activity basically constant from 1950, and I can trace this data to a real scientific publication in Geophysics Letters. Your “click8” graph above plots something called solar activity against arctic air temperature (why just the arctic – the sun affects everywhere), but the solar variation does not have the same time dependence, nor the same magnitude as the first graph. Where did this come from, and have you checked it against an original publication?

I’m not suspicious of the balancing situation, David. There is still movement going on. You can still get short up and down trends for the last 13 years, depending on where you take them. But the average is very close to flat. What is remarkable is the inability of the warming community to assign any attribution to the cooling factor that is cancelling the CO2 forcing. Of course no one really knows what the level of CO2 forcing is, but if one uses the IPCC’s estimate of .2C per decade, then one needs to explain what has been masking it. If one can’t do that after the fact, then one is missing a piece of the puzzle that is critical to creating a meaningful model.

john f: “I believe the answer to Mr metzler’s points are dealt with earlier in the thread of comments and in no way dilute Mr Whitehouse’s point.”
From my reading, David Whitehouse’s argument is:
1. From 1995-2009, the climate showed no warming
2. Therefore, natural climatic variability must have presented a precise “mirror image” of anthropogenic forcings
3. This is too coincidental to be credible.
In order for this argument to work, (1) needs to be true. Is it?
Whitehouse certainly seems to think so: “…suggest the global annual average temperatures haven’t changed for the past 15 years; …the global temperature has remained constant for longer than it has increased; But what does this 10-15 year temperature standstill mean? …the period of warming ended about a decade ago; The fact that the world has not warmed at all; …have kept the global annual average temperature constant throughout the past 10-15 years…; …the fact that the temperature has remained constant…”
That’s a lot of different ways of saying no warming. And yet the person whom Whitehouse enlists in support, Phil Jones, says there was a .12C/decade warming trend from 1995-2009.
On that count at least, Whitehouse’s argument fails.

On a related note, I have created a video presentation about whether the last 15 years of temperature data contradicts global warming (i.e. “Phil Jones admits global warming has stopped…”). I thought it might be of interest to folks:
http://www.fool-me-once.com/2010/07/global-warming-has-stopped.html

Slioch says:
November 11, 2010 at 8:10 am
Unless I am missing something, your numbers for Hadcrut from 1995 to 2009 in 5 year intervals: +0.322, +0.413 and +0.416 just do not add up to what Phil Jones said about the interval from 1995 to 2009, namely that the trend was +0.12. (For argument sake, I am quite prepared to accept this as true and not deal with the significance aspect.) Phil Jones was also asked about spikes in the temperature record, and all spikes were very similar at 0.16, with the steepest spike being from from 1975 to 1998, a 24 year period, and having a value of 0.166.
Steve Metzler says above: “In fact, if you want to look at statistical trends regarding climate *properly*, you need to examine trends of at least 22 years in length.” Fair enough; this time of 24 years meets that requirement.
Steve Metzler says the report in 2007 says: “For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios.”
My problem with the projection is this: Why would the IPCC project a warming that is higher than the steepest rise over the last 130 years? It is my understanding that even the IPCC says the effect of additional CO2 is logarithmic (Law of diminishing returns). The IPCC also says the CO2 should be increasing exponentially. So the net effect of CO2 increasing exponentially and the effect on temperature being logarithmic COULD be a linear increase in temperature. However the graph on page 6 at http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/monckton/co2_report_july_2010.pdf
indicates the actual increase in CO2 is linear. So if the effect of added CO2 is logarithmic, the projected increase in temperature would be much less than for the maximum 24 year period over the last 130 years.
So the bottom line is that the projected increase of 2 C over the 1750 level is AT LEAST a century away. We have lots of time to adapt, if necessary.

Tamino isn’t impressed.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/hey-david-whitehouse-why-is-the-sky-green/
Four temp records all show warming trends (2000 – 2010 Sept/Oct).
HenryP says:
November 11, 2010 at 7:05 am
Henry I love your blog….”I am thinking that if people see too much snow heaping up around them, they will do something about it to try and melt it down. God is good! ”
I’ll certainly be out there with my blow torch as we continue plummeting into the next ice age.

Tim,
If you read my blogg carefully,
http://letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
you would have noticed that I donot the deny the possibility that there is some warming caused by human activities.
I just don’t believe it is the carbon dioxide doing it.
There simply is no evidence for that.
You made a joke of it, but removing snow is actually one of the human activities that could be a cause of global warming: the snow on the roofs and streets is quickly removed with heat and salt whereas normally it would stay for days or weeks on end deflecting light from the sun. Thus, something that people do naturally is in fact acting against nature. Now did anyone actually calculate how much “forcing” this forced removal of snow causes?

Tim Williams says:
November 11, 2010 at 10:43 pm
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, in a manner of speaking, with northern hemisphere human male balding acting as a negative forcing helping to cool the Earth.
I just wonder if the fashion for men not to wear hats any longer might have been part of the conspiracy and fully expect to see an article in WUWT about the subject in the near future.
My own particular concern is the increasing trend for shepherds to breed in more white into their black and white collie dogs. Shepherds have always needed collies with both black and white bits in order to be able to see them more easily. The black bits show up in the snow and the white bits in the dark, so they can see them in both conditions, but with less and less snow there isn’t so much need for the black bits anymore and collies are becoming whiter. Anyone who has stroked a collie dog lying in the sun (I do it all the time) will have noticed that the black bits are hot and the white bits cold. Thus, this change to whiter collies means less solar radiation is being absorbed and therefore acts as a negative forcing countering global warming: global warming leads to less snow, which leads to whiter collie dogs which leads to cooling. I must say I’m surprised David Whitehouse didn’t include this collie dog albedo effect in his treatment of his “Mirror Image” problem.

Tamino has a post in response to this WUWT article.
I tried to reply to comments by Steve Meltzer, who posted there the same comments as above here.
I wrote;
The IPCC report of 2007 used temperature data up to the year 2000.
Climate model projections are from the year 2000.
Hence “For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected” refers to the period from the year 2000.
The first decade of temperature has failed to reach this projection.
I should have known better, but I was disappointed Tamino didnt publish my comments.

tony s says:

The IPCC report of 2007 used temperature data up to the year 2000.
Climate model projections are from the year 2000.
Hence “For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected” refers to the period from the year 2000.
The first decade of temperature has failed to reach this projection.

In fact, further reading of that page from the IPCC 2007 report:
Projections of Future Changes in Climate
Implies that the next 2 decades refers to the *2010 – 2030* time frame, because they mention 2030 in the next paragraph:

And since they also mention 1990 – *2005* in the previous paragraph, there’s no way they are starting their “next 2 decades” retrospectively back in 2000. It’s just that both yourself and Whitehouse desperately wish it to be that way, so you can put your negative spin on it. Distort, cherry pick, and quote mine away. When there’s no science behind what you are saying, all you have left is spin.

correction to my typo-
your first post stated 2007-2027
oh and I agree with you that there is no science behind this.
As we are talking about fanciful climate model projections

steve, you deny your own evidence.
for anyone interested in IPCC projections, Figure SPM5 graphically illustrates projections of a minimum 0.2C per decade from 2000.
Whitehouse was correct to state
“In the past decade the atmospheric CO2 levels have increased from 370 ppm to 390 ppm and using those figure the IPCC once estimated that the world should have warmed by at least 0.2 deg C.”
that’s reality

[snip. No ‘denialist’ talk here, per site Policy. ~dbs, mod.]