Guest post by Ryan Maue
Green journalists and partisan bloggers are baffled about the lack of sufficient coverage of the “2010 hottest year ever” — and utter failure to ram through climate legislation in the 111th Congress. After scratching your head in amazement at the conundrum these journalists find themselves, something about pots, kettles, and a mirror comes to mind.
Here is a sample of headlines from the green media establishment:
Huffington Post: 2010 Hottest Year on Record: The graph that should be on the front page of every newspaper
The Hill: Frustration on global warming deepens for supporters of climate change bill
Guardian UK (warning Bob Ward, palaeopiezometry): Why have UK Media ignored climate change announcements?
I’ll give you a very easy answer: it’s winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and so far, it’s been historically cold. And, the media should be more wary about using such vitriolic language like “denier” considering the explosive connotation that the term implies.
They are all constipated about the lack of overwhelming coverage of 2010, and the sizzling planet (we’re talking about hundredths of degrees here): Read about NASA’s press release below…
Here is NASA’s press release, which apparently wasn’t sufficiently disseminated for certain segments of the climate establishment. According to Hansen, 2010 differed from 2005 by less than 2 hundredths of a degree F (that’s 0.018F). They have to admit an inconvenient truth:
One of the problems with focusing on annual rankings, rather than the longer trend, is that the rankings of individual years often differ in the most closely watched temperature analyses — from GISS, NCDC, and the Met Office — a situation that can generate confusion.
Confusion?
“Certainly, it is interesting that 2010 was so warm despite the presence of a La Niña and a remarkably inactive sun, two factors that have a cooling influence on the planet, but far more important than any particular year’s ranking are the decadal trends,” Hansen said.
Wait a minute, wait a minute: a remarkably inactive sun …
“The three official records vary slightly because of subtle differences in the way we analyze the data, but they agree extraordinarily well,” said Reto Ruedy, one of Hansen’s colleagues at GISS who helps analyze global surface temperatures.
Subtle differences? Extraordinary agreement?
Invariably, a great deal of attention centers on each year’s ranking, but it is critical to focus on the decade-long trends that matter more, the GISS scientists emphasize. On that time scale, the three records are unequivocal: the last decade has been the warmest on record. “It’s not particularly important whether 2010, 2005, or 1998 was the hottest year on record,” said Hansen. “It is the underlying trend that is important.”
Well, then stop issuing press releases which tout the rankings, which are subject to change ex post facto. You never know what year is number 1 due to those “subtle differences”, which apparently aren’t that important anyways.
“I’ll give you a very easy answer: it’s winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and so far, it’s been historically cold…”
Well said….Though most of the snow has melted in our back garden, there’s still some left AND they forcast temps. dipping below freezing again next week!! And we live in Scandinavia!!!!! What more proof do I need that global temp. change is a LIE!!!!!!
AND don’t they know that new research shows that the more inactive the sun is, the warmer the planet gets? (or is that the other way round?)
Wait a minute….What’s our take again? Are we supposed to say the Earth is warming but it’s natural variation, or that it’s cooling because the Suns sleeping????
I can attest to this because I submitted NOAA’s press release to fark.com with a funny headline, and got a red light
[ryanm: big Ben Maller from Fox Sports Radio is a prolific headline writer for fark, it’s an artform that should have been patented to hold twitter ransom]
“We don’t know yet” typically suffices.
Mark
It is the winter of discontent as far as the common people are concerned.
It is th end of the game
Douglas
Ma and Pa Kettle can read a thermometer. They might drop their news coverage from an agency that told them they were about to burn up and die (if they didn’t drown first) while they’re up to their buns in snow and ice. Telling folks their summer discomfort is evidence of AGW is one thing, but selling them on the idea that colder is evidence of warmer is a really hard sell.
“Green journalists lament the lack of overwhelming coverage of global warming in the liberal media”
It is called Relevance Deprivation Syndrome. Any Aussie politician who has lost power and prestige can tell you more about it.
Maybe it’s just that we all can recognize a Lake Wobegon Moment… where all the years snow is good looking and all the years are above average temperature… and we’re getting just a bit tired of the Garrison Keillor voice droning on about it as we shovel more snow out and put more wood on the fire…
When you see how wrong most of the MSM is about Global Warming, you wonder how wrong they are about everything else. Gossip seems to be more reliable, and the gossip around here is that it’s been a very cold winter, and those windmills aren’t turning, and somebody is telling porkies.
There is always a chance that temperatures will start to go up to meet the rise in co2.
If this happens then we will have to consider that co2 is driving significant temp rise.
The thing is, at the minute temps are virtually flat while co2 shoots up in a total disconnect, there are signs of cooling and gaps in the science.
This will be an interesting decade that will settle the climate wars.
I guess it has stopped selling papers because the customer has seen through the scam. How long before it percolates up to the Prime Ministers and Premiers etc. The backbenchers in Australia have seen through it and deposed Turnbull. Typical of the AGW deceit, Turnbull tried to make a party room decidion to consider an ETS into a cast iron guarantee. He was rolled.
Haven’t we been here before? Yawn…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6228765.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7142694.stm
Maybe it’s because we are smart enough to judge a ‘trend’ over the course of millenia, and not a decade or a century on a planet that has been around for over four billion years. What goes up, must come down. It has gone both ways before, and will again. No matter how much you spend, Mother Nature can’t be bribed and now we are slowly proving we can’t be either. Unfortunately, the politicians still can.
They don’t understand because they can’t get it right. If they we’re exposing the truth, they would ask Tim Flannery why he had said in 2007, in New Scientist (http://www.science.org.au/nova/newscientist/105ns_001.htm)
Ecotretas
Over the past 50 years southern Australia has lost about 20 per cent of its rainfall, and one cause is almost certainly global warming. Similar losses have been experienced in eastern Australia, and although the science is less certain it is probable that global warming is behind these losses too. But by far the most dangerous trend is the decline in the flow of Australian rivers: it has fallen by around 70 per cent in recent decades, so dams no longer fill even when it does rain.
Given that the long term trend in global temperatures since the last ice age is upward, why should confirmation of this after thousands of years of rising temperatures be newsworthy?
Now if there was any evidence of thermal runaway as predicted by Mann that might be a story worth telling, so how’s that particular prediction doing, Doc?
No need to update my plot of long running thermometer records which show utterly no change in long term warming trend in the modern industrial era. Ho hum twiddle dee doo dee ditty doo. http://oi49.tinypic.com/rc93fa.jpg
The Guardian has deleted about 40% of posts to Bob Wards article and has now started disappearing them altogther. Damage limitation in full swing 🙂
The simple fact is that interest in “global warming” has been on a long term decline since around 2007. Around 2007 there were around 20,000 google current news story hits. These days it is around 7000.
The main drop I see has been a marked absence of the “boring bit of scientific research desperately linked to global warming to sex it up. (Some researches lesser spotted goat frogs, appears to find a decline in numbers and makes it “yet another impact of the (“proven”) global warming). Clearly, global warming has not only become boring for the public to read about, it has lost its kudos with the rest of real science.
And, I think the Newsmedia themselves, did not take kindly to what they saw in the climategate emails and the way the “scientific” elite seemed to back bad practice to the hilt for short term political reasons. I’m sure a lot of journalists were thinking that if they’d seen the same thing happen amongst politicians they’d have been torn to shreds for their dishonesty – so they can’t understand why these people were allowed to get away with it scot free. They don’t know what the bad smell is, but they personally don’t want to be associated with it!
On the BBC couch this morning Susanna Reid pushed the GW barrow to the Oceanographer from Southampton University and he responded quite clearly that the floods in Australia, Brazil & Sri Lanka were NOT due to GW, they were simply natural things that happen from time to time. However, he did relent later and say that due to GW the 1-in-50 year flood would probably happen more often – but did say, when guessing how often, “This is conjecture.”
MSM honesty??
It’s also a good time for the WMO, UNEP, GISS, NOAA, UK Met, and other UN and govt climate agencies to further lose credibility to the public. Why do taxpayers maintain so many bureaucracies with little or zero credibility?
So essentially we could blame the Sahara desert for having had a slight temperature rise during its hotest days last summer.
And what matter the activity of the sun when we’re apparently a tad bit closer to the sun during this planetary space race of “oddly” recurring cycles? If that’s true then OMG but we’re ever so lucky there was a bunch of clouds to keep us cold. :p
“It’s not particularly important whether 2010, 2005, or 1998 was the hottest year on record,” said Hansen. “It is the underlying trend that is important.”
So if we draw a line across the tops of these three years the underlying trend would be flat or slightly down.
NO?.
E.M.Smith says: “Maybe it’s just that we all can recognize a Lake Wobegon Moment…”
Or maybe it’s because AGW, like Lake Wobegon, was based on a real place but never actually existed itself.
By the way, the British media are more concerned with rocketing fuel bills which are provoking some Unions to threaten strikes and protests over the massive amount of fuel taxes we are forced to pay.
Ryan, you’re argument “we’re talking about hundredths of degrees here” is a bit like saying 14, 505ft Mt Whitney isn’t very high because it’s only 55ft taller than Mt Elbert.
[ryanm: what decimal system do you use? — you do realize that global warming is measured over a century by tenths of a degree C and in the past 3-decades by a dozen or two hundredths?]
but far more important than any particular year’s ranking are the decadal trends,” Hansen said.
What he meant to say was “Far more important is myability to maintain my position of being able to continue manipulating and distorting historical temperature data, so I can manufacture increasingly scary stories to ensure that I get more and more money from gullible politicians and the naive idealistic section of the public”.
Climate change is the norm, has been for many hundreds of millions of years and will continue to be so for many more hundreds of millions of years. There is no such thing as a static climate norm. This is the real problem that alarmists face, the general public is slowly beginning to realise this. Also, they don’t like overpaid government bureaucrats – and that’s what most ‘climate scientists’ are – demanding increased taxes to combat something (climate change) which is almost entirely natural.
Why should anyone advocate returning to the conditions of ‘the Little Ice Age’, when temperatures were 0.7-1.0 degrees C colder than today and mankind’s ability to feed itself was dramatically reduced?
I wonder what the next severe winter will do to the “cagw cause”.
Will it be the final nail ?
From the graphic: “In the end, the 111th Congress adjourned without doing anything – AT ALL – to address the climate crisis.”
What climate crisis? I don’t see no stinkin’ climate crisis. The 111th Congress took exactly the correct action – do nothing. The 112th Congress would do well to follow suit.
Climate Change is real- but driven by totally NATURAL cycles. The planet is entering a cooling cycle now driven by a negative PDO reinforced by the strong La Nina. Ocean surface temperatures are dropping, according to the Argo data so this confirms the cooling trend. On a planet where at any one time the surface temperature can range from +50 to -80C worries about a 0.1C change in any direction seems extreme to say the least. The left wing media should look at reality not model outputs which they seem to think resembles the real world despite proof of the opposite.
Click on the Guardian link in this article and it’s very instructive to see just how many of the comments have been given the “This comment has been removed by a moderator. Replies may also be deleted.” treatment. This is censorship to me and you. And coming from the Guardian it is deeply hypocritical. It has taken me less than five minutes to track down a Guardian leader article about Julain Assange and Wikileaks which states the following:
“What of the internet itself? … For a powerful argument of the potential of the beneficial power of the web, go no further than Mrs Clinton’s powerful January 2010 speech on internet freedom in which she lauded the “iconic infrastructure of our age”, adding this warning: “As in the dictatorships of the past, governments are targeting independent thinkers who use these tools.” She meant Iran and China, but there is widespread unease at the tactics her own administration is using to stifle WikiLeaks into silence.
“The academic Clay Shirky has blogged persuasively this week that the US government should openly use the law against WikiLeaks and others rather than muscle. “… If it’s OK for a democracy to just decide to run someone off the internet for doing something they wouldn’t prosecute a newspaper for doing, the idea of an internet that further democratizes the public sphere will have taken a mortal blow.” We agree.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/08/editorial-wikileaks-julian-assange
To answer the Guardian’s question, “Why have UK Media ignored climate change announcements?” it may be instructive to remind them about the story of the boy who cried “Wolf!”, only I can’t be bothered to register on their wretched website to post this comment.
I confidently predict that The Guardian will be one of the last bastions of warmist orthodoxy even when the international reputation of the IPCC eventually lies in tatters.
Someone needs to capture the juxtaposition at Real Clear Science (at http://www.realclearscience.com/ ).
Thursday Afternoon Update
– 2010 Tied 2005 as Hottest Year on Record – Justin Gillis, New York Times
– Weather Rarity: Snow in 49 States – Stephanie Pappas, Our Amazing Planet
Keep up the good work, Anthony. The extreme warm year 2010 gets some coverage after all!
“Certainly, it is interesting that 2010 was so warm despite the presence of a La Niña and a remarkably inactive sun, two factors that have a cooling influence on the planet, but far more important than any particular year’s ranking are the decadal trends,” Hansen said.
Thus proving AGW.
And what if 2011 turns out to be the hottest year on the record? You would hear no end of it.
The press has ignored “one of the hottest years evaaaah” because their readership will immediately dismiss it as total crap (whether true or not). People are struggling to pay heating bill just to survive and are not prepared to freeze to death to shave a fraction off man’s co2 output. I recall a story about TV audiences – whenever a story about climate change comes up the station looses viewers in droves.
[ryanm: there is a small chance that 2011 will be the warmest on record, unless something unnatural occurs in the tropical pacific]
One of the problems with focusing on annual rankings, rather than the longer trend, is that the rankings of individual years often differ in the most closely watched temperature analyses — from GISS, NCDC, and the Met Office — a situation that can generate confusion.
The hottest year on record in the US was 1934, northern Hemisphere, even with Hansons adjustments, now according to the New Zealand court there has been NO warming since 1960, southern hemisphere.
Hopefully once the US congress get their teeth into Mann, Hanson et al later this year AGW will finally die.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/nEWzEALAND1900-2008.jpg
The press aren’t interested because their customers aren’t interested. Their customers aren’t interested because they’ve become immune to the barrage of catastrophic scenarios which ‘could’ play out and no longer have any respect for much of the science behind the claims.
The Internet has been the cause of the downfall of AGW as it’s freedom has allowed debate and investigation into the fraud perpetuated by people with a lot of money invested in the scam.
Most people are concerned about the future of the planet but recognise bullshit when they see it.
Not necessarily. If temperatures stay relatively flat or decline then AGW will have some serious explaining to do. If temperatures increase then it could simply be exhibiting what it has been doing since the last ice age (which includes sea level rise).
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/ipcc2007/fig68.jpg
mariwarcwm – it’s not just the MSM, but most politicians. I often “straw poll” my friends and acquaintances (who come with a wide range of education, training and careers) on the subject. Almost invariably, when either the MSM or pollies drift into someone’s area of true expertise, they are seen to speak at best partial truths.
But then truth is not the issue for them is it?
Who really takes any notice of those people walking around city streets with placards or sandwich boards proclaiming “The End of the world is Nigh”?
Calamity and apocalypse have only been lifted to another level by more upmarket sandwich boards.
It has taken less than 20 minutes for the Guardian moderators to strike out a comment which was on topic but critical of Bob Ward and his silly article about the UK media not reporting the new ‘Warmest Evah’ as news. Facts are sacred on the Guardian? The Warmist press is obviously desperate to defend their pet polemicists.
“2010 Hottest Year on Record”. Only three words in and we hit the spin. Huffington Post, don’t you think some people reading that headline might deduce that 2010 was the hottest record for centuries at least? After all, the thermometer as we know it was invented in the 17th century and someone must have been writing down temperatures from that date on, at least in England. But no, the weasel words “on record” mean that we’re only going back to the late 19th century, a time when we were emerging from the Little Ice Age. Hardly surprising then, temperatures have since then risen.
Anthony:
Perhaps the media are starting to think what these claims of ‘hottest year on record” mean? They do not mean much, and they certainly do NOT indicate any anthropgenic (i.e. human) influence on global temperature.
People affect local temperatures (e.g. it is warmer in a city than surrounding countryside) but such local effects (even from land use changes) have trivial and indiscernible effect on global temperature.
The average of temperatures everywhere around the surface of the Earth is called ‘mean global temperature’.
Temperature changes everywhere, and the mean global temperature varies, too.
The mean global temperature seems to vary in cycles that are overlaid on each other. And two of these apparent cycles seem to have dominated recently.
One cycle is indicated by archaeology and it seems to have a cycle length of ~900 years. It provided
the Roman Warm Period (RWP), then
the Dark Age Cool Period (DACP), then
the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), then
the Little Ice Age (LIA), then
the present warm period (PWP).
Warming from the LIA to the PWP has been happening for about 300 years.
Thermometers have been measuring temperatures at places around the world since about 1860. And this thermometer temperature record is used to estimate mean global temperature. These estimates are very inaccurate because most places do not have thermometers and both the number and places of the thermometers has varied throughout the time since ~1880. However, these estimates show the global temperature has risen since 1880, and this agrees with the archaeological information.
And the thermometer-derived estimates indicate another temperature cycle with length ~60 years. It provided
cooling or no warming before ~1910, then
warming from ~1910- to ~1940, then
cooling or no warming from ~1940 to ~1970, then
warming from ~1970 to ~2000, then
cooling or no warming since ~2000.
Of course, the recent temperatures are the highest in the thermometer record because there has been a general trend of warming for about 300 years. Hence, it is not surprising that “the decade that just ended included nine of the 10 hottest years on record” as NCDC says in a recent press releas. However, the lack of warming since ~2000 combines with the measurement errors such that there has been no statistically discernible (at 95% confidence) change in the temperature over the most recent 15 years.
If the pattern of these two apparent temperature cycles continues then either
(a) the mean global temperature will continue to show cooling or no warming until ~2030 when it will resume its rise towards the values it had in the RWP and the MWP,
or
(b) the mean global temperature will continue to show cooling or no warming until cooling towards temperatures of the DACP and LIA will initiate before ~2030.
A change to this pattern would indicate a change to the causes of the pattern of changes to global temperature.
But the fact that recent years are the warmest since ~1880 indicates nothing.
Richard
This article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/13/uk-media-ignore-climate-change lists 177 comments, but about half have already been censored or, as they prefer to call it, “moderated”.
No doubt the Guardian is disappointed at their readers’ responses in the face of their never-ending barrage of lying propaganda on this subject, and the success of what they called in one of their most shameful articles last year “the creeping rehabilitation of climate scepticism”.
WOLF, WOLF, WOLF, WOLF…..oh they’ve stop listening to me.
The answer is simple. Our ruling class has a mental and emotional age of six months. Their sole response to the world is MINE! MINE! ME! ME! ALL MINE! ALL MINE!
It’s no use trying to tell them that they already have all the food ever grown and all the toys ever built.
All is not enough for an ego that expands to fill every known and unknown universe.
When a man makes up his mind without evidence, no evidence disproving his opinion will change his mind. — Robert A. Heinlein, 1978
Village Idiot, your attempt at misdirection / sarcasm / parody / whatever is a failure. The problem is that the hockey stick team can’t handle any data that isn’t a hockey stick and they are the ones resorting to sheer speculation. Hansen mentions a “remarkably” inactive sun, but remarkably most of the sun’s activity (e.g. geomagnetic, spectral variations) is not in his models. Instead just a ridiculously oversimplified TSI number. Hansen also cannot alleviate your faux confusion about your local weather since he can’t model that either. But go ahead and mock while you can, time is not on your side.
Peter H:
Point spectacularly missed, sir.
If everywhere was within 55 feet of the height of Mount Whitney then Mount Whitney couldn’t be said to be “very high”, could it?
Since the average global temperature has not varied by more than about 1 degree C in the last hundred years hundredths of a degree in any given year is irrelevant. You’ll need to try harder than that.
Focus on decade long trend?
“Warmest decade,” sure. But that’s not a trend, its an absolute value.
Funny how Hansen conveniently left out the fact that there was a very strong El Nino which was responsible for driving the temperatures so high for most of the year. Notice he didn’t leave off the La Nina that we got at the end of the year that only started impacting temperatures in December.
Am I missing something here? Since when has “the last decade was the warmest ever” been evidence of the underlying trend? Surely the whole point of a “trend” is it’s concerned with the rate of change over time, not the level things happen to be at?
Sam, don’t dismiss 1C, 5C climate change plunges us in a massive ice age, 1C is meaningful climate change.
[ryanm: you have to be more scientifically rigorous — meaningful in what way — and over what time scale. one-c over a century or two may not be noticeable]
The idea that enviro journalists and PR drones should lament the lack of coverage is just laughable. We are fed a daily diet of climate doom conflated with every “green issue” under the sun and they wonder why people have changed the channel.
A quick calculation, using the figures from “Water Aid” (a charity) at face value, suggests that some 58 million people, mostly children, will have died from water based diseases by 2050 (4000 per day). That versus the non-specific numbers of “climate refugees” being spat out of flawed models. What’s wrong Bob? Too specific? Too measurable? Too easily solved? No living to be made from it? Nothing for 58 million real people dead from problems the west solved over a century ago and circa $80 billion for hundredths of a degree with no error bars. What’s wrong with this picture?
Some people talk about the AGW “conspiracy” but I very much doubt that – you just couldn’t make such a mess of the “message” if there were any conspiring going on.
Tried to post a vaguely sceptical comment on the Guardian site -twice! Not abusive, just saying that maybe they had cried “wolf” too often and that is why people are not getting excited about the NASA figures. Both deleted. Extraordinary behaviour.
These lamenting journalists must be getting desperate:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1346936/The-sun-rises-days-early-Greenland-sparking-fears-climate-change-accelerating.html
“One of the problems”
=====================================================
They have been trying to prove global warming for over 30 years, and now
they say they still have problems with the PR.
Give it up, it’s been 30 years, time to move on………….
The whole idea of looking at global temperature as a metric for GW is, at first sight, highly plausible.
The way in which this seemingly simple task has been performed is highly problematic. Relocation of sites, treatment of UHI, data obfuscation, statistical smearing and a clear fanatical need to demonstrate ever increasing temperatures have led to profound distrust in a large and growing section of the population.
In short, many feel that they can no longer trust the messengers and, rightly or wrongly, the message.
Does anybody know why SOHO has stopped its sun image. It used to be daily, and then (afyet their outtage while they moved office) it became more often, but up to Jan 10th/11th a bit erratic. Now nothing since 22.00 on the 11th.
A bit of a pity, as the sun has gone as good as spotless again.
Wow!
My comment which , pointed out that the greenhouse effect was based on the retention of heat and that 2010 finished with the lowest global average surface temp, despite incoming radiation being relatively constant, in over decade was deleted in about a minute.
I have run a corporate communications dept for 8 years. I am not a PR trained person. I have learnt that the media can be generalised to be interested in the three “C”; Celebrity, Catastrophe or Confrontation (or the variant, victim, villian or hero). If you can’t hit one of these you will either be buried in the pages or not make it at all. It is hard to have a climate warming catastrophe in the Northern Hemisphere in a cold winter. You can have one in Australia with the devastating floods, or Russia last summer etc. Media also get bored, just as the rest of us do. So the more something is pushed, the less it becomes news.
“Good” ideas, like saving the planet are always great as long as someone else has to pay. But in places where consumers are starting to see the cost of the “good” ideas, the less of they are keen on them!
Richard S Courtney says:
January 14, 2011 at 3:18 am
Careful Dr Courtney, somebody might infer from your figures that there is a rhythmic cycle going on the climate!!! :-))
Well, well, well. A “remarkably inactive Sun”????? I can hardly believe my ears. Here we are witnessing a most remarkable natrual experiment in the relationship betweeen the Sun & the Earth, & that’s the best they can come up with?
As for those in the MSM of dubiuos parentage, they’re up to something I can tell. TheBBC lunchtime news covered the landslides in Brazil, didn’t mention AGW once at least not when I was watching, although I did have to check on my toast. They kept saying the most ridiculous & pathetically silly things like, “poor construction”, “built without permission”, “poor regulatory control”, “no foundations”, “areas prone to landslip”, & “susceptable to flooding”, etc. etc. etc. I ask you, as if any those pitiful excuses could be legitamite, honestly? We all know it’s AGW. NOT! The Wet Office do at least & always have done when commenting on unusually high rainfall in a given month, point out how some area of the UK had receveid a months worth on rain over night, but also used to point out (in the old days) how over the year of a 12 month period it evened itself out more or less.
The beautiful BBC News reader Sophie Rayworth……………….grrrrr……………….it’s all right I now holding something cold & metallic, mentioned earlier in the week a strange phenomenon, La Nina, allegedly responsible for the strange weather patterns in the Pacific & Eastern Australia in particular. Something’s afoot me thinks! It may be strange to the BBC but it’s not for many people round the world. I recall looking up El Nino/La Nina when the world had that time of blocking where parts of Asia was covered in a smog & low cloud as a result of a holding/blocking pattern, & Eurpoe had stagnant weathe with not much happening either way, as did many areas around the world, forget the year now.
I think you guys are right, people are tired of hearing about global warming, and lefty environmentalists crying wolf.
Of course, if you look at it from my point of view, I’m getting tired of my fellow frogs in the pot telling me not to worry about the water getting warmer…..
Some time soon there will be another weather disaster which is obviously related to global warming, probably something which actually hurts rich people, and then global warming will be all the rage again.
RR Kampen says:
January 14, 2011 at 2:23 am
Keep up the good work, Anthony. The extreme warm year 2010 gets some coverage after all!
“Certainly, it is interesting that 2010 was so warm despite the presence of a La Niña and a remarkably inactive sun, two factors that have a cooling influence on the planet, but far more important than any particular year’s ranking are the decadal trends,” Hansen said.
Thus proving AGW
==============
Thus proving the cognitive bias that has affected climate science. The logic seems to be something like this: Only the sun, Enso and CO2 affect temperature. Therefore it follows that if ‘quiet sun’ plus La Nina equals high temperature, it proves it was CO2 wot done it!
Has climate really science descended to the level of two blokes arguing in a pub? Apparently so!
Warming is not,repeat not a “partisan” issue. Not even close. Using this language completely distorts, and trivializes the very real concerns eminating from the scientific community. The facts are clear. Our planet is warming and, when other forcings are combined with man-made influences, the effects are easily observed. Please open your eyes, and minds, and hearts and help solve our collective challenge.
Green journalists should realize people can only take so much monotonous indecisive repetition coming from their frustrated and debunked supporters. Especially when they claim everything in weather proves global warming. When monkeys all over the place are being neutered by the cold the world burning up is a hard sell. And liberal media’s audience is being siphoned off by conservative media.
I don’t know why but reading the press release the songs Hokey Pokey and Undecided came to mind. Two songs dedicated to repetition and monotony with no purpose butt to entertain.
Mike Haseler says:
January 14, 2011 at 1:11 am
“Clearly, global warming has not only become boring for the public to read about, it has lost its kudos with the rest of real science.”
Excellent point. After beating a dead horse long enough, you find that you are beating bare ground. The Warmista should take this to heart. They have said nothing in response to the very best criticisms of their claims. All they have done is double-down. Who wants to read triple-down and quadruple-down? The Warmista non-response to criticism is not just a matter of public relations but of science. Their science has been totally inflexible. They have been incapable of making some adjustment in the science that might accommodate some valuable criticism. Instead, they have offered an endless run of excuses. Who wants to read quintuple-down and more excuses? The one thing predictable in Warmista science is its lack of adjustment in the face of serious criticism.
“Certainly, it is interesting that 2010 was so warm despite the presence of a La Niña and a remarkably inactive sun”
Hansen, here, is either totally ignorant or being deliberately disingenuous. He ought to know full well that the La Nina effects have a delayed impact on the temperatures, as does El Nino, and it is the El Nino we had prior to the La Nina in question which primarily lingered influencing most of 2010.
In fact, I am certain he knows that the response to solar activity is also not immediate, and I am convinced he must know ENSO has a delayed effect too. Which leaves only one possibility: He is deliberately misleading the public.
Nonoy Oplas says:
January 14, 2011 at 1:16 am
Nothing will change, no matter how cold the world gets, they just live in a parallel universe:
http://www.earthsummit2012.org/
Richard S Courtney says:
January 14, 2011 at 3:18 am
the Roman Warm Period (RWP), then
the Dark Age Cool Period (DACP), then
the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), then
the Little Ice Age (LIA), then
the
present warm period (PWP).Now: the New Dark Age Cool Period.
” ..such vitriolic language like “denier” ….”
If it’s inexcusable of that chump Palin to use “blood libel”, how much more more disgraceful it is for highly educated and intelligent Climate Scientists to use “denier”.
Shevva says:
January 14, 2011 at 3:39 am
….it’s a “Steppenwolf”..and it comes with the cold.
Hansen says: “La Niña and a remarkably inactive sun, two factors that have a cooling influence on the planet”
When was it established that sunspot number is a causitive factor in warming or cooling of the planet?
I’ll tell you when it was established. It was established as soon as it became convenient for the CAGW cabal to say it’s so i.e. when they can say “despite record low solar activity the planet has continued to warm” which of course implies that warming would have been hideously higher had the sun been active.
This is one of the most blatantly dishonest utterances I’ve seen come out of Hansen’s ugly mouth. The man doesn’t have an honest bone in his body.
aaron says:
“My comment which , pointed out that the greenhouse effect was based on the retention of heat and that 2010 finished with the lowest global average surface temp, despite incoming radiation being relatively constant, in over decade was deleted in about a minute.”
Maybe William Connolley is now moderating for the Guardian. You might try writing the editor and pointing out the bizarre rate of erasure.
If that doesn’t work, take heart: Karma does.
Please don’t link to the DailyKos/Huffington Post. I go and look at the comments and get depressed that people can be so insulated and delusional. Just reading their comments makes it clear that global warming is simply another religion/doomsday cult.
The caption under the photo accompanying the article you linked states, “Climate change? The sun rose in Ilulissat, Greenland, two days early on Tuesday, ending a month-and-a-half of winter darkness. One theory is that melting ice caps have lowered the horizon allowing the sun to shine through earlier” (emphasis added)
The article appears on the Science and Tech page, yet the caption incorrectly uses the technical term theory instead of the technically correct term hypothesis. Bob Ward can add imprecision to his list of reasons why more and more people are tuning out his brand of enviro-journalism.
I sort of don’t know what to say. This article is so stupid my jaw drops. In Ryan Maue’s attempt to make nothing of something he just flat out fails. I don’t even get what his main point is??
“stop issuing press releases which tout the rankings?” ???
Yes, Hansen said it’s the long trend that matters, but you think people don’t want to know when we have the hottest year on record? I don’t know what to say?? I am baffled.
“You never know what year is number 1 due to those “subtle differences”, which apparently aren’t that important anyways. ”
You think we can’t see through this? I realize these here devotees can’t, but you are not fooling anybody else. All you are doing is attempting to state the facts (because you can’t deny them) in a way that makes them unimportant. It is word usage, phrasing and rhetoric, but you actually have nothing to say because the truth is staring you in the face, and you don’t know what to do but try and minimize it. Nice try.
[ Moderator note: we have a real winner here, looking at Mr. Heims blog (see his link in his name) we are treated to this:
“I am 56. I have no official background in climatology, which is the subject matter of this paper. I am merely using common sense and logic to draw my conclusions.”
And…
“HEY YOU! Get up and start fighting!”
Another angry emotional approach to science against Dr. Ryan Maue. Verdict: FAIL]
My grammar was better in original comment. Alas, no cache. And commenting is tough on a touch-screen phone that thinks it’s smarter than you.
Dave Springer says:
January 14, 2011 at 8:11 am
Nailed him! Hansen is like a child who believes that the number and weight of his claims will prevail. Apparently, it does not occur to him that his claim about the sun’s activity is inconsistent with all his past claims. Apparently, he thinks we do not care about inconsistencies. He has become another Al Gore, yet he remains a chief administrator at NASA.
Andrew ,
I believe you are correct . IIRC , a couple of years ago the AGW crowd completely dismissed the idea that solar activity could influence climate .
So let me ask this – if anthropogenic warming is unequivocal , why do climatologists spend so much time equivocating when pressed on specifics ?
Why does anyone assume that Hansen is sitting in his office doing actual meteorology/climate research? There is little evidence over the past decade that Hansen is contributing/manufacturing anything more than statistical data — I haven’t not seen a hard science / rigorous dynamical explanation for anything. He is busy writing up legal briefs in order to sue his employer.
Posted on the Grauniad at 5:40 – will it survive until 5:45? 😛
Hansen says: “La Niña and a remarkably inactive sun, two factors that have a cooling influence on the planet”
Dave Springer says:
January 14, 2011 at 8:11 am
What Dave says, plus the chief administrator at NASA should have understand the ENSO by now and study it before coming out with this nonsense.
January to May 2010 were El Nino months, July 2010 onwards were La Nina months, but global temperatures take a few months for the beginning of the change once reached neutral or opposite ENSO phase to start it’s influence. The La Nina didn’t start to affect global temperatures while around November 2010. This is well known science about the delay in ENSO and for Hansen not to know this is astonishing to say the least or is lying about it.
Why should he even be that suprised, he has made up as much warming as possible as likely to get away with. 10 months of 2010 were significantly affected by El Nino, yet tries to blame it on La Nina. Words can’t describe how bad this has become and climate science is the biggest joke in all sciences of the history of the planet with people like this in charge.
Ryan Maue-Depending one what one considers “science” Hansen has done, or has had his name tacked onto, a number of papers involving this subject, besides GISS temp. But the point you raise is interesting in a way, as technically all the climate work associated with Hansen appears to be primarily associated, now, with others working under him at GISS. In particular, the model work is mostly done by Gavin Schmidt. Hansen seems primarily to be an administrator, and the actual “work” whatever the merits, is done under his direction, by other people. I doubt he spends much time actually doing research now, too.
[ryanm: yes, i agree with that reasoning. he is an admin. however, when he makes these “hand-wavy” arse-originating explanations for the climate-year-in-review, invoking el nino, the sun, etc., it is clear he has done absolutely no research to figure this out. I think he simply is 10-20 years out of date when it comes to the academic literature. evidence includes his snapping immediately onto the arctic-seesaw and the grotesque potsdam barrents sea ice paper as evidence of something]
Kate says: January 14, 2011 at 1:37 am
By the way, the British media are more concerned with rocketing fuel bills which are provoking some Unions to threaten strikes and protests over the massive amount of fuel taxes we are forced to pay.
—————————————————————————-
Yes Kate (at last) and this is what FINALLY might concentrate the minds of the politicians about the purpose(s) and economics of the power supply and also THEIR ultimate survival as politicians.
Douglas
[ryanm: note, Hansen wants folks to blow up their coal plants to save the planet, often invoking disturbing, terrorist ideology]
Carl McIntosh quotes an article as part of his critical remarks as follows:
January 14, 2011 at 8:49 am
“One theory is that melting ice caps have lowered the horizon allowing the sun to shine through earlier”
Unbelievable! The Warmista have inadvertently stated a testable hypothesis! Quick, get the helicopters up! (Of course, the supposed melting might effect only that one little town. It is not much of a testable hypothesis, but the best you are going to get from Warmista.)
John Brookes:
At January 14, 2011 at 7:13 am you assert:
“Some time soon there will be another weather disaster which is obviously related to global warming, probably something which actually hurts rich people, and then global warming will be all the rage again.”
You assert “ANOTHER weather disaster which is obviously related to global warming” which can only mean there has been such a disaster “obviously related to global warming”? Please say what and where it was. Many people – notably the IPCC – want to know of it.
Or have you taken James Hansen as your example so you have just made something up?
Richard
Here’s one possible solution to keep people toeing the CAGW line
Several people have made comments about the Daily Mail item on the sun rising two days early in part of Greenland.
The sun rises two days early in Greenland, sparking fears that climate change is accelerating
14th January 2011
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1346936/The-sun-rises-days-early-Greenland-sparking-fears-climate-change-accelerating.html#ixzz1B2U0ShJQ
A few months ago the sun set at the onset of the Arctic winter but apparently it went down in the wrong place!
New documentary recounts bizarre climate changes seen by Inuit elders
GUY DIXON
Globe and Mail, Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/movies/new-documentary-recounts-bizarre-climate-changes-seen-by-inuit-elders/article1763952/
“Even stranger is the fact that the sun now appears to set many kilometres off its usual point on the horizon, and the stars are no longer where they should be. Is the Earth shifting on its axis, causing the very look of the sun and stars to change?”
“These are the drastic conditions Northern Canadians, whose lives depend from childhood on their knowledge of the most minute details of the Arctic land and skies, say they see all around them. These observations by Inuit elders are detailed in a groundbreaking new documentary, Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change, by acclaimed Nunavut filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk (The Fast Runner, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen) and environmental scientist Ian Mauro.”
“When the filmmakers presented some of their findings at the Copenhagen conference on climate change last year, the media picked up on these views of the Inuit subjects, film co-director Ian Mauro says, and alarm bells started to ring in the scientific community. “We had a litany of scientists come back to us, responding after seeing this news, saying, ‘This was great to be speaking to indigenous people about their views, but if you continue to perpetuate this fallacy that the Earth had tilted on its axis, [the Inuit] …. would lose all credibility.’ And so there was really this backlash by the scientific community.”
“Still, the Inuit insist they see changes in the sun’s course and the position of the stars in the night sky. “These elders, when they were growing up, they were told to go out every morning, before having anything to eat. They were told to go out at the age of 5 every morning to observe the weather,” Kunuk says. “So when they started talking about the sun and the sunset, I was puzzled too. Everywhere I went, each community, I was getting the same answer: The sun does not settle where it used to. I mean, it [causes] alarm.”
The stochastic terrorist is the person who uses mass media to broadcast memes that incite unstable people to commit violent acts.
http://webkit.dailykos.com/stories/2011/1/10/934890/-Stochastic-Terrorism:-Triggering-the-shooters..html
The media is too busy worming away on something that’s more likely to pay off. Linking Beck, Hannity and O’Reilly to terrorism, provoking lone wolfs to attack! Heh!
Roy says and quotes:
“Several people have made comments about the Daily Mail item on the sun rising two days early in part of Greenland.”
“‘The sun rises two days early in Greenland, sparking fears that climate change is accelerating'”
‘”Still, the Inuit insist they see changes in the sun’s course and the position of the stars in the night sky. “These elders, when they were growing up, they were told to go out every morning, before having anything to eat. They were told to go out at the age of 5 every morning to observe the weather,” Kunuk says. “So when they started talking about the sun and the sunset, I was puzzled too. Everywhere I went, each community, I was getting the same answer: The sun does not settle where it used to. I mean, it [causes] alarm.”‘”
“‘A few months ago the sun set at the onset of the Arctic winter but apparently it went down in the wrong place!'”
How do they get “climate change” out of a shift of the Earth’s axis? The notion that the ice was lower so the sun came up earlier is beyond stupid. Tampa International Airport has closed some of its runways this week because the one supposedly running in line with the magnetic North and South Poles, is now way off, and they had to find another runway to designate as a pole-pointer.
I love that phrase “sparking fears.” Everything sparks fears with the AGW bunch.
The Guardian has recently got tough on those who question or discuss the science of AGW within it’s ‘Comment is Free’ (CiF) system – which allows registered users to freely post comments about articles published on the Guardian’s web site.
As of last weekend, the CiF moderation team now retrospectively remove all comments, and/or block any user who attempts to discuss the science of AGW within CiF. You’ll see lots and lots of ‘This comment has been removed by a moderator.’ notices in the comments section of the the Guardian article mentioned in this WUWT guest post.
The Guardian now claims that discussing the science of AGW within CiF is off-topic, unless the published article is specifically about AGW science. It’s now, no longer possible to comment on the assumtions made in any article that concerns Climate Change which is published on the Guardian’s web site.
However, when the Guardian does publish a science article about AGW (as they did last Sunday), they simply switch CiF commenting off, preventing any discussion:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/09/global-warming-glaciers-sea-levels
As Lubos said on his site Reference Frame, the real news is the 0.6 deg C divergence between Hansen’s 1998 temp projections and the 2010 surface temps. If the models are such huge errors (on the warm side), what will they be worth in 2100?
Put down the Fly Agaric and step away from the igloo!
Global Warming causes Global Cooling has become the butt of many a joke.
Out in the real world, they take time out from shoveling snow and scraping off ice to poke fun at the clowns who came up with the whackiest explanation of the century.
The end result: rip-roaring laughter that warms many a heart.
Yes, the sky really is falling, and it’s piling up. Now get out there and utilize a non-mechanized eco-friendly shovel.
Carl McIntosh says:
“Anton says:
“‘How do they get “climate change” out of a shift of the Earth’s axis?’
“Put down the Fly Agaric and step away from the igloo!”
Ha. But, seriously, how can they attribute an axis shift to CO2? If the Earth is changing positions, I think they much greater things to worry about than whether the temperature here or there has gone up or down one tenth of one degree.
If the Moon crashed into Earth would they blame climate change? Yes, of course, stupid question. I recall seeing a C-Grade sci-fi movie on cable recently with the same “ominous” signs: the sun rising and setting where it didn’t before. Is anyone sure the Eskimos weren’t watching the SyFy Channel shortly before they reported their anomaly?
David Icke has made a living off of terrorizing the gullible with claims of lizard aliens coming to Earth to eat us: a scenario he apparently got from the old television series “V,” which has recently been resurrected in a new body. Is there any reason to think that climate “scientists,” a bunch of nerds and geeks playing with computers and rarely venturing outside, aren’t doing the same thing with their doomsday predictions?
Yep.. it’s all part of the “green democracy”. You are always free to speak out or ask awkward questions. Seems to be a great success (not so much in circulation terms though) – Komment Macht Frei eh? (Zensur Macht “pink slips” (apologies to German readers))
Anton, here is an article on polar movement with a link to a longer article, you might be interested in.
Earth’s magnetic field: still not reversing « Highly Allochthonous
It says… “Tampa runway realignment is not a big, recent jerk –instead, it’s the result of the gradual –and entirely unremarkable –motion of the magnetic pole relative to the geographic pole over the past few decades (what people who study the Earth’s magnetic field call secular variation).”
http://all-geo.org/highlyallochthonous/2011/01/earths-magnetic-field-still-not-reversing/
Ryan M, what is your opinion regarding the lowering of temperatures in the early and mid 20th somewhat knowledgeable layman, it is hard for me not to believe that there is a concerted effort being made to keep the AGW train(wreck) on track.
Ed Mertin says:
“Anton, here is an article on polar movement with a link to a longer article, you might be interested in….”
Thanks Ed, I’ve seen it. However the recent reports of Eskimos saying that the Earth has changed its position relative to the sun would suggest something more dramatic. What it doesn’t suggest is something CAUSED by climate change, though a shift in the planet’s position would certainly AFFECT climate.
I want to know who is making these claims about planetary position, and based on how many years of observation. As Michael Mann has shown us, some people actually do believe that the weather conditions they experienced as children are the “correct” ones, and must be reclaimed and preserved for all time. So I imagine someone used to seeing the sun rise over A for twenty years might be shocked to see it rise over B. But, would he be shocked if he’d observed for thirty or fifty years?
Humans in general have very short and narrow perspectives, though geologists seem to be able to think in big numbers.
The Blackfoot Indians living around Glacier National Park have said that the supposed catastrophic retreat of glaciers there is a normal, cyclical occurrence, and that glaciers have completely retreated and reformed in the course of a single lifetime, as recorded by their ancestors.
If observers can only compare new experiences to their own prior experiences, everything might look shockingly different over a period of years. If they could draw on a long historical record, they might not become so hysterical.
Okay, a Unified Theory of Everything Wrong with CLimate: See: A) Sarah Palin exhales CO2, B) CO2 is causing everything bad, Ergo: Sara Palin is causing Manmade (Woman made?) Global Warming Change Catastrophy Disruption. She also cause the axial tilt to change because of her hate speech. Feel free to snip if too bitterly political.
Jeremy Crick says:
January 14, 2011 at 2:19 am
“I confidently predict that The Guardian will be one of the last bastions of warmist orthodoxy even when the international reputation of the IPCC eventually lies in tatters.”
Point taken about the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” (my ass!) deletions but as for the last bastion? Maybe the financial tatters the paper is in will be its true downfall, lets face it, the paper is already intellectually bankrupt
My post yesterday got mangled. The question for Ryan is what is his opinion of GISS’ lowering of global temperatures in the early and mid 20th century, and the raising of global temperatures for the 1980’s and 1990’s.
Thank you.
Regarding Hansen, wasn’t it Feynman who used to tell his students that they should absolutely question everything their professors told them about their own theories?