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.
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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.