The Kaufmann et al 2011 paper (Note: Michael L. Mann is a co-author, not the same as Michael E. Mann of hockey team fame) was embargoed until 8PM GMT (12PM PDT) today, and we have an advance copy thanks to Dr. Benny Peiser .
Here is the PDF file: pnas.201102467
The headline from the abstract:
Given the widely noted increase in the warming effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations, it has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008.
But in the conclusion:
The finding that the recent hiatus in warming is driven largely by natural factors does not contradict the hypothesis: “most of the observed increase in global average temperature since the mid 20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations (14).”
From the GWPF:
Comments by Dr David Whitehouse on the PNAS paper Kaufmann et al.
Reconciling anthropogenic climate change with observed temperature 1998 – 2008.
It is good news that the authors recognise that there has been no global temperature increase since 1998. Even after the standstill appears time and again in peer-reviewed scientific studies, many commentators still deny its reality. We live in the warmest decade since thermometer records began about 150 years ago, but it hasn’t gotten any warmer for at least a decade.
The researchers tweak an out-of-date climate computer model and cherry-pick the outcome to get their desired result. They do not use the latest data on the sun’s influence on the Earth, rendering their results of academic interest only.
They blame China’s increasing coal consumption that they say is adding particles into the atmosphere that reflect sunlight and therefore cool the planet. The effect of aerosols and their interplay with other agents of combustion is a major uncertainty in climate models. Moreover, despite China’s coal burning, data indicate that in the past decade the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere has not increased.
The researchers seek to explain the temperature standstill between 1998 and 2008. They say that the global temperature has increased since then.
This is misleading. There was an El Nino in 2010 (natural cyclic warming) but even that did not raise temperatures above 1998. In fact the standstill has continued to 2010 and 2011 appears to be on course to be a cooler year than any of the preceding ten years.
Tweaking computer models like this proves nothing. The real test is in the real world data. The temperature hasn’t increased for over a decade. For there to be any faith in the underlying scientific assumptions the world has to start warming soon, at an enhanced rate to compensate for it being held back for a decade.
Despite what the authors of this paper state after their tinkering with an out of date climate computer model, there is as yet no convincing explanation for the global temperature standstill of the past decade.
Either man-made and natural climatic effects have conspired to completely offset the warming that should have occurred due to greenhouse gasses in the past decade, or our estimation of the ‘climate sensitivity’ to greenhouse gasses is too large.
This is not an extreme or ‘sceptic’ position but represents part of the diversity of scientific opinion presented to the IPCC that is seldom reported.
Dr David Whitehouse
The Global Warming Policy Foundation
e-mail: david.whitehouse@thegwpf.org
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My take on it from the paper – “We don’t know what’s going on, but we aren’t going to admit that” – Anthony
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From Ryan Maue: Mainstream media coverage example headline:
Asia pollution blamed for halt in warming: study — from Reuters
blah blah blah — and the conclusion quotation: “Long term warming will continue unless emissions are reduced,” said Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at Britain’s Met Office.
Well, hells bells.
There are some really funny, or else, astute comments here. Thanks for the laugh/education. In my mind, God willing, “anthropogenic global warming” ceases on November 3, 2012. You know what I mean.
Judith Curry also notes the paper: An explanation(?) for lack of global warming since 1998.
Discussion rages hot and heavy, with ‘Joshua’ vociferously defending the authors and maligning everyone else, as usual.
Judith notes the counter-intuitive logical extrapolation, that all that needs to be done to defeat warming is to encourage China to continue burning coal.
Petards are exploding prematurely in great numbers, now.
Watch the Warmist reprogram thier models every time they go astray, move the goalposts, then backpeddle some more is like watching addicted gamblers. The big jackpot is just another paycheck away. Just one more bet, you’ll see. Just one more paper, one more adjustment should do the trick.
Some of you people need to read the paper properly. What they are saying is that human activities can influence climate but it is not as simple as ‘increase Co2 levels and temps go up’. The paper is saying that there are many other moderating effects some natural and some human.
Correct, Denise, that is exactly what the paper is saying. That (1) human activities can affect climate…
But (2) sometimes we can point the finger of blame at nature…
Climate “science” hasn’t changed much, has it?
The reason it hasn’t warmed recently is simply because witches aren’t the ONLY forcing. In fact they represent less than 50% of all forcings. Witchcraft can be overwhelmed in the short term by other forcings, like prayer, rotten sage thrown into a stream (op.cit.), the Devil putting more sulfur into the air, along with the natural conjunction of the heavenly bodies. These observations confirm the theory of witches: they confirm the theory because the theory says climate is a function of ALL of these forcings!
/parody
“Asia pollution blamed for halt in warming: study ”
I’m thinking the ‘experts’ are worried that the sun may go into a prolonged minimum followed by cooling which would most likely devastate what’s left of their movement for global development, nation wealth equalization, and massive control over our lives. As such, I think they are going to start blaming other things for whatever cooling may happen such as sulfur emissions, volcanos, and anything else they can find. Anything to take the blame off of the sun.
Just my 2 cents…
as others have said, we aussies simply need to open more coal-fired power stations, sell even more coal to china, and we will have saved the world from CAGW:
4 July: Reuters: Gerard Wynn: Asia pollution blamed for halt in warming: study
Other climate scientists broadly supported Monday’s study, stressing that over longer time periods rising greenhouse gas emissions would over-ride cooling factors.
“Long term warming will continue unless emissions are reduced,” said Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at Britain’s Met Office.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/04/us-climate-sulphur-idUSTRE7634IQ20110704
rbateman says:
July 4, 2011 at 8:34 pm
Watch the Warmist reprogram thier models every time they go astray, move the goalposts, then backpeddle some more is like watching addicted gamblers. The big jackpot is just another paycheck away. Just one more bet, you’ll see. Just one more paper, one more adjustment should do the trick.
Robert, you sure hit that one on the nose!
Actually there aren’t two Michael Mann’s, there are THREE. Is it any coincidence the Michael K Mann directed the superb movie “Heat,” with DeNiro, Pacino and Kilmer????
We are astounded that the Academic departmental affiliations of these authors are in Social Sciences! Economics, Economics, Geography? These are soft-sciences. What is the relevance of Economics to the physics of the Earth’s climate? What about Geophysics, Oceanography, or even Atmospheric Sciences? We would give more credence to people with knowledge and a track record of achievement in relevant hard sciences. No wonder the Russian Academy of Science laughs at the West and its bevy of wide eyed AGW believers. A sad state of affairs for the American Scientist. Our profession is in danger of becoming a joke. Freedom of inquiry meets “Are you a climate denier?”
Not to worry folks, the new narrative has been created by the AGW people to explain everything:
Asia pollution blamed for halt in warming: study
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/04/us-climate-sulphur-idUSTRE7634IQ20110704
Smoke belching from Asia’s rapidly growing economies is largely responsible for a halt in global warming in the decade after 1998 because of sulphur’s cooling effect, even though greenhouse gas emissions soared, a U.S. study said on Monday.
The paper raised the prospect of more rapid, pent-up climate change when emerging economies eventually crack down on pollution.
World temperatures did not rise from 1998 to 2008, while manmade emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuel grew by nearly a third, various data show.
The researchers from Boston and Harvard Universities and Finland’s University of Turku said pollution, and specifically sulphur emissions, from coal-fueled growth in Asia was responsible for the cooling effect.
Sulphur allows water drops or aerosols to form, creating hazy clouds which reflect sunlight back into space.
You see it’s all China’s fault for using so much sulfur laden coal. Thus China now has an acceptable “green” excuse for consuming more fossil fuels than the US and still not be held accountable to the Cap and Trade scam. With this excuse, the AGW cult believers now can continue bambozzling governments and scientists all over the world while they rake in billions more dollars for further useless studies and restrictive regulations micromanaging people’s lives and businesses.
So by implication of this study, the timing of the post 1970s rise in GAT to 1998 would be to US Russia and Europe curbing sulfur pollution (allowing CO2 to increase GAT) at which time the Chinese at the end of the 1990s started dumping sulfur back into the air causing a drop in GAT.
Questions: What was the amount per year of sulfur put into the atmosphere from 1940 to 1980 by the US and Europe? What was the amount per year of sulfur put into the atmosphere by China from 1980 to now?
Is anyone really surprised?
It does open the door for new research grants to keep the gravy train rolling.
just realised u had put up peter stott’s comment, anthony. apologies.
what would the media do without the phrase “many scientists say”?
3 July: Sacramento Bee: Paresh Dave: Coastal California developers now must consider sea-level rise
Many scientists also say global climate change will bring more frequent storms of great intensity…
Former Sierra Club California coastal programs leader Mark Massara is skeptical that all of Johnson’s project will remain usable by 2100..
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/07/03/3744307/coastal-california-developers.html
“blah blah blah — and the conclusion quotation: “Long term warming will continue unless emissions are reduced,” said Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at Britain’s Met Office.
”
It only seems to be emissions such as these that keep Global Warming going.
Don’t worry… just read another peer-reviewed article blaming the recent cooling on sulfur dioxide emissions from all the coal-fired power plants in Asia. They claim as soon as China starts cleaning up the sulfur emissions we are in for a massive heat wave. The solutions however remain the same as you might guess… shut down all coal and fossil fuel power plants now or we are all going to die.
whether you believe that carbon dioxide is causing warming or not could you please send this to a scientist to review.
Thermal emissions warming.
The following study done by myself and assisted by a scientist is only to demonstrate that the warming can be mostly if not all explained by thermal emmissions or basically a large scale heat island study using energy use data. This is not intended to give any exact warming extent as average values are used and wind land cover etc are not taken into account (this is virtually impossible despite the claims of organisations such as NASA or CSIRO) Also the energy use is not constant and will have greater effects when weather is cold and heating is more widely used.
The energy use we shall use is the total annual use of fossil fuels and nuclear. These 2 energy sources are being released by humans.
Numbers used for calculations.
Area m2 is square metres
USA 9626091000000 m2
China 9596960000000 m2
France 547030000000 m2
Germany 357021000000 m2
United Kingdom 244820000000 m2
Planet Surface 510066000000000 m2
(Source : http://www.worldatlas.com)
Annual energy use based on energy use in 2009. Includes fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Does not include others such as wind solar biofuels geothermal or hydro.
Mtoe is Million tonnes or oil equivalent.
USA 2119.8 Mtoe
China 2037.7 Mtoe
France 228.8 Mtoe
Germany 285.6 Mtoe
United Kingdom 197.7 Mtoe
World 10424 Mtoe
(Source : Statistical review of world energy full report 2010 (Beyond Petroleum))
The following formula was used. It basically is working out the amount of energy in continuous watt output per hour per metre squared and then calculating out the expected change in temperature by using the average input of energy from the sun using Albedo and Suns energy per square according to NASA. This is not intended to give any accurate prediction but just a general prediction.
Mtoe* 11.63*1 000 000 000 000 (conversion of Mtoe to Watts)*0.7 (energy available as thermal energy)/365/24(conversion to Watt output per hour)/land area in square metres(to give energy output per square metre per hour)*Kelvin 287/342/.703(to give estimated temperature change where Kelvin 287 is earth average temperature 342 is available energy from sun and 0.703 is the amount available to the troposphere after the albedo)
After doing these calculations if the air never left the country and everything else such as albedo remained constant mentioned these would be the approximate temperature changes.
USA 0.24 degrees increase
China 0.23 ,,
France 0.46 ,,
Germany 0.88 ,,
United Kingdom 0.89 ,,
World 0.0224 ,,
Conclusions: If a climate model printout has not taken this into account the printouts highest value shall be the greater of the recycling price to the use as a biofuel (but watch out for the thermal emissions). Most fuel use is over land and in the northern hemisphere so this is where the expected highest results are likely. Anecdotely this could be the effect in the antarctic peninsular but it is very difficult to get any fuel use figures. If this is the case the increases are likely to be in summer as this is when the scientists travel there.
Note; The energy available is a very conservative estimation based on average power station efficiency and vehicle efficiency and uses eg. domestic use of energy is far higher with average households spending over 50% of energy dirrectly for heating (hot water cooking and space heating). The amount of energy from sun will not be accurate as the albedo and latitudes on the earth could have a big effect.
Author: Kelly Liddle
Khwarizmi – thanks for the brilliant satire.
top notch.
Natural cooling has brought AGW to a grinding halt but we are all still going to roast to death anyway.
Srsly?
‘Anthropogenic Sulfur Emissions’ = New Acronym ASE .. I think there is room for an ‘R’ in there.
These people also have not identified what the balance of power was over this time frame. It is entirely possible to absorb more energy than is radiated into space over an interval of time without warming the air. However, you are on the hook to locate that “missing energy”. Because we can’t find it doesn’t mean it isn’t there any more than we can assume it is there but hidden. That is the problem, isn’t it? The temperature is stable but we don’t know what the energy balance is, and to the best of my knowledge, we don’t know how to know what that balance is within an ignorable margin of error.
That, btw, is the fraud that is climate alarmism. Skeptics are not better off – if they can’t show that the balance is negative or balanced they’re not noticing the kings new clothes.
Interesting paper.
While I am not impressed by the obligatory hat/tip to AGW in an attempt to tow the line
“The finding that the recent hiatus in warming is driven largely by natural factors does not contradict the hypothesis”
I still am reassured that they actually admitted what we all thought….that, despite rising CO2, the global temperature has NOT been rising between the periods measured.
On a side note, I wonder if this Michael L. Mann ever regrets being named the same name as Michael ” Wheres the MWP” E. Mann.
Bet he wishes he was named John…
LMAO! Read this in the various UK papers this morning and into my mind jumped Trenberth’s “travesty we can’t account for the lack of warming” comment! (I have always wondered why he could not just use the word….Cooling)!
I bet he feels much more comfortable this morning!
Hope you lot on the other side of the pond had a great day and the BBQ;s were a success.
you dont have to tell us about cooling we are having a blizard in australian snowy area 36 cm snow in 24 hours much much more to come could be our best year yet for snow .bring on global warming
Why does Wikipedia say the second hottest year on record was 2010?
Please don’t blame the evil scientists, if there’s sources to say different why not start with the information everyone is looking at?
JimF says:
July 4, 2011 at 8:11 pm
In my mind, God willing, “anthropogenic global warming” ceases on November 3, 2012. You know what I mean.
I do know what you mean. Michele Bachmann has always been against Cap N Trade. She has never believed in disasters from CO2. Pray God, President Bachmann!
Here she is in 2006, when “An Inconvenient Truth” was in theaters, back before there as a WattsUpWithThat, back before ClimateGate, she said this:
She says the worst offender for regulations hurting American business is the EPA, and “…..I introduced the ‘Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act’!…….. President Bachmann will allow you to buy any light bulb you want in the United states of America!”
Kilez More – Klimawandel (German):
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AybBEuIpy44&w=560&h=349%5D
[could do with a translation for this mod ~ac]