Readers may recall earlier this week when I pointed out an inconvenient truth, the continental USA has no warming trend for the past decade, in fact it is cooling.
And, going back 15 years, the data is flat. Investors business Daily picked up the story in relation to the BEST controversy:
Don’t Stop Doubting
Posted 06:28 PM ET @ news.investors.com
Climate: Just a few weeks ago, a formerly skeptical scientist made news when he changed his mind about global warming. If he looked at the new data a meteorologist has pulled up, he’d change it back again.
Richard Muller, a physics professor at the University of California, said that data from his Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures (BEST) project convinced him that “global warming is real.” “We see no evidence,” he said Oct. 21, that global warming has “slowed down.”
The alarmists, of course, leveraged Muller’s statements to suit their agenda.
But Muller’s is not the “consensus” position of the team. Judith Curry, a Georgia Tech climate researcher with more than 30 years experience who was also part of the BEST project, has said “there is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped.” She looked at the same data Muller did and noted it shows global temperatures haven’t increased since the late 1990s.
Now comes meteorologist Anthony Watts armed with data showing the continental U.S. has not warmed in the last 10 years, and in fact has grown cooler in the summer and colder in the winter. The numbers aren’t a collection of weather forecasts from Watts, who runs the website “Watts Up With That,” but data from the National Climatic Data Center.
Granted, the Lower 48 aren’t the entire world, only a small slice of it. But it is a large portion of the developed world, a significant contributor of man-made carbon dioxide emissions and full of “heat islands” — big cities — that should be skewing temperature data upward.
Yet, that’s not what’s happening. The 2001-to-2011 trend shows a cooling of 0.87 degrees Fahrenheit compared with the 1911-2010 average. Backing up the starting date to 1996 doesn’t help the alarmists’ case, either. Temperatures are flat over that period.
Both the falling and flat temperature trends are coming at a time when man is putting out more emissions of carbon dioxide than ever. Given that, it seems to us that the U.S. should be warming.
Unlike Muller, we remain skeptics and would be even if he were right. Because rising temperatures are indicative of only one thing — rising temperatures — it’ll take more than an upward trend line to change our minds.
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Jeff Grandtham:
1. The Little Ice Age was in fact global. This has been confirmed by precipitation alaysis of South America.
2. Rebound from the Little Ice Age. Yes, when the temp trend switched, according to proxy data, we have been on a slow rising slope ever since.
3. The rate of temp rise in the early 20th century is the same as the rate of temp rise in the late 20th century. There was a cold spell during the middle of the 20th century, with the initeria returning approx 1973.
4. Just as North America has not warmed statistically….well, GISS shows it has but then when looking in the time back machine it seems the temps of the 30’s and early 40’s have been ratcheted down a few degrees. But i regress.
5. One would expect the temps to rise when one is in a Grand Solar Maximum. There is a lot more to the effects on climate than TSI. I know you have to know that as that is common knowledge anymore.
6. The inertia of the rise seems to have peaked in the 1997-1999 period. World wide temp metrics since that time have stablized. Once again, the outlier is GISSTEMP, but the methodology of extracting and the weighing of Arctic Temps has/is in question. Statiscally, it doesn’t work at all unless you are blind. Then you can feel that heat……but wait…..North America is affected by the Arctic more than any other continent. And North America has been flat with a cooling bias….mmmm……gosh…..mmmm….oh yea……the Arctic is hot….hot I tell ya.
7. Sea surface temperatures confirm the cooling trend. OHC confirms the cooling trend. Only the likes of Prof where is the heat Trenbeth think it has gotten past the top 700 meters, that secret pathway…(Must be realllly secret as even Dr. Hansen can’t find it)….I regress…..
8. Oh ya…the strat is cooling…….but wait…..it is warming. Oh yes, more ozone, but it hasn’t been measured yet…..but it has to be there. Why….if it hits the levels it was suppose to be at in 1940..(When it was not measured but it sure is modeled)…it might even warm a few more Kelvins. (But it can’t do that..the models tell us that is impossible)………ahhhhhh yep…..keep drinking the whatever it is you are drinking and let the rest of us in on that secret reciepe please?
The question is…how many holes in a sail does it take before the sail can’t drive the boat forward? Looks to me like the AGW sail is riddled with holes, and the cotton is getting reallllllly rotten.
Tom_R says:
Describe some test or measurement That Climate Science has claimed would refute AGW.
OK, but first describe some test or measurement on a particular human being that would refute the hypothesis that smoking can cause lung cancer.
stevo says:
November 12, 2011 at 10:18 am
………That’s a woeful misunderstanding of what the uncertainty means. When Watts gets around to calculating the uncertainty on the trend he showed, I’ll explain why. I don’t expect that he will do that any time soon though…
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If you want to look at “Uncertainty” A J Strata has a very good article on the “uncertainty” in the temperature data. http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11420
Kev-in-Uk says:
November 12, 2011 at 10:36 am
Garrett says:
November 12, 2011 at 2:07 am
…..Since you seem to want to argue about time periods for analysis, why don’t you start with the big one – like from 12000 years ago? Then you can describe the uppy downy motion of the climate temps and deduce what exactly? Hmmmm, let me see, perhaps it will be a general upward trend in temperatures?…..
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Actually the Holocene started off warms and has an over all slight downward trend in temperature. That is what would make the whole CAGW posturing so very very funny, if it weren’t such a nasty political tool.
12,000 years VostoK Antarctica Ice Core: http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/vostok-last-12000-years-web.gif
10,000 years Greenland GISP2 Ice Core: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/easterbrook_fig5.jpg
15,000 years – Ice cores Greenland: http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a719dbb4970b-pi
2000 yrs of non tree ring proxies: http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a64c8c9b970b-pi
Tom_R says:
Describe some test or measurement That Climate Science has claimed would refute AGW.
_______________________
Jeff Grantham says:
November 12, 2011 at 3:58 pm
OK, but first describe some test or measurement on a particular human being that would refute the hypothesis that smoking can cause lung cancer.
_______________________
You have just shown that you have absolutely no idea of how the Scientific Method works.
Jeff Grantham:
What does cancer have to do with GAWG? Are you saying that GAWG now causes an increase in cancer? (Is this a result of mankinds increased lifespan? When the molecular structure breaks down over a longer time period)
Interesting idea. Will wonders never cease? It seems that GAWG can cause most any malady now a days. Bet my grandpa wishes this new fangled idea was around during his lifetime.
Proof?
Noteing that Jeff now has introduced medical breakthroughs to GAGW. Wasn’t the topic how the USA has cooled for over a decade? Actually, North America as a whole has cooled.
(Note to self. Monday morning put an order in to buy GAGW stock. With the medical news this stock can only go up…….UP……)
Done, but it required a p/w reset, etc., so the best I could do was #7.
Gail Combs says:
November 12, 2011 at 4:22 pm
I thought it was pretty obvious I was meaning the actual rise in temperature from the lowest temps of the last Ice age. Given that the Holocene starts around 10000 years ago, your point is perfectly valid and correct, although I mentioned 12000 yrs as the approximate time at the end of the pleistocene period, when, IIRC, the last ice age ended proper. The Holocene does, as you observe, show a slight downward trend from palaeoclimate proxies (ice cores etc) and also, as you note , this is oft ignored by the team! (in a similar vein, compare to the intense voracity with which the MWP is ignored by the team!)
My beef, and the point I was (badly) making – is the whole timescale selection metric for any climate analysis is baloney – it simply cannot be stressed enough that 10/20/30/100/1000 years is really not appropriate to use as an indicator of what is ‘normal’ and ergo, what is abnormal (i.e anthropogenic climate change)! Moreover, when you add the lack of actual real measurements, and the uncertainties in those measurements, it just makes the whole thing a mockery.
(It would be nice if the sooperdooper MetOffice computer could predict my lottery numbers though – and I think they have more real chance of that than modeling the climate!)
I find the whole global temps issue very disconcerting, as it is the hub of the warmist argument but can never be validated. To me, it’s like tossing a coin a 1000 times and then pointing to a group of say 4 heads in a row and saying that they were ‘abnormal’ and influenced by anthropogenic CO2 ! – even though everyone and his dog knows that that is just a chance/probablity issue!
May the Nobel Award go to Anthony for courage on par with quasi crystals and other similar cases of perseverance against corrupt science fronts. Of course that will be the first Nobel award in the post-bias era of realism. Bravo Anthony! Unlike quasi crystals and the like, this false front of science is a multi-trillion dollar scam capping off an era of unsustainable spending by a generation of kick the can leaders.
Jeff Grantham says:
Smokey says:
The planet is emerging – naturally – from the LIA.
“How do you know? If that were true then natural factors would be able to account for the warming since the LIA. They can’t; in particular solar changes can’t. The Milankovitch cycle indicates another 4000 years of cooling. Decrease in volcanic activity compared to the LIA? Today’s temperatures seem to have overshot that. Then you need to consider that the LIA wasn’t global….”
I know because I provided a graph showing you. Here’s another one.
I agree with Gail Combs, Grantham has no understanding of the scientific method. The conjecture that Gramtham believes in is that a rise in CO2 will cause catastrophic global warming [it is a conjecture and not a hypothesis, because it is not testable; CO2 may cause slightly warmer temperatures, but there is no direct, testable evidence that it does].
Since the CO2=CAGW conjecture is put forth by the alarmist clique, they have the onus of showing it is valid through testable measurements. But as usual the alarmist crowd tries to put the onus on scientific skeptics to prove a negative, as Grantham does in his comment. His response amounts to the usual argumentum ad ignorantium: ‘Since I can’t think of a cause of the global warming since the LIA, then it must be due to human-emitted CO2.’ Unfortunately for the alarmist crowd, the planet isn’t listening.
And anyone who believes the LIA was just a local event needs to run along back to Skeptical Pseudo-Science, where unsupportable beliefs like that can be comfortably discussed, with all credible opposing comments pre-deleted by the moderators.
Smokey:
Naw…..not only predeleted by the poster will be banned if he doesn’t conform to their beliefs. I always get a kick out of their OHC graph, based on one paper that is based on models that are not verified. And somehow all that deep heat got through the top 700 meters.
Oh well, that doesn’t change the fact that presently there has been a definite trend change in global temperatures as confirmed by the majority of the temperature metrics. The most important metric is Sea Surface Temps. They have been flat.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1998/to:2012/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1998/to:2012/trend:1
There are no UHI, elevation issues etc involved with SST.
>> Jeff Grantham says:
November 12, 2011 at 3:58 pm
OK, but first … <<
Clearly you can't. Why not ask your AGW church elders.
Camburn says:
What does cancer have to do with GAWG? Are you saying that GAWG now causes an increase in cancer?
Of course not. We’re discussing how we come to know things.
Smokey says:
I know because I provided a graph showing you. Here’s another one.
This graphs proves nothing, except that two parameters are approximately in phase with one another for a certain time period. That’s hardly sufficient to show one causes the other.
Jeff Grantham:
Smokey’s graph is just as robust as saying co2 causes warming of 0.xC degrees per unit of doubling. In fact, Smokey’s graph may be more robust because the time frame is longer.
As far as how we come to know things. Do you dispute this concerning the stratosphere:?
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tandf/tres/2009/00000030/F0020015/art00002
Jeff Grantham says:
“This graphs proves nothing…”
Grantham is afflicted with incurable cognitive dissonance. It doesn’t matter how many graphs, peer reviewed papers, charts, data, or anything else that is provided for his edification. He still believes that his flying saucer will come and rescue his repeatedly falsified CAGW conjecture.
Smokey says:
November 12, 2011 at 8:02 pm
Jeff Grantham says:
“This graphs proves nothing…”
Grantham is afflicted with incurable cognitive dissonance. It doesn’t matter how many graphs, peer reviewed papers, charts, data, or anything else that is provided for his edification
It is sad that there are those who refuse to accept the papers, such as the one I presented above, that shows the models are not working.
And then they try to tell the rest of us that we don’t get it?
Ok……we can read, observe etc.
The long term trend is up since the LIA ended. The short term trend is down….and accelerateing. NOT good for the USA, nor the world.
At 9:56 PM on 11 November, ,Bob Johnston had commented:
Are there any online sources of statements uttered by Muller which can be cited as demonstrating his previous allegiance to the AGW bogosity?
That might be truly useful in online comments about BEST.
Jeff Grantham says:
November 12, 2011 at 7:37 pm
Camburn says:
What does cancer have to do with GAWG? Are you saying that GAWG now causes an increase in cancer?
Of course not. We’re discussing how we come to know things.
You Carbon Cultists just love to try to use the bogus analogy of climate science to medical science; specifically that showing the link between smoking and lung cancer. It is both a diversionary tactic as well as an implied ad hominem and a poisoning of the well, which shows your actual trollist motives here.
If you would only bother to dig a little deeper, you’d see that what you think you “know” about climate science is based on nothing but assumptions, half-truths, and cherry-picked and distorted data. All you really have is a much- cherished Belief system.
Jeff Grantham says:
November 12, 2011 at 3:58 pm
“Tom_R says:
Describe some test or measurement That Climate Science has claimed would refute AGW.
OK, but first describe some test or measurement on a particular human being that would refute the hypothesis that smoking can cause lung cancer.”
Oh My! Jeff, please tell me that this is not your best argument. Is this really all you’ve got? You just showed the depth of your intellect to the whole world. A truly embarrassing moment…… I feel for you.
Best,
J.
To determine whether or not either the Earth or the U.S. has stopped warming, one would have to invoke an idea that does not appear in the IBD’s article. This idea is the observed independent statistical event (OSE).
An OSE has an outcome, a starting time and a stopping time. If and only if the temperature has not risen in the period between the starting time and the stopping time of a specified OSE can one justifiably state that the temperature has not risen. In climatology, the canonical period of an OSE is 30 years. With temperature-time data extending over 15 years, it would be logically impossible for one to determine that the temperature has not risen.
“Sorry, as I said, it is NCDC’s graph and therefore their presentation issue”
You’re the one who doesn’t understand the importance of the uncertainty, not them. You’re the one promoting this as if it supports your agenda when it doesn’t. You’re the one consistently spreading misinformation.
“The temperatures during the past 10 years are pretty recent. The actual error band should be quit small, say 5% LSD would be acceptable. With that in mind, the trend is flat with a cooling bias.”
Nope, that’s just completely incorrect. Even if the measurement error was zero, the uncertainty on the trend due to inherent noise (ie weather) is much too large to draw the conclusions that you wish to draw from it. “flat with a cooling bias” is a meaningless statement with no foundation in statistics.
REPLY:Oh, please. Steve waded into this but keeps sidestepping this issue: explain why it was OK for Hansen to go on record with 10 years of warming in 1988, but 10 years of cooling, presented using the public tools of NCDC is “misinformation”. – Anthony
stevo, satellite temperatures show what is happening. What’s your excuse now? That global warming causes global cooling?
Stevo:
1. Weather does not last 10 years, it is a year to year flucuation. And even within that year to year there are climatic influences to the weather…..agree?
2. The inherent noise is present in ALL data, whether it is 1 year, 10 years, 100 years.
3. Since 1998, the trend is flat to down. Give it another few years and we wil hit 17 years. That seems to be the golden metric of AGW now a days, altho I am confident that before 17 years hits there will be another metric.
4. You are assuming that the long term trend is going to over ride the short term trend. That is one heck of an assumption based on models and not observation.
5. The statement is not meaningless. Whether you like it or not, the trend is now down. All indicators are that the short term trend will turn into a longer term trend. Which, would follow the long term cooling trend of the Holocene ever since the end of the climate optimum period. On a spatial scale, the recent warming is not even visible yet as the warming has not been long enough.