This time Dr. Judith Curry weighs in. In an email to me earlier this week she revealed that she has been quite busy with this rebuttal (to warmists) and assisting the Mail with this update to the story that appeared last week. Bottom line, the Met Office rebutal was more in agreement than not and Dr. Curry suggests ‘Take a lesson from other scientists who acknowledge the “pause”.’– Anthony
Last week The Mail on Sunday provoked an international storm by publishing a new official world temperature graph showing there has been no global warming since 1997.
The figures came from a database called Hadcrut 4 and were issued by the Met Office and the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University.
We received hundreds of responses from readers, who were overwhelmingly critical of those climate change experts who believe that global warming is inevitable.
But the Met Office, whose lead was then followed by climate change campaigners, accused The Mail on Sunday of cherry-picking data in order to mislead readers. It even claimed it had not released a ‘report’, as we had stated, although it put out the figures from which we drew our graph ten days ago.
The Mail on Sunday revealed figures which appeared to show a 16-year ‘pause’ in global warming
Another critic said that climate expert Professor Judith Curry had protested at the way she was represented in our report. However, Professor Curry, a former US National Research Council Climate Research Committee member and the author of more than 190 peer-reviewed papers, responded:
‘A note to defenders of the idea that the planet has been warming for the past 16 years. Raise the level of your game. Nothing in the Met Office’s statement . . . effectively refutes Mr Rose’s argument that there has been no increase in the global average surface temperature for the past 16 years.
‘Use this as an opportunity to communicate honestly with the public about what we know and what we don’t know about climate change. Take a lesson from other scientists who acknowledge the “pause”.’
The Met Office now confirms on its climate blog that no significant warming has occurred recently: ‘We agree with Mr Rose that there has only been a very small amount of warming in the 21st Century.’
See the full article with Q&A here
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rgbatduke;
Ouch and thank you a concise summary of our ignorance and our blinding assumptions wrt our knowledge.
michel says:
October 21, 2012 at 6:24 am
“Other things being equal, raising taxes and lowering spending will always reduce the deficit. Yes, tell it to the Greeks!”
Actually, the deficit in Euros *is* shrinking.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielknowles/100136919/greece-and-germany-are-playing-a-dangerous-game-of-chicken-this-cannot-last/
The underlying assumption of climate science is that a small change in temperature indicates a change in climate. Is this a reasonable assumption? Isn’t water (rainfall) at least as important a measure of climate. So, how can we consider temperature without also considering rainfall?
For example, if we break climate down by temp and rainfall as below, we find that the hospitable regions of the earth for life occur where it is both wet and warm, and the inhospitable regions occur where it is cold and/or dry. Thus, if anything, global warming should make the earth more hospitable to life, by increasing rainfall and temperature.
moisture
———-
desert – dry
grasslands – moist
forests – wet
temperature
————–
tropical – hot
temperate – warm
arctic – cold
climate
———
tropical grasslands – hospitable
tropical forests – hospitable
temperate grasslands – hospitable
temperate forests – hospitable
temperate desert – inhospitable
arctic desert – inhospitable
arctic grasslands – rare – hospitable
arctic forests – rare – hospitable
tropical desert – rare – inhospitable
rgbatduke
“One day Bob Tisdale will marry his SST data up with Koutsoyiannis’s Hurst-Kolmogorov analysis and we’ll actually start using the approximately correct Markov process to model the global data. Sometime after that — perhaps another decade or three — with a good enough instrumental record that actually spans full cycles of the major decadal oscillations, and with a lot more data on how the Sun by means known and (currently) unknown influences global climate we may be able to go beyond numerology and make statements about what is trend and what is noise in climate science.”
Surely you mean “another century or three”.
Chuck says:
October 21, 2012 at 7:34 am
All very interesting and everyone should read the current report (similar to, but updated) by Leif (follow link here):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/19/muscheler-retracts-offers-a-new-excuse-for-why-solar-activity-cant-be-responsible-for-post-70s-warming/#comment-1114376
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
rgbatduke says:
October 21, 2012 at 7:51 am
Good points regarding “the pause.”
And of interest is: “Monte Carlo results as they evolve out of a Markov Chain” — Many folks will run into this wall when a financial advisor “runs some numbers” and reports they have an 83.6 % chance of out-living their retirement savings. Okay, I just made up that number. Still, the prospect for many is not very “amusing” and they should be much more concerned with doing something about this real problem and less with doing something about the climate.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Raise the level of your game.” [Prof. Judith Curry]
Those of the anti-CAGW persuasion should carry printed cards with this advice to hand out to friends that aren’t paying attention.
Regarding previous comment at 10:48:
About Leif’s report, I meant to say it is similar to some previous papers and reports but that this is a new – updated – version. It requires a bit of work to get through. I fully expand the little pop-up notes and then use a snag-an-image utility to display those on a second monitor.
SAMURAI says:
October 21, 2012 at 7:47 am
A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but this Rose has created quite a stink….
Once more into the breach, my friends, once more…
Because he has opened the sewer where resides the stink that is the BBC and the UK Met Off ???
Its Science, Jim, but not as we know it !
rgbatduke says:
October 21, 2012 at 8:33 am
(but beware the Nirvana fallacy on both sides).
===========================================
What a load of academic liberal bs……………
You can tell when liberals are losing…..and they know it
….all of a sudden both side become morons
What is probably most important is that the existence of this stagnation in temperature change is a clear indication that CO2 is not the sole, nor even the dominant, factor in establishing global temperatures.
Yet for the CAGW alarmism to be valid, and the carbon-strangulation panic to be valid, for the predictions of two degrees by 2050, four degrees by 2100 (or whatever fear-mongery happens to be in vogue) it is necessary that CO2 be by far the most important forcing.
If natural forces are so close to equal those of CO2 as to be able to suppress the latter’s effects entirely, such forces would necessarily be large enough to be responsible for half or more of the prior warming.
For the information of your readers unfamiliar with the UK press I would point out the following.
The UK press is unusual in that, although it is a dying trade nowadays,that the London based newspapers reach everywhere in the UK by morning. It is genuinely a national press.
There are of course regional newspapers, some of excellent reputation, which circulate locally, and do comment on on national politics and of course local papers.
Traditionally the national press, Fleet Street although none are printed there now, is divided into the heavyweights, The Times, sometimes referred to as the London Times, and which considers itself the newspaper of the Establishment and of record, the Telegraph which is right wing, the Guardian, used to be the Manchester Guardian, which is left wing, and the upstart the Independant.
The middle ground is fought over between the Mail and the Express, the latter having faded badly of recent years but seems to have recovered under new ownership.
At the bottom are what our American friends might call the yellow press, chiefly the Sun, Mirror and Star: although they can on occasion throw a political punch.
But in the trade the Mail has the reputation of meticulous reporting when they bother, and are not doing celeb stories or lifestyle or whatever is the fashionable rubbish of the moment.
When the Mail publishes a serious story like this one be sure their reporters have done their homework properly. Hence their counterblast.
Kindest Regards
Re rgbatduke says: October 21, 2012 at 7:51 am
“Therefore a correct statistical statement is that the data show a trend of 0.0 ± 0.1°C
“An even better statistical statement is that the R value (or R^2 value) for any linear fit is absurdly small, in this case around 0.01 or even smaller (if I’m doing the arithmetic in my head correctly, always open to doubt:-).”
You mentioned the correlation coefficient (r) that measures the strength of the relationship between the two variables, and the coefficient of determination (r^2) that provides the proportion of the variation in y that is associated with the variation in x. Let me offer a third tool for your statistical arsenal, the test whether or not the foregoing is significant in the first place. The test of r is a function of the number of data pairs (n – 2 = degrees of freedom). For example see
http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/siegle/research/correlation/corrchrt.htm
The table is a subset of, for example, Table 6.2 “Critical values r substript n alpha of the linear corelation coefficient r” in “Statistical Tables” by H.R. Neave (George Allen & Unsin, 1978). Values can also be calculated from Student’s t by
r(test) = (t^2/(t^2 + df))^0.5
Using the example in the link, for 27 pairs (25 degrees of freedom), the minimum correlation coefficient for 95% confidence is 0.381. For say 16 years (df = 14), the minimum correlation coefficient is 0.497. However, for 100 degrees of freedom,the minimum correlation coefficient drops to 0.195. For 200 degrees of freedom (Neave), it drops even further to 0.139.
Thanks Brian Johnson uk and davidmhoffer, first for pointing out that my numbers were too low and second for flagging the point about ‘enclosed’ spaces. All the arguments I’ve seen and heard about CO2 being the “Greenhouse demon” are based on experiments using closed vessels. Al Gore used one in his infamous movie – and that was a point I should have made. In the open, and at the concentrations found in nature, it just doesn’t happen the way it does in a closed container – and even in those you need to do some fairly strange things to get it to work.
Part of Brian Macker’s point in the first post is worth some extra consideration.
It is a tactical error for us to make this debate about whether there is ANY warming. The real debate is about whether climate change is a PROBLEM. A long-term linear trend of things like global temp and sea level rise are not a catastrophe (and, as Brian pointed out, could be a good thing). The Kyoto Kooks want us to expend tremendous resources trying to slow something that doesn’t need slowing. This is crazy and we are arguing against letting this lunacy ruin our lives.
While natural effects may have paused the recovery from the Little Ice Age, there’s a very good chance it will resume. Six months ago, global sea level rise seems to have paused; now it’s back close to the linear trend line.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
Why set up the parameters of the argument so that any resumption of this warming allows the alarmists to claim victory. Only an acceleration of the warming confirms their theories.
Argue the second derivative and we win. Argue the first derivative and we run the risk of losing even though we’re right.
A little off topic.
Anyone know what IR wavelength(s) is (are) given off by humans?
And how this compares to absorption wavelengths of CO2?
Thanks in advance.
The Gray Monk;
All the arguments I’ve seen and heard about CO2 being the “Greenhouse demon” are based on experiments using closed vessels.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Then you’re looking at the exceptions, not the rule. There are several threads on WUWT about how it works in the atmosphere. Search for Ira Glickstein for a series on the topic that is pretty understandable.
Ross, humans do not emit in specific wavelengths, but rather in a curve whose maximum depends on skin temperature.
Of course the relation is only valid for naked humans; clothing blocks radiation of heat and messes up the curve.
Did you know that not even greenhouses work due to the greenhouse effect. The air inside a greenhouse is warmer than the air outside the greenhouse because the roof of the greenhouse traps the warm air inside. The warm air inside the greenhouse is lighter than the denser cold air outside the greenhouse, and warm air rises
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
a jones says: October 21, 2012 at 11:56 am
[For the information of your readers unfamiliar with the UK press I would point out the following.]
rgbatduke says:
October 21, 2012 at 8:33 am
“For example, let me terrorize you with the threat of rising seas and melting polar icecaps and dying polar bears and penguins, or with a cabal of evil Liberals who want to raise taxes and create a world socialism. ”
Bad example. There is evidence for the second, delivered by the warmists themselves.
http://www.wbgu.de/fileadmin/templates/dateien/veroeffentlichungen/hauptgutachten/jg2011/wbgu_jg2011_kurz_en.pdf
F. Ross says:
October 21, 2012 at 1:16 pm
Anyone know what IR wavelength(s) is (are) given off by humans?
And how this compares to absorption wavelengths of CO2?
————————————————————————————-
All warm bodies emit radiation over an infinite range of wavelengths, not just at one specific wavelength. The power emitted at each wavelength is given by Planck’s Law and is a function of the body’s absolute temperature.
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Blackbody_radiation
We humans have a body temperature of about 37 degrees Celsius. This equates to an absolute temperature of 310K. For a body at this temperature the peak power is emitted at a wavelength of 9.5 microns. The CO2 absorption band relevant to the greenhouse effect is at 15 microns. Humans emit radiation at 15 microns with 63% of the power they emit at their peak emission wavelength of 9.5 microns.
Mmmmmmm.
There, fixed.
The “VIDEO: Nasa video shows Earth’s changing temperature from 1880 to present…” at the end of the article is misleading. It uses 5-year average temperatures to mask out the effects of El Nino and La Ninian events. It also misrepresents the completeness of the instrument temperature record.
The Met Office has accused the Mail of cherry picking yet let’s look at their dishonest behaviour.
I am just waiting for the day when a few Warmist climate scientists are struck by a bout of integrity and raise their arm and say:
“The models have a Warming bias.”
“We need to look at AGW theory again and make adjustments.”
“The theory has been falsified.” (almost?)
I thought this is how other science works. Silly me.