CHRISTOPHER MONCKTON of BRENCHLEY
DELEGATES at the 18th annual UN climate gabfest at the dismal, echoing Doha conference center – one of the least exotic locations chosen for these rebarbatively repetitive exercises in pointlessness – have an Oops! problem.
No, not the sand-flies. Not the questionable food. Not the near-record low attendance. The Oops! problem is this. For the past 16 of the 18-year series of annual hot-air sessions about hot air, the world’s hot air has not gotten hotter. There has been no global warming. At all. Zilch. Nada. Zip. Bupkis.
The equations of classical physics do not require the arrow of time to flow only forward. However, observation indicates this is what always happens. So tomorrow’s predicted warming that has not happened today cannot have caused yesterday’s superstorms, now, can it?
That means They can’t even get away with claiming that tropical storm Sandy and other recent extreme-weather happenings were All Our Fault. After more than a decade and a half without any global warming at all, one does not need to be a climate scientist to know that global warming cannot have been to blame.
Or, rather, one needs not to be a climate scientist. The wearisomely elaborate choreography of these yearly galah sessions has followed its usual course this time, with a spate of suspiciously-timed reports in the once-mainstream media solemnly recording that “Scientists Say” their predictions of doom are worse than ever. But the reports are no longer front-page news. The people have tuned out.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPeCaC), the grim, supranational bureaucracy that makes up turgid, multi-thousand-page climate assessments every five years, has not even been invited to Doha. Oversight or calculated insult? It’s your call.
IPeCaC is about to churn out yet another futile tome. And how will its upcoming Fifth Assessment Report deal with the absence of global warming since a year after the Second Assessment report? Simple. The global-warming profiteers’ bible won’t mention it.
There will be absolutely nothing about the embarrassing 16-year global-warming stasis in the thousands of pages of the new report. Zilch. Nada. Zip. Bupkis.
Instead, the report will hilariously suggest that up to 1.4 Cº of the 0.6 Cº global warming observed in the past 60 years was manmade.
No, that is not a typesetting error. The new official meme will be that if it had not been for all those naughty emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases the world would have gotten up to 0.8 Cº cooler since the 1950s. Yeah, right.
If you will believe that, as the Duke of Wellington used to say, you will believe anything.
The smarter minds at the conference (all two of us) are beginning to ask what it was that the much-trumpeted “consensus” got wrong. The answer is that two-thirds of the warming predicted by the models is uneducated guesswork. The computer models assume that any warming causes further warming, by various “temperature feedbacks”.
Trouble is, not one of the supposed feedbacks can be established reliably either by measurement or by theory. A growing body of scientists think feedbacks may even be net-negative, countervailing against the tiny direct warming from greenhouse gases rather than arbitrarily multiplying it by three to spin up a scare out of not a lot.
IPeCaC’s official prediction in its First Assessment Report in 1990 was that the world would warm at a rate equivalent to 0.3 Cº/decade, or more than 0.6 Cº by now.
But the real-world, measured outturn was 0.14 Cº/decade, and just 0.3 Cº in the quarter of a century since 1990: less than half of what the “consensus” had over-predicted.
In 2008, the world’s “consensus” climate modelers wrote a paper saying ten years without global warming was to be expected (though their billion-dollar brains had somehow failed to predict it). They added that 15 years or more without global warming would establish a discrepancy between real-world observation and their X-boxes’ predictions. You will find their paper in NOAA’s State of the Climate Report for 2008.
By the modelers’ own criterion, then, HAL has failed its most basic test – trying to predict how much global warming will happen.
Yet Ms. Christina Figurehead, chief executive of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, says “centralization” of global governing power (in her hands, natch) is the solution. Solution to what?
And what solution? Even if the world were to warm by 2.2 Cº this century (for IPeCaC will implicitly cut its central estimate from 2.8 Cº in the previous Assessment Report six years ago), it would be at least ten times cheaper and more cost-effective to adapt to warming’s consequences the day after tomorrow than to try to prevent it today.
It is the do-nothing option that is scientifically sound and economically right. And nothing is precisely what 17 previous annual climate yatteramas have done. Zilch. Nada. Zip. Bupkis.
This year’s 18th yadayadathon will be no different. Perhaps it will be the last. In future, Ms. Figurehead, practice what you preach, cut out the carbon footprint from all those travel miles, go virtual, and hold your climate chatternooga chit-chats on FaceTwit.
Support CFACT’s mission here.
Steve C says: December 2, 2012 at 12:48 am: Pat Ravasio – You want to see some facts? […]
It is precisely through ascertaining the facts that many of us became “disbelievers”: I, for example, used to think as you seem to, until a friend put cash on the table for anyone who could show him a proof of catastrophic manmade climate change. After a couple of weeks’ searching, I became seriously worried at the quality of the “science” I was seeing.
I was luckier: I only needed 30 minutes. It was models all the way down.
Although the statistically-inclined will fight a rear-guard action to claim that the temperature trend is still rising, not many of even the faithful believe that. The big switch is on to talk about “Global Wierding” and forget about the temperature trend, or extend the first data at which it can be measured way, way out. Global Weirding only requires forgetting anything that we didn’t experience personally as an adult, making almost everything unprecedented in short order.
Pat:
“And should I be wrong, that you actually do beleive what you write, then you will publish this comment with a reply.”
Interestingly, I clicked your link to http://www.buck**orld,me and there is no comment/reply section on your blog. Please don’t expect others to follow your rules if you do not follow them yourself.
Thank you Alan Millar,
But Andrew’s question was not about averages – but about trends. That is to say ‘the rate of increase ‘ of temperature is seen to be higher if you extend measurements to 2012 instead of stopping at 1997. What you say about averages is of course correct but that was not the problem. Did you bother to plot this out on ‘WoodForTrees’ for example, as suggested? I don’t know which data set Andrew was referring to, it probably applies to all of them, but here it is for HADCRUT3.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1950/to:2012/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1950/to:1997/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1950/to:2012/trend
The rate of increase from 1950 to 2012 is higher than that from 1950 to 1997 but warming clearly stalled after 1997. An interesting paradox. Not that simple!
Patricia Ravasio (@patravasio) says:
December 2, 2012 at 1:44 am
[…[It’s not about religion at all, but about calculating risks of doing nothing, versus the potential upside of facing what may indeed (and no one really knows) be the most serious issue our species will ever face.[…]
The precautionary principle!, or, how to consider hypothetical (conjectuarl, actually) assertions as if they were reality. Too post-modern for my taste and, in this subject, extremely expensive.
You’re into the arts or humanities, isn’t it? With all that importance given to narratives?
I would also welcome your comments on my blog, […]
I knew it. Pat, that wasn’t nice, IMHO..
Gail Combs says: December 2, 2012 at 8:04 am
The comment by Gail is something we should all read twice. That is what it is all about, someone somewhere is lobbying for an advantage that will benefit their pocket (usually successfully).
Now, having said that I don’t hold that there is a conspiracy or an “Ag Cartel” as such, but do agree that the end result is the same as if there was one.
The problem is that all these concepts of free trade and trade agreements are pursued and signed because someone, somewhere thinks they are getting an advantage. This is really our markets at work now, and, as you can see in every sector big business wins – computing, telecommunications, energy, agriculture, mining etc etc.
Some will also see this (carbon actions/or lack thereof) as being a useful trade barrier lever.
Government are usually lobbied and convinced into thinking they win too, but whether they do or not then the next election comes around and it no longer matters (Hey, the out of work pollie can always become a lobbiest, eh Algore?)
This whole show goes ahead because there are a myriad of sectors and individuals who think they can see an advantage, and there are a whole lot of “average Joe public” out there who will buy anything if you wrap it well enough and tell them a the same time they are saving the world.
The one constant among advocates of Man-Caused Climate Change is that only government can solve the problem, and the bigger the government solution the better, and the more it justifies destruction of individual rights and prosperity the better. I don’t need a PhD.to recognize socialists worshiping Gaia when I see it.
Haven’t you heard Mr. Moncton? 2012 is going to be the first, or second or third warmest year on record. Greenland and the Antarctic are melting at unprecedented rates and destructive storms are going to destroy us. Denier! (Sarc off )
J Philip
Here’s an article showing exactly the trend you describe:
Increased efficiency in home appliances ranges from 40 to 200% since 1981.
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/12/the-good-old-days-are-now-todays-home-appliances-are-cheaper-better-and-more-energy-efficient-than-ever-before/
Of course, predicting these advances in technology is just as difficult as predicting changes in the climate. One wonders how the models “control” for these factors. Of course, they can’t.
“MikeB says:
December 2, 2012 at 8:23 am
“Why is the long term temperature trend from say 1950 – 2012 higher than for 1950 – 1997 if warming stopped in 1997 as per the article, surely the long term trend should be lower or the same if you include data points from 1997-2012 if warming stopped in 1997?”
Does anyone have a proper answer?”
I have a novel analogy, same principle. The Grand Old Duke of York is marching his men to the top of the hill and then marching them down again and he measures their height every hour and calculates average height since the start of their trek.
Every hour from the start of their trek their average height is higher than the previous hour. Whan he starts marching them down again the average height from the start of the trek continues to get higher for several hours. When they get back to the bottom he calculates their average height from the start and is surprised that at the end of the trek their average height by this method is approx half the height of the hill.
But The grand Old Duke fancies himself as a scientist and in the face of the empirical evidence he hypothesises that when you march your men to the top of the hill, because they are no longer putting weight on the zero level then the height of the ground level rises by half the height they have risen to the top.
He is also a great fan of Feynman and as he has already done the experiment by originally marching his men to the top of the hill and back he has validated his hypotheses. Just to prove his theory is robust to walking to the bottom of valleys and back up the other side he is not surprised to find that when they get to the top of the otherside of the valley his average height is approx half the depth of the valley below the level.
And the corollary of the story which Feynman failed to convey is that if you are as stupid as the Grand Old Duke of York don’t get involved with science.
LetsBeReasonable says: December 2, 2012 at 3:35 am – Werner, I must have done something wrong with the graphs. I changed the starting point at 1996 instead of 1997 and all the trend lines went up. What is happening?
Being a skeptic, I did that too. The conclusion is, there is warming (it has been around for some time) but not since 1997. The assertion “there has been no warming during the past 16 years” is true. (And what will happen now?)
I’ve just watched an excruciating report on the BBC on the Doha Climate Jamboree with uber warmonger Roger Harriban spouting 5 minutes of absolute climate bollocks. Absolutely outrageous stuff. I was swearing at the telly.
Jordan says:
December 2, 2012 at 8:04 am
Well said – I would be interested to observe the same ‘situation’ played out at RC or SkS – the good lady could try and post a query there about why there is no warming, perhaps posting a link to this piece? Anyone want to bet how long the post would survive?
That said, if the woman has any real interest in the environment, she will find out in short order how badly she is being mislead and conned and will return!
If any of the responses have ‘engaged’ her brain and her curiosity – and she does indeed start to question the consensus – this will be yet another small victory for science!
“Why is the long term temperature trend from say 1950 – 2012 higher than for 1950 – 1997 if warming stopped in 1997 as per the article, surely the long term trend should be lower or the same if you include data points from 1997-2012 if warming stopped in 1997?”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That’s one of the dangers of messing with anomalies and trying to ram linear trends through them. Remember that anomalies are a difference from a starting point. So, two anomalies of the same value mean no change, but that’s now how the math comes out depending on what the average of the time series is and what those anomalies are in comparison to that average. I’ll use a made up and exagerated series to demonstrate.
Suppose we have 6 anomalies as follows:
1,2,3,4,5,15
The “average” anomaly would be 5. The trend would be 2*5/5=2
Now let’s add a 7th anomaly which represents 0 change from the 6th one:
1,2,3,4,5,15,15
The “average” anomaly is now 6.42. The trend would be 2*6.42/6=2.14
So….nothing changed from year 6 to year 7, but the trend over all went up. Let’s add another year of no change:
1,2,3,4,5,15,15,15
The “average” is now 7.5. The trend would be 2*7.5/7=2.14
At this point, the trend hasn’t changed much because there are more years of data, so adding one year is a smaller portion of the data as a whole. We’ve reached a break even point of sorts. If we add still one more year of no change, the trend will start to decline:
1,2,3,4,5,15,15,15,15
The “average” is now 8.3, still higher than before. But the trend 2*8.33/8=2.08 went down.
So, by adding anomalies which represent a change of 0 year over year, we can show that depending on the average and the number of data points on each side of the average, we can create a “trend” that seems to increase as we add additional years of no change, and then decrease as we add still more years of no change. If we wrote the whole data series as the year over year change we would get:
_,1,1,1,1,10,0,0,0,0
By looking at it “year over year” we can see that there were increasing temps for the first 5 years and then no change after that. Anomalies have many problems in terms of how they mask the real data, and this is one of them.
Patricia, I think you will agree that all human caused disasters are caused by people doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. You are advocating just that. We could use all available resources to prevent further warming, only to be confronted by long and protracted cooling.
I cannot definitively point to the dire consequences, of diverting resources to the non-problem of AGW, as the consequences will only appear after the fact. Starvation and mass death are known consequences of protracted cooling and history should provide plenty of precedence of such. Comparatively, a fractional warming has always been a boon to the earth’s bio-mass and humanity. CO2 has been proven to be a boon to biosphere in both quantity and quality and to artificially declare it a pollutant, will prove disastrous, to the biomass and our economy.
The precautionary first principle is to take no actions unless the consequences of such actions can be predicted. Where is the model capable of such certainty?! You need to go back to the beginning, of your climate investigations, and read published papers, that do not support the current ideological driven research. There is much you are not aware of, and WUWT archives will give you an idea, of how much research you have missed.
The great hue and cry, by misinformed environmentalist to “DO SOMETHING… ANYTHING AT ALL” is a recipe for disaster, of the human kind. GK
So wait, you are saying that fossil fuels do not cause warming, but that if we shift away from them to clean energies, there is a risk of the earth cooling? Uh, could you just think that through and try agan?
Silver Ralph says:
December 2, 2012 at 7:22 am
….I contacted Greenpeace UK about the ever increasing world population – which represents the greatest threat to the world environment, more so than any trace gas could possibly be.
Their answer was that “Greenpeace never has and never will campaign on population issues”. So there you have it. Greenpeace will never address or debate the most important factor in the moders world – overpopulation…..
____________________________________
They can not address it because the best method for reducing population is modern INDUSTRIAL civilization and they are opposed to industrialization.
Third world food production needs cheap labor aka child labor. Food production accounts for about 70% of child labor in the world. In some instances the children are sold into “Bonded labour” link 1 and link 2 Either way the child is look at as a financial asset for the family. Some child workers are reported to be as young as four according to the US department of Labor. As the report states “”Slavery is not dead.”1 It is found in the practice of forced or bonded child labor, which is considered to be the most exploitative and egregious form of child labor.”
Take a look at the fertility rates for different countries and you can see modern INDUSTRIAL countries have a fertility rate at or below the replacement rate of 2.1
Pat… hilarious. Everything you say. Simply hilarious. I actually blew stuff out of my nose when you implied that 350.org is a credible source of “scientific” information. LOL! Here’s another extremely credible source of info for you… http://www.nationalenquirer.com/
LOL! LOL!
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1950/to:2012/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1950/to:1996/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1997/to:2012/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1950/to:2012/mean:3
Here’s a wood for trees plot that illustrates. The trend from 1950 to 1996 is clearly lower than the trend from 1997 to 2012. But when the two are combined, the over all trend is higher than either of them. With anomalies, 2+2 can sometimes =5.
Patricia Ravasio (@patravasio) says:
What could possibly be the harm in pursuing newer, cleaner forms of energy?
What would these forms be?
Wind power is literally prehistoric with the first photo voltaic cell having been made in 1839. Producing even modern wind turbines and solar cells results in all sorts of pollution. They are also both a very poor way to generate electricity. Needing 100% backup from either steam or gas turbine.
If wind power was so good commercial shipping would never have switched to steam (and later internal combustion) engines.
Rufus says:
December 2, 2012 at 10:17 am
“Of course, predicting these advances in technology is just as difficult as predicting changes in the climate. One wonders how the models “control” for these factors. Of course, they can’t.”
Ray Kurzweil has occupied himself with that for the past 30 years. see
http://www.kurzweilai.net/
It’s noteworthy that the article provides no references to back up the statement that there has been no warming for the last 16 years. Not entirely surprising, since it’s based on an article published in a British tabloid newspaper, the Daily Mail (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released–chart-prove-it.html#ixzz29ZOznOnr), and which misrepresents the work of the Met Office themselves (http://earthsky.org/earth/uk-met-office-responds-global-warming-did-not-stop-16-years-ago)
markx says:
December 2, 2012 at 10:07 am
…Now, having said that I don’t hold that there is a conspiracy or an “Ag Cartel” ….
____________________________________
Just to make it clear I did not come up with “Ag Cartel” Dr. John M. Connor, Dept. of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University did. THE FOOD AND AGRICULTURAL GLOBAL CARTELS OF THE 1990s: OVERVIEW AND UPDATE
So yes the Ag cartel was alive and well in the 1990’s and pushing for the 1995 WTO agreement on Agriculture that was written by Cargill VP Dan Amstutz.
Jimbo says:
December 2, 2012 at 3:18 am
I maybe wrong here but the 16 years without warming is more serious than previously thought. Are we getting near to falsification as projected by the IPCC / Hansen style????? If not then how many years would it take?
There’s no way to falsify a narrative or an ideology until it becomes entirely absurd, and even then it will have supporters.
Josualdo says:
December 2, 2012 at 10:06 am
Patricia Ravasio (@patravasio) says:
December 2, 2012 at 1:44 am
[…[It’s not about religion at all, but about calculating risks of doing nothing, versus the potential upside of facing what may indeed (and no one really knows) be the most serious issue our species will ever face.[…]
The precautionary principle!,
Exactly! Had the precautionary principle ruled mankind, a horse might never had been tamed, fire would have been left to the gods, the moon would have been only to view by the curious and so it would have been that mariners stayed on dry land as well.
The faulty claim in the precautionary CAGW crowd is: There is no tsunami to make an escape. Who would not enjoy the comfort of a warmer climate? Obviously those who spend entire lives living in Las Vegas manage 120+ degree days. Imagine I could plant banana trees and limes for my home grown agave tequila drinks; stay home to sleep off my tequila; play golf when I am not sleeping…everyday; read WUWT under a palm enjoying the warm CAGW breezes. (no flies please)
Point here is the CAGW alarmist are crying wolf but the only wolf are the alarmist wolves baiting their prey.
@RGB@Duke
WOW! Great comment, worthy of being made into a post IMHO. Although, I would have preferred “fueled by” instead of “burning” with regards to uranium; but, oh well, it’s a small matter.
@Patrick Guinness Ravasio
You insinuate your comment might not get posted and that its content is somehow difficult to our position with “then you will publish this comment with a reply” thereby accusing WUWT of censorship and WUWT’ers of having a delicate position highly dependent upon information control. I’m sure you’re psyche has rationalized away what should by all rights be a realization that it is your position that is delicate and requires careful control of information. After you’ve had a few days to digest what happened I want you to consider two things.
1) You cite the PR site [desmog] who likes to insult people by accusing them of PR, without realizing that we read that site too.
2) Why have you been reluctant to approve my comment on your blog? Please tell me you’re not exhibiting the projectionist tendencies that we’ve seen all too often among the alarmists.
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Jimbo says: December 2, 2012 at 10:39 am
Patricia,
You have been replied to by physicist on WUWT. He always gets to the heart of the matter. You may learn a thing or two. Read it, you have nothing to lose.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/01/18-annual-climate-gabfests-16-years-without-warming/#comment-1162124
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John West says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
December 2, 2012 at 9:09 am
Wait a minute, “ill effects of fossil fuel mining and use are a much greater threat to humankind”, please compare and contrast life circa 1850 to now in countries that have developed fossil fuel infrastructures; then compare and contrast the standard of living in those countries to those that haven’t developed fossil fuel infrastructures before rattling on about how evil fossil fuels are. We owe a lot to fossil fuel use, including a better environment. Imagine if we were all still cooking with wood and riding horses, what an environmental disaster. Look, we didn’t grow dependent on fossil fuels overnight and we’re not going to switch to “renewables” overnight by abandoning our infrastructure investment either, that would be foolish. Yes, eventually fossil fuels will either be replaced or re-sourced but this kind of transition isn’t going to happen quickly nor does it need to. What’s the worst thing that could happen? 5+ billion people in the world with over half starving and/or freezing. That’s the real stuff of mayhem. Not to mention a whole new set of bureaucracies, taxes, and possible loss of sovereignty to an international organization with no checks and balances, regard to population (i.e.: Iran = 1 vote, USA = 1 vote), or fundamental understanding of individual rights and the potential loss of liberty that goes with all of that top down “we know what’s best” mentality in power. “Puh-lease”, I’d rather have the warming.
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Pat Ravasio says: December 2, 2012 at 8:37 am
But even if this is correct, what’s the downside to developing clean energies that will not pollute the atmosphere, our water, our lands and our bodies? Especially since investing in these activities will stimulate the economy? Let’s take a small portion of that huge defense budget and defend ourselves against the known and unknown ill effects of fossil fuels.