Dr. James Hansen and Reto Ruedy of NASA GISS have written a paper (non peer reviewed) with a remarkable admission in it. It is titled Global Temperature Update Through 2012.
Here is the money quote, which pretty much ends the caterwauling from naysayers about global temperature being stalled for the last decade.
The five-year mean global temperature has been flat for the last decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slow down in the growth rate of net climate forcing.
Gosh, I thought Hansen had claimed that “climate forcings” had overwhelmed natural variability?
In 2003 Hansen wrote a widely distributed (but not peer reviewed) paper called Can We Defuse the Global Warming Time Bomb? in which he argues that human-caused forcings on the climate are now greater than the natural ones, and that this, over a long time period, can cause large climate changes.
As we shall see, the small forces that drove millennial climate changes are now overwhelmed by human forcings.
According to Hansen’s latest essay, apparently not. So much for “da bomb”.
Here are some other interesting excerpts from his recent essay, Bob Tisdale take note:
An update through 2012 of our global analysis reveals 2012 as having practically the same temperature as 2011, significantly lower than the maximum reached in 2010. These short-term global fluctuations are associated principally with natural oscillations of tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures summarized in the Nino index in the lower part of the figure. 2012 is nominally the 9th warmest year, but it is indistinguishable in rank with several other years, as shown by the error estimate for comparing nearby years. Note that the 10 warmest years in the record all occurred since 1998.
The current stand-still of the 5-year running mean global temperature may be largely a consequence of the facr [sic] that the first half of the past 10 years had predominantly El Nino conditions, and the second half had predominantly La Nina conditions.
The approximate stand-still of global temperature during 1940-1975 is generally attributed to an approximate balance of aerosol cooling and greenhouse gas warming during a period of rapid growth of fossil fuel use with little control on particulate air pollution, but quantitative interpretation has been impossible because of the absence of adequate aerosol measurements.
That last part about 1940-1975 is telling, given that we now have a cleaner atmosphere, and less aerosols to reflect sunlight, it goes without saying that more sunlight now reaches the surface. Since GISS is all about the surface temperature, that suggests (to rational thinkers at least) that some portion of the surface temperature rise post 1975 is due to pollution controls being enacted.
But, he’s still arguing for an imbalance, even though flatness abounds. Seems like equilibrium to me…
Climate change expectations.
The continuing planetary imbalance and the rapid increase of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel assure that global warming will continue on decadal time scales. Moreover, our interpretation of the larger role of unforced variability in temperature change of the past decade suggests that global temperature will rise significantly in the next few years as the tropics moves inevitably to the next El Nino phase.
Except when natural forcings overwhelm the human component of course.
It’s got nothing to do with me not liking averages, it’s taking an average of disparate things. Averaging intensive variables doesn’t give you anything meaningful.
And I’ve mentioned just that many times. You have to measure heat content, not temperature. Here’s the link again in case you missed it.
Jan P Perlwitz says:
January 16, 2013 at 4:31 pm
It has always been said that natural variability dominates the atmospheric temperature record on short time scales.
I agree, but what is “short”? According to NOAA, 15 years is not short. However the average of the satellite data says there has been no warming for over 15 years. See:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/plot/rss/from:1997.9/trend/plot/uah/from:1997/plot/uah/from:1997.9/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.9/trend/detrend:-0.0735/offset:-0.080/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/trend
I have to agree with Jeff Alberts here. Although there is a putative global temperature, it is largely a SWAG [Scientific Wild A$$ Guess].
JohnH says:
January 16, 2013 at 4:56 pm
“…The good news is that maybe he’ll stop scaring the heck out of his grandchildren.”
To me this is one of the worst things to come out of the CAGW scam: an entire generation of school children have been brainwashed and ndoctrinated – and scared – into believing this bullshit.
If measured competently, it’s the best we have.
Jeff Alberts says:
January 16, 2013 at 8:40 pm
“there is no global mean temperature”
This is often used as an excuse for not knowing anything, but science progresses not by what is strictly true in some sense, but by how useful something or a concept is in predicting how a system behaves. An example is the effective temperature of the Sun or a star. Those entities are also not in thermodynamic equilibrium, but we can derive the very useful concept of an effective temperature as that temperature [an intrinsic variable] that would produce the amount of radiation we receive [an extensive variable] under the assumption of a radiation law [e.g. black body]. This effective temperature also does not ‘exist’ in a strict sense [there may be no part of the star that actually has that temperature], but is extremely useful for the understanding the Sun and the stars. We can also observe the Earth from space [perhaps from far away] and calculate the Earth’s effective temperature and monitor how it changes over time. The various ‘global temperatures’ quoted are approximations to that useful concept ‘effective temperature’. The only question is how good that approximation is. Most scientists would believe the approximation is good provided the network of temperature sensors is dense and regular enough. To reject the concept you have to show that the approximation is not valid. That you have not done.
“The continuing planetary imbalance and the rapid increase of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel assure that global warming will continue on decadal time scales. ”
Have I heard this before? Oh, yes…..
ARTHUR: You are indeed brave, Sir knight, but the fight is mine.
BLACK KNIGHT: Oh, had enough, eh?
ARTHUR: Look, you stupid bastard, you’ve got no arms left.
BLACK KNIGHT: Yes I have.
ARTHUR: Look!
BLACK KNIGHT: Just a flesh wound.
Since it appears that AGW may have been related to the drop of particulate emissions rather than CO2, isn’t it reasonable to conclude that the EPA is maybe at least partially responsible for AGW? Save the world, ban the EPA. More research funding necessary.
[snip – as well as Stealy’s comment spurring this one]
“the first half of the past 10 years had predominantly El Nino conditions, and the second half had predominantly La Nina conditions”
In other words, the PDO cycle turned about 10 years ago. And the warming phase of 1979-98 resulted from the PDO flipping the other way in 1976.
What happened to Occam’s Razor?
There’s no climb down here.
This is the new party line:
“The Warming is Being Concealed by the Cooling [Natural Variation].”
It’s the same story that’s in that SS video that is circulating everywhere.
I hesitate to link to it, but for reference here it is.
Whether this is a coordinated propaganda campaign or not is questionable, after all these folks talk at dinner and in the bar. I’ll give JH the benefit of the doubt and believe he’s just jumping on the bandwagon, and he wasn’t assigned to write this paper during the weekly conspiracy conference call.
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Standstill. Well, catastrophic for the alarmists, anyway.
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Funny how, having reluctantly admitted that there has been no global warming over the last 16/20 years, the ‘warmists’ now confidently predict that ‘it’ll all start going up again around 2017..’
Based on – what, exactly..?
Tak Leif, sikken et fjols
David says:
January 17, 2013 at 5:02 am
Funny how, having reluctantly admitted that there has been no global warming over the last 16/20 years, the ‘warmists’ now confidently predict that ‘it’ll all start going up again around 2017..’
Based on – what, exactly..?
Fervent prayers.
Typhoon says:
January 16, 2013 at 9:05 am
It continues to puzzle me how one can take this stuff seriously:
1/ Claiming to know the “global average temperature” to within +/- 0.2C back in 1880 as much of the planet was; a/ not instrumented and b/ instrumental errors associated with thermometer calibration, accuracy, drift, reproducibility. and siting were not insignificant. Such measurement issues are still a challenge today as Watt’s et al US station survey project demonstrated.
2/ The concept of a “global average temperature” is a dubious physical concept given that the atmosphere is a open highly dynamic system far from thermodynamic equilibrium. What one should be calculating is total heat content, if anything.
Absolutely.
And any measurement of the atmospheric heat content should be in kilojoules per kilogram. Unfortunately, the climate scientists have managed to convince everyone that carbon dioxide traps temperature 😉 So that is what they measure.
There are a few of us beating the enthalpy drum – but everyone still clusters around the lampost arguing about ‘average temperatures’ which can tell you nothing about heat content – but that’s difficult – come over here under the light. {sigh}
It is asserted here by many that there has been “no global warming” for 16 years or “global warming stopped 16 years ago” or similar, based on the fact that the atmospheric temperature increase hasn’t been statistically significant, because some x% threshold probability over such a time wasn’t exceeded. However, this assertion is lacking scientific validity, since the failure to reject a statistical Null-hypothesis (in this case “no global warming”) doesn’t allow the conclusion that the statistical Null-hypothesis was true. Only the successful rejection of the Null-hypothesis allows a probabilistic statement as conclusion that the Null-hypothesis is false, in favor of the alternative hypothesis (in this case presence of global warming). Otherwise one could claim at any point in time that there hasn’t been any change of any statistical variable, if one just cherry picks the data sample small enough. For instance, one could split the temperature record since the mid-1970ies in small enough pieces, and then none of the temperature changes within the limits of the pieces would be statistically significant. According to the flawed reasoning applied by many here, one would have to conclude that there wasn’t any global warming in any of those limited time periods, i.e., no global warming since the mid-1970ies at all. On the other hand, the Null-hypothesis of “no global warming” in the atmospheric temperature record since the mid-1970 can be successfully rejected by doing the statistical significance test over the data from the whole time period from the mid-1970 to today. Global warming and no global warming can’t be both true at the same time. A statement and its negation can’t be both true at the same time. Thus, one of the approaches must be wrong, and it is not the one that uses the more comprehensive data set for the analysis.
Empirical evidence for the assertion that the positive multi-decadal temperature trend since the mid-1970ies, which is statistically significant, was not intact in this century anymore has not been presented so far by the ones who claim “global warming stopped”. Such evidence could be provided, for instance, if it was shown that the temperature record of recent years statistically significantly deviated from the multi-decadal trend, or from the statistically significant positive trend in the decades up-to the point when global warming allegedly stopped. As long as such evidence has not been provided, the claims about the allegedly stopped global warming are only conjecture without scientific basis by the ones who make such a claim. Until this evidence isn’t there, I don’t see any reason to think beyond just speculation that the temperature record of recent years wasn’t anything else than just another random wobble due to unforced variability, which is going to wobble in the other direction in the near future (and then add to the trend again), like this was the case for the global atmospheric temperature record from 1980 to 1994, when the change wasn’t statistically significant either, which resolved afterward, or the upward wobble in the Arctic sea ice after at this time minimum on record in 2007, or the downward wobble in the global sea level in 2010. It’s a pattern that temporary wobbles in climate variables in the opposite direction of the trend, which are just part of the noise overlaying the trend, are being interpreted by “skeptics” as trend reversals and alleged evidence that AGW wasn’t true, every time when such a wobble appears in the record of some variable.
If it was shown that the recent temperature record significantly deviated from the statistically significant warming trend up to the point when global warming allegedly stopped, it would be reasonable to think that the empirically data indicated something has been really different in recent years and to think about what could have caused this. Thus, show me the data and the statistical evidence.
jeez says:
January 17, 2013 at 2:21 am
In effect, Warmists are saying that a lack of signal triggers an interest in natural variation because natural variation hides the signal. Mind you, natural variation cannot do anything else. It cannot increase the signal or cause a false increase in the signal or affect the signal in other ways than hiding it. Obviously, then, natural variation is the enemy of climate science as practiced by Hansen and his followers. I hope it is obvious to everyone that such thinking is more akin to religion than science.
Oh, and the kicker is that Warmists now want credit for taking into account natural variation even though they studiously ignored it when developing their theory of the signal. Sorry, Warmists, but you cannot treat natural variation as something important only when it suits your purposes of supporting your particular theory.
Perlwitz says:
“It is asserted here by many that there has been “no global warming” for 16 years or “global warming stopped 16 years ago”… However, this assertion is lacking scientific validity…”
Wrong. It is not just “asserted”, it is a verified scientific fact: global warming has stopped.
Perlwitz continues:
“…show me the data and the statistical evidence.”
With pleasure:
click1
click2
click3
click4 [10 separate data sets]
Perlwitz refuses to accept reality: global warming has stopped.
@ur momisugly Jan Perlwitz; You seem to be in denial of the fact that there has been no further warming since 1997. We get that this fact is inconvenient for you Warmists, and we sympathize. Your much-ballyhooed and cherished Warmist ideology is going the way of the Dodo, and this must be very troubling. Perhaps some counseling would be in order.
But Jeff Alberts says that there is no global temperature, so stop all this talking.
Perlwitz says: January 17, 2013 at 8:03 am
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Jan Perlwitz does not even pretend to fool himself.
So Jan, how much warming in the last sixteen years? Would you care to tell us?
Jan Perlwitz: once again:
Jan P Perlwitz says: January 16, 2013 at 4:31 pm
I do not know any statement by Hansen from the past, or by any other climate scientist, for the matter of fact, according to which anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcings supposedly overwhelmed natural unforced variability, for instance the ones related to ENSO, on any arbitrarily chosen short time scale.
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If “anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcings” are submerged in short term flutuations, there is no reason to suppose that it would be otherwise in the long term climate trends, as exemplified by the MWP and LIA.
You dismiss the temperature record of the last sixteen years as “any arbitrarily chosen short time scale.” You fool none but yourself with such statements.
Mooloo says:
January 16, 2013 at 7:25 pm
Jeff Alberts says:
No it isn’t obvious, because there is no “global temperature”.
There isn’t a GDP either, by such logic.
“Global temperature”, like GDP, is a statistical measure. You can argue about how it should be measured, or whether it is a useful measure (as economists do with GDP). But you can’t argue that it doesn’t exist because it is a statistical measure not a direct one.
For sure “IQ” is not necessarily a useful measure, but it goes too far to say that just because IQ measurements aren’t useful that they don’t exist. IQ is an attempt to measure a person’s intelligence. Can I conclude that there is no such thing as a smart person or a stupid person, on the basis that measuring it precisely is tricky?
So there is a global temperature. It isn’t a good metric, perhaps. But you just look like an argumentative fool trying to deny it merely on the basis you don’t like averages.
There is an average telephone number for New York too and I am sure you could come up with a CIE average color for cars on the I-95 to compare it with a CIE average color for cars on the I-10.
However, averaging an intensive variable is demonstration of lack of understanding of what it is we are required to measure. We should not even be measuring ‘heat content’ by using ‘atmospheric temperature’.
But what can you expect when these people are using ad hominems like ‘climate denier’.