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In 2003 Hansen wrote a widely distributed (but not peer reviewed) paper called Can We Defuse the Global Warming Time Bomb?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.
Mr. Stealey,
Before you continue to embarrass yourself, I recommend you make yourself familiar with some basic concepts in statistics like Null-hypothesis, statistical significance tests, error probability, and what can be concluded from the successful rejection of a Null-hypothesis, or the failure of a rejection, My request was to show with the available empirical data at hand that the atmospheric temperature record of recent years statistically significantly deviates from the multi-decadal atmospheric warming trend, which is statistically significant, for instance up-to the point when atmospheric global warming allegedly stopped. A little pointer. In this case the Null-hypothesis that must be successfully rejected is the warming trend. Your colored graphs displaying merely some temperature data from cherry picked time intervals do not provide anything of the requested. There are no significance tests there, no uncertainty ranges. Nothing. As long as there is no evidence provided that the recent atmospheric temperature record statistically significantly deviates from the multi-decadal warming trend, the statement that global atmospheric warming stopped allegedly 16 years ago or so is as scientifically meaningless as the statement that global atmospheric warming allegedly stopped last night.
BTW: The assertion of the “stopped global warming” contains actually much more than just a statement about the global atmospheric temperature trend. It is an assertion that the physical process of heat accumulation in the whole atmosphere-ocean-land-cryosphere system due to the radiative perturbation by increasing greenhouse gases has come to a stop. The global atmospheric temperature trend is rather of secondary nature here, since more than 80% of the additional energy available due to the radiative imbalance by greenhouse gases goes into heating the oceans. The oceans heat the atmosphere, then. The heat accumulation in the oceans doesn’t show any “flat” trend since the start of this century:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
which indicates that heat flux from the oceans to the atmosphere will continue to warm the atmosphere in coming decades, even if the increase in greenhouse gases totally stopped. Just to add an argument from physics against the unscientific assertion that global warming “stopped” to the mere statistical argument above. The accelerating melting of the ice in the polar regions of the planet also indicates the continuance of heat accumulation in the system.
Ian W says:
January 17, 2013 at 12:26 pm
The question which arises is what, exactly, does the global average temperature metric measure? It appears to me that it would essentially be putting the most weight on those areas with the greatest temperature variability, i.e., with the lowest local heat capacities. As such, it is basically a measure proportional to average heat in the desert areas of the world, by far the largest of those being the Antarctic, the Arctic, and the Sahara.
Bruce Cobb, your reply in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/16/quote-of-the-week-hansen-concedes-the-age-of-flatness/#comment-1201360
makes the thread recursive, since you only repeat the assertion that something was a “fact”, after I already had replied to this assertion. Please go back to my comment,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/16/quote-of-the-week-hansen-concedes-the-age-of-flatness/#comment-1201297
where you can find my reply.
Even the x-th repetition of an assertion that is actually just a conjecture which comes without any empirical, statistical evidence was a “fact” doesn’t make it a fact. If the request for such evidence is supposed to be a valid criterion for being “in denial”, so be it. If blind acceptance of a conjecture as a “fact” is required to lose this label, so be it. Interesting that you recommend to me to seek council because I was not willing to behave like a true “skeptical” believer who accepts any assertion as a “fact”, even if it comes without any empirical, statistical evidence, as long as it states something that allegedly refutes AGW.
mpainter asks in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/16/quote-of-the-week-hansen-concedes-the-age-of-flatness/#comment-1201441
About 10^22 Joules accumulation of additional heat in the upper 2000 m of the world oceans according to NOAA data. This is the most important physical variable for the process of global warming, since more than 80% of the additional heat available due to the perturbation in the radiative balance by increasing greenhouse gases goes into the oceans.
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
mpainter wrote in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/16/quote-of-the-week-hansen-concedes-the-age-of-flatness/#comment-1201464
Your conclusion is logically a non-sequitur. The incremental change in the anthropogenic forcing is smaller from one year to the next than on a time scale of 10 years, and this one is smaller than the one on a time scale of more than a hundred years. With an increasing magnitude of the anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing over time, one can’t conclude that natural variability of the temperature would equally overwhelm the effect on the temperature record of an anthropogenic forcing change on longer time scales, over which it is large in magnitude, because natural variability overwhelmed the effect of an anthropogenic forcing change on arbitrarily small time scales over which it is only small. The range of natural variability over different time scales can be estimated from data. The magnitude of natural forcings can be estimated from data and calculated, within some uncertainty range. Those can be compared with the magnitude of the anthropogenic forcings. This allows conclusions on what time scales the magnitude of the anthropogenic forcing and their effect can be expected to be larger than natural forcings and their effect and larger than natural unforced variability. Natural variability hasn’t overwhelmed the effect of anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing on the global atmospheric temperature over a time scale of multiple decades since the mid-1970ies. Here you have a time scale over which anthropogenic forcings and their effect were larger. The statistically significant increase in the global atmospheric temperature since the mid-1970ies was not caused by natural variability, forced or unforced.
Just provide the requested empirical, statistical evidence, which shows that the temperature record over those 16 years was of any importance to draw a valid conclusion that global warming “stopped”. Otherwise, the time scale of 16 years is equally arbitrary and meaningless as the time scale since last night, regarding such a conclusion. One always can find a time scale, if chosen sufficiently short enough, for which a trend in a statistical variable can’t be detected with statistical significance. Arguments directed against me as a person don’t do it.
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.
============
So, now Hansen is saying that it isn’t the level of CO2 that causes warming, rather it is the rate of increase in CO2. This is entirely new science because it means that increasing CO2 is not enough to raise temperatures. You must have increasing rate of CO2 increase.
However, the rate of increase in CO2 is not decreasing.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png
But we finally do have Hansen at least admitting that it isn’t increasing CO2 that causes warming. Rather you need the rate of increase to be increasing. If the rate of increase is level (as the Mauna Loa measurements shows) then temperatures are level.
This is what was shown a couple of years back by as I recall an Israeli mathematicians using techniques more common in financial analysis, and picked up on by a couple of popular blogs. That temperature was not driven by CO2 levels, but rather by the rate of change of CO2. It appears that Hansen agrees.
Perlwitz says:
“Your colored graphs displaying merely some temperature data from cherry picked time intervals…”
Those “colored graphs” are empirical evidence. They are constructed from recognized and accepted real world data bases.
Perlwitz is just flailing around, trying to explain why his predicted CO2=CAGW conjecture is failing. Even Hansen is now moving the goal posts, because he couldn’t score from where he had placed them. Despite te continuing rise of CO2, global warming has stopped.
But some folks just can’t handle reality.
Jan P Perlwitz says:
January 17, 2013 at 1:20 pm
The assertion of the “stopped global warming” contains actually much more than just a statement about the global atmospheric temperature trend. It is an assertion that the physical process of heat accumulation in the whole atmosphere-ocean-land-cryosphere system due to the radiative perturbation by increasing greenhouse gases has come to a stop.
You are getting closer, but not quite there yet. The physical process of AGW, although real, was never much of a player in the first place, except in the fevered imaginations and in the C02-centric GCMs of you Warmists. The warming was almost entirely natural, in other words. The fact that the warming has indeed stopped the last 16 years, despite your protestations, is just an obvious indication of the fact that man’s C02 has only a very minor effect on climate.
Keep plugging away, though. You’ll get there eventually.
Jan P Perlw1tz:
At January 17, 2013 at 1:20 pm you say
Oh! So you are moving the goal posts!
For decades I and others have been arguing that global temperature is an undefined metric; e.g. see
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/memo/climatedata/uc0102.htm
But while global temperature was rising you and your colleagues adamantly proclaimed that mean global temperature was what we had to worry about. Indeed, the economy of the entire world needed to be altered to avoid global temperature rising by 2.0 deg.C.
And you made ‘adjustments’ like this
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/giss/hansen-giss-1940-1980.gif
to enhance those assertions.
Now, when even the adjustments cannot show warming for 15+ years, you say we should ignore global temperature and consider “heat accumulation in the system”!
And among all the waffle, red herrings, and obfuscation in your post, you don’t answer the clear and simple question put to you by mpainter January 17, 2013 at 11:22 am; i.e.
Instead of obfuscation, please answer the question.
Richard
Here is an illustration how one could claim no global warming in different time periods over the last three decades by applying the same flawed methodology of “skeptics” like Courtney, Stealey (who apparently doesn’t even understand any of the arguments about statistics and what would have to deliver to give statements about the allegedly stopped global warming any scientific validity) of using cherry picked time intervals from the atmospheric temperature data series to support the scientifically baseless claims about the allegedly “stopped” global warming:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980/to:1994/plot/rss/from:1980/to:1994/trend/plot/rss/from:1994/to:1997/plot/rss/from:1994/to:1997/trend:0.68/plot/rss/from:1997/to:2013/plot/rss/from:1997/to:2013/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1980/normalise/offset:0.4
Actually, the temperature change in none of three periods is statistically significant. So according to “skeptic” reasoning there couldn’t have been any global warming in any of the three time periods. So “skeptic” way of reasoning says no global warming since 1980 at all.
However, the atmospheric temperature increase over the whole time period is statistically significant, if one includes all the data in the analysis at once. Both can’t be true at the same time.
richardscourtney wrote in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/16/quote-of-the-week-hansen-concedes-the-age-of-flatness/#comment-1201639
For your accusation of applying a logical fallacy, you cherry pick one single sentence that was an additional remark, at the same time ignoring my comprehensive argumentation about the statistics of the global atmospheric temperature record. Cherry picking of a quote, a false accusation, probably for the purpose of distraction.
At the end, important is, anyway, whether an argument is scientifically valid, not whether you like it or not depending on whether it contradicts your spin.
Everyone has the right to an opinion. So what?
No specific quotes, no proof of source. You are fabulating about what I allegedly said in the past, compared to what I, or any of the unspecified colleagues to which you refer, say today.
Some graphics, the source of which is unknown, combined with assertions and innuendo of manipulation, because of alleged sinister motives. No evidence is provided what the source of the adjustments was (for instance, whether they were done due to changes in the methodology applied by Hansen et al., or whether those changes came from the source data, which are not produced at GISS). Also, no evidence is provided that those adjustments were done for other reasons than for legitimate scientific ones. So, just the innuendo and here in the comment the open accusation, how it is typically done by “skeptics” to defame scientists, of fraudulent manipulation without evidence for the validity of the accusations.
And your assertion that I made those adjustments seems to reflect your understanding of guilt by association.
And here come the falsehoods again. I didn’t say anywhere that the global temperature should be ignored. Instead, I made a comprehensive argument about statistical methodology, what conclusions can be validly drawn from applying such methodology to the global atmospheric temperature record, and what empirical, statistical evidence must be delivered so that a valid scientific conclusion can be drawn whether the years in the new century have been different to what had happened in the decades before. I stated clear criteria for what I would consider valid empirical, statistical evidence that would warrant thinking about what has changed and what the causes were for the change.
Nevertheless, I also say that heat accumulation in the system, particularly in the oceans, is more important for the question of continuing global warming, since more than 80% of the additional heat due to the radiative imbalance by greenhouse gases goes into the oceans. The ocean heat anomaly has continued to build up in recent years. What is your argument against this? Do you have any? Also here, it is important whether the argument is scientifically valid, not whether you don’t like it, because it was in contradiction to your spin.
I answered this question. The question did not specify to what part of the system it refers. It is logical to take the oceans, since most of the global warming by heat amount takes place in the oceans. If you claim that my answer was “obfuscation” then this suggests you assert the global ocean heat anomaly was not relevant for the question of global warming. Are you saying the part of whole system, where most of the heat from the greenhouse gas imbalance goes, should be just ignored? Based on what argument from physics?
richardscourtney says:
January 17, 2013 at 4:14 pm
…..And among all the waffle, red herrings, and obfuscation in your post, you don’t answer the clear and simple question put to you by mpainter January 17, 2013 at 11:22 am; i.e.
So Jan, how much warming in the last sixteen years? Would you care to tell us?
Instead of obfuscation, please answer the question.
===========================================================
Gore sells out to “Big Oil”. Hansen admits, “The five-year mean global temperature has been flat for the last decade”.
So is the answer, “Enough warming to cause a warmist meltdown”?
mpainter says:
January 16, 2013 at 11:42 am
====================================
Sorry about any mix up. Sometimes words on a page can be read two ways, like the classic job recommendation: “You’ll be lucky to get him to work for you.”
I mistook your intent. My bad.
Jan P Perlwitz says: January 17, 2013 at 2:52 pm
===============================
Your link to noaa does not work
The oceans are opaque to IR radiation (see absorbency spectrum of water), hence the GHE does not contribute to SST. [You know this, I believe.]
Ergo: ocean heat content is due to some factor other than AGW.
The current post-LIA warming trend will peak and reverse according to natural climate factors. We know this because, as you say, natural climate variability submerges any forcing effect from CO2
[inconsequential effect].
AGW is purely theoretical, with no means of testing. A laboratory vessel is not the earth’s atmosphere. Climate processes are imperfectly understood [and sometimes misunderstood] and an imperfectly understood [or misunderstood] system cannot be reliably modeled. Hence the universal failure of the models to reliably forecast.
However, radiation physics aside, warming is entirely beneficial and is much to be preferred to cooling. Cooling is the real danger to our well-being. The hope that AGW once held for warming the globe by combustion of carbon has been dashed by the recent cooling trend.
ferd berple says:
“So, now Hansen is saying that it isn’t the level of CO2 that causes warming, rather it is the rate of increase in CO2. This is entirely new science because it means that increasing CO2 is not enough to raise temperatures. You must have increasing rate of CO2 increase.”
Ferd is right, as usual. The goal posts have been moved once again, this time by none other than James “Coal Trains of Death” Hansen. So now it’s official. Officially official. ☺
• • •
Werner Brozek brings up this point repeatedly: What, exactly, is a “short” time frame? It appears that ‘short’ is always just a little longer than it takes to finally demolish the CO2=CAGW nonsense. That is why Perlwitz never goes on record with a specific number of years. But sixteen years means that the current no-warming trend is becoming quite significant.
[BTW, I am perfectly willing to change my mind if the current lack of warming were to change to rapid, sustained global warming. That is the central difference between CAGW believers and scientific skeptics. Skeptics listen to what Planet Earth is telling us, while CAGW believers ignore the real world in favor of their always-inaccurate GCMs.]
ferd berple says:
January 17, 2013 at 3:21 pm
“However, the rate of increase in CO2 is not decreasing.”
You were doing well, but you took it one step too far. The rate of increase in CO2 is decreasing, in lockstep with the slowdown in the global temperature metric. Because, you see, it is the temperature driving CO2, and not the other way around.
Hansen is NOT doing a ‘climb down’. At a recent event at The Commonwealth Club, he was very much in favor of suing folks who were not on board with “Climate Change” for “crimes against humanity” and talked about a legal organization with which he is working, and how they were exploring that.path. He also repeatedly stressed the absolute need to “put a price on carbon”…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/12/30/sue-happy-hansen/
Note that in the non-paper referenced above he uses a ‘5 year mean’, so he’s already hiding 5 years via averaging. Spots not changed on this spotted skunk, IMHO.
Jan P Perlw1tz:
I take severe exception to your untrue, offensive and evasive post at January 17, 2013 at 6:58 pm.
My post addressed to you at January 17, 2013 at 4:14 pm was clear, provided links (because I know your excuses from old), and asked for specific responses.
Your reply (at January 17, 2013 at 6:58 pm) was typical of you. It was obscurantist and evasive, told blatant lies, and replaced evidence with insult.
People can read your diatribe to see all your behaviour for themselves: I cite only one example because it demonstrates your misdemeanours and the reason for them.
I pointed out that you had evaded the question to you from mpainter and I posed it again, saying it was
I added
You have replied saying in total
No! You state a blatant lie when you claim to have “answered this question”.
Your obscurantist evasion – n.b. NOT an answer – was in your post at January 17, 2013 at 2:52 pm
mpainter asked about warming and – in context – it is clear he meant global warming.
You have answered by talking about ocean heat content.
The two subjects are completely different!
It is as though mpainter had asked about the colour of the sky and you had answered that the Moon is in the sky and is made of rock.
Warming consists of increase to temperature.
Increase to ocean heat content can occur without change to temperature (e.g. by variation in polar ice). Similarly, as you well know, heat added to a glass containing ice and water will increase the heat in the contents of the glass but will not warm those contents.
And the remainder of your reply to mpainter is similar obscurantism. You were not asked about “the most important physical variable for the process of global warming”: you were asked “how much warming in the last sixteen years”.
And your answer to me uses the omission of the word “global” in the question although that was implicit. Your answer to me says; “The question did not specify to what part of the system it refers.”
The question was about the globe and NOT any “part of the system”. And you then talk about ocean heat content. That is an insult to the reader because it assumes the reader is too stupid to know what the question was about.
Indeed, the importance of “the last sixteen years” must be known to you because you are a climate modeller. NOAA’s State of the Climate report in 2008 said of model simulations of global temperature:
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/climate-assessment-2008-lo-rez.pdf
And that is why you refuse to answer the question from mpainter.
The global temperature trend has been indistinguishable from zero at 95% confidence for more than 15 years whether or not one removes the 1998 ENSO peak. This falsifies your models.
Simply, you are evading the question, obfuscating the issue, and throwing insults because the answer to the question says your modelling work is plain wrong.
Richard
“But, he’s still arguing for an imbalance, even though flatness abounds. Seems like equilibrium to me…”
So you are serously implying that one can determine the energy balance being in equilibrium from the Surface temperature? what about the continued increase in oceanic heat content? and continued warming of the troposphere and stratospheric cooling?
Isn’t Hansen getting close to retirement?
He’s just saving face like James Lovelock did in his last few years, a sense that all you’ve been hypothesising/working on for your whole life has been a pile of BS(bad science) but are willing to admit that you maybe wrong. Leaving your legacy enticed and epitaph cleansed for scrutiny.
In reality you’ve pushed scientific discovery back a 100 years and created(or helped to create) a generation of PHD holding scientific illiterates, computer modellers who have completely destroyed scientific method and analytical/rational thinking and feed a wasteland of CAGW bureaucratic/NGO environmental parasites.
I’d still have respect for Lovelock even if he had not step down from his silly GAIA theory and exaggerated doom and gloom soothsayer predictions, this is science and being wrong is part of discovering the truth.
Hansen on the other hand altered real data and is a criminal in my eyes and no matter how much he steps down that doesn’t change the fact that he has been manipulated data from the past to guide this farce from the beginning. He has single handily set back progress in helping out the poor and hungry in this world by redirecting trillions of dollars to a LIE/imaginary problem. Think about all those trillions of dollars going for helping create energy, healthcare and feeding of poor countries, it would be a better world.
Hansen should be in jail for crimes against humanity.
Where is that quote you cite, Anthony, from Hansen’s paper?
All I can find is this. Didn’t he change it?
NASA’s GISS as led by Hansen now has a role as a bureaucratic handmaiden serving obediently to provide the arguments needed to support an ideology. It bends scientific processes and data to further a belief based on that ideology. Hansen holds the belief above what unadjusted reality shows, so he righteously adjusts systematically what reality shows.
I recommend not letting up on Hansen. Keep on doing many more severe critiques of Hansen. What Hansen has done needs much much more exposure, lest in the future some other government paid charlatan in a scientific costume tries the same pseudo-scientific advocacy of ideology.
What is Hansen’s underling Gavin Schmidt’s excuse? Is it that he was just following ideological orders from above? That he carried out the orders, but did not agree with them?
John
Jan P Perlwitz says:
January 17, 2013 at 6:58 pm
The ocean heat anomaly has continued to build up in recent years. What is your argument against this? Do you have any?
Sea surface temperatures have not changed since March 1997 or 15 years, 10 months (goes to December)
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.1/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.1/trend
So are you suggesting the deep ocean gets warmer without the surface getting warmer?
Truth cannot be hidden forever. Where I sit here in New England, writing this comment, was, just 12,000 years ago, under 5,000 feet of glacial ice. Now that’s global warming.
mpainter wrote in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/16/quote-of-the-week-hansen-concedes-the-age-of-flatness/#comment-1201737
This one?
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
I have no idea why it isn’t working for you. I just have tested it again, also in my previous comments. It works for me.
Neither the first statement, nor the conclusion are correct.
High opaqueness means that the water is highly absorbing in the infrared part of the radiation spectrum. You asserting that an increase in the downward flux of photons of longwave radiation, which are being absorbed at the surface skin of the ocean would not have any effect on the energy budget and the temperature of the oceans. Well, were is all the additional energy going then, which is being absorbed at the ocean skin? Is it just vanishing?
The heat flux from the ocean to the atmosphere, which cools the ocean, depends on the temperature gradient in the ocean skin layer. What happens is that the additionally absorbed longwave radiation, e.g., by a radiative perturbation coming from increased greenhouse gases, decreases the temperature gradient in the skin layer, decreasing the heat flux from the ocean to the atmosphere. With a given amount of incident solar radiation, which warms the ocean mixed layer, more heat is retained in the mixed layer. The mixed layer is warming until a new equilibrium has been reached.
Or here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/09/why-greenhouse-gases-heat-the-ocean/
Deeper ocean layers are warmed by advection of excess heat to those layers, then.
What climate factors are these, supposedly? What are the supposed physical processes behind the “current post-LIA warming trend”?
I did not say that natural climate variability “submerges” any forcing effect from CO2. It is not knowledge that this was the case. Neither our, nor yours. This is only your assertion. What is your scientific evidence for your assertion, according to which any CO2 forcing, whatever the magnitude, would be overwhelmed by natural climate variability on a time-scale from decades to hundreds of years?
If this was true then any of the explanations for climate change, in which you believe, would be purely “theoretical” (I suppose you actually mean “hypothetical”), with no means of testing, as well.
Every aspect of the theory that explains climate and what drives it changes is being tested, including the effect of atmospheric greenhouse gases.
Nothing in Nature, about which scientific theories are being formulated, in any field of science is perfectly understood. Therefore, nothing could be reliably modeled according to you. You have raised the bar infinitely high here. Consequently you would have to reject all of science, if perfect understanding is your criterion for accepting a scientific theory as providing a valid explanation for a phenomenon in Nature.
Your generalizing assertion about an alleged “universal failure of the models” with respect to everything that is being predicted with the models is based on what evidence?
Any warming? Whatever the magnitude? And on what evidence is this assertion founded?
What “recent cooling trend”? And where? Please point me to the data from which one could draw a scientifically valid conclusion that there had been a cooling trend, recently.
richardscourtney in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/16/quote-of-the-week-hansen-concedes-the-age-of-flatness/#comment-1201914
None of your assertions is true. You are lying.
I have answered this question. You just don’t like the answer, because it contradicts your spin, and you can’t refute the answer. Therefore, you are trying to dismiss my answer as invalid.
When the oceans are accumulating more and more energy, the component of the climate system that is most important for the global energy budget due to the enormous heat capacity of the oceans, and the oceans are the major energy source for the heating up of the atmosphere, then you asserting that the ocean warming has nothing to do with global warming. Really!
And the oceans have accumulated a large amount of excess energy since the mid of the last century. If this energy from the ocean heat anomaly was instantaneously released into the lower 10 km of the atmosphere (which comprise about 75% of the atmospheric mass) then this atmospheric layer would warm by whopping 36 K.
(Levitus et al., GRL, 2012, http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2012GL051106)
So your objection reduces to that I didn’t use temperature units for my answer. Divide the change in the ocean heat content by the mass of the water and the specific heat capacity, and you get a number in temperature units. This can be done without problems here, particularly since the change in the ocean heat content is derived from the temperature change. Using temperature units is just another way of expressing the same here.
And I answered this question for the ocean component, more specifically for the part of the ocean for which measurements are available.
Are you sure the question was about the whole of the ocean-land-cryosphere-entire atmosphere system? This is not obvious for me from the discussion. How would you know, that mpainter meant this? Or are you and mpainter one and the same person?
When all those components are taken into consideration for the answer, how would it be possible to make a meaningful statement about the amount of warming by using temperature as a variable, although the physical properties of the components are very different from each other, e.g., the large differences in the heat capacities? The same magnitude of the temperature increase for instance of the oceans and of the atmosphere mean something very different with respect to the energy budget, because of the large difference of the heat capacities. Shouldn’t the answer be meaningful from the point of view of physics?
Or maybe you mean something totally different, when you say “globe” and “global”, since you also assert that the ocean heat content change had nothing to do with “global” warming? Please explain your definition of the words “globe” and “global” then, so that I understand what you are talking about.
You present this quote as a statement in the report about the global temperature. You conveniently have not quoted the immediately preceding sentence,
ENSO-adjusted warming in the three surface temperature datasets over the last 2–25 yr continually lies within the 90% range of all similar-length ENSO-adjusted temperature changes in these simulations (Fig. 2.8b).
The quote is really about the global mean atmospheric temperature after adjusting for ENSO, i.e., after the contribution to the temperature variability coming from ENSO has been subtracted from the temperature records. By your way of quoting, you can give the impression to readers, who don’t pay attention and don’t check the source, that the quote as cited by you was a statement about the global atmospheric temperature without adjusting for ENSO, and that the statement said, if there was a Zero trend in the observed temperature record of 15 years or more, it would be valid to conclude a discrepancy between model prediction and observations. I wonder whether this was intended by you, whether you deliberately try to mislead the readers here. Besides, the topic of the discussion here wasn’t whether the observed temperature record was in discrepancy to predictions from climate models. Instead, the topic was whether the observed global atmospheric temperature record provides the empirical, statistical evidence that the assertion according to which global warming “stopped” was scientifically valid. I haven’t discussed models at all in this context here.
What was the Null-hypothesis that was tested as basis for this statement? Anyway, nothing can be scientifically concluded from this for the question whether global warming “stopped”. A successful rejection of the Null-hypothesis “Zero-trend” would falsify the Null-hypothesis in favor of the alternative hypothesis (“global atmospheric warming”) for the chosen probability to err. However, a failure to reject the Null-hypothesis does not falsify the alternative hypothesis. It just leaves the matter inconclusive. To refute global warming you must switch the hypotheses. The Null-hypothesis in this case would be a positive warming trend, e.g., the one in the decades up to the point when global warming allegedly “stopped”. The successful rejection of this warming trend by applying a statistical significance test with this chosen Null-hypotheses would falsify it with whatever probability to err is chosen, in favor of the alternative hypothesis. So far, no one has delivered.
So you asserting, even when ENSO variability is being subtracted, the trend was indistinguishable from Zero over a time period of more than 15 years. And this has be shown by whom and published where? I am going to accuse you of spreading a deliberate falsehood here, if you don’t provide the scientific source for your assertion. Like you very likely just had intentionally made up your claim in a previous thread that all three limited decades from 1971-1980, 1981-1990, and 1991-2000 showed a statistically significant warming with 90% probability within the time limits of the decades.
Perlwitz says of Richard Courtney:
“You are lying.”
Don’t let it bother you, Richard. That is just Perlwitz engaging in his usual psychological Projection. His world is caving in, and he is lashing out at folks who tell the truth: global warming has been on hold for the past decade and a half.
The Met Office and GISS both admit that now. Even James Hansen has been forced to climb down! That says it all.