Guest post by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Following my statement at the Doha climate conference last December that there had been no global warming for 16 years, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the railroad engineer who for some reason chairs the IPCC’s climate “science” panel, has been compelled to admit there has been no global warming for 17 years.
The Hadley Centre/CRU records show no warming for 18 years (v.3) or 19 years (v.4), and the RSS satellite dataset shows no warming for 23 years (h/t to Werner Brozek for determining these values).
Engineer Pachauri said warming would have to endure for “30 to 40 years at least” to break the long-term global warming trend. However, the world’s leading climate modelers wrote in the NOAA’s State of the Climate report in 2008 that 15 years or more without warming would indicate a discrepancy between the models and measured reality.
The Australian reports: Dr Pachauri … said that open discussion about controversial science and politically incorrect views was an essential part of tackling climate change.
“In a wide-ranging interview on topics that included this year’s record northern summer Arctic ice growth, the US shale-gas revolution, the collapse of renewable energy subsidies across Europe and the faltering European carbon market, Dr Pachauri said no issues should be off-limits for public discussion.
“In Melbourne for a 24-hour visit to deliver a lecture for Deakin University, Dr Pachauri said that people had the right to question the science, whatever their motivations.
“‘People have to question these things and science only thrives on the basis of questioning,’ Dr Pachauri said.
“He said there was ‘no doubt about it’ that it was good for controversial issues to be ‘thrashed out in the public arena’.
“Dr Pachauri’s views contrast with arguments in Australia that views outside the orthodox position of approved climate scientists should be left unreported.
“Unlike in Britain, there has been little publicity in Australia given to recent acknowledgment by peak climate-science bodies in Britain and the US of what has been a 17-year pause in global warming. Britain’s Met Office has revised down its forecast for a global temperature rise, predicting no further increase to 2017, which would extend the pause to 21 years.”
Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nothing-off-limits-in-climate-debate/story-e6frg6n6-1226583112134
Given that the IPCC spends a great deal more thought on getting the propaganda spin right than on doing climate science, one should be healthily suspicious of what Engineer Pachauri is up to.
Inferentially, the bureaucrats have decided they can no longer pretend I was wrong to say there has been no global warming for 16 years. This one cannot be squeezed back into the bottle. So they have decided to focus on n years without warming so that, as soon as an uptick in temperature brings the period without warming to an end, they can neatly overlook the fact that what really matters is the growing, and now acutely embarrassing, discrepancy between predicted and observed long-term warming rates.
At some point – probably quite soon – an el Niño will come along, and global temperature will rise again. Therefore, it would be prudent for us to concentrate not only on the absence of warming for n years, but also on the growing discrepancy between the longer-run warming rate predicted by the IPCC and the rate that has actually occurred over the past 60 years or so.
Since 1950 the world has warmed at a rate equivalent to little more than 1 Celsius degree per century. Yet the IPCC’s central projection is for almost three times that rate over the present century. We should keep the focus on this fundamental and enduring discrepancy, which will outlast a temporary interruption of the long period without global warming that the mainstream media once went to such lengths to conceal.
What this means is that the UN’s attempt to ban me from future annual climate gabfests for telling delegates at Doha that there had been no global warming for 16 years will fail, because soon there will be no more annual climate gabfests to ban me from.
Shehan @February 24, 2013 at 9:31 pm asserts that “there is a 95% probability that the real trend is between 0.091 ±0.120 °C/decade”. What orifice did he or his pals pull that bogus number from? From SkS? If so, it figures. That number would indicate a +3ºC global warming since the LIA. That is far higher than even Phil Jones estimates.
The fact is that natural global warming has been only ≈0.35ºC/century since the end of the Little Ice Age:
http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/14.jpg
There is no verifiable, falsifiable AGW ‘signal’ in the data. AGW is only a conjecture. It may cause some minor warming if it exists, but there is currently no empirical, testable measurement of AGW. If there were, then the arguments over the climate sensitivity number would be settled. [As it is, credible scientists argue that CO2 causes a net cooling; or that 2xCO2 causes 0.0ºC warming, or that 2xCO2 causes <0.5º warming, or ≈1º, or even up to 3º+ warming.]
Those falsely asserting that "carbon" is causing runaway global warming are either cherry-picking from unreliable sources, or they are lying propaganda-bots. I cannot see any third alternative.
Mr Stealy,
I wrote:
“We can estimate the warming probability for the last 17 years from the fact that the statistically significant range for the Hadcrut4 data is
0.091 ±0.120 °C/decade”
Note the period is for the last 17 years. The trend and 95% confidence limits are calculated from a simple linear regression algorithm. More fully:
Trend: 0.091 ±0.120 °C/decade (2σ)
β=0.0090822 σw=0.0018076 ν=11.093 σc=σw√ν=0.0060205
Putting this period in context I wrote:
The following is a graph of Hadcrut4 temperatures from 1945 to the present. The long term warming trend is
0.094 ±0.019 °C/decade (2σ)
Breaking that period up into four 17 year periods shows just how unreliable a 17 year period is as a representative of the long term trend, but by chance, the last 17 years are in excellent agreement with the long term trend.
http://tinyurl.com/bzpzzcl
17 yr periods since 1945 Had4:
‘96-2013 0.091 ±0.120 °C/decade
‘79 –‘96 0.119 ±0.116 °C/decade
‘62 –‘79 -0.025 ±0.125 °C/decade
‘45’- ‘62 0.013 ±0.137 °C/decade
That the 17 year period lacks statistical significance within the 95% confidence limit is due to that fact that the noise over the short periods swamps the signal. As it does for every consecutive 17 year period since 1945, except for the period 1979 to 1996 and then only to the third decimal point.
Monckton himself says that long term time periods should be looked at, and wants to examine data back to 1950.
So you can look at the data from 1945 chopped into consecutive 17 year bits and claim the data tell you nothing whatever temperature has been doing since then because the noise over each of those periods swamps the signal, or you can do the mathematically correct thing and look at the entire data set.
As I stated, there is no verifiable AGW signal in the data. None.
Now, looking at the longest reliable temperature trend, we see that whether CO2 was low or high, it makes no difference to global warming. The long term trend [the decelerating green line] is certainly not accelerating — which it would be doing IF CO2 had the claimed effect.
That fact deconstructs the AGW conjecture. Remember that without testable, empirical, verifiable measurements, AGW is only a conjecture at this point. If AGW exists, it is a minor, 3rd order forcing, which is easily swamped by many other forcings, both 1st order and 2nd order.
The more real world data that is collected, the less any putative warming effect of CO2 is found. CO2 just doesn’t matter. Pachauri can see this, even if you can’t.
d.b.stealey,
you come with a lot of remarks and new questions while I was only asking and complaining about the headline ” No warming for 17 years” and the graph that came with it;
during this periode we had ten of the top ten warmest years, so NO warming is a wrong statement;
in september 2013 we will be the start of 17th year, not earlier;
so the headline is double wrong;
that translates into the figure or vv, whatever you like;
that figure promises something there is not: tenths of a degree BELOW world average;
these are all mistakes David Rose introduced in october 2012 in his article in the Mail Online, but Peiser / Whitehouse, Morano and Monckton (and others) just go on promoting this nonsens and figure;
I did’nt know the arctic cover was cyclical in recent times, but I do believe that the melting now has something to do with higher average temperatures and polar amplification;
that it can go fast you can see with your own eyes when spring returns and all snow melts;
besides that, I was not arguing about sea ice, I was complaining about a sentence that passed Monckons ‘scrutiny’ while copy pasting the article from the Australian: ” that included this year’s record northern summer Arctic ice growth” – which in my opinion is just completely wrong;
I am not specialy against the US, there is enough to complain about in my own country, but I could agree with you if you state that all industrialised countries are contributing to rising CO2-levels, including the US and China;
“Werner Brozek says:
February 24, 2013 at 9:22 pm
Philip Shehan says:
February 24, 2013 at 4:49 pm
The following is a graph of Hadcrut4 temperatures from 1945 to the present. The long term warming trend is
0.094 ±0.019 °C/decade (2σ)
Since we have gone up 0.8 C since 1750, and since it is apparently dangerous for us to go up 2 C, at 0.094/decade, it would take another 128 years to reach the 2 C.”
Werner, you are making a fundamental erroneous assumption that global temperature is a linear function of time. The long and very long term (geologic data) clearly show it is not.
The question of AGW covers the period from the when large scale industrialization began to significantly add to atmospheric CO2 levels, that is from about the middle of the 19th century.
http://tinyurl.com/aj2us99
When examining multidecadel temperature trends during that period, linear functions are routinely fitted, as the noise level in the data precludes the fitting of any more complex function. The linear fits are acceptable approximations giving multidecadel trends.
However over a period of 162 years, this approximation clearly breaks down. The temperature data for the earliest and latest part of the plot are above the linear trend line, and the linear fits of the first 82 and second 82 years have distinctly different slopes.
http://tinyurl.com/b3mgkvk
The temperature data is much better fitted by a nonlinear function, which correlates well with the nonlinear plot of rising CO2 concentration for the same period.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/AMTI.png
@ur momisugly db stealey,
talking about cyclical sea ice: did you talk about Kinnard et al Nature 2011 ?
@ur momisugly db stealey
Because there is no testable scientific evidence showing that CO2 is the cause of the current Arctic ice cycle.
I just did read an article by Wielaw Maslowski (The Future of Arctic Sea Ice Feb 2012) in which he argue that 1/3 of arctic sea ice declina is wind and current driven, but 2/3 is caused by melting from underneath (water) and from the air;
A lot of the comments back and forth show that many people are confused about the “pause in warming” over the last 17 years. The Hadcrut4 data is “not inconsistent” with a 0 °C/decade trend. But I can also state, with the same level of accuracy (or misdirection, or imprecision) that the Hadcrut4 data of the last 17 years is not inconsistent with a trend of 0.182 °C/decade
The “pause in warming” can also be legitimately described (using the same logic as for the “pause”) as showing “a continued warming trend of 0.182 °C/decade” over the last 17 years.
How can the same data record support statements that the warming trend is 0 °C/decade and 0.18 °C/decade per decade ???
Easy.
Using the Hadcrut4 data for 1996 through 2012 we get a linear trend line of 0.091 ±0.120 °C/decade. (Yes, I know the error band is underestimated because of the statistical nature of the data, but that doesn’t affect my main point.)
Looking back at the last 17 years, a trend of 0 °C/decade is 0.091 °C/decade less than the best estimate of the observations. Yes, since the trend is 0.091 plus/minus 0.120 C/decade, so the zero trend is not rejected; or in other words, the observed trend is not statistically significantly different than 0 °C/decade.
On the other hand, it would be equally valid to say that an assumed trend of 0.182 °C/decade is only 0.091 °C/decade greater than the observed trend of 0.091 °C/decade. Indeed, I have chosen 0.182 °C/decade for my example because is is the same amount above the observed trend, as a zero trend is below the observed trend.
Therefore, I can claim, with the same level of accuracy (or misdirection, or imprecision) that the Hadcrut4 data of the last 17 years shows a trend of 0.182 °C/decade
Martin van Etten says:
“I could agree with you if you state that all industrialised countries are contributing to rising CO2-levels, including the US and China”.
Yes, I can state that all industrialized countries are contributing to rising CO2 levels. I am glad you agree with me, because my central point is that CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere. At current and projected concentrations, more CO2 is better. There is no downside.
I also know that rising CO2 is largely a result of global warming; not a cause.
• • •
Mr Shehan,
Please stop linking to that SkS chart with the phony red line. It has no provenance, and it was obviously fabricated to show a fictional acceleration in global warming. The chart I posted is based on widely accepted empirical observations, and it contradicts that fictional SkS chart showing geometrically accelerating temperatures. The chart I posted has an auto-generated [green] trend line, which is straight and decelerating. So enough with the fake alarmist propaganda.
Here is another chart that shows [natural] global warming within specific parameters. Note that those parameters are not exceeded, which would be required if warming was actually accelerating. That chart is constructed using verifiable data. The data source is listed.
Global warming has stalled because CO2 has little if any effect. Who should people believe? You? Or their lying eyes, and Planet Earth? AGW is a narrative; an assertion. There are no testable AGW measurements. That is why you cannot produce a chart that shows ∆CO2 causing ∆temperature. You have cause and effect reversed, so naturally your conclusions are wrong.
Philip Shehan says:
February 25, 2013 at 5:02 pm
Werner, you are making a fundamental erroneous assumption that global temperature is a linear function of time.
The temperature data is much better fitted by a nonlinear function
Neither the linear function nor your steadily rising curve are accurate portrayals of what is really happening in my opinion. The steadily rising curve makes it look like global warming is accelerating and it clearly is not. Phil Jones, Hansen and Pachauri all agree on this point at least. The most accurate shape is a a sine wave that has a slow rise as shown here:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/akasofu_ipcc.jpg
Charlie A says:
February 25, 2013 at 5:22 pm
I agree. That is why I like taking the longest time that the slope is 0. For Hadcrut4, that happens to be from November 2000 or 12 years and 2 months going to December.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2000.8/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2000.8/trend
Mr Stealey,
In order to simplify the discussion have cleaned up the extraneous data on your chart by deleting all the series after series 2. This is what is left:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1840/to:2010/trend
The only widely accepted empirical empirical observations on this chart are the red line representing the Hadcrut3 variance adjusted global mean temperatures.
The green line I have left in place and the other lines I have removed are not “empirical observations”. And they are not “auto generated”. The green line shows the results of a linear fit to the empirical temperature data (the red line) that you have chosen to apply.
A linear fit is the simplest that can be applied to the data, and this is the only option WFT supplies, but it is an approximation. There is absolutely no theoretical reason whatsoever for the assumption that global temperatures increase linearly with time and you yourself have in the past posted very long term temperature data that demonstrates this fact. The linear approximation is useful for a discussion of short term trends of a few decades only.
Note also that the green line is not “decelerating”. By definition it is dead straight. Linear. It is the best fit a linear function can apply to the red data.
What the simplified chart shows however, is that from 1850 to about 1885, the red empirical data is almost all above the green line. As is the data after about 1990. Except for the local peak around 1940, the empirical between 1885 and 1990 is mostly below the line. This indicates that there is a curve in the underlying trend, concave to the top of the chart and that the linear fit is failing to show what is really happening.
The data in the SkS chart is every bit as empirical as the red line in your chart and the “provenance” every bit as good. It was produced by Robert Way who writes:
“Each temperature dataset has their own individual caveats so it is difficult to assess which is the most reliable, but a purely unscientific way to look at this issue is to put all the datasets on the same baseline and to average them to create the All Method Temperature Index (AMTI). I have put all the Table 1 datasets on the 1990-2000 baseline (so we could include all) and have averaged them…”
The data sets are these (rate of warming for given indices in °C/century.):
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/2_WarmingRates.png
Instead of choosing to fit the data to a straight line, Mr Way has applied a nonlinear curve fit represented by the red line. Again this is not data but a fit to the data in the same way that the green line is in your chart. The only complaint I have about the Mr Way’s analysis is that he has neglected to tell us what the actual function is but is probably a third order polynomial, similar to the one Layman Lurker posted some time back. Way has supplied the regression coefficient for the fit r2 which is a very respectable 0.8412.
Werner has suggested that a nonlinear function (an upwardly sloping sinewave) can account for the temperature data, and this would seem to help explain the local peak around 1940, but when choosing a curve to fit the data, there is a temptation to go too far and use a too complicated function which ends up fitting noise or other artifacts. Werner has not supplied a theoretical justification for the sinewave. On the basis of greater simplicity and the theoretical backing of the match with the rise in CO2 concentration curve for the period, I think the Way’s fit is to be preferred.
I am surprised you object to my drawing attention to the similarity of the CO2 and temperature curves, since you have posted a number of charts showing such a relationship yourself. Of course, you wish to claim that CO2 follows temperature, whereas in this case the upswing in temperature lags behind the CO2 increase…
Shehan,
As Werner Brozek pointed out, your SkS chart is bogus.
I didn’t bother to read your long ‘explanation’ above, because Werner has more credibility than you will ever have — doubled and squared.
Philip Shehan says:
February 25, 2013 at 8:53 pm
Werner has not supplied a theoretical justification for the sinewave.
As far as I know, the sine wave has a lot to do with the PDO. However we do know that the effect of added CO2 follows the law of diminishing returns. And the sine wave with the resultant pause over the last 12 to 16 years is consistent with the logarithmic effect of added CO2. Even the IPCC agrees with this. However your accelerating line is not consistent with this logarithmic effect.
Werner, I am aware of the logaritmic efffect of CO2, but it depends on where you are on the curve. In the early part the curve can “accelerate” especially if CO2 concentration is rising exponentially, and then plateau giving an elongated “S” shape.
I do have some experience with logarithmic functions, as I spent my PhD thesis analysing such curves which are characteristic of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance relaxation times.
I do not discount what you say. You may well be right.
REPLY: This is where we are now – Anthony
Mr Stealey, With all due respect to Werner, this “appeal to authority” is a little thin. And the fact that someone may dispute an analysis is not the same as saying it is “bogus”. You have never been able to justify that claim other than with the idiotic remarks that it is reproduced on a website you don’t like. It is neither lacking in “provenance” nor “hand drawn” nor by John Cook as you have previously claimed.
That you are not prepared to read an argument (Or claim that you haven’t. You seem toi have got as far as my remarks regarding Werner’s analysis) that runs counter to your prejudices surprises me not at all.
Mr Watts, Thank you for the graph. Do you have a reference from which it is taken? I would like to have a look at the details of how the models were arrived at.
REPLY: Start here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/25/what-does-a-reduction-to-350-ppm-of-co2-get-you/
more here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/
I predict you’ll accept none of it though. – Anthony
@ur momisugly Anthony Watts
were can I find the temperature of the last glacial maximum?
could you please explain how to read that in the graph;
[I think Google is your friend, unless there is some deeper meaning to your question. There is also a lot of very useful information in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/23/crowdsourcing-the-wuwt-paleoclimate-reference-page/ . . mod]
D.B. Stealey / February 25, 2013 at 6:20 pm
You did not comment ont my remarks about Kinnard and Maslowski, nor did you reply to my conclusions about the use of the in my opinion fraudulous graph of David Rose by Mr Monckton;
We seem to have a different attitude towards integrity in science and in blogging about science;
Martin van Etten
Amsterdam / The Netherlands
PS: CO2 can be harmfull when it leads to higher temperatures an and higher sea levels
Werner Brozek, on February 25, 2013 at 7:45 pm, in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/22/ipcc-railroad-engineer-pachauri-acknowledges-no-warming-for-17-years/#comment-1232763
wrote:
I want to make sure that I understand you correctly. The purpose of your exercise is to present something that does not allow any conclusion regarding the question whether the trend has become Zero in recent years or still is the same as the one estimated over a time-period of multiple decades, which has been statistically significant with 3 to 4 sigma?
What for? To study the properties of the noise in the temperature series on short time intervals, before the signal becomes statistically significant?
Anthony Watts replied with respect to some obscure graph, after he was asked for a reference:
You can extend this prediction to me, Mr. Watts. And your prediction will be correct. The graph is referenced with a link to an opinion article, which references to another opinion article (written by someone who claimed on some Heartland bogus “climate conference” that the globally averaged Earth near surface temperature decreased by 0.6 Kelvin from 1998 to 2008, and is nevertheless be taken seriously by the “skeptic” crowd.). And all on your blog. Some reliable scientific references! Why should anyone who actually works in the field even bother with this kind of “references”?
Mr. Watts, regarding the figure you posted.
Where does this formula “4.7ln(CO2) – 26.9” come from, which has the annotation “Global Warming Models”? Why is this formula annotated in this way? What are these obscure “Global Warming Models” in the figure?
Mr. Perlwitz, if you’d bothered to read the links I provided above, you would find the source files. But since once again you’ve reached a conclusion prior to reading it all and started bloviating about Heartland, proving your hate precedes your logic, I’ll point you to the source files here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/25/adjusting-temperatures-for-the-enso-and-the-amo/
Show me also where “Heartland” appears in that story or source files.
As far as “reliable scientific references” and “all on your blog” go, I could say the same thing about your boss James Hansen, each time he publishes one of his non peer reviewed manifestos on his personal web page citing his own previous work.
Also note that the IPCC has a reference to logarithmic CO2 effects:
http://www.ipcc-data.org/ddc_reporting.html
Steve McIntyre has several citations from the IPCC here, including the equation from Lacis and Hansen in 1981, which you should be familiar with:
http://climateaudit.org/2008/01/07/more-on-the-logarithmic-formula/
P.S. I’ve given author of the graph, Bill Illis, notice that you are in denial here. Perhaps he’ll swing by to offer you some guidance.
@ur momisugly anthony watts / [I think Google is your friend, unless there is some deeper meaning to your question.
there is no deeper meaning, there is only the question:
were can I find the temperature of the last glacial maximum?
could you please explain how to read that in the graph;
it must be my terrible English, but it seemed obvious to me that it would be clear to you that I was referring to the graph, two or three paragraphs above my question, about the logarithmic relationship;
there you have marked 280 ppm, 350 ppm, 388 ppm and doubling what seems to be 560 (= 2 x 280)
those points of ‘passage’ I can understand, so I have only one question left: what temperature related to how much CO2 during the last glacial maximum?
REPLY: That isn’t my reply, but the reply of one of my moderators. See comment below this – Anthony
You consider that “long term”?? Let’s go back 1000 years, 2000, 5000. Oh, right, we can’t with any accuracy. Which means we DON’T KNOW if modern temperatures are unprecedented either in scale or rate of change.
The whole CAGW scare is tantamount to opening the window one morning, seeing it’s raining, and proclaiming a global flood is about to occur, based on the trend taken of a tiny snapshot in time.