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.
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The full article in pat’s link above:
A PAUSE in global temperature rises, confirmed by the British Met Office and NASA climate scientist James Hanson, was temporary and science would win out over climate change denial, public ethics professor Clive Hamilton said yesterday.
Professor Hamilton’s comments follow acknowledgement by IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri of the British Met Office’s downward revision of its forecast global temperature average to 2017. The downward revision has been widely reported internationally as meaning the global average temperature would have remained steady, at a record high level, for two decades.
Dr Hansen, from the NASA Institute for Space Studies, has also acknowledged the pause in global temperature rises over the past decade.
In a paper published last month he said the five-year mean global temperature had been flat for a decade, “which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slowdown in the growth rate of the net climate forcing”.
There has been little reporting of the Met Office or Hansen statements in Australia.
Professor Hamilton said: “Of course I accept the Met Office’s analysis, but I reject the spin put on it by some news organisations, including The Australian, that it is some kind of admission that global warming is not as serious as previously believed. The Met Office itself has attempted to correct that distortion.
“The factors responsible for the levelling out of warming, albeit at record highs, are expected to pass in a few years. Then we are in real trouble.”
In an interview with The Australian, Dr Pachauri said a warming pause would have to last 30 to 40 years “at least” to break the long-term warming trend. He said it was important people were able to openly discuss all issues surrounding the challenge of climate change.
Professor Hamilton said: “Of course everyone has the right to question the science of climate change, in the same way that everyone has the right to deny that smoking causes lung cancer.
“And in the same way that The Australian has the right to its continuing campaign to discredit climate science. But that does not make distortion of the facts any less irresponsible.
“For all of the hindrance to action caused by the campaign of climate science denial, in the end the science will win out.”
The Met Office said over the past 140 years global surface temperatures had risen by about 0.8C. However, within this record there had been several periods lasting a decade or more during which temperatures had risen very slowly or cooled, it said.
“The current period of reduced warming is not unprecedented and 15-year-long periods are not unusual,” it said.
Dr Pachauri said the Met Office was “looking at longer time frames and there the picture is quite unmistakable”.
“If you have five or 10 years when you don’t have the same trend that doesn’t necessarily mean that you are deviating from the trend, you are still around the trend,” Dr Pachauri said.
D.B Stealey, I’m not sure what point it is you’re trying to make. I assume it’s that CO2 has no effect whatsoever on earth’s climate. This, of course, cannot be the case. There are multiple lines of evidence that show that CO2 impedes the flow of LWIR energy that is emitted from the earth’s surface. I’m sure that you’re aware that the energy absorbed by the earth (and its atmosphere) must be re-radiated back to space else the earth would continue to warm indefinitely .
This is basic thermodynamics . If you have a problem understanding this then any further discussion is pointless.
CO2 (and other GHGs) absorb outgoing terrestrial IR and emit in all directions – some back towards the earth’s surface. This has the effect of ‘slowing down’ emission to space. But there is still a constant source of energy from the sun. There is, therefore, an energy imbalance where incoming solar energy is greater than outgoing LW energy and so the earth must warm….. until balance is restored. This is why the earth is warmer than it should be given its distance from the sun.
CO2 is, therefore, essential to life on earth – but what happens if we add more CO2 …..
As CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere and, in particular, in the COLDER, DRIER, regions of the upper troposphere it increases the average height at which energy is emitted to space. The Stefan-Boltzmann Law tells us that the rate of emission will fall (i.e. E~T^4). That is, we have an energy imbalance. This means the earth’s surface and lower atmosphere will warm until equilibrium is established.
If you doubt the effect of CO2 then you need to check out graphs which depict earth’s emission spectra. These show that CO2 is clearly influential in determining the earth’s energy balance.
Your question suggests a lack of understanding of the issues. There are factors – other than CO2 – which influence earth’s climate. However, while those factors tend to be cyclical the CO2 increase, while not permanent, will have some effect for some time yet. In a previous post I explained how solar activity could cause a temporary pause in the global temperature rise. That effect is now factored in so I don’t expect any additional solar influence, therefore ………
If global temperatures over the next decade fell – even by a small amount – I would have to accept one of three possibilities, i.e. (1) Solar activity has a greater effect than I thought. (2) CO2 has less effect or (3) Some other variable such as major volcanic activity has kicked in.
To say “there has been no warming in the last 17 years” is misleading.
The trend over the last 17 years is a slight warming. In other words, the trend is positive.
The statement in 2008 State of the Climate was ““The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”
That condition has NOT been met by observations, since the trend is positive (although not statistically significantly different than zero at the 95% confidence level).
There is a difference between “no warming” and “no statistically significant warming”. I am disappointed that so many skeptics have chosen to ignore the difference.
Why was Railroad Bill Pachauri not clapped in irons and dragged from his podium in early 2010? Maybe the Tata Group is eying more British steel mills.
John Finn,
I understand your consternation. The planet itself is falsifying your belief system. You are getting exasperated that Planet Earth is not doing what you want it to do.
The conclusion is simple: CO2 just does not have the claimed effect. Any global warming from CO2 is so minuscule that it is inconsequential. It does not matter. The entire global warming scare is based on the wrongheaded belief that “carbon” is a problem. But as we see, CO2 is not a problem. Even the head of the UN/IPCC has had to climb down from his falsified global warming predictions.
OMG, what will the flocks at SkS and closed mind do now? One of their high priests has committed a heresy of “the cause”. Their silly attempts to deny “the pause” now look doubly pathetic.
Mooloo says:
February 22, 2013 at 1:00 pm
When we talk about reds, we do not mean card carrying members of the Party. We mean everyone who shares their beliefs though they would never attend a Party meeting. Also, we usually include the useful idiots. Why talk about the Party? It is ineffective in North America.
John Finn says:
February 22, 2013 at 2:55 pm
D.B. Stealey says:
February 22, 2013 at 2:37 pm
“However, they do not deny basic physics which says that increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations will cause the earth to be warmer than it would otherwise be.”
Keep in mind that the forcings determine what the impact of CO2 will be and no one has a clue about the forcings.
James Griffin would like to know if anywhere is like Britain for global warming correctness in the media and from politicians. Well , New Zealand seems to be. Does anyone know if EcoConnect really is a joint venture or something similar between the New Zealand and United Kingdom governments? http://www.eco-connect.org/ as I think I read recently? It makes my head swim so I can’t cite the reference. If it is true it explains a lot.
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).
Thank you. However, in turn, I would like to give a h/t to Kevin C who created the calculator that I used and to the people who made it available at:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php
By the way, each of the above are actually a few months more. I am not sure if it is useful to give this information since the huge spike in January for both RSS and UAH changed things by one month in each set.
However if you want to know the very latest times to the nearest month that the warming is not significant for each set, they are as follows: RSS since September 1989; UAH since June 1993; Hadcrut3 since August 1993; Hadcrut4 since July 1994; GISS since June 1995 and NOAA since May 1994.
John Finn says:
February 22, 2013 at 5:58 pm
You overlooked the forcings. Nothing can be inferred from the laboratory characteristics of CO2 until the forcings are known and no one knows diddly about the forcings.
Pachauri actually talks sense. Everyone has a right to question the science. Any genuine scientist would welcome such questioning as an opportunity to communicate.
The fact that temperatures are not increasing in step with CO2 levels strongly suggests that CO2 does not cause significant temperature increase, and that the rise from the seventies to the nineties was natural variation.
There appears to be a long list of scientific and policy problems for the extreme global warming supporters. It is quite amazing how long the manipulation of data and models to push an agenda has gone on. It is quite amazing that the general public has supported the spending of billions of dollars on the green scams which were justified to “save the planet” from climate change. Hopefully reason and logic will eventually prevail.
Satellite data shows planetary cloud cover in the tropics increases or decreases to resist forcing changes (negative feedback). If the planet’s feedback response is negative a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will result in roughly 1C of global warming with most of the warming at high latitudes. The lack of any warming for the last 16 years supports the negative feedback research (note the planetary warming due to the increase in CO2 is logarithmic (subsequent increases in atmospheric CO2 has less and less affect on planetary temperature or equivalently the initial increase in atmospheric CO2 has the greatest effect.)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenmeyer/2012/02/09/understanding-the-global-warming-debate/
“The problem for global warming supporters is they actually need for past warming from CO2 to be higher than 0.7C. If the IPCC is correct that based on their high-feedback models we should expect to see 3C of warming per doubling of CO2, looking backwards this means we should already have seen about 1.5C of CO2-driven warming based on past CO2 increases. But no matter how uncertain our measurements, it’s clear we have seen nothing like this kind of temperature rise. Past warming has in fact been more consistent with low or even negative feedback assumptions.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,662092,00.html
“Even though the temperature standstill probably has no effect on the long-term warming trend, it does raise doubts about the predictive value of climate models, and it is also a political issue. For months, climate change skeptics have been gloating over the findings on their Internet forums. This has prompted many a climatologist to treat the temperature data in public with a sense of shame, thereby damaging their own credibility.
“It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community,” says Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. “We don’t really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point.”
Just a few weeks ago, Britain’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research added more fuel to the fire with its latest calculations of global average temperatures. According to the Hadley figures, the world grew warmer by 0.07 degrees Celsius from 1999 to 2008 and not by the 0.2 degrees Celsius assumed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, say the British experts, when their figure is adjusted for two naturally occurring climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius — in other words, a standstill.”
The extreme AGW supporters appear to live in a fantasy world. The solution they state is a new UN body with special powers that will “be capable of instilling a permanent crisis lasting decades, if not centuries.”
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/03/17/effective-world-government-will-still-be-needed-to-stave-off-climate-catastrophe/
“Would any institution be capable of instilling a permanent crisis mentality lasting decades, if not centuries?”
A policy article authored by several dozen scientists appeared online March 15 in Science to acknowledge this point: “Human societies must now change course and steer away from critical tipping points in the Earth system that might lead to rapid and irreversible change. This requires fundamental reorientation and restructuring of national and international institutions toward more effective Earth system governance and planetary stewardship.”….
…Among the proposals: a call to replace the largely ineffective U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development with a council that reports to the U.N. General Assembly, at attempt to better handle emerging issues related to water, climate, energy and food security. The report advocates a similar revamping of other international environmental institutions….
…Unfortunately, far more is needed. To be effective, a new set of institutions would have to be imbued with heavy-handed, transnational enforcement powers. There would have to be consideration of some way of embracing head-in-the-cloud answers to social problems that are usually dismissed by policymakers as academic naivete. In principle, species-wide alteration in basic human behaviors would be a sine qua non, but that kind of pronouncement also profoundly strains credibility in the chaos of the political sphere. Some of the things that would need to be contemplated: ….Would any institution be capable of instilling a permanent crisis mentality lasting decades, if not centuries? How do we create new institutions with enforcement powers way beyond the current mandate of the U.N.? Could we ensure against a malevolent dictator who might abuse the power of such organizations?
Germany’s Solar Industry Is In Trouble As Its Biggest Company Goes Bankrupt
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-04-04/europe/31285529_1_q-cells-renewable-energy-solar-power-industry#ixzz1s8BRSpQk
Q-Cells, one of the biggest solar cell manufacturers in Germany and the world, has filed for bankruptcy, Spiegel Online reports. It’s the fourth German solar energy company to go bust in recent times.
Germany has been struggling with the decision to replace nuclear energy completely with renewable energy for a while. They are already struggling with a shortfall, which they have been forced to combat with exported nuclear energy in a seemingly counterproductive move.
“A sister issue is “where do the lukewarmers now stand in the face of this embarrassing development?”
It’s perfectly consistent with what we hold.
1. GHGs warming the planet.
2. Sensitivity is likely below 3C and as low as 1C ( about what Monckton thinks)
3. Natural cycles are probably larger than mainstream climate science thinks and less important than skeptics think
Charlie A says:
February 22, 2013 at 6:27 pm
The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more …….There is a difference between “no warming” and “no statistically significant warming”. I am disappointed that so many skeptics have chosen to ignore the difference.
I agree, and I will address the 15 year point at the end.
But first, I must confess I find this statement very odd:
“THE UN’s climate change chief, Rajendra Pachauri, has acknowledged a 17-year pause in global temperature rises, confirmed recently by Britain’s Met Office, but said it would need to last “30 to 40 years at least” to break the long-term global warming trend.“
I thought the Met office reluctantly agreed that the period of no warming was 16 years and not 17 years. But even here, according to Hadcrut4, there was some warming for 16 years, just not very significant. However there is this quote from the article:
“Britain’s Met Office has revised down its forecast for a global temperature rise, predicting no further increase to 2017”
This leaves me with 4 questions:
1. What were his exact words?
2. Exactly what did he mean by “pause”? Did he mean no warming or no significant warming?
3. Why would he add a year to what the MET said, (unless I missed the memo about the 17 years)?
4. Did he mix up the reference to 17 years with what the MET said about 2017?
Now with regards to the 15 years, 3 of the data sets actually show no warming for over 15 years. Note the bolded ones.
1. For GISS, the slope is flat since March 2001 or 11 years, 10 months. (goes to December)
2. For Hadcrut3, the slope is flat since March 1997 or 15 years, 10 months. (goes to December)
3. For a combination of GISS, Hadcrut3, UAH and RSS, the slope is flat since December 2000 or an even 12 years. (goes to November)
4. For Hadcrut4, the slope is flat since November 2000 or 12 years, 2 months. (goes to December.)
5. For Hadsst2, the slope is flat since March 1997 or 15 years, 10 months. (goes to December)
6. For UAH, the slope is flat since July 2008 or 4 years, 7 months. (goes to January)
7. For RSS, the slope is flat since January 1997 or 16 years and 1 month. (goes to January)
Steven Mosher,
How do you explain the same temperature rise early in the 20th Century [when CO2 was very low] with the most recent temperature rise, with 40% more CO2? It certainly appears that CO2 has had no special effect.
I do not believe in such exact coincidences. It looks to me as if the global temperature increased in spite of CO2 — not because of it. The two separate temperature increases appear to be entirely coincidental.
Here is more evidence that CO2 does not control the temperature. So I must ask: what would falsify your conjecture that human emitted CO2 is the primary cause of global warming? Or even a secondary cause?
Or, would 5,000 feet of glacier ice once again covering Chicago still fail to convince you that your “carbon” conjecture has some problems? Just wondering…
When we talk about reds, we do not mean card carrying members of the Party. We mean everyone who shares their beliefs though they would never attend a Party meeting.
I know what you mean, but it’s still wrong.
Also, we usually include the useful idiots.
They’re all reds. But some aren’t reds. But that’s alright because we’ll just call them “useful idiots” to gloss over the fact that the original statement is wrong.
Prince Charles is just an idiot. He is not a “useful idiot” to the left, because his position on almost everything is (small c) conservative. He’s a tree-hugger alright, but never a leftie one.
Why talk about the Party? It is ineffective in North America.
No-one is talking about the Party. I meant that political allegiances tend to determine the stance on AGW in the US, because its politics is so bitterly partisan.
The rest of the world isn’t like that. We have right wing Greens, and non-AGW believing leftists.
In NZ’s case, our previous Labour government pretended to care to placate the extremists, but carefully made sure the carbon trading scheme was unworkable. In nine years in power it managed to avoid any major environmental programs that actually cost them any money.
In Britain’s case, a Tory party has headed down the path of Green looniness.
The groovy train is running out of traction.
That graph does not show tenths of degrees, it shows degrees.
REPLY: It could show kumquats, point is, it is still flat – Anthony
Look for political climate scientists to adopt Beenstock and Reingewertz as their new rallying cry. A cut in CO2 is not what is needed, but a freeze in emission levels. This takes the Chinese out of the equation and makes emissions targets feasible. They can also claim that the lack of warming may be due to global recession.
Richard M says:
February 22, 2013 at 7:25 pm
“OMG, what will the flocks at SkS and closed mind do now?”
I like that – ‘closed mind’. Lol. Typical – closed mind is saying if you remove ENSO the warming is as expected. As if La Nina or El Nino would affect the GLOBAL temperature. It just shifts things around and makes one part of the world hot or cold and the other part wet or dry. The net difference has to be zero.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2013/02/23/once-is-not-enough/
He keeps trying that one on but it doesn’t fool anyone. It’s all just an excuse for tax. You can say anything about a graph and someone will believe you.
” Just updated my my global trend graphic for a public talk and noted the level has really been quite stable since 2000 or so and 2008 doesn’t look too hot …. Be awkward if we went through an early 1940s type swing!” Mick Kelly – Climategate emails.
So this pause has all happened before. Same old same old.
Why does everyone sound so surprised?
So all you climate gurus, What caused that pause? Because in all probability this one is just more of the same.
What I don’t understand is why Dr Rajendra Pachauri is stating that we have to wait 30 to 40 years at least before a breaking a long-term warming trend when he’s a railway engineer and various climate scientists have said 15 or 16 years would indicate a break with the long term trend.
What I’d like to know is what is the name of the scientist or organisation that is telling Dr Pachauri we have to wait 30 or 40 years? Or did he just make it up?
And don’t forget that those useful treeometers are telling us that it has been cooling since the mid/late 1960s!!
It is difficult to claim that the recent rise (if there be any) in extreme weather events these past 10 or 15 or 20 years has beeen caused by CO2 emissions when there has been no rise in temperatures during this period. Given the lack of warming, what exactly is said to have caused this rise in extreme waether events, and how has this been caused.
PS. I agree with others who have expressed unease with the needless and cheap shot belittling of Dr Pachauri. His qualifications are not to be sneered at, and this belittling adds nothing of substance to the article; in fact it distracts as does all ad hominems. I see no reason why we should join the other side in the gutter.
I have noticed that this has been a growing trend of Monckton’s approach of late. Unfortunate, since it does nothing to his own credability, still less to displaying the characteristics of being a gentleman. It would be in order to point out that Dr Pachauri does not possess qualifications relevant to climate science (but then again nor does Monckton). However, that is no real handicap, because it appears that there is little real and genuine science being practiced in the field of climate science. the scientific method for the main part has regrettably be thrown out.
Yes, the headline “Railroad Engineer” is a bit tacky, but when you consider the history of spin involved with CAGW, it is not surprising and can be considered reasonable.
Lord Monckton, Anthony Watts and virtually everyone who puts their head above the climate parapet, who does not have the correct ‘traction’ in the climate community is rubbished due to not possessing the ‘correct’ qualifications and experience or
Not being published in the ‘correct’ journals.
Lord Monckton has had to put up with extreme insults whenever he superbly argues his case.