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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Oops! I did it for You!
for Dutch speaking readers:
http://www.zeeburgnieuws.nl/nieuws/kv_sceptici_011.html
Martin van Etten,
Note that global sea ice is now back to its long term average:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
John Finn says:
February 23, 2013 at 3:26 am
I agree with what you are saying for 18 or 19 years, however
Hadcrut3 since March, 1997 or 15 years and 10 months does rule out 0.2/decade
Trend: 0.000 ±0.135 °C/decade (2σ)
Perlwitz says @6:53 am above:
AC Osborne wrote:
17 years was good enough to declare “AGW”
Perlwitz then asserted to Osborne: “You have made this up.”
No explanation, just another false assertion by Perlwitz.
AC Osborne’s comment, in it’s entirety:
As Magoo says February 22, 2013 at 12:53 pm
17 years was good enough to declare “AGW” but not to say that it has stopped or didn’t exist.
As always one rule for them and one for the rest of us.
Osborne was simply quoting another commenter. Therefore, Osborne was not ‘making up’ anything; he simply cut and pasted the words.
But liars are masters of projection. Liars believe that since they lie, everyone else lies, too. That is wrong, of course, most of us are honest. But not Perlwitz. The proof is right here.
herkimer says:
February 23, 2013 at 6:49 am
“If you have five or 10 years when you don’t have the same trend ”
The historical record shows that these periods of no warming and cooling last for much longer and as much as 40 years [ 1890-1930 and again 1940-1980] . If you have two of these periods before 2100 , kiss goodbye to your forecast of 3-6 C by 2100 or even 1-2 C. The figure of 0.6 C rise by 2100 looks better to me .
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////
The material point is that now the driver, CO2, is rising rapidly, whereas before 1940, manmade CO2 was not significant, and since it is alleged by the warmists that CO2 is a powerful driver, there is now no reasonabkle explanation as to why the CO2 driven warming is not presently occuring.
The best case is that natural variation is at least as powerful as CO2 such that natural variation can swamp the CO2 warming signal. However, once you admit that, ie., that natural variation is at least as powerful as CO2, one can no longer assert that the only explanation for the post war late 1970s to 1998 warming must be CO2. That period can now be explained by natural variation and there is thus no longer any evidence in the temperature record which must be the result of CO2 induced warming. Everything in the temperature record can be explained by natural variation.
John Finn at 6:17 am. Parameter estimate and confidence interval is OK. I even prefer that procedure but it is not statistical hypothesis testing. Perhaps you should not talk about null hypotheses at all in this context.
In the incestuous world of the British loony tunes, anti global warming right, Lord Lawson’s son is married to Lord Monkton’s daughter. Lawson has open connections to the oil industry.
When Leicester archaeologists dug up the alleged body of King Richard III, they originally thought it was Lawson, but following extensive research, they discovered he was still alive.
Associate Lord (Viscount) Matt Ridley is a true right wing nutter who single handedly brought down the British economy. He brandished his optimism (he wrote a book called ‘The Rational Optimist’) by running his bank Northern Rock without money. He had to be bailed out by the Bank Of England.
The Scottish based Bishop Hill is neither Scottish, a bishop, nor a hill. His accent reveals his class origins. His recent article in The Spectator reveals his true purpose of scoring cheap political points for the Neanderthal right. The irony of the title will be lost on him.
nursing-prejudice-how-climate-change-activists-are-prisoners-of-their-own-politics
James Delingpole is comedy writer who knew David Cameron at university but is miles to the right. He has created a persona close to a well known TV character, Conservative MP, Alan B@stard.
The Guardian’s most consistent message on global warming is that the only people who oppose it are right wing nut jobs. They could have added upper class in Britain. Every single one of these evolutionary throwbacks is a gift to their opponents.
Richard Verney,
Exactly right. The conjecture that CO2 is causing global warming has been deconstructed by the temperature record. Here is a chart with data provided by arch-warmist Phil Jones, which shows the same warming trends when CO2 was very low, and when CO2 is high. The trends are almost identical, indicating that CO2 has no measurable effect on global temperature.
Thus, the “carbon” scare is falsified. CO2 may cause some minor, insignificant warming. But because it is too small to measure, it can be completely disregarded.
Realize that this has all come about due to CFCs and the Ozone Hole. Again, false science, completely justified by “finding a cause”, i.e., it must be CFCs [see all our data]. Oh, by the way, the Sun never changes, so therefore, it must be CFCs.
The “scientists” got CFCs banned, but the Ozone Hole[s] still haven’t closed. Oh well, forget that, CO2 is the new “bogey man”. And like CFCs, we have the solution; just give us lots of money and we will fix the problem.
There are only two solutions to the energy problem [CO2, etc.]: nuclear energy and/or the Earth’s heat. Corn, Sugar Cane, Windmills, Hydroelectric, etc., all use the Earth’s heat [Sun energy directly]. Coal, Nat. Gas, Oil all use previously stored Solar energy. Nuclear uses Galactic stored energy [previous stars].
My thoughts are that turning Earth’s heat to electricity is the best way to go. I have a new patent that uses a new thermodynamic cycle [gravity and heat] to capture the Earth’s [low temperature] heat energy and convert it directly to electricity.
More information -> jlurtz@basicisp.net
Eric Smith,
I take it you are not a Lord of any sort, because your comments reek of class envy. If the House of Lords was a race, you would get in big trouble for denigrating them with a wide brush like you did. But since it’s politics, I guess you can make all the ad hominem comments you like.
Americans don’t understand what the big deal is. Apparently the British class system does strange things to some folks’ psyche. I routinely come across comments like yours, and I still don’t understand the reason for the underlying hatred. Is it because a Lord is more attractive to the ladies? Or what? What makes a person bad just because they have a title?
Eric Smith,
“When Leicester archaeologists dug up the alleged body of King Richard III, they originally thought it was Lawson, but following extensive research, they discovered he was still alive.”
Boom boom, said Basil Brush, and the audience burst into applause. Keeping working on your jokes Eric, and you might get a slot on “Have I got news for you!”
Steven Mosher says:
February 22, 2013 at 9:03 pm
“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
Or one could consider:
1) GHGs also cool the atmosphere. Why do some people always ignore this physics?
2) Sensitivity could be zero. Without adjustments there was almost no warming in the 20th century.
3) By removing faulty adjustments and accounting for siting problems plus UHI it appears natural cycles explains 99% of the temperature variation over the temperature record.
Jan P Perlwitz says:
February 23, 2013 at 6:22 am .
“No detectability of a trend in a time series, which is a combination of a trend and fluctuations is not evidence for an absence of the trend.”
Oh dear. Nobody (and I’m sure Monckton is included in this) is asserting that warming cannot start up again at some future time or that the longer term (30 year) trend must end. Monckton is making the valid observation that there has been no trend for the last 18 or 19 years. This is then used to invite comments around such things as, oh, I dunno – how skillfull are the models in predicting trends?
“The oceans are the major component of the climate system, which heats the atmosphere. The ocean heat anomaly has continued to rise in recent years.”
Has it? From what I’ve read, the argo dataset shows either a flat or declining trend depending on when you start. Even Trenberth talked of the “missing heat.” Where has it gone? Have you got a reference for your assertion?
D.B. Stealey, February 23, 2013 at 6:56 am, in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/22/ipcc-railroad-engineer-pachauri-acknowledges-no-warming-for-17-years/#comment-1231131
in response to my previous statement:
“Monckton’s assertion of “no global warming for 16 years” is without any scientific basis…”
wrote:
pointing to this link:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2013/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2013/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2013/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2013/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2013/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2013/trend
No error bars, no information about statistical significance of this “declining” temperature in the figure. Therefore, this graphic does not allow any scientific conclusion about absence or presence of a global warming trend in those temperature records for the shown time period. And, in addition to that, the time period goes only from the beginning of 2002 to the end of 2012, which are only 11 years, not even 16 years, according to my math. Who is Stealey trying to deceive here? This graphic does not refute what I said, and it certainly does not prove that I was a “liar”.
And in response to my previous statement:
“Contrary to the assertion made here by Monckton, there has not been any discrepancy between the observed and predicted temperature record yet, at least any which is statistically significant.”
he accuses me again to be a
pointing to following link:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/mauna-loa-co2-vs-uah.jpg
A graphic without referenced source. What are the alleged numbers in the graphic? Where are they coming from? What are “IPCC high (2.8)”, “IPCC best (2.0)”, and “IPCC low (1.3)” supposed to mean? What are the straight lines supposed to show?
Projected ranges in the IPCC Report 2007 for the temperature increase for the period 2090 to 2099 relative to the period 1980 to 1999 can be found here:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-5-4-6.html
Different scenarios come with different numbers for the average projection and the uncertainty range. The uncertainty range there is based on “expert judgement”. The lowest is 1.1 K as lower bound for the B1 scenario and 6.4 K as upper bound for the A1Fl scenario. I don’t see any of the numbers from the graphic presented by Stealey.
Also, the graphic presented by Stealey does not show any 95% range of the temperature projections for present day from the whole ensemble of simulations done with the global climate models, which were used for the IPCC Report 2007. Thus, it does not contain any information that allows a conclusion about the statistical significance of any difference between mean model projections and recently observed temperature record.
A graphic with 95%-range of all modeled temperature realizations compared with the only one realization that is provided by Nature for the recent period can be found here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/02/2012-updates-to-model-observation-comparions/
I had provided this link already in my previous comment. Why was it cut out from that one?
Again, Stealey’s graphic does not refute what I said. And it certainly does not prove that I was a “liar”.
Vince Causey, on February 23, 2013 at 8:39 am in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/22/ipcc-railroad-engineer-pachauri-acknowledges-no-warming-for-17-years/#comment-1231197
wrote:
And exactly this conclusion drawn by Monckton and, as is seems, by “skeptics” in general is not scientifically valid, when it is based on a lack of statistical significance of the trend estimate. A failure to reject the Null-hypothesis (Zero-trend) for a given probability threshold does not falsify the alternative hypothesis (presence of a trend), since it cannot be excluded the possibility that this lack of statistical significance is just coming from fluctuations in the limited data set, which are masking the trend that can be seen in the extended time series. Non-detectability of a trend is not the same as absence of a trend.
Here are the current data:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
Figure 1 and Figure 2 show the global ocean heat content anomaly for 0-700 m and 0-2000 m, respectively.
As always, I am very grateful to most of those who have commented. But the usual suspects remain unrepentant, and certain false statements by one of them – Jan Perlwitz, whose intention seems to have been to flog the dead horse that is climate alarm by getting the facts carefully wrong – require answers so that no one is misled.
1. Perlwitz says I was wrong to say there was no global warming for 16 years. At the time, I was right: none of the principal global-warming datasets showed any warming statistically distinguishable from zero for 16 years, if one determined the trend by linear regression However, Engineer Pachauri is correct to point out that the absence of warming, on all major datasets., has now persisted for at least 17 years. On the RSS dataset, the absence of warming has endured for 23 years.
2. Perlwitz says global warming is more than a rise in global temperature. Here, he confuses global warming with its imagined (and, thus far, largely imaginary) consequences.
3. Perlwitz says that both ice-caps have been melting in recent decades. However, the University of Illinois’ data show that the Antarctic sea-ice extent shows a rising trend during the 33 years of the satellite era. Since most of Antarctica has been cooling, it is probable that the land-baed ice there is continuing to accumulate. Theory would lead us to expect that the high plateau of East Antarctica, where the bulk of the world’s ice resides, is at too high an altitude and latitude to permit much melting, and the IPCC finds that significant ice loss will occur only after several millennia of global mean surface temperatures above today’s.
4. Perlwitz says the ocean heat anomaly has continued to rise in recent years. So it has, if one goes back far anough, but it has done so at a rate four and a half times slower than the computer models had predicted.
5. Perlwitz says a 17-year pause in global warming is not the same thing as 17 years with no global warming. I decline to be drawn into pusillanimous semantics of this vapid kind.
6. Perlwitz says the NOAA’s State of the Climate report did not say that 15 years or more without warming would indicate a discrepancy between the models and measured reality. However, that is what they did say. One understands that their comment is uncongenial to Perlwitz after 17 years without global warming, but facts are facts and Perlwitz should not seek to mislead readers by stating that which is not true.
7. Perlwitz says there has not been any statistically-significant discrepancy between the observed and predicted temperature record yet. However, the rate of warming since the IPCC’s first report in 1990 has been less than half what the IPCC had then predicted, and the discrepancy is indeed significant in that the actual rate of warming falls outwith the measurement uncertainties specified in the IPCC’s 1990 prediction.
It appears that Perlwitz has willfully attempted to mislead readers with a series of outright falsehoods. If so, Perlwitz does no favors to the climate-extremist cause and should perhaps go and play trains somewhere else – with Engineer Pachauri, perhaps.
Error bars are not necessary to show a long term trend. But if error bars are desired, see here.
Note that the long term rising trend line has not accelerated, and that the climate Null Hypothesis has never been falsified: current climate parameters were routinely exceeded in the past, meaning that nothing unusual or unprecedented is now occurring. As a matter of fact, the past century and a half has been extremely benign, with only an ≈0.8ºC natural recovery from the LIA. Temperatures have changed by tens of degrees within decades during the fairly recent past, therefore a minuscule 0.8º fluctuation is essentially a flat line. Nothing unprecedented is happening, despite the fervent wishes of the alarmist crowd for several degrees of global warming. But it isn’t happening; quite the opposite, in fact.
The entire CO2=CAGW scam is based on the false alarm claiming that rising “carbon” will cause runaway global warming. This is, of course, complete nonsense. In fact, every alarmist prediction has failed. In any normal, honest scientific field, the total failure of all predictions would result in a cutoff of public funding. But not in ClimAstrology, in which the system has been gamed by scam artists and pal reviewed journals. Money has thoroughly corrupted most climate scientists.
Vince Causey says:
“From what I’ve read, the argo dataset shows either a flat or declining trend depending on when you start. Even Trenberth talked of the ‘missing heat.’ Where has it gone? Have you got a reference for your assertion?”
The ARGO buoy system shows that there is no “missing heat” lurking in the oceans. Even Pachauri has now been forced to climb down from his alarming projections. Despite all his usual weasel words, he is now admitting that the IPCC was flat wrong in its wild-eyed predictions. All these jokers are being forced to climb down by the ultimate Authority: Planet Earth itself, which is falsifying their True Beliefs.
Finally, I note that the ARGO database has been “adjusted” just like the GISS temperature database. Any data subsequent to the ARGO adjustment is worthless. It was done specifically to show non-existent heat. Here is a chart of the pre-adjustment ARGO data. Post-adjustment ARGO ‘data’ is not reliable, and in fact, it is not actual data at all, but a modeled output.
Jan P Perlwitz,
Thank you for your link on NOAAs ocean heat content. The graph shows that the ocean globally averaged temperature in the period for which ARgo is active is rising. However, the Argo dataset itself shows a declining trend (see D B Stealeys link in the comment above). When I see two representations of the same phenomena which contradict each other, I become more skeptical of assertions such as “Ocean heat content is rising.”
Jan P Perlwitz says:
February 23, 2013 at 6:22 am
…
—————
Welcome to another wacky episode of Jan’s World!
On our last episode, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/09/another-billboard-about-bogus-climate-claims/ Jan made a spectacle of himself trying to weasel around the meaning of plain english in comments, in order to produce snip fodder for his blog. Today he brings us a fresh perspective on avoiding seeing things he’d rather not see.
This empty invocation of formal semantics is nothing less than a heroic effort on Jan’s part to keep his eyes firmly shut to the fact that there has been no statistically significant warming for 16 years, even though atmospheric CO2 has steadily been climbing all the while. He pretends that the problem is that we can’t detect a trend, as if the temperatures we’ve been seeing over the past 16 years have been completely chaotic, instead of bouncing up and down with a bit of noise centering on a +.2C anomaly value as they’ve clearly been doing.
But apparently, this is insufficient to dispel the unease hidden in the murk of Perlwitz’s mind, because he feels the need for more rationalization:
So, we may NEVER actually see any warming, and it won’t invalidate his theory. With this defense against reality in place he moves on to the attack. Monckton is wrong about Pachauri. Having recently gone through a similar exercise on the last episode of Jan’s World, I’m going to pass on taking this apart piece by piece. Here’s the quote Monckon is referring to, decide for yourselves what this means:
Not satisfied with the level of stupidity thus far demonstrated, Jan cranks it up a notch:
Once again, decide for yourselves:
Jan’s World concludes that the models haven’t been proven wrong yet. We’re still within the error bars. To refresh your memory on what this looks like, look here:
That’s it for this week, thanks for watching another madcap episode of Jan’s World!
John Finn says:
“Oh dear – still doesn’t get it. Planet Earth, as you put it, is behaving exactly as I would expect if CO2 sensitivity was about 1 deg C per 2xCO2”
I am afraid that John Finn doesn’t get it. I’ll try to explain using visual aids and small words:
In this chart we see that global warming went up steadily after 1900. During that first rise, CO2 was very low; under 300 ppmv. Yet the rise is exactly the same as the later rise beginning after 1980, when CO2 was much higher.
We see the same natural causes at work in this chart. No matter how high or low the CO2 level, the natural rise in temperature is the same.
Here we see the long term naturally rising trend. Notice again that no matter how high or low CO2 is, the trend remains the same. There is no acceleration of global warming. That is the key point: CO2 makes no measurable difference.
If CO2 had the claimed effect on temperature, then global temperatures would be accelerating. But they are not. That scientific fact falsifies the CO2=CAGW conjecture.
Now, CO2 may have some minuscule effect. But since any such effect is too small to measure, AGW remains only a conjecture. Claiming that the 0.8ºC rise must be due to CO2, without having any measurements to verify that claim, is simply the Argumentum ad Ignorantium fallacy: “Since I can’t think of any other cause, then CO2 must be the cause of global warming.” But the scientific evidence does not support that conclusion.
The demonization of “carbon” is built on that particular fallacy. But you cannot reach an accurate conclusion based on a fallacy. [Sorry about the big words.]
The article in The Australian does NOT provide a direct quote for the “17-year” pause.
It says:
~~~start quote of article~~~
“Dr Pachauri said global average temperatures had plateaued at record levels and that the halt did not disprove global warming.
“The climate is changing because of natural factors and the impact of human actions,” Dr Pachauri said.
“If you look at temperatures going back 150 years, there are clearly fluctuations which have occurred largely as a result of natural factors: solar activity, volcanic activity and so on.
“What is quite perceptible is, in the last 50 years, the trend is upwards.
“This is not to say you won’t have ups and downs – you will – but what we should be concerned about is the trend, and that is being influenced now to a large extent by human actions.”
He said that it would be 30 to 40 years “at least” before it was possible to say that the long-term upward trend in global temperatures had been broken.
“If you look at the last century, records tell you that the increase in average surface temperature has been 0.74C,” he said.
“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.”
~~~end article quote~~~
Without Mr. Lloyd’s interview notes or interview recording, there is no way to know waht, if anything, Lloyd took to be the basis of this lead-in ==> “THE UN’s climate change chief, Rajendra Pachauri, has acknowledged a 17-year pause in global temperature rises”
(It cost me a dollar to find this out — so now I have 27 more days of access to an Australian newspaper — what a treat! /sarc)
Lord Monckton deliberately misleads us with a headline calling Dr. Pachauri a “railroad engineer,” suggesting he is a locomotive engineer, train operator, or engine driver. There is much to criticize about what the perpetual head of the IPCC says and does – but no justification for misrepresenting what he is: an educated professional with a Phd. in industrial engineering and economics from one of America’s most respected public universities.
I would expect such tactics from the likes of Gleick, Lewandowsky or McKibben, but am disappointed to find it used – and defended – in a respectable sceptic forum.
Kip Hansen says:
February 23, 2013 at 11:52 am
The article in The Australian does NOT provide a direct quote for the “17-year” pause…
—————–
I think you’re right. I think the quote I cited was actually Lloyd.
bladeshearer says:
February 23, 2013 at 12:07 pm
“Lord Monckton deliberately misleads us with a headline calling Dr. Pachauri a “railroad engineer,” suggesting he is a locomotive engineer, train operator, or engine driver.”
I don’t know what country you come from, but in the UK, where Lord Monckton is from, an engineer implies someone who has graduated from university with a first degree or higher in one of the engineering sciences and who is employed in an applied science role. Nobody would take the label to mean what you have taken it to mean – someone who drives a train.
But, with regard to judging a persons competence, do citations of academic qualifications really matter? As Forrest Gump would say – stupid is as stupid does.
D.B. Stealey,
“Here we see the long term naturally rising trend. Notice again that no matter how high or low CO2 is, the trend remains the same. There is no acceleration of global warming. That is the key point: CO2 makes no measurable difference.”
I’m not sure that alarmists claim that increased CO2 should cause temperature to go up at an accelerating rate. Certainly, if you take the forcing due to CO2 increases without feedback, each unit increase in ppCO2 would lead to a smaller increase in temperature due to the logarithmic nature of the relationship between forcing and concentration.
If acceleration is implied by models, that could only be due to supposed positive feedbacks, which are looking increasingly unlikely.