Some stories this week that show global warming aka climate change is beginning to fade away as an issue.
From the 3C Headlines blog:
Global satellite temperatures confirm hiatus of global warming, while the general public and mainstream press are beginning to recognise what climate sceptics long ago identified…global temperatures are trending towards cooling, not accelerating higher.
(click on images to enlarge – data sources, image on right source)
Per The Economist magazine and other major mainstream media outlets, it’s now obvious the conventional, “consensus” global warming meme promulgated by taxpayer-funded researchers is no longer robust – even for the MSM press-release puppets it would appear.
The graph on the right is a depiction of global temperatures as reported by The Economist (pink CO2 curve superimposed by ‘C3′). And The Economist and their mainstream press brethern are not alone in challenging the failed AGW orthodoxy: here and here.
While the majority of “journalists” are still awakening from their intellectual slumber regarding climate science, the latest empirical global temperature measurements (RSS atmosphere temps and CO2 chart on the left) confirm what The Economist is essentially reporting – global warming has gone AWOL and a slight cooling trend has developed over the last 10 years (a minus 0.42 degrees by 2100 if the trend persists).
This warming hiatus happened despite the loud and hysterical shrieking by the climate scientists on the public dole that current CO2 emissions would cause rapid, unequivocal, irrefutable accelerated warming.
And not only are the falling temperatures invalidating the IPCC’s AGW hypothesis, a new Pew poll reports the public support of the global warming hysteria is dropping like a rock – down to only 33%.
Conclusions:
1. Global warming has gone AWOL over last 10 years, per the satellite record
2. Cumulating CO2 emissions in the atmosphere have had a minor impact on global temperatures over the last 20 years
3. The mainstream press, as represented by The Economist, and other proponents of convential climate orthodoxy are moving closer to the AGW skeptics’ (lukewarmers’) position
4. The publics (per Pew) belief in catastrophic AGW predictions is plummeting
The End Of An Illusion
Robert Tracinski, Real Clear Politics
We’re reaching the point where climate predictions have been around long enough to allow for significant comparison against the actual data, and we are now able to say definitively that the predictions were horribly exaggerated.
Many years ago, I remember thinking that it would take many years to refute the panicked claims about global warming. Unlike most political movements, which content themselves with making promises about, say, what the unemployment rate will be in two years if we pass a giant stimulus bill—claims that are proven wrong (and how!) relatively quickly—the environmentalists had successfully managed to put their claims so far off into the future that it would take decades to test them against reality.
But guess what? The decades are finally here.
At Forbes, Harry Binswanger dates the beginning of the campaign to 1979 and puts it in an amusing perspective.
“Remember 1979? That was the year of ‘We Are Family’ by Sister Sledge, of ‘The Dukes of Hazard’ on TV, and of Kramer vs. Kramer on the silver screen. It was the year the Shah was forced out of Iran. It was before the web, before the personal computer, before the cell phone, before voicemail and answering machines. But not before the global warming campaign.
“In January of 1979, a New York Times article was headlined: ‘Experts Tell How Antarctic Ice Could Cause Widespread Floods.’…
“So where’s the warming? Where are the gondolas pulling up to the Capitol? Where are the encroaching seas in Florida? Or anywhere? Where is the climate change which, for 33 years, has been just around the corner?”
He concludes that “I’ve grown old waiting for the promised global warming.” Literally: “I was 35 when predictions of a looming ice age were supplanted by warmmongering. Now I’m 68, and there’s still no sign of warmer weather.”
He puts the issue in terms of common-sense observation. But it can also be measured in terms of hard data. We’re reaching the point where the predictions have been around long enough to allow for significant comparison against the actual data, and we are now able to say definitively that the predictions were horribly exaggerated.
Steven Hayward points to signs that even advocates of the global warming hysteria are starting to backtrack.
“The new issue of The Economist has a long feature on the declining confidence in the high estimates of climate sensitivity. That this appears in The Economist is significant, because this august British news organ has been fully on board with climate alarmism for years now. A Washington-based Economist correspondent admitted to me privately several years ago that the senior editors in London had mandated consistent and regular alarmist climate coverage in its pages.
“The problem for the climateers is increasingly dire. As The Economist shows in its first chart (Figure 1 here), the recent temperature record is now falling distinctly to the very low end of its predicted range and may soon fall out of it, which means the models are wrong, or, at the very least, that there’s something going on that supposedly ‘settled’ science hasn’t been able to settle.”
See a better version of that graph here, which makes it clear that the actual predictions in the graph date only to about 2006—and they are already being proven wrong.
You know, you can really manipulate a graph to spin the data, for example, by manipulating the scale to “zoom in” and make something look bigger or “zoom out” to make it look smaller. We’re used to seeing the zoomed-in version of global temperature measurements, so it’s nice to see this zoomed-out version:
Rather than narrowing in to measure minor variations from the long-term average, which makes annual variations of a few tenths of a degree look enormous, this one zooms out to show us the data in terms of absolute temperature measurements, in which the annual variations over the past 15 years look as insignificant as they really are.
So basically, all that the global warming advocates really have, as the evidentiary basis for their theory, is that global temperatures were a little higher than usual in the late 1990s. That’s it. Which proves nothing. The climate varies, just as weather varies, and as far as we can tell, this is all well within the normal range.
That has been one of my complaints about the global warming scare since the very beginning. We only have systematic global temperature measurements going back about 150 years, which on the relevant timescale—a geological time-scale—is a blink of an eye. Moreover, the measurement methods for these global temperatures have been not been entirely consistent, making them susceptible to changes due to everything from a different paint used on the outside of the weather station to the “urban heat island” effect that happens when a weather station in the middle of a field is surrounded over the years by parking lots. And somehow, among all the billions spent on global warming research, not much money seems to have made its way to the enormous international effort that would be required to ensure the accurate and consistent measurement of global temperatures.
So we have not been able to establish what ought to be the starting point for any theory about global temperatures: a baseline for what is a normal global temperature and what is a natural variation in temperature.
In an effort to fill in this gap—without ever admitting what a fundamental problem it is—the alarmists have made several attempts to patch together a much longer record of global temperatures, going back thousands of years. Michael Mann set the tone for this with his infamous “hockey stick” graph purporting to show temperatures going back 1,000 years, with recent temperatures spiking up ominously like the blade on a hockey stick.
But Mann’s hockey stick came under withering fire for its dodgy statistical methods and selective use of data and has since been pretty much abandoned. But that hasn’t kept the warmists from trying again, this time with a new graph, named after lead study author Shaun Marcott, purporting to show global temperatures over the past 11,300 years, this time with a new, even bigger “blade” to the hockey stick showing the supposed upward thrust of temperatures in the past 100 years.
Except that the whole thing is dissolving in another fiasco.
From the POWERLINE blog:
CLIMATE CHANGE ENDGAME IN SIGHT? ‘The problem for the climateers is increasingly dire’
‘As The Economist shows in its first chart, the recent temperature record is now falling distinctly to the very low end of its predicted range and may soon fall out of it, which means the models are wrong, or, at the very least, that there’s something going on that supposedly “settled” science hasn’t been able to settle. Equally problematic for the theory, one place where the warmth might be hiding—the oceans—is not cooperating with the story line. Recent data show that ocean warming has noticeably slowed, too, as shown’
Related articles
- The puzzle: why have rising temperatures been on a ‘Twenty-year hiatus”? (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Inhofe Praises The Economist for Global-Warming Coverage (nationalreview.com)
- Scientists Are Admitting They Don’t See Global Warming They Expected (godfatherpolitics.com)
- New climate deniers miss the scientific truth on global warming: Rich Lowry (oregonlive.com)
- As Latest Global Warming Scare Report Crumbles, Where’s the New York Times’s Follow-Up? (newsbusters.org)
- New Report: Global Temperature Standstill Is Real (canadafreepress.com)
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Mark Bofill says:
April 5, 2013 at 8:49 am
“…I can just see the headlines now. CO2 Emissions Causing Climate Stagnation and several bleeding edge papers showing how we will all suffer and die as a result sometime off in the future unless emissions are cut immediately.”
*
Oh God, Mark! DON’T GIVE ‘EM IDEAS!
Point is, I think you are right! I can see them saying exactly that! Long faces, the lot – “OMG, we’ve stagnated, and it’s ALL OUR FAULT!”
I could just weep… (you did give me a smile, though). 🙂
Vince Causey says: “Expect an exceedingly long, drawn out end game.”
Not if, as I strongly suspect, Warmists resort to violence when they run out of arguments.
Stephen Wilde says: “How do we know that increased CO2 has had any effect at all?”
Well, we don’t, other than in theory (theory that greatly neglects clouds and convection). There may be some effect, but since the ice core record shows that CO2 follows temperature rise (through the well-understood mechanism of decreased CO2 solubility with increasing water temperature), it’s possible that the CO2 rise is largely due to higher ocean temperatures.
Also, higher ocean temperatures cannot be the result of a warmer atmosphere, since (1) heat transfer is minimal in that direction and (2) the seas have 1100 times as much heat capacity as the air. The tail does not wag the dog. Higher ocean temperatures are mostly due to net incident (rather than TOA) sunlight variation, not higher tropospheric temperatures and definitely not CO2.
I’m a bit sad. It’s 8:30 pm in the UK, our dinner’s burnt. My wife has just said that “what’s up with that” is “what’s up with YOU”. For over three years now, I have been so emersed in all things which make CO2 forced warming absolutely ridiculous, that I’ve become obsessed with the whole subject (probably just like Anthony). Enough is enough I feel. Am I alone in spending so much energy and devoting so many hours building factual evidence that the world is not warming up, creating analogies that CO2 has got very little to do with it . . . . when there’s so many other things that need doing around the house – the lounge could do with a makeover. If there are any phsychologists out there who can convince me that my individual battle with all the deceit about CO2 is worthwhile, then please – I am in need of reassurance. Help.
Joel Shore says:
April 5, 2013 at 10:58 am
Really? I didn’t think the pink curve was scaled; I thought it was showing atmospheric CO2 per given year. I think you’re reading something into the graph that isn’t meant to be indicated.
No, again I think you’re misreading it. The model predictions are the blue regions above the actual temperature line.
How much average difference do you make between RSS and UAH over this time period Joel?
The graphics are fun, but this doesn’t really address the substance of the article, does it?
Is this right for plotting RSS against UAH over this time period?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1950/to:2013/plot/uah/from:1950/to:2013
The method of eyeballs leaves me singularly unimpressed regarding the differences between these data.
Well done, good job… pats on back all-round. I’m going for a cold pint! 🙂
No, this is how it ought to look:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.33/to:2013.25/plot/uah/from:1996.33/to:2013.25
You know, maybe I need to have my eyes checked Joel, but it doesn’t look to me like RSS shows less warming over that time period. If anything, it looks to me as if UAH generally runs a bit cooler than RSS, not that I think there’s a whole lot of difference there. What do you think?
Mark Bofill,
Here are eight (8) trend lines from the Wood For Trees data base, showing a distinct lack of global warming. It also shows the steady rise in CO2.
I have asked Joel Shore before, at what point would he admit that his CO2=AGW conjecture has ben falsified? Never got a straight answer.
Lesson: make decisions based on fact not fantasy.
Mark Bofill says:
No…I think I am exposing what the person who did that was trying to do, which was to lead you to believe that there was a stark contradiction between the rise in CO2 and the behavior of the temperature. If it had been plotted with a realistic scaling between the two, then it would have been obvious that no such conclusion of such a contradiction could be drawn because the rise expected in temperature (as indicated by a realistically-scaled CO2 curve) would be small compared to the “noise” (fluctuations) in the temperature data.
I don’t see a whole lot of substance to the article. It is based on looking at temperature trends over short periods of time and, in some cases, cherrypicking the data set. And, it talks about polls of what the public thinks which, while interesting, have no bearing on the science.
dbstealey says:
April 5, 2013 at 1:49 pm
———
I’ve got to thank you actually for introducing me to WoodForTrees via your posts. The one you linked is a particularly memorable one and a favorite of mine.
At least you’ve got to give Joel credit for using his real name. I doubt any of the anonymous warmists will ever admit to having been C/AGW believers after it’s all done at all.
The debates about whether global warming exists or whether it is caused by man generated greenhouse gases or natural variability may soon become mute. A major heating fuel supply and electrical energy crisis affecting many Northern Hemisphere nations might not be far away as the planet cools to possibly the 1880-1910 or lower global temperature levels due to climate variability . We are already seeing 100 year plus cold temperature records being broken in Europe and again in UK .The global winters of 2008, 2009 2010 and regional cold spells of 2012 and 2013 were just a prelude of what is coming fast down the pike. As we saw during the cold spells of 2012/2013 winter, the extra cooling is coming partly from sudden stratospheric warming causing colder Arctic air entering into the lower latitudes plus the simultaneous cooling from other natural planet variables like a more frquent negative AO, the cooler ocean cycle from the lagged effect of low solar cycle. Many countries in the Northern Hemisphere appear to be doing the opposite in order to protect and prepare their citizens for the colder cycle by prematurely shutting down existing fossil fuel generating plants , restricting the building of new ones and restricting the use of fossil fuel generally . That is similar to removing your furnace and oil storage tank before the onset of winter with no other reliable alternate to see one through the winter Wind and solar will be of little help in most areas due to the extreme winters, winter clouds and significant snow. It is sheer suicide and we can already see many actual examples of this throughout the Northern Hemisphere and currently more notably in UK and Eastern Europe. Now North American nations are being urged by environmentalists who only think about global warming to do the same. Germany, China and India may escape some of the worst heating problems as they seem to retain their former fossil fuel plants and are continuing to build new ones, I also see winters starting to get further cooler as early as 2014/2015 winter and going to 2035 so this problem will be with us for some time to come..
son of mulder says:
April 5, 2013 at 10:07 am
Of all the models used to construct the spread of predictions, which is the model statistically closest to the actual temperature track? How close is it? What are the assumptions in that model? Do they reflect reality or is it just a fluke? My guess is that it’s a fluke. That would mean all the models are rubbish at this game. So there is no point pretending they are some sort of pseudo Monte Carlo simulation against which future global temperature anomoly can be judged. The whole modelled basis of CAGW is just looks like crap.
————–
The closest model would be Hansen’s scenario C. It includes the assumption that human CO2 emissions STOPPED in 2000. The temperature is currently running just below that model, implying that CO2 has little effect on warming.
Psalmon says:
April 5, 2013 at 11:41 am
“2. The political course must be reversed. AGW related taxes need to be abolished. Senseless rules need to be repealed (e.g. burning your food at a net energy loss). Markets need to be allowed to operate to create not just energy, but real solutions. Public investments (those available) need to support technologies really required, not cronies who make solar panels. Laws need to change to allow viable land into production in a more efficient way. The health system still needs private investment with risks and returns.”
and
richardscourtney says:
April 5, 2013 at 12:19 pm
“…Bureaucracies are difficult to eradicate and impossible to nullify.
“As the AGW-scare fades away those in ‘prime positions’ will attempt to establish rules and bureaucracies to impose those rules which provide immortality to their objectives. Guarding against those attempts now needs to be a serious activity.”
*
Totally agree with you both in all you said.
It is vital – the world over – to get rid of the DISEASE behind the symptom that is alarmism and anti-capitalism. We need to protect our societies from the enemy within. We need to protect our technology, too. If we are headed into a little ice age – or a bigger one – it’s technology and fossil fuel that will see us survive and adapt.
Mark Bofill says:
I agree that you need to have your eyes checked: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.33/to:2013.25/plot/uah/from:1996.33/to:2013.25/plot/rss/from:1996.33/to:2013.25/trend/plot/uah/from:1996.33/to:2013.25/trend
joeldshore says:
April 5, 2013 at 2:10 pm
…
No…I think I am exposing what the person who did that was trying to do, which was to lead you to believe that there was a stark contradiction between the rise in CO2 and the behavior of the temperature. If it had been plotted with a realistic scaling between the two, then it would have been obvious that no such conclusion of such a contradiction could be drawn because the rise expected in temperature (as indicated by a realistically-scaled CO2 curve) would be small compared to the “noise” (fluctuations) in the temperature data.
————
Nice play on the graph Joel. Yup, that was one diabolical cherry pick, considering the graph doesn’t show the trend lines at all.
Personally, I think they just wanted to graphically demonstrate the increase in CO2, and the fact that the actual temperatures are about to fall out of the model confidence intervals. I don’t think looking at UAH instead of RSS is going to make much difference in that Joel, but if you think it will, well, more power to you I guess.
joeldshore says:
April 5, 2013 at 2:10 pm: “…It is based on looking at temperature trends over short periods of time…”
Well then, let’s look at T and CO2 trends over, say, 550 million years. That says that what is going on over the last 30 years is inconsequential, and in fact, is working from the lowest starting point, perhaps, in the last half billion years.
” Anthony Scalzi says:
April 5, 2013 at 2:45 pm
The closest model would be Hansen’s scenario C. It includes the assumption that human CO2 emissions STOPPED in 2000. The temperature is currently running just below that model, implying that CO2 has little effect on warming.”
If Model C was adjusted to include CO2 growth from 2000 it would undoubtedly deviate significantly from actual temperature anomoly in a higher direction. That would prove only that the model is crap. As such it implies nothing about CO2.
THis from the spectator probably the MOST crucial point ht to writer’s name missing maybe if AW can find it. Anyway Joe bastardi called him his hero LOL
“The IPCC climate fraud hinges on the concept of ‘back radiation’, supposedly an energy flux from atmosphere to surface. This mistake has existed for 50 years or so.
They claim that when a temperature is converted by the Stefan-Boltzmann equation to the potential energy flux the emitter could transfer to a body at absolute zero, it is real. However, this contradicts Maxwell’s Equations. Only when the radiation field meets another and interferes destructively does real energy transfer occur. Many, perhaps most physical scientists wrongly consider this potential energy as a ‘photon stream’.
In reality, the field from atmospheric GHGs annihilates surface IR emission in those bands – there can be no CO2-AGW. This destroys the contorted ‘back radiation’ argument of which there is no experimental proof. That is an element of faith, the 39 Articles in one designed to persuade the acolytes to support the windmill cult.
I’ll give you an example of their contorted reasoning. Deserts cool at night more than humid regions. The CO2 acolytes think it’s because less water vapour means less ‘back radiation’, so deserts cool more. The reality is IR from the surface to space via the ‘atmospheric window’ cools the surface. In humid regions water vapour condenses, dew, frost or fog. The latent heat evolution offsets radiative heat loss. In deserts, you have to cool much more before there is condensation and the surface can get to well below zero.
This religion, bad science like ‘phlogiston’, has existed since Houghton published his treatise on Atmospheric Physics in 1977; 3 bad mistakes. He is allegedly very religious, a bit like Priestley with phlogiston. Fake ‘back radiation’ is used by Common Purpose to indoctrinate acolytes, Scientology Lite. This is why some want to kill unbelievers.
We have to deprogramme them, like deprogramming Scientologists or Moonies.”
And somehow, among all the billions spent on global warming research, not much money seems to have made its way to the enormous international effort that would be required to ensure the accurate and consistent measurement of global temperatures.
This cuts to the core of the scandal – it was never about actually wanting to know what is really happening with global climate – instead just manufacturing an illusory story. At the end of the cold war – which the liberofascists exploited to make science criminally uncool but at the same time posture themselves as the worlds approved climate scientists – there followed a massive fall-off of weather monitoring stations which has not been addressed. This betrays the lack of any real desire to understand climate – just a need to fabricate an AGW edifice of “perception”.
lsvalgaard says:
April 5, 2013 at 10:11 am
Richard says:
April 5, 2013 at 7:23 am
In 2006 Chabibullo Abdussamatow of the Pulkovo Observatory and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences said global warming had already reached its peak and that reduced solar activity would start the Earth on a cooling phase.
Abdussamatov is already falsified: http://www.leif.org/research/Abdussa3.png
The blue line shows how TSI has actually varied.
Abdussamatov predicted global cooling starting 2016. It is now 2013. In what sense can this prediction already be falsified?
100 years from now we will be talking about the Gores and others as the turn of the century robber barons
phlogiston says:
April 5, 2013 at 4:44 pm
Abdussamatov predicted global cooling starting 2016. It is now 2013. In what sense can this prediction already be falsified?
The ‘prediction’ is based on the projected course of TSI [taking a nose dive]. TSI has not decreased as predicted, hence the extrapolation is not warranted.
marcvsbarcvs
Now can others see why I have been cursing and screaming, ranting and raving here intermittently for months about the cold I have had to endure because I cannot afford heating bills inflated by green b!$%Ar^s. why I say its a life or death issue. Why I so viscerally hate these “environmentalist” fascist scum. In someways they are the equivalent of a Western Taleban.
I think now is the time to talk up their inhumanity and ethical iniquity. Its time to step beyond the settling of pseudo-science in a stout steel-toe-capped pair of rhetorical Doc Martins.
News from Sweden this morning:- The Baltic sea ice thickness and extent has this winter passed previous records. A cooling trend?