It seems the debate is getting a bit testy in the land of watercress sandwiches and doilies*.
“Man-made global-warming hypothesis is dead in the water” says Godfrey Bloom MEP, but it gets better, he points a finger at the chairman and shouts “denier”.
Watch.
h/t to Tom Nelson
* Some people thought I was referring to Belgium. No, I was referring to the EU Parliament in Brussels. I had lunch service there in a roomful of skeptics while Climategate raged in my mind, and I couldn’t say anything until it was verified. I recall the lunch service because it seemed to heighten the surreal situation I found myself in. – Anthony
Icarus62 says:
April 16, 2013 at 5:47 am
“@CodeTech: When multiple peer-reviewed studies find very much the same value for planetary energy imbalance,”
…we would expect the planet TO WARM.
Which it doesn’t.
So your multiple uncited studies must be junk. No warming. It HAS to warm if there’s an imbalance. You can’t define your way out of this total failure of the CO2AGW theory.
Almost empty chamber, as posters above identify..
I thought we were spending God-knows-how-much shipping the whole EU machine from Brussels to Strasbourg every month to appease the French.. Dare I suggest that, in fact, there are huge numbers of EU officials and MEPs PRETENDING to travel to Strasbourg and back every month, when in reality they don’t leave their cosy offices in Brussels..?
Questions need to be asked – and soon…!
@richardscourtney:
The fact that global warming continues unabated strongly suggests that the IPCC were right. Indeed, it would be remarkable if the laws of physics governing the radiative balance of the planet had suddenly changed in the last few years, and the evidence indicates that they have not. The climate is following the known physics and continuing to heat up, under the influence of our huge emissions of greenhouse gases –
Lyman et al 2010
von Schuckmann & Le Traon 2011
Levitus et al 2012
Nuccitelli et al 2012
Balmaseda et al 2013
@DirkH: The existing planetary energy imbalance is, by definition, global warming.
icarus62:
At April 16, 2013 at 4:35 am
you claimed global warming is happening at the rates of temperature change predicted by the IPCC.
At April 16, 2013 at 5:14 am
I explained that you were plain wrong and global warming stopped at least 16 years ago.
At April 16, 2013 at 5:25 am
you conceded that global temperature has not risen and tried to claim global warming is not warming of the globe but is accumulation of heat.
At April 16, 2013 at 5:43 am
I explained that your attempt to redefine global warming was silly.
At April 16, 2013 at 5:55 am
you have repeated your silly assertions and added a ridiculous assertion concerning “huge emissions of greenhouse gases”.
The laughter is too much! It hurts! I can’t take much more! Please stop!
Richard
If you were a national leader and new climate information was brought to your attention that showed that the energy and environmental policies being pursued by your environmental and energy departments were putting your citizens at risk, what would you do? Yet this is what is happening in several western countries. Global temperatures were supposed to rise in an unprecedented way until 2100 and winters were supposed to get warmer. Exactly the opposite is happening. Global surface and ocean surface temperatures have been flat for some 16 years now since 1997 and have actually started to cool the last 10 years.
The winter temperature anomaly for the Northern Hemisphere as measured by Hadcrut3gl shows a negative linear trend for 18 years since 1995.
The year 2012 was the 4th snowiest since 1967, the start of hemispheric snow extent records.
Take the case of UK:
1] Their winters have been cooling for the last 6 years starting in 2008. despite the predictions that they would warm up
2] During the last two decades 1990-2010 there were 6 winters or 30% of the winters below the 1981-2010 average winter temperature of 3.8 C for all of UK
. 3] During the 100 year period of 1910-2013 there were 58 winters. or 58 % of the winters below the 1981-2010 average
4] During the last UK extended cold spell period of 1962-1987, a period of 26 years, there were 19 winters or 73% of the winter were below the 1981-2010 average
5] There have been 41 winters since 1910 colder than the 3.31 C which was the average temperature this past winter of 2012/2013
6] The winter temperatures for Central England (CET) have been slowly declining since 1988 or 26 years
Despite this clear record of regular cold winters as part of the long term trend, the UK government was advised that winter temperatures were going to warm and coal fired power plants should be shut down. This, in my opinion, is like implementing national suicide. During the past winter there was barely enough heating fuel and/or electrical energy to cope but perhaps not enough to prevent thousands of premature deaths due to freezing temperatures. Installing wind and solar energy replacements will be of little help during some of the future winter storms or during periods significant snow or clouds or little wind unless there is some form of stable back up like fossil fuel energy plants. No power plant should be shut down unless it is unsafe to operate or its life cycle has ended.
What is happening in UK is being played out at other nations as well to different degrees.
I think it is time to re-examine the flawed science and assumptions that were used to establish the national energy and environmental policies on the grounds of avoiding further damage and reducing the serious national risk if they were to remain unchanged. We need to rethink the flawed energy and environmental policies even if international agreements need to be modified.
The globe may be headed for 2-3 decades of cooler winters due to declining solar cycles, declining global SST, AO being mostly negative and possibly fewer strong climate altering El Ninos. These climate factors could be further supplemented by volcanic eruptions, sudden stratospheric warming, Rossby wave changes causing the jet stream to dip further south allowing cold Arctic air to come further south and more blocking situations, all of which can lower the winter temperatures further regionally.
A good one!
@richardscourtney: All the evidence as cited above shows that global warming continues unabated, in accordance with the known physics – primarily the radiative imbalance caused by anthropogenic long-lived greenhouse gases. So, the IPCC are still correct (well, predicted 0.2°C per decade vs observed ~0.17°C per decade – I’m sure we’re not going to quibble about 3 hundredths of a degree warming over a decade).
Do you have any physically valid reason to believe that global warming is going to slow down any time soon?
icarus62:
At April 16, 2013 at 6:25 am you ask me
Your question is surreal.
Global warming stopped at least 16 years ago. Something which does not exist cannot “slow down”.
Get real. Move with the times. Global warming is so last century. It has not existed this century.
However, you may be asking about future global cooling when you suggest the global warming which does not exist may “slow down”. Of course, over the long term future global cooling would be likely because return to an ice age seems probable in centuries to come. However, nobody knows if and when that will happen.
What we do know is that global temperature rises and falls but rarely remains unchanged for long. Hence, it can be anticipated that global temperature will rise or fall at some time in the next few years or lustrums. It will then probably continue to stagger up towards the temperature it had in the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), or stagger down towards the temperature it had in the Little Ice Age (LIA). It may, but we can hope will not, fall to a glacial state.
The best we can hope for is that global warming will resume to raise global temperature to the temperature it had in the MWP.
Sadly, there are no shamans armed with chicken entrails or computer models who can predict or affect these future possibilities in any way.
Richard
I enjoyed the video so much that I copied it onto my Facebook page. UKIP are gradually getting more credibility, so it will be interesting to see how they fare in the May local elections.
BTW the changes in moderating this site seem to be pleasing most people, ‘Well Done’ for that.
John
@richardscourtney: As I said, all the evidence shows that global warming continues unabated, in accordance with the known physics, primarily the radiative imbalance caused by anthropogenic long-lived greenhouse gases –
Lyman et al 2010
von Schuckmann & Le Traon 2011
Levitus et al 2012
Nuccitelli et al 2012
Balmaseda et al 2013
So, you are mistaken, and I take it that you do not have any physically valid reason to believe that global warming is going to slow down any time soon. Pity. The fact that global warming is continuing unabated means that we are getting into more and more trouble with every passing year, requiring ever larger efforts to address the problem when / if there is the political will / desperation to deal with it.
Forget about greenhouse gas emission controls – the planet is warming so fast, it’s too late for that now. The planetary energy imbalance shows that we would have to reduce atmospheric CO₂ from the current 390ppm to 345ppm, merely to halt global warming where it is now. This proves that Dr. James Hansen was absolutely right when he advocated that the world should aim to reduce CO₂ to 350ppm as a first step to stabilising the climate and averting climate chaos.
Forget about ‘renewables’ too – they will never come close to powering modern global civilisation as we know it now, so they’re mostly a waste of resources. What we need now is a project on an enormous scale to sequester carbon dioxide from the free atmosphere to the tune of around 60 billion tons per year or more, every year for decades to come, to eliminate the planetary energy imbalance and offset continuing emissions. We need to be working on the science and engineering for this right now, so that when the public are literally screaming at their governments to do something about global warming, it will be ready to be put in place and all the engineering problems will already have been solved. What worries me is that a project like that is going to take a lot of energy, and obviously it can’t come from fossil fuels – where’s it going to come from? Who is going to pay for it? Any ideas?
What was more amusing was the perceived need of the translator to then say “Thank you”. I suspect that most non-German speakers know what Danke Means. 😉
I LOVED the totally flat, monotone response of the German chairperson, obviously a career bureaucrat, “Danke”. I almost fell off my chair.
Done! The EU parliament refuses Connie’s demand!
http://www.lesechos.fr/entreprises-secteurs/energie-environnement/actu/0202707811892-le-parlement-europeen-porte-un-coup-presque-fatal-au-marche-europeen-des-quotas-de-co2-558704.php
And the price of carbon goes down over 30%:
http://www.boursorama.com/cours.phtml?symbole=1rAABCAR
icarus62:
I have had enough of your trolling.
Warming is an increase in temperature.
For example, when heated a mixture of ice and water does not warm until all the ice has melted although it accumulates heat.
Global warming is warming of the globe.
That is what it is BY DEFINITION.
In this thread you accepted that, and you debated whether the warming had stopped until I showed you that ALL the pertinent data sets show global warming stopped at least 16 years ago.
Having been showed that global warming has stopped you then dreamed up a definition of what you want to call global warming.
Global warming is warming of the globe. It stopped at least 16 years ago.
Global warming is NOT accumulated heat, the birth rate of rabbits, the likelihood of alien invasion from space, or anything else you want to pretend it to be.
Global warming is warming of the globe. It stopped at least 16 years ago.
Try to face reality. And stop bothering me. I shall ignore any further delusional nonsense from you.
Richard
George Lawson:
Head of nail, meet hammer. Except I think there’s more to it than that.
Denier and its cognates in the mouths of alarmists definitely and deliberately connotes a similarity to holocaust denier. Denier in the mouth of Godfrey Bloom deliberately brings back to mind that horrific smear of every single one of us. As such it is very powerful rhetoric and entirely justified. It isn’t comparing the chairman with a holocaust denier – there’s been no suggestion to that anywhere in the skeptic world – but it is reminding them and every other alarmist of the need to disavow that disgraceful tactic utterly and for ever.
maybe there is a secret code here…? warming means cooling same as gore means idiot?
Andor:
I would appreciate an explanation of your brief post at April 16, 2013 at 7:35 am. It says
I failto understand what you are trying to say. Can you please explain?
Richard
richardscourtney says:
April 16, 2013 at 5:14 am
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My reading of what the IPCC are saying is that they expect that by the year 2020 it will be 0.4degC hotter than it was in the year 2000. In otherwords, whatever temperature data set one takes (excluding ocean temp sets because the oceans dampen response), one would expect to see the temperature anomaly in the chosen set increase by 0.4degC.
Their statement infers that even if all manmade emissions were to halt completely in the year 2000 (ie., there was not one single ton of manmade CO2 emitted as from the end of 1999 onwards), there would still be a rise in the temperature anomaly of 0.2 degC by the year 2020. This rise resulting from the residency of CO2 in the atmosphere as at 2000.
As you correctly say, there has not this century been any warming. hence for their prophecy to come true one needs to see an increase in anomaly of some 0.4 degC within the next 7 years, ie., before the year end of 2019. This is not looking very likely. The UK Met Office predicts no warming before 2017 so if that is so, the heat will really need to be on between 2017 and 2019 for the IPCC prediction to comne to pass.
Presently, it is looking very much like a fail. I wonder what AR5 will have to say about this prediction and its prospects of being correct.
@richard verney: Remember that the IPCC are talking about the rate of warming averaged over decades, which is currently around 0.17°C per decade – very slightly less than the quoted 0.2°C per decade but not enough to quibble about, I wouldn’t think.
herkimer says:
April 16, 2013 at 6:14 am
////////////////////////////
I have long argued that averaging is distorting the truth. There is no such thing as global warming, only regional variations. Some regions are warming, some are static, and some are cooling. Likewise, the effects of ‘global’ warming is felt on a regional not a global basis.
I have frequently pointed out the position in the UK. Global warming may as some theoretical average have paused these past 16 or so years for the globe as a whole, but as far as the UK is concerned, since the year 2000, CET shows that the temperature in the CET region has fallen by 0.5 degC. More worryingly, since 2000, CET shows that the 3 month winter period temperatures in the CET region have fallen by some 1.5degC
At the time when the Climate Change Act was passed, politicians should have been aware of what was actually hppening to the UK since they have access to the CET record and since the Met Office should be advising them on the CET data. The politicians should have been aware of what energy demands might reasonably be expected in the light of what was actually happening in the UK based upon CET data.
@ur momisugly icarus62 says:
April 16, 2013 at 7:01 am
A genuine question.
Do you have friends, or know people, who respond to matters of fact in the way you do?
I mean, have you come to your position by discussion with others, who agree what you show here is a real, legitimate, workably practical way of thinking? Or do you mix with people for whom what you’ve shown makes sense?
I ask, because although the point made by richardscourtney above, quoting the IPCC statement, is about warming in the first two decades of this century, and your response covers different periods both in duration and relationship to the time frame mentioned. And your assertion that warming continues unabated is not what would ordinarily – to me – be described as being seen to be confirmed by reality.
So I wonder if in fact there is, or can be, any relationship between you, and any who share your responses, and others whose foundations in looking at reality are clearly different? And how extensive in number are those who make sense to you?
richard verney:
Thankyou for your post at April 16, 2013 at 7:45 am.
I write to confirm that your understanding of the IPCC statement is identical to my own. Indeed, I fail to see how it could be understood to say other than you and I understand it does say.
Richard
I just wanted to add something to this from a human perspective . I am sure there are some people who are predisposed to anxiety disorders and who are, like me, living in a state of acute and ever escalating fear after reading almost daily alarmists’ predictions. I have been living in a hell where I’m afraid of the weather on a daily basis, Once where I loved the sea it has now taken on a sinister appearance and I have nightmares where my very young family are faced with food shortages, flooded by the sea or dying from drought and disease. I am pleased to have found your site and even more so after reading this article because it has calmed me down a little and so hopefully I can get back to the business of making a living. I am not prepared to say that there is no longer an issue with warming but that I now have some much needed perspective and can now sleep at night. .
@JC: Yes, anyone who has a reasonable physical understanding of Earth’s climate system thinks the same way as I do. The best evidence we have (cited above) shows global warming continuing unabated, as the laws of physics tell us to expect from the increased infrared opacity of the atmosphere, and several more minor forcings such as black carbon on snow. To focus on natural unforced variability in the surface and lower troposphere temperature series and ignore the continuing global warming trend would be self-delusion, would it not?