Theories for the pause include that deep oceans have taken up more heat with the result that the surface is cooler than expected, that industrial pollution in Asia or clouds are blocking the sun, or that greenhouse gases trap less heat than previously believed.
The change may be a result of an observed decline in heat-trapping water vapor in the high atmosphere, for unknown reasons. It could be a combination of factors or some as yet unknown natural variations, scientists say.
…
“The climate system is not quite so simple as people thought,” said Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician and author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” who estimates that moderate warming will be beneficial for crop growth and human health.
…
“My own confidence in the data has gone down in the past five years,” said Richard Tol, an expert in climate change and professor of economics at the University of Sussex in England.
Full article here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/16/us-climate-slowdown-idUSBRE93F0AJ20130416
See also: Fireworks in the EU Parliament over “the pause” in global warming
==========================================================
This article is a bit of a turnabout for Alister Doyle, who has run a series of mostly unquestioning articles promoting AGW in the past. Now if only Seth Borenstein at AP can begin to start questioning, we could see real journalism on display.
h/t to Joe D’Aleo
Related articles
- Is the media waking up on global warming? ‘Tic, tic, tic. The sleeping MSM is stirring. Headlines no one could imagine seeing a few years ago are popping up on a regular basis. The backdown is beginning’ (climatedepot.com)
- Nature mag forced to admit warming has stopped: New Climate Deniers say ‘the ocean ate my global warming’ (junkscience.com)
“Climate scientists struggle to explain warming slowdown”.
Reuters better be careful or Mike Mann will slap them with a libel lawsuit. I hope they are not implying that he’s struggling to explain the slowdown? He must be tweeting furiously at the moment!
Terry Oldberg says:
The models do not “predict” but rather “project.” As they do not predict, their predictions cannot be proved faulty.
__________
And therefore they should not be used for economic policy decisions. If they have no “predictive” value they are at best curiosities — fantasies of what might or might not happen. I don’t think we should be gambling our future and ruining our standard of living on these wildly inaccurate projections.
Reg Nelson:
Right on!
The ‘market’ would has a term for the present condition we find AGW in, and I think it loosely applies now; the term is “overbought” .
Definition of ‘Overbought’:
1. A situation in which the demand for a certain asset unjustifiably pushes the price of an underlying asset to levels that do not support the fundamentals.
2. In technical analysis, this term describes a situation in which the price of a security has risen to such a degree – usually on high volume – that an oscillator has reached its upper bound. This is generally interpreted as a sign that the price of the asset is becoming overvalued and may experience a pullback.
.
“Theories for the pause include that deep oceans have taken up more heat with the result that the surface is cooler than expected, that industrial pollution in Asia or clouds are blocking the sun, or that greenhouse gases trap less heat than previously believed.”
OR….that their fundamental theory is simply wrong.
Julian Shwinger (nobel Laureate) – about conformity in Science…
After 1989 Schwinger took a keen interest in the non-mainstream research of cold fusion. He wrote eight theory papers about it. He resigned from the American Physical Society after their refusal to publish his papers.[3] He felt that cold fusion research was being suppressed and academic freedom violated. He wrote: “The pressure for conformity is enormous. I have experienced it in editors’ rejection of submitted papers, based on venomous criticism of anonymous referees. The replacement of impartial reviewing by censorship will be the death of science.”
james griffin says:
April 16, 2013 at 8:58 am
“………And if that is not bad enough they are unaware that CO2′s ability to create heat is logarithmic. Thus whatever temp fig you come up with for a doubling it will not double again…you will get a diminishing return. Pretty basic stuff”.
That statement encapsulates the scientific community’s shortcoming from the beginning of this affair. They failed to shout from the rooftops that the AGW concept depends on an absurd misunderstanding at its very root. The CO2 molecule (or any conglomeration of those molecules) has absolutely no ability to create heat – zilch, zero, nada. It cannot add heat to a system and cannot (unconstrained) ‘trap’ heat. Don’t tell me I am wrong without an experimental proof.
DirkH says:
April 16, 2013 at 12:11 pm
Its true that (from memory) Aldous Huxley’s alternative vision, constituting Utopia (The Island? – not nearly as memorable as Brave New World, Utopia’s seem to have a habit of being a bit lifeless) did not have people thick on the ground – a type of Arcadia. But there were people there at least!
Perhaps when WWF was founded it was more conservation rather than extermination, or maybe Aldous was just not as clear about the agenda as Julian – he did take lots of drugs.
Duster “The problem has little if anything to do with “science,” which contrary to your assertion is quite comfortable with “not knowing.”
I’m suggesting more than “not knowing” but having a formal concept. It’s the equivalent of saying that the answer to “if I have two apples and give away two apples … I have nothing” … meaning the absence of anything or the mathematical concept of “zero” is that there is something whose value is nothing.
In science “noise” is considered as an error: a perturbation of the signal … something that can be removed through averaging.
In engineering (with 1/f noise which cannot be averaged out) we have a different concept which is that noise has a finite value. It exists as something which cannot be removed or destroyed (much like heat). So, engineering naturally has this idea that whole parts of systems both cannot and should not be modelled.
In contrast science has a deconstructionalist philosophy: that any system can be dissected into constituent parts and those in turn into constituent parts and that the whole is the simple sum of the parts. Saying that you can deconstruct the system into smaller and smaller parts is the equivalent of saying that no matter how small the part, the noise can be eliminated by some suitable means. In other words as the sample -> inf. then error ->0
Applying this to climate “science”. The philosophy behind science that you can deconstruct the global climate science and understand its constituents parts,directs the academics toward producing climate models with no concept of “what cannot be understood” or “natural variation” as we also call it.
Because the climate “scientist”, has no concept of a finite level of natural noise that cannot be reduced by any amount of sample, they end up with a missing term in their equations so instead of
GLOBAL TEMPERATURE = f(CO2) + NATURAL-VARIATION
They end up with the equation:
GLOBAL TEMPERATURE = f(CO2) x fudgefactor.
The fact that that fudge factor is around 3x (300%) ought to have rung alarm bells. But apparently not. Because “NATURAL-VARIATION” is about 70% of all the raw signal, it has clearly never occurred to them that something like 70% of the climate variability is completely missing from their models.
In other words the majority of the global climate is undetermined by the small group of parameters which they have falsely and stupidly assumed must be the cause of all the climate signal …. because as I keep repeating … they have no concept that 70% of all the climate change has nothing to do with the parameters they input into their models.
Engineers are used to this. Engineers live with real world system with erratic operations, with real people who can’t be modelled.
But climate scientists can neither cope nor understand these real world systems and that is why they continue this fruitless search for a model that models the unmodelable”.
kcrucible says:
That’s the bit I like too… since they don’t actually understand the mechanics of ANY of it, they can’t say WHY the ocean would suddenly start absorbing more heat than before, but it’s the only explaination that they can think of (that doesn’t make them totally wrong.)
Nah. It still makes them totally wrong.
The whole “global warming” religion is based on the notion that the ONLY way their models can be made to fit the data for the mid 20th century forward is to add in their fudged up CO2 factor. That is the argument from ignorance fallacy that the whole house of cards rests on.
They have been able to push that line, because they have been able to feign the necessary ignorance. That is no longer tenable. They now have to admit that there MUST be something else, something other than what they have included in their models to date, that can make those quantities of heat appear and disappear.
They have been playing the “God of the gaps” routine, but they did it wrong. They had to. In order to appear scientific yet scary, they had to make their gap EXACTLY the size of their desired CO2 effect. Problem is, now they have one CO2 sized gap, and two CO2 sized plugs they need to stuff into it. Whoopsie.
If they admit that the oceans can suddenly and unpredictably swallow up (or not) an amount of heat equal to 15 years of “global warming”, then they have themselves claimed that CO2 ain’t the ONLY thing to which such a quantity of heat can be attributed. Any effect that can make 15 years of “global warming” suddenly vanish now (necessary to explain the present) and that can also make it suddenly appear later (necessary to maintain the scary stories that get them funding and political power) can also have made “global warming” appear in the past. Say, @1980-2000.
So many (hah! most?) climate scientists have a vested interest in CO2-based AGW, but it’s nice to see them throw a bone to the faintest possibility that it could be over. It’s the reaction of the masses that will be interesting the climate scientists climb down.
Back during the 70’s ice-age scare, people in the upper N.H. (Canada, U.S. N. Europe, etc.) had been taught about the ice ages in grade school. So it wasn’t much of a stretch for them to buy into the stories that the Holocene party was over and it was time to head back to an ice age. It had happened before so it was probably going to happen again. Bye-bye lovely weather.
Now we have a generation that has had all-CAGW-all-the-time drilled into them from every which social and media direction and so it seems impossible that the warming would stop, let alone possibly reverse. Ice ages are a thing of the past and we are all gonna fry, right?!?
It will be interesting to hear the gears crunch in those heads as they try to shift their beliefs into reverse. Some will blow a gasket.
This is what I’m after, hearing more about the press waking up and what they are saying now. Now is the beginning of the turn around for the masses who largely believe what they are told to believe.
“It could be a combination of factors or some as yet unknown natural variations, scientists say.”
Yes, the real scientists have been saying that for a long time, but no champagne for coming clean until their names are printed and their reputations restored. Start with Vincent Courtillot and include Brian Tinsley, both linking solar activity to short term changes.
I love this peer reviewed article on the lack of temperature rise over the past 10 years.
http://ht.ly/2w0Vb7
They conclude that :
The ability to predict retrospectively this slowdown not only strengthens our confidence in the robustness of our climate models, but also enhances the socio-economic relevance of operational decadal climate predictions.
The ability to predict retrospectively……. Bwhahahaha
How on earth are the BBC going report this standstill and possible cooling that may be coming. If the rest of the media get behind it, as seems likely, it is going to be impossible for the BBC to report it, as they have backed themselves in to a corner on unbiased climate reporting, because of that infamous meeting in 2006. The report of that meeting has still not come in to the mainstream awareness yet, despite widely presented on the blogs, I fear/hope it will still come back to bite them. It was a despicable piece of bias, and against the BBC charter, which we support here with our money.
Keith Gordon
How can this be? I thought the science was ‘settled’.
What I worry about is what if the Earth HAD gotten warmer? They would still have been wrong, but would have boasted that they were right with more fervor than ever. Many CAGW proponents don’t understand this argument. They think that if the Earth had gotten warmer, there would be no doubt that they were right. This is the kind of logic we are fighting. It’s nice to see them scratching their heads, but I think they’re still going to try and delay until the planet gets warmer again. And THEN they’ll be right… all along. (/sarc on that last part)
before you become too complacent and believe rationality is starting to prevail, I suggest you surf any climate article at Huffington post and read the comments. The vast majority of posters will tell you flat out that the warming pause is a lie, and they seem to take great pride in the fact that they would not be caught dead checking out alternative views at WUWT or any other sceptic blog.
Unless we enter an actual ice age, and even then only once it is decades under way, will the majority of these people concede that maybe, just maybe, the earth is not warming. They will then turn around and blame the ice age on modern society and demand we shut it down to reverse the process.
MrX says:
April 16, 2013 at 2:45 pm
What I worry about is what if the Earth HAD gotten warmer? They would still have been wrong, but would have boasted that they were right with more fervor than ever. Many CAGW proponents don’t understand this argument.
——————
Absolutely. I’ve thought before too that if we’d immediately halted all burning of fossil fuels and reduced CO2 emissions to zero some 15-18 years back, they’d have viewed the temperature trends today as confirmation of the IPCC’s zero emission scenario.
Spooky.
denniswingo says:
April 16, 2013 at 7:36 am
The first step is to realize you have a problem.
Perfect! A 12 Step Program for recovering Alarmists Anonymous!!
The Alarmist Anonymous Prayer (with apologies to Red Green and all Possum Lodge members)
I’m an Alarmist but I can change, if I have to, I guess…..
MtK
Gary Pearse asks “How is he [Richard Tol] an expert (economist) in climate change?”
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/economics/people/peoplelists/person/289812
Better to address the argument than the person.
“some as yet unknown natural variations”.
It is not ‘unknown’. It is the cooling expected after the sun peaked in the late 20th century, with a decade or so heat lag. This ‘unknown’ phenomenon happens every day after noon. A child could understand it.
Richard G says:
April 16, 2013 at 12:06 pm From the Reuters article:
“Weak economic growth and the pause in warming is undermining governments’ willingness to make a rapid billion-dollar shift from fossil fuels. Almost 200 governments have agreed to work out a plan by the
end of 2015 to combat global warming.”Critical reading test: What is missing from this paragraph?
“…willingness to make a rapid billion-dollar shift from fossil fuels.” SHIFT TO WHAT? There IS no viable replacement that is politically, economically, or energy equivalent.
I will tell you.
Prepare for something even more irrational than co2 regulation and any of the abuses and falsehoods and attacks on science and reason perpetrated so far. We destroy coal and oil and our existing energy sector so we can have free energy. Yes, free energy. We will now convert to fwee energy.
Now, I do not have millions of views or thousands and thousands of subscribers on Youtube, as the fwee energy crowd does, but at least I can be relied upon to tell the truth: any alternate energy source will not come for free. And the less existing cheap energy we have to develop, manufacture, and ship energy technology, the fewer people in the world it will benefit or reach.
H.R. says:
April 16, 2013 at 2:20 pm
So many (hah! most?) climate scientists have a vested interest in CO2-based AGW, but it’s nice to see them throw a bone to the faintest possibility that it could be over. It’s the reaction of the masses that will be interesting the climate scientists climb down.
Back during the 70′s ice-age scare, people in the upper N.H. (Canada, U.S. N. Europe, etc.) had been taught about the ice ages in grade school. So it wasn’t much of a stretch for them to buy into the stories that the Holocene party was over and it was time to head back to an ice age. It had happened before so it was probably going to happen again. Bye-bye lovely weather.
Now we have a generation that has had all-CAGW-all-the-time drilled into them from every which social and media direction and so it seems impossible that the warming would stop, let alone possibly reverse. Ice ages are a thing of the past and we are all gonna fry, right?!?
It will be interesting to hear the gears crunch in those heads as they try to shift their beliefs into reverse. Some will blow a gasket.
Imagine one of the generation that you are talking about they have lost their engineering job because energy costs were so expensive that the company has moved all its heavy engineering to China. They can no longer afford to run a car because of the unemployment and the extra ‘carbon taxes’ on fuel. They are in fuel poverty and spend most of the winter wrapped in blankets and their grandparents died from hypothermia by their switched off one bar electric fire. This is the story of many many people in Europe. 600,000 families cut off from electricity as they cannot pay the bill. Death rates in the tens of thousands in UK in one winter because they are putting the cost up so that their friends in on the subsidy business can make fortunes. It suddenly dawns on these people that all that was not to save the world at all – it was so the prime minister’s millionaire father in law could make £1000 per DAY – from just allowing windmills on his land and other politicians in UK and elsewhere; and so politicians, greens and scientists could go to far flung tropical areas to cram 8 hours work into 10 days having all expenses paid jollies from taxes. This generation that suddenly realizes – probably in the midst of power cuts next winter – that they were conned and have lost out hugely in money, jobs, and lives – because of climate ‘scientists’ who knew it was all a scam – will lose their sense of humor.
This will not end prettily
@DirkH and possibly @jorge
On re-reading, now with more available time (my issue), I wonder if we are violently agreeing with each other?
Theory, however propagandized by barrage MSM coverage, fails, if unsupported by observable facts. This is the case in respect of the discredited scam which is CAGW.
It’s a long way down for the controllers and acolytes of these MSM organizations, never mind the “scientists”.
Scam at haste. Be brought to account at leisure.
Honest question: pray tell how I have been filtered to “awaiting moderation”?