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)
Friends:
OK, it seems the mass media are – at last – starting to notice that global warming stopped at least 16 years ago. The problem now is to inform them of why this halt to global warming is important.
I again state the importance in case there are readers here who do not know it.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the recent halt to global warming was not possible. But the halt happened and this demonstrates that the hypothesis of man-made global warming is wrong.
This is stated in IPCC AR4 (2007) Chapter 10.7 which can be read at
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-7.html
It says there
In other words,
The IPCC expected that global temperature would rise at an average rate of “0.2°C per decade” over the first two decades of this century with half of this rise being due to atmospheric GHG emissions which were already in the system.
This assertion of “committed warming” should have had large uncertainty because the Report was published in 2007 and there was then no indication of any global temperature rise over the previous 7 years. There has still not been any rise and we are now way past the half-way mark of the “first two decades of the 21st century”.
So, if this “committed warming” is to occur such as to provide a rise of 0.2°C per decade by 2020 then global temperature would need to rise over the next 7 years by about 0.4°C. And this assumes the “average” rise over the two decades is the difference between the temperatures at 2000 and 2020. If the average rise of each of the two decades is assumed to be the “average” (i.e. linear trend) over those two decades then global temperature now needs to rise before 2020 by more than it rose over the entire twentieth century. It only rose ~0.8°C over the entire twentieth century.
Simply, the “committed warming” has disappeared (perhaps it has eloped with Trenberth’s ‘missing heat’?).
I add that the disappearance of the “committed warming” is – of itself – sufficient to falsify the AGW hypothesis as emulated by climate models. If we reach 2020 without any detection of the “committed warming” then it will be 100% certain that all projections of global warming are complete bunkum.
Richard
You say that “…the halt happened and this demonstrates that the hypothesis of man-made global warming is wrong.” It sounds as though the scientific method of investigation has been followed and the hypothesis called “man-made global warming” has been falsified by the evidence. This, however, is not the case.
The scientific method has not been followed but that this is so has been obscured through repeated applications of the equivocation fallacy in arguments made by climatologists about the methodologies of their studies ( see article at http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/15/the-principles-of-reasoning-part-iii-logic-and-climatology/ ). A consequence from failure to follow the scientific method is for falsifiable hypotheses to be absent. We cannot falsify hypotheses because they do not exist!
They finally realize they have been mann handled.
Zeke:
Please allow me to correct the error in your post at April 16, 2013 at 3:15 pm.
You say
Sorry, but ALL energy sources come for free.
Coal. oil, gas, uranium, wind, waves, etc. all exist and cost nothing. They are all free because they all exist in nature. But collecting any one of them and converting that source into useable energy costs money.
Wind and oil are both free. But obtaining usable energy from wind is much, much more expensive than obtaining the same amount of usable energy from oil. There are NO alternatives to energy from fossil fuels and nuclear power which are anywhere near as cheap.
That is why energy from wind power, solar power and muscle power (from animals and slaves) was abandoned when the energy available from fossil fuels became available by use of the steam engine.
Richard
So what does this mean about the “97%?” That they were dunderheads?
Calling 97% “dunderheads” is no way to win friends and influence people.
We are hearing the first yowls of something which is likely to disintegrate into one heck of a cat-fight.
ralfellis says:
April 16, 2013 at 8:29 am
“Theories for the pause include the fact that the entire theory is based on shoddy science and even shoddier computer simulations.”
There, fixed that…..
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
That is certainly one of the explanations and it should be included in the list of possible explanations.
CAGW took off largely as a consequence of the late 1970s warming as seen in the thermometer record. It has always surprised me that warmists could have such high degree of confidence in the late 1070s to 1990s warming when the satelitte record of that period shows no warming; it is flat until and around the super El Nino of 1998.
Given the satellite record, one obvious explanation is that the land based thermometer record became contaminated by issues relating to poor siting, station drop out, UHI etc. Surely, that possibility is no less likely than the IPCC proclaimed only explanation for the ‘observed’ warming must be CO2 (since we can’t think of anything else).
In fact one would consider that contamination of the land based thermmeter data set was the prime suspect, and not CO2, since CO2 emissions cannot explain:
(i)
The 1850 to 1880 warming.
(ii)
The mid 1880s to 1920 cooling
(iii)
The 1920 to 1940 warming.
(iv)
The 1940 to 1970s cooling.
In the light of these simple facts, it is difficult to undersatnd how any objective observer could have high confidence in the proclaimation that in must be CO2.
jc says @ur momisugly April 16, 2013 at 9:29 am
I notice in the Reuters report you link to, Royal Dutch Shell is specified as lobbying for a much higher CO2 price….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes, Shell, BP and Enron were in on the scam from the beginning.
Remember Muller from BEST? His consulting business includes a Shell Oil President, Marlan Downey, “Former President of the international subsidiary of Shell Oil” which might have something to do with all of Muller’s publicity shenanigans. – A puppet attached to Shell Oil with money strings comes to mind. Privately held consulting firms are so nice for hiding money trails aren’t they? ( see my old comment HERE for more on Muller.)
Shell Oil wanted to push natural gas. Ged Davis, the Shell Oil VP who wrote the Sustainability Scenarios for the IPCC shows this in the “Sustainable Development (B1)” part of the February, 1998 ClimateGate (1) email 0889554019, ( link ) which asks for comments on the attachment: “Draft Paper for the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios” by Ged Davis
To quote from the Sustainable Development (B1) section:
“…The impact of environmental concerns is a significant factor in the planning for new energy systems. Two alternative energy systems, leading to two sub-scenarios, are considered to provide this energy:
1. Widespread expansion of natural gas, with a growing role for renewable energy (scenario B1N). Oil and coal are of lesser importance, especially post-2050. This transition is faster in the developed than in the developing countries…”
No wonder Shell Oil (and BP) have been pushing global warming since day one when they provided the initial funding for the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia. It will be a real money maker. Tear out the old infrastructure and replace with Natural gas, Solar and Wind. A new twist on ‘the broken window fallacy’ where the entire country has to shell out to pay for replacing the ‘window’ the energy sector is so busy breaking.
Some Major dailies have “disappeared” the Muller conversion article by the way. I guess too many people had the brains to figure out Muller’s scam.
David Hone is not only SHELL OIL’S Senior Climate Change Adviser he is also Chairman of the International Emissions Trading Association.
Besides lobbying the UK Parliament to strangle Shale Gas by insisting that CCS be deployed – in which venture he’s succeeded- he and his mentor James Smith. SHELL OIL’S previous UK Chairman took SHELL very deeply into Carbon Trading.
“””””…..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…….””””””
Well that must be the answer; can climate science be as easy as that ? We don’t know what, and we don’t know why, but we are quite sure that we have a robust understanding of the science behind it. Film at eleven !
And the language isn’t even florid enough for acceptance as an entry for the Bullwer-Lytton prize.
Who pays money for this stuff ?
And so begins the “Urban Legend” that was global warming. Thankfully some media types are recognizing that some of the leading climate “scientists” are better classified as political activists than dispassionate researchers.
In my post of April 16, 2013 at 4:27 pm, I erred. I meant to address it to richardscourtney but forgot to do so.
DirkH says:
April 16, 2013 at 10:27 am
I generally like to read your comments, but this one was a bit offensive. Mental illness is not a weakness of the mind. In fact, mental illness tends genetically to be associated with highly advanced intellectual capacity. There is often a fine line between genius and madness. John Nash was certainly a highly capable individual. Albert Einstein had a schizophrenic child.
Stay on topic, and avoid triumphalism. The demise of the AGW cult is going to deal a real blow to genuine science, which the world can ill afford. This has been one of my primary worries and sources of anger about the whole brouhaha. These guys borrowed scientific credibility from an account in which I am heavily invested, and I certainly gave them no permission or encouragement to do so.
Be careful what you wish for – you might get it. We, who kept our feet on the ground through the entire onslaught of pseudoscientific malarkey, are going to have to pick up the pieces when it all comes crashing down.
I am happy to see the MSM pulling the plug on, or at least questioning the validity of the CAGW theory. But I don’t think that Reuters was really doing much of that in the subject posting. I blogged this as “Reuters Posting Rationalizes Climate Model Failures” http://cbdakota.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/reuters-posting-rationalizes-climate-model-failures/
cbdakota
Buy popcorn, make note of the weasels before they slide below our radar.
Terry Oldberg:
At April 16, 2013 at 4:27 pm and in response to my post at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/16/the-msm-finally-notices-the-pause/#comment-1277502 you say
Sorry, but your comment displays two errors of understanding.
Firstly, each climate model is a representation of the climate system as understood by the modellers who constructed it. Hence, an error in that representation is observed if there is a difference between behaviour of the real climate and the climate behaviour predicted by the model. The error can be in
(a) the understanding of climate
or
(b) the representation of that understanding built into the model
or
(c) both (a) and (b).
There are no other possibilities.
The models predicted (n.b. predicted and not projected) “committed warming” which has not happened. This demonstrates that the models are in error in a manner which prevents them from predicting behaviour of the real climate. And, therefore, as I explained they are useless as tools for predicting (or projecting) the real climate.
Secondly, there was a hypothesis and my post quoted, cited and linked to it in the IPCC AR4 Report.
The hypothesis was that AGW would occur as emulated by the climate models. That hypothesis has been falsified by the disappearance of the “committed warming”. And that hypothesis was a representation of the understanding of climate behaviour in response to anthropogenic emissions of GHGs as built into the models; i.e. it was an emulation of the hypothesis of man-made global warming.
Simply, the important point is as I said in my post,
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the recent halt to global warming was not possible. But the halt happened and this demonstrates that the hypothesis of man-made global warming is wrong.
Richard
richardscourtney:
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify.
As I’ll use the term “prediction,” it is a product of a conditional prediction or “predictive inference.” An example of the latter is:
Given that is cloudy:
The probability of rain is 30%
Given that it is not cloudy:
The probability of rain in the next 24 hours is 10%
Given that it is cloudy, the prediction of this particular predictive inference is that the probability of rain is 30%. This claim is testable in the statistical population that underlies the associated model.
The models that you claim to have predicted the “pause” have no underlying statistical population. Thus, your “predictions” do not match my definition of predictions. They do match my definition of “projections.” Your argument rests upon an example of an equivocation fallacy that conflates my definition of “prediction” with my definition of “projection.”
Often we are duped into fighting tactical battles about the validity of facts and theory and while too often ignoring the stratigic war plan here.
We need to shine a bright light on the motivations of those who have corrupted the global warming issue.
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t our responsibility to bring that about?” Maurice Strong, former undersecretary of the UN
“We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will
be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” – Tim Wirth, former
member of Congress, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs.
There never were high CO2 trend changes in either long running thermometer or tide gauge records, which exposes any and all headline grabbing alarmist claims as being *lies* and extends the blade of the hockey sticks too far back to blame it on CO2 even if you ignore the bad math needed to create them.
So when do electricity prices and air-fares go down?
Mike Haseler says:
April 16, 2013 at 1:51 pm
….
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….
We aren’t arguing. I like that description of how science operates BTW. You used “deconstruction” in a manner that doesn’t invoke literary criticism and post-normal science. My son is an aerospace engineer and is currently dealing with the very kind of problem you discuss. My own point was different. It is that no matter how much we would like this to be a scientific issue, the majority of people involved are really not much concerned about understanding how climate really works so much as having the appearance of so doing. They want soothsayers rather than science.
I’m coming to the conclusion that a lot of climate science is based on the logical fallacy of confusing necessary with sufficient conditions.
http://bellsouthpwp.net/s/e/sean_c_rhoades/LogicalDebate/FallacyOfTheDay/Fallacy12.htm
As an example, an argument is presented that the recorded increase in energy imbalance at TOA, along with the observed decrease in outgoing longwave radiation within the wavelengths that CO2 is expected to absorb and re-radiate said energy, plus increases in the measured amounts of “back radiation”; constitute direct empirical evidence for CO2-induced global warming. However, I would suggest these are all necessary, but not sufficient, conditions to lead to that conclusion.
You can collect all the evidence you want to support each of these conditions individually, but it won’t be sufficient to reach that overall conclusion, because of this fallacy of composition within the argument itself.
An increasing energy imbalance would surely exist if warming was occurring for whatever reason, not just if CO2 is the culprit. So the change in energy imbalance itself is not a sufficient condition to relate CO2 to warming, it is only a necessary condition…and it is also a necessary condition of ANY warming.
The decrease in outgoing radiation in the CO2 wavelengths is just what you would expect to observe considering the known radiative properties of CO2…it doesn’t logically follow that this is the cause of the change in energy imbalance. It is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for that conclusion, since there could still be another cause or causes for the change in imbalance.
Finally, the increases in measured amounts of “back-radiation” are again a necessary but not a sufficient condition of CO2-induced warming since there could be another cause or causes besides increased back-radiation to explain modern warming.
The difficulty with the science seems to lie in first knowing the full number and nature of all sufficient conditions required to come to a particular conclusion when you’re looking at such a complex and chaotic system, and when some such conditions may not yet be even known or properly understood.
The SS Global Warming has hit the iceberg of truth and is rapidly sinking below the waves. As the cold and unforgiving waters of public backlash flood the hull, all the fellow travellers find themselves trapped. Squealing and foaming like rabid weasels, they are desperately trying to find an exit, but the Internet has welded all the hatches shut. Bleeding paws are franticly scrabbling at every hatch;
The missing heat is in the oceans!
Unpredicted negative feed backs!
Natural variability!
It’s just a pause, it will be back!
But there is no escape. They got the “basic physics” of the “settled science” wrong. They calculated linear flux to and from an atmosphere modelled as a mathematical layer or static body. However the gases in our atmosphere move. They should have run the flux equations iteratively on discrete moving air masses. They modelled conductive flux between the surface and atmosphere incorrectly, but more importantly, they never modelled the critical role radiative gases play in tropospheric convective circulation. It is not just the magnitude of the effects of radiative gases on atmospheric temperatures that they calculated incorrectly, but the very sign of their effect. Radiative gases cool our atmosphere at all concentrations above 0.0ppm
The claim that the atmosphere is 33C warmer than it would otherwise be without radiative gases is the very foundation of AGW claims. This basic error is recorded permanently on the Internet. There is no escape.
Slow down? Pause? Are you kidding???
Trenberth, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE find the missing heat. When Lewiston, Idaho reports that an AIRPORT has recorded a record low temperature, we are NOT talking P–A–U–S–E! Pendleton set a new record at its airport too. But Lewiston???? During the warm-up decades caused by oceanic oscillations, Lewiston was hotter than hell morning, noon, night, winter, spring, summer, fall, all the time! Not so the past few years I tell ya. It’s been FALLING! No pause. No slow down. FALLING!
“RECORD LOW TEMPERATURE SET AT LEWISTON ID AIRPORT
A RECORD LOW TEMPERATURE OF 28 DEGREES WAS SET AT LEWISTON ID
AIRPORT TODAY. THIS TIES THE OLD RECORD OF 28 SET IN 1894.”
My little piece of western pucker brush territory will dip below 26 tonight. Pendleton’s records go further back then Lewiston’s. And this time the warning is for a HARD freeze! As in tender wheat shoots killing freeze. I re-covered my outdoor faucets tonight and I had JUST uncovered them a week ago!
Brought to you by the new era of Weather is the harbinger of AGW.
Idiots.
By the way, me dear ol’ grandma (Irish through and through) always said, germinate seeds just before May but NEVER plant the vegetable garden till after May 7th. Why? She said that from time to time a hard frost will hit during the 1st week of May and wipe out your labors. She lived nearly 100 years. Probably knew what she was talking about.
Perhaps they are an exemplification (living example of) Charles Mackay’s work titled:
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
A couple of Charles’ famous quotes:
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
“We go out of our course to make ourselves uncomfortable; the cup of life is not bitter enough to our palate, and we distill superfluous poison to put into it, or conjure up hideous things to frighten ourselves at, which would never exist if we did not make them.”
.
Pause?? What pause? It’s worse than we thought… is all I’m hearing in rebuttal. It is like arguing with a phone answering system… beeeeeep. GK
Andrew says: “@jorge The duty warmist, jorgekafkazar, puts down an OP with:”
DirkH says: “Barkin up the wrong tree. Jorge just states a fact. The models probably even have the CO2 effect right. Where they fail is most prominently by inventing the never-observed-in-nature positive water vapor feedback. And a lot of other reasons…”
Thanks, DirkH. Couldn’t have put it better myself.
Andrew: to answer your question, above, if it’s still desired, Dirk’s water vapor feedback, above, is #1 model glitch. #2 is probably cloud handling algorithms. #3 may be the improper use of stochastic algorithms, empirical tables, or linear correlations. #4 may be neglecting convective heat transfer. #5 using constant values for varying parameters such as the black body temperature of the sky. #6 incorrect albedo for seawater and land surfaces. #7, possibly error in atmospheric thickness computation. Need I go on? The list is probably much longer. I’ve not delved deep enough into the models to know them all, but I have constructed models of complex systems and am well aware of some of the pitfalls.
Terry Oldberg:
Your post at April 16, 2013 at 7:33 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/16/the-msm-finally-notices-the-pause/#comment-1277670
makes false and untrue assertions concerning the contents of my post at April 16, 2013 at 3:40 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/16/the-msm-finally-notices-the-pause/#comment-1277502
I shall be blunt for clarity.
1. The IPCC AR4 made a clear prediction.
My post quotes it, references it, cites it, links to it, and explains it.
2. The IPCC AR4 prediction has proved wrong.
The predicted ”committed warming” has vanished and, therefore, the “pause” has occurred .
3. That failed prediction demonstrates climate model predictions of AGW are wrong.
It shows that the models don’t emulate climate so they do not emulate effects of changes to climate.
4. The media need to be made aware of points 1 to 3.
The media cannot investigate things of which they are not aware.
5. Your claim that there is not a prediction is plain daft.
My post quotes, references, cites, links to, and explains the prediction.
. Your belief in the existence of an undefined “equivocation fallacy” is your delusion.
You proclaim that this “equivocation fallacy” exists and has importance. I and others have repeatedly asked you to define, to state, and/or to explain this “equivocation fallacy” but you either cannot or will not. All – including me – who have questioned you about your equivocation fallacy have concluded that it only has an abstract existence, it is not defined, it has no effects, and it only exists in your mind: it is your delusion.
Richard
richardscourtney:
I have made no false assertions. Your attempt at proof of your assertion that I have done so is an example of an equivocation fallacy. This example employs the polysemic term “prediction” in making an argument, changes the meaning of this term in the midst of this argument and draws its conclusion from this argument. By logical rule, one cannot properly draw a conclusion in this way.
In this thread, I’m unaware of requests for me to describe the equivocation fallacy. This fallacy is known to logicians and examined by them in their literature. A Web search produces the URLs of numerous articles.
Available articles examine the role of this fallacy in arguments made by climatologists about the methodologies of their investigations of the global warming phenomenon. The biblography of one of these articles ( at http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/15/the-principles-of-reasoning-part-iii-logic-and-climatology/ ) provides citations to most of the others. In addition to myself, the authors of these articles are: a) Vincent Gray and b) Green and Armstrong. Gray’s “The triumph of doublespeak” is perinent but not cited.
Recently, I submitted a detailed report on the equivocatiion fallacy in global warming climatology to the commission that preparing a climate change assessment report for the government of the U.S. I think you’d find this report enlightening. Send a request to terry@knowledgetothemax.com if you’d like to receive a copy.