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)
@Gail Combs says:
April 16, 2013 at 4:17 pm
@Gail Combs says:
April 16, 2013 at 4:17 pm
Sorry about the above content free post! Although I suppose it could be taken as meaning complete affirmation of your post where nothing more needed to be said. I won’t claim that though – regrettably, since it might have made me look like the epitome of incisiveness . I will admit a brain/attention/digit failure.
After that preamble, I will say much the same as I might like to have claimed in the above manner. My quoting of that point, basically based on what I happened to come across at the time, is at least for me, and I think generally, what people have been doing fairly typically in the attention given to the “background” realities to AGW. Whilst that awareness in itself is useful it only goes so far.
Your more comprehensive description adds meat to the bones and is what is needed to actually develop a case based on evidence as to what has and is still occurring. It is normal for the “white-collar” proponent apparently lurking in the background, but in fact indispensable to the implementation of such schemes, to be able to walk away with accrued benefits and no accountability. Que Wall Street.
For this to occur here would be a negligence that itself amounts to criminality. Comprehensive accounts and evidence should be detailed and developed. From what I have seen on this site, you are likely to have collected a valuable archive of information. Hopefully, people are retaining evidence as they come across it. From now on, to put all this together will be a major part of seeing not just reality prevail but justice.
Many of us have been watching the slow backtracking with great amusement. The Telegraph, Mail, Sun, Express and others followed by the Economist, AP and now Reuters. The last 3 are important and especially the last two as they are news agencies. Now let’s watch the media cut and past. The leaks from the great dam called CAGW will only get worse the longer the temperature standstill continues.
One of the hardest things in life is to admit your were a fool after nailing your flag to the mast / painting yourself into a corner / digging yourself into a hole. Stop digging. LOL.
@Peter says:
April 16, 2013 at 2:47 pm
Rationality will not prevail. Not at least in the sense of a careful consideration of an argument, and a formal evaluation. It doesn’t need to.
What will prevail is reality. A reality perceived as simple observations, not requiring elaboration. These can be summed up as: “They said this would happen and it didn’t.” This is not being simple minded, it reflects the core nature of intelligence itself. No need for fancy analysis.
Your comments about the Huffington Post, as being indicative of the established mindset and its obduracy, are only partly true.
Firstly, the type of person this publication caters to is not representative of the whole. Secondly, it is common when a basic belief or position is under threat to see a reaction that seeks to obliterate this threat by increased, not decreased, vigilance and virulence. A death spasm.
Ultimately, your concern is based on such people having a disproportionate, or even total, influence on the course of affairs largely through the capacity to dictate social requirements or norms. This has been the case, for those of that positioning and mentality, for many years. This does not mean it will prevail into the future. Everything indicates such dominance is now ending.
This is normal, and even though this manifestation is particularly repressive and dictatorial, it has reached its end point. The entire legitimacy of this class of people is now evaporating. The demise of Global Warming will play a significant role in that.
Such people are first and foremost conformists and cowards. When the ascendancy of this sectional interest group is undermined, and confidence in the efficacy of their tribal mob becomes uncertain, the adherents will disappear into the woodwork.
@ur momisugly richardscourtney says:
April 16, 2013 at 5:06 pm
Precisely.
This whole proposition is now discredited entirely on the basis of previous claims by its proponents. No science is required. No argument need be mounted.
All that needs to be done – from the point of view of public understanding – is to compile previous claims, back to Hansen in 1988, compare them to reality, and say: “Here, look”.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
No diversions. Obfuscation shown for the deceit it is. Illustration of personal benefits accrued by participants. Revelation of duplicity which shows character.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
And in recent scientific news we have:
Long live the temperature standstill.
Jimbo:
re your post at April 17, 2013 at 2:48 am.
The paper by Nic Lewis showing “low climate sensitivity” is now being discussed in a WUWT thread presented by Nic Lewis at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/16/an-objective-bayesian-estimate-of-climate-sensitivity/
Richard
Jimbo says
Long live the temperature standstill.
Henry says
The problem is that temperature will not stand still. If you look across my tables,
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/
it becomes clear that the worst of the cooling is yet to come
Before they started with the carbon dioxide nonsense, people looked at the planets to explain weather cycles, rightly or wrongly.
see here
http://www.cyclesresearchinstitute.org/cycles-astronomy/arnold_theory_order.pdf
to quote from the above paper:
“A Weather Cycle as observed in the Nile Flood cycle, Max rain followed by Min rain, appears discernible with
maximums at 1750, 1860, 1950 and minimums at 1670, 1800, 1900 and a minimum at 1990 predicted.
The range in meters between a plentiful flood and a drought flood seems minor in the numbers but real in consequence….
end quote
According to my table for maxima, I calculate the date where the sun decided to take a nap, as being around 1995, and not 1990 as William Arnold predicted.
This is looking at energy-in. It looks like earth reached its maximum output (means) a few years later, around 1998.
Anyway, look again at my best sine wave plot for my data
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
now see:
1900 minimum flooding – end of the warming
1950 maximum flooding – end of cooling
1995 minimum flooding – end of warming.
predicted 2035-2040 – maximum flooding – end of cooling.
Do you see the pertinent correlation of the flooding of the Nile with my sine wave?
Lastly, to make the gravity of what we are discussing here even more clear:
the world has to wake up to the fact that it is globally cooling because it (i.e. more cooling) will have dire consequences for global agriculture. Note the poor crops in 2012 in Anchorage.
In the little ice age thousands died because of hunger and starvation.
This is because the differential between zero latitude and 90 degrees latitude will become bigger. Naturally, apart from more cooling at higher latitudes, this will also cause less precipitation at higher latitudes and more at lower latitudes. This will amplify the cooling effect due to less insolation occurring naturally at lower latitudes. Do you get that? Do you understand why this is so?
So, to prevent famines in the future, for 7 billion people and counting, to survive, we need to encourage more agriculture at lower latitudes, e.g. Africa, south America.
Now, how about some of you clever people here peer review my tables – and do some stats to confirm what I am observing, because if what I am saying is right, we should be ringing the alarm bells. There really is nothing to celebrate about global cooling.
Let me be absolutely clear: The diehards will NEVER admit they were wrong. They will create excuses “like the ocean ate my global warming and it will come back later” but will NEVER admit they were wrong. You see, the ocean argument means they can carry on with their careers, retire and still cling on in 50 years time and take their theory to their graves. Even if we entered another Little Ice Age, it won’t matter. The heat is hiding. Simple.
Expect a new IPCC deep ocean temperature projection out to 2100. 😉
richardscourtney says:
April 16, 2013 at 3:40 pm
//////////////////////////////////
Richard
As usual you have made a number of powerful observations. I was pleased to see you making a strong case regarding all existing natural resources are free; it is only a matter of the costs of extraction, conversion to energy, and distribution thereof that costs money. This is a fundamental point which is often overlooked, or not understood.
As regards the so called basic physics, you state:
“…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
…”
/////////////////////////////////////////
A point which is often overlooked by the warmists is that the proclaimed effects of the simple physics of CO2 is that an increase in CO2 levels LEADS ALWAYS to an INCREASE in backradiation, and thereby an increase in warming and/or heat trapping. An increase in the concentration of CO2 cannot give rise to no temperature increase, let alone to a drop in temperatures. If the warmists are right about CO” residency and the locked in effect of that that already exists, one does not even require an increase in concentration of CO2 for further warming to inevitably occur.
Accordingly, it follows as a matter of first principle, in any year where CO2 levels increase unless there is a corresponding increase in temperatures, the CO2 warming conjecture is potentially being invalidated. Thus in any year where there is an increase in CO2 concentrations and no corresponding increase in temperature an explanation is required explaining why there was no observed warming that year. That explanation must be consistent with the physics of the CO2 warming conjecture.
Of course, that explanation could be nothing more onerous than it is due to natural variation; ie., an unexplained phenomena that is as strong or stronger than the effects of CO2. However, reliance on natural variation inevitably undermines the entire CO2 conjecture since it recognises the effects of matters which we do not know or understand but which are at least as powerful as CO2. Once one accepts the existence of such natural variation and its power, immediately the entire thermometer record becomes explainable by natural variation without the need for CO2 to play any role whatsoever.
Accordingly the pause in warming is of utmost significance and even climate scientists recognise the need to explain this. There is no easy explanation which remains consistent with the underlying premise for the claimed effects of the basic physics of the properties of CO2, and hence the reason why we are seeing such desperate claims such as the backradiated energy has suddenly stopped heating the atmosphere but through some unspecified switch in process has decided to take refuge in the deep ocean. That claim is not simply a sign of desperation but opens a Pandora’s box.
Of course, there can only be a pause to the warming, if in practice there was significant warming taking place before the pause interrupted matters. You will note from my comment (richard verney says: April 16, 2013 at 4:05 pm) that I question whether there was in fact much warming post the late 1970s (apart from natural warming that took place incidental to the 1998 super El Nino) . I am sceptical of the land based thermometer record which I consider has become so basterdised that it is not possible to draw any firm conclusion from it, and it appears irreconcilable with the satellite data set (dependent upon the significant one places upon the fact that the satellite data set is not measuring ground temperature).
@Jimbo says:
April 17, 2013 at 3:24 am
Agreed that the “diehards” will not change. What that 2 or 3% think – and it is that small a proportion who cannot extract themselves – is irrelevant.
They must have the active support of at least another 10 or 15% minimum AND the compliance of something close to the majority of the rest of the population.
This is not just a matter of the “democratic process”. If a significant section of society see that this threatens their very basis in life, and “politics” is unresponsive, there will be violence.
This issue has been created and – tenuously – maintained at a certain level through relentless manipulation and propaganda, and plain deceit. It cannot survive any failure in that.
BTW I realize your comment was largely sardonic!
For any Warmists who deny the temperature pause please see the following. Some climate scientists have been aware about pauses since 2005. We are now in 2013 and still some people deny the pause. I wonder why?
Even some brave folks who should know better plunged in some time back.
Yet in March 2013 we still have those denying the standstill. What kind of world is this??? Sheesh.
richard verney:
Thankyou for your post addressed to me at April 17, 2013 at 4:15 am.
My response to your argument is Yes.
Richard
Arthur4563 (April 16; 8.12am) has summarised the whole thing beautifully. Also:
‘It could be a combination of factors or some as yet unknown variations, scientists say..’
Oh, right – so you guys are now admitting that YOU HAVEN’T GOT A CLUE – and we’re all being charged BILLIONS to fund ‘climate change/CO2 reduction’ measures which are probably worse than useless..
Oh, boy – I see some wonderful Class Actions coming along…
How about their projections?
Jimbo:
I’m short on the time it would take to read the report from which you quote but gather from your quote that the authors have extracted confidence limits on the rate of change of the population mean through fabrication of information about the properties of a non-existent population containing time-temperature pairs at intervals in time that are infinitesimally separated. In this population, the population mean varies linearly with the time, events are statistically independent and the residual errors are normally distributed.
Terry Oldberg, we are being asked to make drastic changes to our way of life based on projections / predictions (take your pick) that are currently observed to be failing. If the failing continues will you concede that the models as they stand have failed.
Jimbo:
The models that have thus far been created are unsuitable for the purpose of regulating the global temperature. Thus, it is accurate to say that the government-sponsored research which created these models has been a complete failure. The conclusion that the ‘pause’ proves these models to have failed results from a flawed argument.
Correcttion:
“…..models as they stand have failed?“
Or theat climate sensitivity according to the IPCC is in error? No?
This is the sign of a religion. They will consider everything except this.
I’ve been seeing more and more creative ways to photograph steam, in order to impress low information consumers of low information journalism but yikes! That one has raised the bar. It wouldn’t surprise me if most of that is fog rising off a relatively warm body of water, on a cold morning.
No, the incessant drum beat of doom goes on. Case in point, this morning’s NPR broadcast about the oh-so-scary looming demise of the Great Barrier Reef and the “OMG! Look what happens in this experimental coral reef tank when we boil the water and suddenly spike the CO2 content! Reefageddon I tell ya!”
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/03/07/173702462/australias-heron-island-a-canary-in-the-coal-mine-for-coral-reefs
richardscourtney says:
April 16, 2013 at 3:55 pm “Zeke: Please allow me to correct the error in your post at April 16, 2013 at 3:15 pm.”
RichardsCourtney, you have pointed out that all energy is technically free, but to mine it or retreive it or harvest it and to distribute it in any way all costs money. You next say “There are NO alternatives to energy from fossil fuels and nuclear power which are anywhere near as cheap.”
First we must both agree on the problem we are both addressing. 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.” So the problem is twofold: on the one hand governments and banks have already decided to sabotage and destroy the fossil fuel industry; and on the other hand, there is no replacement technology. The efforts to close coal plants have been successful both here and in the UK; and while remaining coal fired plants such as Drax has not been closed, it has been required to burn wood instead of coal. Here where I live, coal plants are slated to be closed in the next 7 years. I think we both agree that renewables such as worthless wind turbines are an intermittent expense added on to our coal and gas plants, which also introduce price and supply volatility resulting in blackouts and rising energy prices for consumers and industry. This describes the problem we both are discussing.
Now the people are far less convinced of the science, yet the destruction of our energy sector continues unabated. Progressives who previously had the integrity to stand up and be counted among sceptics, and reject the abuse of science for political gain, continue to call for the destruction of coal and oil power called for by governments, NGOs, and banks. How can they do this? They argue that new free energy sources will appear. All that is necessary is to destroy the greedy evil coal and gas industries, and these repressed sources of energy will simply emerge.
Perhaps you were not aware of this “logic.”
I will now disagree with your first point, and correct your own error. Let’s suppose, in a thought experiment for a moment, that there was a cheap new source of power, and that new source of power needed to be developed, manufactured, shipped, and purchased at an affordable price by as many people as possible both here and abroad. The only way that could happen is by the full use of cheap abundant energy, a powerful infrastructure, and through mass production – even money cannot provide all of these, if they are regulated out of affordability. So your statement that money is necessary to retrieve free energy is only partially true. It is the infrastructure, capital, and power that would make this new energy source available in a meaningful and affordable way to all the people who need it. So to argue that our power and transportation system must be crippled and destroyed in order for new free energy sources to emerge, as is the habit of some, is an argument that is even less sufferable from an engineering and scientific pov than the argument that we must destroy the use of fossil fuels because of C02 emissions. People who make these kinds of arguments reveal that they have no experience, expertise, scientific, engineering, or economic understanding and have recused themselves from any kind of credibility in the subject of electricity. No endless sources of QE or government funds can materialize the replacement technology for fossil fuel. And the window for that to happen is being closed by the transition to worthless wind and solar and the closing of the coal plants.
TomB says:
April 17, 2013 at 7:47 am
Perhaps the Churchill quote is apropos:
– Sir Winston Churchill, Speech in November 1942
Zeke:
Thankyou for your post addressed to me at April 17, 2013 at 9:15 am.
My reply to each of its main points is, Yes.
Richard
Terry Oldberg:
I am replying to your post addressed to me at April 17, 2013 at 9:18 am
I made no fallacies.
The IPCC made a prediction. I cited it, quoted it, linked to it, and explained it.
That is not a fallacy as anybody can check for themselves by reading my post at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/16/the-msm-finally-notices-the-pause/#comment-1277502
Your pretence that the IPCC did not make a prediction ‘lets them off the hook’.
And, importantly, it contravenes the fundamental scientific principle that model outputs are assessed by comparison to empirical reality.
Whatever definitions you may dream up, the IPCC did make the prediction and reality has shown the prediction is wrong.
You say to me
Firstly, I am sure the commission will accept your report with gratitude because they desperately want excuses for the increasing failure of the models.
Secondly, I am grateful for your kind offer, but that is not what I want. I would like a clear, simple and succinct statement of your “equivocatiion fallacy” together with any required definitions of terms used in that statement to be posted here for all to see. After that I may want to accept your kind offer of a copy of your treatise which only I would see.
Richard
richardscourtney:
In your latest message to me, you make an argument that contains the two polysemic terms “prediction” and “model.” The presence in this argument of polysemic terms invalidates your conclusion that your previously made argument was sound.
A possible corrective for staying endlessly on this merry-go-round is for you to bone up on the equivocation fallacy and its role in deceptive climatological arguments. As Vincent Gray, Green and Armstrong, I and numerous logicians have already published on this issue, I don’t see it as appropriate for me to have to supply you with a customized, pro-bono tutorial.
Jimbo is correct in observing that even a return of the Little Ice Age wouldn’t convince climate scientists that an AGW process isn’t currently operative in the earth’s climate system. The climate science community has too much financial and intellectual capital invested in AGW ever to abandon it.
I’m talking about the climate scientists themselves here, not simply those in the activist environmental movement who believe AGW is real and is very dangerous.
Here is a completely serious observation on my part — glacial ice sheets must be crossing the Canadian border before American climate scientists in government and in academia ever admit their climate models are deeply flawed.
Yes Bunky, these climate scientists are that corrupt and that intellectually dishonest.
As a practical matter, the issue of AGW will not be decisively resolved unless environmental activists impose truly serious near-term sacrifices on the American public, sacrifices which go far beyond the death by a thousand regulatory cuts which damage America’s economy but which don’t necessarily reduce America’s and the world’s total carbon emissions.
Beta Blocker:
An alternative to death by a thousand regulatory cuts is for fossil fuel producers to join together in lawsuits against climatologists and their employers alleging fraud.