By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
As Anthony and others have pointed out, even the New York Times has at last been constrained to admit what Dr. Pachauri of the IPCC was constrained to admit some months ago. There has been no global warming statistically distinguishable from zero for getting on for two decades.
The NYT says the absence of warming arises because skeptics cherry-pick 1998, the year of the Great el Niño, as their starting point. However, as Anthony explained yesterday, the stasis goes back farther than that. He says we shall soon be approaching Dr. Ben Santer’s 17-year test: if there is no warming for 17 years, the models are wrong.
Usefully, the latest version of the Hadley Centre/Climatic Research Unit monthly global mean surface temperature anomaly series provides not only the anomalies themselves but also the 2 σ uncertainties.
Superimposing the temperature curve and its least-squares linear-regression trend on the statistical insignificance region bounded by the means of the trends on these published uncertainties since January 1996 demonstrates that there has been no statistically-significant warming in 17 years 4 months:
On Dr. Santer’s 17-year test, then, the models may have failed. A rethink is needed.
The fact that an apparent warming rate equivalent to almost 0.9 Cº is statistically insignificant may seem surprising at first sight, but there are two reasons for it. First, the published uncertainties are substantial: approximately 0.15 Cº either side of the central estimate.
Secondly, one weakness of linear regression is that it is unduly influenced by outliers. Visibly, the Great el Niño of 1998 is one such outlier.
If 1998 were the only outlier, and particularly if it were the largest, going back to 1996 would be much the same as cherry-picking 1998 itself as the start date.
However, the magnitude of the 1998 positive outlier is countervailed by that of the 1996/7 la Niña. Also, there is a still more substantial positive outlier in the shape of the 2007 el Niño, against which the la Niña of 2008 countervails.
In passing, note that the cooling from January 2007 to January 2008 is the fastest January-to-January cooling in the HadCRUT4 record going back to 1850.
Bearing these considerations in mind, going back to January 1996 is a fair test for statistical significance. And, as the graph shows, there has been no warming that we can statistically distinguish from zero throughout that period, for even the rightmost endpoint of the regression trend-line falls (albeit barely) within the region of statistical insignificance.
Be that as it may, one should beware of focusing the debate solely on how many years and months have passed without significant global warming. Another strong el Niño could – at least temporarily – bring the long period without warming to an end. If so, the cry-babies will screech that catastrophic global warming has resumed, the models were right all along, etc., etc.
It is better to focus on the ever-widening discrepancy between predicted and observed warming rates. The IPCC’s forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report backcasts the interval of 34 models’ global warming projections to 2005, since when the world should have been warming at a rate equivalent to 2.33 Cº/century. Instead, it has been cooling at a rate equivalent to a statistically-insignificant 0.87 Cº/century:
The variance between prediction and observation over the 100 months from January 2005 to April 2013 is thus equivalent to 3.2 Cº/century.
The correlation coefficient is low, the period of record is short, and I have not yet obtained the monthly projected-anomaly data from the modelers to allow a proper p-value comparison.
Yet it is becoming difficult to suggest with a straight face that the models’ projections are healthily on track.
From now on, I propose to publish a monthly index of the variance between the IPCC’s predicted global warming and the thermometers’ measurements. That variance may well inexorably widen over time.
In any event, the index will limit the scope for false claims that the world continues to warm at an unprecedented and dangerous rate.
UPDATE: Lucia’s Blackboard has a detailed essay analyzing the recent trend, written by SteveF, using an improved index for accounting for ENSO, volcanic aerosols, and solar cycles. He concludes the best estimate rate of warming from 1997 to 2012 is less than 1/3 the rate of warming from 1979 to 1996. Also, the original version of this story incorrectly referred to the Washington Post, when it was actually the New York Times article by Justin Gillis. That reference has been corrected.- Anthony
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Latitude says:
June 15, 2013 at 11:42 am
Nick Stokes says:
June 15, 2013 at 5:43 am
No. The fact is that we have dug up and burned nearly 400 Gtons of carbon. This has increased CO2 in the air by about 40%
======
What a stupid argument….
You have $0.28 in your pocket….I increase it 40%
….go buy dinner
—————————–
Well said, but it’s worse than that. Only about 4% of atmospheric CO2 (& a possibly somewhat higher share of gain since 1850) is due to human activities such as burning hydrocarbons or making cement for windmills, dams & nuclear power plants.
Climate science has been so busy spending grant money on worse than worthless GIGO models, that it hasn’t discovered all the sinks for carbon or worked out the details of the C cycle.
jai mitchell says:
June 14, 2013 at 7:27 pm
milodonharlani
I gave you a lengthy explaination but the moderators are holding onto it for now.
anyone who says that there has been no warming since the 1998 El Nino needs to realize that this has been one of the warmest years in human history and the last 10 years have been the warmest decade in human history.
unless an annual temperature drops below the 1979 average (which it hasn’t done in over 35 years now) I am not concerned about your pet theories.
======================
Haven’t humans been around for the entire holocene? Wasn’t it warmier in the medevil, roman and minoan warm periods? Not to mention the HCO?
One thing I have noticed is that the zealots of the “Alarmist Church” are out in force for this discussion because they absolutley cannot concede this argument. If they do, they realize that its all over for their “faith”.
What are they going to be like when it cools for 20 or thirty years?
LOL
Tom:
The adherents of the CACCA cult will do what they’ve done for the past decade, ie assert that global cooling is a result of catastrophic man-made global warming. The models predicted this result, don’t you know?
jai mitchell says:
June 15, 2013 at 8:15 am
you are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.
We have a very significant and credible record based on thousands of ice cores (recent 2,000 years) and hundreds of ice cores (earlier Holocene).
===================
jai mitchell says:
June 14, 2013 at 7:27 pm
anyone who says that there has been no warming since the 1998 El Nino needs to realize that this has been one of the warmest years in human history and the last 10 years have been the warmest decade in human history.
===================
jai, are you alright?
http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/vostok.png
TomR,Worc,MA,USA says:
What are they going to be like when it cools for 20 or thirty years?
Pockets of them may remain, as members of the “Hot Earth Society”. They will bow and scrape before idols of Al Gore, Hansen, and Mann, and their logo will be a hockey stick.
I just think of thousands to hundreds of thousands of highly-paid and well-respected people who can’t figure out that large chaotic systems aren’t easy to predict, and I want to weep for the future.
Here’s a thought; what else are they getting wrong?
Latitude (June 15, 2013 at 12:54 pm), technically previous interglacials don’t count as “human history”, even though “modern” humans may have been around; they didn’t leave written records and so aren’t “historical”.
He’s still wrong, though, because the Minoan, Roman, and Medieval Warm periods occurred during human “history”. With the limitations of ancient records and temperature proxies (and even modern temperature records), it can’t be said with certainty that one or more of these eras wasn’t warmer than today. One of the warmest decades in history? OK. The warmest? No.
Proxy records indicate that the peaks of the Minoan, Roman & Medieval Warm Periods were hotter than the 1980s & 1990s, which weren’t even warmer than the 1930s & 40s.
CACCA is & always has been an epic FAIL.
jai typed:
You probably don’t realize this, but that’s one of the least intelligent comments on this thread. The “overwhelming majority of the scientists” also believed in eugenics, phrenology, terracentric universe, static continents, ether, etc. etc. etc. Then they died, refusing to look at the facts. Like you will.
And even though I am well aware that you think you’re a pretty clever guy, if you think the ice cores are anything more than a long-term average with absolutely NO capability of documenting spikes or other excursions, then you understand nothing about them. The “52 million years” claim makes you look like a 10 year old, repeating something their teacher told them at school.
the last 10 years have been the warmest decade in human history
On the other hand, 3 of the last 5 years on RSS are not even in the top 10. With RSS, 2012 ranks 11th, and 2011 ranks 13th, and 2008 is 22nd.
Thanks Gary…I was trying to point how how absurd his statement was
Codetech
says,
And even though I am well aware that you think you’re a pretty clever guy, if you think the ice cores are anything more than a long-term average with absolutely NO capability of documenting spikes or other excursions, then you understand nothing about them. The “52 million years” claim makes you look like a 10 year old, repeating something their teacher told them at school.
———-
The finest resolution on the 540,000 year cycle is several hundred years.
the finest resolution on the 2000 year cycle is several decades.
it sounds like you are making stuff up–well, if you think that CO2 isn’t from human’s burning fossil fuels, well there is simply no hope for a guy like you.
Latitude says:
June 15, 2013 at 12:54 pm
do you understand the term “human history”?
just how far back do you suppose that goes?
dbstealey says:
June 15, 2013 at 11:54 am
Glad to see that jai mitchell now understands that we’re in an interstadial. Previously his position was that the current Ice Age had passed.
And yes, CO2 is higher than at times in the past. Not that it matters. During geological history, CO2 has been up to twenty times higher than it is now — with no runaway global warming. When CO2 was high, the biosphere teemed with life. More CO2 is better. There is no downside at either current or projected CO2 levels.
————————————
When CO2 was 20 times higher than it was now was when exactly? and what was the temperature then? and what was the sea levels then? what were humans like then? could our modern civilization survive with the temperature effects and sea level changes that this would bring?
you know, the idea that we are in an interstadial is against everything that has ever been taught or studied in paleo climate. . .I mean, they call it the Holocene BECAUSE we ended the last ice age.
That’s it, I can’t possibly deal with all the Gish Gallop going on here. You guys are absolutely bonkers.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop
jai…..tell me again how far back you said we have ice cores
and what did early humans have to do with temperatures or CO2 levels
So what if humans were here or not…temps with up and down anyway
Just exactly like they are now….
Who’s stupid enough to think a fraction of a degree means anything…and even ‘stupider’ enough to think that tiny, the real one that’s not adjusted, not an anomaly, fraction of a degree can show a trend?
hell, my butt has a bigger temperature swing when I get up and down……….
More importantly Jai, what was the sun doing then? What were the continents doing then?
I can’t believe nobody is even bothered that Santer never said the thing this whole argument is based on. He said 17 years, at a minimum. And he wasn’t even talking about global surface temps.
jai mitchell says:
“When CO2 was 20 times higher than it was now was when exactly?”
You can easily see the answer to that by clicking on the link I posted. CO2 has been up to twenty times higher in the past. Sorry that disrupts your world view.
And:
“…they call it the Holocene BECAUSE we ended the last ice age.”
I understand that you’re winging it here, and that you’re pretty new regarding this subject. But we are still in an Ice Age.
Finally, thanx for the laugh with your one link, which has nothing whatever to do with science. It just reflects the consternation you feel when someone runs circles around your arguments.
I recommend reading the WUWT archives for a few months. You need to get up to speed on the subjects discussed here over the past 5 – 6 years. That way you won’t make juvenile errors, like when you wrote: “The LIA is associated with the maurader minimum…”
It is easy to tell when someone gets their talking points from alarmist blogs, which don’t know what the Maunder Minimum was. You can’t pretend your way to credibility here.
M. Courtney says:-
“The worst impact of creating this echo-chamber is the decline in the Guardian’s readership.”
Indeed, what happened to RealClimate ? It appears to have just moved over, to the Guardian.
Jai & Ryan:
Please educate yourselves on basic geologic & atmospheric history before you comment on them.
Just considering the Phanerozoic Eon (the past 543 million years), CO2 was about 20 times higher than now during the Paleozoic Era’s Cambrian & Ordovician Periods. The sun was then only four to five percent weaker than now, yet the latter period experienced a not just an icehouse cycle, but a glacial epoch. The spread of green plants onto land during the Silurian, Devonian & Carboniferous Periods helped lower CO2 from around 7000 ppm to 1000 during much of the Mesozoic Era.
During the Paleocene & Eocene Epochs of our present Cenozoic Era, CO2 concentration was 900 to 1100 ppm, although some think that during the Eocene Optimum, levels might have returned to 2000 ppm. That time may be the 52 million years ago interval that has Jai so confused, but CO2 was much higher then than now, as you easily could have discovered by doing the least little bit of actual research.
As noted by many, the human contribution to current CO2 concentration of 395 ppm of dry air is a small fraction of the total. Most of the gain in this beneficial gas has been from natural causes, chiefly its release with slow warming of the oceans since the depths of the LIA c. 1700.
dbstealey says:
June 15, 2013 at 4:16 pm
Thanks for mentioning the current glacial epochs.
Jai, the present Ice Age, with waxing & waning ice sheets over the NH, began with the Pleistocene Epoch about 2.4 million years ago. But since the Oligocene Epoch, when Antarctica glaciated, Earth has been in an icehouse phase. The Holocene is simply another in the long series of interglacials that interrupt NH ice sheet advances & extensive SH montane glaciers, in addition to the persistent Antarctic ice sheets, now about 35 million years old.
BTW, soil isotope studies show that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, with most of the ice on our planet, has been stable or growing for at least 3000 years, ending its retreat begun after the Last Glacial Maximum, c. 20,000 years ago. This fits with other proxy data showing that Earth has been in a cooling phase since the Minoan Warm Period, ie headed back toward the next glacial phase. They last about 100,000 years, while the interglacials, as now, typically endure just 10 to 20,000 years. Ours is getting long in the tooth, so enjoy the balmy climate while it lasts.
Humanity could not stop the next ice age even if over the next few centuries we burnt all the accessible fossil fuel in Earth’s crust. The ice sheets might not return for thousands of years yet, but they will.
Yes, glaciations became possible when it went somewhere around or under 3k. A little bit less sun output makes a huge difference, and so do other factors. These things are not news to most anyone who follows climate science, including the thousands of “warmist” climatologists who think the Earth is still warming in response to CO2. And claiming that we know concentrations hit 8k(20×400, assuming here that you don’t think Mauna Loa is in on the conspiracy ;D) is a bit out there. It’s possible, but it is not a sure thing.
Tell me, does it bother you that Santer never said anything about a 17-yr test to disprove warming as is claimed in this post?(trying to actually discuss the post)
Obviously, jai mitchell doesn’t understand climate science, how it works, what the history is, etc.
We can go on trying to educate her, but it is usually pointless for the true believers. They don’t want to know the facts, or the theory or the truth or understand any of the nuances. They just want to continue believing and every comment he/she makes is in that frame. Try to ignore and especially ignore any fact-type information she thinks she is making.
Ryan says:
June 15, 2013 at 4:11 pm
I can’t believe nobody is even bothered that Santer never said the thing this whole argument is based on. He said 17 years, at a minimum.
In other words, if this is the correct interpretation, and if we have no change for a million years, his great, great…..great grandchildren can say he was right since he only said 17 years was the minimum needed, but no maximum was ever given by which time you can conclude that the models are wrong. Is that correct?
Here is what Richard Courtney had to say about Santer’s statement on an earlier article:
“The Santer statement says that a period of at least 17 years is needed to see an anthropogenic effect. It is a political statement because “at least 17 years” could be any length of time longer than 17 years. It is not a scientific statement because it is not falsifiable.
However, if the Santer statement is claimed to be a scientific statement then any period longer than 17 years would indicate an anthropogenic effect. So, a 17-year period of no discernible global warming would indicate no anthropogenic global warming.
In my opinion, Santer made a political statement so it should be answered with a political response: i.e. it should be insisted that he said 17 years of no global warming means no anthropogenic global warming because any anthropogenic effect would have been observed.
Santer made his petard and he should be hoisted on it.
Richard”
Ryan says:
“Tell me, does it bother you that Santer never said anything about a 17-yr test to disprove warming as is claimed in this post?”
Let’s cut to the chase here: How many years, in your opinion, would global warming have to stop for you to admit that the CO2=CAGW conjecture is falsified?
Post a specific number, please. How many years?