By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
I have now had the opportunity to study SteveF’s remarkable essay at Lucia’s Blackboard, to which Anthony kindly draws attention in his footnote to my earlier posting on the absence of statistically-significant global warming for 17 years 4 months.
SteveF’s conclusion is that once allowance has been made for three naturally-occurring influences – volcanic aerosols, the ~11-year solar cycle and the el Niño/la Niña cycles – the HadCRUt4 warming rate from 1979-1996 was six times faster than from 1997-2012. In the abstract, to allow for uncertainties, he cautiously reduces this to three times faster.
Even if one were to take the unadjusted HadCRUt4 data, the rate of warming from 1979-1996 was more than twice as fast as the rate from 1997-2012.
I decided to look not only at HadCRUt4, as SteveF did, but also at the two satellite datasets, RSS and UAH. RSS showed warming at 0.7 Cº/century from 1979-1996 and cooling at almost 0.1 Cº/century from 1997-2012.
UAH, however, in contrast to both HadCRUt4 and RSS, showed warming in the later period, 1997-2012, that was thrice as fast as the warming of the earlier period, 1979-1996.
SteveF’s essay takes no account of the most substantial medium-term natural cycle that seems to influence global temperatures: the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The cycles of that great Oscillation tend to exercise a warming influence for about 30 years followed by a cooling influence for about 30 years. This cyclical influence is visible throughout the HadCRUt4 global temperature record since 1850.
There was a remarkably sharp transition from the “cooling” to the “warming” phase of the PDO at the beginning of 1976 and a transition back to “cooling” late in 2001.
The HadCRUt4 warming rate from 1976-2001 was equivalent to almost 1.8 Cº/century (compared with warming at just 1.1 Cº/century from 1979-1996), but from 2002 to the present HadCRUt4 shows cooling at a rate equivalent to almost 0.5 Cº/century (compared with warming at almost 0.5 Cº/century from 1997-2012).
Much of the fall in the warming rate identified by SteveF, therefore, appears to be attributable to the PDO. It would be interesting to adjust the global instrumental temperature anomaly record not only for volcanic aerosols, solar cycles and el Niños but also for the cycles of the PDO, but that is above my present pay-grade.
What is far from clear is the influence, if any, from CO2. Its influence must be very small, for it seems easily overwhelmed by natural influences such as the PDO and the three phenomena studied by SteveF.
During the three “warming” phases of the PDO that are visible in the HadCRUt4 instrumental record since 1850, the warming rates were as follows: 1860-1880 less than 1.0 Cº/century; 1910-1940 1.4 Cº/century; and 1976-2001 1.8 Cº/century.
Superficially, there appears to be an inexorable and strikingly near-linear increase in the warming rates during successive “warming” phases of the PDO. Might this increase be attributable to the monotonic increase in CO2 over recent decades?
If the increase in warming rates were to continue, perhaps as a result of the growing warming influence from CO2, the warming from about 2040-2070 might be equivalent to 2.2 Cº/century; and from 2100-2130 2.6 Cº/century.
It would not be until around 2160-2190 that the warming rate would reach the IPCC’s currently-projected central estimate of 3.0 Cº/century. And, even then, the mean centennial rate after allowing for the “cooling” phases of the PDO would be considerably less.
However, the apparently tidy 1.0 to 1.4 to 1.8 Cº/century-equivalent increase in the rates of global warming during the “warming” phases of the PDO may not be attributable to CO2 at all. The true cause may be another and more sinister man-made phenomenon: Orwellian data revisionism.
Late in 2009, after the first Climategate emails had been sprung on a naively unsuspecting world, Roger Harrabin of the BBC, an acquiescent true-believer in the global-warming Party Line, was told by his superiors that for the sake of what little is left of the BBC’s reputation he should – just for once – ask Professor Jones of the University of East Anglia some critical questions about the temperature record.
Harrabin had never before stopped to think about whether the Party Line was true. That is the trouble with the Party Line: as Orwell points out in 1984, it is intended as a substitute for independent thought – or for any thought.
So he did not know what questions to ask. He asked me for help in framing suitable critical questions.
I told him to ask Jones whether there had been any statistically-significant global warming over the previous 15 years. He thought that was an absurd question. The Party Line said warming was occurring at a rate unprecedented in human history.
I told him to ask the question anyway. To his astonishment, Jones – albeit testily – admitted there had been no warming statistically distinguishable from zero for 15 years.
I also told Harrabin to ask Jones whether the rates of warming during the three “warming” phases of the PDO in the instrumental record since 1850 were statistically distinguishable from one another.
Harrabin got a further surprise when Jones told him that the three rates could not be distinguished from one another, statistically speaking. On the then HadCRUt3 version of the global dataset, the rates of warming were equivalent to 1.0, 1.6 and 1.7 Cº/century respectively. The uncertainties in the data during the first of the three periods, 1860-1880, were so large that the rate could not be distinguished from that of the later two periods.
Our CO2 emissions could not have influenced the second period of PDO-driven warming, but we could in theory have influenced the third. Yet in the HadCRUt3 dataset the two periods showed warming within 0.1 Cº/century of one another: far too little an increase to be statistically significant.
At a climate conference in Cambridge a few years ago, I asked Jones whether, given that the global warming rates in the three “warming” phases of the PDO could not be distinguished from one another statistically speaking, any anthropogenic influence was yet discernible in the temperature record. He said there was a discernible influence, but did not say where or how large it was.
Not long afterwards, and perhaps not coincidentally, he produced HadCRUt4. Suddenly the rates of warming during the second and third PDO “warming” phases were changed from 1.6 and 1.7 Cº/century respectively to 1.4 and 1.8 Cº/century respectively.
As with other such instances of data revisionism in the terrestrial datasets, the later period was changed very little because the satellites were watching and prevented cheating. But the record in the earlier period was pushed downwards, artificially steepening the apparent warming over the 20th century. It is as though we knew better than those who took the earlier measurements what measurements they ought to have recorded, all over the world.
Disentangling the true contribution of CO2 to warming from not only the numerous natural influences but also from the effects of data revisionism is near impossible. We shall have to wait and see. The one fact that is already clear, however, is that the warming rate predicted by the models on whose output the climate scare is founded is proving to be a hefty exaggeration.
Margaret Hardman says:
“The rejection of AGW here is often ideological rather than scientific, as witnessed by cwon14′s unsubstantiated rant.”
Once again, Ms Hardman has the Scientific Method backward. The ‘rejection’ of AGW is based upon the fact that there is no measurable evidence supporting Margaret’s belief in AGW. Skeptics merely ask those pushing the AGW conjecture to provide testable measurements showing that AGW exists. But they have failed to provide any such measurements.
If I am wrong, Ms Hardman needs to post testable, verifiable measurements quantifying AGW. If she does, she will be the first to be able to do so. In fact, AGW is a wholly-invented fabrication with no basis in measurable, testable science. It is an unproven conjecture, nothing more.
And for the record, I agree with cwon14. Margaret also needs to post chapter and verse regarding her accusation of ‘a couple of misinterpreted emails’. There were plenty of emails that show the AGW scam for what it is, and her vague rebuttal does make that problem go away.
What is the collective noun for climate modellers?
A pomposity?
An ineptocracy?
An incompetency?
A duplicity?
In any event, this group of individuals who loudly trumpet alarmist ‘truths’ and their ‘proof’ of imminent Thermageddon must really adore those like Monckton, who routinely slice and dice their deeply flawed models.
“Show your work” – It would be nice if they did. Their great reluctance to do this is simply the result of not wishing to attract the attention of sceptics, like Monckton, and seeing their models subjected to well-deserved ridicule for their deliberate bias, cleverly manipulated data and flawed analysis.
Typical alarmists are incapable of discussing Monckton and his findings in anything other than the snottiest, or most derisory of terms. Why? Because they are deeply concerned about their ‘science’ being exposed for what it really is – a lot of misleading fuss about a non-problem, which deliberately ignores the effects of natural climate cycles and our variable star, the Sun.
Monckton helps keep ‘climate scientists’ honest, and they really do not like this, as this puts their career/job prospects in jeopardy – as they know that without a steady stream of scary BS, the funding will dry up.
An idiocracy… ?
☺
Kasuha says:
June 15, 2013 at 10:32
In real science, we accept when results change in unfavorable way as long as we know they are closer to reality.
In real science we do no such thing. In real science we guess, calculate, measure reality and if REALITY DOESN’T FIT WITH THE CALCULATIONC THE GUESS WAS WRONG.
Richard FEYNMAN 1974.
Nick Stokes said “GHG forcing just goes on and on.”
Green house forcing seems to have stopped for the past 16 years or so, and in the latter half we find that temperatures are falling, could it be that temperatures have more to do with the the current half height solar high than they do with green house gases.
I look forward to hearing your views over the coming years if a prolonged period of cooling sets in as the combination of Penn, Livingston, Svalgaard and historic records suggest. I believe that Leif is on record on other posts on this blog as saying that loss of sunspots doesn’t mean that temperatures will drop, but documented history from the Dalton and Maunder periods would suggest otherwise.
Do you have a projection or a prediction for us Nick ? To 2030 say, longer if you are brave enough.
The team conspired and strategized to get an editor fired. It discussed collectively boycotting journals too friendly to skeptics. A couple of them indicated they would keep a skeptic paper out of consideration in an upcoming AR even if they had to redefine what peer review meant. Those are the ones that pop into my head.
Steven Mosher says:
June 15, 2013 at 10:40 pm
show your work
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Presumably directed at the Had Crew.
Lord Monckton observes: “I decided to look not only at HadCRUt4, as SteveF did, but also at the two satellite datasets, RSS and UAH. RSS showed warming at 0.7 Cº/century from 1979-1996 and cooling at almost 0.1 Cº/century from 1997-2012”
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Such a statement is erroneous; as a matter of first principle, one cannot extrapolate a data set over a period greater than that which it covers. RSS has only been going for just over 30 years, and therefore one cannot say what it provides on a centenial basis, but rather only on a decadel basis.
Let me give an example. I watch Ulsain Bolt run a 100 metre race, and I note that he runs this in about 9.5 seconds (my watch is only that accurate). 1 conclude that he is running at a speed of about 38km per hour. That statement over extrapolates the data that I have colected. I do not know whether he can run for as long as an hour (after all I have only seen him run for some 9.5 seconds and do not know whether he can keep it up), I do not know how far or at what speed he would run if he were to run for an hour. My data does not allow me to justificably make such assessments.
No doubt this would be proved if I were to place a bet on thee winner between Ulsain Bolt and Mo Farah over 10,000 metres. My projection from watching the 100 metres race suggests that Ulsain Bolt will run 10,000 metres in 15 mins 50 seconds, and I know from watching the 2012 Olympics that Mo Farah runs 10,000 mteres in about 27 mins 30 seconds. I conclude that this must make Ulsain Bolt the clear favourite. Can one imagine what would happen if I went into business as a bookmaker offering odds on a Mo Farah victory at say 1miiilion to one. After all Ulsain Bolt is nearly twice as fast and short of him tripping up and breaking a leg, it is difficult to see how he will not win by the proverbial ‘country mile’ since I expect hime to be several miles ahead of Mo Farah when he crosses the 10,000 metre finishing line. I would go bust because I am over extrapolating my data.
One can see the over extrapolation in the sentence that I have quoted. Lord Monckton observes that between 1979-1996 that RSS showed a warming at a rate of 0.7 ºC/century and then immediately notes that this can not safely be concluded as the centenial rate since over the next 15 years far from warming at that rate, it has actually cooled at a rate of 0.1 ºC/century.
The correct observation is that during the period 1979-1996 RSS shows a warming trend of 0.07 ºC/decade, whereas during the period 1997-2012, it shows a cooling trend of 0.01 ºC/decade.
This is not being pedantic. This is what the data shows. One must not over extrapolate beyond the bounds of the data set. False impressions result from such over extrapolations.
J Martin says: June 16, 2013 at 2:15 am
“Green house forcing seems to have stopped for the past 16 years or so, and in the latter half we find that temperatures are falling, could it be that temperatures have more to do with the the current half height solar high than they do with green house gases.”
I think you’ve missed what this post, and SteveF’s analysis are about. There are causes for variation – we know about them and can account for them, at least partly. And when you do, you get a better picture of forcing, and it hasn’t stopped.
Foster and Rahmstorf said it hadn’t reduced; SteveF has it down (maybe 1/3 of peak), but still continuing. Personally I doubt that the current weak solar cycle has much influence, but insofar as it does, it implies a higher forcing effect. They add together.
Kasuha says:
June 15, 2013 at 10:32 pm
I don’t consider myself a conspiration theorist, therefore I refuse to believe that there is conspiration to adjust past temperature records in a way favorable to global warming alarmism.
Of course if somebody found that they intentionally changed data processing towards less precise but politically more favorable, that would be a different story. But I’m not aware of any evidence for that.
Kasuha, I think you should study the difference between the US GISS data set (Hansens) before and after 1999. It’s quite clear the data has been changed.
1999 US temps – http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/
That graph came from here http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha03200f.html
Now go here: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/
and plug in US 1985-1999 and compare. Using the 1999 data, and adding the measured change from 1999-2013, which is “no change”., the US temps this past decade are less than they were during the 1930’s. There has been no warming in the US this past century. This is not a conspiracy theory, this is the facts as they stand.
George Orwell – “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
Thermodynamically speaking taking a temperature reading when a body is not at thermodynamic equilibrium leads to the incorrect answer. So, in theory at least, all temperatures taken whether inside, or outside, a Stevenson screen are wrong since the planet is never at equilibrium.
tokyoboy says:
June 16, 2013 at 12:04 am
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UHI is an obvious problem in the land based thermometer data sets. The satellite data sets do not suffer from the same problem.
One possible conclussion from a comparison of the two satellite data sets with the land based thermometer data sets for the 1980s to late 1990s warming is that in reality there was very little real warming, and the warming set out in the land based thermometer data sets is little more than an artefact caused predominantly by UHI.
A detailed study nneds to be performed on all adjacent temperature measuring sites which exhibit the kind of discrepancy that you have noted between Tokyo and Miyake Island. Are there any geographical issues that may explain the difference? What is the precise siting of the stations? Is there any difference in equipment, calibration? how has population density changed etc?
Like many others who read this blog, I am far from convinced that we have a proper handle on UHI and the extent to which the data sets may have become contaminated by this (and I include station drop outs). I know that Anthony is working hard on this. It is not a straight forward exercise.
O/T a bit – SandyInLimousin – I’m also in the Limousin, and we have some semblance of summer at last!
if you don’t show the arguments to support a revision in a historic temperature record as has happened between HadCRUt3 and t4, not just there but also in other jurisdictions, the adjusted record simply does not exist as a scientific document. anybody can write a list of numbers, for them to have value and veracity they need the source and interpretation and the adjustments to be explicit.
and then they may be accepted, may.
all parties should argue for a first principles approach, the original data. Without a verified record of how it was arrived at, then its of the table.
Margaret Hardman says:
June 15, 2013 at 11:24 pm
… Bias watch: lifelong Conservative voter, Daily Telegraph reader.
In that case, can you explain to me how global warming scepticism can be squared with being against policies whose outcomes (rather than intentions) make the rich richer and the poor poorer?
Well, thanks. Harrabin’s question about the three times the temperature has risen at the same rate was a key insight for me. I wonder how many times I wrote that the correlation of temperature rise with CO2 rise is best ‘only in the last quarter of the last century’. Steve, bless his heart, must doubt Julio’s attribution after all.
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Margaret Hardman. At least you are given the opportunity to express your views on this website, which is more we “deniers” are allowed to do on websites that support AGW.
Yes I read the Telegraph, yes I usually vote Conservative, because it is self evident that every time, without exception that Labour has been in power the country’s economy has gone down the toilet. With the propoganda of AGW it will go down the toilet big time. We simply cannot afford it!
You mention misinterpreted e-mails. There is no misinterpretation, these con men want their grant money to continue rolling in, which it won’t if AGW isn’t happening. The government wants AGW to be happening so they can tax us with justification and build more useless windmills, that they can pretend is one of their measures to save the world. In fact it has nothing to do with our government, it is an edict from the EU, the left wing, unelected, corrupt (accounts not been signed off by the auditors for 19 years) body that now makes our laws.
Even the “experts” cannot fudge the evidence any longer, there has been no warming for 17 years and four months. AGW is the most expensive con trick ever to be perpertated on mankind.
Has anyone here listened to Rebecca Costa or read her 2010 book The Watchman’s Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out Of Extinction? She is using climate skepticism and how widespread it has become as a Number 1 Example of the kind of irrational beliefs that doomed the Mayan civilization. That we are on the road to doom because of our ability to think analytically and that we need to shift to thinking creatively so that we can find solutions to complex problems like AGW that the governments can then impose.
We are getting education reforms globally to train students to substitute unsupported beliefs for facts and then we can now measure via functional MRI whether the brain is in fact learning to think ideologically, instead of logically problem solving. Researchers have even figured out what part of the brain “lights up like a Christmas tree” when the brain has shifted away from “normal left and right-brain problem solving.” It’s the anterior Superior Temporal Gyrus (aSTG).
When you have a massive organized international effort to identify, encourage, and monitor whether students are learning to move away from rational, fact-based thought so that we can get beyond the debates over Climate Change and simply reorganize society as desired, we need to make note of that. We are properly arguing about the facts and whether the models fit them while education reforms are insisting that only the models will matter in the future. That people need to learn to defer to supercomputer modelling and the advice of experts.
It seems like while we are arguing the real story is that neuroscience is being used to make sure the next generation believes this to the level of physiological change within the brain. And once created, it may take repeated episodes of horrendous cooling to jar the created Mindsets back open.
Nick Stokes
Foster and Rahmstorf said it hadn’t reduced; SteveF has it down (maybe 1/3 of peak), but still continuing. Personally I doubt that the current weak solar cycle has much influence, but insofar as it does, it implies a higher forcing effect. They add together.
Actually it implies a weaker forcing – if natural forcings partly explain 20th century warming, there isn’t a lot of room for alarm.
The IPCC 3c / doubling estimate is based on the assumption that other forcings don’t contribute significantly to climate change. If this assumption is wrong – if say even half the 20th century warming was caused by natural forcings, such as the highest level of solar activity for 8000 years ( http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/solanki2004/solanki2004.html ), then the real climate sensitivity to CO2 is a very unalarming 1.5c / doubling.
At 1.5c / doubling or less, there is simply no point attempting to reduce emissions. The benefits of CO2, such as CO2 fertilisation of global food production, far outweigh any negative effects.
“The rejection of AGW here is often ideological rather than scientific,”
On the contrary, you have it totally arse about !!
AGW is about ideology and agenda.
Scepticism IS science !!
You cannot be a scientist without being sceptical..
if you are not sceptical… you are not a scientist.
Science is built around RATIONAL argument……
.. AGW….. Not so much………………………. its a belief system. !!
I have yet to find any evidence in the paleoclimatic record that CO2 has any effect on climate. From the modeling point of view, there are ample negative feedbacks in the atmosphere attributable to H2O so as to zero out the effects of added CO2.
Heh, Robin, skepticism is the return to reason. This newly invented man is an inferior creature and won’t be sustained in the usual niches. But Gawd, the carnage to come.
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Nick Stokes said:
“I think you’ve missed what this post, and SteveF’s analysis are about. There are causes for variation – we know about them and can account for them, at least partly. And when you do, you get a better picture of forcing, and it hasn’t stopped.
Foster and Rahmstorf said it hadn’t reduced; SteveF has it down (maybe 1/3 of peak), but still continuing. Personally I doubt that the current weak solar cycle has much influence, but insofar as it does, it implies a higher forcing effect. They add together.”
To quote Overpeck, man’s contribution has swamped all natural variability for the last 50 years and they checked everything – including the sun – and it’s impossible that any natural forces were drivers of the warming.
So yes, the greenhouse forcing “went away”.
But since now Overpeck is listed as contributing to explain-away-lack-of-warming Trenberth’s letter stating up to 15% of the energy imbalance reduction is due to the sun going quiet…
Another revision!
Out of interest, given that the CIA has been accused of every major outrage since 1945 (including transmission of African Swine Fever into Humans to create HIV in Haiti and the Dominican Republic) through release of strains generated on Plum Island and the encouragement of populations in Brazil to eat ASF-infected pork to generate AIDS down there), what is the CIA conspiracy theory about how they created ‘global warming’?
LOL