Data doesn’t support Obama’s claim
Guest essay by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
During the July 2013 U.S. Senate hearing at which Roger Pielke Jr. and Roy Spencer gave stellar testimony to the visible discomfiture of the climate-extremist witnesses, none of the “Democrat” Senators and none of the people they had chosen to testify before them was at all anxious to defend Mr. Obama’s assertion that over the past decade global warming has been accelerating at an unforeseen rate.
At a fund-raiser for the “Democratic” Congressional Campaign Committee in Chicago May 29, he had said, “We … know that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or ten years ago.” He had added, “I don’t have much patience for people who deny climate change.”
Well, I deny that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or ten years ago. But I deny it not because I take an aprioristic position opposite to Mr Obama’s aprioristic position, but because science is done by measurement, not by parroting the Party Line. And the measurements do not support the Party Line.
Let me demonstrate. First, what warming does the IPCC anticipate in its upcoming and much-leaked Fifth Assessment Report?
![clip_image002[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0024.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image002[4]")
The graph above, adapted from Figs. 11.33ab in the draft report, for which I am an expert reviewer, shows that from 2005-2050 (most of the past ten years fall within that period) the models expect an approximately linear warming of about 0.4 to 1.0 Cº per 30 years (this range is also explicitly stated in paragraph 11.3.6.3). That is equivalent to 1.33 to 3.33 Cº/century, with a mid-range estimate of 2.33 Cº/century.
The IPCC’s models’ mid-range projection implies that around 0.12 Cº of warming should happen over five years, and o.23 Cº over ten years. An eighth to a quarter of a Celsius degree: those are the benchmarks. Previous IPCC reports made broadly similar near-term projections.
What, then, is the consensus among the monthly global mean surface or lower-troposphere datasets about whether the climate is warming “faster than anybody anticipated five or ten years ago”? Or whether it is warming at all?
There are three terrestrial datasets: HadCRUt4, GISS, and NCDC. There are two satellite datasets: RSS and UAH. To forestall the usual futile allegations of cherry-picking, we shall look at all five of them.
For each dataset, two graphs will be displayed: the most recent 60 months of global temperature anomalies, and the most recent 120 months.
The graph will display the spline-curve of the monthly anomalies in dark blue, with a thicker light-blue trend-line, which is simply the least-squares linear-regression trend on the data. Over short periods, no more complex trend need be determined.
Nor is there any need to allow for seasonality, not only because the graphs analyze data over multiples of 12 months but also because globally the seasons cancel each other out, so that natural variability tends to make any seasonal pattern near-impossible to detect.
Linear regression determines the underlying trend in a dataset over a given period as the slope of the unique straight line through the data that minimizes the sum of the squares of the absolute differences or “residuals” between the data-points corresponding to each time interval in the data and on the trend-line.
The graphs, therefore, give a fair indication of whether global mean temperatures at or near the surface have been rising or falling over the past five or ten years.
Note, however, that – particularly with highly volatile datasets such as the global temperature anomalies – a statistical trend is not a tool for prediction. It indicates only what has happened, not what may or will happen.
And what has happened is, as we shall see, grievously at odds with the Party Line.
We begin with the terrestrial datasets.
GISS, five years:
![clip_image004[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0044.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image004[4]")
GISS, ten years:
![clip_image006[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0064.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image006[4]")
HadCRUT4, five years:
![clip_image008[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0084.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image008[4]")
HadCRUt4, ten years:
![clip_image010[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0104.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image010[4]")
NCDC, five years:
![clip_image012[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0124.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image012[4]")
NCDC, ten years:
![clip_image014[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0144.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image014[4]")
The mean of the anomalies on all three terrestrial datasets, five years:
![clip_image016[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0164.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image016[4]")
The mean of the anomalies on all three terrestrial datasets, ten years:
![clip_image018[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0184.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image018[4]")
Now for the two satellite datasets. RSS, five years:
![clip_image020[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0204.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image020[4]")
RSS, ten years:
![clip_image022[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0224.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image022[4]")
UAH, five years:
![clip_image024[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0244.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image024[4]")
UAH, ten years:
![clip_image026[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0264.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image026[4]")
The mean of the anomalies on the two satellite datasets, five years:
![clip_image028[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0284.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image028[4]")
The mean of the anomalies on the two satellite datasets, ten years:
![clip_image030[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0304.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image030[4]")
The mean of the anomalies on all five datasets, five years:
![clip_image032[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0324.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image032[4]")
The mean of the anomalies on all five datasets, ten years:
![clip_image034[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0344.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image034[4]")
The only dataset that shows any warming at all is UAH over ten years. The warming is a not particularly dizzying one twenty-fifth of a Celsius degree over ten years, equivalent to two-fifths of a degree per century.
The RSS satellite dataset, on the other hand, now shows no global warming at all for an impressive 199 months, or 16 years 7 months:
![clip_image036[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0364.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image036[4]")
Not much “acceleration” there. Will it reach 200 months? I’ll report next month.
Finally, here is the monthly Global Warming Prediction Index, which compares the projections backcast by the modelers to 2005 and published in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report with the real-world outturn as measured by the two satellite datasets.
![clip_image038[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0384.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image038[4]")
The lower bound of the orange zone is the IPCC’s low-end projection. Warming should be occurring at a minimum of 1.33 Cº/century. The thick bright red line is the IPCC’s mid-range projection: warming should be occurring at 2.33 Cº/century.
The real-world trend, represented by the thick bright blue trend line, shows global temperatures declining since January 2005 at a rate equivalent to almost a quarter of a Celsius degree (half a Fahrenheit degree) per century.
You may think that going to the trouble of producing so many graphs is overkill. Yet when I first spoke up at the U.N. climate conference in Doha and pointed out that there had been no global warming for 16 years the delegates were furious. So were the news media. One reason for their unreason: they simply did not know the facts.
One would have thought that among all the hours of hand-wringing on the air and pages of moaning in print about “global warming”, most of the news media would be faithfully reporting the monthly temperature anomalies. But no. The facts do not fit the Party Line, so they are not reported. They are consigned to the Memory Hole.
As for Mr. Obama’s statement about “acceleration”, he was plain wrong. Instead of the warming equivalent to 2.33 Cº/century global warming that had been “anticipated”, there has really been no change in global temperature at all over the past five or ten years.
Will somebody tell the “President”?
But that mass loss (assuming the Grace calculations are correct, which I don’t) is happening, it could be because of the random fits and starts of glacial acceleration and deceleration, which is temperature-independent (presumably).
Corals? They evolved during much higher levels of co2 than today.
Polar bears? A jaw bone found during the Eemian interglacial and they survived the Holocene Climate Optimum of ice-free Arctic Ocean.
It is good to see the graphs we are so familiar with on WUWT being used so effectively. They speak visually, and demolish 10,000 words of waffle. I hope that now the committee have completed taking the evidence they will look at those graphs again and start to ask themselves if they really believe the strange explanation that the heat has suddenly, unconveniently, started to hide in the ocean deeps.
Emperor Penguins? There are DOUBLE more than we previously thought!
OK, I could go on, but I’ll stop for now.
In reply to:
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 21, 2013 at 3:55 pm
William Astley says:
July 21, 2013 at 12:51 pm
The solar magnetic cycle is rapidly changing, it appears the sun will be spotless based on observations by the end of this year.
Clairvoyance beats science every time…
William:
You have a good memory. Yes the sun will be spotless by the end of this year. Sunspots are being replaced by pores. The next step in the progression is no pores.
You have not responded with an explanation as to why sunspots are being replaced with pores.
I am curious why 11799 and 11800 are labeled as sunspot group. That is rhetorical question as obviously the warmists are trying their best to avoid a rapid drop off in sunspot number.
I dread the NASA announcement. ‘Anomalously spotless sun, weird super deep solar magnetic cycle minimum’ as I know what the weird super deep solar magnetic cycle minimum will lead to. This is the most important scientific event in the history of humanity.
http://www.solen.info/solar/
Region 11799 [S16E35] was quiet and stable.
Region 11800 [S11E38] was quiet and stable
Jimbo says: July 21, 2013 at 8:49 am
…
The answer is simple, ‘temperature’ is doing a U-turn … changing direction … therefore accelerating 😉
Jimbo says: July 21, 2013 at 8:59 am
…
Heidi sounds too raspy … needs to cough that ‘hare’ out of her throat.
@Robin –
Tour reference to Sir Peter Medawar’s comment that some people are educated beyond the point of being able to think rationally brings back memories of my brief stint as a university history professor 40 years ago. For the most part, my colleagues’ education made them less able, not more able, to perceive the world around them accurately, or respond to it in any sort of rational manner. This disease clearly infects the likes of Heidi Cullen and others of the alarmist presenters, in addition to the ideological disease that afflicts them..
@Jimbo –
If you really want to put it in perspective, until about 2 to 1-1/2 billion years ago, before photosynthesis by blue-green algae converted almost all of it to oxygen, the Earth’s primordial atmosphere was about 20 percent CO2, about the same percentage as oxygen is today, and the Earth certainly didn’t burn up them even with 500 times as much CO2 in the air as there is today.
@Bill H –
I’ll take it a step further and say that the EPA is a hate group – it’s way beyond even a rogue agency.
jai mitchell says:
July 21, 2013 at 2:37 pm
Gail Combs
no, not like the picture you show….
heat is transferred between two objects according to their differences in temperatures. when the sea surface temperature has a slightly greater mixing, its surface stays cooler and it can acquire more heat than it did before.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
So you are saying the heat [energy] transfered from the air to the sea is greater than the energy from under this curve given that NASA has recently found a difference in the distribution of energy by wavelength even though TSI stay relatively constant. graph of difference in spectral irradiance by wavelength(2004 to 2007.)
Also what causes the “slightly greater mixing” NASA answers that too:
Drat didn’t close first blockquote….
This ignorance of the president here reminds me of the whole WMD thing in Iraq.
Ideas climb up the social and political chain to the point where what the president hears and knows is only what those along the chain want them to hear and know.
I suggest sending in a team of UN inspectors to report that there are no WMDs in the temperature trends, and that what was formerly reported was based only on rumour, hearsay, and ‘bad intelligence’ (if there is such an oxymoron).
Data?
Who needs data?
Just reading an article By Gordon J. Fulks in the Oregonian.
Going over some of the comments, they are like zombies, no matter what data you give them they just drone on about Global warming, Climate change, extreme weather, Koch, Heartland, oil companies, Republicans……
Continuous Ad homonyms is the modus oprandi for most of them.
No data, just bile.
A commenter called ‘jim moran’ sounds like somebody on drugs…….
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/07/the_dishonesty_of_climate_chan.html#comments
Global Warming is eating itself!
AndyG55 says:
July 21, 2013 at 3:15 pm
RR says “And Obama wants to curtail it.”
Well he’s going to have to invade China and India then. 🙂
All he will be doing is moving even more industry to these areas, at the expense of American industry…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>…
And for those who think this is about the ‘Environment’ and about ‘Pollution’ I suggest taking a look at the latest Treaty the [self-snip] turkeys in DC are working on right now.
Unfortunately there is not much else out there telling the ordinary citizen what is going on behind closed doors.
There is this from a radical website. http://www.citizen.org/TPP
It lists several other links
Heidi Cullen’s explanation that, although the temperatures averaged out, it was only averaging out because it was hotter in one place and cooler in another, and that those were the exact places we should expect it to be hotter and colder, was a wonderful bit of waffling. The simple fact of the matter is that Alarmists always talked about temperatures “world wide.” Hansen said temperatures “world wide” were suppose to be a full degree above normal by now. In fact July may be right down around normal, to up around a fifth of a degree above normal, “world wide.”
Rather than Heidi just coming out and being honest, and saying, “We have blown the world wide forecast,” she obfuscates, talking about the Southwest.
She is good at that shell game. As Mr. McIntyre says over on Climate Audit, “You have to keep an eye on the pea.”
The problem is that more and more people understand it is a shell game. When she turns Hurricane Sandy into hype, more and more people have the historical data at their fingertips to refute her assertions and allegations.
“You cannot fool all of the people all of the time,” is attributed by many to Abraham Lincoln, but it also has been attributed to P.T. Barnum. Barnum knew when to leave town, despite the fact that when, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” was attributed to him, Barnum didn’t deny it, (and went on to thank the critic for the free publicity.)
The following is from Wikipedia, so take it as it you will: “According to David W. Maurer, writing in The Big Con (1940),[5] there was a similar saying amongst con men: “There’s a mark born every minute, and one to trim ’em and one to knock ’em”. Here ‘trim’ means to rip off, and ‘knock’ means to persuade away from a scam. The meaning is that there is no shortage of new victims, nor of con men, nor of honest men.”
Using this terminology, I would say our president sees the public as a “mark,” and himself as the “trim.” However when Obama says, “We … know that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or ten years ago,” Lord Monckton is the “knock,” persuading the gullible away from the scam.
Gifted con-artists knew when the jig was up, and snake oil salesmen knew when to leave town, but the Global Warming hoax got too big for its britches, and the perpetrators involved so many towns that they have no towns left to run away to. Expect them to stand their ground no matter how ludicrous their logic gets.
Also, consider the “leaked” AR5 to be a red herring.
Other_Andy says: @ur momisugly July 21, 2013 at 7:27 pm
A commenter called ‘jim moran’ sounds like somebody on drugs….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually he sounds like a paid troll. The attacks on WUWT and Anthony are especially interesting. If any of those people ever dropped by WUWT the discussions here would be completely over their heads.
HadCRUT 3 is still being updated at http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/monthly in addition to HadCRUT 4 at http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/data/current/time_series/HadCRUT.4.2.0.0.monthly_ns_avg.txt
HadCRUT3 has a negative slope from April 1997 to May 2013. HadCRUT ( version 3 and 4) data generally comes out approximately 4 weeks after the end of the month. E.g. maybe July 28th or so.
“…put in anything you want. Alice in Wonderland, put in anything you want…”
Seems to me that anything by Mann fits that example neatly.
“…Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,” the Mock Turtle replied; “and then the different branches of arithmetic – Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision…”
If you put his Tiljander results up to the looking-glass, then the truth comes out…
izen says:
July 21, 2013 at 12:37 pm
“…Thank you that is most helpful.
would it be even MORE reliable to add a few more months, round it up to 17 years?…” You are very cute, a credit to the cult of CAGW or whatever. But like Humpty Dumpty with words, when I say 16 years, 7 months, that is exactly what I mean. Until next month when I say, 16 years, 8 months, and so on.
Let me think about this. How many years had the planet been warming in 1988 when Hansen first claimed we were heading towards a catastrophe? Izen … can you explain why 10 years was good science at that time?
tgasloli,
“I’m generally a Monckton fan, but, this article is just silly. A climate cycle, glacial + interglacial period, is what, 100-150K years long. This article is looking at less than 10 years. The AGW people are looking a what, 50 year–100 years of poor quality data and unvalidated surrogates. If you are trying to do CLIMATE science and you are using anything less than 100 year average you are just looking at noise and picking out the pattern you want to see. Climate science isn’t even possible now. And given the abysmal accuracy of 24 hour weather prediction, even simple meteorology is barely feasible.”
Actually, the Gorebull Warmers like Hansen were looking at NO DATA. When Hansen got up in front of that committee around 1987 they had exactly ZERO data to indicate that we were having ANYTHING happening!!! Go back and get the temp data from that period, which is PRE- ADJUSTMENTS and there is no reason at all to have been worried about ANYTHING!!!
If they had been looking at 50-100 years that would have extended back past the Smoking Hot 30’s with the dust bowl and made the temps at that time look quite cool as opposed to the claims of dangerous warming!!! Gorebull Warming really has been a Propaganda War on the WORLD!!